Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Vol. 5, No. 1, Summer 2004, pp. 139\u2013157
ISSN 1469-0764 print/1743-9647 online
DOI: 10.1080/1469076042000223437 \u00a9 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd

This article is a critical evaluation of Giorgio Agamben\u2019s recent thought in the field of polit- ical philosophy, with a particular focus on the Italian philosopher\u2019s representation of Auschwitz, mostly incarnated through the metaphorical figure of themuselmann. The main argument is that Agamben\u2019s theory of negativity, which is the logical outcome of a consid- erable philosophical quest spanning over three decades, largely fails the test of temporality. Thus, Agamben openly denies any validity to history and his fascination for the cadaveric figure of themuselmann occults the complexity of life, survival and death inside or outside the concentration camp, a complexity which is portrayed in many historical accounts and eyewitness testimonies of Auschwitz .The conclusion is that Agamben\u2019s abstract aesthetics of disaster is quite symptomatic of contemporary philosophical representations of victims of violence, which tend to be detached from any socio-historical framework of analysis.

The corpus of works which Giorgio Agamben started to publish in the mid-1970s includes many essays, which have been following each other with a constant, annual regularity since 1995. Before that date, his highly philosophical research mostly focused on literature and aesthetics. Since 1995, however, the focus of his thought has clearly shifted towards political philosophy. This is evident in the three volumes which make up Homo Sacer(Moyens sans fins, 1995;1 Homo

explores the political dimension as a foundation, and the founding violence from which the political dimension emanates. In 2000, Agamben published a critical exegesis of Saint Paul\u2019s thought (Le

and animal (L\u2019Ouvert: De l\u2019homme et de l\u2019animal).4 Even if these two latest books appear to represent another shift in Agamben\u2019s thought, they do in fact pursue similar interrogations through which this philos- opher seeks to define and understand man at the crepuscular moment

Although these explorations of violence may seem to be found only in a clearly defined period in Agamben\u2019s work, they should be inte- grated into a much broader framework, namely his long-term specula- tion on the conceptual field of the \u2018in-between\u2019 and indistinction, a speculation which constitutes the major logical thread in his thought. However, while it is possible to argue that this conceptual field is the matrix through which thought becomes writing, one may also contend that it constitutes a major block upon which Agamben\u2019s political thought stumbles. More precisely, such stumbling occurs in Agam- ben\u2019s thoughts on Auschwitz, the ultimate symbol of twentieth- century mass violence, and raises the following questions. Should this failure be interpreted as the logical culmination of a thought at the very moment it comes across politics and history? Or is it only afaux

It is absolutely necessary, in order to gain insights into Agamben\u2019s work, to bear in mind the fact that his thought, his writings and indeed his very existence owe much inspiration to Heidegger, whose legacy Agamben seeks to perpetuate and enhance. This philosophical affinity is much stronger than other intellectual links between Agamben and Aristotle, Bataille, Benjamin, whose works Agamben edited in Italy, Blanchot, Benveniste or Hegel. Thus, in his introduction toLe language

cites a passage which to him best epitomises Das Wesen der Sprache: \u2018Le rapport entre mort et langage, un \u00e9clair, s\u2019illumine; mais il est encore impens\u00e9\u2019.5 To Agamben, this unthought is permeated by the central question asked to mankind by twentieth-century history: what is left of man when mankind has experienced its own destruction?

Of course, Agamben is not the only philosopher to have engaged in a constant dialogue with Heidegger\u2019s legacy. However, unlike L\u00e9vinas, Arendt and Ricoeur, he does not attempt to emancipate himself from this ontology, which remains in itself characterised by a major ambi- guity in its relationship between essence and history and darkened by the ultra-conservative political commitment of the German philoso- pher. Thus, while Ricoeur has on many occasions engaged critically

Heidegger\u2019s ontology and postulates the experience of death as an opening to the other through a type of accompanying experience, Agamben takes Heidegger\u2019s thought further and radicalises it by constructing a heuristic apparatus which is both binary and polarised. Thus, whereas Heidegger, in paragraph 76 of Sein und Zeit, leaves the door marginally open to an acknowledgement that history may acquire scientific status if it places itself under the auspices of funda- mental temporality, Agamben, in the very first pages of Ce qui reste

Following in the footsteps of a major metaphysical tradition, in which essence is postulated as a negative foundation, Agamben\u2019s quest leads him, from the very early stages of his work, to explore the rela- tionship between man and language to the extent that, to him, the human dimension is excluded from the sphere of communication. Thus, inEnfance et histoire, he contends that \u2018la constitution du sujet dans et par le langage est \u2026 l\u2019expulsion m\u00eame de cette exp\u00e9rience \u201cmuette\u201d\u2019,8which characterises the relationship betweeninfans and langage. InLa Communaut\u00e9 qui vient, he explores an opening between the potentiality of being and the potentiality of not being.9 Challenging the apparent symmetry between these two potentialities, he identifies the pole of \u2018veritable power\u2019 which can generate both powerandpowerlessness. Therefore, to transcend the alienation inherent in choice can be equated to a descent into a \u2018zone d\u2019indiscern- abilit\u00e9 entre le oui et le non, le pr\u00e9f\u00e9rable et le non pr\u00e9f\u00e9rable\u2019.10Thus, Agamben\u2019s lexis revolves around adjectives such as powerless, impos- sible, unspeakable, unrepresentable, undetectable, \u2018inconnaissance \u2013 ou mieux,ignoscence\u2019, unsavable, unassignable, and his quest for purity and the absolute is clearly placed under the sign of negativity.

From Homo Sacerto Remnants of Auschwitz, Agamben\u2019s philo- sophical matrix focuses more precisely on the relationship between violence and politics. He explores the \u2018zone d\u2019indiff\u00e9rence\u2019 where, within the body of power itself, \u2018les techniques d\u2019individuation et les proc\u00e9dures totalisantes se touchent\u2019,11 and borrows from archaic Roman law a character, \u2018homo sacer\u2019, who never actually existed, as Agamben himself acknowledges half-heartedly. To him, the expres- sion \u2018homo sacer\u2019 refers to an individual (or group of individuals) whose destruction does not amount to homicide, or whoseban12or