Violenza sovrana e nuda vita. Lo zôon politikon negli ultimi scritti di Jacques Derrida (2002-2003)

This paper intends to deepen the deconstructive debate that Derrida proposes with Agamben’s thought in The Beast and the Sovereign (2002-2003). In particular, it is aimed to analyse the concept of naked life (bloß Leben) understood as the original performance of the sovereign power, as outlined in Homo Sacer (1995). This discussion highlights the intertwining of life and politics, which characterises both deconstruction and biopolitics. They demonstrate an unexpected closeness and an unbridgeable distance, which may be summarised by three different logics: Agamben’s ‘logic of exception’, which is countered by the proposal of destituent power; Esposito’s ‘logic of immunisation’, from which a new instituting thought can be delineated; Derrida's ‘logic of supplement’. The latter proposes a different reading of zôon politikon and allows us to outline a new autoimmunitarian logic of life-death that one has to understand in order to deal with the spectres of crisis of contemporary democracies.