The Power of Life: Agamben and the Coming Politics

The Power of Life: Agamben and the Coming Politics

Giorgio Agamben's work develops a new philosophy of life. On its horizon lies the conviction that our form of life can become the guiding and unifying power of the politics to come. Informed by this promise, The Power of Life weaves decisive moments and neglected aspects of Agamben's writings over the past four decades together with the thought of those who influenced him most (including Kafka, Heidegger, Benjamin, Arendt, Deleuze, and Foucault). In addition, the book positions his work in relation to key figures from the history of philosophy (such as Plato, Spinoza, Vico, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Derrida). This approach enables Kishik to offer a vision that ventures beyond Agamben's warning against the power over (bare) life in order to articulate the power of (our form of) life and thus to rethink the biopolitical situation. Following Agamben's prediction that the concept of life will stand at the center of the coming philosophy, Kishik points to some of the most promising directions that this philosophy can take. "An outstanding piece of work."—Simon Critchley, New School for Social Research "Combining novel biographical research with lucid textual analysis, Kishik's illuminating The Power of Life shows the reader how Agamben's work can help us to imagine new forms of life and radically transform philosophical thought and practice. His reading of Agamben is precise and informative, and I can think of no better or more reliable guide for working through Agamben's complex writings."—Matthew Calarco, California State University, Fullerton David Kishik is the author of To Imagine a Form of Life, a series of paraphilosophical books. He is Associate Professor at the Institute for Liberal Arts & Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College. The Power of Life AGAMBEN AND THE COMING POLITICS (To Imagine a Form of Life, II) By David Kishik Stanford University Press Copyright © 2012 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8047-7230-3 Contents Acknowledgments............................................................viAbbreviations of Agamben's Major Works.....................................viiIntroduction: Life in Venice...............................................1The Philosophical Subject..................................................1There Is Something Inside the Text.........................................4Nonparticipation...........................................................7The Mirror of Narcissus....................................................10The Specter of Venice......................................................131 Dialectic of Endarkenment................................................17Darkness Visible...........................................................17Biopolitics in Miniature...................................................19The Biopolitical Ladder....................................................25The Work of Dance in the Age of Sacred Lives...............................27Ethics After Auschwitz 32, The Potentiality of Thought.....................37The Color of Potentiality..................................................422 Feather-Light Rubble.....................................................45Zarathustra's Whisper......................................................45Sharpening Knives..........................................................49Emergency Brake............................................................51Above the Weight of the World..............................................54The Stillest Word..........................................................56Brachylogy.................................................................61Bricolage..................................................................63Ingenium...................................................................65Breathless Lingering.......................................................67The Philosopher and the Dog................................................703 Present While Absent.....................................................73The Politics of Presence...................................................73The Spiral of the Possible.................................................77I Am Whatever I Am.........................................................82Becoming Imperceptible.....................................................86Life and Violence..........................................................924 How to Imagine a Form of Life............................................99Notes......................................................................121Index......................................................................131 Chapter One Dialectic of Endarkenment Darkness Visible "Let there be darkness": it is hard to resist placing these words in the opening chapter of a book dedicated to Agamben's philosophy of life. "Light," he writes, "is only the comin