Agamben and the Existentialists

Marcos Antonio Norris is a lecturer in the School of Writing, Literature and Film at Oregon State University. He is the author of Hemingway and Agamben: Finding Religion Without God (2023) and the co-editor of Agamben and the Existentialists (2021). Norris has authored more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles, most recently including 'Reading ‘On the Quai at Smyrna’ and ‘A Natural History of the Dead’ in Consideration of Hemingway’s Anti-Humanism' with The Hemingway Review and 'Francis Macomber, the Matador: Reading Hemingway’s ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber’' with Studies in the American Short Story. Colby Dickinson is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Theological Poverty in Continental Philosophy: After Christian Theology (Bloomsbury, 2021), Theology and Contemporary Continental Philosophy: The Centrality of a Negative Dialectics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), Continental Philosophy and Theology (Brill, 2018), Words Fail: Theology, Poetry, and the Challenge of Representation (Fordham University Press, 2016), Between the Canon and the Messiah: The Structure of Faith in Contemporary Continental Thought (Bloomsbury, 2013), Agamben and Theology (T&T Clark, 2011). He is co-author of Agamben’s Coming Philosophy: Finding a New Use for Theology with Adam Kotsko (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). He is also the co-editor of The Challenge of God: Continental Philosophy and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Agamben and the Existentialists (Edinburgh University Press, 2021).

Consistently challenging, informative, and enlightening, the essays in this volume make a major contribution in situating Agamben’s thought in relation to existentialist thinkers and themes. They provide a bright new lens through which to view Agamben’s work.

• Introduction: Agamben, Nothingness, ExistentialismMarcos Antonio NorrisPart I: Agamben and the Sovereign Exception1. The Many Faces of a Hidden God: Agamben's Relations to Kierkegaard ReconsideredLucas Lazzaretti2. Biopolitics and Probability: Modifications on Life’s WayVirgil W. Brower3. Kierkegaard and the Figure of Form-of-LifeTom FrostPart II: Agamben and the Death of God4. The Death of God in Nietzsche and AgambenVanessa Lemm5. Nietzsche, Heidegger and the End of Metaphysics in Agamben’s ThoughtColby Dickinson6. Sartre and Agamben: Nothingness and the (Apparent) Death of GodJohn GillespiePart III: Existentialist Themes in Agamben7. Death and the Negative in Agamben and BeauvoirBeatrice Marovich8. Endless Ontology: Agamben and Sartre on DeathAndrew Welch9. Destituent Potential and Camus’s Politics of RebellionTim Christiaens10. Fanon, Decolonisation and the Being/Praxis RelationSusan Dianne Brophy11. Dis/Belief in Agamben and de SilentioMarcos Antonio Norris12. The Existential Situation and Christian Experience: Messianism and Eschatological SalvationDaniel Minch