A 'Retro-version' of Power: Agamben via Foucault on Sovereignty

This essay reviews Agamben's work on the sovereign exception to ask whether it has missed crucial aspects in its reading of Foucault, especially given Foucault's worry that the focus in political theory on sovereignty was but a focus on a `retro-version' of power. The first part reviews Foucault's work on power and sovereignty in The History of Sexuality and ancillary texts from the late 1970s and early 1980s, followed by Agamben's work on sovereignty and its connection to the work of Foucault. The essay is less concerned with whether Agamben is faithful to the work of Foucault than in ascertaining if Agamben forms a critique of sovereignty in line with what Foucault would consider a naive notion of power, or if Agamben has identified something about the very concept of sovereignty, its place as exception to law and history, that is missing from Foucault's analysis.