Agamben and the Animal

With The Open: Man and Animal, Giorgio Agamben introduced a new vocabulary and a new conceptuality in the lexicon of many different fields, from animal studies to biopolitics and political philosophy. However, he thereafter abandoned the whole question and left its rich potential largely unexplored. Agamben’s oeuvre, in general, is a rich mine of unthematized issues concerning the animal question and provides important conceptual tools for others to call into question the anthropocentric context within which he himself remains a prisoner. Though never managing to escape the dualisms of the Western tradition, Agamben gestures or points towards their overcoming. This book argues that, though still firmly rooted in the anthropocentrism of the Western tradition, Agamben’s work points beyond the limits that he himself is unable or unwilling to cross. Each chapter, consequently, retraces and highlights the anthropocentric limits that constrain Agamben in some relevant aspects of his philosophy, while simultaneously looking for the capacity for elaboration that lies within them.