Power’s two bodies: a critique of Agamben’s theory of sovereignty

Cerella, A ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6417-091X, 2024. Power’s two bodies: a critique of Agamben’s theory of sovereignty. Philosophy Today, 68 (1), pp. 71-89. ISSN 0031-8256

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Abstract

This article seeks to problematize Agamben’s interpretation of sovereignty in light of the “archaeological method” he uses in his Homo Sacer project. In contrast to Agamben’s exposition, which treats biopolitics as the original and ontological paradigm of Western politics, the essay discusses how, historically, sovereign power has been conceived as a “double body”—transcendent and immanent, sacred and sacrificial, absolute and perpetual—from whose tension conceptual and political metamorpho- ses of sovereignty arise. The first attribute of sovereignty—absoluteness, on which Agamben has often focused—should be seen as an ordering and essentially modern function of its second “body”: the perpetuity of power. The article illustrates, then, how the retrospective projections through which the Italian philosopher constructs his ontological reading of sovereignty depend on some logical and epistemological lacunae that characterize his “archaeological method,” which is based, essentially, on an arbitrary use of historical analogies.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Philosophy Today
Creators:	Cerella, A.
Publisher:	Philosophy Documentation Center
Date:	2024
Volume:	68
Number:	1
ISSN:	0031-8256
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.5840/philtoday2024123515 DOI 1865582 Other
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	13 Mar 2024 09:37
Last Modified:	13 Mar 2024 09:37
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/51063

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