Giorgio Agamben : a critical introduction / Leland de la Durantaye.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : the idea of potentiality -- Art for art's sake. The destruction of aesthetics and the man without content (1970) -- A general science of the human. Stanzas : word and phantasm in western culture (1977) -- A critique of the dialectic. Infancy and history : the destruction of experience (1978) -- The pure potentiality of representation. Idea of prose (1985) -- From spectacle to shekinah : the coming community (1990) -- The potential of paradigms. Homo sacer : sovereign power and bare life (1995) -- The unique and the unsayable. Remnants of Auschwitz : the witness and the archive. Homo sacer III (1998) -- The suspended substantive. On animals and men in the open : man and animal (2002) -- The exceptional life of the state. State of exception (2003) -- The messiah, or on the sacred and the profane -- Conclusion : the idea of the work.