Talk:Giorgio Agamben

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Apologies to whoever wrote the original article. . .I tried to edit without changing too much of the original article. I gave a summary of his comments on Aristotle, which I think are essential, but didn't go into the distinction between "zoe" and "bios". I might come back and add that in, though--I think that what I wrote still needs many additions and revisions, and if I don't get a chance to do it soon, I welcome the contributions of anyone who will. Also, I changed the last paragraph. . .I used to do Policy Debate, so I understand what the author was saying, but since most people are not acquainted with the jargon of that specific debate system, I tried to rephrase those comments in a way that would be understood by anyone interested in theory, not just people using theory for policy debate.Shakantala 17:52, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm considering deleting the section about his relevance in policy debate. I'll just seperate it as a section for now to get any opinions on this, but it seems trivial and too particular to the activity of debate. WoodenTaco 22:52, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Hey just to announce my intentions. Agamben's interest as a philosopher goes far beyond the most recent books, so I'm hoping to expand this page to take account of his many other contributions. In addition, "Homo Sacer" is only one volume of a larger project into which most of his work since The Coming Community falls and into which much of it has been explicitly inserted; I think the narrow focus of policy debaters on the usefulness of theory in their rounds has probably been responsible for neglecting this larger context and the ultimate stakes of the arguments. Mgasner 06:24, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 9/11 as a category

Brief note: I just reverted the subcategory again. I changed "September 11, 2001" to "9-11" in keeping with Agamben's critique of the Bush administration's instrumentalizing the events as a permanent condition. Mabuse 16:42, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Subsection title you mean? Actually, I prefer September 11, 2001, as "9/11" is commonly used in the States, but that's it. Other parts of the world refer to it as September 11 - furthermore, if you remember well, there is also another September 11 to mourn, somewhere near Santiago... I also think it is important to correct a bit the article, as Agamben certainly is critical to the US response, but it musn't mislead the reader into thinking that it is only an "anti-American POV". In other words, his political criticism must be better related to his philosophical struggle, and it should be noted that when Agamben start talking about a "state of exception", he traces it to the First World War, not to September 11. If we don't do that, the reader will not correctly understand his criticisms, which is extended to all "democracies", which all have made a more than fair use of rule by decree. Lapaz 12:38, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Could it perhaps be an ironic linguistic parallel that the events of September 11, 2001, have been instrumentalised as the permenant condition (ie meaning) of the terms '9/11', even 'September 11'? I also dislike '9/11' as subsection title - to many outside the US this reads as 9th November. Kaele 11:32, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] state of exception

Just a simple thing, really. "State of exception" probably should not link to "state of emergency" as they're 2 completely different things, just as the book state of exception tries to show. Im just goint to blank out the hyperlink for now.