Inoperativity and Destituent Power in Benjamin, Agamben and Spinoza
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Serene Richards
Serene Richards is a lecturer in law at NYU London and author of
Biopolitics as a System of Thought (Bloomsbury, 2024).
Abstract
This paper examines the notion of destituent power in the work of Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben. In contrast to constituent power's emphasis on the formation of a people relying on the metaphysical presuppositions this entails, including representation and identity, destituent power does away with such categories and renders them inoperative. This paper explores this gesture, together with the idea of a modal ontology that substitutes the “what” in the questions “what is being” for “how”. It is argued here that this reconceptualization has the capacity to reorient the mode of politics functioning to take account of power’s anomie and false promises to ever delay the catastrophe that has already arrived.
About the author
Serene Richards is a lecturer in law at NYU London and author of Biopolitics as a System of Thought (Bloomsbury, 2024).
© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Miscellaneous
- Possession
- Editorial
- Introduction: Nomos, Theos and Cultures of Violence
- Focus
- State Violence, Divine Abuse
- Inoperativity and Destituent Power in Benjamin, Agamben and Spinoza
- On the (Im)possible Relation Between the Universal and the Relative: The Aporia of Community
- Violent México: The War on Drugs, the Persistence of Oligarchies, and Gender Issues
- Want to Build a Death Camp? Call in the Lawyers: Obtaining Legal Title to the Land for the Killing Camp at Auschwitz
- “I Want to Judge! I Have to Judge!”: Judg-mentaility and the Theopolitics of the Apocalypse
- Research
- “She Would Get all of Them. Every Last One”: Carrie and the Jouissance of Revenge
- Book Review
- Matteo Nicolini: Legal Geography, Comparative Law and the Production of Space
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Miscellaneous
- Possession
- Editorial
- Introduction: Nomos, Theos and Cultures of Violence
- Focus
- State Violence, Divine Abuse
- Inoperativity and Destituent Power in Benjamin, Agamben and Spinoza
- On the (Im)possible Relation Between the Universal and the Relative: The Aporia of Community
- Violent México: The War on Drugs, the Persistence of Oligarchies, and Gender Issues
- Want to Build a Death Camp? Call in the Lawyers: Obtaining Legal Title to the Land for the Killing Camp at Auschwitz
- “I Want to Judge! I Have to Judge!”: Judg-mentaility and the Theopolitics of the Apocalypse
- Research
- “She Would Get all of Them. Every Last One”: Carrie and the Jouissance of Revenge
- Book Review
- Matteo Nicolini: Legal Geography, Comparative Law and the Production of Space
