Agamben, Giorgio (1941–)

Giorgio Agamben is one of the most prominent Italian philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His oeuvre has been particularly influential for those dealing with questions of law, modern citizenship, subjectivity, power, and community. While Agamben has conducted a wide range of philosophical inquiries, his writing generally hones in on contemporary issues of ethics and biopower (a form of power through which political entities articulate their subjects as populations and manage them through control over life). Within these issues, Agamben portrays the modern world as strongly shaped by the legacy of the Nazi Holocaust as well as characterized by the large number of people who exist in ambiguous relationships to states, such as Europe's large number of international sans-papiers (people without legal ...