Reditus into self-inflicted immaturity: Agamben’s perversions

Abstract

ABSTRACT In my essay, I offer an interpretation of Giorgio Agamben’s political thought as a case of philosophical perversion. According to Lacan, perverse practice is based on a structural non-personal enjoyment, in which a pervert assumes the role of an executioner, meticulously executing his task. My analysis will focus on Agamben’s perverse use of the messianic discourse, the aim of which is to explode it from within: while applying all elements of the messianic idiom, Agamben assumes a mission the goal of which is to deactivate all mission and revoke all vocations. As he states in reference to Bartleby the Scrivener as the possible figure of the Messiah, to fulfill the Torah, i.e. the religious law, is to “destroy it from top to bottom.” I will thus claim that Agamben’s strategy of deactivation – a vocation to end all vocation – can be interpreted as a deliberate methodical use of perversion, that is, a position which simultaneously obeys and destroys the law. Although critical of Agamben’s method, I will not use the Lacanian frame of perversion in a value-charged manner. I want to present it as one of the late-modern philosophical modes of thinking, which became so widely seductive precisely of its powerful perverse component.