Life, Art and Potentialities: Agamben's Concept of Poetics-Politics

Abstract

Abstract: Human life in the context of modernity, according to Giorgio Agamben, has become a "bare life" and human being is reduced to homo sacer, while the political paradigm has transformed from public space to camp. When taking this into consideration, however, it may not be said that humanism should be resorted as the source for humanist thought. Agamben, following Heidegger, believes that humanism is a degradation of human dignity instead of emancipating and upgrading of the human being. The paper tries to answer how human being's integrity can be recovered to open up new space of politics. This paper focuses on Agamben's early writings on art and politics to interpret Agamben's idea of happy life and politics of potentiality.

Key words: Agamben, homo sacer, happy life, potentiality, biopolitics

Wang Xingkun. Life, Art and Potentialities: Agamben's Concept of Poetics-Politics[J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2014, 34(2): 200-208.

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