Giorgio 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 work, the book also marked the beginning of a 20-year research project, which represents Agamben鈥檚 most important contribution to political philosophy.
The Fire and the Tale (2014, in Italian) is another of Agamben鈥檚 shorter books of miscellaneous essays (like Profanations and Nudities), but with a more unified focus on the nexus between art (or creativity and poetics generally) and life. All the sections seem to be written between 2010鈥�2014, and in one sense can be read as a continuation and hybridization of Agamben鈥檚 sporadic investigation into the fate of aesthetics and 鈥淎rt鈥� (as a distinct sphere), from his first book The Man Without Content (1970) to his 鈥淔orm-of-Life鈥� sections from part III of The Use of Bodies (2014). (There are even a few sections which seem to directly mirror text published in The Use of Bodies, such as the metaphor of whirlpools/eddies applied to modes of a substance [within the 鈥淰ortexes鈥� chapter here], and his remarks on Hadot鈥檚 supposed initial misunderstanding of Foucault on care-of-the-self [within the 鈥淥pus Alchymicum鈥� chapter here].) But whereas The Use of Bodies relies on detailed textual analysis to make its suggestive conclusions, the essays here include an outright sense of mystery (or 鈥渇ire鈥�). Although these are disparate essays, the collection opens and closes with separate, explicit mentions of mysticism, by way of Gershom Scholem鈥檚 and Ren茅 Daumal鈥檚 independent reliance on mountain metaphors and Cabalistic notions of 鈥渟parks鈥�/fire, in such a way bookending the volume to highlight the mysterious zone between inspiration and expression (but expression in the generic sense, not confined to a recognized, sanctioned art world or literary establishment 鈥斕齛s Agamben is careful to stress, 鈥溾€ rather prefer to speak of the poetic act, and although I will continue to avail myself of the term creation for convenience, I would like it to be understood without any emphasis, in the simple sense of poiein, 鈥榯o produce鈥欌€� 鈥� which, also, is how Agamben often seems to abstractly link poetics to the foundation of politics, referring to them as simply two dimensions of the 鈥渄eeds of man鈥� in a generic sense). The short section 鈥淚n the Name of What?鈥� is especially intriguing, since it begs the question, for readers of Agamben, in the name of what is he himself writing? It is clearly not: religion, any coherent 鈥渆xistentialism,鈥� a political ideology, etc. For Agamben, it seems that the mysterious foundation of language itself, filled with potentiality, is what he is willing to claim as the only honest self-professed inspiration, and all the implications this may have for poetics and politics (鈥溾€he one who finally decides to speak鈥攐r to keep silent鈥攊n the name of this demand does not need, for his word or silence, any other legitimacy鈥�).
"Ao dizer 'mas podemos narrar a hist贸ria de tudo isso', o rabino havia, ali谩s, asseverado exatamente o contr谩rio. 'Tudo isso' significa perda e esquecimento, e o que a narrativa conta 茅 precisamente a hist贸ria da perda do fogo, do lugar e da prece. Todo relato - toda a literatura - 茅, nesse sentido, mem贸ria da perda do fogo."
鈥淓l fuego y el relato鈥�, 鈥淢ysterium burocraticum鈥� y 鈥淒el libro a la pantalla鈥� fueron lecturas retadoras y muy, muy sorprendentes. De mis libros favoritos de este a帽o sin duda. 隆Qu茅 luminoso todo!
'I am dead because I have no desire, I have no desire because I think I possess, I think I possess because I do not try to give. Trying to give, one sees one has nothing, Seeing one has nothing, one tries to give oneself, Trying to give oneself, one sees one is nothing, Seeing one is nothing, one tries to become, Desiring to become, one lives.'
i read this as a part of a literature class. i dont think this is the sort of text i can give a star rating. it was difficult. i maybe followed what feels like about 5% of it, but i found myself underlining and taking a fair number of notes and i think there's a depth here that i can barely see but that i sense beyond the screen of the lake, a richness worth wrestling with
Di dieci saggi almeno sei mi hanno lasciato piuttosto freddino. Particolarmente interessanti e belli 鈥淚l fuoco e il racconto鈥�, 鈥淒al libro allo schermo鈥� e 鈥淧asqua in Egitto鈥�. Capolavoro l鈥檜ltimo: 鈥淥pus alchymicum鈥�, per il quale vale il prezzo del libro e le conseguenti stelle.
Todos los ensayos recogidos en este libro son magnificos, explorando desde diversos frentes la escritura: sus repercusiones en el escritor, el proceso imaginativo, el formato y sus implicaciones, etc.
Titolo quasi completamente casuale, ma comunque 猫 bello cos矛: saggi nell'insieme molto acuti. Parole chiave: inoperosit脿 e molti altri tipi di 'spazi negativi d'azione' (passatemi e scusatemi il termine non suo, per brevit脿), potenza (nell'accezione di Spinoza) in contrapposizione all'opera finita (dynamis vs ergon e robe del genere ma con agilit脿 e brio), Seit脿 come rapporto etico soggetto-opera. Parecchio Barthes ma non solo. Spicca un bell'excursus sulla storia dell'oggetto-libro culminante in alcuni pensieri notevoli sulla lettura digitale.
There is the fire and then there is literature. This might be the best way to think of what the author wishes to convey in this essay. The fire is the original source material that kept humanity from perishing. All the ceremonies associated with fire have now gone by the wayside, yet we still have literature. Let's dig a little deeper.
In the modern world, tradition has now lost much of its fascination. Or, to put it another way, the 'hold that tradition had on people' has been loosened. Much of this was accomplished by democratic movements, social movements, and scientific research; not in themselves, but the ideas these movements produced in the average intellect. That's a far cry from saying we don't need the truths in tradition. The author's own questions poses for us the problem: What is literature sufficient for? Can we actually read/hear literature without trying to recollect the original fire?
Me parece muy bello como se puede encontrar una forma de pensar en la pol铆tica, la construcci贸n del ser y la creaci贸n en medio de reflexiones profundas sobre las obras, las palabras y los libros. En realidad es un encuentro de muchos paradigmas que, aunque se pueden ver enredados de leer, al entenderlos resultan valiosos y generadores de muchas preguntas para pensar como estamos siendo humanos, como estamos expresando y donde est谩 el fuego que nos mantiene vivos
It took me long enough for such a slim volume. I found the first essays impressive; the latter hold visionary glimpses, but it's clear that this is an odd volume. Most concretely, it's important to see in Agamben's return to the literary and the aesthetic an intimate companion to his work across the Homo Sacer volumes which is all too frequently read as political theory.
Interesting collection of essays that loosely center around the ideas of the aesthetic and creation. I found useful connections with the work and questions taken up in "The Unspeakable Girl" and "Nymphs."
My previous experience reading Giorgio Agamben dates to the mid-1990s when I read La Comunita che viene / The Coming Community, in a beautiful translation by Michael Hardt (University of Minnesota Press). Here, Lorenzo Chiesa's translation of the essays collected in The Fire and the Tale, while apparently very meticulous and accurate, by cleaving so closely to the original Italian sacrifice a certain fluency. But this is not a problem since Agamben's essays tend to the philological anyway, and English poetry and philosophy is completely overlooked in these essays. There's not a word on English contributions to either discipline. The focus is rather on Kabbalistic mysticism, medieval alchemy, variations on these practices, as the title makes clear. The 10 essays reflect and elaborate in detail, and with a rich array of textual references, on the mysteries surrounding man's relationship to language, together with man's exercise of creativity in the arts (understood as ars and poiesis), with a marked penchant for writing.
The essays engage with and elucidate questions such as "What is the Act of Creation?" This is the one essay which seemed familiar to me. It is a brilliant gloss of the concepts of potentiality and potency, with their inherent paradoxical reliance on the forces of impotentiality and inoperativity. Just this one essay alone is for me enough reason to highly recommend the book, but there are other lighter subjects. Such as the essay on Jesus's penchant for parables in teaching the idea of the Kingdom of God. Call it Heaven. Call it Salvation. But it's the idea of happiness in life.
Mysterium Burocraticum is another intriguing essay exploring the nexus of subjectivity, subjectivization, desubjectivization... and other everyday mystical practices. From the Book to the Screen is likewise a very rewarding study of language, I should say literature, I should say the act of writing, composing... the before and after of the book. When is a work done? What goes into the production, the decision-making processes of making a book and when is it complete? When has the creative process reached the point at which you can say, this is it. What is at stake in completion? And, on the other hand, when does a work even begin? What are the first steps? The outline? What is a draft? A verse, a version. Ethically and politically, there are many entanglements in man's relationship to the habit of writing, but also whatever other creative habits make him happy.
If The Fire and the Tale has a weakness, and it does in my opinion, it is this classical ingrained insistence on the masculine as the universal. It is all about him, he, his manhood. Agamben is completely, unabashedly Classical in this regard, so that matters of gender and gender politics appear to have absolutely no place in his thinking -- at least none that I have detected -- in any of the essays in this collection. To make matters worse, the only thinkers Agamben takes issue with are two women: Simone Weill and her protege Cristina Campo. Well, at least Agamben's is a coherent weakness. An a priori flaw.
Uma pequena cole莽茫o de ensaios esparsos, mas preciosos, marcados pelo estilo e as obsess玫es do Agamben - poesia italiana, cabala, mitologia judaica, cria莽茫o art铆stica, o papel da leitura (e da impossibilidade de leitura) no mundo atual.