Giorgio Agamben. Liturgia and the Modern State. 2009 5/8

http://www.egs.edu/ Giorgio Agamben speaking about Michel Foucault, Uficium and the Catholic Church, Homo Sacer, Liturgy, Law, Opus Operatum, Praxis, Ontology, Heidegger with questions by Judith Butler. Giorgio Agamben in a video lecture about the role of the liturgy as well as the etymology and role of the Uficium in the Catholic Church and how those two concepts have carried forth into the contemporary juridical state, most notably in modern ethics and politics. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe 2009 Giorgio Agamben.
Giorgio Agamben is perhaps Italy's most famous contemporary philosopher; as a leading figure in both philosophy and radical political thought, he has been intimately connected, along with Antonio Neri and Paolo Virno to Italy's post-1968 leftist politics. During his tenure as professor at the Universita di Venizia, he has written widely on philosophy, politics, theology as well as radical critical theory—indeed, there is little in the world of critical theory that he has not at some point touched upon. Working in the wake of such thinkers as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, Agamben has become one the most influential thinkers of his generation, concerned primarily with the proper ethical and political task of thought.
With over sixteen titles translated into english so far, Agambens work covers fields as diverse as Biblical studies, cinema, classical and medieval literature, juridic philosophy, as well as commentary on world politics, theories of language, friendship, art, aesthetics, poetics and more. Agamben, continuing the work of both Foucault and Derrida, through history and philosophy, seeks to confront and unwind the aporias and gaps which bind us in our mundane existence.
In his most well known book, Homo Sacer, Agamben uses Roman law as a departure point to investigate how, in contemporary politics, the "state of exception"—in which the law is suspended by the sovereign (or the republic)—has become not extraordinary, but in fact commonplace. Tracing the history of the state of exception from Aristotle through to contemporary times, he argues that the sovereign has constantly placed the idea of a state of exception—a state that remains outside (or above) both holy and mundane law—as a foundation for its actions. Turning from the idea of the state to the idea of community, Agamben traces, in his 1990 book The Coming Community, a delicate re-designation of community. Jean Luc Nancy describes it as a community beyond any conception under this name; not a community of essencebut a being-together of essences. In his most recent book, What Is An Apparatus, Giorgio Agamben seeks to expand Foucault's use of the term apparatus, or dispositif, to include, and implicate, all networks that bind us and and result not in the production of a subject, but a de-subjected subject.
Giorgio Agamben's translated books include The Coming Community (U Minnesota, 1993); Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, 1998); The Open: Man and Animal (Stanford, 2002); State of Exception (U Chicago, 2003). Giorgio Agamben's most recent book, What Is An Apparatus was published in 2009 by Stanford University Press. He is currently, continuing the work of Michel Foucault, focusing on issues of the liturgy and the church.

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