Giorgio Agamben: Beyond the Threshold of Deconstruction

by Kevin Attell

Agamben’s thought has been viewed as descending primarily from the work of Heidegger, Benjamin, and, more recently, Foucault. This book complicates and expands that constellation by showing how throughout his career Agamben has consistently and closely engaged (critically, sympathetically, polemically, and often implicitly) the work of Derrida as his chief contemporary interlocutor.

The book begins by examining the development of Agamben’s key concepts―infancy, Voice, potentiality―from the 1960s to approximately 1990 and shows how these concepts consistently draw on and respond to specific texts and concepts of Derrida. The second part examines the political turn in Agamben’s and Derrida’s thinking from about 1990 onward, beginning with their investigations of sovereignty and violence and moving through their parallel treatments of juridical power, the relation between humans and animals, and finally messianism and the politics to come.

Genres: Philosophy

328 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2014

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

What happens when you pitch one of the giants of twentieth century philosophy against one of the emerging giants of the twenty-first? Nothing less than a 'gigantomachy' of course, the Olympian struggle of the giants invoked by Giorgio Agamben in his discussion of the 'esoteric dossier' of exchange between Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt. In this meticulously researched and wonderfully written book, not Benjamin and Schmitt, but Agamben and Derrida are the subjects of this particular and fascinating gigantomachy. As long time readers of Agamben will know, Derrida's deconstructive project has been a frequent point of passing reference for the Italian philosopher, although the precise nature of their relation has always been obscured by the obliqueness and diffusion of those references throughout Agamben's oeuvre.

With Kevin Attell's book in hand however, the exact proximity - and distance - between these two thinkers comes to light in as clear and lucid a manner as anyone could ask for. Never polemical but always precise, Attell masterfully traces how - on an almost point by point basis - Agamben's concepts advance themselves in engagement with deconstuction. From their differing readings of Saussure (on the nature of signification), Benvensite (on being and enunciation), Benjamin (on the role of violence with respect to the law) and Kafka (on the significance of The Trial), along with their parallel yet contrasting reflections on the nature of the voice, animality, time, and play, the breadth and depth of Attell's study would alone make it indispensable reading for anyone interested in the subjects discussed within.

Alternating with ease between the thoughts of the two philosophers involved here, Attell’s book is keen to show how Agamben and Derrida’s respective (and so-called) ‘political turns’ follow directly from their corresponding ‘first-philosophical’ work, and how each fashions their own distinctive 'critique of metaphysics’ which, while converging in important ways, refract in ways even more so. Attell’s basic and most constant refrain is that while Derrida, for Agamben, is the thinker who comes closest to broaching the borders of metaphysics, he nonetheless never manages to effect the step backwards/beyond metaphysics that properly demands to be taken today. Derrida, of course, never admitted otherwise, with the caveat that any attempt to make that step would fall prey to a naivety all the more metaphysical for it. For Attell, Agamben’s counter-charge is simply that such a limit is precisely a self-imposed one, all the more insidious for proclaiming its own inviolability.

Precisely how Agamben makes this claim without exposing himself to the critique of presence undertaken by Derrida is the precisely the challenge that Attell’s book charts with painstaking rigour. Yet far from being a mere commentator, Attell - already well placed as a translator of a number of Agamben’s books (State of Exception, The Open) - also brings his vast erudition to bear on his analyses. Placing, for example, Agamben’s writings on potentiality within the wider context of Aristotelian scholarship; or triangulating Agamben’s perspective on law with respect to the dominant traditions of natural and positive law, are among the little intellectual flourishes that serve to make Attell’s book one of the best comparative philosophical studies I’ve read in a long time. To borrow Slavoj Zizek’s hyperbolic claim - Attell hasn’t just written a great book - he’s set the standard for what a book like this should aim to be.