"The Theological Materials of Modernity (On Giorgio Agamben)"

Author(s): Paul Colilli

Source: Italica , Winter, 2008, Vol. 85, No. 4 (Winter, 2008), pp. 465-479
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian

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"The Theological Materials of Modernity
(On Giorgio Agamben)"

"[. . .] si tratta [. . .] di una specie di regressione archeo-

logica [. . .] Come se tornare indietro fosse per me il solo
modo di aprirmi una strada, di rendermi il pensiero
nuovamente possibile" (Agamben "Intervista" 41).

thought that took possession of Giorgio Agamben' s mind when

viewing Vanessa Beercroft's performance in Berlin ("nothing but
dressed urban people, looking at naked urban people") was that of the
nudity of the resurrected waiting for the Last Judgment. Agamben car-
ries the idea even further by suggesting that "[T]he dressed people cir-
cling around them were, without knowing it, servants in some celestial
administration, who were preparing to lead them to heaven or cast
them to Gehenna" ("A Theology of Nakedness" 1). Agamben proceeds
to elaborate the theological significance of nakedness as it relates to
Judgement Day and recalls the authority of theologians who suggested
that before the Fall Adam and Eve, although not wearing human cloth-
ing, were not naked but were dressed in a garment of mercy, of "tight-
fitting glory." "What we must find again" Agamben writes, "is the
nakedness of Adam, before God covered him in a dress of glory" (2).
Agamben is ultimately interested in the ancient Christian theological
writings that speak about the concept of "Glory" in that they help us
understand how "la funzione delle acclamazioni e della Gloria, nella
forma moderna dell'opinione pubblica e del consenso, è tuttora al centro
dei dispositivi politici delle democrazie moderne" (II Regno e la Gloria 10).
In Agamben's writings we find the repeated use of the Christian
theological tradition to explain contemporary issues, as exemplified in
the review of Beercroft's performance. Materialist approaches to cul-
tural inquiry have, on the one hand, sought to unmask the purportedly
faceless Transcendent body invented by and agreed upon by humans.
On the other hand, however, the same materialist perspectives have
forced us to re-think the significance of Transcendence by pinpointing
elements that have a contemporary relevance that goes far beyond, or,
for that matter, has nothing to do with spiritual ideology. Modernity is
characterized by, among other particulars, the attempt to overcome re-
ligion with the view of liberating and making autonomous the plural-
ity of realities, objectives and desires of humans. Yet, as John Millbank
intimates, religion has not lost its relevance precisely because any
social phenomenon is arbitrary and is thus "religious." For Millbank,

Italica Volume 85 Number 4 (2008)

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466 Paul Colilli

there is no "purely human space" that opens up once

shackles of religious illusion. In fact, there is no pur
outside of the constitutive opposition of this term to
secular, as an immanent and autonomous space, is
sively by a conventional symbolic codification. More
through "imaginary" identification that we are able
meaning of "real" to this space (Millbank 37). Given
dence, if the hypostatic Ens are human inventions tha
structed and reduced to a series of disjoined signifyin
also true that our perception and cognition of human
in essence, a human construction composed of the sh
Transcendence and of the theological textuality that
centuries.

Agamben' s view on this matter has been influenced by thinkers

such as the jurist Carl Schmitt, according to whom,

All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized
theological concepts not only because of their historical development - in
which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state,
whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent
lawgiver - but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of
which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts
(Political Theology 36).

Schmitt gives the example of the "exception" in law which corre-

sponds in his mind to the miracle in theology. Agamben, in fact, cites
the opening part of the quote from Schmitt (II Regno e la Gloria 14) and
suggests it implies that theology has a significant presence in moder-
nity. However, this does not mean that there exists a linear and direct
affinity between ancient theology and the present, nor, for that matter,
is there a relationship of transparent consonance between theology and
political concepts. Instead, "(. . .) si tratta, piuttosto, di una relazione
strategica particolare, che segna i concetti politici, rimamandandoli alla
loro origine teologica" (II Regno e la Gloria 16).
For Agamben, secularization is not a conceptual category but what
he terms a "segnatura"; that is to say, that element in a sign or in a con-
cept which marks it and goes beyond it with the aim of referring it to
a specific interpretation or context, without, however, exceeding its
signifying structure which would create a new meaning or concept. In
other terms, the "segnature" dislocate and transpose concepts and
signs from one context to another, from the sacred to the profane,
"senza ridefinirli semanticamente" (II Regno e la Gloria 16). Agamben
goes to the extent of intimating that many concepts found in the disci-
plinary discourse of philosophy are "segnature" which, in a manner
that is akin to Benjamin's (a major influence on Agamben's thought)
"secret indices," guide the interpretation of the sign in a specific
direction.1 Moreover, "[I]n quanto mettono in conessione tempi e am-

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 The Theological Materials of Modernity 467

biti diversi, le segnature agiscono, per cosi' dire, come elementi storici
allo stato puro" (II Regno e la Gloria 16).
In the first thesis on the philosophy of history Benjamin contends
that historical materialism "(. . .) enlists the services of theology, which
today, as we know, is small and ugly and has to keep out of sight" ("On
the Concept of History" 389). On the basis of what Benjamin writes in
the "Theological Political Fragment," the destiny of the philosophy of
history is to reveal the link between the historical and the messianic as
a messianic redemption in itself. This notion is echoed in thesis XVIIa
on the philosophy of history when Benjamin claims that in the same
manner that a physicist detects the presence of ultraviolet rays in the
solar spectrum, the historical materialist detects the redemptive signs
of a messianic pulsation in history ("Paralipomena to 'On the Concept
of History' " 402). The key in all of this is understanding what
Benjamin means by redemption and redeeming the past. In the third
thesis on the philosophy of history we read that,

(...) only a redeemed mankind is granted the fullness of its past - which is
to say, only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its
moments. Each moment it has lived becomes a citation à Vordre du jour. And
that day is Judgement Day ("On the Concept of History 390).

Agamben interprets "the citable past" as the possibility of quoting the

past "(. . .) in ognuno dei suoi momenti che costruisce il proprio dell'u-
manità redenta (. . .)"; in other terms, historical redemption involves
forcefully tearing the past out of its context, thus destroying it only to
bring it back to its origins but in a transfigured guise (La potenza del
pensiero 225). What is of interest here is that Agamben is undertaking
something quite similar to his archaeological regression, that is, buy
displacing citations from the theological sources and altering their ide-
ological constellations. The intention, however, is that of installing
them in the "now", which has become the place of a new origin. The
point is that the past is unfinished, and its redemptive citability be-
comes a form of re-awakening, which is of a political-theological
nature in that it arrests history in its moment of plenitude. "Now, as
these formations dissolve," Benjamin rites, "within the enlightened
consciousness, political-theological categories arise to take their place.
And it is only within the purview of these categories, which bring the
flow of events to a standstill, that history forms, at the interior of this
flow, as crystalline constellation" (The Arcades Project 854). Thus, while
Benjamin's theology seeks to restore misplaced revelation by means of
a crystallization of history, Agamben attempts to redeem the theologi-
cal texts of the past by freezing them in a present that sees the past
coming toward it from the future.
Agamben sifts through the textual ruins of theology with the view
of re-assembling them in order to construct a new understanding of
the present. As well, he works through a body of theological material

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468 Paul Colilli

with the aim of shedding light on the obscure and l

logic that gave impulse to, for example, the literatur
age. It would be fair to speculate that Agamben is int
ering the modes of potentiality. An important elemen
the Aristotelian idea of dynamis ('potentiality'), whi
term "faculty," refers to "il modo in cui una certa att
se stessa e assegnata a un soggetto, il modo in cui un v
prassi vitale" {La potenza del pensiero 275). Humans a
between acting on or not acting on the faculty or pote
sess. Other forms of life are only able to act on their
humans possess the ability to not act on their potent
choosing a privation. Agamben goes to the extent of
potentiality commits humans to the knowledge of p
nulla di meno che la mistica come fondamento seg
sapere e di ogni suo agire (280).
Agamben expels blind faith from his theological so
aim of isolating those elements that might have a pa
or purpose for the point he might be making about s
contemporary world. Agamben severs faith from re
so by misreading the theologians he cites, that is, by e
ideology which disappears and is replaced by the sort
rialism which characterizes his work. This line of thin
with what Agamben has to say about religion in a ge
Latin religio, Agamben contends, is not derived from
the human and the divine), but from relegere, "che
mento di scrupolo e di attenzione cui devono appro
con gli dèi, l'inquieta esitazione (il rileggere) davanti a
formule - da osservare per rispettare la separazione fr
fano. Religio non è ciò che unisce uomini e dèi, m
mantenerli distinti" {Profanazioni 85). In other words
that of non-belief and indifference before what is div
dealing with "negligence" or "being distracted" in th
vine. Agamben's real point here is the role of profan
significa: aprire la possibilità di una forma speciale d
ignora la separazione o, piuttosto, ne fa un uso pa
fanazioni 85). If on the one hand we have here the efface
ligious," on the other hand we have the removal of th
gious polarity on which the secular grounds its politi
The intent of the pages that follow is to investiga
of theological materials by way of exploring the exe
offers as far as the matter of the resurrection and th
are concerned. In an enigmatic passage from Prof
Agamben resorting to a lyrical autobiographical voice
ulate the severely theological notion of the day of the
"Nello studio dove lavoro, su un mobile accanto alla scrivania, sta

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 The Theological Materials of Modernity 469

poggiata la fotografia - peraltro assai nota - del volto di una bambina

brasiliana che sembra fissarsi severamente e io so con assoluta certezza
che è e sarà lei a giudicarmi, oggi come nell'ultimo giorno" (Profana-
zioni 28-29). So what exactly happens on and after the day of the Last
Judgement? Before proceeding along this line of thinking it would be
very instructive to compare Agamben to a poet for whom he has much
esteem, namely Giorgio Caproni. While Agamben explores theology
with the view of finding what we could term a 'naked rationality/ that
is, reason that is not clothed by or which does have the imprint of a
fideistic ideology, Caproni, on the other hand, is concerned with re-
affirming the absence of God. A case in point is Caproni' s poem "Dies
ilia" (That day) from II franco cacciatore. The term "dies ilia" echoes the
second part of the first verse of a religious sequence attribuited to
Tommaso da Celano (1190-1250), and which narrates the end of the
world and the Last Judgement passed by God. In Caproni' s poem the
pretext is the death of God and the dissolution of the transcendent val-
ues and meaning of human life: "Nessun tribunale / niente" (L 'opera in
versi 413). Agamben, who edited Caproni's Res amissa, purported that
the atheological tradition of modernity reached its most radical degree
in Caproni. This tradition can be dated to the beginning of the
Nineteenth century when Hölderlin revises the final verse of the poem
"The Poet's Calling." At first Hölderlin writes, "And there is no need
for worth and for / arms, as long as the god is not lacking." Later, how-
ever, Hölderlin proposes a key variant: "And there is no need for arms
and for / cunning, as long as God's absence aids" (Hölderlin 2:388).
What emerges from these words is a poetic atheology characterized
by, to use Agamben's own words, "un sonnambolico rovinare di di-
vino e di umano verso una zona incerta e senza più soggetto appiattita
sul trascendentale" (Caproni, Res amissa 12). In Caproni, atheology is
a very palpable element in, for example, Res amissa, as the following
verses attest: "Ma dio, anche se non esisti, / perché non ci assisti?"
(L'opera in versi 916); "Signore, anche se non ci sei, / egualmente pro-
teggi / e assisti me e i miei" (L 'opera in versi 917); "Uno dei tanti, an-
ch'io. / Un albero fulminato / dalla fuga di Dio" (L'opera in versi 918).
In "Inserto" also from 11 franco cacciatore, Caproni outlines an atheolog-
ical reality where solitude without God gives rise to an unprecedented
lightness:

Vi sono dei casi in cui accettare la solitudine può significare attingere Dio.
Ma v'è una stoica accettazione più nobile ancora: la solitudine senza Dio.
Irrespirabile per i più. Dura e incolore come un quarzo. Nera e trasparente
(e tagliente) come l'ossidiana. L'allegria ch'essa può dare è indicibile. È
l'adito - troncata netta ogni speranza - a tutte le libertà possibili. Compresa
quella (la serpe che si morde la coda) di credere in Dio, pur sapendo -
definitivamente - che Dio non c'è e non esiste. (L'opera in versi 421)

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470 Paul Colilli

In this world depicted by Caproni, Transcendence has

sky and violently crashed onto the surface of the Ear
Angel in Wim Winders's film The Wings of Desire. As
would have it, there remains neither Transcendence
but only the smooth and functional surface of c
(Baudrillard 12). With the disappearance of Transc
remains is the tension of immanence, in fact, aga
Baudrillard, we need to reflect on the prodigious effe
result of the loss of the entirety of Transcendence (
Baudrillard offers us in semiotic terms what Caproni
etological fashion, and which Agamben, theorizes, as w
para-theological manner. The disappearance of Transc
the dissolution of the hypostatic law and guarantee wh
there would be a just trial on the Day of Judgement.
collapse of Transcendence, there is no longer any dis
level of morality, ethics and the law, between the righ
iquitous, as we read in "Dies ilia": "Assassino o innoce
di nessuno un cranio / varrà l'altro, come / varrà l'alt
nome / perso fra l'erba" {L'opera in versi 413). We ar
that, as the poem continues, "La morte / (il dopo) no
suno" {L'opera in versi 413). In "Lo stoico" (which, sim
belongs to the section of // franco cacciatore tha
"Liturgica") the choices that are made do not have tra
as a point of reference, thus, each individual measur
tions according to their conscience without there bein
consequence: "Sei solo con la tua coscienza" {L'opera in
Caproni reaches a further conclusion when he writes
that "puoi ~ anche - farne senza" {L'opera in versi 41
science and reason no longer excercise a relevant func
Caproni's poetological atheology becomes something
in Agamben, where theology is stripped of spiritual
formed into a "dispositivo2" that mediates between ou
sum of human material practices. Unlike Caproni, A
trigued by the presence or absence of God; rather, w
are the discursive structures that theologians have for
to speak about God. Or to be more precise, Agamben
what we could term the "philosophical moment," in t
philosophical element of a work, regardless of its gen
philosophy, literature or art) "[. . .] è quello che è rim
modo non detto e contiene per questo una possibi
("Intervista" 1).
Let us return to the discussion dealing with Agamben's thoughts on
the Day of the Last Judgement that began with the quote from
Profanazioni pertaining to the photo of the Brazilian child. One of
Agamben's most incisive passages dealing with this issue is from La

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 The Theological Materials of Modernity 471

comunità che viene where he proposes an exegesis of quaestio 91 found in

Thomas Aquinas' s Summa entitled De qualitate mundi post iudicium. The
passage deals with the fate of the natural world following the Last
Judgement: will the celestial bodies still move? what will happen to the
flora and fauna of the earth? Agamben' s response is that "gli animali,
le piante, le cose, tutti gli elementi e le creature del mondo dopo il
giudizio, esaurito il loro compito teologico, godono ora di una caducità
per così dire incorruttibile, su di essi sta sospeso qualcosa come un
nimbo profano. Per questo nulla potrebbe definire lo statuto della sin-
golarità che viene meglio dei versi che chiudono una delle tarde poesie
di Hölderlin-Scardanelli: '<Essa> si mostra con un giorno d'oro / e la
compiutezza è senza lamento/ " {La comunità che viene 29).
What exactly does Agamben mean by this? The point is that follow-
ing the Day of the Last Judgement necessity and contingency will have
disappeared from the horizon of the Earth. The reason for this is that
Man's eschatological destiny will have been exhaustively realized and
the supernatural destination will have been reached. There is nothing
left for what remains on Earth to do save to be what it is and nothing
else. Once necessity and contingency have disappeared we are left
with the Irreparable, which refers to the notion that things find their re-
demption in the fact that they continue to exist beyond the final event
of salvation. "L'Irreparabile," Agamben writes, "è che le cose siano così
come sono, in questo o quel modo, consegnate senza rimedio alla loro
maniera di essere. Irreparabili sono gli stati di cose, comunque essi
siano: tristi o lievi, atroci o beati. Come tu sei, come il mondo è - questo
è l'Irreparabile." {La comunità che viene 63). Moreover, Agamben indi-
cates that revelation does not imply the revelation of the sacredness of
the world. If anything, it refers to the revelation of the world's ir-
reparably profane character {La comunità che viene 63). In fact, Agamben
goes to the point of suggesting that "il mondo - in quanto assoluta-
mente, irreparabilmente profano - è Dio" {La comunità che viene 64).
The idea is not that God is the Immanent (rather than the Transcen-
dent) Being, if anything, Agamben's argument pivots on the collapse
of Transcendence and the disappearance of those divine and spiritual
entities which leave matter and natural life abandoned to themselves.
But what exactly are we dealing with here?
In one instance Agamben writes that "[L]a proposizione, secondo
cui Dio non si rivela nel mondo, si potrebbe anche esprimere dicendo:
che il mondo non riveli Dio, questo è propriamente Divino" {La comu-
nità che viene 65). These words are to be read as the possibility of a
Transcendence that has radically sacrificed itself to the point of no
longer resembling a hypostatic Uno. Instead, it has become the
Irreparable elements of the natural world. In a second instance, found
in L'aperto, Agamben cites a passage from the second century CE
Gnostic Basilides; here the issue of the condition of matter and nature

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472 Paul Colilli

following the disappearance of the divine elements is

mentary on the Letter to the Romans, where St. Pau
nature that awaits redemption:
When the whole filial line thus arrives above and is beyo
of the spirit, then the whole creation will receive compas
present it groans and is tormented and awaits for the rev
of God, so that all the men of the filial line may go up fro
has happened, God will bring on the whole world the gre
so that every creature may remain in its natural conditi
desire anything contrary to its nature. Thus, all th
themselves in this expanse, whose nature it is to remain
place alone, will stay here below, knowing nothing other t
this expanse: in the regions below there will be no news
of the realities above, so that the souls below may not b
desiring impossible things, like fish striving to graze on
sheep - for such a desire would be their destruction (qu
89-90).

As far as Agamben is concerned, Basilides has here d

ation where at the end of history humans will have
animality, meaning, again, that necessity and contin
have a relevance for the human body. We have a post-
ure that is saved by the fact that salvation is impossib
this life rests in relation to its own proper nature a
knowledge/' which means in this sense not simply to
"ma lasciar fuori dall'essere, rendere insalvabile/' {L'ap
oretical "coming end of history," which Agamben hy
on a "great ignorance" which lets humans be outside o
are saved precisely in their being unsavable. For Benja
cause "(. . .) nature is messianic by reason of its etern
ing away"3 ("Theological-Political Fragment" 306).
For Benjamin, the Last Judgement is indistinguishab
days, precisely because each single moment "(. . .
judgement concerning certain moments that precede
mena to 'On the Concept of History' " 407). Agamben
"capturing" or "seizing" the moment of unredeem
and proposes the photographic picture as one way of
possibility: "[. . .] la fotografia è per me in qualche m
Giudizio Universale, essa rappresenta il mondo com
timo giorno, nel Giorno della Collera" {Profanazioni
graphic image has the ability of capturing the essenc
a person, but of a moment and of an act, however ba
person participates in the context of everyday life. In
the famous "Boulevard du Temple" daguerreotype
the first photograph in which a human figure ap
writes, "[E] in che modo quella vita, quella perso

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 The Theological Materials of Modernity 473

afferrata, immortalata dall'angelo dell'Ultimo Giorno - che è anche

l'angelo della fotografia? Nel gesto più banale e ordinario, nel gesto di
farsi lustrare le scarpe" (Profanazioni 27). According to Agamben, the
singular aspect of the photographic image is that it is the place of sub-
lime difference between the sensorial and the intelligible, the imitation
and the original, memory and hope.
Such an interpretation of the link between a living person and their
posthumous existence had already been hypothesized by Origen. In
the following quote from Agamben we see the extent to which theol-
ogy from Antiquity continues to have a relevance in our present times:

A proposito della resurrezione della carne, i teologi cristiani si chiedevano,

senza riuscire a trovare una risposta soddisfacente, se il corpo sarebbe
risorto nella condizione in cui si trovava al momento della morte (magari
vecchio, calvo e senza una gamba) o nell'integrità della giovinezza. Origene
tagliò corto a queste discussioni senza fine affermando che a risorgere non
sarà il corpo, ma la sua figura, il suo eidos. La fotografia è, in questo senso,
una profezia del corpo glorioso (Profanazioni 29).

Photography has the ability to grasp an image, sever it from historical

time and transmit to a posterity that awaits. In other words, the photo-
graphic image redeems what it has recorded precisely because it has
fast forwarded it to the moment when the possibility for redemption
will have expired, thus producing an unsavable salvation. What is of
course of great pertinence here is that Agamben is not merely citing
Origen' s authority, but is in fact misreading him rather belatedly.
While Origen was thinking in terms of a radicalized spirituality
Agamben is meditating upon the possibility of an equally radical ma-
teriality, thus making him a post modern example of a secular para-
theologian who reads agonistically.
Agamben makes use of ancient Christian theology because he wants
to unmask the hidden pleats of forgotten experiences, whose insignifi-
cance is instead a matter of great relevance. Michel Foucault plays an
important role in establishing the initial parameters for Agamben' s on-
going cultural investigation. In fact, the point of departure for II Regno
e la Gloria (Per una genealogia teologica dell'economia e del governo) is the
course that Foucault gave at the Collège de France in 1977-78 entitled
Security, Territory, Population and dealing with the geneaology of
modern governmentality. After indicating the three types of modalities
present in the history of power relations, Foucault identifies the
Christian pastorate (the government of the souls) as the source for
modern governmentality: "(. . .) in the Western world I think the real
history of the pastorate as the source of a specific type of power over
men, as a model and matrix of procedures for the government of men,
only begins with Christianity." Foucault justifies this assessment by
suggesting that the pastorate has its origins in a process that is

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474 Paul Colilli

unprecedented in the history of any civilization. The

ferring to is one where a (...) a religious community, c
as a Church, that is to say, as an institution that claims to
their daily life on the grounds of leading them to eternal
world, and to do this not only on the scale of a definit
or a state, but of the whole of humanity" (Security, Terri
148). Agamben agrees with Foucault ideas on this matt
role played by oikonomia in the history of governmentali
of further exploring the French philosopher's groun
sights. However, Agamben emphasizes the fact that F
overlooks the theological implications of oikonomia, a
the early Christian writings dealing with the doctrine of
nomics, which constitutes a major element in the gene
mentality, and which he explores in great depth in II R
However, Agamben is careful to point out that this do
the modern concept of government can be explained t
chy of causes, "quasi che alla teologia competesse un
più originario." What it implies, according to Agamben
ological writings constitute "un laboratorio privilegiat
funzionamento e l'articolazione [. . .] della macchina g
(II Regno e la Gloria 9). Agamben is interested in the p
that these ancient theological writings might have, r
possibility as an ethical and moral source or matrix w
to animate the contemporary idea of politics.
Agamben's interest in theology and religion arises ou
of time and the subject he detected in modern politics
such as Homo sacer and Stato di eccezione Agamben sou
insidiousness of modern politics, whose paradigm is n
city (that is, the State that arose out of a rationality ap
but instead on the concentration camp: namely, the St
ception and the suspension of the law. According
Auschwitz essentially unmasked the workings of a sy
blossomed since World War Two. The fact is that pow
excercized by citizen subjects, who have been reduced
are instead the victims of power, or naked life whos
is the silence of refugees, deportees or the banished. T
a homo sacer "whose biological body is exposed, witho
the action of a force of correction, of imprisonment
(Agamben, "Une biopolitique mineure"). Homo sacer
object of a modern anti-politics which Agamben term
Agamben appropriates the term homo sacer form Rom
where the condemned person became sacer, namely, b
sentially outlawed. Homo sacer did not possess an iden
religious, as he was not eligible for sacrifice, nor one
he could be executed without there being a punishmen

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 The Theological Materials of Modernity 475

tor. For Agamben, the modern State, in a way which is very similar to
a camp, unyieldingly performs a desubjectivization on its citizens,
only to later perform a resubjectivization whose aim it is to realize the
subjugation of individuals who have ceased being persons, and are in-
stead "nuda vita" in the guise, for example, of numbers.
However, Agamben' s use of theology that results from this impasse
is one that pivots on the Messianic impulse that characterizes the end
of history. This idea, with all of this biopolitical implications, is ex-
plored in II tempo che resta (Un commento alla Lettera ai Romani). In this
work Agamben investigates the possibility that the structure of time
implied in St. Paul's Messianic theology could be employed to subvert
the sense of political alienation that permeates the present. One partic-
ular that captures Agamben' s imagination is the role played by poetry,
in fact, he is convinced that the core presence of Messianic thought has
been transmitted to Western culture through the conventional struc-
ture of the poem. According to Agamben, the lyric rhyme is an histori-
cal manifestation of the Messianic announcement of St. Paul. The
rhyming scheme in poetry appears for the first time in Christian verse
as the metric and linguistic transcodification of Messianic time, based
on the Pauline interplay between typology and recapitulation. Poetic
rhyme is the Messianic inheritance that St. Paul bequeaths to modern
poetry: "la rima [. . .] intesa in senso ampio, come articolazione della
differenza tra serie semiotica e serie semantica, è l'eredità messianica
che San Paolo lascia alla poesia moderna e la storia e il destino della
rima coincidono nella poesia con la storia e il destino dell'annuncio
messianico" (II tempo che resta 82, 83).
But poetry is of course not simply something which theology is able
to quote (thus making poetry an anelila theologiae), but it is itself a form
of theology, just as theology can be a form of poetry. Harold Bloom
makes a similar assessment concerning theology and poetry when he
contends that "[. . .]the best poetry, whatever its intentions, is a kind
of theology, while theology generally is bad poetry." However, in the
same breath Bloom acknowledges the fact that theology has the poten-
tial to redeem its poetic vein: "Yet theology can be what Wallace
Stevens called 'the profound poetry of the poor and the dead'[. . .]"
(Jesus and Yahweh 98). In one definite way, Agamben attempts to elabo-
rate a poetry of the dead by seeking to understand what exactly will
happen at the end of time, which, in his view, is already happening
now.5 Agamben is taking Heidegger's dictum of Being-towards-death
to a generally unthought and unthinkable level, that is, by thinking
the meaning of the resurrection and the Last Day. In investigating
Agamben's use of theological materials we discover the presence of
poetry inscribed onto these ruins.
The point of departure for this discovery is the discussion on glory
and "inoperosità" within the context of theological economy, where

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476 Paul Colilli

Judgement Day again plays a key function: "In quan

ultimo dell'uomo e la condizione che segue al Giudi
Gloria coincide con la cessazione di ogni attività e di
Regno e la Gloria 262). Following the resurrection and
ment all that remains are glory and the end of contin
sity, which are replaced by inactivity and contemplati
type of inactivity as the one God possessed before th
world and after its end. The advent of the Messiah b
disactivation of the law: "Vivere nel messia significa a
e rendere inoperosa in ogni istante e in ogni aspetto
amo, fare apparire in essa la vita per cui viviamo, ch
Vita di Gesù' " (271). For Agamben this divine inactivi
to the domain of theology, to be sure, "questa inoper
politica dell'Occidente, il nutrimento glorioso di og
What is of particular significance for the connection
and poetry here is that a model for the disactivation
divine works is the poem. In essence, poetry is a type
eration that disactivates the communicative and informational func-
tions of language, which ends up resting on itself as it contemplates its
potential to speak. It is in this way, Agamben suggests, that Dante's La
vita nuova and Leopardi's Canti are a contemplation of the Italian lan-
guage, that is to say, where "[. . .] il soggetto poetico è non l'individuo
che ha scritto queste poesie, ma quel soggetto che si produce nel punto
in cui la lingua è stata resa, è, cioè, divenuta, in lui e per lui, puramente
dicibile" (275). Agamben's central point is that poetry does for the po-
tential of saying what politics and philosophy do for the potential of
acting. Namely, by disactivating the economical and biological func-
tions, they show what the human body is capable of and open it to a
new horizon of use (275).
"Despite a marvelous parody by Borges," Bloom advises us, "the-
ologians are not primarily agonists. Dante understood that poets
were" (Dante's Divine Comedy 6). Although Bloom never mentions the
work by Borges, a prime candidate would be "The Theologians" from
The Aleph, where the Argentinian writer resolves a conflict between
two early Patristic era theologians (Aurelian of Aquilea and John of
Pannonia) by suggesting that "God takes [. . .] little interest in religious
differences." In fact, Borges concludes the short story by noting that,
"[. . .1 in paradise, Aurelian discovered that in the eyes of the unfath-
omable deity, he and John of Pannonia (the orthodox and the heretic,
the abominator and the abominated, the accuser and the victim) were
a single person" ("The Theologians" 207). In a very uncanny way
something similar could be said about Agamben as he assumes the
guise of a para-theologian; that is, not categorically a theologian, but
rather, as the prefix 'para-' would suggest, someone whose potentiality
is to either think "alongside" theologians or, for that matter, to think

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 The Theological Materials of Modernity 477

"against" them. This prepositional relationship with theology is predi-

cated upon the activity of collecting what remains of the theological
tradition. Agamben recomposes the theological shards he gathers with
the aim of further distinguishing or separating himself from this
Christian intellectual tradition by means of grasping its most radical
elements that pivot on an uncompromising sense of spirituality.
Could it be, however, that radical spirituality and radical materiality
(which is Agamben' s faith) are two sides of the same priceless coin?
The roots of the spirituality implicit in the theological tradition, on the
one hand, and of contemporary materialism on the other, share the
need to separate the world from itself in order to uncover the modes of
potentiality, where, as Agamben argues, thought is non-thought and
activity is inactivity (La potenza del pensiero 281). If this is indeed the
case, then we have a fulfillment of Borges' s prophecy where contrast-
ing theologians are one and the same person. However, to suggest that
Agamben is not to be distinguished from the theologians he employs
would of course be misleading and missing the point. A conclusion
we can draw from Agamben' s writings is that the theological materials
upon which we construct the present are so ingrained into our cogni-
tive operations that we are oblivious to the difference between what
has been transmitted to us from the past and what instead emerges in
the Dresent for the first time.
PAULCOLILLI
Laurentian University

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NOTES
1 "The past carries with it a secret index by which it is referred to redemp-
tion. Doesn't a breath of the air that pervaded earlier days caress us as well? In
the voices we hear, isn't there an echo of now silent ones? (. . .) If so, then there
is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one" (Benjamin
"On the Concept of History" 390).
2 "... chiamerò dispositivo letteralmente qualunque cosa abbia in qualche
modo la capacità di catturare, orientare, determinare, intercettare, modellare,

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 The Theological Materials of Modernity 479

controllare e assicurare i gesti, le condotte, le opinioni e i discorsi degli esseri

viventi" (Agamben, Che cos' è un dispositvo? 22).
ó The passage immediately preceding this reads, Spiritual restitution in in-
tegrum, which introduces immortality, corresponds to a worldly restitution
that leads to an eternity of downfall, and the rhythm of this eternally transient
worldly existence, transient in its totality, in its spatial but also in its temporal
totality, the rhythm of messianic nature, is happiness" ('Theological-Political
Fragment" 306).
4 Agamben employs a similar rhetorical strategy in Homo Sacer when he
first acknowledges Foucault' s important formulations concerning the link be-
tween the technologies of subjective individuation and the processes of objec-
tive totalization. However, Agamben then contends that Foucault "(. . .)
avrebbe costantemente rifiutato di elaborare una teoria unitaria del potere."
Agamben then proposes to fill this lacuna left by Foucault by analyzing the
hidden link between the juridical-institutional and the biopolitical models of
power (Homo Sacer 8, 9).
5 "Di tutto questo la fotografia esige che ci si ricordi, di tutti questi nomi
perduti le foto testimoniano, simili al libro della vita che il nuovo angelo
apocalittico - l'angelo della fotografia - tiene fra le mani alla fine dei giorni,
cioè ogni giorno" (Profanazioni 30).

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