scholarly journals A biopolítica da pandemia: Agamben e Bolsonaro entram em um bar

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-335
Author(s):  
Maikon C. S. Scaldaferro
Keyword(s):  
Giorgio Agamben

A pandemia de coronavírus que alterou a vida de pessoas em todo mundo desvelou surpreendentes “afinidades eletivas” entre o crítico do Estado de exceção e o fã do Estado de exceção. Nesse trabalho discute-se por que o filósofo italiano Giorgio Agamben apresentou teses sobre a pandemia que mais lembram as falas negacionistas do presidente do Brasil. Mais do que uma mera análise política equivocada da pandemia, entendemos que as teses defendidas por Agamben decorrem da própria teoria da biopolítica que o filósofo elaborou em seus textos mais celebrados. Neste artigo procuramos primeiramente apontar os fundamentos da teoria da biopolítica elaborada por Agamben. Num segundo momento mostramos como as ideias do filósofo italiano estão alinhadas com o que tem sido defendido pelo presidente Bolsonaro. Ao final, indicamos porque os textos de Agamben sobre a pandemia são uma consequência lógica daquilo que ele havia formulado em sua teoria da biopolítica.

PENSAMENTO POLÍTICO EM GIORGIO AGAMBEN

Professare ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Claudemir Aparecido Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Political Freedom ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Control ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social

<p class="resumoabstract">O professor Giorgio Agamben tem elaborado críticas à engenhosa estrutura política ocidental moderna. Avalia os mecanismos de controle estatal, nos quais os denomina ‘dispositivos’, cuja força está na imbricação às normas jurídico-teológicas com seus similares ritos e liturgias. Suas ocorrências e legitimidade preponderam no tecido social cuja organização sistêmica se põe quase como elemento natural e não cultural. O texto tem por objetivo explorar a concepção política de Agamben sobre a política contemporânea, especialmente considerando seu livro: ‘Estado de Exceção’, cuja investigação apresenta a possibilidade de atenuação dos direitos de cidadania e o enfraquecimento da prática da liberdade política e o processo de relação dos indivíduos no meio social através da redução das subjetividades ‘autênticas’. Analisamos ainda a transferência do mundo sacro elaborado pelos teólogos católicos presente na modernidade à política cuja democracia moderna faz do homem (sujeito) tornar-se objeto do poder político. Faz também, reflexão dos conceitos de subjetivação e dessubjetivação relacionando-os às implicações políticas do homem moderno. A pesquisa é bibliográfica com ênfase na análise dos conceitos elaborados por Agamben, especialmente quanto ao ‘dispositivo’. Conclui que o indivíduo ocidental, de modo geral, sofre o processo de dessubjetivação e está ‘nu’, indefeso e alienado politicamente. Ele precisa voltar-se ao processo de ‘profanação’ dos dispositivos para libertar-se das vinculações orientadoras que forçosamente o descaracteriza enquanto ser ativo e livre.</p><p class="resumoabstract"><strong>Palavras-chave</strong>: Política. Liberdade. Subjetivação.</p><h3>ABSTRACT</h3><p class="resumoabstract">Professor Giorgio Agamben has been criticizing the ingenious modern Western political structure. It evaluates the mechanisms of state control, in which it calls them 'devices', whose strength lies in the overlap with legal-theological norms with their similar rites and liturgies. Its occurrences and legitimacy preponderate in the social fabric whose systemic organization is almost as a natural and not a cultural element. The text aims to explore Agamben's political conception of contemporary politics, especially considering his book 'State of Exception', whose research presents the possibility of attenuating citizenship rights and weakening the practice of political freedom and the individuals in the social environment through the reduction of 'authentic' subjectivities. We also analyze the transfer of the sacred world elaborated by the Catholic theologians present in the modernity to the politics whose modern democracy makes of the man - subject - to become object of the political power. It also reflects on the concepts of subjectivation and desubjectivation, relating them to the political implications of modern man. The research is bibliographical with emphasis in the analysis of the concepts elaborated by Agamben, especially with regard to the 'device'. He concludes that the Western individual, in general, suffers the process of desubjectivation and is 'naked', defenseless and politically alienated. He must turn to the process of 'desecration' of devices to free himself from the guiding bindings that forcibly demeanes him while being active and free.</p><p class="resumoabstract"><strong>Keywords</strong>: Politics. Freedom. Subjectivity. </p><p> </p>

The Time of Indifference: Mandelstam's Age, Badiou's Event, and Agamben's Contemporary

CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-99
Author(s):  
William Watkin
Keyword(s):  
Modern Time ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Alain Badiou

There has been little direct discussion between perhaps the two leading philosophers of our age: Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben. Yet both men have written about the same poem by Osip Mandelstam, ‘The Age’, around the topic of time. Significantly, Agamben's response, written after Badiou's, is a subtle and damning critique of Badiou's conceptualisation of time, in particular extended across the categories of the modern, the contemporary, and the now or the event – although it never actually mentions Badiou by name. In this paper the lens of the central role of indifference in the work of both is used to present alternating and competing views as to the nature of modern, contemporary, and ‘now’ time. Specifically, a contrast is drawn between Badiou's use of indifference as both quality-neutral and absolutely non-relational, and Agamben's application of the indifferent suspension of the temporal signature as such. The paper concludes that while Badiou uses temporal indifference to question and problematise the idea of modern time as ‘now’, through a theory of the event, Agamben appears to go further. Rather than analyse the nature of modern time, the contemporary and the now through his reading of Mandelstam, Agamben uses Mandelstam's poem to suspend the Western conception of time as a line composed of points in its entirety.

Kevin Attell, Giorgio Agamben: Beyond the Threshold of Deconstruction

Derrida Today ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-243
Author(s):  
Elia R.G. Pusterla
Keyword(s):  
Giorgio Agamben

Friedrich Nietzsche

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Lemm
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Georges Bataille ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
Point Of Reference

Readers of Giorgio Agamben would agree that the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) is not one of his primary interlocutors. As such, Agamben’s engagement with Nietzsche is different from the French reception of Nietzsche’s philosophy in Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Georges Bataille, as well as in his contemporary Italian colleague Roberto Esposito, for whom Nietzsche’s philosophy is a key point of reference in their thinking of politics beyond sovereignty. Agamben’s stance towards the thought of Nietzsche may seem ambiguous to some readers, in particular with regard to his shifting position on Nietzsche’s much-debated vision of the eternal recurrence of the same.

Dante Alighieri

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Bartoloni
Keyword(s):  
Dante Alighieri ◽  
The Political ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Artistic Process ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
The Aesthetic

The Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) is invoked several times in the work of Giorgio Agamben, often in passing to stress a point, as when discussing the political relevance of désoeuvrement (KG 246); to develop a thought, as in the articulation of the medieval idea of imagination as the medium between body and soul (S, especially 127–9); or to explain an idea, as in the case of the artistic process understood as the meeting of contradictory forces such as inspiration and critical control (FR, especially 48–50). So while Agamben does not engage with Dante systematically, he refers to him constantly, treating the Florentine poet as an auctoritas whose presence adds critical rigour and credibility. Identifying and relating the instances of these encounters is useful since they highlight central aspects of Agamben’s thought and its development over the years, from the first writings, such as Stanzas, to more recent texts, such as Il fuoco e il racconto and The Use of Bodies. The significance of Agamben’s reliance on Dante can be divided into two categories: the aesthetic and the political. The following discussion will address each of these categories separately, but will also emphasise the philosophical continuity that links the discussion of the aesthetic with that of the political. While in the first instance Dante is offered as an example of poetic innovation, especially in relation to the use of language and imagination, in the second he is invoked as a forerunner of new forms of life. Mediality and potentiality are the two pivots connecting the aesthetic and the political.

Defetishizing Free Time: From Akrasia to Profanation

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-188
Keyword(s):  
Leisure Time ◽  
Free Time ◽  
Economic Organization ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Economic Thinking

Images of free time are used today to give the impression that alienation from work is being alleviated. As a result, exploitation of the workers who are constantly occupied with “self-realization” becomes even more effective. Free time becomes a fetish — a means of productively engaging people’s energy through various scenarios in which they are (supposedly) enjoying their leisure time pursuits. Is it even possible to undo the fetishization of free time? And if so, how else might we conceptualize it? In seeking an answer to these questions the author continues the discussion of akrasia launched by Michail Maiatsky in his article “Liberation from Work, Unconditional Income and Foolish Will” (Logos, 2015, 25[3]) in which Maiatsky expressed a well-founded fear that a contemporary “post-Nietzschean” person might respond to the “gift of unconditional freedom” with an irrational desire to test the boundaries of that boon and end up as Dostoyevsky said “living by his own foolish will.” A hypothesis to address that fear argues that the intentions behind such an “akratic rebellion” are inherently rooted in the fetishistic logic that dominates both current perceptions of free time and also the debate about providing a basic income. The akratic reaction is a form of phantasmatic acting out of the painful suspicion that efforts to reach liberation could turn into another form of bondage. The roots of this bind can be found in the historically embedded form of economic organization, which is based on a sense of dire emergency. We owe this understanding of the “economic dispositive” to the work of Giorgio Agamben, but it is already discernible in Xenophon. We can find an indication of its dominant position in modern economic thinking in Nikolay Sieber’s (1844–1888) criticism of the postulates of the “subjective school” of economics. Because the economy acquires a sacred aspect within this dispositive, akrasia may be compared with a sacrilegious trespass of its boundaries. However, Agamben proposes that challenging any form of the solemn ceremonies of capitalism’s priesthood in a way that is not merely imaginary must necessarily be a kind of profanation.

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