[rohrpost] Fwd: Lecture by Giorgio Agamben, Staedelmuseum Frankfurt/M.

[Andreas Broeckmann]

Lecture by Giorgio Agamben:
"Oikonomia: The Theological Paradigm of Government"

May 30, 7pm
Place: Städelmuseum, Gartensaal, Dürerstrasse 2

<http://www.staedelschule.de>http://www.staedelschule.de

image: Giorgio Agamben in "The Gospel According to St. Matthew," 
directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964


STAEDELSCHULE, FRANKFURT AM MAIN
Städelschule

Lecture by Giorgio Agamben: "Oikonomia: The Theological Paradigm of Government"

In recent years Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has established 
himself as one of the world’s most significant political thinkers. 
His recent studies of bio-politics develop new theoretical tools for 
analyzing the political situation of today. In books such as Homo 
Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998), Remnants of Auschwitz: 
The Witness and the Archive (2002), and State of Exception (2005), he 
explores legal, philosophical, literary, and political themes in an 
attempt to develop a new understanding of the concepts of life and 
power. Drawing on sources as different as Walter Benjamin, Michel 
Foucault, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt, his writings also 
question the foundation of the concepts of authority in sovereignty 
in today’s globalized world.

Agamben has emerged as an important public intellectual. In a famous 
article published in January of 2004 in Le Monde he explained his 
reasons for refusing to return to NYU to teach that year: "A few 
years ago I wrote that the political model of the West is not the 
city but the concentration camp, not Athens but Auschwitz. That was, 
of course, a philosophical, not a historical thesis. This is not 
about mixing phenomena that must be separated. I only want to remind 
readers that the tattooing in Auschwitz possibly appeared as ‘normal’ 
and economic in order to regulate the admission of the deportees in 
the camp. The bio-political tattooing, which we are forced to undergo 
today in order to enter the United States, is a relay race to what we 
could tomorrow accept as the normal registration of the identity of 
the good citizen considering the mechanisms and machinery of state."

Agamben’s Frankfurt lecture is a collaboration between the Institute 
for Art Criticism at the Städelschule and the Institut für Allgemeine 
und Vergleichende Literturwissenschaft at the Johann Wolfgang 
Goethe-Universität.

The Institute for Art Criticism was founded in the summer 2003 by 
Daniel Birnbaum, Rector of the Städelschule, and Isabelle Graw, 
Professor for art theory. It focuses on the practice of criticism and 
its relationship to other disciplines. The institute regularly 
invites art historians, critics, and philosophers -- most recently 
Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Yve-Alain Bois, and Michael Fried. The 
complex relationship between criticism and artistic practice is 
particularly relevant to the Städelschule, well-known for its 
experimentally inclined students.


Staatliche Hochschule fuer Bildende Kuenste-Staedelschule
Duererstrasse 10
D-60596 Frankfurt am Main
Tel +49 (0) 69 60 50 08-0
Fax +49 (0) 69 60 50 08-66
<http://www.staedelschule.de>http://www.staedelschule.de