NUDITI ES

~ , -
MERIDIAN
Crossing Aesthetics
Werner Hamacher
Editor
Translated by David Kishik
and Stefan Pedatella
Stanford
University
Press
Stanford
California
2011
NUDITIES
Giorgio Agamben
Sranford University Press
Sranford, California
English translarion 2011 by the Boatd ofTrustees
of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Al! rights reserved.
Nudities was originally pub!ished in Italian undcr the ti de
Nudita 2009 Nottetempo SRL.
No pan of this book may be reproduced or transmined in any form or by
any means, dectronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording,
or in any informarion storage or retrieval system withour rhe prior written
permission of Sranford University Prcss.
Printed in rhe United Stares of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congrcss Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Agamben, Giorgio, 1942-
[Nudita. English]
Nudities / Giorgio Agamben ; rranslatcd by
David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella.
p. cm. ~ (Meridian, crossing aesthetics)
"OriginaUy published in Iralian under rhe (ide Nudita."
Indudes bibJiographcal references.
ISBN 978-0-8047-6949-5 (cloth : ,Ik. papee)
ISBN 978-0-8047-6950-r (pbk: alk. paper)
1. Kishik, David. 11. PedateUa, Stefan, 1976-
lE. Tirle. IV. Series: Meridian (Stanford, Calif.)
B36n.A43N8313 2010
195-dc22
2010022808
1
2

3

4

5
6

7
8

9
IO
Contents
Translators' Note
Creation and Salvation
What Is the Contemporary?
K.
On the Uses and Disadvantages of Living
among Specters
On What We Can Nor Do
Identity withour the Person
Nudity
The Glorious Body
Hunger of an Ox
The Last Chapter in the History of the World
Notes
Credits
IX
10
20
37
43
4
6
55
9
1
I04
II3
II5
121
Translators' Note
English transIations of secondary sourees have been silendy
modifled in arder ro take into aecount both the original texts and
Agamben)s own Iralian translations of [hese sources.
Mandelstam's poem on pages 12-13 was translated from the Rus-
sian by Jane Mikkelson.
We would like to thank Matteo Battistini and R. Anthony Peda-
tella for their insights into sorne diffleuIt passages. We are very
grateful to Kevin Attell and Giorgio Agamben, whose generous
and detailed suggestions gready improved our translation.
IX
NUDITI ES
1
Creation and Salvation
1. Prophets disappear early on in Western hisrory. If it is true
that Judaism eannot be undersrood withollt the figure of the nabi,
if the prophetie books oeeupy, in every sense, a central place in the
Bible, it is just as true that early on there are already forees at work
within Judaism that tend to limit the praetiee and the time frame
of prophetism. The rabbinieal traditian therefore tends ro confine
prophetism ro an idealized past that eoncludes with the destme-
tion of the First Temple in 587 BC As the rabbis teaeh, "After the
death of the last prophets-Haggai, Zeehariah, and Malaehi-the
holy spirit departed from Israel, though heavenly messages con-
tinue ro reaeh them through the bat ko!" (literally, "the voiee's
daughter," thar is, the oral tradition, as well as rhe cornmentary
on, and interpretation of, the Torah).' In the same way, Christian-
ity reeognizes the essential funetion of propheey and, indeed, con-
struets the relationship between the Old and New Testaments in
prophetie terms. But inasmueh as the Messiah appeared on earth
and fulfilled the promise, the prophet no longer has any reason ro
exist, and so Paul, Peter, and their companions present themselves
as apostles (thar is, "those who are sent forth"), nevef as prophets.
Far this rcasan, within rhe Christian tradition, rhose who claim
to be prophets eannot but be looked upon by the orthodoxy with
suspicion. In this veio, those who wish ro somehow link them-
selves ro propheey can do so only through the interpretation of the
I
2
Creation and Salvation
Scriptures, by reading rhem in a new way, or restoring the!r 10st
original meaning. In Judasm as in Christianity, hermeneutics has
replaeed prophetism; one can praetiee propheey only in the form
of interpretaran.
Naturally, the propher has nor alrogerher disappeared from
Western culture. He continues his labor discretely, under various
guises, perhaps even ourside rhe hermeneurieal sphere properly
undersrood, And so Aby Warburg classified Nietzsche and Jacob
Burekhardr as rwo opposing rypes of nabi: rhe former direered
roward rhe furure, rhe larrer roward rhe past. Similarly, Miehel
Foueaulr, in his leerure from February 1, 1984, ar rhe College de
Franee, disringuished berween four figures of rrurh-rellers in rhe
aneienr world: rhe propher, rhe sage, rhe expen, and rhe panhe-
siasr, In rhe subsequenr leerure he soughr ro retraee rheir deseen-
danrs in rhe hisrory of modern philosophy, BU[ ir srill remains
rhe case rhar, generally speaking, no one would feel immediarely
eomforrable roday claiming rhe posirion of prophet.
2, Ir is well known rhar in Islam rhe propher performs possi-
bly an even more essenrial funerion, Nor only rhe usual biblieal
prophers, bur also Abraham, Moses, and Jesus are defined in Islam
as prophers, Neverrheless, even in rhis tradirion, Muhammad, rhe
propher par exeellenee, is eonsidered rhe "seal of propheey," he
who has definirively closed wirh his book rhe hisrory of prophe-
ri,m (whieh conrinues seererly even here rhrough eommenrary on,
and inrerprerarion of, rhe Koran),
Ir is signifieanr, however, rhar rhe Islamie tradirion inexrrieably
links rhe figure and funerion of rhe propher ro one of rhe rwo
works or aerions of God, Aecording ro rhis doerrine rhere are rwo
differenr kinds of work or praxis (sunnah): rhe work of erearion
and rhe work of salvarion (or rhe Command), Prophers eorre-
spond ro rhe larrer; rhey funerion as mediarors for eseharologi-
cal salvarion, Angels eorrespond ro rhe former; rhey represenr rhe
work of crearion (of whieh Iblis-rhe angel who had been origi-
nalIy enrrusred wirh rhe eanhly kingdom before refusing ro wor-
ship Adam-is rhe eiphcr), "God," Shahrasranl wrires, "has rwo
Creation and Salvation 3
, has to do with his c[earian, the orher
f k or praxIS: one 'h f
kinds o wor d P' hers funcrion as medlarors w o a -
h h
' C mman ,',' IOp 'd'
wit IS o h C and while angels funCtlon as me la-
h
1 of t e omm , d '
firm t e WOH k f ' ' And sinee the Comman IS
fJi m the wor o eleatlOn, , h
rors who a r , 1 d' f the Command [that IS, t e
bl r than crcanon, t le me lator o '''2
no e. h n the mediator of creanon.
prophet] I,S the two works, united in God, are as-
In Chnstlan t gYJi 'h '[ inity' the Father and rhe
different gures 11l ter ,
signed ro twO , d rhe redeemer inro whom God
h niparent creatOl an '. . h
Son, : e o,m e What is decisive in the Islamic tradltlOn, ow-
empned hls fore , f ' d mprion precedes rhe status of ere-
, h t the status o le el' ,
ever, 15 t a r 11 is actually anterior. Sa vatlon IS
, h hat seems to ro ow h' h
atlOn, t ar w for rhe FalI of created beings but rather rhat W le,
not a !emedy , hensible, whar gives ir its sense, For thls
makes ereanon cohmPI1,e h f the prophet is eonsidered the Jirst
'Isiamrelgto fh
reasan, In . h J 'sh tradition the name o [ e
11 b
' (J'ust as 11l r e eWI ,
among a ell1gs h' fthe world and in Chns-
, h d before t e ereatlOn o , ,
Mess!a was ereate h b e the Father-is eonsubstannaI
, ' h S -thoug orn rrom k
nadOlry t el him), Nothing cxpresses the prioriry of the wlor
an coeva Wl . berter than [he fact that sa va-
1
, thar of ereanon
af sa vatlOn ovedr , nt demand for reparation, one rhat
" te as an eXIge, id
non lS presen f n doing in the created wor .
precedes rhe appearanee o anly"wro g hadith "they raised rheir
"When God created the ange s, recItes a , . h; He re-
nd asked' 'Lord, who are you Wlt ,
heads toward heaven al' "s of inJ' usriee untiI their
d d '1 am wirh rhase w 10 are VICtlm ,
spon e . ,"
rights are restored,
, d h nin of the two works of
3
Seholars have examll1e t e mea g f h K ("T<
. h . only one verse o t e oran o
God, which appear roget er;n h C mmand" [7:54]), Aeeording
Him rhe creatlO
h
: the intimare contradiction
ro sorne Inrerprerers, t . h . God in monorheisric re-
h ses a ereator God Wit a saVlOr .
r at oppo . G . d Marcionire versions, WhICh aceenruate
ligions (or, In nostle . eator of the world, in
. . ahelous Demmrge, er
thc Opposltlon, a m " 1 Id and from whom
'h God who IS aIren to r le wor ,
contrast Wlt a, dI') Whatever the origin of rhe
proeeeds redemptlOn an sa vanon .
Prophecy is only possible in terms
of interpretation. But, it has always
been that way, hasn't it?
Two
kinds of
praxis:
creation
and
salvation
.
Bueno, pero esto
solamente quiere
decir que es
"anterior" en un
sentido. Tergiversa
el sentido de
'anterior' y
'posterior' solo
porque "el status
de uno precede al
del otro".
Es decir: el sentido
de la historia se
cumple en la
redencin.
Why is this an
opposition?
4
Creation and Salvation
two works may be, it is certain thar not on1y in Islam do crearian
and salvaron establish the two poles of divine action. And if it is
true that God is the place where humans think throuah their deci-
sive problems, rhen (hese are aIso rhe tWQ poles of hubman acrion.
All the more interesting, then, is the relationship that res the
two works together: rhey are distinct and evcn oppose oue an-
other, but they are nevertheless inextricable. Those who act and
produce must also save and redeem thcir crearian. Ir is nor enough
ro do; ane must know how to save thar which one has done. In
fact, the task of salvation precedes rhe task of crearon; it is almost
as if the only legitimization for doing and producing were the ca-
pawy to redeem that which has been done and produced.
What is truIy singular in evcry human existence is rhe silent and
impervious ntertwining of rhe two works, rhe extremeIy dose and
yet disjointed proceeding of the propherc word and the creative
word, of the power of the angel (with which we never cease pro-
ducing and looking ahead) and the power of the prophet (that just
as tlreIessly rctncves, undoes, and arrests rhe progress of crcarian
and in this way completes and redeems it). And just as singular is
the trme rhat the two works together, the rhythm according
ro WhlCh creatlOn precedes redemption but in reality follo
ws
it, as
redemption follows creation but in truth precedes it.
. 4 In borh Islam and ]udaism, the work of salvation-though
1t precedes rhe work of crearan in ts degree of importance-is
entrusted to a created being: the prophet or the Messiah (in Chris-
tianity, this ideais attested to by the fact that the Son, although
consubstantlal wlth the Father, was generated, though not created,
by him). The above-cited passage from Shahrastani continues, as
a matter of fact, with these words: "And this is wonhy of marvel:
that the spiritual beings [the angels], though proceeding directly
from the Cornmand, have become mediators of crearian, while
the corporeal, created beings [the prophets] have become media-
tors of the Command."3 What is indeed marvelous here is that
the redemption of crearian is entrusted nor t the creator (nof to
the angels, who proceed directly from the creative power) but to
Creatioll and Salvation
5
a created being. This means rhar crearian and salvation remain
somehow foreign to ane another, thar ir is nor rhe principIe of
crearon within lIS that will be able to save what we have produced.
Nevertheless, rhar which can and must save rhe work of crcatian
results and arises from it. That which precedes in rank and dignity
derives from rhar which is its inferior.
This means that what will save the world is not the spiritual, an-
gelic power (a power thar is, in the final analysis, demonic!: with
which humans produce their works (whether they be techmcal or
artistic works, works of war 01' peace), but a more humble and
corporeal power, which humans have insofar as rhey are
beings. But rhis also rneans rhar rhe tvvo powers somehow
cide in the prophet, that the custodian of the work of salvatlOn
belongs, as far as his being is concerned, to creation.
5. In modern culture philosophy and criticism have inher-
ited the prophetic work of salvaron (that formerly, in the sacred
sphere, had been entrusted to exegesis); poetry, technology, and
art are rhe inheritors of the angelic work of creation. Through the
process of secularizaran of the religious tradition,
disciplines have progressively lost all memory of the relatlOnshlp
that had previously linked them so intimately to one another.
Hence the complicated and almost schizophrenic characrer that
seems to mark this relationship. Once, the poet knew how ro ac-
count for his poetry ("To open ir through prose," as Dante puts
ir), and rhe critic was also a poet.1\ Now, the critic has lost access to
the work of creation and thus gets revenge by presuming to judge
it, while the poet no longet knows how to save his own work and
thus discounrs this incapacity by blindly consigning himself ro the
frivolity of the angel. The fact is that these two works-which ap-
pear autonomous and independent of one another-are in reality
two faces of the same divine power, and they coincide, at least as
far as the prophet is concemed, within a single being. The work
of crearon is, in truth, only a spark thar has detached itself from
rhe prophetic work of salvation, and the work of salvation is only
a fragment of the angclic creation that has become conscious of
Esto es hiperdiscutible
6 CreatiOJl and Salvation
itself. The prophet is an angel who, in the very impulse that spurs
him into action, suddenly feels in his living /lesh the thorn of a
different exigency. This is why the ancient biographies tell us that
Plato was originally a tragic poet who, while heading to the theater
to have his trilogy performed, heard Socrates' voice and decided to
burn his tragedies.
. 6. Just as genius and talent-originally distinct and even oppo-
SIte-are nevertheless united in the work of the poet, so the work
of crcarian and rhe work of salvaran, inasmuch as they represent
the two powers of a single God, remain in sorne way secredy C011-
joined. What determines rhe status of the work is, however, once
nor a result of crearian and talent but of the signature im-
prlllted on it by genius and by salvation. This signature is style:
rhe couIlterforce, as ir were, thar resists and undoes crearian from
within, the countermelody that silences the inspired angel. Vice
versa, in the work of the prophet, style is the signature that cre-
arian-in rhe very aet of being saved-leaves on salvatiollj ir is the
opacity and almost rhe insolcnce with which crearian resists ts
redemption, with which it seeks to remain utterly night, utterly
creaturely, and in this way to bestow its tenor on thought.
A critical or philosophical work that does not possess sorne SOrt
of an essential relationship with crearan is condemned to pointless
idling, just as a work of art or poetry that does not contain within
it a critical exigency is destined for oblivion. Today, however, sepa-
rated into two different subjects as they are, the two divine sunnah
search desperately for a meeting point, for a threshold of indif-
ference, where their lost unity can be rediscovered. They do this
by exchanging their roles, which nevertheless remain implacably
dlvlded. At the moment when, fOl" the rst time, the problem of
the separation between poetry and philosophy forcefully emerges
in our consciousness, Hlderlin describes philosophy (in a letter
to Neuffer) as a "hospital in which the unfortunate poet can take
refuge with honor."5 In our day the hospital of philosophy has
closed its shutters. Critics, transformed into curators," heedlessly
take rhe place of anists in arder t simulare che work of crearian
Creation and Salvation 7
h
the
latter have abandoned, while artisans, who have become
t at . k f.
. . tlve dedicare themselves wnh great zeal to a wor o le-
nopela , b h
d
. ln which there is no longer any work to save. In ot
emptlOll
cl
eation and salvation no longer scratch onta ane another
cases . . d d
h
ignature of their tenacious, amorous confltct. Unslgne an
t e s . . h h h
divided, they place each other in front of a mmor 10 w lC t ey
cannor recognize themselves .
What is the sense of this division of divine-and human-
pr:is into twO works? If in the final analysis it is tme that, despite
rhe difference in their status, rhe mutual roots oE rhe tvvo
seern to stem froro a caroman terrain ar substance, what dces thclr
unity consist of? Pel"haps the only way to lead them back once
again to theil" eommon root is by thinking of the work of salva-
tion as rhar aspect of rhe power to create rhar was lefr
b the angel and thus can turn back on itself. Just as potentalrty
the act and exceeds it, so the work of redemption pre-
cedes thar of creation. Ncvertheless, redempnon 15 nothmg orher
rhan a potentiality ro create that remains pend,ing, th:t
itself and "saves" itself. But what is the mealllng of sav111g 10
this context? After aH, there is nothing in creation that is not ulti-
mately destined ro be lost: not only the part of each and every mo-
ment that must be lost and forgotten-the daily squandering of
tiny gestures, of minute sensations, of that which passes through
the mind in a /lash, of trite and wasted words, all of WhICh exceed
b great measure the merey of memory and the archive of redemp-
ti:n-but also the works of art and ingenuity, the fruits of a long
and patient labor thar, sooner or later, are condemned to disap-
p= .
Ir is over this immemorial mass, over rhe unformed and lm-
mense chaos of what must be lost that, according to the Islamic
tradition, Iblis, the angel that has eyes only for the work of cre-
aton, cries incessantly, He cres because he does not know thar
what one loses acrually belongs ro God, that when all the work
of crearon has been forgotten, when aH signs and words have be-
come illegible, only the work of salvation will remain indelible.
But "divine and
human" only
according muslim
and jewish
tradition, but nor
Christian.
8
CreatioJZ and Sa!vafon
8, Whar is a "saved" potenriality, this power to do (and to not
do) that do
es
not simply pass into acruality, so as to exhaust itself
in it, but rarher conserves itself and dwelIs (ir is "saved") as such
within the work? The work of salvation coincides here point fo
r
poinr wirh rhe work of creation: the fo
rmer
undoes and decreares
rhe latter al' rhe very same moment ir carries and accompanies ir
into being, There is neirher gesture nor word, neither color nor
rimbre, neirher desire nor gaze thar salvation does not suspend and
render inoperative in its amorous struggle with rhe work. That
which the angel forms, produces, and caresses, the prophet brings
back ro an unformed State and contemplares, His eyes observe that
which is saved but only inasmuch as it wilI be lost on the last day,
And just as a loved one is alI of a sudden present in our mem-
ory, but only on the condition that he 01' she is disembodied and
turned into an image, so the work of crearion is now indmately
meshed in every last deral with nonbeing,
But what, then, is saved here, exacdy? No
r
the created being,
beca use ir is lost, beca Use it cannot bur be 10s1'. Not rhe potenrial-
ity, because it has no consistency other rhan rhe decreation of the
work. Instead, rhe creared being and the porentiality now enter
into a rhreshold in which rhey can no longer be in any way dis-
ringuished from one another, This means that rhe ulrimare figure
of human and divine acdon appears where creation and salvation
coincide in the unsavable, This coinciden ce can be achieved only
if the propher has nothing to save and rhe angel has norhing else
ro do, Unsavable, therefore, is rhar work in which creadon and
salvarion, acdon and Contemplarion, operadon and inoperadv_
ity [inoperosita] pcrsisr in every momenr and, without leaving any
residue, in the same being (and in the same nonbeing), Hence its
opaque splendo
r
, which vertiginously disrances irself from us like
a star (hat wilI never rerurn.
9, The crying ange! turns irself into a propher, whle rhe la-
ment of rhe poer for creadon becomes critical prophecy, rhar is ro
say, phlosophy, Bur precisely now-when rhe work of salvadon
seems ro garher within irself as unforgerrable everyrhing rhat is im-
Creation and Salvation
9
. L d Ir remains, of course, hi work 15 translorme . l
nemorial-even t s . the work of redemption is eterna.
J sed to crcanon, . . .
because, as oppo l' has survived crearian, lt5 eXlgency 1$
(har 5a vatlon , h
"'o the extent d' h ed bur rarher losr m l' e unsaY-
.L
1
h liste 111 t e sav
not, howeveff, ex acreation rhar is lefr pending, ir ends up as an
I Born rom a b' ,
ab e, 'h l' no longer has an o jeCtlve,

'nscrurable salvarlOn l' ah " 'd rhar the supreme knowledge

' h' n w y Ir 15 sal
This lS l' e easo 1 hen we no longer have any use
h' h ames roo ate, w , 1 I
is (har W le e . h has survived OUt works, 15 t le ast
for i1'. This knowledge, wfhlC l' though somehow ir no longer
' frUlt o OUt lves, b
and most preclOus h fa country (har we are a out
concerns liS, like (he, geograp Y
I
o to dedicate to it their mast
b h' d Unnl humans earn I d
to leave e In , , I S bb rh this supreme know e ge
'C I C day ther ererna a a , 'dI d
beautlru reast, h' h ane attends to hurne y an
' personal marrer, w lC , f ti II
will remam a 1 f 'h rhe srrange sensarlOn o na y
, I A d rhus we are e t Wlt " l' bl q
Ulet y, n , 'f h o ks of rherr mexp!Ca e
d' he meanmg a t e twa w r ,
understan Ing l' b l' lack of anyrhing else to say.
divisial1, and of OUt su sequen
What Is the Contemporary?
thi:' d
ike
to inscribe on the thteshold of
And, first and fc " n of what are we contemporarles?>'
fa >" oremost, What does ir mean to be contem o
ry. In the COurse of this seminar we will h . p -
texts wh h ave occaSlOll to read
h
oShc aut ors are many centuries removed from liS as well
as ot crs t at are mo '
is essential thar we n::nfaegCeentt, b
or
very recento At aI! events ir
o e In sorne way .
these texts. The "time" f '. contemporanes of
such ir makes an bcontcmporariness, and as
and the authors ir examines. with rhe
thls seminar may be evaluated by its-b egree, t e success of
Sute up to this exigency. y our-capaclty to mea-
an indication that may orient our search for
B h . Ove questlOns comes from Nietzsche Roland
art es summanzes this ans' :. .
Colle e de Fr " wer 1!1 a note Hom hls lectures at the
N' The contemporary is the untimely." In
18
74
that point oletGz:c e
k
, a young phdologlst who had worked up to
n ree texts and had two r .
unexpected celebrity with The Birth
zeztgemasse Betrachtun h Vi . JZ-
which h.' gen, t e ntlmely Meditations, a work in
with re to hi,s and take a position
W
d
g h b p esent. Thls medltatlOn is itself untimely"
e rea at t e egin' f h '
nmg o r e second meditation "b .
, ecause Ir
10
What ls the Contemporarf II
seeks to understand as an iIIness, a disability, and a defect some-
thing which this epoch is quite rightly proud of, that is to say, its
historical culture, because 1 believe that we are al! consumed by
the fever of history and we should at least realize it. "2 In other
words Nietzsche situates his own c1aim for "relevance" [attualita],
his "contemporariness" with respect ro rhe presenr, in a disconnec-
cion and out-of-jointness. Those who are tmly contemporary, who
truly belong to their time, are those who neither perfectly coincide
with it nor adjust themselves to its demands. They are thus in this
sense irrelevant [inattuale]. But precisely because of this condition,
precisely through this disconnection and this anachronism, they
are more capable than orhers of perceiving and grasping their own
time.
Naturally, this noncoincidence, this "dys-chrony," does not
mean rhar rhe contemporary is a person who lives in another time,
a nostalgic who feels more at home in the Athens of Pericles or in
the Paris of Robespierre and the marquis de Sade than in the city
and the time in which he Iives. An intelligent man can despise his
time, while knowing that he nevertheless irrevocably belongs to it,
thar he eannor escape his own time,
Conremporariness is, rhen, a singular relarionship wirh one's
own rime, which adheres to ir and, ar rhe same time, keeps a dis-
tance from it. More precisely, it is that relationship with time that
adheres to it through a disjunction and an anachronism. Those who
coincide too wel! with the epoch, those who are perfectly tied to
ir in every respecr, are nor contemporaries, precisely because they
do not manage to see it: they are not able to firmly hold their gaze
on it.
z. In 1923 Osip Mandelstam writes a poem entitled "The Cen-
tury" (though the Russian word vek also means "epoch" or "age").
The poem does not eOllrain a refleerion on rhe century but rather
a reflection on the relation between the poet and his time, that is
ro say, on conremporariness. Nor "the ccntury," bur, aceording ro
rhe words rhar open rhe firsr verse, "my century" 01' "my age" (vek
mOl):
12
What Is the Contemporary?
My ccntury, my be 1 '
to 100k ins 'd _ ast, w 10 wdj manage
1 e your eyes
and weld tog 1 '
h
Ct ler w1th his Own bl d
t e vertebrae f ,00
o two cenrunes?
The poet, who must pay fo
r
his e '
lS he who mUSt firmly loek his az ontemporanness with his Jife,
must weld with his o:n
e
the eyes of his eemury_
of tIme, [he two eemuries the t the shattered backbo
ne
suggested, the and wa are nor on1y, as has
pOlm, :he length of a single indi 'd but a1so, more to the
/um ongrnally means the eri d VI ual s hfe (remember that saecu_
trve historieal period th pO
lI
' of a person's life) and the e 11
A at we ca 1n th' o ce-
s we learn in the last strophe of the lS ease the twemieth eemury.
eentury lS shattered TI . poem, the backbo
ne
of h'
h' ti . le poet In f h t lS
,t 15 faCture, is at once thar w: al' as e is contemporar , is
rtself and the blood th hlch lmpedes time from COm y
at must Sllt l' b posrng
paralle1ism between th' ure t lIS reak or this wound Th
h
e (me and th . b . e
t e alle hand, and th . e vel te rae oE the creatu '
h e (me and the b le, on
t e Dther, constitutes ane of th rae of the century, on
e essemlal themes of the
So long as the creat l' poem:
. tire lves
1t lUhllSt carry fonh its vertebrae
t e play along ,
an InVIsible spine.
a child's tender cartilage
15 t e century of the ncwbo
rn
eanh.
The other great theme-and this 1'1
l:age contemporariness_is cne, is als
a
an
t e we1drng, of the century's vertebra o t e shatterrng, as well as of
of a srngle individual (in th' he, both of which are the work
lS case, t e paet):
To wrest the century awa fJ
so as to stan th Id y rom bolldage
e Wor anew
Olle mUst tie togerher with a .Rute
the klle
es
of a11 ,he kll d d
Otte ays.
That this is an impossibl k
e tas -or at
any rate a parado
x
ical Ol1e-
What Is the Contemporaly!
is proven by the foHowing strophe with whieh the poem con-
eludes. Not anly does the epoch-beast have broken vertebrae, but
vek, rhe newborn century, wants ro turn around (an impossible
gestute for a person with a broken backbone) in order to contem-
plate its own tracks and, in this way, ro display its demellted face:
But your backbone has been shattered
O my wondrous, wrerched cenrury.
W'th a senscless smile
like a beasr that was once limber
you look back, weak and cruel,
ro contemplate your own tracks.
3. The poet-the contemporary-must firmly hold his gaze on
his own time. But what daes he who sees his time actuaHy see?
What is this demented grin on the face of his century? I would
like at this point ro propose a second definitian of contemporari-
ness. The cantemporary is he who firmly holds his gaze on his
own time so as ro perceive not its light but rather its datkness. AH
eras, far those wha experience conremporariness, are obscure. The
contemporary is precisely the person who knows how ro see rhis
obscuriry, who is able to wrire by dipping his pen in the obscuriry
of rhe present. But whar daes ir mean ('ro see an obscurity," ('ro
perceive the darkness"?
The neurophysiology of visioll suggests an initial answer. Whar
happens when we find ourselves in a plaee deprived of light al'
when we clase our eyes? What is rhe darkness thar we see then?
Neurophysiologists teH us that rhe absence of light activa tes a se-
ries of peripheral ceHs in the retina caHed "off-eeHs." When acti-
vated, rhese ceHs produce the particular kind of vis ion that we caH
darkness. Darkness is not, therefore, a privative natian (the simple
absenee of light, or something lilee nonvision) bur rarher the result
of the activiry of the "off-ceHs," a product of our own retina. This
means, if wc now return ro our rhesis an rhe darkness of contem-
parariness, rhat ro perceive rhis darkness is llat a form af inenia or
of passiviry. Rather, it implies an activiry and a singular abiliry. In
our case this ability amounts to a neurralization cf rhe lights rhar
14
What ls the Contemporary?
come [-om the epoeh in order to discover its obseurity, its 'P"Cl'U
darkness, whieh is not, however, separable [-om thos
e
1ights,
The ones who can caH themse1ves contemporary are on1y
who do not aHow themselves to be b1inded by the 1ights of the
eentury and so manage to get a glimpse of the shado
ws
in tho
se 1ights, of their intimate obscurity, Having said this mueh, we have
neverthel
ess
still not addressed om question, Why sho
u
1d We be at
a11 interested in perceiving the obseurity that emanates from the
epoch? Is darkness not preeisely an anonymous experienee that is
by delinition impenetrable, something that is not direeted at Us
and thus eannot concern us? On the Contrary, the eontemporaty
is the person who pereeives the darkness of his time as something
that eoneerns him, as something that never eeases to engage him,
Darkness is something that-more than any 1ight-
turns
direet1y
and sing
u
1ar1y toward him, The contemporary is the one whose
eyes are struek by the beam of darkness that comes from his own
time.
4, In the linnament that We observe at night, the stars shine
bright1y, surrounded by a thiek darIcness, Sinee the number of
ga1axies and 1uminous bodies in the universe is a1most inlinite,
the darkness that We see in the sky is something that, aecording
to sciemists, demands an exp1anation, It is precisely the exp1ana_
tion that eontemporary astrophysies gives fo
r
this dadmess that
1 wou1d now like to diseuss, In an expanding universe the mOst
remo te galaxies move away from us at a speed so great that their
light is never able to reaeh us, What We pereeive as the darkness of
the heavens is this light that, though travc1ing toward us, eannot
reaeh us, sinee the galaxies from which the light originates move
away [-om us at a velocity greater than the speed of light,
To pereeive, in the darkness of the presem, this 1ight that strives
to reach us but eannot-this is what it means to be eontempo_
rary. As such, eomemporaries are rare, And fo
r
this reason, to be
eontemporary is, lirst and foremost, a question of courage, be-
cause it means being able not only to lin
n
ly lix one's gaze on the
darIcness of the epoeh blIt also to pereeive in this darkness a light
What Is the Contemp0l'ary' 15
. itcl distances itself fram uso
I 'le direeted toward tlS, 111lin Yfor an appointment that
that, w 11 'd it is like being on 11me
ther WOl s , , ,
In o t but mISS. h t contemporanness pel-
e canno I rhe present t a . e ot
011 . . he reason W ly . h esent is 111 raet n
ThlS IS t b Our tiPle t e pr , 1 b
b
oken verte rae. , ) h liS lts bac ( one
' s has r , any way reae ,
celve distant: it cannot 111 'f this fracture,
I the most I ' le exact p0111t o
on y d we lind ourse ves 111 t 1 oraries, !t is im-
is broken an despite everythmg, . in con-
. why we are, that IS l1l questlon
This lS realize that the appointment
l
. n chronological time:
ortant to . ly rake pace 1
p Ol'ariness does not SI",'p 'h' ehronological time,
temp thing that, workmg Wlt m 's the untimelmess,
it is SOI::
d
transforms it. And this l
time
in the fonn of
that "aIready" that is also
t " that is aIso a too , . 'n the obscunty o
a "toO soon . II us to recog111ze 1 .
" Moreover, lt a ows b . ble to reach us, lS
nor yet. h l' ht thar, without ever e1l1g a
the present t e Ig d
. g towar uso perpetually voyagm
. erience of time rhar we
A ood example of this can be delined as ,he
caf' is that divides It
. d crion into time o a pe . being-in-fashlOn 01' ltS
mtro u r irrelevance, 1tS 'be
according to its relevance o This caesura, as subtle as lt may f
no-Ionger-being-in-fashl0n, 'h se who need to make note o
is remarkabIe in the sense that, t o the attest to their own bemg
it do so infallibly, and m so :nd lix this caesura wlthm
B
'f e try to oJee 1 I 1 h first place
in fashion, ut 1 w 'If as ungraspab e, n te, ,
chronologieal time, lt reveals ltse , which it comes into be::,g, IS
the "now" of fashiol1, the 1s this "now per-
tI
'dentifiable via any kmd o fe h' designer coneeives of the
no , h' h the as IOn I f h
ha s the moment m w lC '11 define the new sty e o t e
eoneept, the nuance the fashion designer convet
clothes? Or is it the d then to the tailor who wl11 sew t e
the coneept to his moment of the fashion show,
prototype? 01', rather, IS Itht e I copIe who are always and 0
1
n y
h l
othes are worn by t e on y P d 1 -those who nonethe ess,
t e c . or mo e s
in fashion, the mannequ111s
I6
What Is the Contemporary?
precisely fo
r
this reason, are never truly in fashio
n
?3 In this
instance, the being in fashion of the "Style" will depend On the
that the peop/e of Resh and blood, rather than the : .. o': ..
(tho
se
sacrificial victims of a faceless god), will recognize it as
and choos
e
that style for their own wardrobe,
Yhe time of fashio
n
, therefore, constitutively anticipates i
and consequently is also always too late, It a/ways takes the
of an ungraspabl
e
threshold between a "not yet" and a "no more,
It is quite probable that, as the theologians suggest, this """",,
tio
n
depends On the faet that fashio
n
, at least in Our culture, is
theologieal signature of clothing, whieh derives fi-o
m
the first pie
ee of clothing that was seWn by Adam and Eve after the Original Sin,
in the fo
rm
of a loincloth woven fi-o
m
fig leaves, (Yo be precise,
the clOthes that We wear do not derive from this vegetalloincloth
but fi-o
m
the tunicae pe/fie
eae
, the clothes made fram anima/s' skin
that God, aceotding to Genesis 3:2I, gave to OUt progenitors as
a tangible symbol of sin and death in the moment he expelled
them fi-o
m
Patadise.) In any case, Whatevet the reason may be, the
"now," the kairos of fashion, is ungraspabl
e
: the phrase, "I am in
this instant in fashio
n
" is contradietory beeause the moment in
whieh the subjeet pronounees it, he is already OUt of fashio
n
, So,
being in f.1shio
n
, like contemporariness, entails a eenain "ease,"
a eenain quality of being Out-of-phase or Out-of-date, in which
one's relevanee includes within itself a small pan of what lies OUt-
side of itself, a shade of dmod, of being OUt of fashion, It is in
this sense that it Was said of an elegant lady in nineteenth-eentury
Paris, "Elle est eontemporaine de tOUt le monde" (She is every_
body's eOlltempotary),4
But the tempotality of fashion has another eharaetet that relates
it to eonremporariness, FollOwing the same gesture by whieh the
present divides time aeeording to a "no more" and a "not yet," it
also establishes a peculiar relationship with thes
e
"other times"_
eenainly with the past and perhaps also with the future, Fashion
can therefo
re
"cite," and in this way make relevant again, any mo-
ment fro
m
the past (the I9
2
os, the I970s, but also the neoclassical
or empire style), It Can therefore tie together that which it has
?
What 15 the Contemporary, I7
, h t which it 1 nd revitalrze t a ' d 'eaH re-evo (e, a
divIde -le ,
inexorably dead
h
d declared ' 1 ' ship with the
a h' eeial re atlOn ,
. other aspect to t ,15 SP. e resent by markmg
6 There lS an 'ess inscribes Itsdf In th p tl,e indiees and
'porann .h percelve b
past, arehaie. Only those VI o dem and reeent can e
it above ali
o
; the arehaie in the most arkhe, that is to say,
signatures Archaie means close ro d in a ehronologleal past.
eontemporar:, rigin is not only sltuate, and does not cease
origin, But t e o with historieal beeommg es to be active 1ll
mporary b o eontmu h'
it is eonte 'h'n it] 'ust as the em ry d h hild in the psyc le
te Wlt 1, . an t e e d ti
to opera h ture orgamsm, which e nc
f tema . d nearness,
the tissues o ir. Both this distanemgan, this proximiry ro the
Jife of the adu have their foundatlon m h in the present.
orarmess, . h re force t an .
eontemp h re pulses wlt mo v 1 for the first time
' hat now e fNew lOr( h '
origm t the skyscrapers o , ived this are alC
Whoever has seel: dawn has immedlately ruin that the
froro rhe oeean a this contiguousness Wlt 11
' f the present, d' dent ro a , f
[artes o. of9/
n
have ma e eVl h here is a secret a _
ora/lmages d f know t at t
aremp fl' ture an o art much because
. .' o Itera d nor so
Hlstollans h' nd rhe mo ern, he pres-
h are ale a , 1 harm on t
finity between t e m to exercise a partlCll ar e . h'ldden in rhe h
' rms see h dem 1$
the are ale o b the key to temo 't world in its b
ther eeause 'Th the anClen
ent ut ra d the prehistone. uS', itself. The avant-
irnmemonal an 1 l'l'mordal so as ro redlscover s the primitive
. 15 ro t le p . 1 o pursue
declme tun h has lost itself over time, a s can say that the entry
garde, whleh , Ir is in this sense that of an arehaeology
and the neeessarily takes :he blIt retums ro
point to t e pr r regress to a hlstoflea 'a able of liv-
that does not, howeve, t that we are absolutely me k
P
d baek to-
' h' the presen 'tly sue e
that pal't Wlt m, nlived is therefore meessan
h
't The present is
' What remams u 'ble to reae 1, "d
mg, " 'n witholIt ever bemg a , er thing that lS !rve '
ward the Ollgr h h's un/ived ciement m ev y , ly the mass of
h' other t an t 1 ent 1$ precIse
not mg, , des aeeess to the pres , its exeessive near-
That WhlCh lmpe (its traumatie eharaeter, his "unlived"
what for sorne reasan d ro live. The attentlOll ro t
) we have not manage ness
18
What ls the Contemporary?
is the life of the contemporary. And to be contemporary means in
this sense to return to a present where we have l1evcr been.
7 Those who have tried to think abollt contemporariness have
been able to do so only by splitting it up into several times, by
introducing into time an essemial dishomogeneity. Thos
e
who say
"my time" actuaHy divide time-they inscribe into it a caesura and
a discontinuity. But precisely by means of this caesura, this inter-
polation of the presem into the inert homogeneity of linear time,
the comemporary puts to work a special re1ationship between the
different times. If, as we have seen, it is the Contemporary who
has broken the vertebrae ofhis time (or, at any rate, who has per-
ceived in it a fault line or a breaking poirlt), then he also makes of
this fracture a meeting place or an encoun ter between times and
generations. There is l10thing more exemplary, in this sense, than
Pau1's gesture at the point in which he experiences and announces
to his brothers the contemporariness par exceHence that is mes-
sianic time, the being-contemporary with the Messiah, which he
caHs preeisely the "time of the now" (ho nyn kairos). Not only is
this time chronologieal1y indeterminate (the parousia, the return
of Christ that signals the end is cenain and near, though not at a
calculable point), but it also has the singular capacity of plltting
every instam of the past in direct re1ationship with itselE, of mak-
ing every moment or episode of biblical history a propheey or a
preliguration (Paul prefers the term typos, ligure) of the present
(thus Adam, through whom humanity received death and sin, is a
"type" or ligure of the Messiah, who brings abOllt redemption and
life to human beings).
This means that the contemporary is not only the one who,
perceiving the darkness of the present, grasps a light that can never
reach its destiny; the Contemporary is also the one who, dividing
and interpolating time, is eapable of transfonning it and plltting it
in relation with other times. He is able to read history in unfore-
seen ways, to "cite ir)) according to a necessity thar does no[ arise
in any way from his wil1 but from an exigeney to which he cannot
not respondo It is as if Ihis invisible light that is the darkness of
What 1s the Contemporarf 19
the ast so that the past, touched
resent east its shadow on p ond to the darkness of
:etL shadow, the that Miehe1 Foucault
h
y
now. It is somethmg along h t his historical investiga-
te. . d hen he wrote tal .
b bly had m mm w b h's theoretica mter-
pro a ly the shadow cast y 1 1 h
tions of the past are on S. '1 1 Walter Benjamin writes t lat t e
togation of the presento d
1m1
ar
h
y
,. mages of the past indicates that
1 . d antame In t el. d ent
historica In ex e . 1 'b '1' only in a determme mom
these images may ach1eve 1t
y
to
respond to this exigency and
of
their history. Ir lS on out a ty. ot ooly of our ccntury and
b temporanes n f h
to this shadow, to e coo fi . the texts and documcnts o t e
rhe "now)) but also of lts f seminar depends.
t that (he success or al ti
pas ,
Kalumniator
1. In Roman trials, where ublic .
role, slander represented a tI p prosecutron played a limited
f' . 1reat so gr b h
]UStlCe thar the fa1se accuscr w 01' t e administration
ead with the letter J( (initial of ed by marking his fore-
mem of Davide StimilJi t h d umnzator, slanderer). Ir is th
thlS fa f(. h . o ave emonstrated h . e
01 t e mterpretation of Kaf1 'Th t e lmportance of
unam iguousIy presents ir as 1 (as e Tria!, whose incipj ..
have slander dJ f a s anderous trial ("S e
. e ose K., for ane m' . ameone must
anythrng wrong, he was arrested" 1 WIthout having done
fact that Kafka had studied the By caJ1U1g Our attention to the
prepanng for the legal pe. ory of Roman law while he w
roresSlOn St 'jj" as
not stand (according to an 01' . ' h
lml
1 suggests that K does
for "K fk " b 2InlOn t at dat b k .
a a ut for slander.2 es ac to Max Brod)
2. That slander l'epr 1
esents Oe 1 h
to en tire Kaf].::aesque to t e novel-and, perhaps,
mythlc fo
rces
of Iaw-b ' so potentIy marked b h
'f b ceomes, ho
wev
. y t e
1 we o serve the folJowing p . 1 el, even more ilJuminating
]( 01l1t: at t le m
eeases to stand simply for kal . oment when the letter
refers rather to kalumlliator (the (the false aceusation) but
thar the false aeeuser is th aecuser), this can only m
20
e very protagonist of the novel h lean
, W o las
K
21
beg
un
a against himse,lf,. a,s ir were. ':someone"
(jemalld) who, w"h hlS slander, has mltlated the tnal [S Josef K.
himself.
This is precisely what an attentive reading of rhe novel dem-
oostrares beyond alI dOllbt. Even though K. aerualIy knows right
from the starr rhat there is no way to be eompletely eertain that
he has been accused by the court ("I don't know if you have been
accused," the inspector telIs him during his !irst interview),3 and
that at any rate his eondition of being "under arrest" does not im-
ply any ehange in his life, he still tries in every conceivable way to
penetrate the court buildings (which are not actually court build-
ngs but rather atties, storage rooms, or laundry rooms-whieh,
perhaps, are only transformed into courts by his gaze) and to in-
stigate a trial that the judges do not seem to have any intention
of initiating. That this is not even a real trial for thar marter, but
that the trial exists only ro the extent that K. recognizes it as sueh,
is somethil1g that K. himself anxiously concedes to the examin-
ing magistrate during the initial inquiry. Nevertheless, he does not
hesitate to presenr himself to the eourt even when ir has not been
convened, and it is preeisely at this moment that he unneeessar-
ily admits to having been aecused. Similarly, he does not hesitate
to suggest during his eonversation with Miss Brstner that she
should falsely aeeuse him of assault (in a eertain sense, he therefore
self-slanders). In the !inal analysis this is precisely what the prison
ehaplain informs K. of at the conclusion of their long conversation
in the cathedral: "The court wants nothing from you. It reeeives
you when you come and dismisses you when you go.'" In other
words, the court does not aeeuse you; it only gathers the aeeusa-
tions that you malee against yourself."
}. Every man initiates a slanderous trial against himself. This is
Kafl<a's point of deparrure. Henee his universe eannot be tragic but
only comic: guilt does not exist-or rather, guilt is nothing other
than self-slander, which eonsists in aeeusing oneself of a nonex-
istent guilt (that is, of one's very innoeenee, whieh is the eomie
gesture par excelIenee).
22
J(
T111S is in tune wirh d '.
Kan le prIncJple .
<:a, according to wh h" '. } enunclated elsewh .
J. d b JC ong111al h eje
y man, consists in tI t e aneienr fauIr
whJch he does not desist: that he makes and
that an onginal sin has b a WlOng has been done to
case with auilr is cen clommIttcd against him,"5 As'
rath d b not t le caus f h JS
er 1$ 1 entified WJth . e o t e accusation h .
A lt. elC,
s a matter of f 1 d
f 1 . aet, s an er exists lf
o t le rnnocence of tI on y 1 the aCCUser is
b . le aceused lf h WUVJJlr.
o
,
,Cl1lg any guilt ro ascertain 1 011 Y 1 e accuses without
tIOn becomes at once both' n t le case of se1f-sl
an
der this co .
. e necessary d' nVIC_
111S01ar as he is a self 1 d ,an Jmpossible Th
-s an erer know e . e accused
noee01, but, insofar as h '. s perrectly well that h . . '
th 1 . e JS aceUS111 h lE. e JS tn-
th at(,enlS guilty of slander, that he lmse ,he knows just as well
e a {aesque situaran eserves ro be marked Th' .
does every man-slander But. why does K._:hJys
se y aceuse hJmsell?
4 Roman j. .
has b unsts eonsJdered slander t
"b1" led astray (they used the o be an aceusation that
In y, rando
m
ly," which . tcrm tementas, fram teme
tenebra, darkness) Mo JS etymologieally linked to the 1 l. re,
. mmscn obs' h ta Jan
not seem. ro be originally a technC,l ves ,t :he verb accusare does
anClent testimonials (for e lcal term, and in the
It IS used in a moral xample, 111 Plautus and Tc .
. 1 sense rather tI elence)
preCIse y in its liminaI functio . 1an a Juridical one. But it is
reveaIs ltS decisive ; respect ro the law that the
[he Roman trial . 1'01 tan ce.
. opens wrth th . .
tron, at the behest of th e nomtnzs de/atio the J. .
. ' e accuser f 1 ,nscnp-
person rn the list of h ,o t le name of the d
f
t e accused A enounced
rom causa wh h ". CCtlsare etymolo 11 .
i. ' . IC means to indiet" [ h. . glca y derIVes
s, In a certam s h e amare )
. ense, t e most fund . . n causa. Causa
It something that has be amen:al Jundical term beeause
of law (Just as res signilies som:; lmplreated within the sphere
wJthrn the sphete of la hrng that has been im l
th f< nguage) Cal . d P Jcated
e oundation of a jUridical: -"sa J? Jeates that which lies a
causa and res (which means relationship betwee:
rng, a lan rn L . ). .
aUn 1$ 1flstructive
J(
23
Jiotn this perspeetive. Both belong ro the vocabulary of law, where
t;,ey designate that which is in question in a trial (or in a juridical
reh,tionship). In Romance languages, however, causa progressively
takes the place of res; and after it carne ro designate tbe unknown
in algebraic terminology (just as in French, res survives only in the
form of rien, nothing), causa gives way ro the term cosa ("thing"
in ltalian, chose in Freneh). Cosa-this thoroughly neutral and ge-
neric word-names, in reality, "what is the case (in causa]," what is
at stake in law (and in language).
This is ro suggest that the gravity of slander is a function of
its abili(y to put into quesron the very principIe of the trial: the
mom
ent
of aceusaron. After all, what defines the trial is neither
guilt (which is unnecessary in arehaic law) nor punishment but
rather the aeeusaron. Indeed, the aceusaron is perhaps the ju-
ridical "category" par excellence (kategoria means "accusation" in
Greek), without whieh tbe whole edifiee of law would fall apart:
the indictment ofBeing within the sphere oflaw. The law, then, is
essentially an accusation or a "category." When Being is indicted,
or "accused," within the sphere of law, it loses its innocencej it
becomes a cosa (a thing), (hat is a causa (a case): an object oflitiga-
tion (for the Romans causa, res, and lis were, in this sense, synony-
mous).
5. Self-slander is part of Kafka's strategy in his ineessant struggle
with the law. In the first place it calIs guilt imo quesron or, more
precisely, the principIe aecording to whieh there is no punishment
wi(hout guilt. Along with this it also questions the aceusation,
which grounds itself in guilt (we can add the following to the cata-
logue of Brodian nonsensiealires: Kafka do es not eare about the
question of grace but rather about the accusation, which is its op-
posite). "How can a man in general be guilty?" Josef K. asks the
prison ehaplain, who seems ro concur, by saying that the sentenee
does not exist but that "the trial itself is transformed, litrle by litrle,
into the sentence."6 In the same fashion a modern jurist has writ-
ten that, in the mystery of the trial, the principIe nulla poena sine
iudicio is reversed and becomes a darker principle, according to
K
which there is no judgment witho .
ment lies in J' udgment "7' b . ut pUl11shment, since alI
. 10 e In such t' 1 ')
at a certain paint m h a na J says rhe LInde to
Th' . . ' . eans to ave already lost it "7
IS pOUlt IS eVldent in self-sland d' .
derous tria!' The slander . l' er an , m general, in the
h b
ous tna lS a case wl h
w ere eing indicted is h . d' < lefe t ere is no
h W
t e m lctment it lE h
suc. here gui1t consists in brin . se J t ,c accusation
cannot be anythin h. h gmg about the tnal, the '0111el1ee
g ot el t an the mal itselE
6. In addition to slander, Roma . .'
temeritates or i'darkenl' "f h
11
JUlIsrs were aware of tWQ
II
ngs o t e accu .
co lisian between aCCll d satlOn: praeval'icatio, rh
ser an aecused ( h' h .
opposed to slander) and th t . . w lC lS symmetricalIy
clIsation (fol' rhe chergtversatio, rhe retraction of rhe ac- "':
. I rnans, w o saw an anal b
ttIa J rhe retraction of th . ogy etween war and
. e accusauon was a f( fd
gtversare originaI1y mea " onn o esertion-ter_
e ns to turn on J b 1
losef K. is guilty of alI ti . b es ac ( on something").
. nee. ecause he sla d h'
cause, masmuch as he self-sland . n ers unself; be-
because he is not in' el s, he colIudes with himself: and
". aglcement Wlth his ow '. '
sensc, he tergIversares" h 1 1 f( n accUSatlOn (m this
, e 00 (S 01' a cOP-Out and stalIs for time).
7 One understands, then, the subtlet
egy that seeks to deact" d . y of self-slander as a strat-
h
. . IVate an render 111 . h
t e lUdlCtment that th I dd operatlve t e accusation
. e aw a resses towa d B' f '
tlon is false and iE m h l' emg. 1 the accusa-
, ,oreover t e acc "d
cused, then it is the fund ' l' user COluO es with the ae-
h
amenta lmplicat" f
sp ere of law that is eaI!ed h.' . . IOn O' man within the
fi ' . ele lUto questlon Th I
. rm ones mnocence befare the law (and h' e on y way to af-
lt: for example the fath . t e powers that represent
, er, or marnage)' . h'
accuse onese1f. lS, In t IS sense, to faIsely
That slander can be a defense mech . .
authority is clearly stat d b h anlsm lu the struggle with
Cartle: "It would be a r . ylt e other K, the protagonist of The
. fI e ative y ll1nocent and' h
111SU eient, means of defen "8 K fk .'. 111 t e end also quite
of the insufliciency of tI' se. a a IS 111deed completely aware
. 1IS strategy' h
IS to transform the i d' .' SInce t e response of the law
n Ictment ltse1f into a crime a d
, n ro turn se1f-
K
25
slander into its foundation. Not only does the law ptonounce the
ndemnatio
n
at the very moment m WhlCh It recogmzes the base-
of the accusation, but it also transforms the self-slanderer's
subtetfug
e
into its perpetual self-justification. Since humans do
no
t
cease to slandet themselves, as well as others, the law (that
's the trial) is necessary in arder ro assess which accusations are
1 ,
groundless and which ate noC In this way the law find its
self_justificatlOn by pteSent111g ltself as a bulwark agal11st the de-
lirium of human beings' self-accusations (to so me degree it has
aeted as such with tegard to religion, for example). Even if man
were always innocent, if no man in general can be called guilty,
self-slandet would stiI! rcmain as otiginal sin, as the baseless ac-
cusation that humanity directs at itself .
8. Ir is impottant ro distinguish bctween self-slandet and confes-
sion. When Leni tries to induce K. to make a confessian, telling
him that "the only chance [he has] ro escape"9 is by confessing
his guilt, K. hastily declines the offer. And yet, in a cerrain sense,
the aim of the entire trial is to produce such a confession, which
alteady in Roman law counts as a sort of self-condemnation. Ac-
cording ro a jutidical adage, the one who has confessed is alteady
judged (confissus pro iudicato). The equivalence between confes-
sion and self-condemnation is affirmed without reservation by
one of rhe most authoritative Roman jurists: whoeve1' confesses
condemns himself, so ro speak (quodammodo sua sen ten tia damna-
tur). But whoevet falsely accuses himself-insofar as he has been
accused-must faee precisely fot this reason the impossibility of
confessing, and the coun can condemn him as the accuser only if
it recognizes his innocence as the accused.
In this sense K.'s sttategy can be defined mote precisely as the
failed attempt ro tender the eonfession, but not the trial, impos-
sible. Moreove1', as a fragment from 1920 affirms, "ro confess one's
own guilt and to lie are the same thing. In otdet ro be able ro
confess, one lies."lO Kafka, the1'efo1'e, seems ro inscribe himself into
a tradition that-contrary to the favor that it enjoys in Judeo-
Christian rejects confession: from Cicero, who
26
K.
defines ir as "repugnant and dangerous" (turpis et periculosa),
Proust, who candidly advises, "Don'r evcr confess" (navouez
mais).
9 ln the history of confession the link with torture is >dlllCU,
lady significant, a link that Kafka could hardly be insensitive
While the law during the age of the republic accepted COJ1reSSI(lr
with Sorne reservations as a way to defend rhe accused, during
age of the empire-above aH for crimes against sovereign
(plots, betrayal, conspiracy, or impiety against the emperor)
also for adultery, magic, and illicir divination-the penal proce,
dure entailed the tOrture of he accused and his slaves in arder to
extort from them a confession. "Wrest the truth" (vertatem eruere)
is the insignia of the new judicial rationale that, by closely link,
ing canfession and truth, makes torture (which in cases of high
trcason extends evcn to witnesses) rhe probative instrument par
exceIlence. Henee ts designaran as quaestio in juridical sources:
torture 1S an inquiry into truth (quaestio vertatis), and this is ho
w
ir will be then taken up by the medieval inquisition.
Introduced into rhe COUrtroom, rhe accused underwent an ini-
tiaI interrogarian. After rhe Brst hesitations 01' contradictions, or
even only because he declared himself innocent, the judge ordered
the application of torture. The accused was spread Out on his back
on the rack (cavalletto in Italian or eculeus in Latin, meaning lirtle
horse, which relates to the German term for torture, folte; deriv-
ing from PoNen, "colt"), with arms extended backward and up'
ward, and hands tied with a cord that passed through a pulley,
in such a way that the executioner (quaestionarius, tortor) couId
pull the cord and cause the dislocation of the collarbone. This first
stage, from which the Dame "torture" derives (from torqueo, "to
torque or twist until shattering"), was usually followed by flogging,
as well as laceration with iron hooks and harrows. 1'he dogged
search for truth was such that the torture cauld be prolonged for
several days, until the confession was finally obtained.
Along with the diffusion of the practice of tOrture, confession
J(
27
th
corcefully wrested by the
. . If from uu J' II d
te nternahz
e
ltse. h' thar rhe subject is compe e ,
,cor. es . t becomes somet mg I Sources record
tion
er
, 1 d 1 spomaneous y.
own conscienee, to ee are le who eonfess without being
by hiS of surpris
e
cases of peop d . .' I But even in these
. h a sens
e
b b olve 111 tila . "
WJt < d or afrer having een a s o o he voiee of eonscience
cus
e
o' uch as Ir 15 t d
he confesslOn-masm h 1 ss has probative value an
c.'as
es
.. t . tl'ae vox)-nevert e e '
J;_ . onsctenc e
(C01ljes
sto
e d- tion of the eOI'uessor.
, Hes the con emua
Imp d rruth
. 1 link between torture an
o Ir is precisely the essenua . in an almost mOl'bid man-
l ms to attract Kafka's attentlon for me" he writes in
that sec . f treme importance J.. b
"Yes torture 15 o ex k'" sale oceupatlon lS e-
ner.' M'I a Jesens a, my e h
November 19
20
to J Why? .. To learn how to rorce t e
. ortured and tortuIl g. I "11 Two months prior, he
mg t f h ed moun.
ed
word out o t e curs . I drawing of a torture ma-
curs r f paper Wln a . h
hes
to his letter a s Ip o f. I,e clarifles wlth tese
attae . hose unctlon I d
I . of his own inventlOn, w. b twO poles get pus le
e une o ied in thls way, t e
'ds' "Once the roan 1S t .. "12 That torture may serve
WOI . '1 I . lIt 111 two. l'
1 1
outward unO le IS sp d b !Z fka a few days ear ler,
s aW y . . nflrme y a d
ex
tract a confesSlOn 1S co h f a roan whose hea gets
ro . d' . on ro t at o .
h h
e compares hls con 1t1 h pies' "1'he dJfference
wen o sattetem.
I ed in a vice wlth twa screw I don't wait till they
c amp oh. in order to scream . f
lies only in thls: ... t at in order to extract the confesslOn
flnish tightening the screws. I d when they draw clase. .
eam111g a rea y d b l.
e
but rather 1 start ser o' terest is prove y t le
m , el a passmg m d
1'hat this was not mer :r hich Kafka writes in just a few ays
tory
"In the Penal Colony, w. h mposition of The TrlaL
s '1' . ptlng t e ca . f
in October '9
1
4, Whl e mteru h. " ld Commandant" is, m act,
". tdbyteo . f
1'h
e C<apparatus lllven e '. t for the executlon o
. d an lllStlUmen ..
at once a torture devIee an er himself suggests this when,
capital punishment (the offlc s "We haven't used torture smee
Pating a possible obJectlOn, he '. luuch as it untes 111 ltself
") 14 l' reerse y mas h'
the Middle Ages. t IS P . h nellt inflicted by the mac me
. h the pums 1, h d'
these two functlons t at o tatis in which t e ISCOV-
. 'd s with a particular quaestto ven ,
comC1 e
28
J(
ery of trllth is entrusted not ro rhe judge but t rhe accused,
does so by deciphering the writing that the harrow inscribes
his flesh:
Even rhe most duU-witted ones bcgin to understand. Ir begins around
rhe eyes and from there ir spreads. Ir is a spectade rhar couId
anyone to get undel' rhe harrow himself Norhing cIsc happens,
rhar rhe man begins t deciphcr rhe writing. He purses his lps as
were lstenng. You have seco rhar ir is not casy ro decipher rhe W'I'H'o
with your eyes, bur our ruao deciphers it with his wounds. Ir is
ficult labor; ir takes him six hours to complete. Bur by rhar time, rhe
harrow has pierced him thoroughly and throws him into rhe dteh,
where he falls clown 00 rhe bloody water and corton woof.1
5
II. "In the Penal Colony" was written during the composition of
The Tria!, and the situation of the condemned presems more than
juSt an analogy with that of K. As K. does not know what he is ac-
cused oE, so in the short story the condemned does not know that
he has been condemned. He does not even know his semence ("To
cornmunicate ir ro him," explains the offieer, "would be use1ess.
He will experience it on his Own flesh").'6 Both stories seem to
condude with the executiOl1 of a death sentence (one that, in the
short story, the officer seems to inflict on himself instead of on the
condemned). But it is precisely the obviousness of this condusion
that must be questioned. That what is at stake in the shon srory
is not an exeeution, but only torture, is clearIy stated precisdy at
the moment in which the machine breaks down and is no longer
able to perform irs function: "This was not the torture that the
officer wamed to inllict, this was murder, plain and simple." 17 The
true aim of the maehine is, therefore, torture as quaestio veritatis.
Death, which often occurs during torture, is only a coIlateral e!fect
of the discovery of truth. When the torture machine is no longer
able to force the condemned to decipher the truth on his own
flesh, torture gives way to simple homicide.
It is from this perspective that one must reread the final chapter
of The Tria! Here, as weIl, we are not dealing with the execution
of a sentenee but with a scene of torture. The two men with top
J(
29
. econd-rate actors or even like
h
t who look to K. hice s h I sense but quaestionariz who
a s, " ' the tee mca d 1 d
ot
executlOners In h 1 tllen no one ha as <:e
are n ; . t at up unn f
e trying ro get a con esslOn K who falsely accused himsel ,
for (if it is tme that ;r ;:: c;nfession of such slander that
then it is perhaps prfec,se This is confirmed by the
they want t rom h contact with K., which reea s
description of then first p y tbe tension of the arms and the po-
( I ngh in a vertlcal posmon) .. "TIley held their shoul-
no d d the quaestlO. d
sition of crook their arms, but instead wrappe h
d rs right be 111 IS, .. in K's hands below Wlt
about the whole length :! grip. K. walked along
a methodical, wel!-tra1l1ed, a h e med such a close Ulllt, that
h d the t ree lOr h 11
stiffiy between t em, an
k
1 d d wn [zerschlagen hiitte], t en a
. f them had been noe <:e o. "18
tf one o Id have been knocked down. " .
three of them wou . h K I ing on (he stone in a posture qUIte
Even the final scene, Wlt . y f torture gone awry (han
bl ". more an act o b
forced and implausl e, IS ffi . b penal colony fails ro find y
. J9A dastheo cer1l1t e h d h
an executlon. n h that he was looking for, so also t e eat
means of torture the .. d than like a concluslOn of a quaes-
of K. seems more like a . : I cks the streng(h ro do what he
tio verilatis. In the end, 111 acht, 1 eca t passed from hand to hand
h d . "to selze t e mlle as lId d
knew was IS uty. .. h. If"20 Whoever has s an ele
. d 1 nge It mto Imse. . If A
above hlm an p u . . h I by rorturing hlmse. t any
f
; hls own t!Ut on y I
himsel can con ess .. . h has missed i(s goa .
I
'k an inquny mto tl ut ,
rate, torture, 1 e
slanders himself in order to be subtracted
12. K. (every man) . h. ems to incontestably
f
h accusatlon t at It se h
from the law, rom t e h. h h IS unable to escape (as t e
d h d from w IC e If.
direct towar HU, an " 1 declaring onese 1n-
l
l s at one pOlnt, Slmp y b
Prison chap am c alm Ik") 21 Nevertheless, y act-
"1 1 people always ta . f
nocent is lOW gm ty bl. the prisoner from Qne e
h
d up resem mg .
ing in this way, e en allows being ereeted in the pnsen
Kafka's fragments, who sees ag.. nded for him, breaks out
Y
ard mistakenly believes that It 'S
d
m(e to hang himself."22 Here
' h h nd goes own d f
of his cel! in t e mg t, a d. . . n the self-slan er o
f h 1
. roo te as It IS I
lies the ambiguity o t e aw.
3
K
individuals, ir nevertheless presents itself as a power that is
and superior to them.
It is in this sense that one should read the parable on the
of the law that the priest recaunts ro K. n the scene in
thedral. Tbe door of the law is tbe accusation through which
individual comes to be implicated within the law. But the
and supreme accusation is pronounced by the accused lllfn":1t
beit in the form of self-slander). For this reason the str:HeW
the law consists in making the accused believe that the ac<:us:atio)
(the door) is destined (perhaps) precisely for him, that the
demands (perhaps) something from him, that there is
a trial in progress that has something to do with him. In
there is no accusation and no trial, at least nor until the "'L""'ODr.
in which whoever believes himself to be aceused stops dCLU"llg'
himself.
This is the sense of tbe "deception" (Tauschung) that is, aC(:onl-.
ing to tbe words of the priest, pUt into question by the oarahle'
("In tbe introductory texts to the law it says of tbis deception: Be,
fore tbe law stands a doorkeeper")."The problem is not so much,
as K. believes, who deceives (the doorkeeper) and who is being
deceived (the man from the country). The problem is also not
whether the two statements of the doorkeeper (that "he can't grant
him admittance now" and tbat "this entrance was meant soldy for
yo u") are more or less contradictory." At aIl events, they mean,
"You are nor accused," and "The accusation concerns you alane;
only you can aceuse yourself and be aecused." They are, therefore,
an invitation to se1f-accusation, an invitaran to aUow oneself to
be captured in the trial. For this reason K. 's hopo---that the priest
couid give him decisive advice" that would help him, nor to jnBu-
ence the trial but rather to avoid it, to always live outside of it-
cannor but be in vain. Even the priest is, in reality, a doorkeeper;
even he "belongs t the court." The ttue deeeprion is precisely the
existence of doorkeepers, ofhumans (or angels: guarding the door
is, in the Jewish tradition, one of the funetions of angels)-from
the lowliest bureauerat al! the way up to the attomeys and the
highest ranking judge-whose aim is to induce other humans to
3
1
K
h h the door that leads
s and have theIll pass t roug ha s contain a
thernsbel:; the triaL The parhab\e n!r ;he study of
'.;, ... Wh t is ere ats , d
" dvice," thoug
h
. a . but rather the ' long stu y
of a in itselfbears no gUllt-
S
d' des Trhters) ro
. h langen tu tUm
,no."" (in demJa re d' h'ros
df
uninterrupt-
h ntry de 1cates 1 h' d '
. h roan froro t e cOU 1 1 25 lt is thanks tO t lS stu ,
''1h1eh t e his sojourn before t ,e aw. h country-in OppOS1-
"dly durr11g T lm
ud
that the roan from t e d outside the triaL
ro this neW a 'able ro live tO the very en
; n ro Josef K.-wa
s
tia
A
".,.imen5or . . of borders or
b' . h the eonstl
tutlOn
T
. ch as he deaIr w1t l' 01tant in Rome. o
lna
smu
ticular v 1mp f h'
. L. the land surveyor waS pa1 ( . following the name o lS
ltm
1tS
, a surveyor, an agrnnenso
r
01, ss a difRcult cxam; oth-
.beco
me
e11t, a gromatieus), had tOlrbe punished with death.
iOS
truro
. . g this profess
lO11
cOU such a degre
e
. practlcm d haracter to
borders had, indfahct, a exarare) becaro
e
eliminate tese .' nity There wele
that whoever killed by anyone wrth 1mpU . f the land
ae
er
and could be . for the 1roportance o
s Iso simpler reaso
ns
aceountmg ublic law, the possiblity of ascer-
a r In civil !aw, just as m p . and assigning portlO
nS

f 1
d (ader, an . mSO ar as
o an b . f 1 For th1s reas
on
, d d termines
I Y P
racuce o aw. . blishes, an e
oe ver h who ascertams, esta .' . ('creator
tOl'par exceUence---- e was also called lUflS auct01,
. h land surveyor . .
boundarres-
t
e . 1 . rfeettsstmus. d
f 1
"and he held the ut e vtr pe e llection of texts on lan.
O aW, h that the llrst ca Ir IS
Ir is not surprising, t . 1 Cor us Iuris by almost a century.
surveying precedes edi?rely afrer its publicatio
n
, the ":
even less surprising t at 1mro dition of the Corpus f
cessity waS felt te prepare of jurists between the Wfltlng
s
o
which interpolared ,he op
the land surveyors.
or was the groma
f he Roman land survey
T
he instrUment o t
2.
3
2
K
(or gruma), a Son of eross whose eemer was posiioned in
spondenee with a poi m on he ground (eaI1ed he umbi!icus
and from whos
e
ends hung four aur threads wih smalI
Thanks o his insrumem, he land surveyor eould raee
sraigh lines (rigores) ha permitted him o measure he
and trace its limits.
The two fundamemallines ha erossed one anoher a a
angle were he kardo, raeed from nonh ro souh, and he ue'UIr,'a,
nus, whieh ran fi-om eas o wesr. Thes
e
wo lines corresponded,
he foundaion of he castrum ("forilied place" or "easde"-,asret-..
lum is he diminuive of castrum_bur also "militay eamp"),
he wo principal roads around which he dweI1ings (or he
diers' ems, in he case of a miliary camp) were gahered,
For he Romans the original celestial eharacter of this funda_
memal constitutio !imitum was beyond aI1 doub, Fot his reason
Hyginus's treatise on the Constitution 01 Limits begins with hes
e
words: ':Among aI1 the ries and aes hat have to do with mea-
suremems, the mast eminem is the eonstitution of limits, It has
celestial origin and a perpetual enduranee , , , sinee limits are eon-
stituted in their referenee to the worid: indeed, the decumani are
traeed by foI1owing the eourse of the sun, and the kardines aecord_
ing to the axis of the poles, "2(,
3, In
18
48, three eminent philologists and historians of law, F.
Blume, K. Laehmann, and A. Rudorff, published in Berlin the
lirst modern edition of the corpus of Roman land surveyors: Die
Schriften del' romischen F'eldmesser, The edition (whieh gathers in
two volumes the treatises of Julius Frominus, Agg
enus
Urbieus,
Hyginus Gromatieus, and $ieulus Flaeeus) eontains an extensive
appendix that reproduces the iI1ustrations from the manuseripts,
Partieulariy striking among thom, and in twenty-nine variations,
is the image of a castrum, whieh reealIs in a truly astounding way
the deseription of the easde that appears ro K. in the lirst ehapter
of the novel: "lt Was neither an old knight's fortress nor a mag-
nilie
em
new ediliee, but a large eomplex, made up of a few two-
story buildings and many lowel; tighdy paeked ones, Had one not
K. 33
Id have taken i for a smal!
th
ar this was a castle, ane 'ts small wndows, which k
own , d rower Wlt , h
n "27 The easdes roun 'h' hometown, appears III t o
(Own, K f the ehureh tower III IS
inds ,o , , , ' , ,
rcm , tions muluple umes, I f the first constttutlo ltmt-
'1Ias
na
'1 the resu t o k d d
1 h '1Iustranons s lOW d'ng ro the a" o an
Ot er 1 , , , f pace aecor 1 f
he fundamental dlVISlOl1 o s t rhe northern extreme o
In eaeh one o: K, the inirial of ,kardo,
t
h
meridian, one clearly s M (for maximus) , [n thls way
t e the opposite pole ,IS the ett:damenral limit, while DM
iM defines the first Ime, the,!::,,) delines the second line, whleh
iation of decumanus maxl K carres rhe same meanmg,
brev dieular ro the first, The letter h 'multiple oeeasions
is perpen . b' tion with ot ers, ll1
eirher alone ar In com !na
hroughout the text. , , Th
. 1 rhe rotagonist's prOfeSSlOl1 In . e
L
et us try to take senous y p , Kmeans kardo, whleh
4, f I d surveyOls, ,
Castle, In the language o .aH "tself towards the cardinal pOlnr
'h lled "beeause lt dlleets 1 . /' t) What K. does-
1st usca , dk dmemcaetes . . h
f h S
ky" (quod dtrectum e a" l' to have and whICh t e
o t e kingly e ,lms , 'h
the prafession that he pravo 'd a kind of deliance-ls, t ere-
funetionaries of the, eastI; eonfliet-if it is indeedda
fore, the "eonstltutlOn o not have as mueh ro do (acco,r _
eonflict, as lt seems ro be ') vith the possiblltty of setdmg
ing to Brod's reekless b' the castIe as it does with the
l
'n the village and bemg acefe
b
P
d y [f the casde (again accordmg
, ) o or ers, " f the
setting (or transgressmg d s the "divine government o ,
B
d) is graee llndersroo a himself not wlth hls
ro ro d '. r-who presents "28 '
world, then the lan knobby stiek within reaeh -IS
instruments but rather Wlt t 'th rhe casde and its bureaucrats
engaged in an obstinate strugg e Wl , n implacable and very spe-
h 1, 'ts of this government, III a over t e 1m!
cial constitutio limtum.
, , f The Castle,
" rhe cOmpOSltlOn o .
5
On January 16, 19
22
, dllll!lg s'lderations on the sub)eet
' , h' d' ysomecon ,
Kafka writes clown m 1$ lar h been underlined many tImes,
of limits, whose importance ave
(01' gru1na), a son of cross who
se
Spondence with a point on the --... ,,;'
and from who
se
ends hung fo
ur
taUt
Than1<s ta this instrument, the
straight lines (rigores) that permitt'e'Ud"u:su
and trace its limits.
The two fundamentallines that
angle were the kardo, traced from
nus, which tan from cast to west.
the foundatian of the castrum
fum is the diminutive af
the two principal roads around '''''''' "",U
diers' tents, in the case of a military __ ''''''",
For the Romans the original ..
mental constitutio limtum was beyond
Hyginus's treatise on rhe Constitution
words: "Amang a11 the rites and acts
surements, the mOSt eminent is the conSttnlt
celestial origin and a perpetual eWUUl ance,
stituted in their reference ro the world:
traced by fa110
w
ing the COurse of the sun,
ing to the axis of the poles. "26
3 In r848, three eminent philologists
Blume, K. Lachmann, and A. Rudorff,
first modern edition of the corpus of
Schriften der ro'mischen Feldmesser, The
two volumes the treatises of ]ulius "'"'''''''}"''''
Hyginus Gromaticlls, and Siculus ""c'""'.'"'''
appendix that reproduces the i11ustrations
Partieular1y striking among them, and in
is the image of a castrum, which reca11s in
the deseription of the castle that appears ta
of the novel: "Ir Was neither an old
nificent new edifice, but a large complex,
story buildings and many lawel; tightly
33
. F small
have taken Ir 01 a ieh
to
uld
n
windows, wh
W', .. its sma appears in the
his hometOwn,
st constitutio
'''''C;U .. of the lir tO the kardo and
aecordmg treme of
rthern ex
""., at the na . . . 1 of kardo.
K the 111ma
ktter , , s) In this way
(for maxl:nu 'ile DM (ab-
limlt, wh, which
1 eeond lme,
defines t :e s he same mcaning,
K carnes t l' 1 occasion
s
1:l
1t
"co""others, in mu up e
. The
" rofession In
protago
nlstS
p k d which
,tfSW" .. K means ar, 0, . nt
d he cardinal pOI
itself towar s)t What K. does-
caelz esl , h' h the
" h and w le
daims to ave) . s there-
'v",,'"'''' a kind of deliafn ce-:-
s
deed a
11
, l'ltl
The con lCt- d (ac
cord
-
mueh to o .
not have as 'bT of settlrng
. th the pOSSl 1 Jty , h the
'o;C$ll'J':' Wl 1 ir does Wlt
" by the cast e as , ording
1 (agarn acc
If the cast e " f the
01 btnu'c<o. ment o
-l "divine govern , h his
ast le h'mself not wrt ,
presents 1 h"28_1S
IVeyo,,-- .... - . 1 within rcae
"a knobby StlC { . bureaucratS
with the eastle ltS d very spe-
in an implaca e an
. 'h Castle,
I
P
osition of r: e . t
durillg t le com . on the suhJec
some consideratlOlls times,
have been underlined many
34
K
though they have never been linked to the prafession of the nove!'s
protagonist. Kafka speaks of a breakdown (Zusammenbruch) he
experienced in the preceding week, after which the interior world
and the external one were divided and Cut off fram one another.
The savage wildness (Wildheit) that was produced in the interi-
ority is described as a "hunt" Vagen), in whieh "self-observation
does nar representation in peace but pursues thcm up-
ward [empoIJagt] 111 arder to then be the one who is being pursued
[weztergeagt] as representation by a new self-observation."29 At this
point the image of the hunt gives way to a reBection on the limit
between humans and that which lies above and beyond them:
hun.t in a clirection opposite to rhar of humanity
[ntmmt dte Rchtung aus del' Menschheit] , Solitude, which for rhe mast
pan !1aS always foreed on me and in part sought by me (but
wasnt thls also a compulsion?), s .. now Iosing alI irs amhiguity and
goes rhe extreme .[geht auf das AusseJ:te]. Where is ir leading? Per-
lt.leads, and rhis seems to me inescapable, ro madness [Irrsnn,
whICh 1$ etyrnologically linked to ilnn, "wander," "eu"]; there is 11oth-
ing lefr te add, rhe hum passes through me and tcars me aparto Ol'
else 1 can (can I?), evcn if only to a smalI dcgl'cc, stay on my fect and
aIJow myself to carry on the hum. Where, then, do 1 arrive? "Hum"
is only an image; ! could also say "an assaulr 011 the last earthly limt"
[Ansturm gegen dle fetzte irdische Grenze]. This is an assaulr launched
from be.low: by and since this is aIso only an image, 1 couId
rcplace Ir wrrh the lmage of an assaulr amed ar me from aboye.
AH this literature is an assaulr on the limjt and, if Zionism had
intervened, it might easily have deveJoped imo a new secret doc-
tnne, a Kabbalah [zu einer neuen Geheimiehre, ener Kabbala1. There
are inrimations of this. Though of course it requires an inconccivabIe
genius to srrike new roots in the oId ccnruries, or to create the cenru-
res anew, withollt, in so doing, consuming their forces, but rather, ro
only now bcgin consummaring them .. 10
6. The in every scnse "decisive" character of this entry has not
eluded seholars. In a single gesture it involves an existential deci-
sion C"going aU the way ro the extreme," no longer surrendering
to the weakness that, as he wiU note on February 3, has kept him
K. 35
r "31 A.h . 1
((jus
t
as much from madness as rrom . u;"stteg, agam t le
'dea of a movement upward) and a poene theology (the new Kab-
in opposition ro Zionism, the ancient and eomplex Gnos-
tic-messianic inheritanee in opposition to the psychology and
superficiality of the westjdische Zt in. whieh he lived). But the
diary entry becomes even more declslve lf lt refers to the novel that
Kafka was writing at the time and ro its protagonist, the land
veyor K. (kardo, "the one who directs himself ro,;ard the
point of the sky"). The choke of professlOn (whleh K. asslgns to
himself, sinee no one hlred hlm for the Job and Slllee, as the chaIr-
man informs him, the village has no need for this service) is, then,
at once a declaration of war and a strategy. It is not the bound-
aries between the gardens and the houses of the viUage (which,
in the words of the chairman, are already "marked out and duly
egistered")32 that he has come to occupy himself with. Rather,
;iven that life in the village is, in reality, entirely determined by
the boundaries that separate 1t froID the castle and, at the same
time, keep the former inseparable fram the latter, it is these limits,
bove alI that the alTival of the land snrveyor calIs llltO quesnon.
a , b d'
The ((assault on the last limit" is an assault against the oun anes
that separate the easde (the high) fram the village (the low).
7. Once again-and this is Katl(a's grand strategie intuition, the
new Kabbalah that he prepares-the struggle is not against God
or the supreme sovereignty (Count Westwest is never reaUy dis-
cussed in the novel) but against the angels, the messengers, and
the bureaucrats who appear to be their representatives. A list of
the casde's personnel with whom he has ro deal is, in this sense,
instructive: various "girls of the castle," a substeward, a messenger,
a seeretary, and a director (with whom K. nevef had direct contaet,
but whose narne, Klamm, seems to evoke the extreme points-
KM-of the kardo). At stake here-pace Kafka's theologieal in-
terpreters, whether Jewish or not a conflict with the
divine but rather a relendess struggle with the lies ofhumans (ar
angels) coneerning the divine (primarily those eurrent in the en-
viranmenr ofWestern Jewish intelIectuals to whieh he belonged).
K
These are the boundaries, separations, and barriers established
tween humans, as weI1 as between humans and rhe divine,
rhe land surveyor wants ro put into question.
The interpretation according to which K. wants ro be accepted
the casde and setde in the village seems, then, all the more
ous, K. does not know what to make of the village as it is, and
less so of the casde, What the land SUlveyor is concerned with is
border that divides and conjoins the two, and this is what he
to abolish or, rather, render inoperative, Where this border actually.
passes, no one seems ro know. Perhaps ir does nar really exst
passes, like an invisible door, withill every human being.
Kardo is nor on1y a term in land surveying; ir also means
hinge of a door, "1\, hinge [cmdo]," Isidore ofSeville's etymology
us, "is the place on which the door [ostium] swings and moves, It is
so called after the Greek word for heart rapo tes kardias], because as
the heart of man governs everything, so rhe hinge holds and moves
the door, Whence the proverb: in cmdinem esse, 'to find on,ese:lt
a turning point,"'33 "The door [ostium]," Isidore COntinues (with a
definition that Ka/ka could have subscribed to without any reser-
varian), "i5 rhar which impedes ane from entering."3<i The ostarii,
the doorkeepers, "are those who, in the Old Testament, impede the
entrance of the impure into the Temple, "35 The hinge, the turning
point, is where rhe doo
r
rhar obstructs access 1S neutralized. And
if Bucephalus is the "new advocate," who studies the law only on
the eondition that it no longer be applied, then K, is the "new land
surveyor," who renders inoperative rhe limits and rhe boundaries
that separate (and at the same time hold together) the high and the
low, the casde and the village, the temple and the home, the divine
and the human, What would happen to the high and the low, the
divine and the human, the pure and the impure, once the door (hat
1S, rhe systcm of laws, written and unwritten, that regulate these
relatiouships) is neutralized? What would happen, in the end, to
that "world of truth" (to which the canine protagonist dedicates his
investigations in the story that Ka/ka wrote when he definitively in-
terrupted the eomposition of the nove])? This is just ho
w
much the
land surveyor is allowed to eatch a glimpse of.
On the Uses and Disadvantages of
Living among Specters
he University Institute of Archi-
In the inaugural t F bruary 1993 Manfredo Tafuri
' y, 'e dellvere 111 e , ll'
teeture 111 "of Venice in no uncertain terms, Reca
evoked the ca aver, h ho proposed to host the Wor s
I d agall1st tose w "Th
the batt e wage 1 d d 'haut a note of sadness: e
h ' 1 eonc u e ,not WI d l'
Fair in t e Clty, le h h' s better ro put makeup an IP-
t W et el' lt wa
probl
em
was no h 1 ' it loo k so ridiculous that even
stiek on the eadaver, t us ma :mg . hat we-the power-
d
h cked It' nor was It w ,
children woul ave mo d 'h -ended up with, that IS, a
less defenders, the dlsarme prop ets "1
' fy' b fore our very eyes, ,
eadaver hque IIlg e d' e this implacable diagnosIs,
Almost two decades have palsse shlllcty nd competen ce, whose
' h amp e aut Ofl a
penned by a person Wlt ossibl challenge in good faith (not even
aeeuraey no one could p, ,Y d the rest who, then as today,
' h' t ets mmlsterS, an .
the mayors, ale 1 e, d h ", deeency" to eontlnue to
. T f ., wor S t e m .
had and have, 111 a un s d') 't the careful observer thls
doU up and undersell thehea , , no longer a cadaver, that if
h t at ventee IS
aetually means, 1 b se I't has managed to move
'11' t IS ou y ecau
it somehow Stl eXlsts, 1 d h d the consequent decom-
beyond he state rhat follows ea an that of the specter, of the
f h Thls new state IS f
P
osition o t e corpse, , e rably in the middle o
'h t warn II1g, p rere
dead who appears Wlt ou d' ' 1 sometimes even speaking,
' h k' and sen IIlg sIgna s, , h'
the I1Ig t, crea II1g , ll' 'ble "Veniee IS w IS-
though in a way ha is not always Ime Igl ,
37
3
8
On the Uses and Disadvantages o[ Living among Speetm
pering," Tafuri wrires, though he adds that such whispers are an
unbearable sound ro the modern ear,
Those who live in Venice attain a certain familiarity with this
specter, Ir suddenly appears during a nocturnal stroll when, cross-
ing a bridge, one's gazc turns a cerner alongside a canal immersed
in shadows, as a glimmer of orange light 1S switched on in a distant
window, and an observing passerby on another bridge holds Out a
fogged-up mirror, Or when the Giudecca Island almost seems to
gurgle as it drains fOtten algae and plastic botdes onto the Zattere
promenade, And it was yet again the same specter that-thanks
to the invisible echo of a final ray of light, indefinitely lingering
over the canals-Maree! saw enshrouded within the refleetions
of the palazzos in their ever-darkening obseurity, And prior still,
this speeter appears at the very origins of this eity, whieh was not
born, like almost every other city in Italy, as a result of the eneoun-
ter between late antiquity in its decline and new barbaran forees
but rather as a resuh of exhausted refugees who, abandoning their
fiches behind thcrn in Romc, carried its phantasm in rheir minds,
to then dissolve ir into rhe city's waters, streaks, and colors.
What is a speeter made oE? Of signs, or more preeisely of sig-
natures, that 1S to say, those signs, ciphers, 01" monograrns that
are etehed Onto things by time, A speeter always carries with it a
date wherever ir goesj ir is, in other words, an intimately historical
entity, This is why old ciries are the quintessential place of signa-
tures, which the flaneur in turn reads, somewhat absentmindedly,
in the course of his drifting and strolling down the streets, This
is why the taste1ess restorations that sugarcoat and homogenize
European cities also erase their signatures; they render them iUeg-
ible, And this is why eities-and espeeiaUy Venice-tend to look
like dreams, In dreams the eyes of the dreaming person seize on
each and every thing; each and every creature exhibits a signature
that signifies more than its traits, gestures, and words couId ever
express, Nonetheless, those who stubbornly try to interpret their
dreams are stiU ar least partIy eonvineed that they are meaningless,
On the Uses and Disadvamages o[ Living among Speelers 39
, i ever rhin thar has happened in sorne lane,
Sirnilarly, rn the e ty, y g sorne sidewalk along a canal, rn
piazza 1I1 some street, on . d' ti
in sorne 1 U', ddenly eondensed and erystalhze mto a g-
sorne bac (a ey tS lsub'le and exigent mute and winking, resentful
hat tS at once a r , f h 1
tdistant. Sueh figure is the speeter or genius o t e pace,
h d d' "The work of love in recoUecring
What do we owe to t e ea , , ", h k f the most
h . d d" Kierleegaard wntes, IS t e wor o
the one w o lS . ea , d faithfullove."2 But it is certainly not the
disinterested, frdee, 11 not only ask nothing from us, bur they
, t The dea alter a , 1'h'
easles, . 'h' 'ble in order to be forgotten, tS,
to do everyt mg possr d
also seem, '1 h the dead are perhaps the most deman -
however, rs preerse y w y d f, 1 s and de!inquent with respeet
in objects of love. We are e ense es
g d fl f om and negleet them,
ro the dea ; we ee r l' the Venetians' laek of love for
Only in ;his love it, nor are they capable
therr ctty, ,1 hey , he dead is diffieult. Ir is mueh easter to
of lovrng rt, smee lovrng t 'd l' cate and bloodless members
d h
'tisalive 1Oeoverlts er
preten t at 1 , . d' h 'bit ir to the tour-
le and rouge m 01' el ro ex 1
with sorne rna eup .. .' In Veniee the merehants are ro
ists who pay an the 1Ombs, where they offend
be found not rn the temp e tI e eadaver (or rather what
1 h living bur even more so 1 ;
nor on y t e d' h u h without being able 10 con ess
they believe 10 be a ca aver, t o g , to sa (if the mer-
it), But this eadaver is actually a specter, that tS b 1 Y d subtle
f
' ' ) the most ne u OllS an
hants are aware o ltS eXlstenee , . .
e, d thus as distant from a eadaver as one ean lmagme.
entlty, an
" f l' ; a )osthumous or complementaty
Speetrahty tS a form o r 'flnished, Speetrality thus
life begins graee and astuteness of
has, wlth respect ro I e, t e and recision of those who
that whieh is eompleted, the It Fs ereatures of this kind
110 longer have anythmg ahea o t, VI ' (' his ghost sto-
J
learned ro pereelve m elllce In
that Henry ames 1 h d 1 es) These speeters are so
ries he compares them to sy l' s t
n
e:. ving who invade their
diserete and so eluslve, that It IS a ways t e
homes and strain their reteenee.
4
0
On the Uses and Disadvantages of Living among Specters
But there is also another type of specrraliry rhar we may
larval, which is born fmm llor accepting lts own conditio
ll
,
forgetting ir so as ro prerend at aU COSts rhar ir srill has
weighr and !lesh. Such larval specrers do nor live alone bur
obstinately look for people who generated rhem through theit
conscience. They Iive in them as nightmares, as incubi ar sW;cUibi.
internaUy moving their lifeless members with strings made
While the /irsr rype of specrrality is perfecr, since it no longer
anything to add to what it has said or done, the larval specter.
must pretend ro have a furure in arder to cIear a space fOl"
torment from their own past, for their own incapacity ro
hend that they have, indeed, reached completion.
Ingeborg Bachmann once compared language ro a city, with irs
aneient center, its more recent and peripheraI boroughs, and fi-
naUy the encircling beltway and its gas stations, which are also an
integral pan of the city. The same utopia and rhe same ruin are
contained in OUt city and in out" language, and we have dreamt
and lost ourselves in both; indeed, they are merely the fotm that
this dream and this loss take. If we compare Venice ro a lan-
guage, then living in Venice is like studying Latin, like trying to
prono unce every word, syllable by syUable, in a dead language;
learning how to lose and rediscover our way in the bottlenecks of
dedensions and unexpected openings of supines and future in-
/initives. It musr be remembered, tbough, that one should never
dedare a language dead provided that it still somehow speaks and
is read; it is only impossible-or nearly impossible-to aSSume
the position of a subjecr in such a language, of the one who says
"1." The truth is rhat a dead language, jusr like Venice, is a spectral
language rhat we cannor speak bur rhat stiU quivers and hums and
whispers in ts Qwn special way, so we can eventually come to un-
dersrand and decipher ir, albeit wirh so me effon and rhe help of
a dicrionary. But ro whom does a dead language speak? To whom
do es rhe specrer of language rurn? Nor ro us, certainly, but not
even ro its addressees from another time, of whom ir no Ionger has
any recoUecrion. And yet, preeisely for rhis reason, ir is as if only
On the Uses an
,I"L mang Specters 41
d Disadvantages aJ tvzng a
. I n ua e speaks, a \anguage the
for the /irst rime(, that he has thus
thil,)$Opwe> refers to t oug. ) by saying rhar it speaks-
.. .. \ a spectral conslstency
Ir Wltl ,

f
. mblem of modernity, 1 In a
Venice is therefore the tIue e e one evoked by Tafun ar the
letely differenr sense flom rh . t new r nuava] but last
comp \ dd Our tIme IS no e l!
cnd of his inaugura a and larval. This is what we usua y
[l1ovissimoL (hat 1$ too . ostmodernity, without suspectmg
understand as pOsrhIStOly 01 being consigned ro a posthu-
h t this conditIon necessatlly. .. thar the life of the spec-
t
a
ll

c
thout Imagmlllg .
S and spectra IlC, WI . dltion char ir tmpases
mO
U
1 d pervlOuS con, .
.. the most hturglca an In:. 1 f onduct and feroclOuS
tel 15 f romlsmg fU es o e . d
h observance o uneomp . . dawn dusk, mghr, an
t. e. with al! rheir speclal prayers Ol ,
btames, . 1\
the rest of the canOillca deceney of the larval specters who
Henee the lack of ngor an d l! I nguages, al! orders and al!
live among uso Al! peoples an da l! s:vereigns, the churehes and
institutions, al! parllaments an d gowns, have slipped one af-
the synagog
ues
, rhe ermmes anlaI.val condirion, though they are
. bly mro a < b dI
ter another, mexora, , f' And so writers wnte a y,
unprepared for and unconsclOUS hO is alivci
SInce they need ro pretend thar t e
d
.mulate a political hfe for
. b h y nee ro SI h
leg
islate in valll ecause t e d. ed of piety beca use t ey
. . r are epnv
their larval natIons; le IglOns 1, b and feel at home among
1, bl ss t e rom s .
no langer know ow to eh e sl<:eletons and mannequms
.. 1, wywese d
them. Thls IS t e reason. d ro cheerful!y con uct
IB d ummles preten ll1g d
marching StI y an m . 1 . l Ing rhat their decompose
h
. Wit lOut lea IZ h .
their wn ex umatlon, . 1, bl. s and tatters, char t elf
1 . them 1Il s am e
members are eavlll
g
l
1 r and unintel!igible.
words have become g 0$50 a le
ot
hing of any of this. It no
f y, nice knows n . p.
But rhe specter o e. f rse to the tounsts. el-
h y, tlans or o eou , . .
longer appears ro t e ene h ' 1, d away by brazen admIl1lS-
b . w oaree ase .hh.
haps it appears ro eggals. 1 f m lane ro lane wIt t elf
ho anxlOUS y eross ro
trators, or to rats w
4
2
On the Uses and Disadvantaffes 0+ Li '
6' 'J. vmg among Specters
muzzles to the ground ' h
1
' al to tose rare pe 1 h l'
to ucubrate on this oC
t
'd d < al' e w o, Ike exiles
11 en aVOI e le S' '
argues, with its choirboy 1'1 . sson. lIlce what the
h 1
- 1 (e VOl ce IS th . f 11 1 '.
t e anguages ofPur "at 1 a t le Cltles and
h Jope now surVlve on1y a h
tose who have underst d 1 s l' antasms, then
. 00 tlese m '.
lar deeds, only thos
e
1 .' OSt lIltlmate and mOSt
d
w 10 leCIte and re d 1 d'
an stones, will perhaps b bl cor r le Iscarnate
h
h h' e a e one day to r h b
w IC Istory-in wh' 1 j'fc eopen t at reach
IC 1 1 e-suddenly fulfills its pro mise.
Gn What We Can Not Do
Deleuze once defined the operaran of power as a separaran
af humans from what they can do, that is, from their potential-
iry. Active forces are impeded from being put into practice either
because they are deprived of the material conditions that make
them possible ar because a prohibitian makes them formally im-
passibl
e
. In both cases pawer-and rhis is its most oppressive and
brural form-separates human beings from their potentiality and,
in this way, renders rhem impotent. There i5, neverthe1ess, another
and more insidious operaria n of power rhat does nor irnrnediately
affeet what humans can do-their potentiality-but rather their
imporentiality," that is, what rhey cannor do, or better, can nor
do
l
That potentiality is always also constitutively an impotential-
ity, that every ability to do is also always already an ability to not
do, is the decisive point of the theory of potentiality developed
by Aristode in the ninth book of the Metaphysics. "Impotential-
iry [adynamia]," he writes, ('is a privation contrary to potentiality
[dynamis]. Every potentiality is impotentiality of the same [poren-
tiality] and with respect to the same [potenrality]" (104
6a
3
0
-3
1
).
"Impotentiality" does not mean hele only absenee of potentiality,
not being able to do, but also and above all "being able to not do,"
being able te nor exercise onc's wn potcntiality. And, indeed, ir
43
44
On What We Can Not Do
is precisely this specifie ambivalenee of .111 potentiality-whieh
always the power to be and to not be, to do and to not "v-c"av_
defines, in faet, human potentiality. This is to say that human
ings are the living beings that, existing in the mode of potentiality,
are eapable just as mueh of one thing as its opposite, to do jUst
to nOt do. This exposes them, more than any other living being,
to the risk of error; but, at the same time, it pennits human beings
to aeeumulate and freely master their own eapacities, to transfo
nn
them into "faeulties." Ir is not only the measure of what someone
can do, but also and primarily the eapaeity of maintaining one_
self in relation to one's own possibility to not do, that defines the
status of ones aetion. While fire can only bU1"l1, and Other living
beings are only eapable of their Own speeifie potentialities_they
are eapable of only this or that behavior inseribed into their bio-
logieal voeation-human beings are the animals eapabl
e
of their
Own impotentiality.
It is on this other, more obseure, faee oE potentiality that today
the pOwer one ironically defines as "demacra tic" prefers to aet. Ir
separates humans not only and not so mueh from what they can
do but primarily and fo
r
the mOSt pan from what they can not
do. Separated fro
m
his impotentiality, deprived of the experienee
of what he can not do, today's man believes himself eapabl
e
of
everything, and so he repeats his jovial "no problem," and his ir-
responsible "1 can do it," precisely when he should instead realize
that he has been consigned in unheard of measure to forees and
proeesses Over whieh he has lost all control. He has be
eome
blind
not to his eapacities but to his ineapaeities, not to what he can do
but ro What he cannor, or can nor, do.
Henee the definitive eonfusion in Our time between jobs and
voeations, professional identities and social roles, eaeh of whieh
is impersonated by a walk-on actor who
se
arrogan ce is in inverse
Proponion to the instability and uneenainty of his or her perfor-
mance. The idea that anyone can do or be anything_the suspi-
cion that not only eould the doctor who examines me today be a
On What We Can Not Do
45
ut thar evcn the executioner who kills me
'deo artist tomorrow, b _,. 1 I 'nger-is nothing bllt the
VI . K fl ' TheTrta asoaSI .
is aetually, as III a that is simply bending hlm-
refieerion of thedawal h' Ilexibility that is today the pnmary
If aceor lllg ro t IS
al' herse
l
h market demands from eaeh persono
ualrty tlat t e
q h'
10re im overished and less free than t 15
Norhing makes us n . I
P
Those who are separated [rom
f m Impotenna Ity. '11 d
estrangement ro I . tl'll resist, they can srl not o.
d an loweVCl, s , .. I
what they can o, e. ' d from their own impotennallty ose,. on
Those who are scpalatc I . to resist And just as It 15
d ti f all r le eapaelty .
the other han, 1st o f h 'annot be that guarantees
. reness o w at wc e h
only the burnll1g awa .. I the lucid vis ion of w at we
h [ h t wc are so It IS on y .
the trut o w a dI' t gives consistency to our actlOns.
cannot) Ol" can not, o t 1a
6 Identity without the Person
h The desire to be recognized by others is inseparable from being
Indeed, recognition is so essential thar, according to
ege , everyone IS ready ro put his or her own Jife in jeopardy in
rO,obtam l,t. !his is nor merely a question of satisfaction or
ove, :ather, ,Ir 1$ only through recognition by others thar man
can constltute hlffiSelf as a persono
h originally means "mask," and it is through the mask that
t e ,In acqUlres a role and a social idenrity. In Rome ev-
ery mdlvldual was identified by a name that expressed his belon _
mg to a gen:, ro a lmcage; but this Jincage was dcfined in turn
the ancestor s mask of wax that every patrician family kept in
atflum of ltS here, ir only takes a small step to trans-
form persona mto the personality" that defines the place of the in-
the dramas and rituals of social Jife. Eventually, persona
f ame to Slglllfy the Jundlcal capaclty and political dignity of the
[ce mano The slave, masmuch as he OI she had neither ancestors
?or a, nar a name, likewise couId not have a "persona," rha;
!s, a capacity (servus non habet personam). The stru le
for recogllltlOn !S, therefore, the struggle for a mask but th' gg 1
. 'd . h h " ' !S mase
es Wlt t e personality" thar society recognizes in ever
(or with the "personage" that it makes of the
Wlt ,at tunes, retIcent connivance).
Identity without the Person 47
Ir is hardly surprising rhar one's recognition as a person was for
millennia one's most jealously guarded and significant possession.
Other human beings ate important and necessary primarily be-
cause rhey can recognize me. Even the power, glory, and wealrh
that the "others" seem so sensirive ro, make sense, in the final
analysis, only in view of this recognition of personal identity. Of
course, one can-as it is said that the Caliph of Baghdad, Harn
al-Rasld, was fond of doing-walk incognito through the streets
dress
ed
as a beggar. But if there were never a moment in which
rhe name, glory, wealrh, and power were recognized as "mine,"
iE-as certain sainrs recommend doing-I were ro live my whole
lfe in nonrecognition, then my personal identity would also be
lost forever.
In our culture, however, rhe "persona-mask" does nor only have
a juridical sgnificance. Ir also made a decsive contribution ro rhe
formation of the moral persono This formation (irst took place in
the theater but also in stoic philosophy, which modeled its ethics
on the relationship between the actor and his mask. This relation-
ship is defined by a double intensity: on the one hand, the actor
can neither aspire ro choose nor ro refuse rhe part thar rhe au-
thor has assigned to him. On the other hand, he cannot idenrify
himself with the part without leaving sorne residue. "Remember,"
Epicterus writes,
thar you are an actor in a part that the author of rhe play chose to give
you: shorr jfhe wants ir short, long jfhe wants ir long. Ifhe wants you
to aet the part of a beggar, see that you act the part skillfully. And do the
samc ifir is a part of a cripplc, or a public official, or a private citizen. Ir
is not up to you to choose your parto But what does depend on you is to
skillfully perform rhe persona rhar has becn assigned to you.
l
Nevertheless, the actor (like the sage, who takes the actor as a para-
digm) must not identify completely with his part, thus confusing
himself with his srage persona: "The time is coming," Epicrerus
admonishes, "when actors will believe that their masks and cos-
turnes reflect rheir very selves."2
Identity without the Person
The moral person constitutes himself, then, through, ar once
ro, an,d a distancing [rom, rhe social mask: he
Ir wlthout reservatlon and, at rhe same time, almost i'l mF'en:eF'til,lv ...
distan ces himself from it.
Perhaps nowhere does this ambivalent gesture, along with the
ethical gap that it opens up between man and his mask, aD'Dear
with 5uch evidence as in the Raman paintings and masaies rhar
represent the silent dialogue between the actor and his mask. The
actor is depicted here either standing or sitting in from of his
mask, which is held in his left hand or is placed on a pedestal.
The actor's idealized posture and engrossed expression, as he fixes
his gaze on the blind eyes of the mask, are a testimony ro the
significance of their relationship. This relationship reaches
ltS CfJtlcal threshold-and, at the same time, the beginning of its
ded1I1e-at rhe cornmencemcl1t of rhe modern age, with portraits
of actors in the commedia dellarte: Giovanni Gabrielli (known as il
Sivello), Domenico Biancolelli (known as Arlecchino), and Tristano
Maninelli (he also known as Ar!ecchino). Now the actor no lon-
ger looks at his mask, which is still displayed as he holds it in his
hand. The distance between man and "persona," so blurry in clas-
sical representations, is accentuated by rhe vivacity of the gaze thar
the actor decisively and inquisitively direcrs toward rhe spectator.
In second half of the nineteemh century, techniques used by
the pollee undergo an unexpected development, which involves a
decisive transformation of the concept of identity. From this point
ldentlty no longer has, essentialIy, anything ro do with recognition
and the person's social prestigc. lnstead, ir responds ro rhe neces-
sity of ensuring another type of recognition: that of the recidivist
criminal by the poi ice officer. It is not easy for us-habituated as
;ve are to the knowledge that we are recorded with great precision
111 files and databases-to imagine juSt how arduous it could be to
ascenain personal identity in a society that had neither photogra-
phy nor documents of identification. As a matter of fact, in the
second half of the nineteenth century this became the principal
problem among those who saw themselves as the "defenders of
Identity without the Person
49
. "against the appearance, and increasing diffusian, af the
soclety f h' 1
ure that seems ro canstitute the ohsession o t e nmeteent 1
fig . bourgeoisie' the "persistent offender." Both France and
centli1y . ... fi
E
1 nd passed laws that clearly dlstmgUlshed between the rst-
ng a d h 'd"
. criminal (whosc punishment was prison) an t e reC1 lVIst
tIm
e
' nal (who was punished instead by being deported to the
cnmI . . 1 .
1
. ) l'he necessity of being able to idennfy Wlt 1 cenalllty
cO an1es . . .
the persa n arrested for a crime became at thIs pOlnt a necessary
ndition for a functioning judiciary system.
co Ir was this necessity that pushed Alphonse Benllon, an obscure
bureaucrat in the Paris police department, ro establish toward the
end of the I870S a system of criminal identificanon based on an-
thropometric measurements and mug shots. In just a few years 1t
would beco me known to the whole world as Bertillonage. Whoever
happened ro be detained or arrested for whatever reason would
immediately be subjected ro a senes of measurements of the skulI,
arms, fingers, toes, ears, and face. Once the suspect had been pha-
rographed both in profile and fr?,ntalIy, the two photos would he
attached to the "Benllon card, wluch contalned alI the useful
identificatan data, according ro the system that ts inventor had
christened portrait parl.
Around the same time, Francis Galron (a cousin of Charles
Darwin)-by developing the work of Henry Faulds (a bureau-
crat in the English colonial administration)-began ro work on
a fingerprinting classification system, which would alIow for the
identification of recidivist criminals without posslbllrty of error.
Curiously, Galton was an avid supponer of Benillon's
pometric-photographic method and advocated ltS adoptlOn ll1
England. But he also maintained that the statlstJcal survey of fin-
gerprinting was particularly suited to natives from calomes,
whose physical characteristics tended to be confusmg and
peared indistinguishable ro a European eye. Al;orher field to WhlCh
this procedure was quickly appled was prostltutlon, because the
use af anthropometric procedures on women l11volved was
considered an embarrassing promiscuity, and anyway, theIr long
Identity without he 1'ersoll
hair rendered measurements more difficult to take. Ir was probably
reasoning of this sort-linked in same fashion ro racial ar sexual
ptejudices-that delayed the application of Galton's method be-
yond the colonial realm or, in the case of the United States, be-
yond citizens of African or Asian descent. But by the first two
decades of the twemieth century the system spread throughout the
world and, beginning in the 1920S, tended ro replace or to comple-
ment Bertiffollage.
For the first time in the history of humanity, identity was no
longer a function of rhe social "persona)' and ItS recognition by
othets but rathet a function of biological data, which could bear
no re1ation ro it. Human beings removed rhe mask rhar [or centu-
ries had been the basis of their tecognizability in arder to consign
rheil" identity to something rhar be10ngs ro thcm in an intimare
and exclusive way but with which they can in no way identity. No
longer do the "others," my fellow men, my friends or enemies,
guarantee my recognition. Not evcn my ethical capacity to nor
coincide with the social mask that I have nevertheless taken on
can guarantee such recognition. What llQW defines my identity
and recognizability are the senseless arabesques that my inked-up
thumb lcaves on a card in same poliee station. This is something
with which I have absolutely nothing to do, something with which
and by which I cannot in any way identity myself Ot take distance
from: naked !ife, a purely biological datum.3
Anthropomerric techniques that had been designed for ctimi-
nals remained their exclusive privilege foc sorne time. Even in
1943 the U.S. Congress rejected the Citizens Identification Act,
which aimed at instituting mandatory identification cards with
fingerprints for all citizens. Nevertheless, by the rule that stipu-
lates that what was invented for criminals, foreigners, Ol" Jews
will Sooner or later be invariably applied ro all human beings as
such, techniques that had been developed for recidivist criminals
began to extend in the course of the twentieth century to all
citizens. Thc mug shot, accompanied at times by fingerprints,
became such an integral patt of the identity card Ca kind of con-
Identity without the Pmon 51
densed Bertillon card) that it gradually became obligatory in ev-
ery state in the world. . d d . .11
I b I
Iy 1Il our ay an lS sn
But the extreme step las een ta <en on
n the process of its full realization. Thanks to the developmendt
1 . . h dl btain fingerpnnts an
f biometnc teehnologles t at can rapl yo. .
o f . I nners blOmemc ap-
retinal or iris patterns by means o opnea sea. ' . .
1 d h l
statlOnS and lmmlgra-
P
aratuses tend to move Jeyon t e po Ice
h h
f . d y !ife The entrance
don offices ro penetrate t e sp ere o evely a . .
ro the high scho01 cafeteria, even in elementary schools In SOlne
. . f I b . ector which are under-
countries (the mdustnes o t le lOmetnc s '. . d
I
lend that CltlzenS get use
going a frenetic deve opment, recomn I d
f h
. I ' uth) is already regu ate
ro this sort of control rom t elr car) yo . I
. .. hich srudents dlstracted y
by an opncal blOmetnc appararus, on w .
d h E tropean eountnes a new
P
lace their hands. In Franee an ot er l .
NES)
h aking WhlCh has an
biometric identity catd (I tS 1Il t e m '. . .
. . . .. b lements of ldentlficanon
elCCtrolllC mlCrodllp contammg aslC e. I
. d . I h ) well as a slgnarure samp e
Cfingerpnnts and 19tta p otoS , as, bl
to facilitate eommercial transactions. As pan of e
.. I d ernmentallty-m whlC a
drifting of polltlca power towar gov . .
. . I ith a stanst paradlgm-
liberal paradlgm cunous y converges w .
. . stablish an archIve eon-
Western democracIes are prepanng ro e . d
f
. . much ro cnsure secunty an
taining the DNA o every Cltnen, as
reptession of crime as to manage public health.
e . ters to the dangers em-
Our attention is ealled lrom vanous quar
bedded in the absolute and limidess control of a power that
. d .. formation of alllts Cltl-
at its disposal the biometnc an genetlC m
d h
. tion of the Jews Cand
zens. With such power at han , t e extermma h
.. d ) h h was undertaken on t e
every other tmagmable genoo e -w lC . Id h
I ffi
' d umentatlon-wou ave
basis of incomparably ess e oent oc
been total and inctedibly swift. I I b
Even more serious, nasmuch as it has been ete y d-
h h proeesses of blOmetrlC an
served, are the consequences t at t e b'
biological identification have Oil the constitution of the su Jehct.
. . . t n the basis of data t at
What kmd of ldent1ty can one construc o . d
. .. . I rsonal identity, whtch use
lS merely btologtcal? Certam y not a pe
52
ldentity without the Pmon
to be linked 'o the reeogni,ion by ather members of the
group and, at rhe saIne time, to (he capacity of rhe """""'1'01
take on the social tnask withoUl, however, being redueed 'o
in the linal analysis, my idemity is now de'ermined by v,,'
faets-tha, in no way depend on my will, and over whieh 1
no control-then rhe COllsrruction of something like a
e,hies beco mes problema,ie, What relationship can 1
wi,h my lingerprillls or with my gene,ie eode? How can 1
on, and also 'ake distan ce from, sueh faels? The new ,u.eI!irltj'
an idelllity witho
Ul
the person, as it were, in whieh the space
ethics as we used 'o think of i, loses its sense and must be lU'OU;lJt.'
through again fm
m
,he ground up, Ulllil ,his happens i,
sense to expeet a general eollapse of the personal ethieal pl'lnclp1<:s,
thar have governed Western edIles fo
r
centuries.
The redue,ion of man to a naked Jife is 'oday sueh a fai, .",v",>,
pli ,ha, it is by now the basis of ,he iden'ity that ,he s'ate
nizes in its eitizens, As the deponees 'o Ausehwitz no longer
either a name or a nationality, and Were by then only ,he numt)ers
,hat had be
en
'a[[ooed on ,heir arms, so ,he con'emporary
zens, lost in an anonymous mass and redueed 'o ,he level of po,
temial eriminals, are delined by no,hing other ,han their biomet,
rie da'a and, ultimatelY_by means of a SOrt of aneient fate, whieh
has become all ,he more opaque and incomprehensible_their
DNA. Neverthcless, if man is he who can indelinitely survive the
human, if there is stilI sorne humanity ,ha, always exislS beyond
the inhuman, then ethies must be possible even in ,he ex ,reme
posthistorieal ,hreshold in whieh Western humanity seems to be
stranded with a feeling of bo,h joy and horror, Like every appara,
tus, biome'ric idelllilication captures a more or less unconfessed
desire fo
r
happiness, In this case we are dealing with ,he wilI 'o be
freed from the weight of ,he person, from ,he moral as mueh as
the juridieal responsibili,y ,hat it earries along with ir. The person
(in both ,ragie and eomie guises) is also the bearer of guilt, so
the e,hies implied is neeessarily asee,ie, sinee it is founded on a
separation (of the individual from ,he mask, of the ethieal person
Identity without the Person 53
. ainst rhis separation that new
the juridieal person), Ir I:
S
:7.ts the illusion no' of a uhnlty: bt
'i/ Ar'o," without rhe pers,on a I At rhe mament w en m. 1-
mulup cano . 1 . 1 and aSOCia 1 en ,
'1' n of ma"s, , I 'd tlty
".",,, urely blO oglCa d 11
a
iled down to a p II the masks an a
are n bT to assume a , h
"'n"" also promised ,he a lIt Y the Internet, none of wh!e
are d d ,hird lives posslble on , add ,he fleetlllg
h
econ an h To th15 Qile can .
r e s ,11 belong to t em" " d by a machllle,
ever lea y . f bemg recogmze ,
Imo
st
insolent pleasUle o, I 'mplications ,hat are Illsepa-
.n a h burden of the emotlOna 1 b' The mote ,he
:u e recognition by anothe1' humanac;l:r;h one anothe1',
:oof ,he metropolis have lost eaeh orher in the
eltlz
en
h have beeome meapable o , 'th the apparatus
he more t ey h 'tual 1I1t1lnaey WI d I
' I more consoling t e VIf d' turn to look so eep y
eye ne h has learne 111 d 11 I
' (an apparatus t at I 11 identity an a rea
beeomes 'fh re they have ost a b ee-
' their re,inas), e ' as become for them lO e l'
iOto , the more gratlfymg lt h , fi' nd minute vanants:
he Great Maehine in 1[$ 111 mte maehine, from
:U;nstile of a while they
'deo eamera that enevo he a ararus that opens t,
:I
ank
or walk down the meet lO obligatory identlty
t door for them, all the ,,:,ay lO , e and any place for what
garage , hem 111 any '1m 'or
eard that will recogmze t h.' 'f ,he Machine reeognlzes me h '
they inexorably are, 1 al In Maehine, whieh knowshnelIt er
me- 1 am a lve 1 rantees t at am
at least, sees , I b t s eternally alert, gua d d my
sleep no' wakefu ness, u 'f h Gre.' Memo,y has reeor e
l
' ,1 am no' forgorren 1 t e
a ve, d
erieal or digital ata,
num , 'es are artificial and illusory
d these eertallltl , I those
That this pleasure an , e this are precise y
is evident, and rhe 61'st Qnes ,to does ir mean, in faet,
who experience them on a. datly eco' nition is not a person but a
to be reeognized, if that seems
numerical darum? An e m men who do nar rea y
nze me, a'e there not Plerhaps and ;eeuse me? And how is lit
. but on y ro co 'l' gesture, wIt 1 to recogmze me . . h neither a sml e 110l a
possible to commUfilcate wIt
54 Identity without the Person
graciousness nor reticence, but rather rhrough a biological
,dentlty?
And yet, fo!Iowing the rule that stipulates that history never re-
turns ro a lost statc, we must be prepared, with neither regret nor
hope, to seareh-beyond both personal identity and identity with-
out the person-fot that figure of the human. Or, perhaps,
what we must seareh for IS sllnply the figure of the living bein
tha'. faee beyond the mask juSt as mueh as it is beyond
blOmetne focies. We sti!I do not manage ro see this figure, but the
preSentlment of Ir suddenly startles liS in our bewilderment as l'
d . . n
our reams, 111 oul' unconsciollsness as in our lucidity.
Nudity
1. On April 8, 2005, a performance by Vanessa Beeeroft rook
place in Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie. A hundred nude women
(though, in truth, they were wearing transparent pantyhose)
stood, immobile and indifferent, exposed to the gaze of visitors
who, after having waited on a long line, entered in groups into
a vast space Oil rhe museum's ground floar. The visitors, at once
timid and eurious, began to east sidelong glanees at bodies that
wete, after a!I, there to be looked al. After walking around them,
as if they were conducting reconnaissance, rhe visitors began to
distan ce themselves embarrassedly from the almost military ranks
of the hostile, naked bodies. The first impression of those who at-
tempted t observe nor only rhe women bu! also rhe visitors was
that this was a nonplaee. Something that could have and, perhaps,
should have happened did not take place.
Clothed men who observe nude bodies: this seene irresistibly
evokes the sadomasoehistic ritual of power. In the beginning of
Pasolini's Salo (whieh more or less faithfu!Iy reproduces de Sade's
One Hundred and Twenty Days ofSodom), four parry-officials are
abour ro loek themselves in their villa. While they remain fu!Iy
clothed, the offieials proeeed to attentively inspeet vietims whom
they compel ro en ter naked, so as to evaluate their merits and de-
feets. Clothed, too, were the American soldiers standing in front of
apile of their tortured prisoners' naked bodies in the Abu Ghraib
55
Nudity
prison. But nothing of the like happened in the N .
ene: 111 a certain sense th . l' h' eue Natlonalgal_
. e le atlons lp here d b'
51I1Ce there was nothin . lid' seeme ro e tnverted,
. g mOle per lOUS than tI, b d d'
pcrtment gaze thar especiaIl h . e ore an lln-
tinuously easting toward tl'Yd
t
~ youlngest glrJS seemed to be COn-
e el ense ess spect t N h
supposed to happen and did not ha a ors. o: w at was
under any cirCUffiStance a sadom P h ~ e ~ l couId not have been,
, aSac IStlc s d
an even more improbable orgy. ance, a pro fOme of
Ir seemed as if evervone was ex eer .
painting of the LastJ 'd B P ant, as lf th
ey
were in a
, u gment. lit on cI - b .
hefe the roJes were reversed- th . 1 '. oser o servatlOn, even
cable and severe angels that'th e gtr s 111 pan.tyhose were the impla-
e lconographlc t d" I
resents as being eovel'ed bId fa ltlOll a ways rep-
y ong reSses Th '.
hand-hesitant and b dI d . e V1Sltors, on the other
. Un e -up as they . h
BerJ111 winter-personi6ed h. Wele at t e end of that
t e lcsurrected a '. h"
ment, whose depietion in fe II d' Wall111g t elr Judg-
I I
. 1 nu lty even the m t . .
t leo oglcal tradition ha h' d os sanctlmol110Us
s aur onze .
What did not take pI I
aee was, t lcrefore, ncither tOHUte llor a
Nudity
57
partouze: it was, rather, simple nudity. Precisely in this ample and
well-lllum11lated spaee-where a hundred female bodles of vari-
oUS ages, faces, and shapes were 011 display, which rhe gaze couid
examine with case and in detail-there seemed to be no trace of
nudity. The event that was not produeed (01', assuming that this
was the intention of the artst, the event that took place by llot
happening) called the very nudity of the human body unequivo-
cally into question.
2. Nudity, in our culture, is inseparable f10m a theological sig-
natllre, Everyone s familiar with the story of Genesis, according
10 which after their sin Adam and Eve realized fo1' the very flrst
time that they were naked: ''And the eyes of both were opened,
and they knew that they were nakcd" (Gen. 37). According to
theologians this does not happen as a result of sin having erased
their simple, previolls unawareness, Though they were not covered
by any human clothing befo re the Fall, Adam and Eve were not
naked; rather, they were covered by elothing of grace, which clung
10 them as a garment of glory (the Jewish version of this exegesis,
which can be found fOJ example in the Zohar, speaks about "cloth-
ing of light"). Ir is this supernatural clothing that was stripped
from the two after their sin. Denuded, they are lirst foreed to
cover themselves with a loineloth of flg leaves that they fashioned
themselves ("they sewed lig leaves together and made themselves
waistbands" [Gen. 3:7]). Later on, at the moment of their expul-
sion from Paradisc, they put on clothes made from animal skins,
whieh had been prepared for them by God. AII this means that
Oilr progenitors were nude in earthly Paradise only at two points:
the lirst, in the presumably very brief imerval between pereeiving
their nudity and making their loincloths; the second, the moment
when they take off their lig leaves and put on their new garments
of skins. And even during these two fleeting instanees, nudity ex-
ists only negatively, so to speak: as a privarion of the clothing of
grace and as a presaging of the resplendent garment of glory that
the blessed will reeeive in heaven. Fullnudity exists, perhaps, only
in the bodies of the damned in hell, as they umemittingly suffer
58
Nudity
the eternal torment of d . .
I
. lvme }ustlce 1 h .
t lat m Christianity tI . . . 11 t 1$ sense It can be said
lele IS no theolo f d '
of clothing. gy o nu lty, only a theology
3 This is the reason why E 1 P
th I
. II ( eterson one of h
eo oglans who has refIeet d h' t erare modern
h. . lean t e question f d
lS amc e Theologie des Kleie/, (Th I o nu lty, entitled
senrial themes of th h 1 ~ s ea ogy of Clothing). The es-
r. d e t ea ogIcal tradition d
ew ense pages. Pirst f 11 h. . are summe up m a
b o a , t ere 15 rhe 1m d'
etween nudity and sin: me late con11ection
Nudi?, appcars only after sin. Befare 1
cIorhmg [Unbekfeidetheit] b h' t 1(: Fall there WJS an absence of
N d' ' ut t 15 was nor y d [
U lty presupposes th b . ce nu lty Nacktheit] .
. J ' e a sence of clothll1 b . d
Wlt 11(. The perception of 1 d' . r g, ut Ir oes not coincide
1ll lty 1$ rnked ro rhe spiritual aet rhar rhe
Nudity 59
Scriptures define as rhe "opening of rhe eyes." Nudity is something
rhar Qne natices, whereas (he absence of clothes is something chal'
rem
ains
unobserved. Nudity could rhcrefore have been observed after
sin only if man's being had changed. This change, brought on by ,he
Fall, must have entire!y affected Adam and Eve's nature. There must
have been, in other words, a metaphysical transformation, affecting
man's mode of being, rather than mere!y a moral change.
1
This "metaphysical transformation" consists, however, simply in
denudatio
n
, in the loss of the clothing of grace:
The disrortion of human nature through sin leads ro the "discovery"
of the body, ro the perception of ts nudity. Before the Fall, man ex-
isted for God in such a way that his body, even in the absenee of
clothing, was not "naked." The human body's state of "not being na-
ked," despite ts apparent laek of clothing, is cxplained by the faet
that supernatural grace enveloped the human person lilee a garment.
Man did not simply find himself in the midst of the light of divine
glory: he was dothcd in the glory of God. Through sin, man loses the
glory of God, and so in his nature a body without glory now becomes
visible: the naleedness of pure corporeality, the denudation resulting
in pure functionality, a body that lacles all oobility since its ultimate
dignity lay io the divine glory now lost.
2
Peterson tries tO articulate in precise terms this essential connec-
tion between the Pall, nudity, and the loss of clothing, which
seems t make sin consist in a simple aet of undressing and baring
(Entblossung): "The 'denudation' of the bodies of the frst humans
must have preceded the awareness of their bodies' nudity. This
'discovery' of the human body, which allows its 'naked corporeal-
ity' ro appear, this ruthless denudation of the body with all the
signs of its sexuality, which become visible for the eyes that have
now been 'opened' by sin, can only be understood if we presup-
pose that what was 'covered' before the Pall is now what is 'discov-
ered,' that what was before veiled and dressed is now unveiled and
undressed."3
4. At this point the meaning of the theological apparatus hegins
60
Nudity
to take shape, by situating the very possibility of sin in the rela_
tionship that it establishes between nudity and clothing. Petersons
text appears, at least at first sight, to entail same contradictions.
The "metaphysical transformarian" thar results from sin 1S, in re-
ality, only the loss of the clothing of grace that hid the
corporeality" of the first couple. LogicalIy, this means that sin
at least the possibility of sin) already existed in this "naked COr-
poreality," which in tself is deprved of grace. Ir means rhat the
loss of clothing now makes this "naked corporeality" appear in its
biological "pure functionality," "wth alI the signs of its sexuality,"
as a "body that lacks any noblity." If already before sin there was
a need to cover up the human body with the veil of glory, then the
blissful and innocent paradisiacal nudity was preceded by another
nudity, a "naked corporeality" that sin, by removing the clothes of
grace, allows, mercilessly, ro appear.
The trLlth of the matter is that the seemingly secondalY proble
m
concerning the relationship between nudity and clothing coincides
with another problem that theologicalIy is utterly fundamental: the
link between nature and grace. "Just as clothing presupposes the body
rhar must be covered," Peterson writes, {(so grace presupposes natllre,
which must reach its fulfilIment in glory. This is why supernatural
grace is granted to man in Paradise as clothing. Man was created with-
out clothe.>-which means that he had a nature of his own, distinct
from divine nature-but he was created with this absence 01 ctothing in
order to then be dressed in the supernatural garment 01 gtol]'."4
The problem of nudity is, therefore, the problem ofhuman na-
ture in its relationship with grace.
5 Preserved in the ColIegiate Church ofSan Isidoro in Len is
an eleventh-century silver rcliquary, 011 whose sides scenes froro
the book of Genesis are sculpted in relief. One of the panels
shows Adam and Eve shortly befo re their expulsion fram Eden.
According to the biblical narrative, they have just realized that
they are naked and have covered their shame with fig lea ves,
held by their left hands. Before them stands their vexed creator,
wrapped in a sort of toga, and making an inquisitive gesture (0-
Nudity
61
. .' h nd (which is clarified by the caprion,
ward them wlth hlS nght ~ " [God said 10 Adam, Where art
"Dixit DOl1unus Adam ub, es. . . d by the right hands of
, ]) TI' gesture lS mtrrOle
thon?] [Gen. }:9 . llS. hl t make excuses for them-
. h 1 'ldlS yattempt o ,
the culpnts, as t ey c 11 d E '111tS at the serpent. 1 he
d
. t Eve an 've po
selves: A am pOlntS a. l' l' t us iIlustrates the verse
I
. h artlcu ar y tnteres s , .
next sccnc, W He p, . . D Adae et mulier etus
.... "Et fiectt DOJJ1mus eus
from Genesls }:21:. . " (A d G d made for Adam and
11
' t ndu,t eos n o
tunicas pe Iceas e, '. d I h d them). The unknown
l
c . of sk1l1s, an c ot e l'
for 115 WllC (umes d d, d . th a posture rcvea mg
. nts Adam aIrea y resse ,Wl . F
artlst represe . h d r hrful inventiveness, he deptcrs ,ve
great sadness; but, Wlt e lhgl h L rd appears to be putting
. I '11 aked W 1 e t e o .
wlth her egs Stl n, , lose face we can Just
. l' 1 f rce The woman, W 1 .
rhe tume on lCl )y o " f h d. ss resists this divine VIO-
barely see above the neckl1l1e o tbe le 'd beyond aIl doubt not
. I II h . ht thlS can e plOve
lence Wlt 1 a er lmg '. f I I . d the grimace of her
only by rhe unnatural torSlOl1 o lCf egs an
Nudity
squinting eyes but also by the gesrure of her right hand, which
despcrately grasps at God's garmcnt.
Why does Eve not want to wear her "fue coat"? Why does she
want to remain naked (it appears that she has either taken the fig
leaf off or that, in the vehemence of the scume, she has lost it)?
Of caurse, an aneient tradition, which can be traced back to Saint
Nilus, Theodoret of Cynrs, and ]erome, conceives of garments
made from animal skins-the Septuagint's chitonai dermatinoi-
as a symbol of death (indeed, petticria, the lta/ian word for fur
coar, which maintains a sin fuI connotation up ro this day, derives
from tunicae peiceae, the Vulgate's rendcrng of the same phrase).
This is the reason why, after baptism, those tunics of skins are
replaced by a garment made of white linen ("When, ready for the
clothes of Christ, we have taken off our tunics of skins," Jerome
writes, "we wilI then put on linen clothing, which has nothing to
do wirh death, but is wholIy white, so that, after having been bap-
tized, we can gird our loins in truth").' Other amhors, like John
Chrysostom and Augustine, insist instead on the literal meaning
of the episode. And it is probable that neither the maker of the
reliquary nor its buyers intended to give a particular significance
to Eve's gesture. Yet this episode acquires its proper sel1se only if
we remember that this is the last moment of the couple's life in
earthly Paradise, the last moment when Out progenitors could stilI
be naked, befare being clothed in animal skins and expelIed from
Paradise forever. lf this is indeed the case, then the slim, silvery
figure that desperately resists being clothed is an extraordinary
symbol of femininity. This woman is the tenacious custodian of
paradisiacal nudity.
6. That grace is something like a garment (Augustine calIs it
indumentum gratae)6 means thar, like aH garments, ir was an ad-
dition that can also be taken away. But for this very reason it also
means that the addition of grace constituted human corporeality,
originaIly, as "naked" and thar its removal always returns anew to
the exhibirion of nudity as sueh. And sinco grace, in the words
of the apostle, "was given to us in Christ befare the beginning of
Nudity
63
. f " t' 19 "given
o "O o as Au ustine never tireS o lepea 11 o' "
tune, smce It was, g b . were not yet in eXIstenCe,
1 t was t e glvcn
when those t w 10m 1 d o ted aS naked o it is always
human nature is always altea y constltu '
r "7
already "naked corpotea lty. h " . a garment while nature
the idea t at glaCe lS "
Peterso
n
stresses o oh' b "Clothes make the man
. d f d' Cltlng t e plOver ,
is a km o nu lty. ." 1" eo ,le" [Kleider machen
(
. . Gel"man verSlOll, clothes ma <e p 1
or lI1 lts
Leute]), he explains that .
h is made by bis dothes, since he IS
not only pea pie, manhas suc
H
na!l nature according to ts very
. 11 thout t em. UI '
UI1lllterprct'd) e WI d" f II alizcd only through grace
o
o b dO t grace an IS u y re " d
goal, 1S su al' $upcrnatural justice,
Henee Adam 1S do I l' Id bestow on him hIS dlgnIty
o L 1 eh e oniJ1g eou o f
immortalIty, lar y su G d d ned him for through the gIft o
and thus makc ViSIble what:ro es!!
Nudity
rhe parac.lsiacal
is rhe case with clothes . .' '. . S 10WS liS t lat-prcClscly as
be aranrcd to Al' . and immortality must
", b . . (am In Ole er to makc hun complete. Finall, we 1
lcach rhls ultimare rruth: rhar just as clorhcs vcil rhe body s): A so
r.natural gracc CQvcrs a naturc abandoned by Go,!', '1 111 d'
t len" .' gory an ert
"', _.115 IS as rhe possiblity of human narme de en-
clatmg lnto what rhe Scnpturcs caH "Desl "1 b . . . g
ma ' 1"" <. 1, t le CCOffilI1g VISIble of
1I1.ltS corruptioll and putrcfaction. There is thercfor
a ploroun to rh - r. . l 1 C. e
"1 l' "J e aet t lar t le Jatho}c tradirion caBs
e or 11J1g t lC gift of g" 1 .
b _'.' lace r lar man rCCClves in Paradisc. Man can
t? be onl)' through such clorhing of glory rhar fl
a cel taIn pOInr of Vlew 1 1 1 . < ,10m
pi
' f 1 l' , ,)e ongs ro 11m onl)' cxrel'iorl)', jusr likc any
cce o e ot l1na Somcrl . .
. . b' llng ver)' llnponanr is exp d' l'
rcnol"lt)' of mere 1 h' _} resse In r lIS cx-
"abscnce of dorh'
c
o:, .1ll
g
: grace created naturc, irs
lI1g, as we as rhc posslbdty of it bcing denudcd.8
Gcnesis does not explicitIy say anywl . h . I
it f " . 1ele t at luman nature was
eet, or potcntially eorrupted and in need
g aee. By asscrtrng the nceessity of graec, whieh lilee d tI .
must eover the nudity of the bod
y
e ti r h l' o
.. f' I II ' "a 10 re t eo ogy malees lt a
SOH o rne ueta> e supplcment that IJreeisely e . h' .
1 ,101 t IS lcaSOn prc-
lUman nature as its obseure bcarer' "11al,ed .' 1
1t "B h' .. . eOlporea-
tl
Y
' 1 ult.t 15 rngrnal nudity immediately disappcars undcrneath
le e ot lIno O' 0raee te th
r. b '. en reappear as natura lapsa only at the
o S1J1, that lS, at the moment of denudation. Just as the
po ltIea of homo saca postula tes as a presu) osition
a that rs rmpurc, sacred, and thus leillable this
na <e 1 e was produced only by means of such resu osirion
so the naleed eorporeality of human nature is ue
of the ongmal and luminous supplcment
el ot lrn
g
l
o graee. Thaugh the presupposition is hidden' behind
t le It comes back to light whenever the caesura of sin
dIVIdes and grace, nudity and clothing.
. lIS .means :In did not introduce evil into the world but
tevealed.lt. SIn essentialIy conssts, at least as far as its effecrs
ale concerned, 111 tbe removing of clothing Nudit " 1 d
. y, na <e corpo-
Nudity
reality," is the irreducible Gnostie residue rhar implies a constitu-
tive imperfection in creation, which must, at all evenrs, be covered
up. Neverthc1ess, rhe corruption of nature, which has now come ro
light, did not exist befo re sin but was itself produced by it.
7. If nudiry is marked in aur culture by sueh a weighry theologi-
callegacy, if it is only the obseure and ungraspable presupposition
of dothing, then ane comprehends why it could not have helped
bur miss irs appoinrment in Vanessa Beecroft's performance.
To eyes so profoundly (albeit unlenowingly) conditioned by the
theological tradition, that which appears when dothes (graee) are
taken off is nothing but their shadow. To completely liberate nu-
dity from the parterns of thought that permit us to conceive of
it solely in a privative and instantaneous manner is a task thar
requires uncommon lucidity.
In our culture one of the eonsequences of this theologieal nexus
that dosely unites nature and graee, nudity and dothing, is that
nudity is not actually a srare but rarher an event. Inasmuch as it
is the obscure presupposition of the addition of a piece of doth-
ing or rhe sudden result of irs removal-an unexpecred gift or an
unexpected loss-nudity belongs to time and history, not to being
and fonn. We can therefore only experienee nudiry as a denuda-
tion and a baring, never as a form and a stable possession. Ar any
rate, it is difficult to grasp and impossible to hold on to.
h is nor surprising, then, rhar in the performance ar rhe Neue
Nationalgalerie, jusr as in aH the preceding ones, rhe womeIl were
never eompletely naked but always bore so me trace of dothing
(shoes during the performance at the Gagosian Gallery in London,
shoes and a SOrt of gauze mask at the Guggenhcim Colleetion in
Venice, a black cache-sexe at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa). Strip-
tease, thar is ro say, the impossibility of nakedness, is in this sense
the paradigm for our relationship with nudity. As an event that
never reaches its eompleted form, as a fonn rhar does nor allow
itself ro be entirely seized as it occurs, nudity is, lirerally, infinire:
ir never stops occurring. Inasmuch as irs narure is essentially defec-
tive, inasmuch as ir is norhing orher rhan the event of rhe laek of
GG
Nudity
graee, nduldit
y
never satiate the gaze to whieh it is offered Th
gaze aVl y contInues to . h f, d' . e
pieee of clothing has be seale or nu lty, even when the smallest
were hidden have been a11 the parts that
lf at the b . . aee manner.
G ' eglllnlllg of the twentierh eentury, there spread f1
ermany to the rest of Euro . rom
a s?cial ideal thar as
ture, lt 15 no surprise rhar this was ossiblc o . na-
obseene nudity of orn h p. nly by Opposlllg the
Lichtkleid (clothes ograp y and prostitution with nudity as
. h l' f ltght), thereby unknowingly evoking the
anClent t ca ogIcaI . f'
graee. Wh 1 o lllnoeent nudity as clothing of
rather t lOse natutlsts dlsplayed was therefore not nudity bU!
. nor l1ature but rather grace.
An lllvestIgation tl . h .
of l111dity must first es to senously confront r,he problem
so urce of the theologieal o OlClnost gOb baek arehaeologleally ro the
n . d. . pposItlon etween nudlty and clothing
atUle an glaee. The aun h . '. '
P
rior to the s . b ele 1$ not ro tap Into an original state
eparatlOn ut to ca 1 d d .
paratus that p' j di' mpre len an neutraltze the ap-
loe uce t 11$ separatlon.
Nudity
8. Augustine's The ety of God is, in every sen se, a decisivc
mament [01' rhe consuuction of the rheological apparatus of na-
ture (nudity) / graee (clothing). Augustine had already developed
rhe conceptual foundations for his vicw on the subject in the
polemies against Pelagius that can be found in On Natu,.e and
Grace. Aecording ro Pelagius-one of rhe most integral figures
among those wholll the dogmatie orthodoxy ended up pushing
to rhe margins of rhe Christian tradition-grace is nothing other
than human nature just as Cod ereated it, with free will (nullam
dicit dei gratiam nisi naturam nostram cum libero arbitrio).9 As a
result the possibility of nar sinning inheres in human nature in
an inseparable way (Augustine uses in his critique of Pelagius
the ward inamissibile, that whieh cannot be lost) and without
the need for further graee. Pe1agius does not deny the existence
of grace hut idcntifies ir with Edenic nature, which he in turn
identifies with the sphere of possibiliry or porentialiry (posse) that
precedes both wil! (velle) and aclon (aco). Adam's sin-whieh
is a sin of rhe will-does nor necessarily signify, therefore, rhe
l055 o[ grace, which is in turn passcd 011 as a curse to rhe entre
human raee ("per tmiversam Jzassam," as Augllstinc writes), 011
rhe contrary, though ir is a given thar humans have sinned and
continue to sin, ir nevertheless rcmains (l'ue thar, at least de sola
possibilitate, every man-just like Adam in Paradise-is eapable
of not sinning.
Ir is this identification of nature with grace that Augustine re-
jects so tenaciously in his anti-Pclagian writings, affirming instead
their irreducible difference. At stake in ,he differenee between the
two is nothing less than the diseovery of the doctrine of Original
Sin, whieh would be offieialIy raken tlp by he Church only twO
eenturies later, at the Second Cotlncil of Orange. Ir is enough for
now ro observe that the interpretation of the Edenic condition and
Adam's PalI in The City ofGod is based on this opposition between
nature and grace. Adam and Eve were created with animal rather
than spirimal bodies, but theil' bodies were clothed with grace as if
it had been a garment. Consequent1y, just as they knew neither ill-
ness nor death, likewise, they did not know the libido, that is, the
uneontrolIable excitation of tbeir private parts (obscenae). Libido
68 Nudity
is rhe technical tcrm in Augustine thar defines rhe consequcnce of
sin. On the basis of a passage fro111 Paul (" Caro enim concupiscit
advmul' [Gal. 5'17]), libido is defined as a rebellion of the flesh
and its desires against rhe spirit, as an irremediable split bct\Vcen
flesh (caro--sarx-is the term by which Faul expresses the subjec-
don of man ro sin) and wilL Augustine writes rhar befare sin,
as che Scripturcs say, "man and his wife were botb nakcd, and were
nor ashamed." This was llor beca use chey did nor see ebeir nudiey;
racher, thcir nudity was nor yet indecent, because rhe libido did nor
yet aro use their members against eheir will. ... Their eyes werc open,
bue nor in arder to recognize what was granted to them under che
clothing of gracc, since rheir members did nor yet know how to rebel
against ebejr wiII. When chis grace was srripped from rhem, in order
ro punish rheir disobcdicnce wirh a commensurare punishmenr, a
new impudence was awakened in rhe urges of rheir bodies. The con-
sequence was rhar rheir nudiry became indecent, rhus making rhem
aware of rheir condirion and dismayed by ir. 10
The parts of the body that could once be freely exposed in their
glory (glorianda) thus beco me something that had ro be hidden
(pudenda). Hence the shame that drives Adam and Eve ro cover
themselves with fig leaves, and which becomes fram that day on
such an inseparable element of the human condition that, Augus-
tine writes, "even in the dark solitudes of India, even those who
ate accustomed ro philosophize in the nude (and are therefore
called gymnosophists), cover their genitals in order to differentiate
them from the other parts oftheir body.'",
9. At this point Augustine presents his surprising conception of
Edenic sexuality, or at least what this sexuality would llave been
had humans not sinned. If the posdapsarian libido is defined by
the impossibility of conrralling the genitals, then the state of grace
that preceded sin consists in the will's perfect control over the sex-
ualorgans:
In Paradise, if culpable disobedience had nor been punished wirh an-
orher disobedience, marriage would nor have known this resisrance,
Nudity
rhis opposirion, rhis srrugg[e berween libido and will. On rhe con-
trary, our private pares, like all the orher pares of rhe body, would
have been ar rhe service of rhe will. Thar which was crea red fo1' rhis
end would have sown the ficld of generarian, as the hand sows rhe
eareh .... Man would have sown his sccd and woman would have
received ir in her genirals, ooly when necessa1'y, aod ro rhe dcgrec nec-
essary, as a result of rhe will's command, and nor due ro rhe excitation
of rhe libido."12
To substantiare his hypothesis, Augustine does nar hesitate to rurn
to a somewhat grotesque example of the will's control over those
badily pans that seem to be uncontrollable:
We know of mCl1 who scr rhemselvcs apare from orhers, by ther
amaziog ability to acheve wirh rheir body things other meo are abso-
lurely incapable oC There are rhose who can move their ears, one ar a
rime or both rogether. Orhers arc able to move their hairline, shifting
their scalp back and forth at will. Still others can vomir on command
everyrhing thar rhey have devoured by slighrly pressing 00 rheir belly,
as if it were a bago Some can imirare the cres of birds and beasts, as
well as rhe voiees of orher men, so perfectly rhar no difference can be
dcrecred. And flnally, there are rhose who can volumarily emir from
thcir anus a variet)' of sounds withour any unpleasanr odor, ro the ef-
feer rhar rhey appear ro be singing from thar region. 13
It is on the basis of this not very edifying model that we must
imagine Edenic sexuality under the clothes of grace. With a signal
of the will, the genitals would have been aroused, just as easily as
we might raise a hand, and the husband would impregnate his
wife without the burning stimulation of the libido: "It would have
been possible for man t transmit his seed ro his wife without
harming her physical integrity, just as now the flow of the men-
strual blood can come forth fram the womb of a virgin without
compromising her integrity."14
This chimera (''At present," Augustine writes, "there is noth-
ing that would enable us to demonstrate how this is possible")
of a nature perfecdy submissive ro grace renders the corporeality
of mankind after the Fall even more obscene. The uncontrallable
Nudity
nudity of the gcnitals is rhe ciphcr of nature's corru!1tion after .
l
'lh' . S111,
W lle 1 UIDal1lty tranSl111ts through procreation.
10. Ir is worth emphasizing the paradoxical conception of hu-
man d:<lt lies ar rhe foundaran of rhe aboye claims. This
COl1CeptlOll 15 In a?"reement with rhe doctrine of Original Sin (even
though the tcchmcal term peccatum originale is still missing) that
AugustIne espouses, cOlltrary to Pelagius. Confirmed by the COUll-
d of in 529, it would achieve its full elaboration only ill
ScholastlClsm. Accordmg to rhis doctrine human nature was C01'-
rupred by Adam's sin (through which "all have sinned " Ro
) d
. ' m.
5:12 , wtthour rhe aid of gracc human beings became abso-
lutely 111capable of doing good. But if we now ask ourselves what
the naturc became is, the answer is nor so simple.
A,dam \:as 111 faet crcatcd l11 grace, and rhereforc his nature, like
hIs nudIty, was c10aked with divine gifts right from rhe start. Be-
cause man abandoncd Cad, after sin he was abandoned to himself
and left entirely ro the mercy of his nature. Nevertheless, the loss
of grace does nor simply allow a previous and, for thar matter, un-
known n,ature appear. Instead, what appears is only a corrupted
(m detenus commutata) thar results fmm this 1055 of grace.
WIth the oE grace an original nature comes ro light thar is
no longer ongmal, beca use only sin s original, and so this nature
has become mcrcly a derivation of this sin.
It is not a coincidence thar in his commentary Oil Thomas
Aquinas's Summa Theologica, Thomas Cajetan (a perceptive theo-
logran who opposed Martin Luther in 1518 at the behest of the
Carholc found it necessary ro make use of a comparison
wIth nudIty 111 arder to ilIustrate rhis paradox. The difference, he
says, bct\iVcen a supposedly pure" human nature (that was nor cre-
ated in gracc) and an originally graceful nature that was rhen 10st
is the same as [he difference betwecn a Ilude person and a person
who has been denuded (expoliata). This analogy is illuminating
llor only 111 rcgard to nature but also in reoard ro nudity and it
also c1arifies the sense of the theological rhat stubbornly
1mks dotlllng wlth gracc, nature with nudity. Just as the nudity
Nudity
7
1
of a person who is simply nude is idenrieal ro-and nevertheless
different from-the nudity of a person who has been denuded,
so human nature, which has lost what was not nature (grace), is
different from what it was before grace had been added to it. Na-
tute is now defined by rhe non-narure (grace) that it has lost, just
s nudity is defined by the non-nudity (cIothingl that has been
ah'
stripped from it. Nature and grace, Iludiry and dot ing, constltute
a singular aggregate whose elements are separate and autono:nous,
though-at least wirh regard ro nature-rhey do not r:emarn un-
ehanged aftet their separation. But this means that nudrty and na-
ture are-as such-impossible: there is, instead, only banng, only
corrupted naturc.
IL The Bible nowhere states that Adam and Eve were unable to
see their nudity before they had sinned because it was covered by
the c10thes of grace. The only thing certain is that in the begin-
ning Adam and Eve were naked and feIt no shame ("And they
were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed"
[Gen. 2:25]). After the FalI, by contrasr, rhey felt the need ro cover
themselves with fig leaves. The transgression of the divine com-
mand entails, then, a passage from nudity without shame ro nu-
dity that must be concealed.
The nostalgia for nudity without shame, the idea that what was
lost through sin is the possibility of being nude without blush-
ing, forcefulIy resurfaces in the Gospels as welI a;. in
texts (which we unreasonably contInue to call apocryphal, thar
is, "hidden"). In The GospelAccording 10 Thomaswe read: "His dis-
ciples asked: 'When wilI you reveal yourself ro us, and when wilI
we see you?' Jesus answered: 'Whcn you undress wlthout shame,
when you take off your cIothes and trample on rhem wirh your
feet like children: then you will behold the Son of the living God,
'11 h e "'15
and you Wl ave no leal'.
In rhe tradition of the Christian community of the firsr twO
centuries, the only occasion in which one could be nude without
shame was rhe baptismal ritual, which was not usualIy performed
on newborn babies bur mainly on aduIrs (the baptism of infants
7
2
Nudity
beeame obligatory only after the doctrine of Original Sin w
eepted by the entire Chureh). It entailed the irnmersion in as
of the naked catechumen in the presence of mernbers of th
rnunity (it is to this ritualistic nudity of the baptized that
rhe relatlve and otherwise unexplainable tolerance in our
toward beach nudity). The Catechetica! Lectures by Cyril
lem commcnts 011 this rite in rhe following way: "As soon as
enter, immediately take off your dothes, in order ro the
removmg of the old man and his sins .... How Marvelous!
a,re nucle in front everyone's eyes, and they do not feel ashamed,
smee they are the unage of Adam the first-formed man wh
Id
" ' , owas
lla<e In Paradlse and was nor ashamed."16
The clothes, whieh the baptized trample on with their feet
"h lh fh " ,are
t e ot es o s ame, heirs of rhe "tunics of skins" thar Our pro-
gel1ltors wore at the moment they were expelled from Parad'
These are the dothes that get replaced after baptism by the
meu: of,wlute lmen. Bur what is decisive in rhe ritual of
baptIsm 1$ prcClsely its evocarian of Adamic nudity without shame
as a symbol and of redemption. And it is for this nudity
that, on the relIquary 111 San s,doro, Eve feels nostalgia, as she
refuses to put on the dorhes that God is foreing her ro wear.
.12. "Like children": that infantile nudity is the paradigm of nu-
shame is a very aneient morif, nor only in Gn05-
tlC rexts lrke The Cospel According to Thomas but also in Jewish
and Chnstlan doeume.nts. Even though the docrrine aeeording
to wh1eh Ongmal Sm 1S propagated through proereation implies
rhe rc)cctlon of l11fantile innocence we have seen-
the practiee ofbaptizing newborns), the faet that ehildren are not
ashamed by their nudity is often linked in the Christian tradition
with paradisiacal innocence. As we read in a Syrian text from rh
fifth eentury, "when the Seriptures say that 'they were both naked:
and. were nor ashamed,' this means rhar they were unaware of rheir
nudity, just like ehildren."t7 Though marked by Original Sin, ehil-
dren, msofar as they do not pereeive their nudity, dwell in a sort of
unaware of the shame rhar, according to Augustine, sanc-
nons the appearance of the libido.
Nudity 73
Ir is ro this idea tha!" we owe the praetiee (attested to-though
lu
sively-by sources up ro the slxteenrh century) of re-
. . l"
vin for boys (pum) the privilege of singmg dunng re 'glOUS
ser g " h'" . ( b') d
e . s almost as if their w lte vOlCe voce lanca conta111e ,
Iuncno
n
,
.' ntrast ro rhe murated" voices afrcr puberty (voces mutatae),
!O eo 'da h" 1
h signature of prelap5arian innocence. Cand, "or w lte, 15 r le
t . of the linen clothing that the baprized reecive after they
removed the clothes that symbolized sin and death. "Wholly
white," writes Jerome, "because it bear5 no dearh, and
o after having been baptized, we can gird our 10111s 111 truth and
s , . "18 B l d' 1 fi
cover all the shame of our past 5111S. ut a rea. y m t le .lst cen-
. Quintilian uses the word candida ro descnbe an attrIbute of
wy lW '
the human voiee (though, naturally, he does not refer ro e 1l ren s
voices). Thus, in the hisrory of sacred music we sce the artempr
ro ensure rhe persistcnce of rhe young voice by means of rhe ca8-
tration of the ehoirboys (pueri cantores) befare they have reaehed
uberty. The "white voiee" is the cipher of this nostalgia for a lost,
PI' d'
Edenic innocence-for something that, like pre apsanan nu lry,
we no longer undersrand.
13. A perspieuous example of thcologieal eategories persisting in
laces where we least expect ro encounter them occurs m Sartre. In
ehapter from Being and Nothingness dedieated ro the relation-
ship with the Orher, Sartre deals with the subjeet of nud1ty In con-
nection with obscenity and sadismo He does so 111 terms so closely
resembling Augustinian categorics th.c not
explainable by noting the eommon thcolog1eal mhentance that
infuses our entirc vocabulary of corporealny-we mlghr condude
rhar rhe connection was intenrional.
Desire, according (O Sartre, is aboye all a srrategy directed (0-
ward making the "flesh" [chai,. in French, carne in ltalian] appear
in the body of the Other. Impeding this "incarnarion". (another
theologieal term) of the body are not so mueh the matenal clothes
and the makeup that usually eoneeal it but rather the faet that the
body of the Other is always "in situarion": it is always already 111
the proeess of eompleting this or that gesture, th1S or that move-
74
Nudity
ment, with some goal in mind: "The Other's body is originally a
body in situation; flesh, on the contrary, appears as the pure
tingeney 01 presence. Ordinarily, it is hidden by makeup, clothes,
and so forth; but above all it is hidden by movements; nothing is
less 'in rhe flesh' rhan a dancer, even if she is nude. Desire is an at-
tempr to strip the body of its movements as of its clothes in ordet
to make ir exist as pure flesh; ir is an attempt to achieve an incar_
nation of the Other's body.""
This being always already "in situation" of the Other's body is
what Sartre calls "grace":
In grace, che body appears as a psychic being in situation. Ir rcveals
aboye all lts transccndencc, as a rranscendcnce-transcended; ir is in
aet and is understood in tcrms of che stuation and of che cnd ehar
ir pursues. Each movcment is apprehendcd in a perceptivc process
rhar goes from che present ro che [uture, ... Ir is chis imagc of l1eces_
sity and [reedom in movement ... char, strictly speaking, consritures
grace .... In grace rhe body 1S the instrument thar manifesrs freedom.
The graceful acr, insofar as it reveals rhe body as a precision
mene, furnishes rhis body at each instant wirh its justification fo
r

isting.
20
Even the theological meraphor of graee as clothing that impedes
the perception of nudity appears at this point: "Facticity, then, is
clothed and disguised by grace: the nudity of the flesh is wholly
present, but it cannot be seen. Thus the supreme coquetry, the '
supreme challenge of grace, is to exhibit the body unveiled with
no clothing, with no veil except grace itself. The most graeeful
body is the naked body whose acts surround it with an invisible
garment, hiding its flesh entirely, though it is completely present
to the spectators' eyes."2l
Ir is against this garment of grace thar the sadist directs his
strategy. The special incarnation that he wants to bring about
is "the obscene," which is nothing other than the loss of grace:
"The obscene is a species ofBeing-for-the-Other which bel
ongs
ro
the genus of the ungraceful [disgraceux] . ... The ungraceful ap-
pears ... when Orre of the elements of grace is thwarted in its real-
Nudity
75
.' when the body adopts poseures that entirely strip it of
reveal the inertia of its flesh."22 This is the reason why
the sadist tries, in every possible way, to make the flesh appear, ro
force the body of rhe Other into incongruous posmons that reveal
its obscenity, that is, irs irreparable loss of al! grace.
14 Analyses that have deep-even if unintentional-theologi

cal are often very pertinent. In many o t
sadomasochistic publications has recendy , W lC 11S
present the fltture victim elegantly dressed and In her
text: smiling, strolling with her friends, or flIpp1l1g rolug
. TUI"nI'ng a few pages forward, the reader su en y sees
magazrne. d h st
d d dad force to assume temo.
the same girl un resse ,tIC up, n . fr h
unnatural and painful positions, removrng all grace even d t e
lineaments of ber face, which are deformed and y spe-
. I . 1'he sadisric apparatus-wlth ItS straps, WhIPS,
Cla mstrutncnts. . 1 f .
and poires d'angoisse-is here the perfeet profane eqUlva ent o SIn
ci
whieh according to theologians, removes the clothes gra;efian
liberates in rhe body the absence of grace t at enes
Nudity
"nakcd corporeali"," Wh h d' .
I
"J' at t e 5a 1St tnes to '. h'
11an he empty shell of . , I I seIZe S not ll1g other
. " gIaCC, t le s 1adow that 1 "b'
tIon (the dressed girl in the hoto r 11e ell1g in situa-
c10thing of light, casts on t I ~ b : abhs on the next pagel, or the
the desire of the sadi t S e o y. ut preClsely for this reason
, s -as ante does n t f '1 .
for failure, since he never n o al to notc-IS dcstined
". anages to truly gr . b I h
l11carnation" (har he nI' 11' asp Hl ot 1 ands (he
d
. lec 1amea y tnes ro . de'
emed result seems to b l' d plO uce. ertall1ly, the
e ac lleve : the body of the Other is now
Nudity 77
entirely obscene and bteathless flesh, docilely holding the position
dictated by the torturer [carnefice]; it seems to luve definitively lost
both freedom and grace. But it is exactly this freedom that necessar-
ily remains unobtainable: "The more me sadist persists in treating
rhe Othcr as an instrument, rhe more this freedom eludes him."23
The nudity, rhe ungracefulness" (hat rhe sadist tries te seize in
his victim, is (like Adam's naked corporeality, according to theolo-
7
8
Nudity
gians) nothing other than the hypostasis and the evanescent sup-
pon of freedo,:, and grace: Nudity is that thing that must be pre-
supposed as pnor to grace In arder for something IIce sin to OCCUf.
Naked corporeality, like naked life, is only the obscure and impal-
pable bearer of gllllt. In rruth, there is only baring, only the infi-
nlte gestlculatlons that remove clothing and grace from rhe bod .
Nudity in our culture ends up looking like the beautiful
nude rhat Clemente Susini created in wax for rhe Grand Duke of
Tuscany's Museum of Natural History. One can remove the lay-
elS dus anatomrcalmodel ane at a time, allowing first the ab-
dom111al and pectoral walls to appear, then the anay of lungs and
Vlscera snll covered by rhe greater orncntum, thcn rhe heart and
Nudity 79
rhe intestines, until finaUy, inside the womh, one can make out a
small fetus. But no matter how much we open the wax model and
scrutinize it wilh our gaze, the naked body of the beautiful, dis-
cmboweled woman remains obstinately unobtainablc. Hence rhe
impurity, almost the sacredness, that scems ro inhere in this wax
model. Like naturc, nudity is impute because ir is acccssiblc only
by the removal of clothes (gracc).
15. In November r981 Helmur Newton published a diptych in
Vogue thar would soon become famous under the titIe "They Are
Coming." On the magazine's left page we see four completely na-
ked women (apart from their shoes, which rhe photographer appar-
entIy could not do withour) walking in a cold and stiff manner, like
models in a fashion show. The facing page to the right displays the
same models in che very same positions, but this time rhey are im-
maculately dressed in elegant clothes. The singular effect produced
80 Nudity
by rhis diprych is rhar, contrary ro al1 appearances, rhc rwo images
are actuaUy rhe same. The models wear rheir nudiry in exactly rhe
same way thar, Oil rhe opposite page, they wear their attire. Even
if ir is nor likely rhar he phorographer had a rheological intent,
certainly rhe nudiry/clorhing apparatlls seems ro be evoked here
and, perhaps uninrentionaUy, called into quesron. AU rhe more so
when, republishing me same dipryeh two years larer in Big Nudes,
Newron reversed rhe order of rhe images so rhar rhe dressed women
precede rhe nude women, jusr as in Paradise rhe clorhing of grace
precedes rhe denudarion. Bur even in this reversed arder the elfect
remains unchanged: neither rhe eyes of the models nor the eyes of
rhe spectator have been openedj there is neither sharne nor glory,
neither pudenda nor glorianda. The equivalence of the two images
is further enhanced by the faces of the models, which express-as
is rhe conventan among fashion models-the sarne indifference in
both photos. The fce-which in the pictorial depicrons of the Pall
is rhe place where rhe artst represents rhe sorrow, shame, and dis-
may of the faUen couple (one thinks, above aU, of Masaccio's fresco
in the Brancacci Chape! in Florence)-acquires here the same gelid
inexpressiveness: ir is no longer a face.
In any case the essential point is that in Newron's diprych, as in
Beecroft's performance, nudiry has not taken place. Ir is as if naked
corporealiry and fallen nature, which had functioned as the theo-
logical presupposirons of cloming, have both been eliminated,
and so denudation no longer had anything left ro unveil. The only
thing left is rhe fasbion clothing, thar is, an undecidable element
between flesh and fabric, nature and grace. Fashion is the profane
heir of the theology of clothing, the mercantile secularizaron of
the prelapsarian Edenic condition.
16. In Genesis the ftuit that Eve gives ro Adam comes from the
tree of knowledge of good and evil and is meant, according to the
tempting words of rhe serpent, to "open their eyes" and commu-
nicate to them tbis knowledge ("Wben you eat from it, your eyes
will be opened, and you wil1 be like God, knowing good and evil"
[Gen. 3:5]). And indeed, rhe eyes of Adam and Eve are opened
Nudity
81
immediately afterward, but what they then come to know is des-
ignated by he Bible only aS nudity: 'And the eyes of both were
opened, and they knew tha they were naked." The only content
of met knowledge of good and evil is, therefore, nudity. But what
is this first objec and conrenr ofknowledge, this thing that we caU
nudity? What do we come ro know by knowing nudity?
Commenting on rhe biblical passage in question, Rashi writes:
"What does it mean 'they knew rhat they were naked'? It means
that they possessed a single precepr from God, and they stripped
themselves of it."" Genesis Rabbah explains thar Adam and Eve
were deprived of the justice and glory har carne wirh the obser-
vanee of God's commandment. According ro rhe apparatus thar
should be familiar ro us by now, the knowledge of nudity leads
back, once again, to a privation: rhe knowledge thar something
invisible and insubstantial (the c10thing of grace, the justice that
comes with rhe observance of rhe commandments) has been 10st.
Ir is possible, however, ro offer a different interpretation of rhis
absence of content of humanity's first knowledge. That this firsr
knowledge is devoid of cantent can, in faet, mean thar ir is nor rhe
knowledge of something but rather the knowledge of pure know-
ability. It means that to know nudity is not ro know an object but
onlyan absence of veils, only a possibiliry ofknowing. The nudiry
rhar rhe first humans saw in Paradise when their eyes werc opened
is, then, rhe opening of truth, of "disclosedness" (a-letheia, "un-
concealment"), withour which knowledge would not be possible.
The condition of no longer being covered by the clothing of grace
does not reveal rhe obscurry of flesh and sin bur rather the light
of knowability. There is nothing behind the presumed clothing
of grace, and it is precisely this condition of not having anything
behind it, this pure visibiliry and presence, rhat is nudity. To see a
body naked means ro perceive its pure knowability beyond every
secret, beyond al' befare its objective predicares.
'7. This kind of exegesis is not completely unfamiliar to Chris-
tian theology. In rhe Eastern tradition, represented by Basil the
Great anel John of Damascus, the knowledge of nudiry (epgnosis
Nudity
signifies the 1055 of rhe condition of cestas)' and the
bhssful 19noranee of self that defined the Edenie condition, as welI
:5 the. in man of his wicked yearning to
filI 11ls defieleneles (ton !upontos anap!erosis). Befare sin, the first
human beings lived in a state of idleness (schole) and fuIlness. The
true signifieanee of the opening of the eyes is the closing of the
eyes of the semI and rhe pcrccption of one's own state of fullncss
and as a statc of weakness and atechna (rhar is, a lacle of
apphed knowledge). Sin, then, does not reveal a laek or a defeet
111 human nature, whieh the clothing of graee eovered up. On the
contrary, Sll1 conslsts ltl percciving the fuIlness tbar defined the
Edenic condition as l lack.
If man had remained in Paradise, Basil writes, he would have
owed his clothes neither to natllre (as animals do) llor ro a tech-
nieal ability but only to the divine graee that responded to the
love he had far God. By eompelIing humans to abandon their
blissful Edenic contemplaran, sin plunges thcm into the vain
search for the technicaI knowledge and rhe sciences thar distraer
them from the eontemplation of God. Aecording ro this tradi-
nud1ty does not refer to corporeality) as it do es in Augus-
tlne and the rest of the Latin tradition, but rather to the 10ss of
con:emplation-that is, the knowledge of the pure knowability
of (,od-and lts substitlltion by applied and earthly knowledge.
In faet, when God makes Adam fall asleep in order to remove his
rib) Adam enjoys a state of perfect contemplation that culminates
ecstasy ecstasy," Augustine writes, "he participated
tl1 the angelte court and, by penetrating the sanetuary of God, he
undersrood the mysteries")." The Fall is therefore not a fall of the
esh but of the mind. At stake in nudity and the loss of innoeenee
is not this or that other way of making love but the hierarehy and
modaltttes of knowledge.
18. Nudity-or rather denudation-as a eipher of knowledge,
belongs ro the voeabulary of philosophy and mystieism. This is the
case not only beeause it relates ro the objeet of supreme knowledge
that is, "nakcd being)) (esse autem Deum esse nudum sine
Nudity
est), but also insofar as it relates to the very proeess of knowledge.
In medieval psyehology the medium of knowledge is eaIled an tm-
age, or "phantasm," or speeies. The proeess that brings about per-
feet knowledge is therefore deseribed as a progresstve banng of thts
"phantasm," which-passing fmm the scnses to the imagm:tlon to
memory-is srripped Iitrle by Iittle of its sensible elements t!1 order
to present itself, once the denuCttio pefecta has been completed, as
an "inteIligible speeies," apure intention or image. Through the act
of intelleetion, the image beeomes perfeetly nude, and-Avtcenna
it were not alrcady naked, it would at any rate become
so, because the contemplative faculty strips this image in such a way
that no material affection can remain in it."26 Complete knowledge
is comemplation in and abour nudity.
In one of Eckhart's scrmons this connection between image and
nudity is further developed in a way that turns the image (identi-
fied with "naked essenee") into something like the pure and ab-
solute medium of knowledge: "The image is a simple and formal
emanation thar transfuses in its totality the naked essence, whtch
is how it is coneeived by the meraphysician .... It is alife [vita
quaedam] that can be coneeived as something that begins ro swelI
and tremble [intumescere et bullire] in itself and by itself, without
however thinking at the same time about its expansion outwards
[necdum cointe!!ecta ebullitione] ."27 In Eekhart's terminology bu/-
litio signifies the trembling 01' tbe internal tension of tbe
in the mind of God or of man (ens cognitivum), whereas ebulizttO
signifies the eondition of real objeets outside the mind extra
anima). The image, inasmuch as ir expresses naked bemg, 1S a
feet medium between the objeet in the mind and the real tht!1g.
As such, ir is neither a mere logical object nor a real enrity: Ir .1S
something that lives Ca life"); it is the trembling of the thing tl1
the medium of its own knowability; it is the quivering in whtch
the image alIows itself to be known. "The forms that exist in mat-
tcr/) wrires one of Eckhart's pupils, "tremble incessandy
tremant], like an ebullient strait between twO seas [tamquam. m
eurippo, hoc est in ebullitione] . ... This is the reason why nothtng
. f . bl "28
about them can be concelved o as ccrtalll 01' sta e.
Nudity
The nudiry of rhe human body is its image-rhat is, the trem_
bling rhat makes rhis body knowable bllt rhar remains, in itself,
ungraspable. Hcnce rhe uniquc fascination rhar imagcs exercse
ayer rhe human mind. Precisely beca use the irnagc is not the
rhing, but rhe thing's knowabiliry (irs nudity), it neither expresses
nor signifies the thing. Nevertheless, inasmuch as ir is nothing
orher rhan rhe giving of the rhing over to knowledge, norhing
orher rhan rhe stripping off of rhe clorhes rhat eover it, nudiry is
nor separare fram the rhing: ir is rhe rhing irselE
'9, An atrempr ro think abollt nudiry in all irs rheological com-
plexiry and, ar the same rime, ro move beyond rhe theological pet-
specrive is accomplished in Walrer Benjamin's work, Toward rhe
end of his essay OIl Goethe's Electh;e Affinities, he examines the
relarionship in beallty berween rhe veil and the veiled, appearanee
and essence, in connectiol1 with the character of Ottilia (who
rn
Benjamin saw as a figuration of Jula Cohn, rhe woman whom he
was in love wirh ar rhe rime), In beauty the veil and rhe veiled, the
envclopment and rhe objecr that ir envelops, are linked by a nec-
essary relationship thar Benjamin calls "secrer" (Geheimnis), The
beauriful, rhen, is rhar object for which rhe veil is essenrial. Thar
Benjamin is aware of rhe rheological deprh of rhis rhesis, which
irrevocably links rhe veil ro the veiled, is suggesred by a reference
ro the "age-old idea" rhar rhe veiled is rransformed by irs unveiling,
since ir can remain "equal ro itself" only underneath ts envelop-
ment. As a result beauty is in ts cssence an impossibility of unveil-
ing; ir is "non-unveilable" [unenthllbaj:
Unveilcd, rhe beautiful objcct would prove t be infinitcly inappar-
ent [unscheinbar] . .. ,Thus, in facing whatcver is beautiful, the idea
of unveiling beco mes (he idea of ts non-unvcilability .... If only the
beautiful, and nothing OLttside of it, can cxist essentialIy as veiled and
remain veiled, then the divinc grollnd of beauty would le in the se-
cret. In bcauty, appcarance is jllSt this: not the superfluous envelop-
mcnt of things in themsclvcs, but rather the necessary envdopmcnt of
things for uso Such vciling is divindy necessary ar certain times, jusr as
ir is divinely esrablished that an unveiling rhar takes place olltside of
Nudity
time lcads the inapparent to vanish ioto nothing, whcreupon revela-
don dissolves all sccrets.
29
This law rhar inseparably unires veil and veiled rhe sphere
of beauty comes up unexpecredly short preclselywhen Ir confranrs
human beings and rheir nudiry, Due ro rhe thar IS formed
between rhe veil and rhe veiled, Benamm clalms rhar beauty can
exisr as essence only where the dualiry of nudity and clorh1l1g no
longer exisrs: in art and the phenomena of naked narure [blogen
Natur]: "On rhe conrrary, the more clearly rhls duahry explesses
itself in order ro finally be confirmed ar its highesr leve! in rhe
human being, rhe more ir beco mes clear rhar 111 nudlty wlrhour
vds the essenrially beautiful has vanished, and rhe naked body
f rhe human being achieves an exisrence beyond al! beaury-rhe
a work rhat goes beyond all crearions-rhar of rhe
"30
crearor, . , '1' h
In rhe human body, and particularly in Goerhe s Ow la-w o
is, in the novel, rhe paradigm of this pure appearance-beaury
1 be apparenr, Hence, while in works of art and of nature
can on y f '1 b'l' ", 1 r
I licable principIe is thar o "non-unvel a I Iry, 111 r le lV-
ne app 1 bl ffi d h'
ing body rhe opposite principIe is imp aca dY ah rme:
mortal is non-unveilable,"31 Nor only, rhen, oes r e pOSSl I Iry o
being denuded condemn human ro appearance, bur un-
'1 bility consritures in sorne way Its Clpher: m rhe human body
vel a 1 bl" , 1 b
beauty is essential!y and infinirely "unvei a e; Ir can a ways e
exhibited as mere appearance. There is, however, a hmIt, .beyond
which exists neither an essence that cannot be unvelled nol'
a natura lapsa, Here one encounrers only rhe veIl ltsel(
'r elf which is no longer rhe appearance of anyrh1l1g, Thls
ance I s , , 1 h
indelible residue of appearance where norhing appears, rhls c ot ,-
, h o body can wear anymore-rhis is human nudlty, Ir IS
mg t ar n '. bl'
what remains when you remove the ved from beauty. IS su .1me
because, as Kant claims, rhe impossibility of present1l1g rhe Idea
through the senses is reversed at a certain point a presentatlon
f h' her order where whar is being presented IS, so ro speak,
o a 19 , , , h '1
presentation itself. Ir is in this way that, 111 nudlty Wlt out ve! s,
86 Nudity
appearance itself appears and displays itself as infinitely inappar-
ent, infinitely free of SeCl"et. The sublime, then, is an appearance
that exhibits its own vacuity and, in this exhibition, al!ows the
inapparent to take place.
As a result, at the end of Benjamin's essay, it is precisely ro ap-
Nudity
pearance rhar ''rhe most extreme hope" is entrusted, and rhe prin-
ciple according to which it is absurd ro desire the appearance of
rhe good "suffers its unique exception."32 If beauty, in its most
intimare condiran, was once secret-that is ro say, rhe necessary
relation of appearance and essence, the veil and the veiled-then
here appearance unties itself from this knot and shines for a mo-
ment by itself as the "appearance of he good." Accordingly, the
ligh from this star is opaque, ro be found only in certain Gnostic
texts: no longer a necessary and "non-unveilable" envelopment of
beauty, it is now appearance, to the extent that nothing appears by
means 01 this appearance. The place where this inappearance-this
sublime absence of rhe secret of human nudity-most promi-
nently leaves its mark is the face.
20. At the end of the 1920S and the beginning of the 1930S Ben-
jamin associated with a group of very attractive female ftiends.
Among them were Gert Wissing, Ola Parem, and Eva Hermann,
whom he thought al! shared the same special relationship to ap-
pearance. In the diaries he kept during his stay on the French Riv-
iera between May and June of 1931, Benjamin sought ro describe
this relationship, linking it with the theme of appearance that he
had confronted some years before in his essay on Goethe's novel.
"Speyer's wife," he writes,
reported this astounding statement by Eva Hermano, from rhe period
of her greatest depressioo: "The faet that I am unhappy doesn't mean
thar I have to mn around with a faee full of wrinlcles." This made many
things dear to me, above aB that the rudimentary eontaet that I have
had io reeent years wirh these ereatures-Gert, Eva Hermaon, and so
on-is ooly a feeble and be!ated echo of one of the most fundamental
experienees of my Jife: the experieoee of appearanee [Schein]. I spoke
yesterday with Speyer about this, who for his pan also cootemplated
about these women and made the curious observation that they have
no sense of hooor, or rather thar their code of honor is actually to say
everythiog they think. This is a very true observatioo, and it proves
the profundity of the obligation they fee! toward appearance. For this
"sayiog everything" is meant aboye all to destray what has beeo said; ol'
88
Nudity
rather, once ir has been destroycd, ro turn ir 111(0 an object. Only 11150-
far as ir is apparent [scheinhtifi] are rhey able ro assimilate ir.33
One eould define this attitude as the "nihilism of beauty," eom-
mon to many beautiful women, which conssts in reducing one's
own beauty ro pure appearanee and then exhibiting this appear-
anee with a SOft of remote sadness, stubbomly denying the idea
that beauty can signifY something other than itselE. But it is pre-
eisely the very laek of illusions abollt itself-this nudity wirhout
veils that beauty thus manages to aehieve-that fumishes the most
frightful attraetion. This disenehantment ofbeauty, this speeial ni-
hilism, reaehes its extreme stage with the mannequins or the fash-
ion models, who leam befo re all e1se ro erase all expression from
thcir faces. In so dong, their faces become pure exhibiran value
and, as a result, acquire a particular allure.
21. In our culture, the faee-body relationship is marked by a
fundamental asymmetry, in thar OUt faces remain for the most
part naked, while our bodies are normally eovered. Correspond-
ing to this asymmetry is the primaey of the head, whieh may be
expressed in many ways but remains more 01' less constant in all
fields: fram polities (where the highest power is usual!y eal!ed the
"head") to religion (Paul's eephalie metaphor of Christ), from art
(where one can represent in a portrait the head without the body
but nor, as is evident from "nucle" depictions, the body without
the head) to everyday life, where the head is the loeus of exptes-
siveness par exeel!enee. This last point seems to be confirmed by
the faet that while the bodies of other animals often exhibit very
Iively and expressive signs (the pattem of the leopard's skin, the
fiery colors of the mandrill's sexual otgans, bllt also the butterRy's
wings and the peaeoek's plumage), the human body is singularly
devoid of any expressive fcarures.
This expressive supremaey of the faee finds its eonfirmation, as
wel! as irs point of weakness, in the uncontral!able blushing that
attests to the shame we fee! at being nude. This is perhaps the
reason why the assertion of nudity seems to cal! the primaey of
the faee into question. That the nudity of a beautiful body can
Nudity
eclipse rhe faec, or make ir invisible, is stated with clarity in
Charmides, the dialogue Plato dedieates to the sub)eet ofbeauty.
Charmides, the young man who lends his name to the dIalogue,
has a beautiful faee, but, as one of rhe interlocutors comments,
h
body is so beautiful that "if he were to undress, you would
IS . 11 "c l "
believe that he had no faee" (that he would be Inera y raee ess,.
aprosopos, r54d). The idea that the nude body can the pn-
maey of the faee, to then offer itself as a faee, IS ImphClt In the
response rhe women accused of witchcraft gave to rhose who
dered why they had kissed Satan's anus during the Sabbath: theH
defense was that even there, there is a faee. Slmtlarly, 10 the first
stages of eratie phorography, models had ro affeeI a romantle and
dreamy expression, as if the unseen lens had surpnsed them 11l the
intimaey of their boudoir. But in the coutse of tlme thls proeedure
was inverted, to the effeet that the faee's only task beeame the ex-
pression of rhe shame!ess awareness that the naked body was betng
exhibited ro the gaze. Barefaeedness [sfocciataggine, etymologleally,
the loss of the faee] is now the neeessary eoumerpart tonudrty
without veils. The faee, now an aeeompliee of nudlty-as It looks
into rhe lens 01' winks at rhe spectator-lets rhe of secrct
be seel1; ir expresses only a letting-be-seen, apure eXhlhltlOll.
22. A miniature in one of the manuseripts of the Clavis physi-
cae by Honorius of Aurun shows a eharaeter (perhaps the author)
holding a ribbon on which is written: ((lnvolucrum rerum petzt
is sibi jieri clarum" (He who tries ro clarifY the enve!opment of
things).'" One eould define nudity as the enve!opment that reaehes
a paint where ir becomes clear thar clanficatlon 1$ no lO!1ger P,os-
sible. Ir is in (his sense thar we must understand Goethes maxlffi,
aecording to whieh "beauty can never clarifY itself."35 Only be-
cause beauty remains ro rhe end an "envelopment,': only because
it remains "inexplicable" [etymologieally, rhat whlch eannot be
unfoldedJ, can appearanee-whieh reaehes its supreme stage 111
nudity-be ealled beautiful. That nudity and beauty eannot be
clarified does not therefore mean that they contain a secret
eannot be braught ro light. Sueh an appearanee would be mysten-
Nudity
ous, but precisely for this reason ir would not be an envelopment,
snce in this case one couId always continue ro search for rhe secret
that is hidden within it. In rhe inexplicable envelopment, on rhe
orher hancl, rhere is no secret; denuded, ir manifests itseIf as pure
appearance. The only rhing that the beautiful face can say, exhibit-
ing its nudity with a smile, is, "You wanted ro see my secret? You
wanted ro c1arilY my envelopment? Then look right at it, if you
can. Look at rhis absolute, unforgivable absence of secrets!" The
matheme of nudiry is, in this sense, simply rhis: haecce! there is
norhing orher rhan this. Yet ir is precisely the disenchantment of
beauty in the experienee of nudity, rhis sublime bur also miser-
able exhibirion of appearance beyond all mystery and all meaning,
thar can somehow defuse rhe theological appararus and allow us
to see, beyond tbe prestige of grace and the chimeras of corrupr
nature, a simple, inapparenr human body. The deactivarion of this
apparatlls retroactiveIyoperares, rherefore, as much 011 nature as
on grace, as mueh on nudity as on c1othing, liberaring rhem from
rheir theological signature. This simple dwelling of appearance in
the absence of seerers is its special trembling-it is rhe nudity thar,
like the choirboy's "white" voice, signifies nothing and, precisely
for rhis reaSOll, manages ro penetrare uso
8 The Glorious Body
I. The problem of rhe glorious body, that is to say, rhe nature
and characteristics-and more generally the life-of the body of
rhe resurrected in Paradise, is rhe paramount chapter in rheology,
and is c1assified in rhe literature under the rubric de fine ultimo.
Neverthe1ess, rhe Roman Curia, in arder to settle on its compro-
mise with modernity, decided ro c10se in a rather hasty manner the
eseharological door that leads ro the discussion concerning "Iast
rhing5," 01' rather, ir froze this-if not obsolete, rhen at least cer-
tainly cumbersome-discussion. Bur as long as the dogma of the
rcsurrection of the flesh persists as an essential pan of the Chris-
tian faith, this impasse cannot bur remain problematic. In the
pages that follow we will revive rhis frozen theological theme and
thus examine a problem that is equally ineseapable: that of the
ethical and politieal sta rus of eorporeallife (rhe bodies of the res-
urrected are numerically and materially the same as the ones they
had during their earrhly existen ce) . This means rhat the glorious
body will serve as a paradigm that will allow us to meditate on the
figures, and the possible uses, of the human bodyas such.
2. The first problem that theologians have ro confronr is the
identity of the resurrected body. Supposing that the soul will have
to rake on the same body once again, how then can its identity
and integrity be defined? A preliminary question involves the
9
I
9
2
The Clorious Body
age of the resurrected: must they rise again at the age at which
they died, decrepit as decrepit, baby as baby, adult as adult? Man
Thomas Aquinas responds, must be resurrccted with no natural
defects. But the nature of an individual can also be defective as
a of not having yet reached its perfection (as happens with
bables) or as a result left its perfect state behind (as hap-
pens wlth the elderly). fhe resurrection will therefore bring every-
body back to the perfewon that coincides with theit youth, that is
ro say, Chrises age when he was resurrected (rea trginta annos).
Paradise is a world for those in their thirties, invariably balanced
between grawth and decay. Apart fram this, however, the bodies
will maintain the differences that once distinguished them fram
one another, /irst and foremost (contrary to those who daim that
since the feminine condition is imperfect, rhe resurrected would
all be males) their sexual differences.
3 Much more insidiaus is the question of the material identity
between the body of the resurrected and rhe body rhat dwelled on
carth. How is ane ro conceive of rhe integrated identity of each
and every last partide of matter between the two bodies? Will
each speck of dust that the body has decomposed into rerurn to
rhe same place ir used ro have in the living body? Here is pre-
Clsely where the dif/iculty begins. We could certainly grant that
the amputated hand of a thief-who later on repenred and was
redeemed-would rejoin his body at the moment of resurrection.
But what abollt Adam's rib, which was removed from his body in
arder to form Eve's body: will it be resurrected in his glorious body
or hers? And whar about rhe case of the anrhrapophagus: will rhe
human flesh that he has eaten and assimilared inro his own body
be resurrecred in rhe body of his victim or his own?
One of rhe hyporheses rhar put the subrlety of the Church Fa-
thers ro the greatesr test dealt with the scenario of an anrhrapoph-
agus who eats norhing bur human flesh, or even only embryos,
and rhen begets a son. According te medieval scicnce, semen is
generated de superfluo alimenti, by an excess or surplus of digested
food. Thls means that the same flesh will belong to more than one
The Clorious Body 93
body (rhat of rhe devoured and that of rhe son) and will therefore
have ro be resurrected, impossibly, in different bodies. For Aquinas
the solution to thi$ last case gives [se ro a Solomonic split:
The embryos as such will not take pare in the rcsurrection if they did
not fi.rse livc as rational souls. But at this stage the maternal womb
already adds new nourishment to the subsrancc of rhe semen. Con-
sequently, assuming that someone were to car such human embryos,
and rhen procreate by means of rhe surplus of such food, the sub-
srance of rhe semen would rise again in him who was begorten by ir,
unlcss rhis semen did nor contain elemenrs belonging to the subsrance
of rhe semen of those whose flcsh was devoured, as such clemenrs
would rise again in the former and not in rhe larter. The remainder
of rhe earen flesh, which was nor transformed into semen, wil! clearly
rise again in rhe hrst individual, while rhe divine power will intcrvene
in order ro supply rhe missing parts. 1
4- Origen offers a more elegant and less muddled solution to
the problem of the identiry of the resurrected. That which remains
constant in each individual, he suggests, is the image (eidos) thar
we continue to recognize every time we encollnter the individual,
despite inevitable changes. This same image will also guarantee
the identity of the resurrected body: "As our eidos remains iden-
tical from infancy to oId age, even though our material features
undergo a continuolls mutation, so in the same manner, it is this
eidos that we had thraughout our earthly existence thar will be
resurrected and remain identical in the world ro come, though ir
has been changed for the better and become more glorious." The
idea of such an "imaginarl resurrection, like many other of Ori-
gen's themes, was suspected of heresy. Neverrheless, the obsession
with an integral material identity was pragressively replaced by rhe
idea that each pan of the human body remains immutable as far
as its aspect especies) is concerned, though it is in a continuous
ebb and flow (fluere et rejiuere) as far as its material composition
is concerned. ''And so in the parts that compase aman," Aquinas
writes, "the same thing happens that occurs in the population of
a city, where single individuals die and others come ro take their
"

.
'., ..... ....... ' , ..... 1 ..... ' ..... ' ......... ' . , .. , .... ' .' ..... .
94 The Glorious Body
place. From a material paint of vicw, rhe components rhar
pose the populaee sueceed one another, but fotmally the populaee
remains the same .... In like mannet, in the human body there
are also pans that, in their ebb, are replaeed by others that take the
same shape and posiron, and so materially all the pans ebb and
flow, while numerically man remains idemiea!.'" The paradigm
of paradisiaeal identity is not material sameness, whieh poliee de-
panmems around the world try to set today through biometrie
apparatuses, but rather the image, that is to say, the body's likeness
to itself.
5 Once the shared idemity of the glorious body and the eanhly
body is guaranteed, ir remains ro be ascertained what distinguishes
rhe one fmm rhe other. Theologians enumerare four characteristics
of glory: impassibility, subtlety, agility, and c1arity.
That the body of the blcssed is impassible does not mean that it
has no capaeity to sense, whieh is an inseparable pan of the body's
perfeeron. Without this eapaeity, the life of the blessed would re-
semble a kind of sleep; that is to say, it would be half of a Efe (vitae
dimidium). Impassibility means, rather, that the body will not be
subjeeted to those disordered passions that wrest it from its perfee-
ran. AIl the pans of the glorious body will be, in faet, submissive
to the dominio n of the raronal soul, whieh will in turn be per-
feetly submissive to the divine wil!.
Some theologians, however, seandalized by the idea that there
eould be something to smel!, taste, 01' toueh in Paradise, exclude
all the senses from the paradisiaeal eondition. Aquinas, along with
the majority of the Chureh Fathers, rejeets sueh an amputation.
The sense of smel! of (he blessed would not be deprived of an
objeet: "Does not the Chureh say in its songs that from the bod-
ies of rhe saints emanare a gentle In its sublime state, rhe
odor of the glorious body will be, in faet, deprived of any material
humidity, as happens in the exhalations of distil!ed fumes (sicut
odor fmalis evaporationis). And so the nose of the blessed, not
hindered by any sueh humidity, will then pereeive the smallest
nuances (minimas odorum differentias). Tastc will a150 be exercised,
The Glorious Body 95
though there will be no need for food, perhaps beeause "on the
tongue of the e1eet there will be a de!ieious humor."4
will perceive particular qualities in bodies thar sccm ro
those immaterial properties of images that modern art hlstonans
call ((tactile values."
6. How are we to understand the "subtle" nature of the glorious
body? According to a posiron that Aquinas deems heretieal, sub-
tlety-as a son of extreme rarefaetion-renders the bodies of the
blessed similar to air 01' wind and thus penetrable by other bod-
ies. They are so impalpable that they are indistinguishable from
a breath or a spirit. Sueh a body eould therefore simultaneously
oeeupy the spaee already oeeupied by another body, whether this
other body is glorious or nor. Against sueh excesses the prevalem
opinion defends the view that the perfeet body has. an extended
and palpable eharaeter. "The Lord will be revlved wlth a gloflous
body, but he wil! still be palpable, as it is wrtten in the Gospel:
'fee! me [palpale] and see me, for a spirit does not have flesh and
bones.' And so the glorious bodies will also be palpable.'" Never-
theless, sinee they are ful!y subjeeted to the spirit, they can also
decide not to impress their touch andJ by a supernatural virtue,
remain impalpable to nonglorious bodies.
7. Agile is that which aptly moves effortlessly and uninhibit-
edly. In this sense the glorious body, perfectly submissive to the
glorified soul, will be endowed with agility, .and "in al! its
ments and in al! its acts it will be ready to sWlftly obey the Spltlt.
Once again, eontrary to those who cantend that the glorious body
can move from one place to anarher without passing through the
space in between, the theologians reaffirm their position that this
would contradiet the nature of corporeality. But against those who
conceive of movement as a kind of corruption) as almost an im-
perfeeron of the body (as far as its place is eoncemed), and thus
endorse the immobility of the glorious bodies, theologlans valonze
agility as a sort of grace that carries the blessed almost instantly
and effortlessly wherever they want to go. Like dancers, who move
-------------------- - - - - - - ................ -i
1
The Glorious Bod}
in space with neither aim llor necessity, the blcssed move in the
heavens only in order ro exhibit their agility.
8. Clarity (claritas) can be thought of in two ways: like the shim-
mer of gold (due ro its density) or like the splendor of crystal (be-
cause of irs transparenc)'). According to Gregoty the Great, the
bodies of the blessed possess clariry in both senses: they are di-
aphanous like a crystal and impervious to light like gold. It is this
halo of light, which emana tes from the glorious body, that can be
perceived by a nonglorious body, and its splendor can differ ac-
cording to the quality of the blessed. The greater or lesser clarity of
the halo is only the outermost index of the individual differences
between the glorious badies.
9 Impassibility, subdety, agility, and clatity-as characteristics
and almost ornaments of the glotious bod)'-do nat present an)'
particular difficulties. At stake in each case is the assurance that
the blessed have a bod)' and that this body is the same as the
one that the individual had on earth, even if it is incomparably
better. The far more atduous and decisive problem is the way in
which this body exercises its vital functions, that is ro say, the
articulation of a physialogy of the glorious body. The body, as
we have seen, s resurrected as a whole, with alI the organs it
possessed during its earthly existen ce. Therefore, the blesscd wiU
forever have, according to their sex, either a virile member or a
vagina and, in both cases, a stomach and intestines. But what
for, if, as seems obvious, they will need neither to reproduce nor
to eat? Certainly blood will circula te in their arteries and veins,
but is it possible that hair wiU stiU grow on their heads and faces
or that their fingernails will grow, as well, poindessly and irtitat-
ingl),? In confronting these delicate questions, theologians come
up against a decisive apoda, one that scems to exceed the limits
of their conceptual strategy but that aIso constitutes the locus in
which we can think of a diffetent possible use far the body.
10. The problem of the tesurrection of hair and nails (bod)'
The Glorious Bod}
97
parts that few theologians, it would seem, considered suitable ro
the patadisiacal condition) is tteated by Aquinas just befare he
confronts the equalIy embarrassing problem of the resurrection of
the bodily humors (blood, milk, black bile, sweat, sperm, mucus,
urine, and so forth). The animate body is called "organic" because
the soul makes use of its various parts as if they were instruments.
Among these parts, sorne are necessary in arder t exercise a func-
tion (the heart, the liver, the hands), while others are meant ro
preserve the necessary organs. Examples of the second kind are
hair and nails, which wilI be resUl'rected in the glorious body since
they contribute in thcir own way ro the perfection of human na-
ture. The petfectly depilated body of the fashion model and the
parn star is cxtraneous to glory. Ncvertheless, since ir is difficult
to imagine celestial hair and nail salons, we must assume (though
theologians fail ro addtess the mattet) that just as the age of the
blessed will forever remain the same, so will the length of theit
hait and nails.
As for rhe humors, Aquinas's salutian demonstrates thar already
in the thirteenth century the Church was ttying ro hatmonize
theological and scientific demands. Sorne of the humors-includ-
ing urine, mucus, and sweat-are in faet extraneous to rhe per-
fection of the individual, insofar as they ate residues that nature
expels in via corruptionis: they will nor, therefore, be resurrected.
Others are useful only in arder to preserve the species in anather
individual, b), means of procreation (sperm) and nutrition (milk).
Ir is not expected that these humors wiU be resurrected, either. The
othet humors familiar to medieval medicine-above aU the four
that define the body's temperaments: blood, black bile or me/an-
chol)" yeUow bile, and phlegm, which were later joined by ros,
cambium, and gluten-wiU be resurtected in the glorious body,
since they are directed toward its natural perfectian and are in-
separable from it.
n. Ir is with regard ro two principal functions of vegetative
life-sexual reproduction and nutritian-that the problem of the
physiology of the glarious body reachcs its critical threshold. If
The Glorious Body
the organs thar execute these functions-testl I . .
b l ces, pe!l1S vagH
wom : Stomac 1, mtestmes-will neccssarily b _, . 'h la,
urrectlon, funetion are they ; res-
end of procreanon IS to multiply the I h. . The
f .. . luman mee, w de rhe d
o nutrttlOn IS the restantion of the indlvId I AC h en
. h ua. ltcr t e res
rcenan, owever, rhe human race wilI reach rhe crfeer n lit-
that had been preordained by God, and the b d p. umber
undergo either diminution or r . o. y w]1 no longer
will th f, I g owth. PlOcreatlOn and nutrttion
. ore no anger have any reason for being "7
lt IS Impossible, though, that the corres ondin .
pletely use!ess and superfluo
us
(super p ) g organs are Com-
perfcer nature nothing exists in state
non of the body's other use finds its f . ques-
A ", rsr, stammenng formularan
qumass strategy 1$ cIcar: ro se . .'
ph . I . I f palate organs from thelr specific
yslO oglca UnCtlOns. The purpose of each organ, like that of
any ll1strumcl1t, 15 lts operation' but l' d
h . e . ' t l1S oes not mean that "f
t e operatlOn atls, then the instrumem beco me I (fr I
. I ) TI s use ess uslra stl
tns rumentum. le organ or instrument that d C
. . was separare rfOm
ltS operatlOll and remains, so to speal . f .
'. (, In a state o suspenslOn
acqmres, preCIsely fol' rhis reasOn an o t . f . . '. '
1 '. . ,s enSlve UnctlOnj It exhIblt
t le vHtue correspondmg ro the suspended operatiO!l "Th. s
ment se I . e mstru-
rves not on y t execute the agent' . b I
h . . [ s operauon ut a so to
S. ow ItS vl1'tue ad ostendendam vJ'tutem flsus] "8] ' . d
ttsemenrs or 01' h h :r. usr as m a ver-
. p nograp y, w ere the simulacra of merchandise Or
bodles exalt then appeal precisely to ti h
be used but onl exhb . le extem t at they cannot
organs ':'ill displYay tI I lted, 1
10
the resurrection the idle sexual
le potenna Ity or th .. f .
The glorious bod . .' e Vll tue, o procreatlOn.
y IS an ostenSlve bod h fi .
execured but rather dis la ed. G " y w. ose nor
. h . . . p y lor, 10 thls sense, IS 10 sohdarity
Wlr 1ll0peratlvlty.
12. h it possible, then, to speak of a differem use of th b d
the ba.sls of the glorious body's useless or unusable or an:'
and Irme, Instrumems that are OUt of use-h gl
thar is broken, and rhus ino erari 01' examp e, a hammer
Zuhandenh f b . h P ve-Ieave the concrete sphere of
fIt, o elIlg-at- and where th 1
' ey are a ways ready for a
The Glorious Body
99
possible use, and enter the sphere of Vorhandenheit, of mere avail-
ability with no aim. This, however, docs not imply another use for
the instrumenr; ir simply suggests its being presenr outside of any
possible use, which the philosopher likens ta an alienated concep-
ran ofBeing that is dominant in our day. Like those human insrru-
ments scattered around the feet of the melancholic ange! in Drer's
engraving, like toys abandoned by children after play time, objects
separated [rom thei1' use become enigmatic and even unnerving. In
the same way, the etemalIy inoperative organs in the bodies of the
blessed-even if they exhibit the procreative function that belongs
to human natu1'e-do not represenr another use for rhose organs.
The ostensive body of rhe elect, no matter how "organic" and real
it may be, is outside the sphere of any possible use. There is perhaps
nothing more enigmatic than a glorious penis, nothing more spec-
tral than a purely doxological vagina.
13. Between the years I924 and I926 the philosopher Alfred
50hn-Rethe!lived in Naples. By observing the behavior of fish-
ermen grappling with their little motorboats, and drivers trying
to stan their run-down ca1's, he carne ro formulate a theory of
technology that he calIed in jest "Philosophy of the Broken" (Phi-
losophie des Kaputten).9 According to 50hn-Rethel, a thing begins
ta function for a Neapolitan only when it is unusable. By this he
means that a Neapolitan only begins ro realIy use technical ohjects
at the moment when they no longer function. An imact thing
that functions welI on its own irritates Neapolitans, so they usualIy
avoid it. And yet, by shoving a pieee of wood in the right spot,
or by making a slight adjustment with a smack of the hand at
the right moment, Neapolitans manage ro make their apparatuses
work according to their desires. This behavior, 50hn-Rethe! com-
ments, contains a higher technological paradigm than our current
one: true technology begins when man is able ta oppose the blind
and hosrile automatism of the machines and learns how ro move
rhem into unforeseen rerrirories and uses, lilee thar young man Oll
the street in Capri who rransformed a broken motorcycle engine
imo a device that makes whipped cream.
100 The Glorio"s Body
In this example rhe engine continues ro spin on sorne level but
from rhe pcrspective of entirely new desires and ncw needs. Inop-
erativity is nor lefr here ro ts Qwn devices but instead becomes rhe
opening, rhe "open-sesame," thar leads to a new possible use.
14. In the glorious body it beeame possible for the first time ro
eoneeive the separation of an organ from its physiological fune-
rion. But the possibility of diseovering another use of the body-
whieh this separation alIows us to glimpse-has remained unex-
plored. In its place we find glory, understood as rhe isolarion of
inoperativity in a speeial sphere. The exhibition of the organ sepa-
rated from its exercise ar (he empty repetirian of its funetian have
no aim other than the glorifieation of Cod's work, exaetIy as the
arms and insignias exhibited by the vietorious general in the Ro-
man trillmph are rhe signs and, at rhe same time, rhe effectuarion
of his glory. The sexual organs and the intestines of tbe blessed are
only the hieroglyphs or the arabesques that divine glory inscribes
onto irs own eoat of arms. The earthly liturgy, like the celesrial
ane, does nothing other rhan incessandy capture inoperativity and
displace it into the sphere of worship ad maiorem Dei gloriam (for
the greater glory of Cod).
15. In his rrearise The Ultimate ~ E n d 01 Human Lifo a twentieth-
eenrury Freneh theologian poses the question of whether it is pos-
sible to attribute to the blessed the fulI exercise of their vegetarive
Jife. For understandable reasons he is partieularly interested in the
nutritive faeulty (potestas vescendz). He argues that eorporeallife
essentialIy eonsists in the funetions of vegetative Jife. The perfeet
restitution of corporeal life that will take place in the resurrec-
tion cannar fail to entail, therefore, rhe exercise of such functions.
"Indeed," he writes, "it seems reasonable that the vegetative poten-
tiality not only fails to be abolished among the elect, but that in
sorne marvelous [mirabiliter] way it aetualIy inereases."lO The para-
digm of this persistence of the nutritive function in the glorious
body is the meal that the resurreeted Jesus shares with his diseiples
(Luke 24:42-43). With their usual innoeent pedantry theologians
The Glorious Body lO!
ask themselves whether the broiled nsh that Jesus ate was also di-
gested and assimilated and whether the residues of his digestion
were eventualIy evaeuated from his body. A tradition that dates
baek ro Basil of Caesarea and the Fathers of the Eastern Church
affirms that the food eaten by Jesus-during his ife and after the
resurreerion-was so completely assimilated into his body thar no
eliminaron of its residues was necessary. Another opinion asserts
that in the glorious body of Christ, just as in the bodies of the
blessed, food is immediately transformed into a spiritual nature by
rneans of a sort of miraculous evaporation. This, however, implies
(and Augusrine was the first ro draw this eonclusion) that glorious
bodies-beginning with Jesus's-while not requiring nutrition of
any kind, maintain in sorne way their patestas vescendi. In a SOft of
gratuitous aet, or a kind of sublime snobbery, tbe blessed will ear
and digest their food without having any need ro do so.
In reply ro the objection that, since excretion (deassimilatio) is
as essential as assimilation, there will be a conversion of matter
from one form to another in the glorious body-and therefore
also a form of corruption and vileness (turpitudo)-the above-
mentioned theologian affirms that there is nothing in itself vile
in the operations of nature: "As no part of the human body is in
itself unworthy of being elevated to the Jife of glory, so no organie
operation needs to be considcrcd as unworthy to participate in
sueh a Jife .... It is a produet of false imagination to believe that
our eorporeallife would be more worthy of Cod ro the extent that
it differs from our present eondirion. Cod does not destroy natural
laws by means of his supreme gifts; rather, with his ineffable wis-
dom, he completes and perfeets these laws."lI There is a glorious
defeearion, which takes place only in order to show the perfeetion
of natural functions. But as far as its possible use is concerned, the
theologians remain silent.
!6. Clory is nothing other than the separation of inoperativ-
ity inro a speeial sphere: that of worship or liturgy. In this way
what was merely a threshold that granted aeeess to a new use is
transforrned into a permanent condition. A new use for the body
I02
The Glorious Body
is thus possible only if ir wrests rhe inoperative functon from its
separaran, only if ir succeeds in bringing together withiI1 a sin-
gle place and in a single gesture borh exercise and inoperariviry,
economic body and glorious body, function and its suspension.
Physiological function, inoperativity, and new use aIl persist in rhe
body's single field of rension, a field from which rhey cannor be
separated. This 1S becallse inoperativity is nor incaj Oil rhe con-
trary, ir allows rhe very porentialiry rhar has manifesred irself in rhe
aet ro appear. It is nor potentiality rhar is deactivated in inopera-
riviry but only rhe aims and modaliries into which irs exercise had
been inscribed and separared. And ir is rhis porentialiry rhar can
now become rhe organ of a new possible use, rhe organ of a body
whose organiciry has been suspended and rendered inoperative.
T'o use a body, and ro make ir serve as an insrrument for a par-
ticular purpose, are not the same rhing. Nor are we dealing hefe
wirh a simple and insipid absence of a purpose, which ofren leads
ro a confusion of erhics and beaury. Rarher, ar srake here is rhe
rendering inoperative of a11y activity directed toward an end, in
arder ro thcn dispose ir toward a new use, one rhar does nor abol-
ish rhe old use bur persisrs in it and exhibirs it. This is precisely
whar amorous desire and so-called perversion achieve every time
they use rhe organs of rhe nutritive and reproductive funcrions
and rum rhem-in rhe very acr of using rhem-away from rheir
physiological meaning, roward a new and more human operarion.
Ol' consider the dancer, as he 01' she undoes and disorganizes rhe
economy of corporeal movements ro then rediscover rhem, at once
intacr and rransfigured, in rhe choreography.
The naked, simple human body is nor displaced here in ro a
higher and nobler realiry; insread, liberared from rhe wirchcrafr
rhat once separared ir from itself, it is as if rhis body were now
able ro gain access ro its own rrurh for the first time. In rhis way
rhe mouth rmly beco mes a mouth only as ir is abour ro be kissed;
rhe mosr intimare and private parrs become a place for shared use
and pleasure; habitual gestures become rhe iIIegible wriring whose
hidden meaning rhe dancer deciphers fOl' all. nsofar as an organ
and an object have potenriality, their use can never be individual
The Glorious Body I03
and privare bur only common. And jusr as, acc.ording r.o Benja-
min, rhe sexual fulfillment rhat renders rhe body 1I10perarlve severs
rhe bond rhar ties man ro nature, so rhe body rhar contemplares
and exhibits its potentiality through its gestures enrers.a secand,
final narure (which is nothing orher rhan rhe rrurh of lrs former
nature). The glorious body is not sorne other body, more agile and
beautiful, more luminous and spirirual; ir is rhe body rselE, ar rhe
mamenr when inaperariviry removes rhe spell from it and opens it
up ro a new possible comman use.
9 Hunger of an Ox: Considerations on
the Sabbath, the Feast, and
Inoperativity
1. That there is a special relationship between the feast and in-
operativity is evident in the Jewish Sabbath.' The feast day par
excelIence of the Jews-for whom it is the paradigm of faith (yesod
ha-emunah) and in some way the archetype for every day of cel-
ebration-finds its theological paradigm in the fact that it is not
rhe work of crearon, but rarher rhe cessation of aH work thar is
declared sacred:
On rhe scventh day Cad finishcd rhe wark chat he had done, and On
the sevcnth day he ceascd from all his wark. Cad blessed rhe seventh
day and consecrared ir, beca use on chis day he ccased from all rhe
work of his crearan. (Gen. 2:2-3)
Rcmember rhe Sabbarh day ro sanctify ir. Far six days yau shalllabor
and do all yom wor-k, but the seventh day is a Sabbarh ro the Lord
yaU!' God. (Exod. 20:8-10)
The condition of the Jews during the celebration of the Sabbath
is thus calIed menuchah (in the Greek of the Septuagint and of
Philo, .anapausis or katapausis), that is ro say, inoperativity. This
condltlOn do es nor concern only humansj rather, it is a joyous
and ~ , e r ; e c t reality tI,;at dchnes the very essence of God ("Only
God, I hIlo wntes, IS truly an moperatlve bcmg .... The Sab-
bath, which mcans inoperativity, is God's Sabbath")2 When Jeho-
I04
Hunger 01 an Ox 10
5
vah evokes the object of escharological awaiting in the Psalms, he
says of the impious thar they shall nor en ter into my inoperativ-
ity" (Ps. 95:n).
As a result the rabbinical tradition has devoted itself (with its
usual meticulousness) ro defining the types of work that are not
permissible during the Sabbath. The Mishnah lists thirty-nine
such activities (melachot) fmm which Jews must take every care to
abstain: from reaping and sowing ro baking and kneading, from
weaving and unraveling threads ro tanning hides, from writing to
lighting 6res, fmm carrying things ro umying knots. As a matter
of faer) according ro rhe extensive interpretaran of the oral tradi-
tion, the melachot coincide with the emire sphere of labor and
productive activity.
2. This does nor mean thar human beings must abstain from ev-
ery sort of activity during the celebration of the Sabbath. The de-
cisive question is whether the activity aims toward production. In-
dced, according ro rhe Jewish traditioll) an act of pure destruction
thar has no constructive implicarion does nor constiture me/achah
and is not considered a transgression of the Sabbath repose (for
rhis reason fesrive behaviors, even beyond ]udaism, often involve
a joyous and, ar times even violent, exercise of destruction and
squandering). And so, iflighting 6res and cooking are prohibited,
the spirit of menuchah nonetheless finds a particular expression in
the consumption of meals-an activity ro which, as with any fcast
day, we give a very special attention and care (the Sabbarh con-
sists of at least three festive meals). GeneralIy speaking, the emire
sphere of licit behaviors and activities-from the most common
everyday gestures to hymns of celebration and praise-is invested
with that indefinable emotive tonality that we calI "festiveness." In
the Judeo-Christian tradition this particular mode of shared doing
and living is expressed in rhe commandmenr (whose significance
we seem to have completely forgotten in our day) ro "sanctifY the
feasrs."3 The inoperativiry rhar defines rhe feasr is nor mere inertia
or absrenrionj ir is, rather, a sanctincation, rhat is ro say, a particu-
lar modality of acting and living.
i1
r;
ti
i:
, !
Ir----------------------....
I06
Hunger 01 an Ox
3 Despite the faim air of nostalgia that stil! surrounds the feast
day, lt IS all too.obvious that it eannot be expetieneed today en-
tlrdy 111 good falth. In this spirit Kernyi eompared the loss of fes-
tlVlty ro rhe condition of a person who wants ro dance but can no
longer hear rhe music. We continue to perform the same gestures
our grandparents lIS-to abstain more or less completely
from labor, to prepare wlth more Ol" less care rhe Christmas turkey
or the Easter lamb, to smile, give gifts, and sing-but in reality
,:c longer hcar rhe musicj we no longer know how ro "sanc-
tlfy .. And yet we are not ablc ro give up Ollr celebrations, so we
t? pursue,on every possible occasion (even beyond rhe
offielal holrdays) lost-modality of aeting and
Irvl11g that we cal! . edebratl11g. We insist on dancing, making up
for the loss of mUSle wlth the noise of discos and loudspeakers; we
to squander and destroy-even, and increasingly often,
]fe ltsdf-tlrough we are no longer able to reaeh menuchah the
simple, for lIS impracticable, inoperativity thar couId alon'e re-
store mean10g to the feast. But why is inoperativity so difficult and
so for us? And what is this attribute of human living
and aet10g that we cal! festiveness?
4- In his Convivial Questions Plutarch relates having witnessed
at Cheronea a feast cal!ed "expulsion of bulimia." "There is an
ancestral feast," he by the archon at the public
altar and by all ;he 10 their own homes. It is called 'expul-
SlOn of bulImIa [bouZ,mou exelasis]. They ehase away from theit
homes one of therr slaves by striking him with a staff made from
the chaste tree, while shouting: 'out with bulimia, in with wealth
and health."" Boulimos means in Greek "hunger of an ox." PI u-
1l1forms us thar a similar feasr also existed at Smirne, where
111 arder to chase away the boubrostis ("eating like an ox"), a black
bull was saenficed complete with its emire skin.
To undersrand what was rruly at srake in rhese feasrs, ir is firsr
necessary ro free oneself from rhe false assumprion that rhese were
ro propiriare rhe gods in order ro achieve material pros-
penry and abundanee of food. That this has nothing at al! to do
Hunger of an Ox
I07
with the meaning of the above feasts is proved beyond all doubt
by the faet that what is chased away is not hunger and but
rarher the "hunger of an ox": the beasrs' continuous and Insanable
eating (symbolized by the ox, with its slow and uninrerrupted ru-
minarion). Chasing away rhe "bulimic" slave means,.
ling a certain fotm of eating (devouring or lrke wlld
beasts in order ro satiate a hunger that is by definltlon Illsatlable),
and thus clearing a space for another modality of eating, one that
is human and festive, one that can begin only once the "hunger of
an ox" has been expelled, once the bulimia has been tendered Ill-
operarive and sancrified. Earing, in rhis is a melachah,
an activiry direcred toward an aim, bur an Inoperanvlry and me1'lU-
chah, a Sabbath of nourishment.
5. In modern languages the Greek term fot the hunget of an ox
has been preserved in medical tenninology, where ir has come to
designate an eating disorder that, sinee the end of the 1970s, has
beeome common in opulent societies. The symptomology of thls
disorder (which appears at times in COllnection with its
cal opposire, anorexia nervosa) is characrerized by. or-
gies of eating, by the sensation of losing control dunngthe b111ge,
and by induced vomiting immediately after the bulrmlc eplsode.
Eating disorders, whieh come to be sporadieally observed the
second half of rhe nineteenrh century, acquire rhe characrenstlcs
of an epidemic only in our time. Yet it has been noted that, in the
religious sphere, rhese disorders find rheir In fasr-
ing (the medieval "anorexic sainrs"), as well as 111 the of
ritual fasting: banquets that ate Iinked to feasts (the Englrsh phrase
"eating binges," which the DSM uses to define bulimic episodes,
originally referred ro excessive eating dunng festlve eelebratlons,
and there are celebrations, such as Ramadan, thar seern ro conslst
of apure and simple ritual alternation between anotexia and buli-
m a, fasting and feasting).
From this perspecrive ir is possible ro view bulimia nervosa as
linked in some fashion to its eponymous festival described by Plu-
tareh. J ust as the slave, chased away from the ha me with a staff
ro8 Hunger 01 an Ox
made from the chaste tree, personified with his own body the hun-
ger of an ox-a kind of hunger that had ro be removed from the
city in arder ro make way for festive eating-so bulimics) with
their insatiable appetite, live in their very flesh the hunger of an
ox that has become impossible ro expel from the city. Often obese,
insecure, incapable of self-control, and for rhis reason (unlike the
anorexic) subjected ro rhe condemnation of society, rhe bulmic
is the useless scapegoat for rhe impossibility of an authenric fes-
tive behavior in our time-rhe unusable resdue of a purifying
ceremony, the meaning of which has been lost to contemporary
society.
6. There is, however an aspect of the bulimic's behavior that
seems to attest, at least in pan, to (he memory oE a cathanic de-
mando 1 am referring ro vomiting, an aet thar (he bulimic performs
eirher mechanicaUy, by inserting two fingers down the throat, or by
taking emetics and purgatives (it is precisely this latter practice that
can put a patient's life at risk, as in (he famous case of rhe singer
Karen Carpemer, who died as a result of abusing emetics). From
(he very first studes on bulimia, rhe rccourse ro vomiting has been
considered an integral part of the diagnosis, even though a smaU
percemage of bulimics (around 6 percent) do nor resort to this
practice. Attributing rhis self-wiUed nausea ro a preoccupation with
gaining weight (chiefly among female patiems) does not seem a sat-
isfactory explanation. In reality, by throwing up what was eaten a
moment prior during the binge, bulimics seem to undo and render
inoperative ther hunger oE an OX, thereby in some way purifying
themselves of it. For a momem-even if aU alone, and with the
absolute incomprehension of other human beings, in the eyes of
whom vomiting seems even more reproachable rhan binge-eating-
the bulimic seems to unconsciously take 011 (he cathartic function
that the slave happily performed for the citizens of Cheronea (and ir
is precisely in relation to (his regulated alternation of excessive eating
and vomiting, sin and expiation, that in a book significandy entided
Responsible Bulimia, the author could claim to have practiced buli-
mia "consciously and successfuUy" for a good number of years).
Hunger 01 an Ox 10
9
7. Animal voracity and human dining, which ritual behaviors
necessarily represent as two distinct lTIOlnents, are in reality in-
separable. If at Smirne the expulsion of the boubrostis (of eating
like an ox) coincided with the sacrifice of the ox and the ritual
meal, so also at Cheronea the sacrifice (Plutarch caUs it thysia)-
insofar as it was followed by a public banquet-seems essentiaUy
ro have consisted of rhe hum of the boulimos, that is to say, of
rendering inoperative the hunger of an ox that undeniably occurs
in the human body itself. In a similar manner it is as if the bulimic
patiem-vomiting food immediately after having swallowed it,
almost without realizing it-were really vomiting and devouring
at (he same time, vomiting and rendering inoperative (he same
animalistic hunger.
This intermingling between animal and man, between the hun-
ger oE an ox and festive nourishment, contains a precious teaching
about the relationship between inoperativiry and the feasr that I
have proposed to make intelligible. Inoperarivity (this, at leasr, is
the hypothesis that I intend ro suggest) is neirher a cOllsequence
nor a precondition (the abstention from labor) of the feast day but
coincides with festiveness itself in rhe sense (har ir consists pre-
cisely in neutralizing and rendering illoperative human gestures,
actions, and works, which in turn can become festive only in this
way (celebrating (for ftstaJ, in this sense, literaUy involves killing
(fore la ftsta], consuming, deactivating, and finally, eliminating
something) .
8. That the Sabbath-that every feast-is not simply a day of
repose rhat is added ro the workweek (as our calendars would have
it), but signifies a special time and a special activity, is implicit
in the very narration of Genesis, where repose and completion
of work coincide on the seventh day Con the sevemh day God
finished the work that he had done, and on the sevemh day he
ceased from all his work"). Precisely in order ro underline the im-
mediate continuity-and, at the same time, the heterogeneity-
between work and repose, the author of the commentary known
as Genesis Rabbah writes: "Man of flesh and blood, who knows
no
Hunger 01 an Ox
not his times, his moments, and his hours, takes something from
profane time and adds it to sacred time: but the Holy One, blessed
be his name, who knows his times, his moments, and his hours,
entered the Sabbath by a hair's breadth."5 And it is in the same
sense thar one must rcad [he assertion oE another cornmentator,
according to which "the precept of the Sabbath is equivalent to al!
the precepts of the Torah," and that the observance of the Sabbath
"brings about the coming of the Messiah."6 All this means that the
repose of the Sabbath is not a simple abstention, unrelated to the
precepts and actions of the other days of the week: it corresponds,
rather, to the perfect fulfil!ment of the commandments (the com-
ing of the Messiah signifies the definitive fulfi!!ment of the Torah,
its becoming inoperative). For this reason the rabbinical tradition
sees the Sabbath as asma!! part of the messianic kingdom and an
anticipation of it. The Talmud expresses with its usual bluntness
this essential kinship between the Sabbath and the olam habbah
rhe time to come: Three things anticipare the time ro come:
sun, the Sabbath, and tashmish [a word that signifies either sexual
unian or defecation]."7
How should we understand, then, the re!ationship of proximity
and almost reciprocal immanence between Sabbath, WOl'k, and in-
operativity? In his commentary on Genesis, Rashi harkens back to
a tradition according to which even on the Sabbath samething was
created: 'After the six days of creation, what was sti!! missing from
the Ulllverse? Menuchah [inoperativity, restJ. The Sabbath carne,
[he ,m.enuchah carne, and the universe was complete."8 Even inop-
eratlVlty belongs to crearian; ir is a work of God. But ir is a very
work, as ir were, which consisrs in rendering inoperative, in
puttmg to rest al! the other works. Rosenzweig expresses this het-
erogeneous contiguity between the Sabbath and creation when he
writes that it is at once both the feast of creation and the feasr of
redemption or, more precisely, that in the Sabbath we celebrate a
creatian that was destined for redemption (that is, for inoperativ-
lty) from the very beginning.
9 The feast day is not defined by what is not done in it but
Hunger 01 an Ox III
instead by the fact that what is done-which in itself is not un-
like what is accomplished every day-becomes undone, rendered
inoperative, liberated and suspended fram its "economy," from
the reasons and aims that define it during the weekdays (and not
doing, in this sensc, is only an extreme case ?f this
If one eats, it is nor done for the sake of bcmg fed: lf one gets
dressed, it is not done for the sake of being covered up or taking
shelter from the cold: if one wakes up, it is not done for the sake
of working: if one walks, it is not done for the sake of going some-
place; if one spcaks, it is not done for rhe sake of commUnIcanng
information; if one exchanges objecrs, it is not done for the sake
of selling or buying.
Every feast day involves, in some measure, this element of sus-
pension and begins primarily by rendering inoperative the ,:,orks
of meno In the Sicilian feast of the dead descnbed by Pltre, the
dead (01' an old woman called Strina, from strena, a Latin name
for the gifts exchanged during the festivities of the beginning of
the year) steal goods from tailors, merchants, and bakers to .then
bestow them on children (something similar to this happens 111 all
feasts that involve gifts, like Halloween, where the dead are imper-
sonated by children). Presents, gifts, and tays are objects with use
and exchangc value that are rendered inoperative, wrested from
their economy. In every carnivalesque feast, such as the Roman
saturnalia, existing social relations are suspended not
only do sI aves command their masters, but soverelgnty IS placed
in the hands of a mock-king (saturnalicius princeps) who takes the
place of the legitimate king. In this way the feast reveals itself to
be first and foremost a deactivation of existing values and pow-
ers. "There are no ancient fcasts without dance," writes Lucian,
but what is dance other than the liberation of the body from its
utilitarian movements, the exhibition of gestures in their pute in-
operativity?' And what are masks-which playa role in various
ways in the feasts of many peoples-if not, first and foremost, a
neutralization of the face?
JO. This does nor mean that the human activities that the feast
JI2
Hungerofan Ox
has suspended and rendered inoperative are neeessarily separated
and transported into a more elevated and solemn sphere. Ir is pos-
sible, in faet, that this separation of the feast into the saered sphere,
which certainly carne about at a certain point, was the work of
the Chureh and the c1ergy. We should, perhaps, try ro invert the
familiar chmnology aceording to whieh religious phenomena are
plaeed at the origin, only to be seeularized later on, and instead
hypothesize that what comes first is the moment in whieh human
activities are simply neutralized and rendered inoperative during
the feasr. What we call "religion" (a term that, in its eutrent mean-
ing, is missing from ancient culture) intervenes at thar mament by
eapturing the feast in a separate sphere. Lvi-Strauss's hypothesis-
whieh reads the fundamental coneepts by whieh we usually think
of religion (mana, wakan, orenda, taboo, and the like) as excessive
signifiers that are in themselves empty, and preeisely for this reason
can be laden with any son of symbolic content-gains, from this
perspective, an even widet meaning. Signifiers with "zem symbolie
value" may correspond to human actions and objects that the feast
emptied out and rendered inopetative and that religion then carne
to separate and tecodifY thmugh its ceremonial apparatus.10
At any rate, whether festive inoperativity precedes religion or
results [rom the profanation of its apparatuses, what is essential
here is a dimension of praxis in whieh simple, quotidian human
aetivities are neither negated nor abolished but suspended and ren-
dered inoperative in arder ro be exhibited, as such, in a festive
manner. Thus, the proeession and the dance exhibit and transform
the simple gait of a human body walking, the gift reveals an un-
expeeted possibility within the produets of eeonomy and labor,
and the festive meal renews and transfigures the hunger of an ox.
The aim is nor ro render these activities sacred and untouchable
but, an the contrary, to open them to a new-or more ancient-
possible use in the spirit of the Sabbath. The blunr and derisive
language of the Talmud-whieh speaks in the same bread, of the
Sabbath and sexual union (or defeeation) as a pledge of the time to
comc-demonstrates here its utter seriousness.
10 The Last Chapter in the History
ofthe World
In tbe marionette, or in God.
-Heinrich van Klcist, "Tbe Puppet Theatre"
. h' h do not know things are just as important
The ways m w 1C we . . k
and erha s even more important) as the ways In we
( PTI P s of not knowing-earelessness, mattentlOn,
them. lere are way . b h
; tD Iness-that lead to c1u111siness and uglllless, ut t ere are
unselfconsciousness of Kleist's young man, the en-
. f n infant-whose completeness we never
chantmg sprezzatura o a . . h
f d .. O tbe one hand repreSSlOn lS the name psye 0-
tire o a mlnng. n, . .
1 . way of not knowing that often produces mauspl-
ana ySlS glves ro a h
fC . the life of the one who does not know. But, on t e
ClOUS e rects m . d h'l
h h d we eall beautiful a woman whose 111m seems appl y
ot er an , d Th
unaware of a seeret that her body is perfeedy attune too . ere are,.
then, suceessful ways of not knowing oneself, and beauty lS one of
h l
'bl'n eaet tbat the way m whleh we are able to
t em t 1S pOSSl e, 1 r; , bl
. . . . 1 what defines the rank of what we are a e
be 19norant lS preelse y Id'
k d that the artieularon of a zone of nonknow e ge lS
to now an h f 11
h d . d at the same time the touc stone-o a our
t e con ltlon-an . 'f h d
knowledge. If rhis is true, then a catalogue razsonne o temo
d f . . e would be J' ust as useful as the systemane
an types o 19nOlanc . ,
classincation of the sciences on which we base the tranSffilSSlOn
f 1 I d And
Y
et while humans have refleeted for eentu-
o mow e ge., . k I d
h . l' mprove and ensure thelr now e ge, we
nes on ow to preserve" . E .
lack even the elemenrary principIes of an art of 19noranee: plS-
I d h seienee of method investigate and establrsh the temo ogy an t e
II3
II4 The [ast Chapter in the Histol) 01 the World
eonditions, patadigms, and statutes of knowledge, bU[ there is no
recipe f01" articulating a zone of nonknowledge. Indeed, articulat-
ing a zone of nonknowledge does not mean simply not knowing;
it is not only a question of laek or defeet. Ir means, on the con-
trary, maintaining oneself in rhe right relationship with ignoran ce,
allowing an absenee of knowledge to guide and aecompany our
gestures, letting a srubborn silenee clearly tespond for our words.
Or, to use an obsolete vocabulary, we couId say thar what is mast
intimare and nourishing does nor take rhe form of science and
dogma but of graee and testimony. The art of living is, in this
sense, rhe capacity to keep ourselves in harmonious relationship
with that whieh escapes uso
Even knowledge, in the final analysis, maintains a relationship
with ignorance. Bur ir does so through repression or, in an even
more effeetive and potent way, presupposition. The unknown is
that whieh knowledge presupposes as the unexplored eountry to
be conquered; rhe unconscious is rhe darkness into which con-
sciousness will have to carry its light. In both cases something gets
separated in order to then be permeated and attained. The rela-
tionship with a zone of nonknowledge, on the other hand, keeps
watch over rhis zone so thar ir will [cmain as s. This is done nor
by exalting its darkness (as in mystieism), not by glorifying the
areane (as in liturgy), and not even by filling it with phantasms (as
in psyehoanalysis). At issue here is not a seeret doctrine or a higher
science, nor a knowledge thar we do nor know. Rather, ir is pos-
sible that the zone of nonknowledge does not reaUy eontain any-
thing speeial at all, that if one could loo k inside of it, one would
only glimpse-though this is not eertain-an old and abandoned
sled, only glimpse-though this is not clear-the petulant hinting
of a little girl inviting us to play. Perhaps a zone of nonknowledge
does not exist at aU; perhaps only its gestures existo As Kleist un-
derstood so well, the relationship with a zone of nonlmowledge is
a dance.
Notes
Chapter 1
1. The Tsefta: Nashim, transo J. Neusner (New York: Ktav, 1979),201.
M h ruad ibn 'Abd al-Kadm Shahrastani, Ltvre des reltgtOns et 2. u am
des sectes, 2, transo J. Jolivet and G. Monnot (Paris: Peeters/Unesco,
199J), 1JO-JI.
3. ShahrastanI, Livre des religions et des sectes, 13I.
4. Dante Alighieri, La vita nll-ova, transo B. Reynolds (London: Pen-
guin, 1969), 7+ . . .
5. Friedrich Holderlin, Werke und Enej, vol. 2, ed. F. BelSsnel and J.
Schmidt (Frankfurt: Insel, 1969), 880.
Chapter 2
L This cssay takes up a text prepared for the inaugural lccrure of a
course in Theoretical Philosophy, 2006-7, the Faculty of Arts and De-
slgn the University IUAV ofVenicc,
, 2.' Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Uses and Abuses ofHisto? to Life,"
in Untimely Meditations, transo R. J. Hollingdale (CambrIdge, VK:
Cambridge Vniversity Press, 1997), 60. . .
3, Translators' note: Here and elsewhere Agamben uses mannequm 111
the less familiar sense of "living fashion model," though the more com-
mon sensc of "dummy" is quite suggestivc, .
4- Sce Walter Benjamin, The Arcades H. EIland and
K. MeLallghlin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard VntVerslty 1 ress, 1999),66.
II5
4
II6
Notes
Chapter 3
1. Franz Kafka, The li-ial, traos. B. Mitehell (New York' Seh k
199
8
),3. . oc en,
2. Davide Stimilli, "Kaflds Shorthand "
at rhe Warburg Institute in 1 d M' a conference paper deIivered
,011 on, ay 20 2006
3 Kafka, The n-ial, 14: "1 can't re on d ~ "
anyrhing, or more accurately 1 dan'r k
P
'far YOhuve beco accused of
b
'd ,now 1 you ave."
4. 1 ,,224.
5 Franz Kafka, The Crea! %11 ofCh' d .
Muir and E. Muir (Lo d . M SIma an Other heces, transo W.
6 Kafk T'. Ti.!,n on. . ee <er, 1933), 245-46.
. a, 10C na 213.
7 bid., 94-
8. Franz Kafka Th e l
199
8
), 25
2
. ,e as! e, transo M. Harman (New York: Schocken,
9 Kafka, The Tria!, 106.
10. Franz Kafka, Dearest Father- Stories a d O ..
Kaiser and E. Wilkins (N Yc .k. S h n t Jer Wrttmgs, transo E.
ew 01 . e ocken, 1954) 308
11. Franz Kafka, Letters fo Milena t p:' .
Sehoeken, 1990),
21
4-
1
5. ' tans. . Boehm (New York:
12. bid., 201.
13 bid., I98.
14 Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories ed
Sehoeken, I9
88
), I5
6
. ' . N. Glatzer (New York:
I5 bid.,150.
IG. bid., I45.
17 [bid., 165.
18. Kafka, The Tria!, 2Z6.
19 [bid., 230.
20. [bid.
21. [bid., 213.
22. Kafka, Dearest Father, 87.
23 Kafka, The Tria!, 2I5.
24- [bid., 215, 2I7.
25 [bid., 216.
26. Hyginus Gromaticus "De l' "b .
S
' ifi ,lmItI us constltuend' ". D'
clJn en der romschen Feld I S, In te
messer, vo 1 ed F BI K L h
and A. Rudorff (Berlin' GR' 8 . )' .. ume, . ae mann,
, . Clmer, 1 48 166
27 Kafka, The Castle, 8. ,.
28. [bid., 4.
Notes II7
29. Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka, vol. 2, ed. M. Brod
(New York: Schocken, I949), 202.
30. [bid., 202-3
31. [bid., zr8-I 9
3
2
. Kafka, The Castle, 59: "The boundarie, of our ,mal! holdings have
been markcd out, everyrhing has bcen duly registcred."
33. [sidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore ofSeville, ed. S. A.
Barney and W. J. Lewis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2007), 3II.
34. [bid.
35. [bid., 172.
Chapter 4
1. Manfredo Tafuri, "Le forme del tcmpo: Venezia e la moderni,"
in Unversita IUAV di Venezia, lnaugurazioni accademiche, 1991-2006
(Veniee: [UAV, 2006).
2. S0ren Kierkegaard, Works o[ Love, transo H. V. Hong (Princeton,
NJ: Ptineeton University Pres" 1995), 35
8
.
Chapter 5
1. Translators' note: We follow here Daniel Heller-Roazen's more pre-
cise but less natural renditions of potenza as "potentiality" and impotenza
as "impotentiality," though it is helpful to bear in mind the simpler no-
tions of"power" and "powerlessness."
Chapter 6
1. Epictetus, The Handbook, transo N. P. White (Indianapolis: Hack-
ctt, I983), 16.
2. Epicterus, The Discourses, transo R. Dobbin (London: Penguin,
2008),72 .
3. Translators' note: Although Daniel Heller-Roazen's rendering of
nuda vita as "bare Jife" is certainly warrantable, we transIare it hereafter
as "naked lfe" for reasons that the next chapter will make dear.
Chapter 7
1. Erik Peterson, "Theology of Clothes," Selection, vol. 2, ed. C. Hast-
ing' and D. Nieholl (Landon: Sheed and Watd, 1954), 54-55
1I8
2. Ibid., 56.
3 Ibid., 55.
4 Ibid., 57-58.
Notes
5 Saim Jerome, Episrle 64.19; sce ]onathan Z. Smith, "The Garments
ofShame," in Map ls Not Territory (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 17.
6. Saint Augustine, The City ofCod against the Pagans, ed. R. W Dy-
son (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Ptess, 199
8
),
61
5.
7 2 Timothy 1:9; Saint Augustine, Christian lnstruction, in The Fa-
thers of the Chureh: Augustine, vol. 4, transo J. J. Gavigan (New York:
CIMA, 1947), 159.
8. Peterson, "Theology of Clothes," 56-57.
9 "The gracc of God is nothing at aH execpt our own narure with
free will" (Sainr Augustine, Foul' Anti-Pe!agian WJ'itings, transo J. A.
Mourant and W J. Collinge [W"hington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 1992], 154).
ro. Saint Augustine, The City 01 Cod against the Pagam,
61
5.
n. [bid., 617.
12. [bid., 624-26.
13 [bid., 626-27.
14 Ibid., 629.
1). The Gospef Accordng to Thomas, transo A. Guillaumont ct al.
(Leiden: Brill, 20or), 23.
16. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, "Mystagogical Lectures," in The 117o,,.s of
Saint Cyri! offemsalem, vol. 2, tlans. L. P. McCauley and A. A. Slephenson
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1970), 161-62.
17 Theodore of Mopsuestia; quoted in Smith, "The Garments of
Shame," 19.
18. Quored in Smith, "The Garments ofShame," 17.
19 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Esay
on Ont%gy, transo H. E. Barnes (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992),
506.
20. bid., 519.
21. [bid., 520.
22. [bid., 519-20.
23 [bid., 525.
24 Pentateuch with Rashis Commentary: Genesis, ed. A. M. Silber-
mann (Jerusalem: Rourledge, 1973), 13.
25 Saillt Augustine, "The Literal Meaning of Genesis," in On Gen-
esis, lrans. E. HiIl (New York: New Ciry Press, 2002), 39
6
-97.
Notes
1I9
'b -' . a seu Sextus de naturalibus, vol. 1, ed. S. 26. Aviccnna, Lt er ae annn '} ,
van Riet (Louvain: 197
2
), lateinischen Werke: Die latein-
27 Meister Eckhart, Dle deutsc en uhn
lh
. 1994) 4
2
5-
26
(Latin
1 (S ' . W Ko amme!, , ischen Werke, va . 3 tuttgart. .
Sermon 49) .. 1 TI' l . (7'ative et connaissance de Dieu
28 Sec Vladlmu Loss <y, 1 rJ o ogle n e,
chez Maltre Eckhart (Paris: J. Vrin, " in Se/eeted Writ-
. . "G the's" ectLve fl 1 ,
29 Walter k M. W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Har-
ings, vol. 1, ed. M. Bu oc
vard University Press, 2004), 351.
30. [bid.
JI. bid., 353.
3
2
. bid., 355.. ." June 1 3
1
" Seleeted Writings, vol. 2, part
33 Walter Benam1l1, May- G' Smirh (Cambridge, MA: Har-
d M W Jenn1l1gs, H. E!land, an . 2, e. . .
vard Universiry Prcss, 2005), 4
8o
.. CL . Ph sicae ed. P. Lucentini
Honorius Augustoduoensls, avlS. y '.
3+ . 1 974) !llustratlOn 1.
(Rome: Ediziooi di sto na e and Reflections, transo E.
35. Johann Wolfgang van Goet le, a
SIOpp (London: Penguin, 1998), 29
Chapter 8 . S Theologica, 5 vols. (Westminsrer,
1. Saiot Thomas Aqumas, umma
MD: Christian Classics, 1981), p887
2. [bid.
3. bid., 2897.
+ bid., 2899.
5. bid., 2906.
6. bid., 2907.
7. [bid., 2891-92.
8. [bid., 2882. r' Id Kanutten (Bremen: Wassmann,
9. Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Das wea es r
1
990
).. d B' l' D fine ultimo humanae vitae (Paris: Beauchesne
ro. ViruS e lOg le, e
et ses fils, 1948), 285.
11. bid., 293-9+
120 Notes
Chapter 9
I. Translators' note: The !talian flsta encompasses a broader semantic
field thao aoy of the comparable Eoglish terms: ftast, ftstiva4 holiday,
part)!, ar celebraton. In (his contextfoastshould brng to mind a periodic
and ritualistic celebration rather rhan a sumpruous meal.
2. Philo, "00 the Cherubim," in Phi/o, voL 2, transo F. H. Colson
aod G. H. Whitaker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uoivcrsity Press, 1929),
6r.
3. TransIarars' note: The commandmcnt, "Remember rhe Sabbath
day, ro keep ir holy" (Exod. 20:8), is rendered in ts mnemonic Italian
version as "Ricordari di santificare le feste."
+ Plutarch, MOl'alia, vol. 8, traos. P. A. Clemeot and H. B. Hoffleit
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uoiversity Press, r969), 495-97.
5 Cenesis Rabbah: The judaic Commentdly to the Book ofCenesis: A
New American Translation, vol. r, transo J. Neusner (Adama: Scholars
Press, 1985), I07.
6. The Zohar, vol. 4, transo D. C. Matt (Staoford, CA: Staoford Uoi-
versity Press, 2007), 504.
7. The Talmud ofBabylonia: An Academic Commentmy, vol. !, trans.].
Neusoer (Adanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 338.
8. Hebrew-English Edition 01 the Babylollian Talmu' Megillah, traos.
M. Simon (London: Soncino, 1984), 9a.
9 Ludan, "The Dance," in Lucan, vol. 5, transo A. M. Harmon
(Cambtidge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 229.
10. Claude Lvi-Strauss, Introduction to the Works of Mareel Mauss,
transo E Bajer (Loodon: Routledge, 1987), 64.
Credits
6 VB 43 Gagosian Gallery,
Vanessa Beecroft, VB43
o
9
re
, f Gil'
London. 2009 Vanessa Beecroft, Courtesy o a erIa
p.6
p.63
p. 66
pp. 76-77
Lia Rumma & Massimo Minini
Fl CI iesa di Santa Maria del Cannine, Cap pella
orence,. M' l' o Aclaro and Eve in Earthly Paradise,
BrancaCCl aso ln , . . .
affresco. With rhe permission of the ServJZ10 Musel
Comunali.
From: The Art 01 MedievalSpain, AD 500-1200, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y. I993
Expulsion mm Paradise, Masaie in rhe, Cattedrale
di Monreale, Palerma, Italy, WikimedJa Commons,
anonymous photographer.
d VB 7 Peggy Guggenheim
Vanessa Beecroft, VB4734I. r, 4 f
C II
. "e,ice. 2009 Vanessa Beecroft, Courtesy o
o ecuon, v' ..
Galleria Lia Rumma & Massimo MiDlnl
C
f rhe Museum of Natural History, University
ourtesyo '1 B b'-Museo di Storia
of Florence, Photo credlt: Sau o am 1
Naturale/Firenze
The Helmut Newton Estate / TDR
pp. 78-79
p. 86
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