Something you are reading

Something you are reading 

At the moment I am reading a book entitled “Homo sacer. El poder soberano y la nuda vida I” published in 1998. This book is written by the European intellectual Giorgio Agamben. This Italian philosopher is a very important intellectual of the second half of the twentieth century and twenty one century.  His books are critical analyses about “Biopolitics” (the relation between political power and individual life) and global socio-political issues in general.

This important book is part of the readings of the course “Work and materiality”. This course belongs to the undergraduate Programme of History of the Art at the University of Chile. Since March of 2014 I am working as academic assistant of a Literature Professor who teaches this course. My job is to explain and discuss this Agamben's book with the students of the course. I also have to give them help with the final assessment of the course: they have to write an essay on any topic of this book they could find interesting.

The book is very complex and interesting. It mentions a number of philosophers and analyses their fundamental ideas to understand the meaning and dynamics of biopolitics in the twentieth century. The book explains how human life can lose its value. Moreover, the author analyses how people can become to think that some human beings can be exterminated by reasons like race, different ideology or religion and gives some historical examples like the Jewish Holocaust and the Nazi doctrine.

Reading this book is really entertaining for me because I love philosophy and social sciences and also love teaching to young university students.