Giorgio Agamben — To Whom Do We Address Our Word?
This is my translation of the new Giorgio Agamben’s intervention, original in Italian is here.
Giorgio Agamben — To Whom The Word Is Addressed?
In every age poets, philosophers and prophets have unreservedly lamented and denounced the vices and shortcomings of their times. Those who thus groaned and accused, however, addressed themselves to their fellow human beings and spoke in the name of something common or at least shareable. It has been said, in this sense, that poets and philosophers have always spoken in the name of an absent people. Absent in the sense of missing, of something that was missed and was therefore somehow still present. Albeit in this negative and purely ideal mode, their words still presupposed an addressee.
Today, perhaps for the first time, poets and philosophers speak — if they speak at all — without having any possible addressee in mind anymore. The philosopher’s traditional estrangement from the world in which he lives has shifted its meaning; it is no longer merely isolation or persecution by hostile or enemy forces. The word must now reckon with an absence of addressee that is not episodic but, so to speak, ongoing. It is without addressee, that is, without destiny. This can also be expressed by saying, as is done in many quarters, that humanity — or at least that part of it which is richer and more…
