Giorgio Agamben

Agamben's thought has been viewed as descending primarily from the work of Heidegger, Benjamin, and, more recently, Foucault. This book complicates and expands that constellation by showing how throughout his career Agamben has consistently and closely engaged (critically, sympathetically, polemically, and often implicitly) the work of Derrida as his chief contemporary interlocutor.
The book begins by examining the development of Agamben's key concepts--infancy, Voice, potentiality--from the 1960s to approximately 1990 and shows how these concepts consistently draw on and respond to specific texts and concepts of Derrida. The second part examines the political turn in Agamben's and Derrida's thinking from about 1990 onward, beginning with their investigations of sovereignty and violence and moving through their parallel treatments of juridical power, the relation between humans and animals, and finally messianism and the politics to come.

Introduction: An Esoteric Dossier Part One: First Principles
1. Agamben and Derrida Read Saussure Overture: "Before the Law" Semiology and Saussure Semiology and the Sphinx
2. "The Human Voice" Introduction to Origin of Geometry Speech and Phenomena Infancy and History Excursus: Agamben and Derrida Read Benveniste Language and Death
3. Potenza and Differance Dunamis and Energeia Dunamis and Adunamia Writing and Potentiality Part Two: Strategy without Finality or Means without End
4. Sovereignty, Law, and Violence Abandoning the Logic of the Ban Means and Ends: Reading the "Critique of Violence"
5. Ticks and Cats Machines Bios and Zoe Heidegger and the Animal
6. A Matter of Time Prophet or Apostle Nun, jetzt Aufhebung Messianic Nun, jetzt Aufhebung Messianic