For a critique of power:

Walter Benjamin's influence on Giorgio Agamben

Abstract

This article seeks to trace relationships between fundamental concepts in the work of Walter Benjamin and the thought of Giorgio Agamben. Without intending to exhaust the links between the two authors, we propose to approach Benjamin's notions and categories to understand his influences on Agamben's thought. Shedding light on these influences, our challenge was to identify some ideas in the work of W. Benjamin that could designate the German philosopher as a source of inspiration for the critique of power and violence developed by the Italian thinker. That is why we highlight in Benjamin the roots of the concepts of bare life, sovereign power and state of exception, which Agamben elaborates in works I, II and III of his project “Homo Sacer”. We developed notions of historiography, emphasizing the category of the oppressed and the task of "brushing history against the grain". The Benjaminian texts that constitute his political theory are a true critical arsenal for thinking about our history and the period between wars. Agamben's proposal, in Benjamin's line, is that among the ruins of the past, we can collect traces and weave memories that allow a critical awareness in the construction of ethical lifestyles in the present, contributing to the necessary transformations that guarantee us a future of social justice. Assuming the concentration camp as a paradigm of this relationship, the identification with the victims of violence, in Agamben, follows Benjamin's indications about the critical task: shedding new light on the facts, giving voice to those who were victims of violence, oppressed and silenced by sovereign power.