GIORGIO AGAMBEN fordham university press new york 2015 commonalities Timothy C. Campbell, series editor GIORGIO AGAMBEN Beyond the Threshold of Deconstruction kevin attell this book is made possible by a collaborative grant from the andrew w. mellon foundation. Copyright © 2015 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Attell, Kevin. Giorgio Agamben : beyond the threshold of deconstruction / Kevin Attell. — First edition. pages cm. — (Commonalities) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8232-6204-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8232-6205-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Agamben, Giorgio, 1942– 2. Derrida, Jacques. 3. Deconstruction. I. Title. B3611.A44A88 2014 195—dc23 2014017794 Printed in the United States of America 17 16 15 5 4 3 2 1 First edition This was a case of metaphysics, at least as difficult for Joe to deal with, as for me. But Joe took the case altogether out of the region of metaphysics, and by that means vanquished it. —charles dickens, great expectations CONTENTS Acknowledgments ........................... ix Abbreviations ..............................xiii Introduction. Agamben and Derrida: An Esoteric Dossier ......................... 1 : PARTONE FIRSTPRINCIPLES 1 Agamben and Derrida Read Saussure ........ 13 2 “The Human Voice” .......................40 3 Potenza and Différance .....................84 : PARTTWO STRATEGYWITHOUTFINALITYORMEANSWITHOUTEND 4 Sovereignty, Law, and Violence ..............125 5 Ticks and Cats ........................... 167 6 A Matter of Time ..........................213 Coda: Play ............................... 255 Notes ...................................... 263 Works Cited .............................289 Index ................................... 297 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In these acknowledgments of the many people to whom I am indebted, my first is to Giorgio Agamben, whom I had the good fortune to meet while studying at Berkeley. I thank him for his personal and intellectual gener- osity over the years since then and, of course, for his extraordinary body of work. This book was being set in page proofs when we all received the terrible and shocking news of Fordham University Press Editorial Director Helen Tartar’s death. Helen supported this book and its author from early on— indeed, as early as my translation of Agamben’s The Open—and I consider it a supreme privilege to have known and worked with her. It is a joyful honor—alas, now mixed with deep sadness—to have this book appear with Fordham University Press under her editorial directorship. The idea for this book arose while I was an Andrew W. Mellon Post- doctoral Fellow in the English department at Johns Hopkins University. I would like to thank the Mellon Foundation as well as all those who made Gilman Hall such a happy and exciting academic home, especially Amanda Anderson, Sharon Cameron, Frances Ferguson, Richard Halpern, Allen Grossman, and Gabrielle Spiegel. And from Baltimore to Ithaca—that is to say, from the beginning to the completion of this book—Simon During and Neil Hertz have continuously offered kind support and sage advice. By a happy chance, Jesse Molesworth was also a Mellon fellow at Hopkins at the same time, and I have benefitted from his friendship and intelligence ever since. One could hardly think of a better place than Cornell to think and write about contemporary philosophy, and deconstruction in particular. I must