How's this for a fun fact: at age 22, Agamben played the apostle Philip in The Gospel According to Matthew (1964), a retelling of the Passion by Italian auteur Pier Paolo Pasolini. We think he looks dreamy on film, but that's beside the point. More relevant, maybe, is the fact that this shows how tight Agamben was, even way back when, with the heaviest of Italy's intellectual heavyweights. (Source.)

Fast-forward to 2004 and Agamben's refusal to travel to New York for a visiting professorship. This earned the guy admiration and even theory superstardom… and with good reason. It's not every theorist, after all, who has the guts to say no—and stand up—to a super-university at the heart of a world super-power. (Source.)

Agamben also figures in the "filmed essay" Get Rid of Yourself by the radical art collective Bernadette Corporation. (Source.)

Theory's high priest has also been known to write editorials in his spare time. These tend to appear in European newspapers, and in them, Agamben totally translates his theories into terms readily applicable to real-time political events. Following are two of our favorites. Fair warning: the second one is truly strange. (Source and source.)