Life and death are not properly scientific concepts but rather political concepts, which as such acquire a political meaning precisely only through a decision.
Giorgio AgambenRemembrance restores possibility to the past, making what happened incomplete and completing what never was. Remembrance is neither what happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their becoming possible once again.
Giorgio AgambenThose who are truly contemporary are those who neither perfectly coincide with their time nor adapt to its demands...Contemporariness, then, is that relationship with time that adheres to it through a disconnection.
Giorgio AgambenTo believe that will has power over potentiality, that the passage to actuality is the result of a decision that puts an end to the ambiguity of potentiality (which is always potentiality to do and not to do) — this is the perpetual illusion of morality.
Giorgio AgambenThe camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule.
Giorgio AgambenIn the eyes of authority - and maybe rightly so - nothing looks more like a terrorist than the ordinary man.
Giorgio AgambenOne day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good.
Giorgio AgambenModern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system
Giorgio Agamben