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The eclipse of politics began when it ceased to deal with the transformations that deprived its categories and concepts of their meaning. To find genuine political paradigms, we must now turn to fields that are usually not considered political: we can thus speak of a paradigm based on the natural life of human beings, which—from a Foucauldian perspective—regains its centrality within the polis; of the paradigm of concentration camps, where our most private part, blood, becomes a crucial political criterion defining a space where politics and biopolitics become indistinguishable; of the refugee paradigm, which breaks the link between man and citizen; of language as the political locus par excellence, a site of unprecedented arguments and manipulation; and last but not least, of the sphere of pure means or gestures—i.e., means that, while remaining such, are released from their relation to an end. Dedicated to the memory of Guy Debord, Agamben’s book aims to rethink political categories within a new reality, one in which the peoples of the earth seem to have completed their historical tasks, thus letting power and naked life face one another without intermediation.

Giorgio Agamben

Giorgio Agamben is one of the most hotly debated political philosophers today. His works on the political and legal paradigm of the West have caught the attention of philosophers, sociologists, political scientists and jurists alike, but his significance has been obscured by myths and misunderstandings. His works have been translated into more than 15 languages.