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Self-Portrait in the Studio
A rare autobiographical glimpse into the life and influences of one of Europe’s greatest living philosophers.
This book’s title, Self-Portrait in the Studio—a familiar iconographic subject in the history of painting—is intended to be taken literally: the book is a self-portrait, but one that comes into view for the reader only by way of patient scrutiny of the images, photographs, objects, and paintings present in the studios where the writer has worked and still works. That is to say, Giorgio Agamben’s wager is to speak of himself solely and uniquely by speaking of others: the poets, philosophers, painters, musicians, friends, passions—in short, the meetings and encounters that have shaped his life, thought, and writing, from Martin Heidegger to Elsa Morante, from Herman Melville to Walter Benjamin, from Giorgio Caproni to Giovanni Urbani. For this reason, images are an integral part of the book, images that—like those in a rebus that together form another, larger image—ultimately combine with the written text in one of the most unusual self-portraits that any writer has left of himself: not an autobiography, but a faithful and timeless auto-heterography.
This book’s title, Self-Portrait in the Studio—a familiar iconographic subject in the history of painting—is intended to be taken literally: the book is a self-portrait, but one that comes into view for the reader only by way of patient scrutiny of the images, photographs, objects, and paintings present in the studios where the writer has worked and still works. That is to say, Giorgio Agamben’s wager is to speak of himself solely and uniquely by speaking of others: the poets, philosophers, painters, musicians, friends, passions—in short, the meetings and encounters that have shaped his life, thought, and writing, from Martin Heidegger to Elsa Morante, from Herman Melville to Walter Benjamin, from Giorgio Caproni to Giovanni Urbani. For this reason, images are an integral part of the book, images that—like those in a rebus that together form another, larger image—ultimately combine with the written text in one of the most unusual self-portraits that any writer has left of himself: not an autobiography, but a faithful and timeless auto-heterography.
220 pages, Hardcover
First published March 23, 2017
6 people are currently reading
357 people want to read
About the author
Giorgio Agamben
226 books970 followersGiorgio Agamben is one of the leading figures in Italian and contemporary continental philosophy. He is the author of Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life; Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive; Profanations; The Signature of All Things: On Method, and other books. Through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s he treated a wide range of topics, including aesthetics, literature, language, ontology, nihilism, and radical political thought.
In recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Born in Rome in 1942, Agamben completed studies in Law and Philosophy with a doctoral thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil, and participated in Martin Heidegger’s seminars on Hegel and Heraclitus as a postdoctoral scholar.
He rose to international prominence after the publication of Homo Sacer in 1995. Translated into English in 1998, the book’s analyses of law, life, and state power appeared uncannily prescient after the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC in September 2001, and the resultant shifts in the geopolitical landscape. Provoking a wave of scholarly interest in the philosopher’s work, the book also marked the beginning of a 20-year research project, which represents Agamben’s most important contribution to political philosophy.
In recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Born in Rome in 1942, Agamben completed studies in Law and Philosophy with a doctoral thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil, and participated in Martin Heidegger’s seminars on Hegel and Heraclitus as a postdoctoral scholar.
He rose to international prominence after the publication of Homo Sacer in 1995. Translated into English in 1998, the book’s analyses of law, life, and state power appeared uncannily prescient after the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC in September 2001, and the resultant shifts in the geopolitical landscape. Provoking a wave of scholarly interest in the philosopher’s work, the book also marked the beginning of a 20-year research project, which represents Agamben’s most important contribution to political philosophy.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 31, 2025
In this surprisingly engaging volume, Italian philosopher traces his own intellectual journey through the poets and thinkers who influenced him, some whom he knew only through their writing, others who became friends and mentors along the way. Even though many of the people he remembers were unknown to me (Google is your friend), this book is not an in-depth literary or philosophical adventure and, as such, the tone is casual and the illustrations plentiful. What is fascinating is the connections made in a rich, intellectual life—the honest reflection on the way the friendship and ideas of others have guided him. The result is a philosopher's selfie. Using photos of the various studios he lived and worked in over the decades (most of which were borrowed), he picks out photos and memorabilia to serve as his signposts. Many people I know praised this book and I fully understand why. Agamben's works can be quite rigorous, but this book is light-toned, intelligent and humane.
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2025/05/31/a-...
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2025/05/31/a-...
November 26, 2024
one of my favourite books published this year (in English). Memory is love and to be near anything human is to open oneself up to the possibilities of regret. Really didn't expect something like this from Agamben but maybe I just wasn't reading close enough before
October 8, 2017
“Vi sono nella vita eventi e incontri a tal punto decisivi, che è impossibile che entrino completamente nella realtà. Accadono, certo, e segnano la via – ma non finiscono, per così dire, mai di accadere. Incontri, in questo senso, continui […]. Essi non cessano di accompagnarci fino alla fine. Fanno parte di ciò che resta incompiuto in una vita, che va al di là di essa. E ciò che va al di là della vita è ciò che resta di essa.” (pp. 16, 17)
“Ho spesso sognato di trovare il Libro, il Libro assoluto e perfetto – quello che abbiamo più o meno consapevolmente cercato per tutta la vita in ogni luogo, in ogni libreria, in ogni biblioteca. […] Così continuiamo a cercare senza sosta per anni, finché comprendiamo che quel libro non esiste da nessuna parte e che l’unico modo per trovarlo è scriverlo noi stessi.” (p. 137)
“Ho spesso sognato di trovare il Libro, il Libro assoluto e perfetto – quello che abbiamo più o meno consapevolmente cercato per tutta la vita in ogni luogo, in ogni libreria, in ogni biblioteca. […] Così continuiamo a cercare senza sosta per anni, finché comprendiamo che quel libro non esiste da nessuna parte e che l’unico modo per trovarlo è scriverlo noi stessi.” (p. 137)
July 9, 2022
Философская книга которая читается как поэзия. Через рассказ о кабинетах Агамбен пишет историю своего творческого пути и тех, кто его вёл и продолжает вести
September 7, 2025
This is more of a disorganised reflection than a review. When I look around the room or “studio” which I have occupied for the longest one thing that stands out to me is the meticulous and clinical bareness of it. I have nothing on my walls and instead of bookshelves I keep my books in cupboards. At the moment there is a box with my new pair of shoes. I’m very pleased with the idea that this at first sight could belong to anyone and reveals nothing about me. The structure of this pleasure is simply that a person cannot tear me down if they know nothing about me. I grew up first with my grandparents and then in the rooms of others and then when I eventually had my own room my parents had their own ideas of what constituted acceptable and unacceptable expression. So I never got into the habit(!) (habitare = to dwell in Latin) of existing in a way where I would leave traces of myself or letting it be known I had a real existence. Agamben writes: “Habito is a frequentative of habeo: to inhabit is a special mode of having, a having so intense that it is no longer possession at all. By dint of having something, we inhabit it, we belong to it.”
Recently, for some reason, I’ve asked myself what kind of person I am. It’s a pointless question. But, out of many things, I would have liked to be the kind of person who can express their selves in their room without fear. Once I had a reproduction of a painting of two mandarin ducks by Shōson on the wall facing my desk and an envelope above the door frame containing my wishes (based on a Chinese tradition and it looked aesthetically pleasing). I put away the painting by Shōson when I moved away and haven’t gotten around to putting it up again. I also stopped wishing for things so the envelope went away too.
I lived with a set designer for the BBC for some time which gave me a certain confidence for interior personalisation. Maybe when I feel compelled to personalise my room I will put up reproductions of Picasso’s sketches of goats, my most loved depictions of horses (my favourite animal), Snoopy, and other such things. At the bottom of the dilemma is this: that I’m not quite sure how to be a person.
The Italian for “bedroom” is “camera”. I’ve always liked this word because it makes me think of the camera obscura and the visual capacities of opacity. Camera comes from the Ancient Greek καμάρα (kamara) which meant vaulted chamber. Perhaps that my “studio” reflects a certain guardedness means it is faithful to the original sense of the term. I admired that there was so much person in the images Agamben shows of his studies. Everything from Walter Benjamin shrine to the puppet. It was so endearing.
I will say my only concern with this auto-biography is that he doesn’t mention his wife. I find it difficult to accept that an almost lifelong partner who is also a writer and professor in their own right had no intellectual influence on his development. This makes the self-portrait seem quite insincere and superficial. This is especially the case as it becomes tedious towards the last few pages where he hurriedly mentions all the intellectual figures he associated with and knew. These friendships (as he calls them) which seem like superficial acquaintances to the reader make me wonder at the affective depth of all he says.
Even so, this criticism has made it possible for me to voice my problem with the idea of literary and intellectual ‘circles’—I find that because they are exclusionary and depend on a narcissistic cult of self they are just so gauche and self-conscious! I can’t imagine the vapidity of people who treat human connection like a networking event but play pretend at feeling things. This sense of superficiality distracts from his project of giving an account of himself through others.
Upon reading this, I am amused. Is it possible that to share a soul with another person who is also living? And how can a person even say of themselves ‘I share a soul with Agamben?’ I found it somehow unpleasant I would have a thought like that. But intellectual tendencies aside, specific experiences and thoughts such as the one on belonging and moving properties, specific aspects of Zorastianism, the idea of vegetative life as relational life, even the passage on urination… and on alphabet books and Pinocchio: in a seminar I once selected a sculpture by Étienne-Martin (Abécédaire, 1967) discuss with the class. I had related it to the Abécédaire of Victor Hugo (and also Gilles Deleuze). The idea was to relate to Foucault’s notion of episteme in relation to personal knowledge. The professor mentioned Pinocchio’s alphabet book: Geppetto sells his coat to buy Pinocchio an ABC book: education would be the individuating force which transforms him into a real boy. I had long since been preoccupied with The Adventures of Pinocchio since it was one of the few books I had as a child and because in the idea of wanting to become real I found an image of my earliest suffering. I also like the idea of an adventure—fucking off is always very appealing. Pinocchio haunts me always in relation to the adventure. It’s true because I was watching JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Pinocchio features in Stone Oceans where he keeps asking Narciso, “I was your favourite as a child, wasn’t I?”
Back to Agamben. So this is ultimately a book on the transformative impact of love and how it influences one’s philosophical practice. For me his view on love—one which relates loving to memory and knowledge—is difficult to accept. I agree with the transformative aspect nascere connotes (to love is individuating, it is to accept the invitation to be transformed). For those who want all the benefits of love whilst preserving themselves, they prove incapable of loving because in the acceptance to transform, there is no question of the I and We. It is a matter of re-negotiating the self with itself. On the other hand, what Agamben presents as meditative and reflective but is just a cliché of love as a site of property relations and control.
“Smara in Sanskrit means both love and memory. We love someone because we remember them and we remember because we love. In loving we remember and in remembering we love. This is why loving means being unable to forget.”
Against this I would say that love is constituted in forgetting. This finds its most prominent form in the act of forgiveness. To which he writes:
“But in truth it also means that we can no longer have a memory of it, that love is beyond memory, immemorably, ceaselessly present.”
Recently, for some reason, I’ve asked myself what kind of person I am. It’s a pointless question. But, out of many things, I would have liked to be the kind of person who can express their selves in their room without fear. Once I had a reproduction of a painting of two mandarin ducks by Shōson on the wall facing my desk and an envelope above the door frame containing my wishes (based on a Chinese tradition and it looked aesthetically pleasing). I put away the painting by Shōson when I moved away and haven’t gotten around to putting it up again. I also stopped wishing for things so the envelope went away too.
I lived with a set designer for the BBC for some time which gave me a certain confidence for interior personalisation. Maybe when I feel compelled to personalise my room I will put up reproductions of Picasso’s sketches of goats, my most loved depictions of horses (my favourite animal), Snoopy, and other such things. At the bottom of the dilemma is this: that I’m not quite sure how to be a person.
The Italian for “bedroom” is “camera”. I’ve always liked this word because it makes me think of the camera obscura and the visual capacities of opacity. Camera comes from the Ancient Greek καμάρα (kamara) which meant vaulted chamber. Perhaps that my “studio” reflects a certain guardedness means it is faithful to the original sense of the term. I admired that there was so much person in the images Agamben shows of his studies. Everything from Walter Benjamin shrine to the puppet. It was so endearing.
I will say my only concern with this auto-biography is that he doesn’t mention his wife. I find it difficult to accept that an almost lifelong partner who is also a writer and professor in their own right had no intellectual influence on his development. This makes the self-portrait seem quite insincere and superficial. This is especially the case as it becomes tedious towards the last few pages where he hurriedly mentions all the intellectual figures he associated with and knew. These friendships (as he calls them) which seem like superficial acquaintances to the reader make me wonder at the affective depth of all he says.
Even so, this criticism has made it possible for me to voice my problem with the idea of literary and intellectual ‘circles’—I find that because they are exclusionary and depend on a narcissistic cult of self they are just so gauche and self-conscious! I can’t imagine the vapidity of people who treat human connection like a networking event but play pretend at feeling things. This sense of superficiality distracts from his project of giving an account of himself through others.
Upon reading this, I am amused. Is it possible that to share a soul with another person who is also living? And how can a person even say of themselves ‘I share a soul with Agamben?’ I found it somehow unpleasant I would have a thought like that. But intellectual tendencies aside, specific experiences and thoughts such as the one on belonging and moving properties, specific aspects of Zorastianism, the idea of vegetative life as relational life, even the passage on urination… and on alphabet books and Pinocchio: in a seminar I once selected a sculpture by Étienne-Martin (Abécédaire, 1967) discuss with the class. I had related it to the Abécédaire of Victor Hugo (and also Gilles Deleuze). The idea was to relate to Foucault’s notion of episteme in relation to personal knowledge. The professor mentioned Pinocchio’s alphabet book: Geppetto sells his coat to buy Pinocchio an ABC book: education would be the individuating force which transforms him into a real boy. I had long since been preoccupied with The Adventures of Pinocchio since it was one of the few books I had as a child and because in the idea of wanting to become real I found an image of my earliest suffering. I also like the idea of an adventure—fucking off is always very appealing. Pinocchio haunts me always in relation to the adventure. It’s true because I was watching JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Pinocchio features in Stone Oceans where he keeps asking Narciso, “I was your favourite as a child, wasn’t I?”
Back to Agamben. So this is ultimately a book on the transformative impact of love and how it influences one’s philosophical practice. For me his view on love—one which relates loving to memory and knowledge—is difficult to accept. I agree with the transformative aspect nascere connotes (to love is individuating, it is to accept the invitation to be transformed). For those who want all the benefits of love whilst preserving themselves, they prove incapable of loving because in the acceptance to transform, there is no question of the I and We. It is a matter of re-negotiating the self with itself. On the other hand, what Agamben presents as meditative and reflective but is just a cliché of love as a site of property relations and control.
“Smara in Sanskrit means both love and memory. We love someone because we remember them and we remember because we love. In loving we remember and in remembering we love. This is why loving means being unable to forget.”
Against this I would say that love is constituted in forgetting. This finds its most prominent form in the act of forgiveness. To which he writes:
“But in truth it also means that we can no longer have a memory of it, that love is beyond memory, immemorably, ceaselessly present.”
June 19, 2022
Autorretrato que remite al otro, ese que ha sido amado, frágil, testimonio de aquello que escapa a la nominación y al significado. Los estudios, que son el estudio, cartografían el mundo del autor a través de sus cuadernos, fotografías, polichinelas, postales, tarjetas y libros, configurados más como sorpresas de la prehistoria que como archivos históricos.
May 11, 2020
«Smara en sánscrito significa tanto amor como memoria. Se ama a alguien porque se lo recuerda y, viceversa, se recuerda porque se ama. Amando se recuerda y recordando se ama y, al final, amamos el recuerdo -es decir, el amor mismo- y recordamos el amor, es decir, el recuerdo mismo. Por esto amar significa no llegar a olvidar, a sacarse de la mente un rostro, un gesto, una luz. Pero también significa que, en realidad, ya no podemos tener un recuerdo de ellos, que el amor está más allá del recuerdo, inmemorable, incesantemente presente».
May 23, 2022
Дуже атмосферний опис робочих місць італійського філософа, який протягом всієї книги намагається втекти від свого відображення в обличчі поетів, філософів, художників та інших селебріті того часу і знайти серед цього всього себе.
Що дає нам підставу обговорювати, що відчували і що відчували давно померлі люди, яких відзеркалює автор у собі і який вплив оточення має на нас.
Читати варто лише тому, щоб зрозуміти і для себе кому ж належать наші спогади, почуття, емоції та оточуючі предмети?
Що дає нам підставу обговорювати, що відчували і що відчували давно померлі люди, яких відзеркалює автор у собі і який вплив оточення має на нас.
Читати варто лише тому, щоб зрозуміти і для себе кому ж належать наші спогади, почуття, емоції та оточуючі предмети?
October 5, 2022
Un libro delicioso. Un recorrido autobiográfico a través de la imagen de una potencia: el estudio. Muy recomendable para entender sus otros libros, sin la intrincada genealogía filológica a la que nos tiene acostumbrados.
January 30, 2020
Ameno, está muy bien
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February 27, 2022Probably this is the only Agamben you need to read—he shows his cards more than in any other book of his I've read.
July 1, 2024
A review of a late-life memoir of one of our greats. Please read it for free here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/msarki/...
https://open.substack.com/pub/msarki/...
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews