Giorgio Agamben

Giorgio Agamben is an Italian philosopher, born in 1942, whose work spans political theory, ontology, aesthetics and literature. He is best known for developing the concept of homo sacer and exploring the relationship between sovereignty, legal authority and what he calls bare life, drawing on sources including Aristotle, Roman law, Christian theology, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Augustine and Carl Schmitt, and engaging critically with Michel Foucault's account of biopolitics and biopower. His multi-volume Homo Sacer project has been widely discussed in political philosophy, jurisprudence, anthropology and the humanities, and he is considered one of the most influential writers in contemporary continental philosophy. He has held teaching and research positions at the universities of Verona, Macerata, Palermo and the Universita Iuav di Venezia, and his publications include Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life in 1995, State of Exception in 2003, The Kingdom and the Glory in 2007, and The Use of Bodies in 2014, alongside works on language, poetry and the history of Western metaphysics. His theoretical concerns have repeatedly intersected with contemporary political controversy, including his 2004 refusal to travel to the United States over new biometric fingerprinting requirements, which he likened to bodily-registration practices of twentieth century totalitarian regimes, and his criticism during the COVID-19 pandemic of Italian lockdown, mask and vaccination-pass policies as an expansion of the state of exception, interventions that drew significant criticism from public health experts and fellow philosophers alongside some support.