Politics

‘Agamben reconceives the very notion of the political. In so doing, he develops an understanding of the political that equates neither to a purely linguistic relation nor to grounded intervention in specific social or institutional contexts. And it is primarily for this reason, I would suggest, that his work is proving so important for a younger generation of cultural studies practitioners, a generation who have grown discontent with the tendency to classify research in the field either as being curiosity-driven and therefore political only at a gestural level; or as actively engaged with the solution of practical problems in an increasingly complex world.

[…]

Agamben’s thought concerns itself with the constitution of the political as such, with the indefiniteness and imperfection of every politics, with means without ends. In this sense, it remains an analytical tool that denies the reality of the object it analyses. The question Agamben presents to cultural studies is not one about the need to be more political in dangerous and compromised times. Rather it is about how to negotiate its very conception of the political under conditions where politics cannot simply be reduced to agency and engagement.’

- Brett Neilson, “Cultural Studies and Giorgio Agamben”