Agamben’s Language and Politics: from Exception to Paradigm

The aim of this paper is to do research on Giorgio Agamben’s efforts to recover language, ethics and politics based on Plato’s paradigm against language, ethics and politics of Aristotle’s gramma: letter that has dominated Western thoughts. In Plato’s paradigm syntagma, ‘a thing the thing itself,’ ‘the thing itself’ as ipseity of a thing referring to self-reference of a thing indicates the birth of linguistic being of a thing. The essence in paradigm is ‘exclusive inclusion’ through inoperativity. With an exclusion of a thing, not only a thing but also its class which it belongs to will be exposed. By rendering ‘a thing’ inoperative (exclusion), the thing itself (inclusion) takes place. Aristotle, however, considers ‘the thing itself’ as a simple ‘duplicate’ of a thing and excludes it and in its place, he positions ‘gramma.’ Gramma is a reasoned voice in voice that can be articulated with vowels and consonants. Gramma, a reasoned voice, follows the structure of state of exception in which it sets up itself by inclusively excluding parts in voice that can not be articulable with vowels and consonants. Language and ethics and politics based on Aristotle’s gramma cannot get away from structure by state of exception. Following Walter Benjamin, Agamben redeems language and ethics and politics on paradigm, by rendering inoperative language and ethics of politics on Aristotle’s gramma. Inoperativity turns gramma into gramma itself, exposing being of gramma. Benjamin’s proletariat general strike renders proletariat inoperative, leading to exposure of proletariat itself and being of proletariat simultaneously.