Thinking relationality in Agamben and Levinas

Giorgio Agamben’s development of a messianic politics-to-come seeks to counter the law which is in force without significance, a law which creates bare life. Embodying this messianic politics, and a call for the law’s fulfilment, is the figure of whatever-being, a form-of-life. This article contends that there is an important conceptual problem in respect of Agamben’s construction of such a form-of-life, namely the issue of relationality. The problem of relationality in Agamben is explored here through the comparative lens of relationality in Levinas’s thought. It is contended that Agamben’s messianic subject, his form-of-life, has a negative relation to its other, in contrast to Levinas’s positive, subject forming view of relationality.