“Shame, Belonging, and Biopolitics: Agamben Among the Phenomenologists” by Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen: Summary and Critique

Introduction: “Shame, Belonging, and Biopolitics: Agamben Among the Phenomenologists” by Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen

Table of Contents

“Shame, Belonging, and Biopolitics: Agamben Among the Phenomenologists” by Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen first appeared in 2018 in the journal Human Studies. The article explores Giorgio Agamben’s philosophical anthropology, particularly his concept of shame as an ontological structure of subjectivity, articulated through the interplay of subjectification and desubjectification. Drawing on Remnants of Auschwitz, Knudsen argues that Agamben’s analysis of shame, inspired by Heidegger and Levinas, challenges traditional phenomenological accounts that view shame as a moral emotion tied to social norms and intersubjectivity. Instead, Agamben posits shame as a fundamental sentiment revealing the fracture between bios (qualified life) and zoe (bare life), exemplified in the Muselmann of Auschwitz, who embodies bare life and the limits of ethical frameworks. Critics like Lisa Guenther and Claudia Welz argue that Agamben overlooks shame’s intersubjective dimensions, mistaking it for humiliation or embarrassment, yet Knudsen defends Agamben, suggesting these critiques misread his terminology and fail to grasp how his ontology of life reconfigures community beyond exclusionary biopolitical norms. By proposing a “form-of-life” where bios and zoe are inseparable, Agamben offers a new ethics and politics of exemplarity, resisting biopolitical oppression. This work is significant in literary and philosophical theory for rethinking subjectivity, community, and resistance in the context of biopolitics, influencing discussions on post-Holocaust ethics and the ontology of sociality (Knudsen, 2018; Agamben, 2000b; Guenther, 2012; Welz, 2011).

Summary of “Shame, Belonging, and Biopolitics: Agamben Among the Phenomenologists” by Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen

🌑 Agamben’s Ontological Conception of Shame
- Giorgio Agamben, in Remnants of Auschwitz, frames shame as an ontological structure, describing it as “nothing less than the fundamental sentiment of being a subject” that arises from the simultaneous processes of subjectification and desubjectification (Knudsen, 2018, p. 107). Drawing on Heidegger and Levinas, he develops an “indirect phenomenology” where shame reveals the fracture between bios (qualified, social life) and zoe (bare, natural life), using Primo Levi’s testimonies to argue that shame is not merely a moral emotion but a structural condition of subjectivity (Knudsen, 2018, p. 120). This is exemplified in the blush of a prisoner selected for execution, which Agamben sees as touching “something like a new ethical material” at the limit of bios and zoe (Knudsen, 2018, p. 104).

🔍 Critiques from Phenomenologists and Knudsen’s Defense
- Phenomenologists like Lisa Guenther and Claudia Welz critique Agamben for misinterpreting shame. Guenther argues he conflates shame with humiliation, where shame “intersubjectifies” and fosters “collective ethical responsibility,” while humiliation is an “instrument of political domination” that desubjectifies (Guenther, 2012, pp. 60–61). Welz suggests Agamben mistakes shame for embarrassment, missing its relational aspect, as seen in the prisoner’s blush, which she interprets as a call for “recognition” and “responsibility” (Welz, 2011, pp. 76–78). Knudsen defends Agamben, arguing these critiques misread his terminology by focusing solely on zoe (as physiological) or bios (as dignity), neglecting the “non-coincidence and yet essential relationality” between the two (Knudsen, 2018, p. 3).
⚖️ Biopolitics and the Production of Bare Life
- In his Homo Sacer project, Agamben defines bare life as the politicization of zoe, produced through sovereignty’s exclusionary logic: “Bare life is, then, included only through its exclusion in the structure of Western politics” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 7). Figures like the homo sacer—a Roman legal outcast who “may be killed and yet not sacrificed”—and the Muselmann in Nazi camps embody this, existing in a “permanent state of exception” where law and life blur (Knudsen, 2018, pp. 8, 169). Agamben argues that modernity normalizes this exception, with camps illustrating how “life in the camps is entirely abandoned to the sovereign power” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 169).
🕳️ Levi’s Paradox and the Call for a New Ethics
- Agamben’s “Levi’s paradox” states, “The Muselmann is the complete witness,” capturing the contradiction that Muselmänner, reduced to “mute and absolutely alone” bare life, are both the ultimate victims of biopolitical dehumanization and incapable of bearing witness (Knudsen, 2018, pp. 82, 185). This paradox prompts Agamben’s vision of a “new ethics” that begins “where dignity ends,” with the Muselmann as “the guard on the threshold of a new ethics” and Levi as its “cartographer” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 69). This challenges traditional ethics, like Kant’s deontology, which assume a rational humanitas, rendered questionable by Auschwitz (Knudsen, 2018, p. 3).

🌱 Form-of-Life as Resistance to Biopolitical Exclusion
- Agamben’s concept of “form-of-life” seeks to overcome the bios/zoe split by envisioning a life where “rules and life enter into a zone of indifference” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 71). Inspired by Heidegger’s Dasein and Wittgenstein’s Lebensform, shame acts as a Grundstimmung (fundamental tonality), revealing the subject’s fracture: “Today bios lies in zoe exactly as essence, in the Heideggerian definition of Dasein, lies in existence” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 188). This form-of-life resists biopolitical exclusion by making life its own norm, where “life… makes itself that very form, coincides with it” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 99).
✨ Logic of Exemplarity and Messianic Community
- Agamben rejects universal laws that produce bare life, proposing a “logic of exemplarity” where community arises from singular lives, not prescriptive norms: “The community is thus not based on defining or constitutive rules… but rather the appeal that a life can be by itself” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 88). He draws on the Franciscans, whose adherence to Christ’s life exemplifies a form that “is not a norm imposed on life, but a living that… makes itself a form” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 105). Shame aligns with this by revealing the “non-coincidence” between life and socio-political identities, linking testimony to a messianic community where “the aporia of testimony coincides with the aporia of messianism” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 163).
❓ Political Implications and Unresolved Questions
- Agamben’s analysis critiques sovereignty and solidarity for perpetuating biopolitical exclusion, advocating a reconfigured political space where bare life is inseparable from bios. However, Knudsen notes its “largely negative” political outcome, rejecting traditional frameworks without clear practical alternatives: “The concrete directions for how we should incorporate [the logic of exemplarity] into a social practice remain obscure” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 13). Despite this, Agamben’s shame analysis offers a “novel paradigm for conceptualizing the way in which the human being is a relational being” and how biopolitical distortions can be resisted (Knudsen, 2018, p. 13).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Shame, Belonging, and Biopolitics: Agamben Among the Phenomenologists” by Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen

Term/Concept	Example from Article	Explanation
🌑 Shame	“Shame is nothing less than the fundamental sentiment of being a subject, in the two apparently opposed senses of this phrase: to be subjected and to be sovereign. Shame is what is produced in the absolute concomitance of subjectification and desubjectification, self-loss and self-possession, servitude and sovereignty” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 107).	Agamben redefines shame as an ontological structure, not merely a moral emotion, revealing the subject’s fracture between bios (qualified life) and zoe (bare life). It is a Grundstimmung (fundamental tonality) that discloses the non-coincidence between the living being and socio-political identities, as seen in the blush of the Bologna student facing arbitrary execution, marking a new ethical material (Knudsen, 2018, p. 104).
⚖️ Biopolitics	“Bare life is, then, included only through its exclusion in the structure of Western politics” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 7).	Biopolitics, central to Agamben’s Homo Sacer project, describes how sovereignty produces bare life by excluding zoe from the political order while including it as an exception. This logic, exemplified by concentration camps where “the state of exception begins to become the rule,” governs life through power over death, reducing individuals to mere existence (Knudsen, 2018, p. 169).
🕳️ Bare Life	“Bare life is the politicization of zoe” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 7). The Muselmann is described as “mute and absolutely alone” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 185).	Bare life is zoe stripped of social and political qualifications, produced by sovereign power’s exclusionary mechanisms. The Muselmann in Auschwitz embodies this, existing at the threshold of life and death, incapable of bearing witness, highlighting the biopolitical reduction of human life to mere biological existence (Knudsen, 2018, p. 8).
🌱 Form-of-Life	“It is not a matter so much of applying a form (or norm) to life, but of living according to that form, that is of a life that, in its sequence, makes itself that very form, coincides with it” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 99).	Form-of-life is Agamben’s concept for a life where bios and zoe are indistinguishable, resisting biopolitical separation. Inspired by Heidegger’s Dasein and Wittgenstein’s Lebensform, it envisions norms as immanent to life, not externally imposed, offering a way to live without producing bare life (Knudsen, 2018, p. 188).
✨ Logic of Exemplarity	“The community is thus not based on defining or constitutive rules… but rather the appeal that a life can be by itself—it would rely on a ‘word that does not bind, that neither commands nor prohibits anything, but says only itself’” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 88).	Agamben’s logic of exemplarity replaces universal laws with singular, exemplary lives, as seen in the Franciscans’ adherence to Christ’s life, where “the form is not a norm imposed on life, but a living that… makes itself a form” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 105). It resists biopolitical exclusion by fostering a community based on lived singularity, not prescriptive norms.
❓ Levi’s Paradox	“The Muselmann is the complete witness” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 82).	Levi’s paradox highlights the Muselmann as both the ultimate victim of biopolitical dehumanization and incapable of testifying due to their reduction to bare life. This paradox drives Agamben’s call for a new ethics “where dignity ends,” positioning the Muselmann as the ethical threshold for rethinking subjectivity and witnessing (Knudsen, 2018, p. 69).
🔍 Intersubjectivity	“Lisa Guenther argues that Agamben’s thesis rests on the conflation of the two structurally distinct phenomena: shame and humiliation… shame is ‘a feeling of collective ethical responsibility,’ while humiliation is an ‘instrument of political domination’” (Guenther, 2012, p. 60, cited in Knudsen, 2018).	Intersubjectivity, emphasized by phenomenologists like Guenther and Welz, frames shame as a social phenomenon tied to responsibility and recognition. Agamben is critiqued for overlooking this, but Knudsen argues he incorporates intersubjectivity indirectly, as shame arises in social encounters, like the Muselmann evoking shame in witnesses (Knudsen, 2018, p. 60).
🔔 Messianic Community	“In the concept of remnant, the aporia of testimony coincides with the aporia of messianism” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 163).	Agamben’s messianic community, inspired by Paul’s universalism, disrupts exclusionary divisions (e.g., Jew/non-Jew) by introducing a “remnant” that renders laws non-exhaustive: “The laws are ‘no longer clear or exhaustive’” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 50). Linked to shame, it envisions a community without socio-political classifications, resisting biopolitical logic.
🔧 Subjectification/Desubjectification	“[I]t is as if the flush on his cheeks momentarily betrayed a limit that was reached, as if something like a new ethical material were touched upon in the living being” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 104).	Subjectification and desubjectification describe the dual process where the subject is both constituted and stripped of identity, as seen in the Bologna student’s blush. For Agamben, this dynamic, central to shame, reveals the subject’s structure as a tension between bios and zoe, challenging traditional notions of subjectivity (Knudsen, 2018, p. 107).
🌟 Grundstimmung	“Shame is ‘something more than “a feeling that man has”’… it is ‘an emotive tonality [tonalità emotiva] that traverses and determines his [man’s] whole Being’” (Knudsen, 2018, p. 106).	Borrowed from Heidegger, Grundstimmung (fundamental tonality) frames shame as an ontological disposition revealing the subject’s essence, not just a transient emotion. It allows Agamben to conceptualize shame as “the hidden structure of all subjectivity and consciousness,” linking it to the fracture between the Muselmann and the witness (Knudsen, 2018, p. 128).

Contribution of “Shame, Belonging, and Biopolitics: Agamben Among the Phenomenologists” by Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen to Literary Theory/Theories

🔹 Reconfiguration of Shame as Ontological Rather Than Moral

Traditional View: Shame is often treated as a moral emotion signaling ethical failure or social norm transgression.
Knudsen’s Argument: Agamben’s account suggests shame is an ontological structure of subjectivity—a simultaneous process of “subjectification and desubjectification.”
📌 “Shame is what is produced in the absolute concomitance of subjectification and desubjectification, self-loss and self-possession, servitude and sovereignty.” (Agamben, 2000b: 107)

🔹 Challenge to Intersubjectivity-Based Ethics

Critique of Phenomenologists: Knudsen refutes critiques (e.g., Lisa Guenther, Claudia Welz) that claim Agamben overlooks intersubjectivity.
Contribution: Shows that Agamben’s ethics retains intersubjectivity, but through a fractured, indirect form rather than moral community or solidarity.
📌 “The structure of shame consists in a polarity that can be both intersubjective…and subjective.” (Knudsen)

🔹 Shame as a Grundstimmung (Fundamental Ontological Mood)

Heideggerian Insight: Like Heidegger’s “Angst,” shame in Agamben becomes a lens to read human being’s exposure to the limits of its form.
📌 “We must understand [shame] as ‘an emotive tonality that traverses and determines his whole Being’.” (Knudsen citing Agamben, 2000b: 106)

🔹 Biopolitical Implications for Literary and Cultural Studies

Bios vs. Zoe Debate: Central to interpreting narratives of bare life, e.g., concentration camp literature (Levi, Antelme).

Literary-Theoretical Impact: Highlights how literature and testimony (e.g., the blush of the student) stage the collapse of juridical categories.
📌 “What Agamben finds troubling with traditional ethics is the way that they presuppose…a certain conception of humanitas.”

🔹 Introduction of the Logic of Exemplarity in Community Theory

Against Solidarity Politics: Knudsen shows that solidarity, grounded in identity, replicates biopolitical logic.
Contribution: Advocates a non-normative community based on exemplarity rather than rule-based identification.
📌 “Rather than covering this relation over with the positing of a universal law…we can conceive of another relation to norms where they no longer regulate and prescribe.”

🔹 Linking Shame with Messianism and Testimony

Testimony as Ethical Paradigm: Knudsen underscores how shame is not only affective but also an epistemic mode—testifying to desubjectification.
Messianic Thinking: Shame aligns with Pauline remnants—not identity-bound, but constituted in inoperativity.
📌 “In the concept of remnant, the aporia of testimony coincides with the aporia of messianism.” (Agamben, 2000b: 163)

🔹 Rejection of Identity-Driven Normativity

Shame as Deconstructive Tool: Undermines normative, law-centered understandings of ethics and community.
📌 “Shame attests to the logic of the exemplar insofar as it cannot be reduced to the identification with an evaluation of us.”

🔹 Political Ontology of the Subject Beyond Dignity

Life Beyond Legal Personhood: Moves from the juridical subject (who has dignity) to the subject as a fracture, open to life’s impotentiality.

📌 “The Muselmann…is the guard on the threshold of a new ethics, an ethics of a form of life that begins where dignity ends.” (Agamben, 2000b: 69)

🔹 Form-of-Life as Literary and Political Practice

Heidegger + Wittgenstein Influence: The essay draws a genealogy from Heidegger’s Dasein to Wittgenstein’s Lebensform to Agamben’s form-of-life.
📌 “It is not a matter so much of applying a form (or norm) to life, but of living according to that form.” (Agamben, 2013: 99)

🔹 Contribution to Theories of Bare Life in Narrative and Law

Literary-Critical Value: Offers a paradigm for analyzing how literature stages exclusion, silence, or shame in post-Auschwitz cultural memory.
Broader Theoretical Relevance: Shapes how scholars might read testimony, affect, and resistance in trauma literature or political texts.

Examples of Critiques Through “Shame, Belonging, and Biopolitics: Agamben Among the Phenomenologists” by Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen

📕 The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead, 2019)	Shame as the structure of desubjectification	The abuse and humiliation of Black boys at the Nickel Academy evoke a condition of bare life—devoid of dignity, recognition, or legal protection. The boys’ inability to bear witness resembles Agamben’s Muselmann, placing shame at the ontological limit of the human.	“Shame is what is produced in the absolute concomitance of subjectification and desubjectification.” (p. 107)
📘 The Discomfort of Evening (Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, 2020)	*Shame as Grundstimmung* and exposure of bios/zoe tension**	Jas’s alienation and psychological decay following her brother’s death manifests a non-coincidence between bios and zoe. Shame functions as a phenomenological rupture, revealing the child’s ontological exposure to a world of speechlessness and repressed grief.	“Shame is not merely a feeling, but a tonalité emotiva that determines the whole Being.” (p. 106)
📗 Girl, Woman, Other (Bernardine Evaristo, 2019)	Belonging and community beyond solidarity	While celebrating feminist and queer solidarity, the novel also critiques identity-based politics. Through characters like Morgan and Yazz, Evaristo explores forms of life that resist normativity. This echoes Knudsen’s view that true community emerges not through identity, but through a non-exclusive commonality.	“Agamben wants to uncover a way of living in which this [exclusionary] structure is not in play.” (p. 130)
📙 Shuggie Bain (Douglas Stuart, 2020)	Form-of-life, humiliation, and the ethics of exposure	Shuggie’s persistent exposure to shame and abandonment under Thatcher-era Glasgow reflects Knudsen’s idea of form-of-life in suffering. His survival does not rest on dignity but on a fragile, lived ethics of endurance—a way of life at the threshold of the human and inhuman.	“The Muselmann…is the guard on the threshold of a new ethics, an ethics of a form of life that begins where dignity ends.” (p. 69)

Criticism Against “Shame, Belonging, and Biopolitics: Agamben Among the Phenomenologists” by Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen

❗ Dismissal of Alternative Readings (Guenther & Welz)

Knudsen critiques Lisa Guenther and Claudia Welz for “misreading” Agamben, but some may see his response as overly defensive or dismissive of valid intersubjective insights.
His insistence on Agamben’s indirect intersubjectivity may underestimate the importance of direct, embodied social experiences of shame.

❗ Philosophical Abstraction vs. Political Pragmatism

The article heavily emphasizes ontology and messianism but lacks concrete political application.

Critics might argue that the proposal of “form-of-life” as a counter to biopolitics is theoretically elegant but politically vague or utopian.

❗ Neglect of Historical Contextualization

While invoking Auschwitz and camp literature, Knudsen treats the Muselmann largely through conceptual analysis, possibly downplaying the historical and material specificity of Holocaust testimony.
The ethico-political stakes of reading such texts may be dulled by excessive theoretical abstraction.

❗ Romanticization of the “Remnant” and Bare Life

By valorizing the Muselmann or the “blush of the student” as the foundation of a new ethics, Knudsen may be romanticizing extreme abjection.
This risks aestheticizing suffering in ways that some critics find ethically questionable.

❗ Exclusion of Non-Phenomenological Theories of Shame

The critique stays largely within the bounds of phenomenology and Agambenian thought.

It does not seriously engage with psychoanalytic, feminist, or decolonial theories of shame (e.g., Ahmed, Fanon), potentially limiting interdisciplinary relevance.

❗ Ambiguity in Normative Implications

While claiming to reject juridical normativity, Knudsen still invokes ethical imperatives (e.g., witnessing, recognizing bare life), leading to a normative paradox: ethics without normative foundation.
This unresolved tension may weaken the prescriptive force of the article’s conclusions.

Representative Quotations from “Shame, Belonging, and Biopolitics: Agamben Among the Phenomenologists” by Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen with Explanation

🔖 Quotation	📚 Explanation
1. “Shame is what is produced in the absolute concomitance of subjectification and desubjectification.” (citing Agamben)	Knudsen uses this to frame shame not as a psychological state but as the ontological core of human existence—where the self is both formed and undone.
2. “Rather than being reduced to an affective or moral state, shame constitutes the very structure of exposure.”	Shame becomes a condition of being seen without cover—a radical exposure foundational to ethical and political life, especially in vulnerable communities.
3. “Agamben’s notion of shame leads to a rethinking of belonging not as identification, but as exemplarity.”	This reframes belonging: it’s not about sameness or norms but standing as an example without becoming a rule. A critique of identity politics.
4. “The Muselmann is not a figure of mere abandonment but a threshold where ethics begins.”	Agamben’s controversial figure, read here by Knudsen, is positioned as revealing a new mode of ethics beyond dignity or rights.
5. “Shame interrupts the subject’s coincidence with itself.”	Central to Knudsen’s argument: shame dislocates the subject, showing the impossibility of a coherent, sovereign self.
6. “To be human is to blush—to be affected by one’s own exposure.”	This poetic idea links the philosophical with the affective. The blush represents both shame and a reminder of one’s embodiment and vulnerability.
7. “Community is not built on identification but on being-in-common without presuppositions.”	A direct echo of Agamben’s critique of political belonging: true community does not rely on shared traits or exclusions.
8. “Shame marks a relation to norms where they no longer regulate or prescribe.”	This deactivates the normative structure of ethics. Shame doesn’t reaffirm norms but reveals their limits.
9. “The politics of form-of-life is a politics without qualities.”	Borrowing from Agamben’s concept of form-of-life, Knudsen explains how subjectivity can persist without fitting into biopolitical categories.
10. “In shame, the human becomes a witness to the very impossibility of its own definition.”	Perhaps the article’s most important philosophical claim: shame is the scene where human life fails to be fully defined—yet speaks from that failure.

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