Abstract

This thesis develops an account of Giorgio Agamben's political ontology of sovereignty and his diagnosis of the dissolution of the Twentieth Century state, which he outlines in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life and State of Exception. I read these aspects of Agamben's thought in light of his early work on language, and an analysis of the political theoretical strategy guiding his engagement with the political tradition. The first half of the thesis examines the ontological grounds of Agamben's political analysis. Chapter one illustrates Agamben's analysis of the human capacity for language; his critique of the metaphysical tradition for presupposing language as a negative and ineffable foundation; and his attempt to conceive the existence of language without presupposition. Chapter two elucidates the structural parallels Agamben draws between law and language, and between the sovereign exception and linguistic potentiality. I identify that, for Agamben, law and state are founded not on a presupposed social bond, but a juridical void that is manifest in exile, civil war, and revolution. In the second half of the thesis I examine Agamben's analysis of the crisis of the state through the lens of nihilism. Chapter three illuminates the parallels between Agamben's diagnoses of ontological nihilism and contemporary politics, and argues that his thought attempts to open space for new possibilities of political thought and praxis that respond to nihilism. Agamben does this by analysing particular political problems as a hollowing out of the concepts of the political tradition, as well as the coming to light of their problematic conceptual presuppositions. Chapter three illustrates this through a reading of Homo Sacer's account of the relation between the Nazi concentration camps and the nation-state. Chapter four argues that State of Exception's diagnosis of the crisis of parliamentary legality caused by the use of emergency powers is limited as an account of security politics. However, I find that the central stake of the work is the argument that contemporary politics brings to light the groundlessness of law and of human action.