The Threshold Figure: Agamben and Arendt on the (Im)Possibility of Human Rights

Abstract

This paper seeks to follow Giorgio Agamben’s critical project, which entails a renewed analysis of key concepts within Western philosophy and political thought. This undertaking enables Agamben to bring to light a certain logical regularity in the concatenation of concepts, and ultimately in the very mode of thinking that structures Western politics. Through an analysis of the concepts phone/logos and bios/zoe it will be shown that the political subject does not precede the political order but rather emerges through an operation of selection and identification with the privileged pole of difference. By calling into question the status of the subject as a potential bearer of rights, we simultaneously problematize the concept of the human as a figure produced through the work of the anthropological machine. In this sense, the fracture of the human as the central site of Western political functioning sheds light on the question of the universality of human rights. Their claim to belong to the human as such independent of political status, religious or national affiliation—proves to be merely superficial. It thus becomes necessary to expose the underlying mechanism through which the concatenation of these concepts forms a political order that, in turn, conditions the universality of human rights.