Table of Contents

Introduction: The Work of Giorgio Agamben: Life and Power Chapter 1 Paradigms, Signatures, and Philosophical Archaeology - The Idea of the Arche: The Moment of Arising - On Paradigms: Between Singularity and Exemplarity - On Signatures - Philosophical Archaeology and Deconstruction Chapter 2 Language and Being -On the Linguistic- Metaphysical Machine in Agamben’s Thought - The Isolation of the Improper: A Critique of Signification - The Common and the Proper: How do Signatures Work? Chapter 3 The Paradox of Sovereignty: Bare life and its Paradigms - The Paradox of Sovereignty: Between Benjamin and Schmitt - Bare Life and its Paradigms: On the Figure of Homo Sacer -The Homo Sacer Project as Philosophical Archaeology Chapter 4 The Signature of Secularisation: Economic Theology, Government and Bare Life - An Archaeology of Economic Theology: Oikonomia and the Fracture Between God’s Being and His Action - The Providential Machine: On the Collateral Effect as an Act of Government - An Archaeology of Glory and the Production of Bare Life - The Production of Bare Life and the Governmental Machine Chapter 5 Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Sovereignty: The Lessons of The Kingdom and the Glory - Agamben and Foucault: Two Genealogies of Governmentality - Neoliberalism: Rearticulating Sovereignty and Governance -The production of bare Life and Neoliberalism Chapter 6 The signature of Life, Biopolitics, and Inoperativity - Foucault’s Notion of Life and the Enigma of Biopolitics - The Signature of Life and the Biopolitical Machine -Biopolitics and Philosophical Archaeology Conclusion: The Politics of Inoperativity: Use, Modal Ontology and Destituent Power -Profanation, Inoperativity and Deactivation -The Use of Bodies: towards a theory of Use and a Modal Ontology -Destituent Power and Resistance Index

Promotional Information

Rethink the notions of life and power – two of the central themes in Agamben’s work – through a reconstruction of his philosophical method and the examination of his critique of Western metaphysics.

About the Author

German Eduardo Primera is Lecturer in Philosophy and Critical Theory in the School of Humanities, University of Brighton, UK.

Reviews

German Primera’s engaging work uses the recent completion of the Homo Sacer project as an occasion to assess Agamben’s work in its entirety. Demonstrating how the early writings on metaphysics and signification inform later discussions of sovereignty, theology, governmentality, power and life, it shows how the ontology of signatures and paradigms underpinning Agamben’s philosophical archaeology form the threads that cross the whole arc of his thinking, cashing themselves out in a politics of inoperability and destituent potency. Combining close engagements with contemporaries such as Foucault, Derrida and Negri, and answering a multitude of critics, Primera establishes Agamben’s distinctive place in post-Heideggerian political philosophy.
*Nathan Widder, Professor of Political Theory, University of London, UK*

One of the very few genuine attempts to understand Agamben’s work philosophically: by means of a careful, precise, and absolutely lucid reconstruction of his thought, which only an exceptional familiarity with the whole corpus would allow, Primera throws new light on the very deepest of its structures. These structures are rendered visible by a return to one of the earliest moments of Agamben’s mature work: the critique of signification and the sign. This return is made in such a way as to allow Primera to carry out a deeper excavation of the foundations of Agamben’s conceptual architecture than we have ever seen before.
*Michael Lewis, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK*

A clear, inspiring, and beautifully written investigation into Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy understood as a critique of Western metaphysics aimed at rendering inoperative the signatures that control the intelligibility of Western politics and culture. In dialogue with Derrida, Foucault, Negri, Schmitt, and Benjamin, the book underscores the significance of Agamben’s work for both a critique of and a contribution to current debates on neoliberalism, biopolitics, governmentality, and sovereignty.
*Silvia Benso, Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA*