Agamben and the Politics of the Human

This paper addresses the Agambenian interpretation and reformulation of the humanistic tradition. In a series of family remembrances, the concept of humanism has become a recurring theme in the history of the West and has inspired numerous schools of thought. However different the historical forms of humanism may be, Agamben believes that they nonetheless are all characterized by the same political mechanism of ‘inclusive exclusion’ of ‘bare life’ in politically qualified life. The aim of Agamben is to render the political machinery of humanism ‘inoperative’ by delineating a ‘form-of-life’ able to avoid the articulation and division into politically qualified life and bare life. Instead of providing a newer or better representation of man beyond humanism, the ‘form-of-life’ entails a ‘void of representation,’ a ‘great ignorance’ about the human being. In outlining the main traits of the Agambenian reformulation of the humanistic tradition, the paper also attempts to show a limit of it. The man of humanism is essentially not a living creature because his essence is located in a supernatural realm. If the man of humanism is more than a living, the ‘form-of-life’ seems to be less than a living because no natural or supernatural dimension can account for her existence. If the possibility to establish whether the ‘form-of-life’ is or is not a living creature is lost in a ‘great ignorance,’ one can wonder whether Agamben’s political theory throws out the baby with the bath water, insofar as the attempt to jam the humanism’s mechanism of exclusion does not allow Agamben to embrace any natural explanation of the human being.