Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the theoretical and political aporias of Agamben’s theory of state of exception. The starting point of our argumentation is the Agambenian statement that the political governance of COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed the normalization of the state of exception. We dispute this assumption through a comparison with Schmittian concept of state of exception, in order to point out the incongruities of Agambenian reformulation of this notion. In our opinion, those equivocations result from the original refusal, by Agamben, of each legal and political dimension of modernity. In the second (and last) paragraph of the paper, we criticize how Agamben discuss the problem of state of exception in Dante’s political philosophy