A1 Journal article (refereed)
The limits of subtractive politics : Agamben and Rousseau’s inheritance (2021)

Prozorov, S. (2021). The limits of subtractive politics : Agamben and Rousseau’s inheritance. Contemporary Political Theory, 20(3), 636-656. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-020-00444-y

JYU authors or editors

Publication details

All authors or editors: Prozorov, Sergei

Journal or series: Contemporary Political Theory

ISSN: 1470-8914

eISSN: 1476-9336

Publication year: 2021

Publication date: 28/09/2020

Volume: 20

Issue number: 3

Pages range: 636-656

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication country: United Kingdom

Publication language: English

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-020-00444-y

Publication open access: Not open

Publication channel open access: 

Publication is parallel published (JYX): https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/71927

Abstract

The article critically engages with Giorgio Agamben’s reading of Rousseau in order to explore the affinities between the two authors’ subtractive approach to political subjectivation. In The Kingdom and the Glory. Agamben argues that Rousseau’s Social Contract reproduces, in a secularized manner, the providential paradigm of government, whose origins Agamben finds in early Christianity. This paradigm establishes a fictitious articulation between transcendent sovereignty and immanent government, presenting particular acts of government as emanating from general divine laws. We shall demonstrate that Rousseau was neither unaware of the problematic character of this paradigm nor did he venture to conceal its problems, but, on the contrary, he highlighted them throughout the Social Contract, whose key motif was the danger of the contamination of general will by particular acts, identities or interests. The same wariness of particularism characterizes Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker, often read as entirely heterogeneous to the political project of the Social Contract. By reading these two works together as the affirmation of generic existence against all forms of particularism, we bring Rousseau’s analysis closer to Agamben’s own attempts to rethink politics as subtracted from all identity predicates and contained in the affirmation of ‘whatever being’. The elucidation of affinities between Rousseau and Agamben will permit us to identify the limits of this subtractive approach to politics and outline an alternative to it.

Keywords: sovereignty; governments (countries); identity (mental objects)

Free keywords: Rousseau, Jean-Jacques; Agamben, Giorgio; Sloterdijk, Peter; sovereignty; government; identity; subtraction

Contributing organizations

Ministry reporting: Yes

Reporting Year: 2021

JUFO rating: 2