2 Giorgio Agamben A Critical Introduction Leland de la Durantaye 3 Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2009 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. Portions of Chapter Four were originally published in Diacritics © 2000, Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted with permission. Portions of Chapter Eight were originally published in Diacritics © 2005, Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted with permission. Portions of Chapter Nine were originally published in Genre © 2005, University of Oklahoma Press. Reprinted with permission. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Pu6lication Data De la Durantaye, Leland. Giorgio Agamben : a critical introduction / Leland de la Durantaye. 4 p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 9780804771252 1. Agamben, Giorgio, 1942— 2. Philosophy, Italian—20th century. I. Title. B3611.A44D4 2009 195—dc22 2008037590 5 For Katharina 6 “ L’inferno dei viventi non e qualcosa che sarà; se ce n‘è uno è quello che è già qui, l’inferno che abitiamo tutti i giorni, che formiamo stando insieme. Due modi ci sono per non soffrirne. II primo riesce facile a molti: accettare l’inferno e diventarne parte fin al punto di non vederlo più. Il secondo e riscbioso ed esige attenzione e apprendimento continui: cercare e saper riconoscere chi e cosa, in mezzo all’inferno, non inferno, e farlo durare, e dargli spazio.” —ITALO CALVINO, Le città invisibili 7 Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Praise Acknowledgments Abbreviations of Agamben’s Works Preface: The Law of the Good Neighbor Introduction: The Idea of Potentiality CHAPTER ONE - Art for Art’s Sake: The Destruction of Aesthetics and The Man Without Content CHAPTER TWO - A General Science of the Human: Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture CHAPTER THREE - A Critique of the Dialectic: Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience CHAPTER FOUR - The Pure Potentiality of Representation: Idea of Prose CHAPTER FIVE - From Spectacle to Shekinah: The Coming Community CHAPTER SIX - The Potential of Paradigms: Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life CHAPTER SEVEN - The Unique and the Unsayable: Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. Homo Sacer III CHAPTER EIGHT - The Suspended Substantive: The Open: Man and Animal CHAPTER NINE - The Exceptional Life of the State: State 8 of Exception. Homo Sacer II.1 CHAPTER TEN - The Messiah, or On the Sacred and the Profane Conclusion: The Idea of the Work Notes Bibliography Index 9 Acknowledgments My first thanks go to the subject of this study for the teaching and works that led to it. I thank Jonathan Culler for kind assistance and advice. I thank Cesare Casarino for introducing me to Agamben’s writings. Jen Hui Bon Hoa and John Minervini read large unruly swaths of the manuscript in its early stages and whatever clarity those sections have attained is thanks to their efforts. I thank Moira Gallagher for her careful reading of several chapters. I thank Doug Lavin for eleventh-hour assistance with the function of mankind. I thank Norris Pope at Stanford University Press for his interest in the project from inception to completion, and his colleagues Alice Rowan, Sarah Crane Newman, Emily-Jane Cohen, and Tim Roberts for their editing of the final product. Warm thanks go to my colleagues in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University for kindnesses too many and too diverse to name. I thank the faculty, fellows, and staff of Princeton University’s Laurance S. Rockefeller Center for Human Values for their recommendations concerning Chapter Seven of this study. I thank Thomas Khurana and his colleauges at the University of Potsdam for their insightful discussion of Chapter Five. I thank Nicola del Roscio for his permission to reprint the image featured on this book’s cover. Finally, I thank the staffs of the American Academy in Rome, the Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Roma, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, the Bibliotheque de l’École Normale Supérieure, the 10