Agamben and Derrida on language and the political

Clark at Mormon Metaphysics has a post on Being in Heidegger and Pierce that triggered a thought on something that's interested me for a while, the different relationships of language to the political posited by Derrida on one hand and Agamben on the other.  Ultimately, I think, this connects up with Jodi Dean's recent post on "solidarity" at I cite (cross-posted at Long Sunday).  If that sounds a like a rather free free association, I guess it is, but . . . . .   

Clark says, interpreting Heidegger:

I'd suggest that perhaps a useful, if not completely accurate, way of thinking Being as beings in totality to consider it as what, in the final outcome, the community of people would understand of beings. That would include not just our feeling of beings as we encounter them, but the discourses about these beings, the relationships the beings enter into and so forth. It would be beings as intelligible in their fulness.

Based on what I know of Heidegger (which is less than I should), I would agree with Clark that this is not a "completely accurate" account of his conception of Being.  (Nor does it sound to me, as Clark seems to be saying, that this is the equivalent of Pierce's identification of Being with the absolute sign -- Being as "the very fact, that is, the ideal sign which should be quite perfect, and so identical, - in such identity as a sign may have, - with the very matter denoted united with the very form signified by it," in Clark's quotation from Pierce.) 

That said, Clark's suggestion that Being amounts to "the discourses about . . . beings, . . . beings as intelligible in their fullness" is reminiscent of (although not identical to) Agamben's understanding of Being, which is another interpretation (I think) of the later Heidegger's turn to language as a, if not the, privileged mode of access to Being.  For Agamben, the Being of beings is their "sayability" in language, the fact that beings only are what they are, as such, insofar as they enter language and thus become subject to the predication of their infinity of uniquely identifying qualities.  (This is not linguistic idealism, by the way -- not the assertion that linguistic concepts or predicates are the real, but that the real is only real-ized in the medium of language, which is something else again.) 

Furthermore, picking up on something I was saying elsewhere, this necessarily shared "sayability" of all beings ("shared" insofar as each "is" what it "is" by virtue of that sayability -- the scare-quotes necessary because it's the Being of Being that's at stake here) is simultaneously the model and condition for the coming community of identity-free "whatever singularities," which is to say, people who exist solely and as such, without categorization -- without being "Italian," "communist," "red," etc.  (These are Agamben's examples in The Coming Community (if I'm remembering correctly), an overarching theme of which is the free political existence of these linguistically liberated beings).  This freedom from identity is simultaneously political freedom for Agamben as well -- in fact, absolute political freedom, insofar as he says (something like; this isn't a real quote but I think captures the sense of the original), "The State can handle anything except someone [i.e., a "whatever singularity"] that exists without relation to any category."  The notion here is something along lines that the State can control anything  through the medium of judgment -- which is to say, law -- as long as the act of judgment is capable of addressing its object (that is, that the object can be categorized, placed on one side of a line or another); but that the act of judgment is necessarily stymied by a singularity that exists beyond (or rather, before) the possibility of linguistic predication, insofar as its only characteristic is to participate in the condition of possibility of linguistic predication in general.   

This then is the main point of contact between Agamben's first-philosophical work and his later, political philosophical work.   On one hand, insofar as it precedes and thereby remains immune from categorization and judgment, such "whatever singularities" exemplify the "form-of-life" -- the life whose form is simply life itself, the pure gesture, habit, the "life for which living itself would be at stake in its own living" as he variously puts it -- that Agamben in Homo Sacer opposes to the pure sovereign function of separating "bare life" from its form.   On the other hand (and  this is what begins to draw the Agambenian paradigm closer to the question of "solidarity" that Jodi Dean raises), by transposing it into the realm of human experience, Agamben also interprets the being's pure being-in-language as the model of the "commonality" that seals the solidarity of the ideal political community.   We are, or can be, members of one big community, Agamben suggests, just insofar as we all share the "pure experience of language" (or as he also calls it, experimentum linguae).  This is an experience which is simultaneously  empty-and-universal -- insofar as it consists of nothing but the originary experience of our existence as individuals in and through the medium of our exposition in language -- yet singular-izing as well -- insofar as it is precisely this bare, empty act of linguistic exposure which is the precondition of singularity as such.  In this sense, I think Agamben provides us with linguistically-turned (and considerably more radical) version of the "subjective destitution" that Jodi Dean suggests is at the basis of political solidarity in her recent post (and at Long Sunday).

Agamben emphasizes that this "pure experience of language" or experimentum linguae is, of necessity, an experience of "language as such," the pure "linguistic-ality" of beings prior to their being spoken in any particular language, or rather, precisely as they are spoken in every particular language, insofar as "sayability" is a condition of beings qua "sayable" at all, in any language.  And thus Agamben writes repeatedly of "language as such" and "the Idea of Language," and argues (in the new preface to Infancy and History, written around the time of The Coming Community) that political salvation can only come after humanity stops its "wandering through traditions" -- which is to say, releases itself from the hold of the particular linguistic traditions which bind our identities and create the political divisions that lead to war, in favor of the pure "being-in-language" that we all share. 

Following on all this, Agamben would also have to say, I believe, that the Schmittian conception of solidarity that Jodi attempts to draw out of Zizek is imperfect precisely to the extent that it retains the "friend/enemy distinction," because this distinction leaves the political subject insufficiently "destitute,"  still burdened by a substantive predicate or quality ("friend" or "enemy") that stands in the way of the experience of oneself in the opening of language as such (to use the Heideggerian idiom).  At the same time, Agamben would have to reject Zizek's belief (in Jodi's summary) "that violence as such liberates, that it draws a line of separation, that it establishes a difference, discards . . .  that this freedom is necessary for the cut of universality proper," because precisely what Agamben is after is a freedom that requires neither universality (in the conventional sense of abstract universality that Zizek apparently intends) nor a "cut" or division of any kind.   And finally, one should consider what this all implies about the political validity of "the party" (which by minimal definition is determined by the "friend/enemy" distinction), and therefore for practical politics in general.  Can politics in the mundane and everyday sense survive this paradigm?   What would it look like?  Something like Hart and Negri's multitude, perhaps, or anarchism in some more traditional form?

In any event, to return to the notion of experimentum linguae, pure experience of language as such, which provides the onto-linguistic support for this notion of politics:  What is most striking to me about this notion is its contrast to a line of Derrida's, who says in passing (in Demeure, I think), something like, "of course there is no such thing as 'language as such,' no one has ever experienced 'language,' only particular languages" (I don't have the text in front of me).  This is really a throw-away line in the context of Demeure (I'm pretty sure that's where it appears), but nevertheless, there is something entirely consistent with Derrida's whole program about it -- the impossibility of the pure Idea, the at-best "quasi-transcendental" (i.e, marked by its historico-empirical context) nature of his governing concepts (and there have to be concepts, and not a concept, for this very reason), and so on.  Moreover, because it articulates so perfectly (albeit negatively) with Agamben's linguistified and then politicized idea of Being, it also seems to me to mark a very important point at which Derrida's own concept of the political intersects with and then diverges from Agamben's.  It corresponds, for example, to why Derrida can say in a footnote in Politics of Friendship, "I have never been able to utter the word 'community,' at least in my own name" (something like that -- again, don't have the book here), whereas for Agamben, "community" is ultimately nothing other than "utterability" itself, as such.  More importantly, I think it casts light on why Agamben's concept of the political, including the more recent onto-biopolitical analysis of Homo Sacer, is set against the background of the "real possibility" (the quotes here are meant to allude to Derrida's analysis of this phrase of Schmitt's in PoF) of a "coming community," a messianic political community that exists at least (this is the "realness" of its possibility) as an eschaton if not a normative ideal of political life, while for Derrida, the political can only begin and concern itself with the messianic call and possibility of the singular here-and-now, which always "exists" within the particularity of a particular tradition or history.  For Agamben, because there is available to us an experience of "language as such" (if we just heed its Call?  this part of his program is hazy to me), there is also available to us -- qua philosophers -- the notion of an ideal political community that language-as-such implies as its end.  For Derrida, by contrast, there is no escape from our "wandering through traditions" and thus no point at which the philosopher can dictate to the politician her true goals.  That's why it seems to me that Derrida's concept of the political is truer to finitude than is Agamben's (and it's also why I think -- although this would take much more to establish -- that Derrida is the true heir to Benjamin's philosophy of the political, and not Agamben). 

Does this mean that there's no notion of political solidarity implicit in Derrida's more chastened version of political messianism?  I think it is possible to draw out such a notion, along the Levinasian lines that dominated his later political thought.  I'm thinking of statements by Levinas like, "[m]y relationship with the other as neighbor gives meaning to my relations with all the others," as well some suggestions in Derrida's writings that, despite the basic structure of his (Levinasian) political thought -- that is, that the ethical relationship to the Other demands political calculation but cannot determine the content of this calculation, which remains singularly tied to the singularity of the here-and-now that it addresses -- the ethical relationship can infuse the (necessarily) calculative political relationships to all the other others (there's a line to this effect in The Gift of Death but it's not coming to me now).  Thus, pace Zizek, and paraphrasing Karl Rufo's excellent comment to Jodi Dean's post (which is also the source of the above Levinas quote), I think that Levinas's "conception of ethics can[] ground an ethical politics" (although, "ground" being a little strong for the relationship between the two, I would prefer the term "infuse" or "suffuse").  Something along those lines would be my candidate for the Derridian/Levinasian stand-in for "solidarity," although it's too late at night for me really to defend that now . . . . .

Comments

[Jodi]

Adam,
Would your Derridean solidarity then be something like the infusion of the Other into a political calculation? If it is, I don't see how that is solidarity in any political sense; it seems to come after, to supplement, the calculation; and, it is hard to tell apart from a general ethical regard. Solidarity should be something stronger, no?

On Agamben, I thought that his discussion of Paul in The Time That Remains was premised on an account of separation and an analogy between messianic time and the state of exception.

Also, on Agamben, it isn't clear to me how he can have a properly destitute subject and still have politics; in other words, even if I was congenial to the 'pure experience of language' idea (which I simply don't get), how this connects to politics is another matter. Precisely insofar as the idea (if I've understood you correctly) involves overcoming or surmounting division, it would involve overcoming or surmounting the constitutive feature of the political; in short, it would establish a kind of totalized field with no outside and hence beyond politics. Isn't the very notion of one big community a kind of anti-politics? A fantasy of unity and fullness?

[Matt]

Well you've added a bit since I last saved my comment, will see if this can still ap-ply at all...(We may not advertise it much, but there's still an ongoing discussion of Donner la mort and that upcoming Politics of Friendship reading on Long Sunday, you know.)

For whatever it's worth, this strikes me as a very fair and accurate (beginning-)reading of a central point, or points of contention. (As you're probably aware, another place where Derrida raises the question of more than one language--for which the enigmatic and economic phrase, "plus d'un" sometimes stands in--is of course certain essays collected in Acts of Religion, though certainly you're correct it runs throughout.)

The passage you mention from Politics of Friendship comes at the very end. I've had the exact same experience trying to remember, triggered I think by John Caputo's really good review (since become book chapter?) which correctly dwells there and--for me, at least--forever reinforced the association of this massive book with that small, still humble statement...as if Derrida is still wondering, even after such a work, whether Blanchot would ever return his calls or not...thinking also of Counterpath.

I do worry about overly reducing Agamben, or his potential distance from Heidegger--though not really qualified to speak to this. For instance, Agamben still gives his own twist to the phrase, "it is divided in two that we live-speak." And what does he really mean by a pure being-in-language yet one--at root, perhaps--not divorced from a certain willing? It makes one wonder if Agamben's certain proto-Catholicism, or adherence to certain proto-Catholic strands, as Derrida might have said, doesn't lead him to a theory of the origin to which--while it may share more affinities with that of Blanchot than he would like to admit--Derrida was never comfortable subscribing. But have we really begun to understand this whatever-being, and how to keep from erring on the side of "the intelligibility of the universal?"

The danger of minimizing the distance between Derrida and Levinas is probably just as great, though. One has to be pretty careful in discussing "Derrida's politics" or even moreso Derrida's "ethics," no? In any case, the Caputo chapter may be found, at least in part and for those with (at least one) Google account, here.

Thanks v. much for sharing this. Looking forward to more.

[Clark Goble]

Just a clarification. I'm not saying Being can reduce down to discourse precisely because of the way Being gives itself to Dasein.

[Adam Thurschwell]

Clark, that makes sense, thanks for the clarification. I think Agamben would say that Being doesn't "give itself to discourse" but is this "giving" itself (and hence the being's "sayability," etc.), but that certainly doesn't make you wrong. And apologies if my post sounds dismissive (I hope it doesn't, but fear on re-reading that it may); that's not at all what I intended. Matt and Jodi, most interesting and I want to respond, but have to go write a brief so will have to get back to this later . . . .

[Adam Thurschwell]

Matt: On one hand, I share your concern about reducing Agamben to Heidegger. To the extent that I understand Heidegger, I think Agamben's fundamental "thought of Being" is not the same -- as I suggested in my response to Clark's comment, "Being" for Agamben is almost a process value, the being's emergence-as-such-in-language rather than that which "gives itself," and so on. It's something like a radical linguistification (to use an abominable term) of Lichtung or "the open," an attempt to isolate the event and, simultaneously, the medium in which beings can first be said to "be." That said, by the same token, it seems to me that Agamben nevertheless remains firmly within the Heideggerian paradigm in that he is seeking an even more refined answer to the same fundamental questions -- the philosopher's questions of the meaning of Being, the essence of Truth, and so on. Those are not, by contrast, the questions with which Levinas or Derrida begin. Or rather, in Derrida's case at least, what he discovers is that even if one begins with these questions one finds that they lead elsewhere, outside of philosophy and the "question of Being" and into another realm, the realm of the Other. More specifically, what one finds is that the question of Being turns out to be dependent upon this constitutive outside, in the form of the Zusage ("pledge," "grant") of what is to be questioned that the later Heidegger identified as prior to the (philosophical) question. In other words, to go way out on a limb (so don't hold me to this, this is working out an idea on the fly), I think Derrida interprets the Heideggerian "es gibt" in terms of the Levinasian Other, which means first of all that what "gives" in every case is not Being but a being -- a concrete other, in whose very particularity (his or her (or, I think Derrida would add, its) "face") resides the only "meaning of Being" available to us mortals. (Whew, clearly don't get me started talking about Heidegger -- I don't sound like this most of the time, I hope.)

At any rate, my response to your warning against collapsing Derrida and Levinas may be implicit in all of this as well. It seems to me that Derrida radicalizes the Levinasian Other (taking it beyond the human Altrui to include the animal and perhaps non-living nature as well, and more generally emphasizing, in the very un-knowability of its Otherness, the futility of any such presumptive characterizations or categorizations, as human or animal, good or evil, etc.), and brings it back in an uneasy but productive relationship with Heideggerian Being. Finally, while I agree that one has to be careful talking about a "Derridian" politics or ethics, I think the whole point of his later ethico-political writings is that that is precisely what one has to do -- one has to decide, make the political decision, just because the (abstract, non-normative) ethical injunction demands it. So I'm willing to take the risk even if Derrida himself would undoubtedly have resisted any such attempt to pigeon-hole him. Derrida sometimes reminds me of Moses (I haven't read the Susan Handelman (sp?) book about Derrida and Moses so maybe she says this) -- he takes you to the promised land and points the way over the river, but is forbidden by the same law that sanctifies the land from crossing over himself. But that's his problem, not ours.

Jodi: Great questions and I share your precise doubts about the possibility of a genuine politics given Agamben's ontological (or quasi-ontological or onto-linguistic or something) commitments, but want to respond to this in a separate post on the solidarity thread wending its way around the philosophical blogosphere at the moment.

[Matt]

Adam, thanks for that. My general impression is that Agamben is indeed closer to Heidegger than Derrida (comments about "proto-Catholics" included).

I'm currently, slowly, reading The Time That Remains, and one thing that strikes me repeatedly is how it's possible to read-- sometimes between Agamben's lines, sometimes bluntly, often humorously--a very willful resistance to...shades of 'Derrida, and this book is indeed largely a response that way.

So what? Well, if Derrida sometimes reminds you of such things, you're certainly in good (and bad) company. Not that Agamben is inherently right, and least of all about Derrida, of course!

[squibb]

I am going to frame my comments as questions as I am pretty sure I am out of my league here, especially with regards to Agamben, so any response is appreciated.

What is the nature of the relationship between ‘sayability,’ posited by Agamben, and politics? What distance does he seek to cross in linking one to the other, be this link grounding, infusing, motivating or what have you?

In other words is he saying ‘sayability’ accounts for the possibility of politics? Or for the possibility of a certain kind of politics? Or is there no difference?

In still more words, am I mislead in seeing the resonance between Derrida’s (essential, definitive) musing that no one has ever experienced language as such, and the utopian impulse Agamben locates within ‘sayability,’ within language-as-such?

Is it precisely because no one has experienced language-as-such, that only language-as-such can provide the possibility for the politics which, I am assuming we can all agree, has never been experienced?

So the question then becomes our access to “language-as-such”?

Assuming we agree with Agamben that language-as-such has a political viability, how do we avoid ending up with Habermas’ communicative ethics? Or at least with tracing out his attempts to extract a politics from the bare-being of language, the bluntness of sayability’s presence? Is there only a cold, moral solidarity here? Like asking people to believe in the idea of democracy but not in the president himself, ever?

Or saying we side with Derrida, that language-qua-language is only a performance of academic privilege, and is never accessible in any way that can ever be whatever-it-is something needs to be to be political? Than must solidarity itself become impoverished, and hopelessly ontic? (or just specific?) But doesn’t this in turn grant to the word ‘solidarity’ a unique status, as that which is always already ontic because political?
Does solidarity participate in language in the same way then?
Or does it become unsayable because ‘sayability’ is never, ever political, and solidarity is never otherwise? (What is the nature of solidarity’s participation in language in this case?)

Does this make any sense?

[Adam Thurschwell]

Squibb, fantastic questions all -- want to respond to them in the same post on solidarity that takes up Jodi's questions, too, so check back here in the next couple of days (if I can squeeze in the time).

Matt, thanks for your continuing comments, and I agree that Agamben is in frequently silent, but also frequently quite explicit, dialogue and disagreement with Derrida. For whatever they're worth, my full (or I should say, developing) views on this are in a paper I wrote on Agamben's most explicit engagement with Derrida (abstract and cite here).