Scenes of Indifference: The Addressee of the Adventure

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The article, born of a dialogue between two thinkers of negativity and the neuter, elaborates Agamben’s philosophy of indifference through a series of (dis)connected scenes orthematic ep-isodes. These scenes do not so much describe as perform indifference, insofar as they pursue the same themes through in-different variations. In seeking to critically articulate Agamben’s ‘ar-cheaology of the subject’ by assessing the manner in which Agamben’s thought picks up and differs from Foucault and Heidegger as well as the lesser known Salomo Friedlaender/Mynona, the text evokes a range of avenues into deactivation, inoperativity, indifference, and the event. The deliberately performativeapproach both addresses and seeks to embody the spirit of adven-ture at work in Agamben’s thinking by exploring a plane and practice of thought “below” or beyond surface assumptions of identity and position –where ways of being, forms of life, and modes of thinking and writing attune, and are acquiesced to, as necessarily open and plural. The essay seeks to show how Agamben’s attempts to render inoperative the metaphysical determina-tions of the human as subject are keyed to a specific form of address, an address that can be understood as a response to Jean-Luc Nancy’s question “who comes after the subject”?
Original languageEnglish
JournalEthics and Politics
Volume22
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)87–108
Number of pages21
ISSN1825-5167
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

    Research areas

  • Science of art - Active/Passive, Aestherics of Existence, Subjectivity, Anthropogenesis, Creative Indifference, Deactivation, Inoperativity, Event, Form of Life, Freedom, Ways of Being
  • Cultural studies