A Small, Additonal, Added–on Life Speaking. Remarks on the Vitalism in Giorgio Agamben's Critical Theory

Abstract

Agamben’s thought gives us an interesting set of tools and references to critically analyse the logic of sovereignty haunting even the best intentions of Western biopolitics. As an alternative to the inherently disastrous logic of inclusive exclusion, he puts forward a strong vitalist, ontological way of thinking. This paper is an enquiry into whether that alternative is really valid. As far as his publications allow (since the “pars construens” of his Homo Sacer project is still to be published), the answer to this question must be negative. A careful reading of the passages on language in both Homo Sacer I and III (Remnants of Auschwitz), is illuminating in this regard. This is because the passages on language in which Agamben develops his alternative logic (for instance, the ones on bearing witness) do not overcome the logic of sovereignty denounced in the usual – representationalist – way of thinking the biopolitical. Those passages give no adequate answer to the representationalist way of treating the same problems, saying that the logic of sovereignty – of inclusive exclusion – is  the logic we have to deal with even to find solutions for the disaster that logic has provoked and is still able to provoke.