For about thirty years, between 1940 and 1970, a strange entity made a passing and hesitant appearance on the radar of the West’s intellectual history. Homo schizoid found its decisive articulation in the writings of Ronald Fairbairn and Harry Guntrip, two psychoanalysts who are barely known outside of professional circles. By now, this figure is all too often either forgotten or, even worse, confused with its psychotic relative, the schizophrenic. Giorgio Agamben and his commentators have made no serious effort to investigate the schizoid position in their attempt to imagine a politics that transcends the idea of relation and an ethics freed from the need for recognition. So this paper is guided by three questions: What does the notion of homo sacer have to do with homo schizoid? Is Agamben's approach to life as something that is never defined but only divided somehow connected to the split or skhizein which gives the schizoid its name? Finally, will the schizoid persist as a personality disorder, or can it become the harbinger of a destituent power?
