Ungovernable potentialities - DOI: 10.9732/P.0034-7191.2014v108p93

Résumé

Giorgio Agamben’s essay What Is An Apparatus? presents in condensed form several of themost important strands of his research over the past decade. My aim in this paper is to survey some of these themes in order to underscore both the critical promise and limitations of Agamben’s work on apparatuses. In particular, I will argue that the expanded ontology and conception of apparatuses that he develops in this essay is an essential theoretical advance, and that the one of the chief tasks for thought today is to maintain that expanded ontology and notion of apparatusesas we seek to understand and contest contemporary developments in biopolitical and control societies as they affect both human and nonhuman life.