Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Medieval Cultures and Modern Crises: Agamben’s Troubadours, Angels and Monks

Sunderland, Luke

Medieval Cultures and Modern Crises: Agamben’s Troubadours, Angels and Monks Thumbnail


Authors



Abstract

Giorgio Agamben is accused of political passivity, but this article argues that he sees the potential for resistance in modes of being inactive and unproductive, in study, play and profanity, which alone can escape the binary oppositions through which modern power operates, most notably the attempt to separate useful from useless life. He finds the resources for this model in very diverse locations, including the poetry of the troubadours, medieval thought about angels and medieval monastic movements. Agamben argues that such texts retain philosophical potential which is revealed precisely by modern crises of subjectivity, economy and community. Agamben’s The End of the Poem is read here as containing early elements of a mode of resistance that informs the new paradigms for human life and practice developed in his The Kingdom and the Glory and The Highest Poverty, where the revolutionary potential of past cultures emerges fully.

Citation

Sunderland, L. (2018). Medieval Cultures and Modern Crises: Agamben’s Troubadours, Angels and Monks. Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 23(5), 77-93. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2018.1513200

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 6, 2017
Online Publication Date Sep 11, 2018
Publication Date Sep 11, 2018
Deposit Date Sep 24, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities
Print ISSN 0969-725X
Electronic ISSN 1469-2899
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 23
Issue 5
Pages 77-93
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2018.1513200

Files





You might also like



Downloadable Citations