VI.
Concluding Notes
Because I have evoked the current identity crisis of the
left, it would be fitting to conclude with a reflection on the place of
Agamben’s political philosophy in the context of dialogues of the contemporary
left. Agamben is often discussed as part of a new anti-postmodernist wave in
continental philosophy that seeks to recover philosophical and political
content from such notions as subjectivity, ontology, and truth; he further
expresses, with other radical philosophers, the need to escape from the moral
degradation and nihilism of postmodernism, while fully realizing the
impossibility of a return to modernism. Agamben’s project can therefore be
linked, as many others have noted, to the projects of Alain Badiou (b. 1937)
and Slavoj Žižek (b. 1949). However, though all three philosophers want to
redefine the nature of political practice and the identity of the left, crucial
differences emerge when considering the three together. Unlike Žižek and
Badiou’s search for a new philosophical grounding for a politics of universal
identity, Agamben is much more hesitant and cautious about evoking any kind of universalism,
betraying, perhaps, the substantial influence of Foucault and the “messianic
nihilism” of Benjamin. Agamben is thus less explicitly Marxist and is certainly
less “militant” than Badiou and Žižek (though I do not mean to use “militant”
in the pejorative sense). Also unlike his contemporaries, Agamben shows a
closer attention to language and the historical development of concepts,
whereas Žižek and Badiou are generally more psychoanalytical, showing
especially the influence of Lacan. Finally, Agamben’s cautious return to an
ethical imperative is a fundamental departure from Badiou especially, who
considers any evocation of “ethical principles” to be “evil” and reactionary.[i]
Agamben’s return to the question of ethics, filtered through
his singular perspective on subjectivity, is in other words a particularly
relevant and novel reaction to the crippling relativism of postmodernism, a
response that safeguards and values individual difference—for relativism, after
all, can also always be understood as a kind particularism, in the sense that a
relativist always regards his or her own perspective as beyond reproach. Though
I would agree that the book has its weaknesses, Remnants of Auschwitz is nevertheless an important intervention in
continental philosophy and critical theory. Therefore, Agamben does achieve the
modest goal with which he starts—to establish “some signposts allowing future
cartographers of the new ethical territory to orient themselves.”[ii]
[i] I
am referring here to Badiou’s book on ethics, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter
Hallward (New York: Verso, 2000).
[ii]
Agamben, Remnants, 13.
