Theological-political considerations on nudity, denudation and bare life in Giorgio Agamben

Abstract

This study seeks to understand the meaning of nudity in the theological perspective and its consequences in politics, as the denudation of the human being, the bare corporeity of life. It appeals to Giorgio Agamben’s interpretation about Erik Peterson’s theology of dress, to which the human being is stripped of the robe of glory because of the sin, showing the denudation. Then it approaches the issue of nudity in the biopolitical sense, in other words, as bare life, highlighting the radicality of homo sacer and naked corporeality, evidenced by the “killability” and “non-sacrificability” in the exception space. Enlightened by these theological-political considerations about the nudity of the human being, the text seeks to approach denudation and bare life.