Political Theology and Historical Materialism: Reading Benjamin against Agamben

Giorgio Agamben’s work on the power of sovereignty has been greatly influential in recent political thought. However, it has also overshadowed the independently original contributions of his two primary theoretical sources, Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin. In this article, I argue that Agamben’s political defeatism can be traced back to a double misconception in his reception of these two authors: first a formalistic reduction of Schmitt, and second a Schmittian reduction of Benjamin. Through this reduction to juridical formalism, the radicality of Benjamin’s historical materialist critique is replaced by a messianic nihilism, leading to the colonization of society by the logic of the concentration camp. Though Agamben’s theory of sovereignty and its implications for a positive political project have been contested, this origin of the decline of radical philosophy has not previously undergone a systematic critique.