This essay, by an increasingly influential Italian philosopher, takes its overall theme from Walter Benjamin (Agamben is the editor of Benjamin's works in Italy): contemporary existence is marked by a denial of experience; the density of modern urban life becomes intolerable through our incapacity to transmute the everyday eventualities of life into any form of direct engagement or personal wisdom. Through explorations of the work of Kant, Hegel and Husserl, in particular, Agamben addresses the question of language and experience, and the notion of a "dumb", pre-linguistic experience, which takes him into analyses of childhood, games (in a chapter on Pinocchio) and time. This should be a useful contribution to debates on philosophy and everyday life.
Giorgio Agamben is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Venice. He is the author of Profanations (2007), Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (2002), both published by Zone Books, and other books.
