Agamben versus Agamben: for a bare life

Abstract

In the work of Giorgio Agamben as a whole, but especially in his famous political-philosophical project, the concept of bare life basically appears as the fundamental provision of sovereign power and the original element of the Western legal-political world, in a residual relationship dissected by the threat and by violence. The investigation that takes shape in the reflections that are now summarized has the purpose of elucidating whether there are elements in the philosopher's work that authorize taking another look at bare life, beyond its most evident theoretical conception. Covering the long period that separates Homo sacer: il potere sovrano e la nuda vita from Quando la casa brucia, with twenty-five years of uninterrupted production, we now seek to assess if there is another side to bare life, whether the concept can be observed from another angle, what alternatives it supports, what suggestions it infers, what its potentialities are, both by the elements listed by the author himself and by the meanings that we can construct through independent argumentative paths. Just as for the Italian philosopher, we read in an interview dated from the beginning of this journey, Walter Benjamin’s reading can serve as an antidote to the thought of Martin Heidegger, Giorgio Agamben can perhaps serve as an antidote against himself.