贫困政治和生命规范——阿甘本对中世纪“生命治理术”的谱系学重构

The Politics of Poverty and Norms of Life:On Giorgio Agamben’s Genealogical Reconstruction of Medieval “Governmentality of Life”

一、摆脱赤裸生命概念的困局意大利思想家阿甘本(Giorgio Agamben)的政治哲学思想引起了国内外思想界的较大反响。这些反响中值得重视的一种意见是:阿甘本很好地揭示了西方现代政治秩序的内在悖论,却未提出有效的解决方案。这一悖论集中体现在"赤裸生命(Bare Life)"这一概念的内在困境之中。一方面,赤裸生命及其表征者"神圣人"(homo sacer)成为现代国家主权权力排斥和消灭的对象;另一方面,被剥离了一切外在形式规定性的赤裸生命是现代国家治理体系的最高目标和正当性基础。在这一情形下,一切基于生命权利的反抗必然有可能成为主权权力强化其暴力的目标。在"神圣人"系列尚未完成时.

Drawing on Michel Foucault’s bio-political paradigm,Giorgio Agamben used the concept of"bare life"to present the dilemma between the operation of modern sovereign power and individual life.With it he attempts to understand the double bind of life and political power through a formmaterial relationship.In The Highest Poverty:The Monastic Rules and Formof-Life,Agamben seeks to overcome the dilemma by criticizing Michel Foucault’s understanding of the"medieval discipline"of monastic ascetic practices.Foucault regards the monastic religious practices as a typical example of the exercise of priestly power,which led to the control of body through apathetic control of the monks’souls.By a detailed analysis of the concepts of habitus,meditatio and form-of-life in The Highest Poverty,the author argues that Agamben did not regard monastic rules as a regulative form shaped by leading priests,rather,that these rules were the means of substituting a common life for private or individual life.Unlike Foucault’s critical posture of"de-formalization"of the medieval monastic disciplinary apparatus,Agamben reveals the positive dimensions of monastic life by finding in its operations a"de-materalization"of private life.This paper concludes that Agamben’s operations opened a way to a possible"medieval communism"which would be a critical source for overcoming aporia in the bio-political paradigm.