Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer Series - by Colby Dickinson (Paperback)

About the Book

Requiring no prior knowledge of the series, Colby Dickinson explains why Agamben's Homer Sacer series is one of the most significant philosophical texts of the past century. He unpacks key concepts including sovereignty, potentiality, form-of-life, the state of exception, inoperativity, glory and the messianic as they appear and reappear.

Book Synopsis

Requiring no prior knowledge of the series, Colby Dickinson explains why Agamben's Homer Sacer series is one of the most significant philosophical texts of the past century. He unpacks key concepts including sovereignty, potentiality, form-of-life, the state of exception, inoperativity, glory and the messianic as they appear and reappear.

From the Back Cover

An overview of the most significant concepts and histories in the Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben's magnum opus, the nine-volume Homo Sacer series. In this celebrated work, Agamben provides a delicate and complex interweaving of his views on a wide range of themes including sovereignty, and the state of exception, the Aristotelean distinction between potentiality and actuality, through to the impossibility of stating the existence of language in words and the form-of-life lived beyond all forms of law. Requiring no prior knowledge of the text Colby Dickinson provides a guide to understanding why this series is one of the most significant philosophical texts of the past century. Key features: - The first introductory text to Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer series - Explains the series both to those unfamiliar with the series and to those more versed in his philosophy - Explores key concepts, including sovereignty, potentiality, form-of-life, the state of exception, inoperativity, glory and the messianic as they reappear throughout the series. Colby Dickinson is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University, Chicago.

Review Quotes

Reading a good book takes time, and this is one of these books that deserves time. It also deserves to be taken up again at a later moment to further develop insights. Even when the subject of the book is not directly linked to one's own research, it opens new perspectives. It can even pave the way for further exploration of certain topics already known to the reader rendering these topics both more complex and more insightful.--Jens Van Rompaey, KU Leuven "Louvain Studies"

While Giorgio Agamben is the author of dozens of books spanning many decades, his most influential work and his true intellectual legacy is the monumental Homo Sacer project. In this book, Colby Dickinson provides not only an introduction to this multi-volume oeuvre, but more importantly, demonstrates its urgent relevance for understanding our contemporary world and the indispensable role of philosophy in critiquing and transforming it.

-- "Adam Kotsko, North Central College"

About the Author

Colby Dickinson is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Theological Poverty in Continental Philosophy: After Christian Theology (Bloomsbury, 2021), Theology and Contemporary Continental Philosophy: The Centrality of a Negative Dialectics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), Continental Philosophy and Theology (Brill, 2018), Words Fail: Theology, Poetry, and the Challenge of Representation (Fordham University Press, 2016), Between the Canon and the Messiah: The Structure of Faith in Contemporary Continental Thought (Bloomsbury, 2013), Agamben and Theology (T&T Clark, 2011). He is co-author of Agamben's Coming Philosophy: Finding a New Use for Theology with Adam Kotsko (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). He is also the co-editor of The Challenge of God: Continental Philosophy and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Agamben and the Existentialists (Edinburgh University Press, 2021).