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The Presents Longer Shadow

Udaya Kumar

Agamben, Quest-ce quun dispositif?, tr. Martin Rueff (Paris: ditions Payot &Rivages, 2007), 64 pp. ISBN:978-2-7436-1672-4. 5 euros.

Giorgio Agambens recent work has tried to extend Foucaults inquiry intomodern power by travelling further back in time to zones beyond thehistorical origins of western modernity. This attempt at a medieval, andespecially theological, genealogy of modernity, Agamben has reminded us, isvery much in the spirit of Foucaults own historical investigations which wereseen by their author as shadows cast on the past by a theoretical questioningof the present. This short volume consists of a single essay, and it performs itsinquiry in relation to a single term. Terminology is the poetic moment ofthought, Agamben tells us at the outset in a suggestive invocation of WalterBenjamin. As in poetry, not everything is explained when it comes tophilosophical terminology: did Plato not desist from defining the mostprivileged of his philosophical terms, the Idea? It is not surprising then thatFoucault too does not define the dispositif, a term of strategic importancein his own thought.

The dispositif is often translated into English as apparatus. The price we payfor the clarity of this choice is the etymological aura of the term, whichAgambens philological acumen makes rich use of. Although Foucault did notdefine the dispositif, he described it at some length in an interview in 1977,

identifying three crucial aspects: What I am trying to pick out with this termis, firstly, a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses,institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrativemeasures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropicpropositions in short, the said as much as the unsaid. Secondly, what Iam trying to identify in this apparatus is precisely the nature of theconnection that can exist between these heterogeneous elements. Thirdly, Iunderstand by the term apparatus a sort of shall we say formation whichhas as its major function at a given historical moment that of responding to anurgent need. The interviewers went on to question Foucault on the links

between the dispositif and the episteme, a crucial phrase in some of his

earlier work. His response characterized the episteme as a dispositif whichmade possible a separation of the scientific and the unscientific in discourses.However, the division of entities into discursive and non-discursive isultimately of interest neither to Foucault nor to Agamben. When Agambenlooks for a predecessor of the dispositif in Foucaults earlier works, he turnsrather to a term that cuts across this distinction. The term in question ispositivity (which receives much attention in Archaeology of Knowledge), whichshares a curious etymological history with the dispositif.

The turn towards theology in Agambens essay begins here in his inquiry intothe sources of Foucaults use of positivity. He finds an antecedent in Jean

Hyppolites Introduction to Hegels Philosophy of History, which argues thatHegel, in his early essays on Christianity, made a distinction between

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natural and positive religion. While natural religion, for Hegel, referred to adirect and immediate relationship between human reason and the divine,positive religion indicated an ensemble of beliefs, rules and rites imposedfrom the outside on individuals at any given point in time. In this sense, thepositivity of positive religion comes to coincide with its historicality. Hegels

approach to positive religion implied an ambivalent estimation. On the onehand, positive religion, insofar as it suggests external constraints on theindividual subject, is a taint on the liberty of human reason; on the other,since positive religion is historical, it can be reconciled with reason, whichloses its abstract character in this concrete historical manifestation. The linkthat Agamben establishes between Foucault and Hyppolite concerns thishistorical dimension of a grid or set of constraints which also enable andshape distinctive forms of life. This can be seen in Foucaults use ofpositivity to refer to an ensemble of institutions, processes of subjectivationand rules within which power relations are concretized. Unlike Hyppolitewho aimed at a reconciliation of reason and history, Foucault is interested inexamining the specific modes by which positivities operate withinmechanisms of power.

Interestingly, Foucaults use of dispositif seems to mobilize all three sensesinvoked in the ordinary language use of the term discussed in dictionaries,which connected three separate meanings: juridical, technological andmilitary. While the juridical sense referred to that part of a legal judgementwhich spelt out a decision arrived at after a consideration of arguments, thetechnological use pointed to the manner in which parts are arranged in amachine or mechanism, and the military use denoted an ensemble of meansdeployed towards an end. For Agamben, these three senses are parts of anoriginal configuration of the dispositif; his attempt is to use this insight to

provoke a fresh look at the historical forms in which dispositifs are availableto us in contemporary times. This modern history of the dispositif philosophical and philological in parts concludes the first movement ofAgambens text. The second begins by plunging into an earlier, theologicalcontext and explores a fresh trajectory. At later point, we shall see these twintrajectories of philological investigation converge.

Agambens new starting point, this time from the medieval and classical past,is also a term economy. We are familiar with the Greek use of the term,which referred to the management of the household, oikos. The story thatAgamben tells us is less familiar, and concerns the Christian theological uses

of the term to refer to a divine economy. Agamben notes that this use becameprominent in discussions of the trinity: in responding to charges ofintroducing polytheism into Christianity, theologians elaborated a discourseon the relations between the three elements of the trinity. The father and theson were consubstantial or of the same substance. However, they weredifferent in the tasks that they perform. The father assigns certain tasks to theson. This arrangement of tasks and functions may be called a divine economy.In other words, economy was the device or dispositif by which Trinitariandogma and the doctrine of a providential government were introduced intoChristianity. This also produced a distinction between the domains of beingand action. The latter, which included politics and economy, came to have no

foundation in the order of being. Agamben would go so far as to say that oneof the major legacies that the doctrine of the economy has bequeathed to

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western culture is this schizophrenic theoretical articulation. In later thinkerssuch as Clement of Alexandria, economy comes to be identified withprovidence, and the salvational government of the world. And, interestingly,the term that the Latin fathers adopted for translating the Greek wordeconomy was none other than dispositio.

With this moment of translation, Agambens second trajectory meets the first.He goes on to say: Foucaults dispositif articulates this theologicalheritage. It means a pure activity of governance without any foundation in

being. Given its lack of foundation (or an-archy) in the order of being, alldispositifs need to produce their own subjects; thus dispositif becomes the siteof subjectivation. This once again links Foucaults dispositifs with Hegelspositivities.

However, this moment of arrival in Agambens argument also marks a freshpoint of departure. The third movement in the essay, which opens on to thelast series of reflections, is initiated by a methodological choice. Agambeninvokes Feurbachs notion of the philosophical element in a text to identifythe point at which a text becomes vulnerable and signals to the reader that heor she cannot proceed any further without violating fundamentalhermeneutic protocols. This means that the deployment of the text studiedhas reached a point of undecidability where it becomes impossible todistinguish between the author and the interpreter it is then time toabandon the text that one had submitted to analysis and pursue reflection onones own. Thus Agamben sets aside his philological discussion of Foucaultsdispositifs and begins anew, delineating a new context for the term and itswork.

This does not mean that the earlier trajectories are abandoned; the distinctionbetween ontology and economy is invoked as the ground for differentiatingall beings into living beings and dispositifs. This produces, to speak in atheological vein, an ontology of creatures on the one hand, and an economy ofdispositifs on the other. It is here that Agamben defines the dispositif forcontemporary theoretical usage: I call a dispositif everything that has thecapacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control and ensurethe gestures, the conduct, the opinions, and the discourses of living beings.Thus it is not only prisons, asylums, the panopticon, schools, factories anddisciplines but also the pen, writing, literature, philosophy, agriculture,cigarette, navigation, computers, cell phones, and why not language itself,

perhaps the oldest of dispositifs in which thousands of years ago a primate,probably unaware of consequences, had unconsciously let himself be caught.This characterization, copiously inclusive, places all technology within theambit of the dispositif. Thus we have two classes: living beings anddispositifs. However, that is not all. Between the two, we have a new class that of subjects, produced by the relationship between living beings anddispositifs.

For Agamben, thus, dispositifs are not a matter of modernity. They are as oldas man; in fact, they go back to the very process that separated the humanfrom the animal world. The process of humanization produces a schism in

living beings, similar to the division between the realms of ontology andeconomy within the divine. Agamben sees this as cutting into the living

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beings immediate connection with itself and its surroundings. However, italso makes available an experience of the Open, that is, the capacity forencountering being as such and constructing a world. Along with this is giventhe possibility of dispositifs. Thus, for Agamben, all dispositifs are motivated

by the desire for an all too human happiness.

What attitude do we adopt to dispositifs? Agamben is understandably waryof the optimistic advocacy of good use his argument on the subjectivizingpowers of the dispositif rule out this option. He proceeds by thematizing thetransactions between the domains of the sacred and the profane. Acts ofconsecration or sacrifice traditionally mark this division, regulating thetransfer of objects from the profane to the sacred sphere. In contrast, aprocedure of profanation can be seen as a counter-dispositif which makessacred objects available for free circulation and use. The distinction betweensacralization and profanation is for Agamben also pertinent for moderndispositifs and their work of subjectivation.

Agambens most original, and perhaps most problematic, argument isdeveloped here. He makes a distinction between traditional and moderndispositifs and suggests that the profanation of the latter is particularlydifficult. Traditional dispositifs linked the production of new forms ofsubjectivity to the disavowal of earlier figures of the subject. For instance, inthe catholic rituals of penitence, the new subject finds its truth in the non-truth of the older and repudiated form of the sinful subject. Similarly, thedisciplinary dispsotif of the prison as Foucault so eloquently showed produces delinquency which, in turn, leads to the production of subjects fornew forms of governance. Agamben argues that this movement ofdesubjectivation, integrally linked to the production of subjects, is no longer

available in the case of modern dispositifs. The user of the cell phone,according to him, does not get a new form of subjectivity, but merely anumber with which he can be effectively controlled. Subjectivation anddesubjectivation, in the modern dispositif, have become indifferent to oneanother.

What we then have in the contemporary world are gigantic processes ofdesubjectivation without a corresponding movement towards the productionof subjects. This occasions the eclipse of all politics avowedly based on realsubjects, and marks the triumph of the economy, by which Agamben meansan act of pure government that has as its aim nothing other than self-

reproduction. We find the reappearance of several themes and motifs familiarfrom Agambens earlier work here biopolitical governmentality, the erasureof the distinction between the political right and the left, and the strangeconvergence effected by modern governance between the figures of thecitizen and the terrorist (in the eyes of authority, nobody resembles a terroristas much as the ordinary man).

However, the ubiquity of dispositifs in the contemporary world also results inthe production of an element that seems to exceed or escape the grasp ofmechanisms of governance. Agamben warns against equating thisungovernable element too quickly with revolutionary or even anti-

governmental possibilities. In fact it seems to bring together the oldtheological themes of the providential and the eschatological. All this seems

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to highlight the importance of profanation. However, the contemporaryconfiguration of the dispositif makes it difficult to pose this problem and tothematize the ungovernable which, for Agamben, is both the point of originand the breaking point for all politics.

The challenge that Agambens recent work poses concerns our understandingof the history and the structure of the modern subject. The theological roots ofmodern power sketched by him propose a rethinking of the relations betweensovereignty, disciplinarity and governance. Agambens method, whichcombines philological, philosophical and historical moves, also posemethodological problems for determining the level at which a history offorms of power can be conceived. It becomes difficult to decide, for example,how to figure and understand an instance of discontinuity, as the philologicalnarrative seems to carry with it resonances of an original articulation.

In the essay on the dispositif we are directly confronted with this problem.The specificity of the dispositif in Foucaults work was linked to its strategiccharacter and its relation to situations of urgent need. Agamben retains thissense, but also expands the scope of the concept to include all technology.Thus the dispositif seems to invoke a situation of irreducible specificity and aconfiguration that defines the human at the same time. Agambens account ofmodern technological devices such as the cell phone or the television alsoshows a curious denial of new forms of subjectivity to their users,highlighting passivity and a sense of being controlled. In Remnants ofAuschwitz, Agamben gave a rich account of the relationship betweendesubjectivation and the production of subjects in the context of language. Doour times refuse such complexity, or does Agambens inclusive definition ofthe dispositif and his identifying it with the technological device foreclose a

closer encounter with the positivities that make our present?