"Tutti i popoli sono bande" Giorgio Agamben's Populism

This chapter traces the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's ideas concerning “the people”. In Agamben's political philosophy, “the people” – as living and speaking subject – is opposed to the Leviathan or inanimate “automaton” of the State. Rooted in tradition and the local, “the people” constitute a vital alternative to faceless State bureaucracy and its globalist ambitions. In particular, through its many vernaculars and argot, “the people” speak truth to a State power that instrumentalises and neutralises language itself – language remaining the prime political instrument for Agamben. This chapter shows how Agamben's political thought oscillates between anarchism, ultra-leftism, and a populism that at times seems dangerously close to mainstream populist politics, as he moves in-between fellow thinkers such as Guy Debord, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Martin Heidegger, all in their own ways hesitating between, on the one hand, populism, sentimentalism, and traditionalism, and on the other hand, radical political change.