Georgy Layus

Предметом исследования, представленного в этой статье, является понятие мессианского события в философском проекте Джорджо Агамбена. Центральным текстом для этого исследования является книга «Оставшееся время. Комментарий к Посланию к Римлянам», в которой итальянский философ предлагает свою концепцию мессианизма. Центральным событием, на котором выстраивается эта концепция, является событие упразднения диспозитива закона, которое открывает время аномии. На основе внимательного прочтения «Оставшегося времени» выделяются три ключевые особенности концепции мессианского события: во-первых, оно погружено в прошлое и требует своей реактуализации посредством «расчистки» от традиции; во-вторых, событие, как оно понимается Агамбеном, с са мого начала лишено своей захватывающей силы и предстает обездействованным и «разложенным на cоставляющие»; в-третьих, мессианское событие не может служить основанием для какой-либо позитивной исторической силы, что является важным аспектом критической составляющей проекта Агамбена. Как демонстрируется во второй части статьи, такое понимание мессианского события ведет к упразднению самого горизонта будущего, что ставит препятствие не только перед политическим потенциалом мессианизма, но и накладывает серьезные ограничения эпистемологического характера: упраздняя саму возможность будущего события, нам ничего не остается, кроме как упускать будущее, оставляя его без внимания. The paper addresses the notion of the messianic event in the philosophical project of Giorgio Agamben. The central reference for this paper is the book The Time that Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, in which the Italian philosopher proposes his conception of messianism. The central event that lies at the foundation of this conception is the event of deactivation of the apparatus of law, which introduces the time of anomia. Based on a close reading of The Time that Remains, the author singles out three key features of the messianic event: 1) This event has already taken place in the past. 2) The event, as conceptualized by Agamben, is deprived of its capturing power and is deactivated and decom posed into parts. 3) The messianic event cannot be a foundation of any positive historical power, which constitutes an important aspect of the critical component of Agamben’s project. As the fifth section of the paper demonstrates, such understanding of the messianic event leads to an abolishment of the horizon of the future itself, which poses obstacles to the political potential of messianism and introduces serious limitations to Agamben’s philosophical strategy: if we abolish the possibility of the future event itself, we have nothing to do but to overlook and neglect the future.

This chapter focuses on the notion of seal in the last sentence of Walter Benjamin’s “Toward the Critique of Violence.” Benjamin uses seal as a metaphor of divine violence. By putting this metaphor in the broader context of Benjamin’s work, the author demonstrates that it plays a strategic role in the conceptualization of divine violence. By turning to works like Origin of the German Trauerspiel, “Fate and Character,” fragments on painting, and “The Work of Art in the Age of its Reproducibility” the author demonstrates that in Benjamin’s thought printing and sealing which are necessarily connected to iterability are endowed with an anti-mythical potential. Special attention is paid to the examples of mythical and divine violence—Niobe and Korah. Iterability of the seal interrupts the homogeneous temporality of myth and brings about legibility which is understood as a rhythm of interruptions and legible imprints. Relying on Derrida’s reading of the essay on violence, the author establishes a connection between the notion of seal and Benjamin’s signature at the end of the essay. This chapter demonstrates that the motif of sealing is associated with liberation from myth throughout Benjamin’s entire oeuvre from early essays and the text on violence to “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Reproducibility.”

This article aims to elucidate the relationship between Agamben’s notion of messianism and his project of philosophical archaeology. Whereas the former relates to political and ethical aspects of Agamben’s philosophy, the latter belongs to the domain of methodology of philosophical research itself. The main thesis of the paper argues that these two components rely on each other and constitute one and the same project. The author demonstrates that Agamben’s notion of messianic action and scholarly activity of philosophical archaeology overlap, which leads to a problematization of political dimension of Agamben’s messianism. The orientation towards the past in Agamben’s understanding of the messianic is its crucial presupposition that imposes limits on its applicability to the realm of politics. This thesis is substantiated by an investigation of the problem of relation between theory and practice in Agamben’s thought and by a close reading of the ‘Mystery of Anomia’ section in The Time that Remains. Beginning with the problem of the possibility of a transition from the tragic narrative elaborated in the Homo Sacer project to the messianic state of lawlessness, the author demonstrates that in Agamben’s thought this transition is made possible only by means of an archaeological inquiry.