The relation of excepcion: the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion of voice and potency in the thought of Giorgio Agamben

Abstract

Starting from what Agamben, in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (2002), called the “relation of excepcion”, which is based on the inclusion of bare life in the political order by means of its exclusion, we observe that the idea of an “inclusive exclusion” shaped other concepts considered by the Italian philosopher, such as voice and language. For one to possess the lógos, the living being must preserve and simultaneously withhold its own voice, as well as the concept of potency and act, where realization presupposes the exclusion and preservation of potency within itself. In light of this, we propose an analysis of this relation of excepcion within the categories of language/voice and potency/act. To this end, we draw upon a series of the philosopher’s texts, primarily the reflections presented in Language and death (2006) to address voice, Bartleby or Contingency (2015) to reflect on the transition (or not) from potency to act, and the text “The Glorious Body” (2021), whose reflections focus on inoperativity. This leads us to the idea of the “lost wax,” that is, an absent work that is only preserved as fragments in those that have been completed, continually pointing toward the “place” of language.