Monday, November 21, 2005
(10:09 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Influences from A to Z
[UPDATE: See Žižek's new articles on France.]In my recent reading of Agamben, I noticed that there are two basic authorities for him: Aristotle and Benjamin. He might not always get them "right" in terms of the scholarly concensus, but if Agamben says that either Aristotle or Benjamin said it, then that is equivalent to Agamben saying it in his own name. Similarly, Žižek has two basic authorities, Hegel and Lacan. For all the differences between the two, they do share the trait of being unafraid of challenging even the loftiest authorities on their chosen figures. Agamben, for instance, only ever seems to bring up Scholem in order to disprove him, and Žižek has even challenged Jacques-Alain Miller a time or two.
In both cases, the basic pattern seems to have been that they first went through a more or less conventional philosophical education (picking up the Aristotle and Hegel, respectively), then later in their careers picked up the second figure in what at first might have seemed to be a radical shift away from their initial expertise -- but instead of dumping the old stuff, they integrated it. I wonder if it's possible to repeat this model on purpose, or if one of the conditions of its success is to just find oneself doing it.
Since we're on the "A to Z" topic, I will note that Agamben also repeats himself -- for instance, one of the little aleph-footnote sections in Homo Sacer is basically identical to an essay in Means without End -- but it doesn't become so egregious as in Žižek's case. This is first of all because Agamben is not publishing a ridiculous number of articles in any venue that will take him, but more importantly because Agamben is smooth. He has a seductive writing style, such that it doesn't seem so important that you've heard this before, whereas with Žižek, it's like your gregarious uncle who tells the same stories every Thanksgiving -- except that it's every two weeks.
