DE LA DURANTAYE

In glossing the suspension of the divisions that separate men (such as Jew/Gentile, circumcised/uncircumcised, married/single, and so forth) which is to characterize the messianic kingdom invoked by Saint Paul, Agamben directs his readerʼs attention to a curious passage in Benjaminʼs unfi nished final work. Therein, Benjamin employs a singular metaphor for the division between what came before and what came after a given historical event. He describes it as being “like a line divided by the Apollonian incision [wie eine Strecke, die nach dem apoll(i)nishcen Schnitt geteilt wird]” [Benjamin, 5: 588; 7a1]. Agamben 4. For a brief summary of Agambenʼs views on gesture, cf. de la Durantaye [5n8]. 8 points out that this comparison, as it stands in the German critical edition of Benjaminʼs works, makes no sense. Nowhere in Greek thought is there to be found such a reference to an “Apollonian incision.” Benjaminʼs handwriting was notoriously difficult to decipher. After examining the manuscript, Agamben suggests that while the illegible “i” is in fact an illegible “i,” the half-legible “o” is a half-legible “e.” Benjamin is not referring to the god Apollo, Agamben notes, but to the painter Apelles. Agamben recalls Plinyʼs account of Apellesʼs visit to fellow painter Protogenes when he, displaying the height of his painterly art, divided in two an incredibly fi ne line drawn by Protogenes.5 Agamben takes Benjaminʼs hitherto misunderstood metaphor as a metaphor for the Paulinian division and suspension of earlier divisions (Jew/Gentile, circumcised/ uncircumcised, married/single, etc.). “Wherein lies the interest of this ʻdivision of a divisionʼ?” asks Agamben. His reply is: “Above all in that it obliges us to think the question of the relation of universal to particular in a completely new fashion, not only in the realm of logic, but in that of ontology and of politics [Inanzi tutto perché obbliga a pensare in modo completamente nuovo la questione della lʼuniversale et del particolare, non soltanto nella logica, ma anche nellʼontologia e nella politica]” [Il tempo che resta 53–54]. Further glossing this division of a division, Agamben says that it is, “an operation that divides these nomistic divisions and renders them inoperative, without forasmuch leading them to an ultimate stage [unʼoperazione che divide le stesse divisioni nomistiche e le rende inoperanti, senza però mai raggiungere un suolo ultimo]” [54-55; my emphasis]. This division of division which Agamben finds in Benjamin and Paul, this characteristic gesture, does not pretend simply to efface the divisions which isolate and alienate communities, but, without effacing them, renders them no longer of great importance, renders them, as instruments of political division, “inoperative.”6

LELAND DE LA DURANTAYE