Subversiver Messianismus

The same world - and yet everything is different. This could be a succinct formula for what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben seeks to expose in his studies: categories of a new way of thinking, of a different use and form-of-life, in which natural life cannot be separated from social life and in which the logic of exclusion and the violence of domination are suspended. Starting from the last volume of the Homo-Sacer project, the studies in this volume trace Agamben's search for a "destituent potential" that opens a way out of the state of exception we are living in. Such a "subversive messianism" moves between politics and theology, ontology and poetry; it works archaeologically through the Greek and Roman, Jewish and Christian roots of Western culture in order to open them up to a new use in surprising constellations.

With contributions by
Daniela Blum, René Dausner, Daniel Kazmaier, Martin Kirschner, Aaron Looney, Edda Mack, Moritz Rudolph, Joost van Loon, Josef Wohlmuth, Peter Zeillinger, Michael Zimmermann