In "The Open," contemporary Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben examines the way
s in which, throughout the history of Western culture, man has been distinguishe
d from animal, and in his inquiry discovers that the human arises not from the "
conjunction" of a natural, living body and a divine or rational element, but rat
her through the workings of the "anthropological machine" which produces man by
means of a strategic, practico-political "separation" of humanity from animality
.
