Redemptive Remnants: Agamben's Human Messianism

摘要

This article charts the role of the “redemptive” and “messianic” in Giorgio Agamben. In this way, Agamben takes up Heidegger's response to nihilism. Here, the author argues that the philosophical novelty of Agamben's work rests on his attempt to formulate a human form of messianism. On the surface, Agamben's work could be said to be pessimistic; continually emphasizing the normality of states of exception, the prevalence of zones of indetermination and the correlative perpetuation of biopolitical sovereignty. However, scattered throughout his work are fragments of messianic remnants. The success and novelty of Agamben's philosophy rests on conceptualizing these fragments. Agamben hangs this on a conceptualization of an experience of messianic time between chronological or profane time and eternal time. A further consequence of this is Agamben's desire to assert a core of human being that resists either region. This redemption rests on a special relationship to temporality, one that transcends profane time and sacred eternal time. This exceptional temporal disjunction calls for an articulation of what Agamben calls in The Coming Community “the loss of the lost”. It is a call for an articulation of a core or part of us that is most human which transcends delimitation. It is a core that is whole and exempt from transgression. In this article, the author analyzes the consistency of Agamben's claims and asserts that Agamben does not provide a satisfactory description of human temporality. This, in part, is due to Agamben's reluctance to define what precisely the messianic region is, but also his desire to offer a philosophy that transcends the vicissitudes of temporal life. Agamben ends up defining a metaphysical description of life. The author concludes by describing the potential ethical and political range of Agamben's position.