Nudities - Rilegato

Agamben, Giorgio

 
9780804769495: Nudities
Rilegato
ISBN 10: 0804769494 ISBN 13: 9780804769495
Casa editrice: Stanford Univ Pr, 2010

Sinossi

Encompassing a wide range of subjects, the ten masterful essays gathered here may at first appear unrelated to one another. In truth, Giorgio Agamben's latest book is a mosaic of his most pressing concerns. Take a step backward after reading it from cover to cover, and a world of secret affinities between the chapters slowly comes into focus. Take another step back, and it becomes another indispensable piece of the finely nuanced philosophy that Agamben has been patiently constructing over four decades of sustained research.

If nudity is unconcealment, or the absence of all veils, then Nudities is a series of apertures onto truth. A guiding thread of this collection—weaving together the prophet's work of redemption, the glorious bodies of the resurrected, the celebration of the Sabbath, and the specters that stroll the streets of Venice—is inoperativity, or the cessation of work. The term should not be understood as laziness or inertia, but rather as the paradigm of human action in the politics to come. Itself the result of inoperativity, Nudities shuttles between philosophy and poetry, philological erudition and unexpected digression, metaphysical treatise and critique of modern life. And whether the subject at hand is personal identity or the biometric apparatus, the slanderer or the land surveyor, Kafka or Kleist, every page bears the singular imprint of one of the most astute philosophers of our time.

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Informazioni sugli autori

Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher and radical political theorist, is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Venice. Stanford University Press has published seven of his previous books: Homo Sacer (1998), Potentialities (1999), The Man Without Content (1999), The End of the Poem (1999), The Open (2004), The Time that Remains (2005), and, most recently, "What is an Apparatus?" and Other Essays(2009).


Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher and radical political theorist, is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Venice. Stanford University Press has published seven of his previous books: Homo Sacer (1998), Potentialities (1999), The Man Without Content (1999), The End of the Poem (1999), The Open (2004), The Time that Remains (2005), and, most recently, "What is an Apparatus?" and Other Essays(2009).

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NUDITIES

By Giorgio Agamben, David Kishik, Stefan Pedatella

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2009 Nottetempo SRL
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-6949-5

Contents

Translators' Note..........................................................ix
§ 1 Creation and Salvation.................................................1
§ 2 What Is the Contemporary?..............................................10
§ 3 K......................................................................20
§ 4 On the Uses and Disadvantages of Living among Specters.................37
§ 5 On What We Can Not Do..................................................43
§ 6 Identity without the Person............................................46
§ 7 Nudity.................................................................55
§ 8 The Glorious Body......................................................91
§ 9 Hunger of an Ox........................................................104
§ 10 The Last Chapter in the History of the World..........................113
Notes......................................................................115
Credits....................................................................121


CHAPTER 1

§ 1 Creation and Salvation


1. Prophets disappear early on in Western history. If it is truethat Judaism cannot be understood without the figure of the nabi,if the prophetic books occupy, in every sense, a central place in theBible, it is just as true that early on there are already forces at workwithin Judaism that tend to limit the practice and the time frameof prophetism. The rabbinical tradition therefore tends to confineprophetism to an idealized past that concludes with the destructionof the First Temple in 587 BC. As the rabbis teach, "After thedeath of the last prophets—Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi—theholy spirit departed from Israel, though heavenly messages continueto reach them through the bat kol" (literally, "the voice'sdaughter," that is, the oral tradition, as well as the commentaryon, and interpretation of, the Torah). In the same way, Christianityrecognizes the essential function of prophecy and, indeed, constructsthe relationship between the Old and New Testaments inprophetic terms. But inasmuch as the Messiah appeared on earthand fulfilled the promise, the prophet no longer has any reason toexist, and so Paul, Peter, and their companions present themselvesas apostles (that is, "those who are sent forth"), never as prophets.For this reason, within the Christian tradition, those who claimto be prophets cannot but be looked upon by the orthodoxy withsuspicion. In this vein, those who wish to somehow link themselvesto prophecy can do so only through the interpretation of theScriptures, by reading them in a new way, or restoring their lostoriginal meaning. In Judaism as in Christianity, hermeneutics hasreplaced prophetism; one can practice prophecy only in the formof interpretation.

Naturally, the prophet has not altogether disappeared fromWestern culture. He continues his labor discretely, under variousguises, perhaps even outside the hermeneutical sphere properlyunderstood. And so Aby Warburg classified Nietzsche and JacobBurckhardt as two opposing types of nabi: the former directedtoward the future, the latter toward the past. Similarly, MichelFoucault, in his lecture from February 1, 1984, at the Collège deFrance, distinguished between four figures of truth-tellers in theancient world: the prophet, the sage, the expert, and the parrhesiast.In the subsequent lecture he sought to retrace their descendantsin the history of modern philosophy. But it still remainsthe case that, generally speaking, no one would feel immediatelycomfortable today claiming the position of prophet.


2. It is well known that in Islam the prophet performs possiblyan even more essential function. Not only the usual biblicalprophets, but also Abraham, Moses, and Jesus are defined in Islamas prophets. Nevertheless, even in this tradition, Muhammad, theprophet par excellence, is considered the "seal of prophecy," hewho has definitively closed with his book the history of prophetism(which continues secretly even here through commentary on,and interpretation of, the Koran).

It is significant, however, that the Islamic tradition inextricablylinks the figure and function of the prophet to one of the twoworks or actions of God. According to this doctrine there are twodifferent kinds of work or praxis (sunnah): the work of creationand the work of salvation (or the Command). Prophets correspondto the latter; they function as mediators for eschatologicalsalvation. Angels correspond to the former; they represent thework of creation (of which Iblis—the angel who had been originallyentrusted with the earthly kingdom before refusing to worshipAdam—is the cipher). "God," Shahrastani writes, "has twokinds of work or praxis: one has to do with his creation, the otherwith his Command.... Prophets function as mediators who affirmthe work of the Command, while angels function as mediatorswho affirm the work of creation. And since the Command isnobler than creation, the mediator of the Command [that is, theprophet] is nobler than the mediator of creation."

In Christian theology the two works, united in God, are assignedto two different figures in the Trinity: the Father and theSon, the omnipotent creator and the redeemer, into whom Godemptied his force. What is decisive in the Islamic tradition, however,is that the status of redemption precedes the status of creation,that what seems to follow is actually anterior. Salvation isnot a remedy for the Fall of created beings but rather that whichmakes creation comprehensible, what gives it its sense. For thisreason, in Islam the light of the prophet is considered the firstamong all beings (just as in the Jewish tradition the name of theMessiah was created before the creation of the world, and in Christianitythe Son—though born from the Father—is consubstantialand coeval with him). Nothing expresses the priority of the workof salvation over that of creation better than the fact that salvationis presented as an exigent demand for reparation, one thatprecedes the appearance of any wrongdoing in the created world."When God created the angels," recites a hadith, "they raised theirheads toward heaven and asked: 'Lord, who are you with?' He responded:'I am with those who are victims of injustice, until theirrights are restored.'"


3. Scholars have examined the meaning of the two works ofGod, which appear together in only one verse of the Koran ("ToHim belong the creation and the Command" [7: 54]). Accordingto some interpreters, the verse treats the intimate contradictionthat opposes a creator God with a savior God in monotheistic religions(or, in Gnostic and Marcionite versions, which accentuatethe opposition, a malicious Demiurge, creator of the world, incontrast with a God who is alien to the world, and from whomproceeds redemption and salvation). Whatever the origin of thetwo works may be, it is certain that not only in Islam do creationand salvation establish the two poles of divine action. And if it istrue that God is the place where humans think through their decisiveproblems, then these are also the two poles of human action.

All the more interesting, then, is the relationship that ties thetwo works together: they are distinct and even oppose one another,but they are nevertheless inextricable. Those who act andproduce must also save and redeem their creation. It is not enoughto do; one must know how to save that which one has done. Infact, the task of salvation precedes the task of creation; it is almostas if the only legitimization for doing and producing were the capacityto redeem that which has been done and produced.

What is truly singular in every human existence is the silent andimpervious intertwining of the two works, the extremely close andyet disjointed proceeding of the prophetic word and the creativeword, of the power of the angel (with which we never cease producingand looking ahead) and the power of the prophet (that justas tirelessly retrieves, undoes, and arrests the progress of creationand in this way completes and redeems it). And just as singular isthe time that ties the two works together, the rhythm accordingto which creation precedes redemption but in reality follows it, asredemption follows creation but in truth precedes it.


4. In both Islam and Judaism, the work of salvation—thoughit precedes the work of creation in its degree of importance—isentrusted to a created being: the prophet or the Messiah (in Christianity,this idea is attested to by the fact that the Son, althoughconsubstantial with the Father, was generated, though not created,by him). The above-cited passage from Shahrastani continues, asa matter of fact, with these words: "And this is worthy of marvel:that the spiritual beings [the angels], though proceeding directlyfrom the Command, have become mediators of creation, whilethe corporeal, created beings [the prophets] have become mediatorsof the Command." What is indeed marvelous here is thatthe redemption of creation is entrusted not to the creator (nor tothe angels, who proceed directly from the creative power) but toa created being. This means that creation and salvation remainsomehow foreign to one another, that it is not the principle ofcreation within us that will be able to save what we have produced.Nevertheless, that which can and must save the work of creationresults and arises from it. That which precedes in rank and dignityderives from that which is its inferior.

This means that what will save the world is not the spiritual, angelicpower (a power that is, in the final analysis, demonic), withwhich humans produce their works (whether they be technical orartistic works, works of war or peace), but a more humble andcorporeal power, which humans have insofar as they are createdbeings. But this also means that the two powers somehow coincidein the prophet, that the custodian of the work of salvationbelongs, as far as his being is concerned, to creation.


5 . In modern culture philosophy and criticism have inheritedthe prophetic work of salvation (that formerly, in the sacredsphere, had been entrusted to exegesis); poetry, technology, andart are the inheritors of the angelic work of creation. Through theprocess of secularization of the religious tradition, however, thesedisciplines have progressively lost all memory of the relationshipthat had previously linked them so intimately to one another.Hence the complicated and almost schizophrenic character thatseems to mark this relationship. Once, the poet knew how to accountfor his poetry ("To open it through prose," as Dante putsit), and the critic was also a poet. Now, the critic has lost access tothe work of creation and thus gets revenge by presuming to judgeit, while the poet no longer knows how to save his own work andthus discounts this incapacity by blindly consigning himself to thefrivolity of the angel. The fact is that these two works—which appearautonomous and independent of one another—are in realitytwo faces of the same divine power, and they coincide, at least asfar as the prophet is concerned, within a single being. The workof creation is, in truth, only a spark that has detached itself fromthe prophetic work of salvation, and the work of salvation is onlya fragment of the angelic creation that has become conscious ofitself. The prophet is an angel who, in the very impulse that spurshim into action, suddenly feels in his living flesh the thorn of adifferent exigency. This is why the ancient biographies tell us thatPlato was originally a tragic poet who, while heading to the theaterto have his trilogy performed, heard Socrates' voice and decided toburn his tragedies.


6. Just as genius and talent—originally distinct and even opposite—arenevertheless united in the work of the poet, so the workof creation and the work of salvation, inasmuch as they representthe two powers of a single God, remain in some way secretly conjoined.What determines the status of the work is, however, onceagain, not a result of creation and talent but of the signature imprintedon it by genius and by salvation. This signature is style:the counterforce, as it were, that resists and undoes creation fromwithin, the countermelody that silences the inspired angel. Viceversa, in the work of the prophet, style is the signature that creation—inthe very act of being saved—leaves on salvation; it is theopacity and almost the insolence with which creation resists itsredemption, with which it seeks to remain utterly night, utterlycreaturely, and in this way to bestow its tenor on thought.

A critical or philosophical work that does not possess some sortof an essential relationship with creation is condemned to pointlessidling, just as a work of art or poetry that does not contain withinit a critical exigency is destined for oblivion. Today, however, separatedinto two different subjects as they are, the two divine sunnahsearch desperately for a meeting point, for a threshold of indifference,where their lost unity can be rediscovered. They do thisby exchanging their roles, which nevertheless remain implacablydivided. At the moment when, for the first time, the problem ofthe separation between poetry and philosophy forcefully emergesin our consciousness, Holderlin describes philosophy (in a letterto Neuffer) as a "hospital in which the unfortunate poet can takerefuge with honor." In our day the hospital of philosophy hasclosed its shutters. Critics, transformed into "curators," heedlesslytake the place of artists in order to simulate the work of creationthat the latter have abandoned, while artisans, who have becomeinoperative, dedicate themselves with great zeal to a work of redemptionin which there is no longer any work to save. In bothcases creation and salvation no longer scratch onto one anotherthe signature of their tenacious, amorous conflict. Unsigned anddivided, they place each other in front of a mirror in which theycannot recognize themselves.


7. What is the sense of this division of divine—and human—praxisinto two works? If in the final analysis it is true that, despitethe difference in their status, the mutual roots of the two worksseem to stem from a common terrain or substance, what does theirunity consist of? Perhaps the only way to lead them back onceagain to their common root is by thinking of the work of salvationas that aspect of the power to create that was left unpracticedby the angel and thus can turn back on itself. Just as potentialityanticipates the act and exceeds it, so the work of redemption precedesthat of creation. Nevertheless, redemption is nothing otherthan a potentiality to create that remains pending, that turns onitself and "saves" itself. But what is the meaning of "saving" inthis context? After all, there is nothing in creation that is not ultimatelydestined to be lost: not only the part of each and every momentthat must be lost and forgotten—the daily squandering oftiny gestures, of minute sensations, of that which passes throughthe mind in a flash, of trite and wasted words, all of which exceedby great measure the mercy of memory and the archive of redemption—butalso the works of art and ingenuity, the fruits of a longand patient labor that, sooner or later, are condemned to disappear.

It is over this immemorial mass, over the unformed and immensechaos of what must be lost that, according to the Islamictradition, Iblis, the angel that has eyes only for the work of creation,cries incessantly. He cries because he does not know thatwhat one loses actually belongs to God, that when all the workof creation has been forgotten, when all signs and words have becomeillegible, only the work of salvation will remain indelible.


8. What is a "saved" potentiality, this power to do (and to notdo) that does not simply pass into actuality, so as to exhaust itselfin it, but rather conserves itself and dwells (it is "saved") as suchwithin the work? The work of salvation coincides here point forpoint with the work of creation: the former undoes and decreatesthe latter at the very same moment it carries and accompanies itinto being. There is neither gesture nor word, neither color nortimbre, neither desire nor gaze that salvation does not suspend andrender inoperative in its amorous struggle with the work. Thatwhich the angel forms, produces, and caresses, the prophet bringsback to an unformed state and contemplates. His eyes observe thatwhich is saved but only inasmuch as it will be lost on the last day.And just as a loved one is all of a sudden present in our memory,but only on the condition that he or she is disembodied andturned into an image, so the work of creation is now intimatelymeshed in every last detail with nonbeing.

But what, then, is saved here, exactly? Not the created being,because it is lost, because it cannot but be lost. Not the potentiality,because it has no consistency other than the decreation of thework. Instead, the created being and the potentiality now enterinto a threshold in which they can no longer be in any way distinguishedfrom one another. This means that the ultimate figureof human and divine action appears where creation and salvationcoincide in the unsavable. This coincidence can be achieved onlyif the prophet has nothing to save and the angel has nothing elseto do. Unsavable, therefore, is that work in which creation andsalvation, action and contemplation, operation and inoperativity[inoperosità] persist in every moment and, without leaving anyresidue, in the same being (and in the same nonbeing). Hence itsopaque splendor, which vertiginously distances itself from us likea star that will never return.


9. The crying angel turns itself into a prophet, while the lamentof the poet for creation becomes critical prophecy, that is tosay, philosophy. But precisely now—when the work of salvationseems to gather within itself as unforgettable everything that is immemorial—eventhis work is transformed. It remains, of course,because, as opposed to creation, the work of redemption is eternal.To the extent that salvation has survived creation, its exigency isnot, however, exhausted in the saved but rather lost in the unsavable.Born from a creation that is left pending, it ends up as aninscrutable salvation that no longer has an objective.


(Continues...)
Excerpted from NUDITIES by Giorgio Agamben, David Kishik, Stefan Pedatella. Copyright © 2009 Nottetempo SRL. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press.
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Editore
Stanford Univ Pr
Data di pubblicazione
2010
Lingua
Inglese
ISBN 10 
0804769494
ISBN 13 
9780804769495
Rilegatura
Copertina rigida
Numero di pagine
121
Contatto del produttore
non disponibile
Persona responsabile
non disponibile

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9780804769501: Nudities

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ISBN 10:  0804769508 ISBN 13:  9780804769501
Casa editrice: Stanford Univ Pr, 2010
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