Agamben’s political messianism in ‘The Time That Remains’

Abstract

The aim of this article is to shed light on the political ambitions of Agamben's book The Time That Remains. First, the article examines Agamben's political messianism in The Time That Remains by taking into account the question of political theology. Second, the article elaborates on a number of important concepts and ideas that are at the forefront of Agamben's political messianism. Third, the author elucidates the general framework within which one has to view Agamben's political messianism. In the fourth and last part of the article, the author assesses the innovative nature of Agamben's political messianism by sketching out a comparison between The Time That Remains and Heidegger's phenomenological interpretation of Paul the apostle. ARTICLE HISTORY

Agency and will in Agamben’s coming politics

“…This brings forth the issue of how the “affirmation” of potentiality takes place or, put differently, how potentiality is actualized. Most responses to this issue implicitly affirm the passive interpretation to focus on Agamben’s notion of messianism (Cimino, 2016; Durantaye, 2009; Mills, 2004; Newman, 2017; Zartaloudis, 2015), which is also linked to the specifics of his ontology, insofar as actuality is held to be constituted by “gaps” that permit new potential configurations to simply arise (Attell, 2009; Sawczyński, 2018). The problem with these approaches is that although they enlighten our understanding of Agamben’s notion of the coming politics, they seem to make the change an effect of anonymous, pre-personal changes (Frazer and Hutchins, 2011: 139).…”