10. What Is a Form-of-Life?: Giorgio Agamben and the Practice of Poverty

DeCaroli, Steven

doi:10.1515/9781474402651-012

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 2 publications

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“…Form-of-life, notes Steven DeCaroli (2016: 207), ‘remains in continual tension’ with form of life. In Prozorov’s (2016: 184) convincing reading of this dialectic, form-of-life is Agamben’s crucial ‘source of radical political affirmation, whereby the being of things “as they are” authorises the overcoming of the present order of things’.…”

Section: Agamben’s Unspeakable Girlmentioning

confidence: 99%

A blue coat: The addict and the unspeakable girl in South Africa’s colonial archive

Waetjen

2023

Thesis Eleven

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Can a colonial archive render up form-of-life? To what ends? This essay explores these questions through a methodological exercise that casts a specific historical subject in the role of Giorgio Agamben’s ‘unspeakable girl’. The subject is a woman identified in a 1910 Cape Town police report as a habitual opium smoker. The unspeakable girl is a philosophical construction through which Agamben develops a concept of initiated (or initiating) knowledge. At stake in my forensic re/deconstruction of this case is how a concept of the ‘unspeakable’ may help to unsettle the figure of the ‘addict’ as a stigmatised object of knowledge and paternalism, in service of more humane policy and treatment regimes in the present. The transformative potential of initiating knowledge supports current practice as the ‘come as you are’ motto of harm reduction, and as a bridge between academic analysis and the more intimate concerns of the heart.

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Section: Agamben’s Unspeakable Girlmentioning

confidence: 99%

A blue coat: The addict and the unspeakable girl in South Africa’s colonial archive

Waetjen

2023

Thesis Eleven

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Why Agamben Cannot Save Us: A Political Critique of Giorgio Agamben’s “Coming Politics”

Jamali

2024

Rethinking Marxism

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Biopolitics and Illiberalism

Yatsyk

2024

The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism

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This chapter examines how the biopolitical approach can help to unpack the illiberal backsliding of national states. It demonstrates the Russian state’s illiberal degradation toward totalitarianism from the beginning of Putin’s presidency in the 2000s, moving from the “power of life” to the “power of death.” The chapter argues that the biopolitical approach revealed the Kremlin’s totalitarian potential during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev in 2008–2012. Since 2012, Moscow has been intensively applying biopolitical regulations to consolidate Russian society on the basis of conservative values and imperial ressentiment. Body-oriented discourse has become popular among Russian politicians due to its ability to substitute post-ideological forms for public politics. As Putin’s regime continues to solidify, it replaces politico-ideological arguments with force and violence against political opponents. This chapter tells the story of the Kremlin’s zoe- and thanatopoliticization through the normalization of violence, its ultimate manifestation being the full-fledged war with Ukraine.

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10. What Is a Form-of-Life?: Giorgio Agamben and the Practice of Poverty

Cited by 3 publications

References 2 publications

A blue coat: The addict and the unspeakable girl in South Africa’s colonial archive

A blue coat: The addict and the unspeakable girl in South Africa’s colonial archive

Why Agamben Cannot Save Us: A Political Critique of Giorgio Agamben’s “Coming Politics”

Biopolitics and Illiberalism

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