The adventure as a form of life

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the implications of the idea of "adventure" (based on Giorgio Agamben's formulations of the concept in Childhood and History (2004 [1978]), The Adventure (2018 [2015]) and Pinocchio (2023 [2021]) for a theory of life as a "form of forms" (Gailus 2020). We are interested in attending to the ways in which this event that constitutes the adventure is introduced as an initiatory event in biographical writing and, particularly, in reading the meanings of this initiation in two autobiographical texts by Agamben himself: Self-Portrait in the Studio (2018 [2017]) and What I Saw, Heard Learned ... (2023).