DISPOZITIVI I KONTRADISPOZITIVI (AGAMBENOVO SHVATANJE PROFANACIJE)
APPARATUSES AND COUNTER-APPARATUSES (AGAMBEN’S UNDERSTANDING OF PROFANATION)

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I am starting with Foucault’s notion of apparatus (dispositif), showing its genealogy, its „growth“ from the concept of positivity (from Archaeology of Knowledge), in order to demonstrate its double-sidedness: on the one hand, functions of subjugation, and on the other, chance for emancipation. Gilles Deleuze was the first to announce such adjustment of that notion, identifying foucauldian apparatus as controling force, as well as the one that can liberate human beings. Giorgio Agamben transposed that division into the difference between sacred and profane, claiming that apparatus works like the act of sacrifice, and that the opposing act of profanation can be understood as the work of counter-apparatus. Following Agamben’s analysis, language, in its poetic function (in its possibility of enjambement), is the one of the most powerfull counter-appparatuses.

• Details
• Contents