Thanks Stephanie, clearly the Australian accent has done the job! Here at La Trobe Uni, in Melbourne Australia, we use Bourgois & Schonberg's Righteous Dopefiends as a 'way in' to understanding race and health care in the USA. Their work might be of interest; it focuses mainly on the effects neo-liberal 'reform'.

Will do! & Thank you. I'm always in search of historical relevance in my study of health care and the relationship with race relationships in the US. Very grateful.

Thank you. I hope your paper went well.

Thanks Sandra!

Thanks Gerard. My philosophy professors reveled in paradoxes and contradictions from Zeno to Descartes. So my experience was not of struggling to recognize contraditions. Rather philosophy was a series of attempts at resolving 'unresolvables'!

With regards to understandings of life, anthropologists have been working particularly on ideas of person and self. Maybe Agamben can provide some insight into Western ideas of life . But, generally, anthropologists have used a whole lot of other concepts to understand life in other cultures.

@@NicholasHerriman Yes, indeed, Nicholas, and philosophers, too. This is all quite intriguing. (Btw, I'm a poet by trade, but I did take a philosophy degree from Yale about, ooh, 300 years ago, it seems to me). For me, Agamben is at least part of, what would I call it, a "congealed-confluence of thought", or something. Whereas anthropologists do indeed use a "whole lot of other concepts to understand life in other cultures," so, too, do philosophers who are from those various cultures. To wit: If I start my "congealed-confluence of thought" with, say, Nietzsche (the human being not as static "being" at all, but as the "immer Werdende" - the always becoming), and see in him the roots of Heidegger's "Sorge" (not "worry", but "care", is what he means, for one"Self"), I don't even get anywhere near Foucault's "Care of the Self" before I'm at the Kyoto School and Keiji Nishitani, who not only studied under Heidegger briefly but who wrote his doctoral dissertation in German (!!) at Kyoto University. And 20th century Japanese philosophy (by which I really do mean, basically, the Kyoto School) delves but extremely deeply into what you are calling ideas of "person and self", although they will call this a distinction between the "I" (the thing we present to our "Self", and others, which changes by the second) and the "Self" (that "ever becoming but not changing" essence at our very center as persons). Agamben's ideas may very well seem to be rooted in a lot of the Nihilism (not a bad word in Japanese philosophy, only a bad word for us, apparently) found in the Kyoto School (especially his ideas on how the "Sovereign" is the crucible where law/justice flows into violence, and vice-versa, for example); and what if they are? We westerners simply assume, for the most part, my "I" and my"Self" are the same things, which of course they can't be, (Heidegger's "Dasein"), and it is this dichotomy which leads us to look for answers where there are no questions. Again, in my set-up, I draw a quite direct line from Nietzsche to Heidegger, the Kyoto School, Teilhard de Chardin, Paul Tillich, Rollo May (the first American "existentialist" psychotherapist), and Agamben, a view with which I know many people would disagree. Sources (of long study) for my thoughts on these matters, for those who might be interested: The Kyoto School ("The Kyoto School: An Introduction" Robert F. Carter; "The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism" and "Religion and Nothingness", Keiji Nishitani) Martin Heidegger ("Being and Time") Teilhard de Chardin ("The Phenomenon of Man") Paul Tillich ("The Courage to Be") Rollo May ("Love and Will"; "Man's Search for Himself"; "The Courage to Create") Giorgio Agamben ("Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life"; "The Coming Community"; "The Man Without Content"; "The End of the Poem")

Thanks for taking time to comment!

Hi Adan, thanks for the interest. I have made dozens of videos. You could start with my "Concepts in Anthropology" series:kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gKxnntaE0sqYh5s.html

You're welcome! Anthropologist from Australia.

Thanks for asking. I think scholars were using it to analyze the treatment of refugees in refugee camps. For instance, Australia had some refugee camps where refugees died and scholars argued that this could only happen because the refugees had no bios. Also, as you know Agamben uses it to explain people on death row; brain dead people etc.

@@NicholasHerriman I think he was referring to lockdowns and medical mandates.

@@gedcaeneus4628 Thanks for pointing that out. For medical lockdowns and mandates, possibly Foucault would provide more insight.

I think for Agamben, the political system (feudalism; democracy; Shogun; totalitarianism, dictatorship, whatever) is irrelevant. I'm not sure if Agamben's right; but I'm pretty sure that's what he's saying.

Hi Vladimir, tell me about the devotus. I thought devotus was a kind of homo sacer and that the distinction was of little consequence in Agamben's theory. Perhaps you can shed some light on this?

How do you know that it's pronounced "k". What makes you think that?

And, thanks for your responses!

Sounds like a good life. And I think because of that, Agamben would call that life Bios not just because it's good but also because you're not killable. What I mean is I can't legally kill someone just because they are living off the grid.

Bare life is not the same as natural life.