Papers by Daniel McLoughlin
Desubjectivation is central to Agamben's political thought. In the Homo Sacer project, Agamben id... more Desubjectivation is central to Agamben's political thought. In the Homo Sacer project, Agamben identifies two different forms of desubjectivation: the first is the stripping of identity by the state; the second is an experience of letting go of the self which, he argues, provides resources for resisting contemporary biopolitics. In Homo Sacer, Agamben is also profoundly critical of Georges Bataille's thought for reproducing the logic of the sovereign ban, which is the most extreme mechanism that the state uses to deprive people of their identity. In this essay, however, I argue that Agamben's first account of the emancipatory potentials of desubjectivation, his 1970 essay On the Limits of Violence, echoes themes that are central to Bataille's thought. Agamben argues that violence can only break with the history of domination through a non-instrumental action that involves the negation of both self and other, and he formulates this idea by drawing on the example of sacrifice, Marx and Engels' analysis of proletarian revolution, and the existential problem of mortality and the limits of language. I show that while Agamben's analysis of selfnegating violence draws on a range of sources, including Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin, the key claims of the essay reflect the account of desubjectivation that Bataille develops through his reflections on sacrifice, subjectivity, and the social.
Agamben and Radical Politics, 2016
Agamben and Radical Politics, 2016
This chapter responds to arguments that Agamben’s work contributes little to the analysis of cont... more This chapter responds to arguments that Agamben’s work contributes little to the analysis of contemporary capitalism by reading his genealogy of government in the context of Guy Debord’s analysis of spectacular capitalism and the analysis of immaterial labour developed by post-operaismo thinkers. The chapter shows how Agamben’s analysis of glorification in The Kingdom and the Glory builds upon his earlier work on sacrifice to describe an estranged practice that masks the social foundations of governmental power. McLoughlin then argues that Agamben extends on this analysis in The Highest Poverty, which describes a monastic labour that that occupies the totality of life, and which simultaneously enacts and glorifies the divine order. This monastic paradigm can, the chapter claims, be usefully deployed in understanding contemporary capitalism, which has integrated language into both the process of exchange (the spectacle) and the process of production (Post-Fordism).
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2011
Agamben and Radical Politics, 2016
This chapter explains the rationale for the book by surveying the reception of Agamben’s work and... more This chapter explains the rationale for the book by surveying the reception of Agamben’s work and the development of the Homo Sacer project. It notes that Agamben was often criticised for political quietism and for focusing on sovereignty and the totalitarian state at the expense of capitalism and liberal government. It suggests that we should re-think Agamben’s contribution to critical thought on the basis of his recent works, which develop a genealogy of the theological roots of economy, and develop his account of a non-sovereign politics. It also emphasises the importance of Agamben’s engagement with classical and contemporary theorists associated with the revolutionary tradition for understanding his contribution to political thought.
Griffith Law Review, 2019
Theory, Culture & Society, 2019
In this interview, Vicki Kirby discusses her research into the relationship between nature and cu... more In this interview, Vicki Kirby discusses her research into the relationship between nature and culture, focusing in particular on her recent edited collection, What If Culture Was Nature All Along? The volume appears in the ‘New Materialisms’ series, and so the interview begins by situating the collection with respect to the recent materialist turn in social theory. Kirby discusses the influence of deconstruction on her thought, and the way that she draws upon Derrida to think through recent research in the life sciences and its implications for understanding the relationship between matter, life, and communication. She also goes into the political implications of her work and the relationship between biopolitics and biodeconstruction.
The Politics of Legality in a Neoliberal Age, 2017
Contemporary Political Theory, 2017
Griffith Law Review, 2012
In State of Exception, Giorgio Agamben argues that contemporary security politics is an extension... more In State of Exception, Giorgio Agamben argues that contemporary security politics is an extension of a crisis into which the liberal constitutional state entered after World War I, when the state of exception ‘became the rule’. Agamben has been criticised for focusing too narrowly on the problem of sovereignty and for failing to explain the causes of the crisis he identifies, yet he also describes this process as one in which the state of exception becomes a ‘technique of government’. Building on fragments disseminated across Agamben’s work, I argue that his account of the crisis of legality should be understood in the context of Michel Foucault’s work on biopolitics and government, the problem of total war, and the rise of the administrative state. By drawing on these reference points, the article develops an account of the context informing the crisis of legality, and offers a new interpretation of what is at stake in the ‘normalisation of the state of exception’.
Law, Culture and the Humanities, 2016
Agamben is perhaps best known for his analysis of the “logic of sovereignty” drawn from Carl Schm... more Agamben is perhaps best known for his analysis of the “logic of sovereignty” drawn from Carl Schmitt. This article examines the critique of sovereignty that Agamben develops through his reading of Walter Benjamin’s messianism. For Agamben, Schmitt’s analysis of sovereignty claims that the state of exception is a juridical condition, in that the law survives its suspension in the form of the “force-of-law.” Drawing on Benjamin, Agamben argues that sovereignty is a fiction that covers over the originary inoperativity of the law and the illegitimacy of authority. The purpose of Agamben’s analysis is to open space for a new understanding of the relationship between law and political action that responds to the contemporary crisis of tradition.
The Modern Law Review, 2011
... In his early political works such as The Coming Community and Means Without Ends, one finds c... more ... In his early political works such as The Coming Community and Means Without Ends, one finds cryptic comments about a future politics that is ... These aspects of Agamben's thought have, however, often been met with baffled silence or, as Zartaloudis notes, accusations that ...
London Review of International Law
Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets
Australian Feminist Law Journal, 2009
Law and Critique, 2016
Recent histories of human rights have shown that the turn to human rights as a form of politics o... more Recent histories of human rights have shown that the turn to human rights as a form of politics occurred as a placeholder for utopian energies at the end of history, coinciding with a retreat of the organised left, the abandonment of the theme of revolution, and the pluralisation of political struggles. This essay examines the way that radical continental theory has responded to the political hegemony of human rights by focusing on ‘post-Marxist’ thought. Examining the work of four influential critics of human rights – Claude Lefort, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, and Jacques Rancière – I argue that post-Marxist thought offers two very different approaches to the political possibilities offered by human rights. The first retains a fidelity to the anti-nomian spirit of the revolutionary tradition and rejects the language and conceptuality of rights as being too deeply implicated in the liberal political order that needs to be resisted. The second acknowledges the limitations of human rights while arguing that they also offer important tools for democratic political struggle. The essay draws upon these analyses to consider the contemporary political meaning of human rights. It argues that the latter of these strategies is problematic because we now face a radically different political conjuncture to the one in which the politics of human rights first emerged: human rights have played an important role in the project of post-historical reaction; the political space in which the politics of rights once made sense has collapsed; and we have seen a return of revolution in the wake of the crisis of capitalism.
Giorgio Agamben's work has often been criticised for being bleak, pessimistic, and of little use ... more Giorgio Agamben's work has often been criticised for being bleak, pessimistic, and of little use for thinking about political action. This image of Agamben has, however, resulted from a narrow reading of the Homo Sacer project that isolates it from his early thought on language and ontology. This essay draws on new works on by Mathew Abbott and Jessica Whyte to explore the ways that Agamben attempts to think the conditions for overcoming the political nihilism of the present. It argues that the two works diverge on the question of where Agamben locates the potential for political transformation, and that this results from their differing approaches to the relationship between ontology and politics.
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Papers by Daniel McLoughlin