Giorgio Agamben’s concept of Homo Sacer

Agamben planned the homo sacer project as an eight-volume series, seven of which have been included in this work, as the eighth and most recent volume (IV.2) L’uso dei corpi has not yet been published in German or English translation. An overview of the works in the homo sacer project is provided below: I: Homo sacer, II/1: State of Exception, II/2: Sovereignty and Glory II/3: The Sacrament of Language II/5: Opus Dei III: What Remains of Auschwitz IV/1: Extreme Poverty IV/2: L’uso dei corpi Reading Agamben’s work has revealed that he derives contemporary political concepts from theological terms - his arguments are thanatopolitical insofar as he draws attention to a zone in which death and life become indistinguishable: The figure of the ’Muselmann’ in the Auschwitz camp illustrates this situation, which is essentially a disappearance of the boundary between the living and the dead. Using an analysis of the concept of brain death - as it is used in contemporary medicine - and an attempt to think about death with Hegel and Heidegger, I have tried to refer to these circumstances.