Agamben's vocabulary is both expansive and idiosyncratic, with words such as 'infancy', 'gesture' and 'profanation' given specific and complex meanings that can bewilder the new reader. Bringing together leading scholars in the field, including Steven DeCaroli (Goucher College, Baltimore), Justin Clemens (University of Melbourne), Claire Colebrook (Penn State) and Steven DeCaroli (Goucher College, Baltimore) the 150 entries explain the key concepts in Agamben's work and his relationship with other thinkers, from Aristotle to Aby Warburg.

Challenging the prevalent account of Agamben as a pessimistic thinker, Catastrophe and Redemption proposes a reading of his political thought in which the redemptive element of his work is not a curious aside but instead is fundamental to his project. Jessica Whyte considers his critical account of contemporary politics--his argument that Western politics has been "biopolitics" since its inception, his critique of human rights, his argument that the state of exception is now the norm, and the paradigmatic significance he attributes to the concentration camp--and shows that it is in the...