Politics Is an Ontological Issue

Abstract

According to Giorgio Agamben, in order to become a subject, and consequently to give itself a history, the individual must first say itself, and by saying itself it is destined to inhabit its most authentic ethical dwelling in an ever-partial and situated way. Such ethical dwelling is identified as the impotent and totipotent infancy which, translating itself perpetually into act, is inaccessible in its breadth and in its complete availability to pure use. The present issue of «Etica&Politica/Ethics&Politics» aims at probing Agamben’s ontology of the subject in critical terms, drawing its premises from previous or external studies to the Homo sacer series, and investigating its political repercussions in Homo sacer.