Between sovereign violence and human action. Giorgio Agamben and the critique of political sovereignty Cover Image
  • Price 4.90 €

Между суверенно насилие и човешко действие. Джорджо Агамбен и критиката на политическата суверенност
Between sovereign violence and human action. Giorgio Agamben and the critique of political sovereignty

Author(s): Boyan Manchev
Subject(s): Philosophy
Published by: Фондация за хуманитарни и социални изследвания - София
Keywords: crisis; politics; sovereignity; violence; Agamben; critique; representative democracy; modernity;

Summary/Abstract: Today, the ascertainment of a ‘crisis of the political’ (that is, not merely a particular political crisis but a crisis of the overall model of representative democracy dominating in the last decades and, therefore, of an array of generally established political principles of modernity that until recently appeared to be unshakeable) is shared by an array of radical political philosophers and to a great extent coincides, though with a reversed evaluation, with the neoliberal diagnosis of the ‘end of the political.’ There could hardly be any doubt about the fact that this crisis is part and parcel of a much more global transformation (parallel to the process which is obscurely called ‘globalization’) that affects the forms of production and exchange as well as the social structures and practices, and public space reaching also the most intimate spheres of private being. This paper aims at proposing several theoretical hypotheses on the current crisis, which is undoubtedly connected to the crisis of modern conceptual regimes of thinking of the political, through the prism of some radical interpretations of Walter Benjamin’s political theses by Giorgio Agamben. The unprecedented interest towards the two volumes of Homo Sacer by Agamben has undoubtedly a symptomatic value for the critical thinking of contemporaneity. Hence, it is of a particular interest to subject his theses to a detailed analysis in order to see in which aspects they capture the symptom and in which aspects they do not manage to rise to the level of the critical gesture thereby becoming, due to this failure, a part of the symptom itself.

  • Issue Year: 2010
  • Issue No: 32
  • Page Range: 55-74
  • Page Count: 20
  • Language: Bulgarian