This site accompanies the exhibition Position and Imposition: MCAD Faculty Responds to Politics at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. It is a forum for MCAD's Liberal Arts faculty to recommend books, films, and other cultural artifacts that contribute to the dialogue surrounding the exhibition. We invite you to comment on the books, the work in the exhibition, and address how they are part of a larger conversation about art, politics, and society.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Ana Lois-Borzi

HOMO SACER: Sovereign Power and Bare Life by Giorgio Agamben

When a text allows me to slowly and painfully crack open my basic conceptions (and some I didn’t even know I had), it opens up distant vistas where the world as I knew it has shifted. The same old world, seemingly solid and impenetrable, becomes slightly porous. HOMO SACER: Sovereign Power and Bare Life by Giorgio Agamben is doing this in the political terrain.

Agamben’s analysis of the constitution of sovereign power, the modern state, the law and their relationship to life is allowing me to understand further how the political realm (in “the state of exception”) makes allowances for torture, nepotism, high-handed policies and corrupt practices. It’s a perfect companion to this season of National Conventions.

[[ Ana Lois-Borzi is an artist and an educator. She has been working with graduate students at MCAD for the last 10 years. Her work has been featured at a number of galleries and spaces throughout the United States and internationally. ]]
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