ABSTRACT
Philosopher Professor of philosophy at the University of Macerata and later at the University of Verona, Agamben was also for some time Director of the Philosophy Programme at the Collège International de Philosophic in Paris. He attended Martin Heidegger’s seminars in Le Thor in 1966-8 and, beginning in 1982, produced the Italian edition of the collected works of Walter Benjamin. Associated with the magazine Aut aut, Agamben came to be one of the most widely read and influential of the new Italian philosophers. His works include Stanze (Stanzas) (1977) on the problem of representation; Infanzia e storia (Infancy and History) (1979) on the relationship between experience and knowledge; Il linguaggio e la morte (Language and Death) (1982), an analysis of the place of negativity in philosophical discourse; and La communità che viene (The Coming Community) (1990) on the contemporary forms of sociality. Homo sacer (1995) and Mezzi senza fine (Means Without End) (1996) are a rethinking of political categories in a period of crisis for the nation-state. Agamben writes in an erudite and epigrammatic style, and his work is a mixture of philology and contemporary linguistics imbued with references to medieval scholars and theorists of Judeo-Christian scripture.
