The great story of biopolitics

With Reign and gloryAgamben does not only deliver the continuation of research undertaken with the volumes already stored under the title ofHomo Sacerit also offers new development to the archeology method inherited from Foucault, of which he made theory in Signatura rerum. On the method (Vrin, 2008). This new publication therefore initiates a double issue: on the one hand, it is a question of extending an interrogation concerning the exercise of power and its structuring in Western society ; On the other hand, this survey applies a method which it helps to deepen. It is from this double angle, both political and methodological, that we propose to read the way in which the Italian philosopher goes up the thread of the concepts on which the government machine of the Christian world was built.

In his first volume, Agamben had highlighted “ Naked life “As an original production placed in the center of the political orb: the” naked life ” (there zôe biological), this is what the Greeks conceived like the “ Simple living », And who was common to all living things, animals, men or gods ; his other, the “ qualified life ” (THE organic policy) designated “ the form or the way of living specific to an individual or a group ». However, according to Agamben, the object of biopolitics is not so much the political existence of the citizen as this “ naked life “, That of a” Homo Sacer »Ban by power (by expulsion, confinement or death). Western power thus defines its sovereignty by the systematic exclusion of this life, to the way in which the movement of a wheel supports the immobility of the hub (Homo Sacer I. Sovereign power and naked lifeSeuil, 1995). In the second volume, Agamben has shown, in analogous way, that the state of exception constitutes an empty space of law, which has gradually become essential to legal order: thereby, it has ensured a force-of-law itself prior to the law ; continuity is then drawn between the totalitarian regimes of XX^e century and our democracies (Homo Sacer II1. Exceptional conditionSeuil, 2003). Thus, one could define the political thought of Agamben as an effort to understand the production of a void, variously defined, intended to found and maintain the functioning of the State. The object of this new opus (Homo Sacer, II2. Reign and gloryThreshold, 2008) is to continue this exam. The constitutive emptiness is now between the government machine on the one hand, designed on an economic-management model, and on the other, glory (acclamations and protocol) which the political power is hailed to perpetuate the almost religious confidence that the citizens grant to it.

To do this, Agamben once again mobilizes the form of archeology of which he made himself the theorist, according to which the study of a concept must cross different fields of knowing to recognize a “ signature “: The signature is what,” In a sign or concept, the brand and goes beyond it to return it to a determined interpretation or domain without however getting out of it to constitute a new concept “(Signatura Rerump. 87). Thus, the “ secularization »From a concept designates its transition from the religious domain to the political domain, which defines in it a theological signature.

Separation of politics and economic: the construction of the “ government machine »By Christian theology

In this case, the starting point of the investigation is the following hypothesis: the division between the transcendence of power and the immanent economic order, which governs the contemporary decomposition of the political, is of theological origin. Indeed, the development of the economic paradigm is based on the confusion of the city (polishedproperly political space) and house (Oikos, Oikonomia space) ; This distinction, established by Aristotle, has disappeared in late antiquity within the Christian community, in several times. In Paul, the economy of the world first designated the activity, specific to the things of nature, responsible for accomplishing the divine mystery ; with Hippolyte, at II^e A century, this activity became mystery in itself, and with Tertullian, it ended up being inseparable from the divine monarchy. This imposed a reorganization of the whole: on these bases, Grégoire de Nazianze had to articulate the single power of God (his “ Reign “Properly said, not acting) with his embodied division (in the mode of a” economy »): The dogma of the Trinity was thus established, determining at the same time the development of a political model, according to which power is only exercised to be delegated, without, however, really, divide. Consequently, Christianity began to think of history in the form of a “ mysterious economy (P. 79). The stake was also controversial: by affirming the reign of God, it was for Christians to form a paradigm different from destiny, specific to the pagans, and of necessity, defended by the Stoics: this economy leaves a more frank margin to a free praxis, and the articulation of this freedom to the divine reign constitutes in itself a mystery.

With the structuring of the church, whose archetype is the Trinitarian economy, the notion of “ hierarchy “: Introduced by the pseudo-denys, this notion (which means” sacred power ) Allows both to introduce the number in the economy, and to sacralize the ecclesiastical administration. At this stage, Agamben has already founded the first part of his thesis: “ The split of being in two distinct and articulated planes (…) will allow Christian theology to build its government machine (P.196).

However, the strongest of the device thus put in place is that the hierarchy survives its exercise: when it becomes useless, it gives itself a new form – glory. Agamben then formulates a hypothesis which directs the last three chapters of the book: the glory which goes hand in hand with any hierarchy is intended to mask the fundamental idleness of the reign, when all the activity is left to the economy.

To verify it, Agamben follows the German Catholic theologian Peterson (1890-1960) in his history of ceremonies of power and law (last chapter: “ Archeology of glory »). It is learned that Roman acclamations had a legal dimension of assent of the people, and that the right of triumph granted to the Emperor was the legal nucleus which transformed the Roman public law. In such a worship, ecclesiastical liturgy and profane protocol strengthen each other. “” Glory is precisely the place where this bilateral character (…) of the relationship between theology and politics appears in full light ». (p. 294) Besides, this is not a Roman innovation: ambiguity is already in the Hebrew term kabob (translated into Latin by “ Gloria ), Both divine reality and human practice. This function is always used in modern democracies: acclamation has taken the form of public opinion.

In short, while the government is the manager of the economy, its power takes on the appearance of a reign that turns empty and continues to produce emptiness. “” Glory is only the splendor that emanates from this void, the habod inexhaustible which sails and reveals both the central emptiness of the machine “(P.340) This is how Agnamben can find” This idleness (which) is the political substance of the West “: This unproductive center of humans, at the heart of each of us, is precisely what the machine of the economy seeks to have produced, while its vocation” authentic Is to make the functions of the living unproductive to open up the possibilities (p. 374).

Foucault accomplishment or negation ?

Agamben thus draws up an exciting picture of the government paradigm, and thinks that he has succeeded where Foucault had, according to him, failed: to find the source of the power structures which allow the present of the present in the strongest light. No doubt it is upstream of the Renaissance, and from policy to theology. But the functioning of this method is not simple: indeed, as the temporal limits of the investigation move away, its relation to the present suffers from an indeterminacy all the greater. The more the researcher moves away, the more distant the parentage, the more the lighting weakens and the withdrawal becomes difficult. So, to reduce the Trinity for example on governmentality, or to make the pseudo-denys and Kafka join, it becomes necessary to make a gesture, which is no longer that of unscrewing a thread: it is a jump between worlds. However, this jump is here, ultimately, less archaeological than anthropological. Between such distant problematic horizons, Agamben is confronted with situations of otherness that are familiar with anthropologists. In this light, the reference to Marcel Mauss and the Rig-Vêda (found in section 8.20 of the last chapter, the most decisive according to the author himself) ceases to appear as an excursus or a quirk. There, leaving for a moment his methodological prudence, the author accepts as “ Brahman theory »The interpretative summary offered by Mauss, in order to” throw an unexpected light on the essence of the liturgy ». That heterogeneous practices and horizons can be confronted in the mode of surprise (“ unexpected light ») And not according to a common genealogy (that it would not be absurd to seek to reconstruct), this leaves to flush in the Agamben method the figure of a naturalized universal, as if” The essence of the liturgy Was the same everywhere, from India from the second millennium BC. AD to contemporary Europe. What the author does not support in any way ; But the means he implements do not allow this interpretation to be excluded.

By trying to “ Understand the internal reasons that prevented research (from Foucault) from arriving at their goal », Agamben may have simply moved the meaning of the archaeological investigation. By always pushing it a notch further, until only the biblical desert stops chronological regression, it implicitly refers to a naturalness that Foucault looked at the greatest distrust.