The Power of Life: Agamben and the Coming Politics

by David Kishik

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804778381
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	01/11/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	483 KB

About the Author

David Kishik is the author of Wittgenstein's Form of Life (2008) and co-translator, with Stefan Pedatella, of Agamben's What Is an Apparatus? (Stanford 2009) and Nudities (Stanford 2010). He is a fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin, though he usually lives in New York.

Read an Excerpt

The Power of Life

AGAMBEN AND THE COMING POLITICS (To Imagine a Form of Life, II)

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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

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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 coming to itself of the dark" (IP, 119). There seems to be little hope in his mind that light really has the capacity to enlighten. A light can only flicker, like a distant star, and the darkness that surrounds it is not meant to understand it. In fact, even the "total darkness" of the nightly sky is for him "the testimony of a time in which the stars did not yet shine" (RA, 162). Even Arendt's Gnostic faith in the power of singular bright "men in dark times" to ever more slightly make a difference in this world does not seem to play the same role in Agamben's thought. Be that as it may, he also appears to be possessed by an exigent demand to which he cannot not answer: it is difficult to miss (though many still do) that there is a constant attempt throughout his writings to bear witness to a certain light or, at least, to a glimmer. If you have ever tried to catch fireflies with your hand on a hot summer night, you may have experienced this curious philosophical comportment. Call it, if you wish, a dialectic of endarkenment, by which I mean a perpetual attempt "to perceive, in the darkness of the present, this light that strives to reach us but cannot" (WA, 46).

Consider, for example, the Homo Sacer series of books, Agamben's major contribution to the field of political philosophy, and compare it with The Republic, the founding text in this tradition. The most famous image in Plato's book is of a prisoner who is released from his chains to face the sunlight of truth, of this gloomy cave from which the reader is supposed to emerge with a little help from the philosopher. In Agamben's work, the experience seems to be the reverse: in the middle of life, while sitting on a comfortable chair with a lamp and maybe even a hot drink in a reasonably secure corner of the earth, the reader suddenly finds herself in a dark forest. This experience echoes not only the first lines of Dante's Inferno but also the opening scene of Kafka's The Trial, where Joseph K., the protagonist of the story, wakes up one morning to discover that he is charged in a shadowy court of committing an unspecified crime. Our life, with its basic rights and liberties, is usually protected by the laws of a state; but it can also easily be transformed into what Agamben calls a bare or naked life, which is stripped of its way or form of life. With a blink of an eye, a flick of a pen, or a press of a button, any "good citizen" from any "respected country" (it does not matter whether it is democratic or not) can be excluded from the state-run "protection plan" and thus be exposed to random acts of violence. Even as we live our seemingly meaningful and civil everyday lives, we should not forget that, from the perspective of the powers that be, we may very well be perceived as no more than a mere fact, a docile body, or a simple number, which can and should be governed, monitored, disciplined, and controlled. Agamben thus observes that "in the eyes of authority—and maybe rightly so—nothing looks more like a terrorist than the ordinary man" (WA, 23).

But what at first appears to the human eye as pitch dark—similar to what, in the initial ascension from the cave, appears to Plato's prisoner as the blinding light of the sun—simply takes time to adjust to. You will certainly begin to discern your surroundings after spending a few seconds in an unlit room, even though objects may still look monochromatic (as Agamben's work might seem at times). What you then see, however, is "no light; but rather darkness visible," to echo Milton's Paradise Lost. We therefore need to find a way to cope with the shadows inside the cave that Plato deems to be mere appearances in a time when the burning sun—understood here not only as a metaphor for absolute truth or God but also for the absolute king or sovereign—is possibly undergoing an eclipse. This, however, does not mean that we now have no choice but to live in a relativistic or anarchic chaos, as some nihilistic readings of the allegory of the cave may lead one to assume. "Because human beings neither are nor have to be any essence, any nature, or any specific destiny," Agamben writes, "their condition is the most empty and the most insubstantial of all: it is the truth. What remains hidden from them is not something behind appearance, but rather appearing itself.... The task of politics is to return appearance itself to appearance, to cause appearance itself to appear" (ME, 94–95).

In this way, Agamben reveals the intimate relationship between the prisoner in Plato's Republic and the bat from Aristotle's Metaphysics: both are blinded by the blazing light of the sun, and thus they are comparable symbols of the great difficulty that humans have in comprehending "the things which are by nature most evident of all," because this kind of difficulty, Aristotle claims, "does not lie in the things, but in us." For Agamben, however, it is not light but rather darkness that is visible, that is apparent. Nevertheless, we still face it as if we were bats in daylight, which is understandable, given that for so long we were told that the sun is supposed to be good for us. The difficulty of seeing this visible darkness lies not in the things but in us, in our failure to see what is right under our nose. So maybe behind what we like to think of as a romantic cliché stands a simple realization: only during sunset, when our shadows grow much longer than our selves, can we begin to appear to one another; only at twilight can we begin to see each other's truth.

Biopolitics in Miniature

Agamben's strategy postulates that the first text in political thought demanding our undistracted attention is not The Republic but Leviathan, which places his analysis within a decidedly modern context. One of the best ways to approach Hobbes's imposing tomb of a book is to simply inspect its frontispiece, as Agamben did in a lecture in New York during the tumultuous fall semester of 2001. It is worthwhile to examine this engraving quite closely, since it can not only offer a window into Hobbes's system but also encapsulate a miniature model of Agamben's extensive critique of modern politics. Nevertheless, like all miniatures, what follows is not going to be an adequate substitution for the real thing. This section is meant only to serve as a quick and idiosyncratic primer for the five books that constitute (so far) the Homo Sacer project. This chapter as a whole introduces some of the most basic elements of the political and philosophical "darkness" as Agamben understands it. On this background, we will also begin to glimpse some possible illuminations.

Observe the great leviathan, "that mortal God," on the top half of Hobbes's frontispiece, which is represented as a disproportionally large sovereign with a majestic crown. This giant dominates the image even though it is placed behind a stretch of hills, leaving to your imagination the shape of its lower body. Given the title of the book—the Hebrew name for a mystical sea monster—it could very well be a fishtail submerged in the sea. Or perhaps it is a puppet maneuvered by an invisible hand. Speculation aside, it is the upper body to which our attention is drawn. The arms and torso of the giant are composed of a multitude of little people. The body politic, the citizens, constitute the very body of the sovereign. The people's backs are turned to the viewer, since the collective attention of the commonwealth is focused on the head, on their leader. As one can expect, the people are excluded from this head (of state). A standard reading of Leviathan establishes a bipolar opposition between the state of nature (where "man is a wolf to man," since life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short") and the political state (where you transfer the right to govern yourself to the sovereign, who thereafter has the exclusive power to protect the citizenry from any harm). In a move that we will witness time and again throughout Agamben's work, he questions this clear-cut separation by tracing the sovereign's special position within this scheme. Notice that in the engraving he is located far away from the city, beyond a valley and behind the hills. The ruler, who at first glance appears to be the pinnacle of the political state, actually remains in a sort of natural state, outside the city, and therefore stands as the exception to the rule. In the first volume of Homo Sacer, subtitled Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Agamben explains: "This is why in Hobbes, the foundation of sovereign power is to be sought not in the subjects' free renunciation of their natural right but in the sovereign's preservation of his natural right to do anything to anyone" (HS, 106). The basic mistake of the standard reading of Leviathan lies therefore in looking at the situation from the fixed position given to the one viewing the frontispiece, which is the vantage point of the populace. Notice that when you place the picture close to your nose while focusing on the monarch with his outstretched arms, the vista is quite similar to what you would see if you still bother to participate in those political assemblies at the city square: a multitude of backs, and a single head elevated above the rest. By means of your gaze, you become one with this commonwealth that voices in unison its support or demands, its hopes or fears, and you are led to believe that this is the meaning of the political. Agamben's discovery lies in renouncing this perspective and assuming instead the viewpoint of the sovereign, for whom the city does not appear as bustling with life but as if it were dissolved: "Contrary to our modern habit of representing the political realm in terms of citizens' rights, free will, and social contracts, from the point of view of sovereignty only bare life is authentically political" (HS, 106). This shift in the reader's perspective produces an effect similar to that of an X-ray: what traditionally looks like a normal human being transforms into a ghostly white skeleton on a thick dark background. The "political animal" that Aristotle saw in man is reduced to just another animal. More than a century before Agamben, Nietzsche had already described this perilous condition in unambiguous terms: "State, where the slow suicide of all is called 'life.'"

Let us focus now on a place that the commonwealth cannot see because its collective back is turned away. Here, on the bottom of the top half (or the center) of the frontispiece, one can detect a small city surrounded by a wall. But the city is nearly empty: except for a few almost indiscernible little soldiers bearing arms, there are only buildings and desolate streets. The city appears as if it were in the midst of some kind of state of emergency and therefore was put under curfew. The traditional picture of politics as a public sphere suffused with words and deeds is nowhere to be found. In the eyes of the sovereign, the war of all against all cannot be fully distinguished—temporally, spatially, or conceptually—from the more or less peaceful, civilized, and protected society in which we think that we live. The citizens may believe that the state of nature is in every sense "behind them," but from the sovereign's viewpoint it persists as "the exception and the threshold that constitutes and dwells within" the seemingly lawful and normal state (HS, 106). In State of Exception, the next volume in the Homo Sacer series, Agamben focuses on a specific apparatus that is deployed whenever an emergency situation is declared in our modern nation-states: by virtue of a special clause in the law itself, there is always the possibility of suspending certain laws and rights, thus giving the sovereign and his assistants unrestrained power to, indeed, "do anything to anyone." In this state of exception, the individuals that come together to compose the Hobbesian commonwealth may no longer be protected by the law that is usually meant to keep them out of harm's way. In the final analysis, they are marked not by their capacity to speak and act but by the capacity of their bodies to be killed with impunity. This, Agamben boldly claims, is "the new political body of the West," which is perfectly illustrated in another version of the frontispiece that Hobbes commissioned for a special parchment copy of Leviathan, dedicated to Charles II. The startling difference is that here, in an image meant for the exclusive gaze of the sovereign, the people that compose the giant's body are looking straight at the viewer rather than turning their backs away, and the expressions on their faces are evidently full of dread. They no longer look like respectable citizens but like what Agamben calls homines sacri, sacred men, who are ready for the massacre. According to this analysis, the killing of homo sacer is considered neither as homicide nor as sacrifice, since it is banished to a space that lies outside both human and divine law. Politics thus transforms into biopolitics: the political power over the bare lives of those sacred men, women, and children.

This, however, is not the end of the story. In On the Citizen, the first systematic formulation of his political thought, Hobbes makes an interesting though rarely noticed distinction "between the right and the exercise of sovereign power" by comparing the government of this or that commonwealth to the government of the world en masse: "When he who has the right to reign wishes to participate himself in all judgments, consolations, and public actions, it is a way of running things comparable to God's attending directly to everything himself, contrary to the order of nature." Agamben uses this quote as an epigraph for the next part of Homo Sacer, titled The Kingdom and the Glory. To illustrate this point, notice that in the familiar engraving for Hobbes's Leviathan the sovereign holds a sword in one hand and a staff in the other, which are conventionally interpreted as representations of the earthly (political) and heavenly (theological) powers, respectively. But since his arms and torso are made of people, those powers can be said to be, both figuratively and literally, in the hands of the people. The sovereign is therefore said to reign, but he does not govern. The day-to-day governance of the modern state is entrusted to the bureaucracy, exactly as, in medieval theology, the actual governance of the world is entrusted to the angels. What, then, is the function of God and the sovereign within their respective theological and political economies? What is left for them to do? Agamben explains that since the sovereign, like God, has no practical role in government, he can only idly bask in his own glory (given to him, of course, by the multitude). The sword and the staff from the frontispiece may therefore also symbolize the power and the glory of the mortal as well as the immortal gods. This interpretation of the image may be well and good, until one notices that Agamben places at the beginning of his own book a different frontispiece that is a direct reply to Hobbes's. It is a common medieval representation of the heavenly throne, the seat of divine power, complete with all its necessary symbols and regalia. Only one element is missing: God is absent, the seat vacant. "The empty throne" is the emblem of Agamben's assertion that at the center of the governmental machine there is nothing. But this, of course, is already present in a larval form in Hobbes's original frontispiece: under the real crown, in between the physical sword and staff, above the vividly drawn city, this giant creature without fear is actually a specter devoid of life. The sovereign, after all, is not a real man but an artificial one, like the Jewish golem that was created only to serve in the rabbi's household but then grew larger and larger until it overcame its own master. (According to the lore, the only way to get rid of this golem is to climb up to its forehead, where the word emet, "truth" in Hebrew, was first written in order to give life to the dummy. You must then erase the first letter, the privative aleph, thus leaving the word met, which means "dead." At that moment, the golem is supposed to immediately collapse like a log. But please be cautious as you do so, or you will end up like the Polish rabbi who was crushed under the lifeless mass of his leviathan-like golem.)

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Power of Life by David Kishik Copyright © 2012 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vi

Abbreviations of Agamben's Major Works vii

Introduction: Life in Venice 1

The Philosophical Subject 1

There Is Something Inside the Text 1

Nonparticipation 1

The Mirror of Narcissus 1

The Specter of Venice 13

1 Dialectic of Endarkenment 17

Darkness Visible 1

Biopolitics in Miniature 1

The Biopolitical Ladder 1

The Work of Dance in the Age of Sacred Lives 1

Ethics After Auschwitz 1

The Potentiality of Thought 1

The Color of Potentiality 42

2 Feather-Light Rubble 45

Zarathustra's Whisper 1

Sharpening Knives 1

Emergency Brake 1

Above the Weight of the World 1

The Stillest Word 1

Brachylogy 1

Bricolage 1

Ingenium 1

Breathless Lingering 1

The Philosopher and the Dog 70

3 Present While Absent 73

The Politics of Presence 1

The Spiral of the Possible 1

I Am Whatever I Am 1

Becoming Imperceptible 1

Life and Violence 92

4 How to Imagine a Form of Life 99

Notes 121

Index 131

Editorial Reviews

"Through the combination of biographical research and textual analysis of Giorgio Agamben's work a picture emerges of a life infused and transformed by philosophy . . . Kishik's work is an insightful and engaging companion to Agamben's lifework."

Useful Illusions - J. Paetkau

"Through the combination of biographical research and textual analysis of Giorgio Agamben's work a picture emerges of a life infused and transformed by philosophy . . . Kishik's work is an insightful and engaging companion to Agamben's lifework."—J. Paetkau, Useful Illusions

"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

From the Publisher

"An outstanding piece of work."

New School for Social Research - Simon Critchley

"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."

Fullerton - Matthew Calarco