Homo Sacer - not too long; still didn't read

July 21, 2024 8:39 PM

Never got around to reading Homo Sacer? Me either. So I watched this animatic. But consider, in the next election, when you pick a Sovereign, you're also picking who gets to be Bios, and who gets to be Zoë. Homo Sacer reviewed in a YouTube video essay, The link that started this post AGAMBEN HOMO SACER ANIMATIC, Homo Sacer slide deck [Triple Link YouTube]
posted by otherchaz (2 comments total)

if you prefer video format, you may also appreciate Sociological Theory: Skeleton Key 1 to Agamben's Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power & Bare Life. at ~15:51 Professor Dan Krier begins describing how Nazi Carl Schmitt is the terminological origin of Agamben's bios and zoë, sources et cetera
posted by HearHere at 11:17 PM on July 21 [1 favorite]

Agamben never sat right with me, even as I was educated in fields that were heavily influenced by his work. It took COVID and reading Benjamin Bratton's Revenge of the Real to understand why. As Bratton wrote for Verso:

Agamben explicitly rejects all pandemic-mitigation measures on behalf of an ‘embrace tradition, refuse modernity’ conviction which denies the relevance of a biology that is real regardless of the words used to name it. Something seems to have recently cracked open for him, and yet at the same time, re-reading his foundational texts in the light of the pandemic pieces is illuminating. His position has not suddenly changed. It was there all along.

posted by criticalyeast at 11:42 PM on July 21 [2 favorites]