Subsequently published as a facsimile, this English translation of the original Italian text (1993) was first published in Giorgio Agamben, Means without End. Notes on Politics in Theory Out of Bounds, Vol. 20 (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

Giorgio Agamben (b. 1942 Rome/IT) is one of the leading figures in Italian philosophy and radical political theory, and in recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Agamben completed studies in Law and Philosophy with a doctoral thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil, and participated in Martin Heidegger’s seminars on Hegel and Heraclitus as a postdoctoral scholar. He has taught at various universities, including the Universities of Macerata and Verona and was Director of Programmes at the Collège Internationale de Paris. He has been a visiting professor at various universities in the USA, and was a Distinguished Professor at the New School in New York City. He caused a controversy when he refused to submit to the “biopolitical tattooing” requested by the United States Immigration Department for entry to the USA in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.