Katja Diefenbach: To bring about the real state of...
Rated • 1 review • philosophy, agamben • eipcp.net
From the page: "In a tender essay on Bartleby from 1993, Giorgio Agamben introduces the law-copyist who prefers not to write as an angel and messenger of an ontology of potentiality. With his â€oeI would prefer not to”, this pale and exhausted employee, who doesnâ€t intend to carry out anything more, announces that man, the community and the political exist in the mode of potentiality. Being is potential. Only as potential does it make community possible. If it were always already actualised, it would always already be this thing or that identity, there could only be â€oecoincidences and factual partitions”.[1] This is the first feature of Agambenâ€s thought that I want to address: the ontologisation of the political in the figure of potentiality. Currently, it is possible to observe a strong return to ontology in parts of a political philosophy of the left, letâ€s say one committed to the analytics and change of the societal â€" Nancyâ€s ontology of being-with, Agambenâ€s ontology of potentiality, Zizekâ€s ontologising definition of capital as the real, Badiouâ€s mathematical ontology of set theory, Negriâ€s ontology of a constituent power of the multitude etc.[2]
But even a weak ontological thinking that introduces paradoxical, empty, contingent or groundless foundations of being works with a priori and transhistorical determinations that transcend the strategic conflicts of the societal and are thereby logically and ethically purified. Accordingly, Derridaâ€s call for de-ontologisation is pushed aside as much as the poststructuralist call to think in the interplay between practices, in the interaction between governmental, valorising and social practices. In poststructuralism, praxis is never seen as pure; it is relative. Just as it can represent an instrument of power or an effect of power, it can also become an obstacle for power, something that escapes it or pushes its effects in another direction, creates a point of resistance or the starting point for an alternative strategy. Here, power relations are never the effect of another instance that explains them.[3]
"
But even a weak ontological thinking that introduces paradoxical, empty, contingent or groundless foundations of being works with a priori and transhistorical determinations that transcend the strategic conflicts of the societal and are thereby logically and ethically purified. Accordingly, Derridaâ€s call for de-ontologisation is pushed aside as much as the poststructuralist call to think in the interplay between practices, in the interaction between governmental, valorising and social practices. In poststructuralism, praxis is never seen as pure; it is relative. Just as it can represent an instrument of power or an effect of power, it can also become an obstacle for power, something that escapes it or pushes its effects in another direction, creates a point of resistance or the starting point for an alternative strategy. Here, power relations are never the effect of another instance that explains them.[3]
"
