Giorgio Agamben

Leland de la Durantaye is Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of English at Harvard University. He is the author of Style is Matter: The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov (2007).

"[D]e la Durantaye's critical introduction for Stanford's increasingly impressive work in continental philosophy . . . assist[s] in clarifying why Agamben's philosophy deserves our attention . . . [de la Durantaye] shows a delicate touch in noting important conceptual connections many might overlook in the primary sources."—Benjamin Hutchens, Philosophy in Review "Leland de la Durantaye has not only offered an illuminating and provocative account of Agamben's most important work, he has also made this philosophical corpus appealing and accessible to a very broad audience—to all those interested in aesthetics, literature, ethics, and political theory. Carefully attuned to the multiple voices of Agamben's rich polyphony, in both a theoretical and historical sense, this book generously invites the reader to consider and reflect upon some of the most pressing issues in contemporary thought." —John Hamilton, New York University "Readers of Giorgio Agamben have long yearned for a guide to his work. This book is just such a guide: comprehensive, erudite, reliable, up-to-date, accessible, and properly critical. Leland de la Durantaye traces meticulously the development of concepts and terms in Agamben's oeuvre and provides future scholarship with a sound footing."—Wlad Godzic, University of California, Santa Cruz

• @fmct:Contents @toc4:Acknowledgmentsiii Abbreviationsiii Preface: The Law of the Good Neighboriii @toc2:Introduction: The Idea of Potentiality0 @toc3:Scholium I: The Inoperative00 Scholium II: On Creation and Decreation00 Scholium III: Heidegger's Potential, or Creative Terminology000 @toc2:Chapter One: Art for Art's Sake. The Destruction of Aesthetics and The Man Without Content (1970)000 @toc3:Scholium I: Benjamin and Heidegger or Poison and Antidote000 Scholium II: The Potentiality of Art000 @toc2:Chapter Two: A General Science of the Human. Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture (1977)000 @toc3:Scholium: On Erudition000 @toc2:Chapter Three: A Critique of the Dialectic.Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience (1978)000 @toc3:Scholium I: Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History, or The Floodgates of Enthusiastic Misunderstanding000 Scholium II: The Now of Knowability000 Scholium III: Kairos000 Scholium IV: Dialectics at a Standstill, or Means and Ends000 @toc2:Chapter Four: The Pure Potentiality of Representation. Idea of Prose (1985)000 @toc3:Scholium I: The Art of Citation Without Quotation Marks000 Scholium II: The Idea of Benjamin000 Scholium III: Reading What Was Never Written000 Scholium IV: The Storyteller000 @toc2:Chapter Five: From Spectacle to Shekinah: The Coming Community (1990)000 @toc3:Scholium I: Jacques Derrida, Rabbi Akiba, Aher and the Cutting of the Branches000 Scholium II: The Idea of Pornography000 Scholium III: Guy Debord, Strategy, and Political Ontology000 Scholium IV: On Hope, Redemption and the Irreparable000 @toc2:Chapter Six: The Potential of Paradigms. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995)000 @toc3:Scholium I: Progress and Catastrophe, or Clear and Present Dangers000 Scholium II: Paradigm and Dialectical Image, or the Shadow of the Present000 @toc2:Chapter Seven: The Unique and the Unsayable. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. Homo Sacer III (1998)000 @toc3:Scholium I: What is a Remnant?000 Scholium II: On Genius, or Heidegger's Poison and Benjamin's Antidote000 Scholium III: Eternal Recurrence of the Same, or Nietzsche and the Potentiality of the Past000 @toc2:Chapter Eight: The Suspended Substantive. On Animals and Men in The Open: Man and Animal (2002)000 Chapter Nine: The Exceptional Life of the State. State of Exception (2003)000 @toc3:Scholium I: Adorno, Profanity and the Secular Order000 Scholium II: Carl Schmitt, or Politics and Strategy000 @toc2:Chapter Ten: The Messiah, or on the Sacred and the Profane000 Conclusion: The Idea of the Work000 @toc4:Notes000 Bibliogrpahy000 Index000