Arché-ic: Secularization in Giorgio Agamben’s “Homo Sacer” series

This paper puts Agamben in conversation with the topic of secularization. The fit between thinker and topic is quite natural, given that Agamben frequently approaches modernity through a theological archive, takes secularization narratives as the contrast space for his own account of intellectual history, and regularly discusses secularization through the lens of signatures. The result is that his work ends up revising secularization narratives by relocating the source of modernity in a deeper metaphysical regime rather than a past historical moment. The paper begins first by outlining Agamben’s engagement with secularization theorists and concepts throughout the Homo Sacer series. Next, I sketch Agamben’s ontological picture, exploring the “arché” as the backdrop for his analysis of secularization as a signature. I conclude with three ways Agamben’s work might reconfigure our conversations about the secular and allow engagement with new theoretical partners. By turning our attention away from the binaries of religious/secular to the third option represented by the messianic, Agamben revises traditional narratives about the decline of metaphysics, broadens our alternatives beyond the overly-narrow constraints represented by someone like Charles Taylor, and opens the beginnings of a possible rapprochement with postcolonial accounts of modernity.