Boredom and inoperativity: An involuntary strike against the imperatives of the times

Abstract

This article starts from an analysis of Giorgio Agamben's use of the notion of “boredom” from the point of view of Heidegger and Benjamin in the framework of his philosophy of inoperativity. First, Heidegger's interpretation of the concept of “deep boredom” in L'Aperto and L'uso dei corpi is analyzed. From the perspective of a broader interpretation of the concept of emotional tonality (Stimmung) in the early works, it is shown that, critically, Agamben interprets boredom as a fundamental emotive tonality that would be the last radical but still “metaphysical” attempt to make an “anthropological machine” work. In this sense, boredom would offer a suspensive model for thinking a human life without content but still suggestively “thrown” into a “task” that fails to resolve a certain “affective” biologization of the realization of the human. Secondly, we study the mentions of the figure of the boredom (Langeweile, ennui) that refer to the thought of Walter Benjamin. Although Agamben does not explicitly compare these concepts of boredom in Heidegger and Benjamin, their contraposition allows us to illuminate two different “suspensive” models, close and opposite, that operate in the philosophy of inoperativity. Finally, it is proposed to define the critical potential of an Agambenean philosophy of boredom, as a figure of the “involuntary strike” against the imperatives of the epoch itself.