Pulcinella: Or Entertainment for Children

by Giorgio Agamben, Kevin Attell (Translator)

The list of subjects that Giorgio Agamben has tackled in his career is dizzying—from the dangers of our current political moment to the traces of the distant past that inflect the culture around us today. With Pulcinella, Agamben is back with yet another surprising—and surprisingly relevant—subject: the commedia dell’arte character.
 
At the heart of Pulcinella is Agamben’s exploration of an album of 104 drawings, created by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727–1804) near the end of his life, that cover the life, adventures, death, and resurrection of the title character. Who is Pulcinella under his black mask? Is he a man, a demon, or a god? Mixing stories of the enigmatic Pulcinella with his own character in a sort of imaginary philosophical biography, Agamben attempts to locate the line connection between philosophy and comedy. Perhaps, contrary to what we’ve been told, comedy is not only more ancient and profound than tragedy, but also closer to philosophy—close enough, in fact, that, as happens in this book, at times the line between the two can blur.
 

Genres: Art, Philosophy, Nonfiction

144 pages, Hardcover

Published February 15, 2019

About the author

Giorgio Agamben is one of the leading figures in Italian and contemporary continental philosophy. He is the author of Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life; Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive; Profanations; The Signature of All Things: On Method, and other books. Through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s he treated a wide range of topics, including aesthetics, literature, language, ontology, nihilism, and radical political thought.

In recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Born in Rome in 1942, 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 rose to international prominence after the publication of Homo Sacer in 1995. Translated into English in 1998, the book’s analyses of law, life, and state power appeared uncannily prescient after the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC in September 2001, and the resultant shifts in the geopolitical landscape. Provoking a wave of scholarly interest in the philosopher’s work, the book also marked the beginning of a 20-year research project, which represents Agamben’s most important contribution to political philosophy.

Reviews

[Mikołaj Stachańczyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

ESSSA spłynęła na mnie, i leżę jak naleśnik rozjebany na podłodze a pulcinella śmieję sie ze mnie i tak kocham ją kocham ją a ona śmieję się ze mnie och śmieje

[FluffyNyctea]

The hours I spent on the phone recounting to R the content of the whole book, just simply because I loved this playful, optimistic version of Agamben so much and wanted to share that joy with R. R listened with such care, asked engaging questions, and really, really held that joy. I can’t remember exactly when this was — 6 years ago? 8 years? I can, however, still remember my voice — that particularly slow and softly fricative voice I used when I wanted to sound welcoming. I also remember that I was sitting in bed — back on the bed frame, duvet pulled up to my shoulders — slightly adjusting my position every now and then. Time didn’t matter anymore. Bodily sensations provided coordinations enough. There were so many moments like this with R, both of us sharing with each other secret textures of reality. What an extraordinary friendship. I feel so, so fortunate to be doing my current fieldwork with them.

Also, from this book on, I started to really try and articulate what it was about Agamben that I liked so much better than other philosophers I read at the time. It somehow led me to a deep dive into madness, into Hölderlin and his uncanny traces in Tübingen, and finally into imagining a kind of inquiry very much like anthropology, before even knowing anything about anthropology.