This book explores the relationship between the works of Agamben and Jacques Derrida. Arthur Willemse explains how Agamben’s thought renders Derridean terminology inoperative—by suspending the suspense of signification. He argues that this is Agamben’s way of undoing a theological structure of thought that philosophy has unknowingly appropriated.

The work of Giorgio Agamben relies heavily on two rather opaque notions: the messianic and the irreparable. This essay is devoted to an analysis of the latter. After surveying the existing literature, I take my cue from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's prison letters and prepare the way for my own analysis of Agamben's irreparable. In the final part of the essay, I compare the irreparable with Agamben's use of Benjamin's thought of something unforgettable. I understand the role of the irreparable in this (...) light, since, for Agamben, it means the chance of something given up by language, something given up altogether, and as such serves as entry to the paradigmatic. (shrink)

In this essay, I trace the motif of abandonment that runs through the ethics of Simone Weil. In doing so, as a conceptual lens, I make use of Giorgio Agamben’s concept of abandonment. Taking my cue from Weil’s hesitations concerning baptism, I examine her stance as a case of either sacrifice or exception, of ambiguity or indifference. Subsequently, I use Weil’s hesitations to examine an interconnected sequence of soteriology and metaphysics, following Church and potentiality, World and actuality, and The Kingdom (...) and contingency. This allows me to explore the themes of writing and life. A crucial role is reserved for the Parable of the Sower, and how it discriminates between the saved and the damned. (shrink)

Review of Georges Didi-Huberman (2022) Het Voortleven van de Vuurvliegjes. Vertaling: Ineke van der Burg. Amsterdam: Octavo Publicaties.