Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Acknowledgments xi
4. Abbreviations of Agamben’s Works xii
5. Preface: The Law of the Good Neighbor xviii
6. Introduction: The Idea of Potentiality 1
7. Chapter One: Art for Art’s Sake: The Destruction of Aesthetics and The Man Without Content 26
8. Chapter Two: A General Science of the Human: Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture 56
9. Chapter Three: A Critique of the Dialectic: Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience 81
10. Chapter Four: The Pure Potentiality of Representation: Idea of Prose 121
11. Chapter Five: From Spectacle to Shekinah: The Coming Community 156
12. Chapter Six: The Potential of Paradigms: Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life 200
13. Chapter Seven: The Unique and the Unsayable: Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. Homo Sacer III 247
14. Chapter Eight: The Suspended Substantive: The Open: Man and Animal 324
15. Chapter Nine: The Exceptional Life of the State: State of Exception. Homo Sacer II.1 335
16. Chapter Ten: The Messiah, or On the Sacred and the Profane 366
17. Conclusion: The Idea of the Work 383
18. Notes 391
19. Bibliography 441
20. Index 455