Agamben before the Law. Biopolitics and Form-of-Life

This paper explores Agamben’s philosophy of law, highlighting how his view on the topic relies on his reading of sovereignty and biopolitics. Indeed, within the fertile debate on Foucault’s biopower, Agamben provides an original and radical reading of the political inclusion of life. His exegesis embeds biopolitics within a theory of the very essence of Western tradition and its fundamental elements: law and sovereignty. In the paper, deviations from a Foucauldian “orthodoxy” are traced back to the Italian philosopher’s fascination with Heidegger, Benjamin, and Kafka, where a temptation of a leakage from history emerges, as demonstrated by Agamben’s interpretation of the historical a priori. Hence, Agamben develops an unedited method and a positive political proposal. Last, this paper exhibits some shortcomings of his method, as an ontologising approach to politics could obliterate, rather than clarify, the manifold historical manifestations of power and make ineffective the positive strategies against its violence.