Infancy and Experience

Voice, Politics and Bare Life

Bibliographic Data

ID2397827
AuthorsDavid Oswell (0000-0002-3552-4977, Goldsmiths University of London, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume12
Issue1
Pages135-154
Publication date2009-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1368-4310 • E-ISSN: 1461-7137
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1368431009102426
OpenAlexW2135423782
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited14

This article explores the question of the empirical in the context of its related notion of experience, inasmuch as the latter explicitly brings into play issues about subjectivity. The article focuses directly on the ideas of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben concerning infancy and experience, voice and speech, and bare life and politics. In doing so, an argument is made that questions Agamben's recourse to a particular form of linguistic model and makes evident the limitations that such a model poses for an understanding of significant transformations in modern forms of sovereignty regarding the socio-political articulation of highly domesticated voices. The study aims to provide some sociological and social theoretical ground for a consideration of the voice of infancy in contemporary forms of biopolitical sovereignty. In doing so, it suggests that infancy is more than a figuration of experimentation, inasmuch as its voice (hovering between babble and the comprehensible) may resonate across an empirical domain, which is reconfigured through such a voice (or voices) heard, taken seriously and touching others

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · Subjectivity · History · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Populism, Right-Wing Movements

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