Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Picturing the Messianic
T2 - Agamben and Titian's The Nymph and the Shepherd
AU - Palladino, Paolo
PY - 2010/1
Y1 - 2010/1
N2 - In The Open (2002), a series of reflections on the historical endeavours to define the essential features of the human figure in relation to the biological existence it shares with animals, Giorgio Agamben offers a detailed reading of Titian’s painting The Nymph and the Shepherd. He argues that the scene depicted enables the contemporary viewer to visualize the advent of radical freedom, the moment when the historical dialectic of nature and culture comes to a ‘stand-still’. In this article, I offer a different reading of The Nymph and the Shepherd, whereby the advent of radical freedom and death become indistinguishable. This different reading, I argue, calls into question Agamben’s understanding of corporeal being. I conclude by suggesting more speculatively and tentatively that ‘bioart’, the field now emerging at the intersection of the creative arts and the bio-medical sciences, may provide a better site of reflection on the questions Agamben ultimately poses about the future of bio-political governmentality.
AB - In The Open (2002), a series of reflections on the historical endeavours to define the essential features of the human figure in relation to the biological existence it shares with animals, Giorgio Agamben offers a detailed reading of Titian’s painting The Nymph and the Shepherd. He argues that the scene depicted enables the contemporary viewer to visualize the advent of radical freedom, the moment when the historical dialectic of nature and culture comes to a ‘stand-still’. In this article, I offer a different reading of The Nymph and the Shepherd, whereby the advent of radical freedom and death become indistinguishable. This different reading, I argue, calls into question Agamben’s understanding of corporeal being. I conclude by suggesting more speculatively and tentatively that ‘bioart’, the field now emerging at the intersection of the creative arts and the bio-medical sciences, may provide a better site of reflection on the questions Agamben ultimately poses about the future of bio-political governmentality.
KW - aesthetics
KW - Giorgio Agamben
KW - Walter Benjamin
KW - bio-politics
KW - Erwin Panofsky
U2 - 10.1177/0263276409350358
DO - 10.1177/0263276409350358
M3 - Journal article
VL - 27
SP - 94
EP - 109
JO - Theory, Culture and Society
JF - Theory, Culture and Society
SN - 1460-3616
IS - 1
ER -