What do you think?
Rate this book
Creation and Anarchy: The Work of Art and the Religion of Capitalism
Creation and the giving of orders are closely entwined in Western culture, where God commands the world into existence and later issues the injunctions known as the Ten Commandments. The arche, or origin, is always also a command, and a beginning is always the first principle that governs and decrees. This is as true for theology, where God not only creates the world but governs and continues to govern through continuous creation, as it is for the philosophical and political tradition according to which beginning and creation, command and will, together form a strategic apparatus without which our society would fall apart.
The five essays collected here aim to deactivate this apparatus through a patient archaeological inquiry into the concepts of work, creation, and command. Giorgio Agamben explores every nuance of the arche in search of an an-archic exit strategy. By the book's final chapter, anarchy appears as the secret center of power, brought to light so as to make possible a philosophical thought that might overthrow both the principle and its command.
105 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 16, 2017
50 people are currently reading
543 people want to read
About the author
Giorgio Agamben
224 books963 followersGiorgio Agamben is one of the leading figures in Italian and contemporary continental philosophy. He is the author of Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life; Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive; Profanations; The Signature of All Things: On Method, and other books. Through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s he treated a wide range of topics, including aesthetics, literature, language, ontology, nihilism, and radical political thought.
In recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Born in Rome in 1942, Agamben completed studies in Law and Philosophy with a doctoral thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil, and participated in Martin Heidegger’s seminars on Hegel and Heraclitus as a postdoctoral scholar.
He rose to international prominence after the publication of Homo Sacer in 1995. Translated into English in 1998, the book’s analyses of law, life, and state power appeared uncannily prescient after the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC in September 2001, and the resultant shifts in the geopolitical landscape. Provoking a wave of scholarly interest in the philosopher’s work, the book also marked the beginning of a 20-year research project, which represents Agamben’s most important contribution to political philosophy.
In recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Born in Rome in 1942, Agamben completed studies in Law and Philosophy with a doctoral thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil, and participated in Martin Heidegger’s seminars on Hegel and Heraclitus as a postdoctoral scholar.
He rose to international prominence after the publication of Homo Sacer in 1995. Translated into English in 1998, the book’s analyses of law, life, and state power appeared uncannily prescient after the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC in September 2001, and the resultant shifts in the geopolitical landscape. Provoking a wave of scholarly interest in the philosopher’s work, the book also marked the beginning of a 20-year research project, which represents Agamben’s most important contribution to political philosophy.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
July 31, 2019
The older the philosopher, the shorter the book. But while our older scholars may be more pithy, they remain powerful. I am a fan - a big fan - of Giorgio Agamben. Not only do I remember his books, they are so meaningful to me, I remember where I was when I read them.
Creation and Anarchy is not his best book. Indeed, it is based on a series of lectures that are 'written up.' There is too much Heidegger (yawn). But the final chapter on credit and capitalism was extraordinary.
Agamben is like the late style Barthes. There are sentences that pierce your heart, your mind, and your conscience. Readers carry these heavy sentences through life, and they spark and future thought.
Creation and Anarchy is not his best book. Indeed, it is based on a series of lectures that are 'written up.' There is too much Heidegger (yawn). But the final chapter on credit and capitalism was extraordinary.
Agamben is like the late style Barthes. There are sentences that pierce your heart, your mind, and your conscience. Readers carry these heavy sentences through life, and they spark and future thought.
August 18, 2023
An interesting and provocative book that develops ideas from Benjamin and Debord into a vision of a politics without command.
One of the key themes in the book concerns disinhibition, leading to a kind of tastelessness: "Those who lack taste cannot refrain from anything; tastelessness is always a not being able not to do something." This tastelessness manifests in boredom:
"In boredom—just like the animal in its disinhibitor—we are “absorbed” and “stunned” in things; but these latter, in contrast with what happens in the animal, refuse themselves to us to the same extent in which we are enclosed in them. “Dasein thus finds itself delivered over to beings’ telling refusal of themselves as a whole” (p. 210/139). In a state of profound boredom, the human being is consigned to something that refuses itself, exactly as the animal, in its stunning, is exposed in a non-revelation. But, differently from the animal, the human being, while remaining in boredom, suspends the immediate relationship with the environment: the human being is an animal that becomes bored and thus perceives for the first time as such—that is, as a being—the disinhibitor that refuses itself to it."
Agamben here insists on openness as the essence of humanity as distinct from animality, comparing the absorbed person to an experiment "in which a bee is placed in a laboratory in front of a glass full of honey. If, after it has begun to suck, one removes the bee’s abdomen, it tranquilly continues to suck, while one sees honey flowing out where the abdomen has been cut off. The bee is so absorbed in its disinhibitor that it can never place itself before it to perceive it as something that exists objectively in and for itself."
It is this automaticity that troubles Agamben, and he instead proposes contemplation as a way of disabling this compulsion to work. This removal from the sphere or work is what he calls the metaphysical operator of anthropogenesis, which frees humanity from every biological or social destiny and from any predetermined task. Agamben gives the example of the Franciscan order as an experiment in implementing this inoperativity, "which calls into question the possibility even of something like a proper will (cf. Admonitiones, chapter 2: is qui suam voluntatem appropriat, he who appropriates his will, eats from the Tree of Knowledge)." Francis' refusal of property and ownership thus culminates in a denial of the will*, which for Agamben is equated with his notion of command.
Agamben's equation of willing and commanding is the guiding intuition of his archaeology of the imperative, which focuses on the dual sense of archē: "in our culture, the archē, the origin, is always already the command; the beginning is always also the principle that governs and commands." He connects this to the rise of the notion of 'performativity,' suggesting that
"the centrality of this concept actually corresponds to the fact that, in contemporary societies, the ontology of the command is progressively supplanting the ontology of the assertion. This means that, in a type of what psychoanalysts call “return of the repressed,” religion, magic, and law—and with these, the whole sphere of nonapophantic discourse, which have been driven into the shadows—in reality secretly govern the functioning of our societies that wish to be lay and secular."
For Agamben, these three fields "constitute in fact a sphere in which language is always in the imperative. Indeed, I believe that a good definition of religion would be that which characterizes it as the attempt to construct an entire universe on the basis of a command." The idea of religion as the attempt to construct a universe of command is provocative, and sets up Agamben's analysis of capitalism as a religion.
Capitalism realizes faith as (monetary) cred: pistis "is simply the credit we enjoy with God and the word of God enjoys with us, when we believe (or credit) him." Capitalism has no privileged object, and is a belief system trading on faith alone, sola fide. In capitalism, banks replace churches, as machines to "fabricate and administer credit." The religion of capital is fundamentally anarchic, since capitalism "does not know a beginning" but is "always in the act of beginning again." For Agamben, a recognition of this anarchy of power is necessary for what he calls true anarchy, though the difference between the two is left a bit vague.
The basic argument that religion is permeated with command, and that this reaches a high point in capitalism is compelling. It is less clear how exactly Agamben hopes to reclaim religion against the pseudo-religion of capital, since if his analysis is right it is religion itself that is the problem.
*Agamben makes an odd digression into the phenomenology of the inappropriable in terms of the urgency of bodily needs:
"The contradictory nature of the relation to the body reaches its critical mass in need. At the moment that I experience an uncontestable urge to urinate, it is as if all my reality and all my presence are concentrated in the part of my body from which the need is coming. It is absolutely and implacably proper to me, and yet just for this reason, precisely because I am nailed down to it without escape, it becomes the most external and inappropriable thing. The instant of need, that is to say, lays bare the truth of the body proper: it is a field of polar tensions whose extremes are defined by a “being consigned to” and a “not being able to assume.” My body is given to me originarily as the most proper thing, only to the extent to which it reveals itself to be absolutely inappropriable."
While this description captures a recognizable experience, the link between this phenomenology and his archaeology of command is obscure. It would be quite surprising to discover that his vision of Franciscan Communism amounts ultimately to the need to pee.
One of the key themes in the book concerns disinhibition, leading to a kind of tastelessness: "Those who lack taste cannot refrain from anything; tastelessness is always a not being able not to do something." This tastelessness manifests in boredom:
"In boredom—just like the animal in its disinhibitor—we are “absorbed” and “stunned” in things; but these latter, in contrast with what happens in the animal, refuse themselves to us to the same extent in which we are enclosed in them. “Dasein thus finds itself delivered over to beings’ telling refusal of themselves as a whole” (p. 210/139). In a state of profound boredom, the human being is consigned to something that refuses itself, exactly as the animal, in its stunning, is exposed in a non-revelation. But, differently from the animal, the human being, while remaining in boredom, suspends the immediate relationship with the environment: the human being is an animal that becomes bored and thus perceives for the first time as such—that is, as a being—the disinhibitor that refuses itself to it."
Agamben here insists on openness as the essence of humanity as distinct from animality, comparing the absorbed person to an experiment "in which a bee is placed in a laboratory in front of a glass full of honey. If, after it has begun to suck, one removes the bee’s abdomen, it tranquilly continues to suck, while one sees honey flowing out where the abdomen has been cut off. The bee is so absorbed in its disinhibitor that it can never place itself before it to perceive it as something that exists objectively in and for itself."
It is this automaticity that troubles Agamben, and he instead proposes contemplation as a way of disabling this compulsion to work. This removal from the sphere or work is what he calls the metaphysical operator of anthropogenesis, which frees humanity from every biological or social destiny and from any predetermined task. Agamben gives the example of the Franciscan order as an experiment in implementing this inoperativity, "which calls into question the possibility even of something like a proper will (cf. Admonitiones, chapter 2: is qui suam voluntatem appropriat, he who appropriates his will, eats from the Tree of Knowledge)." Francis' refusal of property and ownership thus culminates in a denial of the will*, which for Agamben is equated with his notion of command.
Agamben's equation of willing and commanding is the guiding intuition of his archaeology of the imperative, which focuses on the dual sense of archē: "in our culture, the archē, the origin, is always already the command; the beginning is always also the principle that governs and commands." He connects this to the rise of the notion of 'performativity,' suggesting that
"the centrality of this concept actually corresponds to the fact that, in contemporary societies, the ontology of the command is progressively supplanting the ontology of the assertion. This means that, in a type of what psychoanalysts call “return of the repressed,” religion, magic, and law—and with these, the whole sphere of nonapophantic discourse, which have been driven into the shadows—in reality secretly govern the functioning of our societies that wish to be lay and secular."
For Agamben, these three fields "constitute in fact a sphere in which language is always in the imperative. Indeed, I believe that a good definition of religion would be that which characterizes it as the attempt to construct an entire universe on the basis of a command." The idea of religion as the attempt to construct a universe of command is provocative, and sets up Agamben's analysis of capitalism as a religion.
Capitalism realizes faith as (monetary) cred: pistis "is simply the credit we enjoy with God and the word of God enjoys with us, when we believe (or credit) him." Capitalism has no privileged object, and is a belief system trading on faith alone, sola fide. In capitalism, banks replace churches, as machines to "fabricate and administer credit." The religion of capital is fundamentally anarchic, since capitalism "does not know a beginning" but is "always in the act of beginning again." For Agamben, a recognition of this anarchy of power is necessary for what he calls true anarchy, though the difference between the two is left a bit vague.
The basic argument that religion is permeated with command, and that this reaches a high point in capitalism is compelling. It is less clear how exactly Agamben hopes to reclaim religion against the pseudo-religion of capital, since if his analysis is right it is religion itself that is the problem.
*Agamben makes an odd digression into the phenomenology of the inappropriable in terms of the urgency of bodily needs:
"The contradictory nature of the relation to the body reaches its critical mass in need. At the moment that I experience an uncontestable urge to urinate, it is as if all my reality and all my presence are concentrated in the part of my body from which the need is coming. It is absolutely and implacably proper to me, and yet just for this reason, precisely because I am nailed down to it without escape, it becomes the most external and inappropriable thing. The instant of need, that is to say, lays bare the truth of the body proper: it is a field of polar tensions whose extremes are defined by a “being consigned to” and a “not being able to assume.” My body is given to me originarily as the most proper thing, only to the extent to which it reveals itself to be absolutely inappropriable."
While this description captures a recognizable experience, the link between this phenomenology and his archaeology of command is obscure. It would be quite surprising to discover that his vision of Franciscan Communism amounts ultimately to the need to pee.
May 16, 2021
a bit too short and unfocused for what it sets out to do, though i do appreciate his explicit reverence for Deleuze (despite doing away with his analysis in like, a page and a half). The last chapter on Capitalism as religion is good and worthwhile, but really just skims along the surface of what Benjamin’s essay of the same name has to offer.
December 24, 2020
really nice little book with cool ideas.
August 22, 2019
This is a book for people who want to dive into words, and the first sign of that comes from how you read the title. "Creation" is indeed a theme of the book, more in the artistic sense than the natural, but the "anarchy" Agamben talks about is about things that have no beginning or "arche" (an-arche). The first essay is about the "archeology" of "works of art" but I associate it with etymology, rather: it's about how Aristotle and company most highly valued the artworks that changed the person, inside, rather than those that produced a physical object. Therefore, contemplation was a high good, much higher than it is today. I'd like to contemplate bringing that back.
Overall, this book is the second I've read by Agamben and both have been the very definition of pithy. These books are only 100 pages or so and 5-6 chapters, but open them up and they have as much depth as the Tardis. Occasional paragraphs get bogged down in philosophical complexities, but Agamben's ability to take words apart and reconstruct their meanings means that if you have a passing knowledge of Greek or Latin, then you're able to keep up with the fundamental ideas, which are what really matter.
The last two essays (of five) are the best, and overlap with David Bosworth's The Demise of Virtue in Virtual America, another little book with big implications. Agamben points out that the conflict between science and religion may reflect how the two disciplines use words: philosophy and science use words of description; law, religion, and magic use words of command. There's a great gulf between describing something passively, and speaking to make something true, respectively. That crystalline insight is an example of why, if you like words, you should read Agamben.
Overall, this book is the second I've read by Agamben and both have been the very definition of pithy. These books are only 100 pages or so and 5-6 chapters, but open them up and they have as much depth as the Tardis. Occasional paragraphs get bogged down in philosophical complexities, but Agamben's ability to take words apart and reconstruct their meanings means that if you have a passing knowledge of Greek or Latin, then you're able to keep up with the fundamental ideas, which are what really matter.
The last two essays (of five) are the best, and overlap with David Bosworth's The Demise of Virtue in Virtual America, another little book with big implications. Agamben points out that the conflict between science and religion may reflect how the two disciplines use words: philosophy and science use words of description; law, religion, and magic use words of command. There's a great gulf between describing something passively, and speaking to make something true, respectively. That crystalline insight is an example of why, if you like words, you should read Agamben.
November 22, 2019
A short but stimulating series of essays. I found his discussion of the Greek word arche as both foundation/beginning and, less commonly, command fertile.
February 20, 2020
Un libro esencial para el lector de Giorgio Agamben, que podría leerse como preámbulo a la obra de este autor, pues compila cinco ensayos en los cuales desarrolla -con mucha claridad como es característico de él- indagaciones arqueológicas en sentido foucaultiano (resaltando el archè preposicional de la palabra arqueología, en griego antiguo: origen y comando u orden), sobre algunas de las nociones necesarias para entender su obra filosófica.
Es difícil hacer una reseña de un libro que toca tantos temas, pero puedo resaltar algunas de las ideas que quedan de su lectura. Por ejemplo la reflexión que hace sobre la obra de arte en el siglo XX, en la que se invierte la relación aristotélica potencia-acto en la obra de arte, para lograr una efectiva supresión de la obra, desplazando el foco de la obra como concreción de la técnica, a la “capacidad” del artista para crear situaciones. Por su parte, el acto de creación, Agamben lo entiende como la “capacidad” para suspender el acto mismo de crear, el poder de resistir la acción o poner en acción la impotencia. Lo cual devendría en una tensión entre manera (lenguaje formal o técnica) y estilo (propio del artista) que permite así llevar lo creado fuera de los límites de su origen concreto, a su autonomía como obra.
El capítulo sobre lo inapropiable incluye una objeción a la definición fenomenológica del cuerpo propio como dado originario. En cambio, se propone considerar el cuerpo como lo que simplemente es, dada la evidencia que presentan las experiencias en las que el cuerpo ajeno se percibe como propio (empatía) y el cuerpo propio como ajeno (náusea, vergüenza, necesidad fisiológica). De tal forma que el sujeto mantendría una relación con su cuerpo caracterizada por la pobreza, entendida esta como una forma de vida que está en relación permanente con lo inapropiable. Es decir, no como negación del poseer (o sea por fuera del ámbito jurídico) y por fuera de la esfera de la virtud. Para lo cual Agamben recurre a la definición teológica del "vivere sine proprio", la cual posibilita una experiencia del mundo sin propiedad. Lo que vinculado al discurso no-apofántico o performativo, permite entender la voluntad como un acto del lenguaje, es decir, un lenguaje que no está separado del mundo, sin ser meramente asertivo, sino entrañando una ética que incorpora el “puedo no…” en contraposición al impositivo capitalista: sí puedo.
El poder en el capitalismo del siglo XX, fundamentado en el dinero -que por ser un sistema autorreferencial ha deshecho todo vínculo con lo material- tiene un origen elusivo (an-árquico), que le permite funcionar como un sistema de creencias o de fe, de poder absoluto (como el divino). Agamben sugiere una tensión entre creación y anarquía, y contrario a lo que se podría intuir del título Creación Y Anarquía, sitúa la anarquía del lado del capitalismo (que busca parasitar la religión cristiana, haciendo confluir las definiciones de dios y dinero como an-árquicas, sin origen, infinitas). Veo en esta antología de ensayos, una propuesta para entender en el acto creativo, una suspensión del poder y una posibilidad de resistencia ante el poder ubicuo e intangible que se da en el capitalismo a partir del siglo XX. Postulando además una forma de vida que subvierte la idea de propiedad, basándose no en activos financieros, sino en cosas reales que pueden usarse, sin necesariamente poseerse. Uno podría inferir de esta lectura, sobre todo cuando hace referencia al paisaje como inapropiable (sin equivalencia en dinero) y a la justicia que como la pobreza, puede ser una forma de vida que no se apropia del mundo; que en una sociedad -por lo menos en Europa- los bienes públicos e inapropiables (especialmente la naturaleza despojada de su clasificación como recurso), son los que posibilitan la experiencia de la justicia.
Es difícil hacer una reseña de un libro que toca tantos temas, pero puedo resaltar algunas de las ideas que quedan de su lectura. Por ejemplo la reflexión que hace sobre la obra de arte en el siglo XX, en la que se invierte la relación aristotélica potencia-acto en la obra de arte, para lograr una efectiva supresión de la obra, desplazando el foco de la obra como concreción de la técnica, a la “capacidad” del artista para crear situaciones. Por su parte, el acto de creación, Agamben lo entiende como la “capacidad” para suspender el acto mismo de crear, el poder de resistir la acción o poner en acción la impotencia. Lo cual devendría en una tensión entre manera (lenguaje formal o técnica) y estilo (propio del artista) que permite así llevar lo creado fuera de los límites de su origen concreto, a su autonomía como obra.
El capítulo sobre lo inapropiable incluye una objeción a la definición fenomenológica del cuerpo propio como dado originario. En cambio, se propone considerar el cuerpo como lo que simplemente es, dada la evidencia que presentan las experiencias en las que el cuerpo ajeno se percibe como propio (empatía) y el cuerpo propio como ajeno (náusea, vergüenza, necesidad fisiológica). De tal forma que el sujeto mantendría una relación con su cuerpo caracterizada por la pobreza, entendida esta como una forma de vida que está en relación permanente con lo inapropiable. Es decir, no como negación del poseer (o sea por fuera del ámbito jurídico) y por fuera de la esfera de la virtud. Para lo cual Agamben recurre a la definición teológica del "vivere sine proprio", la cual posibilita una experiencia del mundo sin propiedad. Lo que vinculado al discurso no-apofántico o performativo, permite entender la voluntad como un acto del lenguaje, es decir, un lenguaje que no está separado del mundo, sin ser meramente asertivo, sino entrañando una ética que incorpora el “puedo no…” en contraposición al impositivo capitalista: sí puedo.
El poder en el capitalismo del siglo XX, fundamentado en el dinero -que por ser un sistema autorreferencial ha deshecho todo vínculo con lo material- tiene un origen elusivo (an-árquico), que le permite funcionar como un sistema de creencias o de fe, de poder absoluto (como el divino). Agamben sugiere una tensión entre creación y anarquía, y contrario a lo que se podría intuir del título Creación Y Anarquía, sitúa la anarquía del lado del capitalismo (que busca parasitar la religión cristiana, haciendo confluir las definiciones de dios y dinero como an-árquicas, sin origen, infinitas). Veo en esta antología de ensayos, una propuesta para entender en el acto creativo, una suspensión del poder y una posibilidad de resistencia ante el poder ubicuo e intangible que se da en el capitalismo a partir del siglo XX. Postulando además una forma de vida que subvierte la idea de propiedad, basándose no en activos financieros, sino en cosas reales que pueden usarse, sin necesariamente poseerse. Uno podría inferir de esta lectura, sobre todo cuando hace referencia al paisaje como inapropiable (sin equivalencia en dinero) y a la justicia que como la pobreza, puede ser una forma de vida que no se apropia del mundo; que en una sociedad -por lo menos en Europa- los bienes públicos e inapropiables (especialmente la naturaleza despojada de su clasificación como recurso), son los que posibilitan la experiencia de la justicia.
September 15, 2022
lot of food for thought. will come back.
July 6, 2019
Tightly argued, persuasive to the core, and offering an acute, cogent critique of the flaw at the heart of the Western philosophical, political, and spiritual source, Giorgio Agamben's "Creation and Anarchy: the work of Art and the Religion of Capitalism consists of five lectures that offer discourse about classical and contemporary theories of the work of art, the nature of creation, the Franciscan theory of poverty and its relation to juridical theories present day, etymological explorations of the nature of the command, and, most powerfully, a discussion of the link between the debasement of language and the "cult of capitalism," a theory which is truly groundbreaking. These lectures are erudite, somewhat opaque at times, and yet very illuminating and broadening. I found myself nodding in silent agreement as I successfully cracked the nut of his arguments, a satisfying and edifying experience. So, as a worthy addition to Agamben's oeuvre, and as an excuse to exercise the mind, please read this book!
December 17, 2020
ENGLISH REVIEW:
This book gathers a selection of essays by Giorgio Agamben on various topics about art, anarchy, creation, capitalism as a religion, being and not being, potency, etc.
References and discussion of ideas from other philosophers are numerous. The level of the discourse in the essays is quite high, so a knowledge or experience in reading philosophy is essential for its understanding. Apart from that, I found the text stimulating and I discovered a very interesting author.
REVIEW EN ESPAÑOL:
Este libro recoge una selección de ensayos de Giorgio Agamben sobre diversos temas en torno al arte, la anarquía, la creación, el capitalismo como religión, el ser y el no ser, la potencia, etc.
Abundan las referencias y discusión de ideas de otros filósofos. El nivel del discurso en los ensayos es bastante elevado, por lo que una formación o experiencia en lectura de filosofía es imprescindible a la hora de su comprensión. Aparte de eso, me ha parecido un texto estimulante y he descubierto a un autor muy interesante.
This book gathers a selection of essays by Giorgio Agamben on various topics about art, anarchy, creation, capitalism as a religion, being and not being, potency, etc.
References and discussion of ideas from other philosophers are numerous. The level of the discourse in the essays is quite high, so a knowledge or experience in reading philosophy is essential for its understanding. Apart from that, I found the text stimulating and I discovered a very interesting author.
REVIEW EN ESPAÑOL:
Este libro recoge una selección de ensayos de Giorgio Agamben sobre diversos temas en torno al arte, la anarquía, la creación, el capitalismo como religión, el ser y el no ser, la potencia, etc.
Abundan las referencias y discusión de ideas de otros filósofos. El nivel del discurso en los ensayos es bastante elevado, por lo que una formación o experiencia en lectura de filosofía es imprescindible a la hora de su comprensión. Aparte de eso, me ha parecido un texto estimulante y he descubierto a un autor muy interesante.
February 5, 2020
Περιέχει 5 κείμενα στα οποία ο Agamben, εμπνεόμενος από την ντελεζιανή ιδέα της «πράξης της δημιουργίας», ανοίγει μια συζήτηση για την υφή της, προσπαθώντας να την ανανοηματοδοτήσει και να την τοποθετήσει σε μια νέα και αναρχική βάση.
Στο πρώτο κείμενο την «αρχαιολογία του έργου τέχνης» υπογραμμίζει την κεντρικής σημασίας ανάγκη για μία ανανοηματοδότηση της συγκρουσιακής σχέσης παρελθόντος - παρόντος.
Στο δεύτερο αναλύει ότι κάθε πράξη δημιουργίας εγκλείει πάντα κάτι που ανθίσταται. Κάθε πράξη-ποίησις υπάρχει τελικά λόγω μιας δύναμης που αντιστέκεται στην εκδήλωσή της.
Στο τρίτο και πιο δύσκολο κείμενο καταπιάνεται με τις ένοιες του ανοικείωτου και της φτώχειας.
Στο 4ο μέσα από την παράδοξη ομωνυμία μεθόδου (αρχαιολογίας - αρχής) και σημαινομένου της προσταγής (προστάζω=άρχω), ο Agamben διαπιστώνει πως δεν μπορεί τελικά να υπάρξει μια αρχή για την προσταγή.
Το τελευταίο κείμενο είναι αφιερωμένο στον καπιταλισμό ως θησκεία.
Στο πρώτο κείμενο την «αρχαιολογία του έργου τέχνης» υπογραμμίζει την κεντρικής σημασίας ανάγκη για μία ανανοηματοδότηση της συγκρουσιακής σχέσης παρελθόντος - παρόντος.
Στο δεύτερο αναλύει ότι κάθε πράξη δημιουργίας εγκλείει πάντα κάτι που ανθίσταται. Κάθε πράξη-ποίησις υπάρχει τελικά λόγω μιας δύναμης που αντιστέκεται στην εκδήλωσή της.
Στο τρίτο και πιο δύσκολο κείμενο καταπιάνεται με τις ένοιες του ανοικείωτου και της φτώχειας.
Στο 4ο μέσα από την παράδοξη ομωνυμία μεθόδου (αρχαιολογίας - αρχής) και σημαινομένου της προσταγής (προστάζω=άρχω), ο Agamben διαπιστώνει πως δεν μπορεί τελικά να υπάρξει μια αρχή για την προσταγή.
Το τελευταίο κείμενο είναι αφιερωμένο στον καπιταλισμό ως θησκεία.
June 15, 2023
3,5 la verdad. Gozo leyendo a Agamben. Para mí, es un bálsamo para el intelecto leer ideas densas en un estilo tan pulcro como el de él. Puede resultar un poquitín repetitivo si alguno ya se leyó el proyecto Homo Sacer completo, pero no deja de ser estimulante releer las conceptualizaciones en torno a la dýnamis y enérgeia y la inoperosidad a la que puede ser susceptible. Mención honrosa para el último ensayo, pues es poco común leer a postheideggerianos hablando de capitalismo (a mi juicio, la gran debilidad de los filósofos no-marxistas) y para el segundo ensayo, ya que con la idea de adýnamis me siento autorizado filosóficamente para poder flojear tranquilo.
January 20, 2022
An interesting set of Agamben's philological-type essays, particularly those in the second half of the book. It all comes to an end rather suddenly though, I guess I didn't get a proper sense of closure (but then again I suppose Agamben isn't really known for his excess verbosity).
January 24, 2022
The potential to potentially potentiate potentiality is potentially the being in the openness of the open, which, at its origin, is transversed by the nothing.
Found this incredibly dense and obscure, definitely not a book id recommend to anyone looking for light reading.
Found this incredibly dense and obscure, definitely not a book id recommend to anyone looking for light reading.
February 16, 2022
Con un poco de dificultad para abstraer las tesis de estos ensayos, pero al final se logró.
Pensando en releer para hacer apuntes y que nada se quede en el olvido.
Mi ensayo favorito fue en el que se habló de Lo Inapropiable.
Pensando en releer para hacer apuntes y que nada se quede en el olvido.
Mi ensayo favorito fue en el que se habló de Lo Inapropiable.
June 15, 2019
some good nuggets but brief and without sustained theses.
December 26, 2020
Art thoughts!
August 8, 2021
The last chapter on capitalism as parasitic of Christian theology is particularly good
October 1, 2024
La potencia es el origen de la creación, el poder; es la fuerza detrás de lo representado. El dinero se crea y se representa a si mismo, es la fuerza omnipresente y el dios contemporaneo.
March 24, 2025
Ufuk açıcı dört makale. Çeviri de başarılı.
November 11, 2019
do you think Agamben would go out with me maybe?
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews