A study of Giorgio Agamben's Theory and Biopolitics

• 발행기관: 한국비평이론학회
• 저자명: Myoung Ah Shin
• 간행물 정보: 『비평과 이론』제14권 2호, 235~264쪽, 전체 30쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2009.12.30

영문 초록

Agamben's criticism of biopolitics proves to be political enough when associated with Lacanian concept of shame. Agamben's view of shame and Lacanian shame as explained by Copjec highlight echoes of the need to go beyond any politics of identifying mechani는 or desubjectifying logics; Agamben's view making any humanizing or petrifying mechanism or machine of thinking out of place as ethice of the modem society, while Lacanian shame allows the various approaches toward jouissance to be effective as a discourse of overcoming the dichotomous ahthropological mechanism of the human/nonhuman. This paper focuses on the positive side of Agamben's discourse by illustrating how optimistic Agamben is in his explanations of the concepts like the Muselmann, the 'open,' and the 'comin coummunity.' Agamben's optimism is reflected in his reading of Benjamin's angel in his essay on a picture of an angel by Klee, called Angelus No편. Walter Benjamin reads that the angel "would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed" but cannot stay due to catastrophe. However, as Agamben transforms the Muselmann as a witness to overcome the production of bare life, he reads the angel suffering from the discord between the past and the future as being able to stay, thanks to "Kafka's reversal of benjamin's image of the 'angel of history": 'The angel has already arrived in Paradise'". This reading is in opposition to that of Adorno who affirms that "writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric." This essay brings to light the positive side of Agamben's criticism of biopolitics and shows how optimistic Agamben is about the power of non-identity and anti-humanist mechanisms of thought.

키워드

Agamben Benjamin Camp Auschwitz Foucault biopolitics Kafka shame becoming Muselmann