Homo Sacer, Homo Magus, and the Ethics of Philosophical Archaeology

Philosophical archaeology, which was first developed into a workable formulation by Michel Foucault (1966), is a method of modern historiography that engages the production of its own origin (and destiny). For this reason, however, the manner in which the figure of "man" is inscribed by a thinker upon its episteme is never ethically neutral. Giorgio Agamben's production of a figure without speech, homo sacer, delivers the Western political subject into a powerless political destiny, leaving thinkers who accept this paradigm to grope blindly after a rarified concept of "whatever" community. We must give an alternative archaeology of political speech to avoid this fate. Thus, I propose an archaeological account of a figure that is in essential possession of its own speech. This paradigmatic figure is what I call the magician, or homo magus.