This lecture, largely in part to the soothing voice, was just what I was looking for. Great explanation. I am studying the obvious dichotomies found in maternity care in the United States, particularly in relation to the stark disparities in outcomes in African-American Women. Agamben's Theory strikes true again!
Thanks Stephanie, clearly the Australian accent has done the job! Here at La Trobe Uni, in Melbourne Australia, we use Bourgois & Schonberg's Righteous Dopefiends as a 'way in' to understanding race and health care in the USA. Their work might be of interest; it focuses mainly on the effects neo-liberal 'reform'.
Will do! & Thank you. I'm always in search of historical relevance in my study of health care and the relationship with race relationships in the US. Very grateful.
Intriguing presentation. Yes, I can hear you getting a bit dodgy towards the end (who wouldn't in trying to elucidate Agamben!), but maybe as an anthropologist you are missing his philosophical point. He means that the "state of exception" (Ausnahmezustand in German, as Agamben is mostly referencing here the work of the German jurist/philosopher and Nazi Carl Schmitt) is a product of the concept of "sovereignty" itself, and that the very concepts of sovereignty AND the zoe-bios contradictions are just that: they are, as Agamben would point out, in Aristotle's original Greek "aporia" (internally unresolvable contradictions, the perfect example of which is the classic "All Cretans are liars" - says the Cretan. Is he telling the truth, or lying?). It is this "aporia" which we have spent 2,400 years - since Aristotle - trying to "resolve" (to "bridge" the distance between zoe and bios), whether through the sovereignty of kingship, of totalitarianism, of democracy, it doesn't matter, because the "simplicity" of the zoe can NOT be resolved into the political life of the bios. All attempts to "bridge" these two concepts of life (via, yes, some form of "development"... we "civilize" natives, we "educate" children, we "rehabilitate" criminals), all these attempts to not only not help bridge the gap between zoe and bios, they WIDEN that gap. So, Agamben himself is not being "contradictory" in his arguments vis-a-vis these matters, he is telling us that this fundamental internal contradiction (aporia) can NOT be resolved. And because we are always sure, in the west, that there is an answer to every problem, it is we who have a difficult time realizing... there isn't an answer to this one. That's Agamben's overall "point".
Thanks Gerard. My philosophy professors reveled in paradoxes and contradictions from Zeno to Descartes. So my experience was not of struggling to recognize contraditions. Rather philosophy was a series of attempts at resolving 'unresolvables'!
With regards to understandings of life, anthropologists have been working particularly on ideas of person and self. Maybe Agamben can provide some insight into Western ideas of life . But, generally, anthropologists have used a whole lot of other concepts to understand life in other cultures.
@@NicholasHerriman Yes, indeed, Nicholas, and philosophers, too. This is all quite intriguing. (Btw, I'm a poet by trade, but I did take a philosophy degree from Yale about, ooh, 300 years ago, it seems to me). For me, Agamben is at least part of, what would I call it, a "congealed-confluence of thought", or something. Whereas anthropologists do indeed use a "whole lot of other concepts to understand life in other cultures," so, too, do philosophers who are from those various cultures. To wit: If I start my "congealed-confluence of thought" with, say, Nietzsche (the human being not as static "being" at all, but as the "immer Werdende" - the always becoming), and see in him the roots of Heidegger's "Sorge" (not "worry", but "care", is what he means, for one"Self"), I don't even get anywhere near Foucault's "Care of the Self" before I'm at the Kyoto School and Keiji Nishitani, who not only studied under Heidegger briefly but who wrote his doctoral dissertation in German (!!) at Kyoto University. And 20th century Japanese philosophy (by which I really do mean, basically, the Kyoto School) delves but extremely deeply into what you are calling ideas of "person and self", although they will call this a distinction between the "I" (the thing we present to our "Self", and others, which changes by the second) and the "Self" (that "ever becoming but not changing" essence at our very center as persons). Agamben's ideas may very well seem to be rooted in a lot of the Nihilism (not a bad word in Japanese philosophy, only a bad word for us, apparently) found in the Kyoto School (especially his ideas on how the "Sovereign" is the crucible where law/justice flows into violence, and vice-versa, for example); and what if they are? We westerners simply assume, for the most part, my "I" and my"Self" are the same things, which of course they can't be, (Heidegger's "Dasein"), and it is this dichotomy which leads us to look for answers where there are no questions. Again, in my set-up, I draw a quite direct line from Nietzsche to Heidegger, the Kyoto School, Teilhard de Chardin, Paul Tillich, Rollo May (the first American "existentialist" psychotherapist), and Agamben, a view with which I know many people would disagree. Sources (of long study) for my thoughts on these matters, for those who might be interested: The Kyoto School ("The Kyoto School: An Introduction" Robert F. Carter; "The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism" and "Religion and Nothingness", Keiji Nishitani) Martin Heidegger ("Being and Time") Teilhard de Chardin ("The Phenomenon of Man") Paul Tillich ("The Courage to Be") Rollo May ("Love and Will"; "Man's Search for Himself"; "The Courage to Create") Giorgio Agamben ("Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life"; "The Coming Community"; "The Man Without Content"; "The End of the Poem")
I am very grateful for your clear and informative video! I am writing a practice exam paper on the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers through Agamben's theory of Zoe and Bios! Hope you are keeping well in this strange time!
Thank you very much, it was very enlightening. I was handling the idea that bios comes to mean life as in life-form or the particular forms of life with their particular ways they have to earn their living different from other life-forms. As if with life or bios they meant that, the particular way or form of activity that each life-form has to survive. And zoe just an abstracted bare life common to all life-forms like "they are born, they grow, they reproduce, and they die," like in a zoo where animals are feed and they don't have the chance to express their particular life-forms or ways of activity to earn their living. Then to me the problem seems to reach a new society or a new society forming around you, because you for sure had your nice bios in your previous society or lonely life in the wilderness but the moment you arrive to that new society with new definitions or effigies of bios or forms of earning a living (bio-logos) then you magically may become a zoe for them because your previous bios or form of life means naught there!
Hi Adan, thanks for the interest. I have made dozens of videos. You could start with my "Concepts in Anthropology" series:ua-cam.com/video/JF7ksSmd4Wg/v-deo.html
Thanks for asking. I think scholars were using it to analyze the treatment of refugees in refugee camps. For instance, Australia had some refugee camps where refugees died and scholars argued that this could only happen because the refugees had no bios. Also, as you know Agamben uses it to explain people on death row; brain dead people etc.
I think for Agamben, the political system (feudalism; democracy; Shogun; totalitarianism, dictatorship, whatever) is irrelevant. I'm not sure if Agamben's right; but I'm pretty sure that's what he's saying.
Hi Vladimir, tell me about the devotus. I thought devotus was a kind of homo sacer and that the distinction was of little consequence in Agamben's theory. Perhaps you can shed some light on this?
What about the one that wants to live off grid away from the degenerative public. That wants to optimize their Zoe (health*, thinking, intentions) and could care less about consents, opinions, validations of popularized masses. Cherish your bare life; its simplicity and intrinsic value for from it comes purity, as with a child. Bois is only "good life" relative to opinion at most. Such reminds me of Panam, in Hunger Games or the Divergent series with the 5 different factions.
Sounds like a good life. And I think because of that, Agamben would call that life Bios not just because it's good but also because you're not killable. What I mean is I can't legally kill someone just because they are living off the grid.
This lecture, largely in part to the soothing voice, was just what I was looking for. Great explanation. I am studying the obvious dichotomies found in maternity care in the United States, particularly in relation to the stark disparities in outcomes in African-American Women. Agamben's Theory strikes true again!
Thanks Stephanie, clearly the Australian accent has done the job! Here at La Trobe Uni, in Melbourne Australia, we use Bourgois & Schonberg's Righteous Dopefiends as a 'way in' to understanding race and health care in the USA. Their work might be of interest; it focuses mainly on the effects neo-liberal 'reform'.
Will do! & Thank you. I'm always in search of historical relevance in my study of health care and the relationship with race relationships in the US. Very grateful.
Intriguing presentation. Yes, I can hear you getting a bit dodgy towards the end (who wouldn't in trying to elucidate Agamben!), but maybe as an anthropologist you are missing his philosophical point. He means that the "state of exception" (Ausnahmezustand in German, as Agamben is mostly referencing here the work of the German jurist/philosopher and Nazi Carl Schmitt) is a product of the concept of "sovereignty" itself, and that the very concepts of sovereignty AND the zoe-bios contradictions are just that: they are, as Agamben would point out, in Aristotle's original Greek "aporia" (internally unresolvable contradictions, the perfect example of which is the classic "All Cretans are liars" - says the Cretan. Is he telling the truth, or lying?).
It is this "aporia" which we have spent 2,400 years - since Aristotle - trying to "resolve" (to "bridge" the distance between zoe and bios), whether through the sovereignty of kingship, of totalitarianism, of democracy, it doesn't matter, because the "simplicity" of the zoe can NOT be resolved into the political life of the bios.
All attempts to "bridge" these two concepts of life (via, yes, some form of "development"... we "civilize" natives, we "educate" children, we "rehabilitate" criminals), all these attempts to not only not help bridge the gap between zoe and bios, they WIDEN that gap.
So, Agamben himself is not being "contradictory" in his arguments vis-a-vis these matters, he is telling us that this fundamental internal contradiction (aporia) can NOT be resolved.
And because we are always sure, in the west, that there is an answer to every problem, it is we who have a difficult time realizing... there isn't an answer to this one.
That's Agamben's overall "point".
Thanks Gerard. My philosophy professors reveled in paradoxes and contradictions from Zeno to Descartes. So my experience was not of struggling to recognize contraditions. Rather philosophy was a series of attempts at resolving 'unresolvables'!
With regards to understandings of life, anthropologists have been working particularly on ideas of person and self. Maybe Agamben can provide some insight into Western ideas of life . But, generally, anthropologists have used a whole lot of other concepts to understand life in other cultures.
@@NicholasHerriman Yes, indeed, Nicholas, and philosophers, too. This is all quite intriguing. (Btw, I'm a poet by trade, but I did take a philosophy degree from Yale about, ooh, 300 years ago, it seems to me).
For me, Agamben is at least part of, what would I call it, a "congealed-confluence of thought", or something. Whereas anthropologists do indeed use a "whole lot of other concepts to understand life in other cultures," so, too, do philosophers who are from those various cultures. To wit:
If I start my "congealed-confluence of thought" with, say, Nietzsche (the human being not as static "being" at all, but as the "immer Werdende" - the always becoming), and see in him the roots of Heidegger's "Sorge" (not "worry", but "care", is what he means, for one"Self"), I don't even get anywhere near Foucault's "Care of the Self" before I'm at the Kyoto School and Keiji Nishitani, who not only studied under Heidegger briefly but who wrote his doctoral dissertation in German (!!) at Kyoto University.
And 20th century Japanese philosophy (by which I really do mean, basically, the Kyoto School) delves but extremely deeply into what you are calling ideas of "person and self", although they will call this a distinction between the "I" (the thing we present to our "Self", and others, which changes by the second) and the "Self" (that "ever becoming but not changing" essence at our very center as persons).
Agamben's ideas may very well seem to be rooted in a lot of the Nihilism (not a bad word in Japanese philosophy, only a bad word for us, apparently) found in the Kyoto School (especially his ideas on how the "Sovereign" is the crucible where law/justice flows into violence, and vice-versa, for example); and what if they are?
We westerners simply assume, for the most part, my "I" and my"Self" are the same things, which of course they can't be, (Heidegger's "Dasein"), and it is this dichotomy which leads us to look for answers where there are no questions.
Again, in my set-up, I draw a quite direct line from Nietzsche to Heidegger, the Kyoto School, Teilhard de Chardin, Paul Tillich, Rollo May (the first American "existentialist" psychotherapist), and Agamben, a view with which I know many people would disagree.
Sources (of long study) for my thoughts on these matters, for those who might be interested:
The Kyoto School ("The Kyoto School: An Introduction" Robert F. Carter; "The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism" and "Religion and Nothingness", Keiji Nishitani)
Martin Heidegger ("Being and Time")
Teilhard de Chardin ("The Phenomenon of Man")
Paul Tillich ("The Courage to Be")
Rollo May ("Love and Will"; "Man's Search for Himself"; "The Courage to Create")
Giorgio Agamben ("Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life"; "The Coming Community"; "The Man Without Content"; "The End of the Poem")
I am very grateful for your clear and informative video! I am writing a practice exam paper on the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers through Agamben's theory of Zoe and Bios! Hope you are keeping well in this strange time!
Thank you. I hope your paper went well.
Thank you very much, it was very enlightening.
I was handling the idea that bios comes to mean life as in life-form or the particular forms of life with their particular ways they have to earn their living different from other life-forms. As if with life or bios they meant that, the particular way or form of activity that each life-form has to survive. And zoe just an abstracted bare life common to all life-forms like "they are born, they grow, they reproduce, and they die," like in a zoo where animals are feed and they don't have the chance to express their particular life-forms or ways of activity to earn their living.
Then to me the problem seems to reach a new society or a new society forming around you, because you for sure had your nice bios in your previous society or lonely life in the wilderness but the moment you arrive to that new society with new definitions or effigies of bios or forms of earning a living (bio-logos) then you magically may become a zoe for them because your previous bios or form of life means naught there!
Thank you so much! This was very helpful! Student from India
You're welcome! Anthropologist from Australia.
Thank you! Very helpful.
Thanks Sandra!
I am currently studying anthropology at As level. could you make any videos on it?
Hi Adan, thanks for the interest. I have made dozens of videos. You could start with my "Concepts in Anthropology" series:ua-cam.com/video/JF7ksSmd4Wg/v-deo.html
So helpful! Thank you!
Thanks for taking time to comment!
How would you apply this to the current environment we are living in right now?
Thanks for asking. I think scholars were using it to analyze the treatment of refugees in refugee camps. For instance, Australia had some refugee camps where refugees died and scholars argued that this could only happen because the refugees had no bios. Also, as you know Agamben uses it to explain people on death row; brain dead people etc.
@@NicholasHerriman I think he was referring to lockdowns and medical mandates.
@@gedcaeneus4628 Thanks for pointing that out. For medical lockdowns and mandates, possibly Foucault would provide more insight.
thank you..in 6 years 7.000 views, no wonder we are in a totalitarism, in a sanitary dictatorship...
I think for Agamben, the political system (feudalism; democracy; Shogun; totalitarianism, dictatorship, whatever) is irrelevant. I'm not sure if Agamben's right; but I'm pretty sure that's what he's saying.
At 1:35 you confuse homo sacer with the devotus. They are not the same. Also the c in sacer is pronounced as a k. Like in sacred...
Hi Vladimir, tell me about the devotus. I thought devotus was a kind of homo sacer and that the distinction was of little consequence in Agamben's theory. Perhaps you can shed some light on this?
How do you know that it's pronounced "k". What makes you think that?
And, thanks for your responses!
What about the one that wants to live off grid away from the degenerative public. That wants to optimize their Zoe (health*, thinking, intentions) and could care less about consents, opinions, validations of popularized masses. Cherish your bare life; its simplicity and intrinsic value for from it comes purity, as with a child. Bois is only "good life" relative to opinion at most. Such reminds me of Panam, in Hunger Games or the Divergent series with the 5 different factions.
Sounds like a good life. And I think because of that, Agamben would call that life Bios not just because it's good but also because you're not killable. What I mean is I can't legally kill someone just because they are living off the grid.
Bare life is not the same as natural life.