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SPEP Issue 2001.Vp VISIBILITY AND HISTORY GIORGIO AGAMBEN AND THE EXEMPLARY Steven D. DeCaroli In the third chapter of The Coming Com- dresses this same process by referencing munity, Giorgio Agamben turns his attention Hegel’s discussion of sense-certainty in the to the “example” insofar as it stands in rela- opening chapter of the Phenomenology of tion to “the antinomy of the individual and Spirit. Here, sense-certainty’s immediate en- the universal” that has its origin in language.1 counter with being is compromised the mo- The familiar antinomy to which Agamben ment consciousness attempts to speak this refers arises when, in the act of calling some- relation, that is to say, the moment language thing a tree, or a plow, or bitter, the empirical attempts to preserve sense-certainty’s imme- singularity of that thing is transformed into a diate relation to being it inevitably mediates member of a class defined by a property held that relation.3 Raw, unclassified being which in common. Language is forever positing the is the object of sense-certainty is, therefore, universal in place of, or as a substitute for, abruptly transformed into the ideal being the singular that it wishes quite literally to proper to language. keep in mind. “The word ‘tree’,” Agamben For Agamben, in Language and Death,in writes, “designates all trees indifferently, in- The Coming Community, and indeed, in his sofar as it posits the proper universal signifi- work as a whole, it is this moment of trans- cance in place of singular, ineffable trees,”2 formation from ineffable object to object of and in so doing transforms singularities into thought, and a host of other similarly struc- members of a class. Language is perpetually tured transformations, that are of interest. caught between the universality of its gener- More specifically, it is those instances where alized expressions and the empirical singu- a transition gets hung-up, where it lingers on larity of those denominated entities which, a threshold, where it hesitates and thereby re- while they are the ultimate ground of this veals itself as purely transitional, that en- generalization, are always somehow inade- gages Agamben’s attention. For it is in those quately represented by it. case where an object is neither thoroughly The passage of an entity into language inaccessible to cognition (and inaccessibil- proceeds by way of a conceptualization ity takes various forms, e.g., the noumenal, which is familiar to philosophy, for in its being-in-itself, chaos, etc.), nor thoroughly most elementary form judgment (and here I appropriated by cognition through its ideal- am thinking of determinative judgment ization in language, that Agamben identifies rather than reflective judgment) is the capac- moments where the singular reveals itself in ity to grasp the particular as an instance of a its singularity, that is to say, as something general rule—a relation Kant repeatedly de- which is essentially un-common. For scribes as analogous to the application of a Agamben, it is in these hesitant moments of law. But the general categories which sub- transition that unclaimed figures appear— sume particular objects remain fundamen- the refugee, the werewolf, the sacred, the tally at odds with the irreducible singularity camp, Bartleby, and most germane to this of the particular instances which language, discussion, the exemplary. In each case, es- and by extension thought, attempts to grasp. sence is not a forgone conclusion. But de- In Language and Death, Agamben ad- spite the lack of an essential commonality, PHILOSOPHY TODAY SPEP SUPPLEMENT 2001 9 what gathers each of these cases together is ally “shows alongside” itself. Or equally precisely their enduring potential to be oth- evocative, the German, Bei-spiel, literally erwise: to be wolf, to be stateless, to be sa- that which “plays alongside” itself.5 The ex- cred, to be one who does not write. ample provides its own criteria of inclusion When Agamben turns to demons, or to ha- and, therefore, remains ambiguously along- los, to limbo, or to wolf-men, it is to suggest side the class of which it is most representa- that when the human has lost its qualities it is most capable of forming a community which tive. In both of these etymological deriva- refuses any criteria of belonging. The task of tions the example is presented as the form of the many brief, almost aphoristic chapters in a singular object that remains neither fully The Coming Community is to begin to con- included in a class nor full excluded from it. ceive of such a community, a community That is to say, it remains transitional. that lays no claim to identity, a community in If the pursuit of philosophy is tradition- which singularities, not bound by a common ally for the a priori, and if the debates sur- property, communicate nonetheless. And it rounding the a priori have largely been those is in pursuit of such singularities, that waged between nominalist and realist, not Agamben speaks of the example. over the necessity of the principles demon- The example remains distinct, one singu- strated, but over whether or not the catego- larity among others, while at the same time it ries that describe this necessity exist in real- stands in for them as a whole. The example, ity or in name alone, then the example stands Agamben maintains, is one single case, but somewhat outside of this debate, not because yet is called upon to stand in for a class of it is not real or because it is not known by a similar objects. In other words, the example name, but because it is not bound by the sta- is at one and the same time a member of a set bility of a category—whether linguistic or and the defining criteria of that set. He actual. To say that Muhammad is a member writes, of a class called prophet, or to say that the Farnese Hercules is a member of a class One concept that escapes the antinomy of called beauty, may be true in a quite limited the universal and the particular has long sense, but it certainly does not explain the been familiar to us: the example. In any potency these unique figures possess in their context where it exerts its force, the exam- role as examples. Thus, while Agamben’s ple is characterized by the fact that it holds discussion of the example is framed linguis- for all cases of the same type, and, at the tically, even grammatically—illustrating same time, it is included among these. It is how the example, in its singularity, epito- one singularity among others, which, how- mizes a conceptual category that it exceeds, ever, stands for each of them and serves for and to which it does not quite belong—I will all....Neither particular nor universal, the consider the example in a somewhat differ- example is a singular object that presents ent context. Rather than attend to the linguis- tic appearance of the exemplary, I will con- itself as such, that shows its singularity.4 cern myself with its historical manifestations and, in particular, I will con- The example, it seems, possesses a capacity sider the normative capacity that deeply to indicate itself, to refer to itself, not characterizes the historical appearance of through a conceptualization of its properties, exemplary objects, individuals and events. but, as Agamben suggests, through an in- Whereas philosophy has traditionally structive showing. Thus, we are directed to placed an emphasis on necessity, pursuing the Greek word, para-digma, through which the demonstrative validity of principles not the example comes to mean that which liter- contingent on time or place, seeking truths PHILOSOPHY TODAY 10 unencumbered by historical ties, the exam- for us in history, will always accomplish ple, by contrast, is fully historical. Its ap- more than any universal precepts we have pearance in the form of an object, or an received from priests or philosophers.7 event, or a person—the Apollo Belvedere, for instance, or the French Revolution, or a My point here is certainly not to suggest that Messiah—is both historical and irreducibly Kant has abandoned his commitment to the singular, yet each case very often assumes a legislative function of reason or to the uni- powerful normative capacity. The question versal validity of the faculties, but rather, to for much theoretical work, particularly in the suggest that there are moments even in Kant, areas of aesthetics and politics, but also for particularly with respect to aesthetic judg- the philosophical historians of the eigh- teenth century and certainly in the more ment, where the work of abstract thought speculative work of religious traditions— must give way to something more historical. Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ co- And because even in Kant the historical ap- mes to mind—has been not only to recognize pearance of an example is recognized as in- the normative potency of examples, but to strumental in acquiring a sense of taste, that determine how one ought to respond to them. is to say, in acquiring the ability to make Unlike moral rules or normative principles, sound judgments even when no general rule what the example promises cannot be ade- is at our disposal, it is worth considering the quately legislated and, therefore, one’s re- implications of this concept in more detail. sponse to the exemplary cannot be a simple Consequently, I would like to take up this form of rational obedience—a mere adher- challenge by augmenting the work of ence to reasonable principles. Debates in Giorgio Agamben whose explicit writings eighteenth-century aesthetics, for instance, on the exemplary, while limited and inter- are brimming with such considerations, par- mittent, are both evocative in their own right, ticularly with respect to the cultivation of and suggestive of a wider inquiry that, to the good taste.
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