This essay is concerned with criticisms of Giorgio Agamben’s biopolitical theory of sovereignty that are developed by Jacques Derrida in his final seminar titled The Beast and the Sovereign (2009). The implicit interlocutor for much of the seminar is theories of biopolitics. However, when...

Derrida’s <i>The Beast & the Sovereign</i>, volume I, explores the contradictory appearance of animals in political discourse. Sometimes, as he points out, political man and the sovereign state appear in the form of an animal and, at other times, as superior to animals of which he is the master. In...

In Session 7 (26 February 2003) of <i>The Beast and the Sovereign</i>, Volume II, Jacques Derrida engages again with Maurice Blanchot, two days after the latter’s cremation. This intervention also appears as a post-face to Derrida’s 2003 edition of <i>Parages</i>, his collection of essays devoted to the...

This paper addresses the “right to die” through the lens of Derrida’s <i>The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume One</i>. Specifically focusing on the case of Tony Nicklinson <i>v.</i> Ministry of Justice, 2012, the essay posits two things. First, Derrida’s insight helps us understand how a “fear of...

This paper takes up the question of secrecy and sovereignty in Derrida’s final seminar on <i>The Beast and the Sovereign</i>. Focusing primarily on Derrida’s readings of Lacan and Celan in <i>Volume I</i>, it argues that, for Derrida, we should distinguish between the lie (or what Lacan calls...

How might one read a collection of transcriptions—such as <i>The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1</i>—that exemplifies how to read other texts deconstructively? In the spirit of Derrida’s text, a response to this question remains radically undecided; however, it certainly does not imply the absence...

In this essay I would like to focus on “The Beast and the Sovereign”—and especially the Second Volume—as being something of an exception to Derrida’s usual hesitations about sovereignty. In other works, such as “Rogues”, Derrida displays a deep ambivalence about sovereignty insofar...

In <i>The Beast and the Sovereign</i> v.1, Derrida argues that classical sovereignty is linked to the performative act of declaring oneself master. Thus, each sovereign asserts a distinction between the masterful self and the mastered other. Derrida contends that the sovereign distinction between self...