Catastrophe and Redemption: The Political Thought of Giorgio Agamben (SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

Offers a striking new reading of Agamben’s political thought and its implications for political action in the present. Challenging the prevalent account of Agamben as a pessimistic thinker, Catastrophe and Redemption proposes a reading of his political thought in which the redemptive element of his work is not a curious aside but instead is fundamental to his project. Jessica Whyte considers his critical account of contemporary politics—his argument that Western politics has been “biopolitics” since its inception, his critique of human rights, his argument that the state of exception is now the norm, and the paradigmatic significance he attributes to the concentration camp—and shows that it is in the midst of these catastrophes of the present that Agamben sees the possibility of a form of profane redemption. Whyte outlines the importance of potentiality in his attempt to formulate a new politics, examines his relation to Jewish and Christian strands of messianism, and interrogates the new forms of praxis that he situates within contemporary commodity culture, taking Agamben’s thought as a call for the creation of new political forms Catastrophe and Redemption: The Political Thought of Giorgio Agamben 4 Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction: On Catastrophe and Redemption 10 Katechon, Antichrist, Messiah 16 Flowers and Chains 19 Chapter Outline 24 Chapter 1: The Politics of Life 28 Agamben and Foucault: On Biopolitics, Ancient and Modern 34 Biopolitics and Sovereignty 37 Biopolitical Being 40 The Rights of Bare Life 44 Hoping Merely Out of Stupidity 51 Chapter 2: Politics at the Limits of the Law: On the State of Exception 56 The State of Exception 61 Carl Schmitt: The Paradox of Sovereignty 63 Presupposition and the Problem of Application 68 The State of “Nature” 72 Challenging the Normalization of the Exception? 77 Chapter 3: If This Is a Man: Life after Auschwitz 82 The Remnant Shall Be Saved 85 The Danger 87 Where Danger Is, Grows the Saving Power Also 96 Chapter 4: “I Would Prefer Not To”: Bartleby, Messianism, and the Potentiality of the Law 106 The Law Is a Dry Canal 111 Aristotle and the Origins of Sovereignty 113 Past Contingent 119 Bartleby as Messiah? 128 Chapter 5: A New Use: On the Society of the Spectacle and the Coming Politics 132 Paying Pilgrimage to the Commodity Fetish 138 The Eclipse of Use and the “Dialectical Salvation of the Commodity” 141 A New Use for the Self: The Global Petty Bourgeoisie and the Coming Community 153 We Are Saved When We No Longer Want to Be 159 Conclusion: Unemployment and the Ungovernable 168 Notes 176 Introduction: On Catastrophe and Redemption 176 Chapter 1: The Politics of Life 180 Chapter 2: Politics at the Limits of the Law: On the State of Exception 185 Chapter 3: If This Is a Man: Life after Auschwitz 189 Chapter 4: “I Would Prefer Not To”: Bartleby, Messianism, and the Potentiality of the Law 194 Chapter 5: A New Use: On the Society of the Spectacle and the Coming Politics 199 Conclusion: Unemployment and the Ungovernable 206 Bibliography 208 Works by Giorgio Agamben 208 Other Works 209 Index 220 A Striking New Reading Of Agamben's Political Thought And Its Implications For Political Action In The Present--provided By Publisher. Jessica Whyte. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.