[-empyre-] On Giorgio Agamben's Profanations

[Aliette <aliette@criticalsecret.org>]

      On Giorgio Agamben's Profanations
[excerpt]

 
    
                
Please is somebody disposing of this entire article that can be useful in
this debate? 

"On Giorgio Agamben's Profanations" by a young French writer that I enjoy
the name being  Mehdi Belhaj Kacem...

(on the book Profanations)

It has disappeared of the free access in http://lacan.com ?but the only
quotation of an extract:
http://www.lacan.com/lacinkXXVII5.htm

Mehdi Belhaj Kacem

translated by Jorge Jauregui

 

Agamben defines religion as the sphere of separation: consequently every
kind of separation seems to be religious. His rationale roughly follows that
of Walter Benjamin, who declared that the religion of our times was
capitalism, and that capitalism has raised the category of separation to its
utmost degree of perfection. Capitalist nihilism is a religious cult of the
purest kind - formal - its contents being the empty forms of separation and
sacredness. We may easily surmise where he is leading us: profanation is the
logical solution to the hegemonic curse of the commodity; the pure and empty
form of separation - sacrare - rules among men. Still we will run up against
a difficulty.

[...]

Agamben argues that in the capitalist cult everything is profaned, yet at
the same time everything is useless so that use itself has become
impossible. To describe the cultural emptiness of capitalist profanation
Agamben resorts to pornography and fashion. The affinities between
contemporary art and these two spheres of production are quite obvious. In
Fuerbach's terms, pornography is defined by sex as the identity of the
profane and truth, whereas fashion is defined by money as the identity of
the sacred and the illusion. All this seems fairly clear, and nevertheless
why does Agamben target pornography as the potential and elective object of
profanation rather than fashion? In a sense, fashion would be more entitled,
and would certainly be likely disposed, to profanation than pornography,
despite the fact that the latter is prone to profanation as well.

Roughly speaking, Agamben tells us: "The profanation of the unprofanable is
the political task of the coming generation." *

[...]