Giorgio Agamben. Resistance in Art. 2014

source: European Graduate School  2015年3月2日
http://www.egs.edu/ Giorgio Agamben, Italian philosopher and writer, delivers a lecture in which he takes up a Deleuzean thread considering the act of creation as an act of resistance. Agamben discusses potentiality, impotentiality and actuality which is a philosophical problem dating back to Aristotle. The potential in the act of creation not only resists an external force, but also the impotentiality itself which is internal. This relation is unique to humans and allows for the act of creation such that it exists in no other species. This resistance acts as a critical power which restrains the blind drive of potentiality, leading to the retention of some imperfection and therefore the simultaneous exertion of potentiality and impotentiality. This, Agamben will call, Poetics of Inoperativity. Further, he will claim that true human praxis, by making inoperative works and functions of humans, will open the possibility for new works and usage. Open lecture delivered to the students and faculty of the European Graduate School, August 2014.