ON RHTYHM, RESONANCE AND DISTORTION

 

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman — a rope over an abyss…What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is a transition… Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which spanned a length of one mile over the Tacoma Narrows in Bremerton, Washington, was nicknamed the Galloping Gertie because of its constant rocking and twisting in the wind. These oscillations became so great that on November 7, 1940, a support cable near the middle of the bridge snapped, causing the entire structure to crash into the river below.

0.

That to think, to speak and to write about rhythm requires and does not require rhythm at the same time can be obtained from a line of thought which aims to preserve its unthought not as something that can be thought or written or spoken about but as that which makes one aware of the absent presence of the unthought, as “something,” or perhaps as the” unheard.

ii

Yet how one approaches this term also determines the “meaning(s)” associated with this term. Can we understand rhythm? Is it possible to understand rhythm as such? If it is possible then, how? Furthermore, why should we understand rhythm?

Can we hear the rhythm?

One possible way of understanding rhythm can be found in a traditional appropriation of the word… Rhythm: division of a supposed continuum into intervals, an attempt at temporalization? Yet, that which is known as a continuum of time is a continuum only when time is conceptualised as a succession of points – rhythm thus can be conceptualised as a division of continuum of time into intervals only when time is made of points – of what? Of the experience of the one who experiences it? Yet, does rhtyhm have a subject? Does the subject have a rhtyhm? Is it possible to approach rhythm without appropriation? Is it possible to formulate a concept of rhythm without falling into the determinations of an epistemology of subject? Is it possible to consider the heard and the unheard of rhythm without betraying them?

1.

Getting into resonance with these preliminary questions, this essay finds its point of departure in two essays written by G. Agamben, entitled, “Poiesis and Praxis” and “The Original Structure of Work of Art”iii. The latter opens with following sentences:

“Everything is rhythm, the entire destiny of man is one heavenly rhythm, just as every work of art is one rhtyhm, and everything swings from the poetizing lips of the god.” This statement was not passed down to us by Hölderlin’s own hand. It is from a period of his life – 1807-1843 – that we usually define as the years of his insanity. The words that compose it were transcribed by a visitor’s sympathetic hand from the “incoherent speech” that he uttered in his room in the house of the carpenter Zimmer.iv

First of all, one of my aims in this paper is to draw attention to a certain reading of Hölderlin’s quite often cited paragraph on rhythm with the intention of foregrounding in Agamben the privilege concluded from this quotation. That is, a certain privilege which might be taken here as corresponding to an authentic experience of rhythm; or, maybe, to an ear that hears the unheard; or, maybe, to a subject – something more than a subject that takes the step beyond, which is pointed towards by a moment of Aufhebung.

However, I believe that this privilege cannot be made clear without following Agamben’s route (a route which not only traverses possibilities but also produces truths) towards a formulation of an original structure of the work of art at the cost of an exclusion and, at the same time, of an inclusion of “the unheard” as that which can be experienced which, I think, finds its point of departure in a negation though it passes itself off as an affirmation of the unthought. As Nietzsche showed us time and again, this is an affirmation in which is hidden a negation. Or, better, this is a move of Aufhebung, in which a negation is elevated to the level of affirmation. Therefore, my main concern in this paper will be to read Agamben’s essay with the intention of affirming an affirmation, that is, keeping such oppositions as the thought and the unthought, the heard and the unheard, the ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos) as mere differences by way of miraculating a different approach to rhythm. My second concern will be to distinguish the Heideggerian move in Agamben’s handling of Hölderlin’s claim and thus to throw light on the above mentioned negation. Therefore my guiding question will be: is there a possible way of developing a relationship between ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos) by keeping these terms as differential units and thus, in a double move, rhythmizing non-rhythm and non-rhythmizing rhythm?

2.

In his essay, “Poiesis and Praxis,” tracing etymologically the (original) meaning of poiesis, praxis and work, Agamben lays bare the historical evolution these words went through in Western thought. According to Agamben the (hi)story – for this is a story of a fall – of these words is as follows: poiesis in time is conjoined with praxis only to be subsumed under the general concept of work. From Roman times on work started to signify production with the sole aim of putting into action whereas formerly these three represented different realms in their relationship to “limit.” Thus, “bringing into presence” which was the main concern of art (poiesis) in the beginning was replaced by an aesthetic production of works (praxis) and a concern for principles that constitute art as an aesthetic realm.

For Agamben, it was in Nietzsche that the ultimate unity of poiesis and praxis culminated into “will to power.” If the will that only wills itself represented this evolution, a will which is willed by opening itself to an application of “being” to “becoming” was what Nietzsche introduced into metaphysical tradition. Therefore, Nietzsche’s thought was a “thought of art.”v

If our intention is to approach these preliminary conclusions about the issue of poiesis and praxis, we should be able to locate the matter into a broader context: that is, in the question of applicability of the thought of “being” to “becoming,” in the question of associations the word “will” has in Nietzsche and also into the much broader context of the question of negation and affirmation in Nietzsche.

These three points become especially important when, for example, one considers Agamben’s other essay “The Original Structure of the Work of Art” where one observes that the transformation of the whole of life into art and the artist’s will to power in the former essay is much related to “the original structure of work of art” which Agamben detects in the opposition of ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos). For if the poiesis essay can be seen as an attempt to draw a picture of the fall of poiesis into “will to power,” the second essay traces the possibility – by a certain reading of the quotation from Hölderlin – of restoring poiesis to its original status by means of foregrounding the unheard as that which can be heard within the oppositional structure of ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos).

To start with, to be resonating with Nietzsche probably amplifies those vibrations of thought which, genealogically speaking, put forward thought as a difference of forces, instead of the traditional way of putting it into opposition to “praxis.” If the Nietzschean criticism of Hegel – the critique of Aufhebung – should be pursued in the name of a critique of Hegelian transgression of limit, then, one should first deconstruct the opposition of “the thought” to “the unthought” or “the heard” to the “the unheard,” which is embodied in Agamben as the opposition between “poiesis” and “praxis” or, between ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos). Such a deconstruction also facilitates one with a reading of Nietzschean will not as an application of “being” to “becoming” but with viewing them as differential units, or rather, as less being of becoming than being of becoming.

Since Lacoue-Labarthe’s essays “Apocryphal Nietzsche” and “Obliteration”vi, we have learned too well the Heideggerean approach to Nietzsche which “obliterated” Nietzsche by way of an Hegelian move (though much criticised and thought as surpassed by Heidegger himself as a result of his maneuvre, “step back”). I propose at this point that a similar approach can be detected in Agamben’s approach to Nietzsche by way of his criticism of “will” which leads him to a conceptualisation of ruqmoz (rhutmos) as an authentic experience. Without doubt, it does not mean that Agamben obliterates Nietzsche but he, in a certain way, reads Nietzsche as if certain truths can be obtained from him – this is a subject which I will return later as the main theme of both my essay and Agamben’s: resonance.

As Agamben puts it:

We are so accustomed to this unified understanding of all man’s “doing” as praxis that we do not recognize that it could be, and in other eras has been, conceived differently. The Greeks, to whom we owe all the categories through which we judge ourselves and reality around us, made a clear distinction between poiesis (poiein, “to produce” in the sense of bringing into being) and praxis (prattein, “to do” in the sense of acting). As we shall see, central to praxis was the idea of the will that finds its immediate expression in an act, while, by contrast, central to poiesis was the experience of pro-duction into presence, the fact that something passed from nonbeing to being, from concealment into the light of the work. The essential character of poiesis was not its aspect as a practical and voluntary process but its being a mode of truth understood as unveiling, as aletheia.vii

In relation to these definitions of poiesis and praxis, the category of “work” was understood by Greeks as that which pertains to biological necessity. According to Agamben, these distinctions between poiesis, praxis and work have been obscured in time as a result of a tendency which prioritized “voluntary production of an effect” above all.

When this process is completed in the modern era, every chance to distinguish between poiesis and praxis, pro-duction and action, is lost. Man’s “doing” is determined as an activity producing a real effect, whose worth is appreciated with respect to the will that is expressed in it, that is, with respect to its creativity and freedom. (…) In terms of the work of art, this means the emphasis shifts away from what the Greeks considered the essence of the work – the fact that in it something passed from nonbeing into being, thus opening the space of truth and building a world for man’s dwelling on earth – and to the operari of the artist, that is, to the creative genius and the particular characteristics of the artistic process in which it finds expression.viii

The most obvious distinction between poiesis and praxis, as can be observed above, is that for poiesis, there does not necessarily have to be something actualized which can be represented either in the form of a work or an art work. In other words, that which unveils itself might or might not find embodiment in an artwork for what exactly distinguishes it from praxis is the lack of the will of the artist in poiesis and the will of the artist in praxis as “voluntary production of an effect,” that is, the active will of the artist to represent this experience in an artwork. Consequently, if, after this development, one can talk about “the particular characteristics of the artistic process” there is a more convenient way of defining it: aesthetics.

For Agamben, all Western thought – basically metaphysical – therefore can be seen as a series of “attempts to transcend aesthetics and to give a new status to artistic pro-duction [which] have started from the blurring of the distinction between poiesis and praxis, that is from the interpretation of art as a mode of praxis and of the praxis as the expression of a will and a creative force.”ix Novalis, Nietzsche, Artaud, the Situationists, therefore, attempted in vain to posit the essence of “human activity as will and vital impulse”x because what they strived for was in fact a “forgetting of the original pro-ductive status of the work of art as foundation of the space of truth.”xi

In the rest of the essay Agamben elaborates the distinctions between poiesis and praxis on the basis of “limit” and “will.” If poiesis has its limit outside itself and is not determined therefore by an end or by an act of production, praxis is what has its limit within itself and therefore what is determined by an act of production in opposition to bringing into presence. Furthermore, the final and the most crucial distinction between the two lies in praxis‘ relation to “will”: “that man is capable of praxis means that man wills his action and, willing it, goes through it to its limit. Praxis is going through to the limit of the action, while moved by will; it is willed action.”xii

Now if we could sum up all those distinctions that went into the structuring of poiesis and praxis as oppositional terms, perhaps we could finish this essay at any moment; yet, I guess, the fact that one can never produce a sum total of such distinctions is what raises some questions about the “truth” of both this essay and Agamben’s. Without doubt, it is the inexhaustibility of such distinctions which both constructs and deconstructs such oppositions between terms; yet there is always a point, where, by means of an approximation, a concrete opposition is produced in phenomenology: poiesis or praxis? As long as thought proceeds with binary oppositions, it is inevitable that one will be caught – most of the time by an unconscious act, or, by simply avoiding it – crossing the bridge. Then, there arises a serious question about this inexhaustability: should one prefer to cross the bridge? Or, should one prefer to preserve an already-there abyss as an abyss? Is approximation that which is unavoidable?

Without producing truths, but rather, by looking at the origin of values and values of origin, or, better, proceeding genealogically, can one explain this “abyss” by way of a concept of resonance? By resonance, I mean, not the general dictionary of the term – “Resonance: sound produced or increased in one body by sound waves from another…” but resonance on both sides of a border which gives way to a distorted rhythm on the very line (?) that seems to constitute the border.

3.

The last section of the poiesis essay, “Art Is the Highest Task and the Truly Metaphysical Activity of Man”xiii is devoted to a reading of Nietzsche which crosses the labrynthine bridge between Nietzsche’s early and late works as Heidegger’s Zarathustraxiv crosses the bridge in order to reach the truth. Now “will” is transformed into “will to power” and equated with “eternal recurrence,” thereby made bearing witness to the Nietzschean project of transforming life into art, that is, transforming the whole of life into an art work not by means of the will of the artist but by transformation of the will into a general will. These are the final sentences of the essay:

Art is the eternal self-generation of the will to power. As such, it detaches itself both from the activity of the artist and from the sensibility of the spectator to posit itself as the fundamental trait of universal becoming. A fragment from the years 1885-86 reads:“The work of art where it appears without an artist, e.g., as body as organism … To what extent the artist is only a preliminary stage. The world as a work of art that gives birth to itself – ”xv

Agamben comments no more after this quotation and it seems as if we are asked to conclude that this is the final stage of the poiesis‘ fall into the hegemony of the will and since then what has been ruling man is this fallen state in which he is condemned to metaphysics. Without doubt this position emanates from a special perspective from which Agamben formerly has looked at a famous Nietzschean aphorism in the Will to Power: “Recapitulation: To impose upon becoming the character of being – that is the supreme will to power.”xvi

This is supposedly, as one considers the generalisation of the will, what constitutes, according to Agamben, the metaphysical twist of the will in Nietzsche which, I believe, can only be maintained if one decides to read the quotation literally, that is, if one holds it as a means for producing “truth.”

I will return to this in following sections because I think there is no way of producing a criticisim of how this point is appropriated by Agamben for restoring poiesis to its original status without first showing the moves taken by Agamben for foregrounding a relationship between 1) the fallen state of poiesis; 2) the quotation from Hölderlin; and 3) the opposition of ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos). One possible way of such a criticism might probably be undertaken by claiming that all are a work of negation: that is, 1) if Nietzschean will ends up in will to power it is because Agamben sees in Nietzsche not an affirmation of affirmation but simply an affirmation of negation; 2) if Agamben concludes that Nietzsche, with a basically metaphysical twist, is the ultimate point in the development of the history of the will it is because he puts stress on being in the phrase, being of becoming, rather than on becoming; 3) if Agamben raises the possibility of hearing the unheard within an economy of opposition between ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos) he achieves that only by way of a negation of time as made of points – all of which would have to be proved later.

4.

To my knowledge, it hardly occurred to anyone to take this quotation by Hölderlin – which opens Agamben’s essay – “Everything is rhythm, the entire destiny of man is one heavenly rhythm, just as every work of art is one rhtyhm, and everything swings from the poetizing lips of the god” – as bearing witness to the question of the visible. Now perhaps this is a rather perverse way of approaching this quotation – for there will be no ends in this query and one is guaranteed to becoming lost on the way – but is not this parallellism between “everything is rhythm” and “just as every work of art is one rhythm” drawn by Hölderlin in order to throw light on “everything” by asking “art” in all its visibility to be present as witness to the invisible rhythm in “everything”? Asking this question facilitates one with seeing (?) the potentiality of “everything” having a rhythm but not by way of identifying “art” with “everything.” That is, Hölderlin offers us no direct passage from the visible or audible rhythm of the art work to that “everything is rhythm.” In other words, Hölderlin does not guarantee that one can see or hear this but one can only think of it as the inaudible, as the invisible, which can be thought only “as” and not as such of the audible or visible rhythm of the artwork. I guess this way of thinking about the radical otherness of everything which is compared by Hölderlin to artwork invites us to a rethinking of the relationship of the unthought to thought in this quotation ( and also, of Hölderlin’s madness, or, the question of madness in generalxvii).

Should not one better talk about a punctured tympanum between the two?

5.

I think there is no other way of falling out of resonance with Agamben’s “The Original Structure of the Work of Art” (or showing that if there is a possibility of getting into resonance with him, it can only be achieved by means of admitting to a hierarchy between a model and a copy) without first pointing to a determination of limit with respect to the distinction produced by Agamben between ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos). (The question of resonance will always remain though, until we get to the point of impossibility of appropriating the unthought as the thought.)

Agamben’s move to save poiesis from the metaphysics of will, or, basically, from metaphysics, or aesthetics, goes by way of showing that rhythm is not a structure in the sense that Structuralism appropriated it. After discussing Aristotle’s claim – which the philosopher adopted from Antiphon – that rhythm is what gives structure to “elemental, inarticulate nature,”xviii Agamben compares the implications of this theory with Structuralism in general. If rhtyhm should be generally understood as structure and if structure is “a whole that contains something more than the simple sum of its parts,” then this “something” is something else, something other than the elements and that “which must exist in someway.”xix What Structuralism did, in that sense was nothing different from Pythagoreans who sought this element, this something other, in ariqmoi (arithmoi), numbers. Numbers for them constituted the original principle of all things. “Structural analysis, then understands structure not only as ruqmoz but also as a number and elemental principle.”xx

For Aristotle, on the other hand, this “something else” should be something that is “radically other” which opens “a more essential dimension”:

Aristotle designates this dimension as the aitia tou einai, the “cause of being,” and the ousia, the principle that gives origin and maintains everything in presence: not a material element but Form (morfh cai eidoz). Therefore, in the passage from the second book the Physics referred to earlier, Aristotle refuses the theory expounded by Antiphon and by all those who define nature as elementary matter, to arrnqmioton, and instead identifies nature, that is, the original principle of presence, precisely with ruqmoz, structure understood synonymous with Formxxi.

Now what happens in Aristotle is the abolition of the hierarchy between elemental, inarticulate nature and structure as ruqmoz (rhutmos): thus, these concepts, such as, structure, rhuthmos, and Form are subsumed under a general concept of ousia (ousia), presence. That is, form is always already there in nature because of the original principle, ousia (ousia), all of which of course gives way to the question of rhythm, whether it can be felt as such or as something that can be calculated as in Structuralism.

Agamben’s criticism, without doubt, does not prefer Structuralism because, as we mentioned above, it “understands structure not only as ariqmoz but also as a number and elemental principle,”xxii as something more than its elements and thus it is how it aims to transcend aesthetics by searching for the original principle that is located outside its elements, such as mathemathical precision (ariqmoz (arithmos), just as in the case of Pythagoreans).

If rhythm should be seen as something else, that is, as something radically other, Agamben is quite careful not to offer a concept of rhythm that can be felt “as such.” Rhythm, therefore, as Hölderlin put it, is not a structure in the sense of ariqmoz (arithmos), that is, something calculable, but, instead, is related to ousia (ousia), the principle of presence that “opens and maintains the work of art in its original space.”xxiii I think, what happens here in Agamben’s criticism, by a sleight of hand, is to literally obliterate what Hölderlin, in his madness, quite carefully formulated, that is, the division of “everything” and “art.” In other words, Hölderlin does not talk about a possibility of projecting what is peculiar to “art” to “everything,” he only makes a comparison, without identifying one with the other. In that sense, what the poet formulates as something visible, audible, or simply, as sensible for art is applied by Agamben to “everything” who formerly defined his position as saving poiesis from aesthetics. Without doubt, one cannot trace here any intention that, once appropriated by “everything,” this rhythm can be felt as such.

However, this move, first of all, does not save Agamben from reappropriatng the limit that is intentionally disappropriated earlier as a result of which we are put face to face with a formerly denied opposition: if we have to think ruqmoz (rhutmos) not in opposition to ariqmoz (arithmos), then what is at stake here is the reproduction of another limit, say between “everything” and its outside. In other words, can one preserve one’s distance from reappropriation by, first, extending what only applies, for Hölderlin, to art, to “everything” and then creating another limit between “everything,” in which art is included, and an outside, which is the original principle, that is, presence, ousia (ousia)? Isn’it it to reappropriate the hierarchical structure abolished a second ago, that is, the one between ousia (ousia) and all the others, that is, “everything”?

On the other hand, the question of whether this rhythm, which is not only peculiar to art, but to everything, can be felt as such? Does not Agamben here open up a possibility for hearing the unheard in quite a Heideggerian manner?

Let us follow the steps carefully.

“But what, then, is the essence of rhythm?”xxiv asks Agamben.

6.

“Recapitulation: To impose upon becoming the character of being – that is the supreme will to power.”

This is supposedly, as one considers the generalisation of the will, what constitutes, according to Agamben, the metaphysical twist of the will in Nietzsche which, I believe, can only be maintained if one decides to read the quotation literally, that is, if one holds it as a means for producing “truth.”

Now, Nietzsche’s position with regard to “truth” is obvious as early as his The Birth of Tragedy where he finds the embodiment of this attititude in the person of Socrates. Given this attitude, which Nietzsche defines as the attitude of the Socratic man, tragic view of life opposes it in the sense of a singularity (or, rather, appearances) which knows no distinction between universal and particular. If the production of truth is what can only be obtained by means of a knowledge whose validity is guaranteed by a universal concept of truth, the tragic view of life privileges a certain abyss which cannot be crossed unless by way of scientific approximation. Without doubt, Nietzsche’s criticism of metaphysics, which can be discerned, and yet which cannot be held as the main theme of this early work, belongs to a later period, say, to Zarathustra, in the form of a project of leaving metaphysics behind. Already in the introduction written to The Birth of Tragedy in 1871, he defends his position as follows: “Art is the highest task and the truly metaphysical activity of man.”

Furthermore, this position, as Agamben believes, can also be held as bearing witness to Nietzsche’s attempt at an aestheticisation of metaphysics, which Nietzsche himself calls, “aesthetic metaphysics” in The Birth of Tragedy. Especially when Nietzsche discusses the relationship between the Dionysiac and the Apollonian, he undoubtedly follows a metaphysical route which places these two gods into opposing forces: one represents the chaos, the One, and the other, the Form. His later work, though cannot be taken as the completion of his project of leaving metaphysics behind – for example, in Zarathustra, where he considers the distinction between “higher men” and “overman” unavoidably is raised the question of the possibility of “turning one’s back” on the whole metaphysicsxxv – yet if one pays attention to the differences between the first introduction of 1871 and the one he wrote in 1886, one cannot fail to see that there had been immense changes that took place in Nietzsche’s position with regard to metaphysics. I think the whole passage is worth quoting because it higlights those strains of thought which express not only Nietzsche’s bitter criticism of himself concerning his discipleship of Wagner but also a fruitful confusion of mind concerning his consideration of Dionysos, the God, the metaphysical principle of art, and their relation to Being and active nihilism.

Now, I believe that if what Nietzsche aims in the aphorism, “Recapitulation: To impose upon becoming the character of being – that is the supreme will to power,” is taken as a literal application of being on becoming , the conclusion that Agamben reaches can be deduced from The Birth of Tragedy – a conclusion which transforms Nietzsche’s thought, by way of looking for proofs, into “a thought of art,” the ultimate point within the tradition of metaphysics of an attempt to forget poiesis: aestheticisation of life. However, and in fact, that is literally what Nietzsche is criticising in 1886 as the failure in his earlier thought.

But, my dear chap, where on earth are we to find romanticism if not in your book? Can that profound hatred of “contemporariness,” “actuality,” “modern ideas” be carried any farther than you have carried it in your aesthetic metaphysics – a metaphysics which would rather believe in nothingness, indeed in the devil himself, than in the here and now? Do we not hear a ground bass of rage and destructive fury growl through all your ear beguiling contrapuntal art – a fierce hostility to everything that is happening today, an iron will (not far removed from active nihilism – my emphasis) which seems to proclaim, “I’d rather that nothing were true than see you triumph and your truth?” Listen, you high priest of art and pessimism, to one of your own statements, that eloquent passage full of dragon killer’s bravado and ratcatcher’s tricks so appealing to innocent ears; listen to it and tell us, aren’t we dealing here with the confession of a true romantic of the 1830’S, disguised as a pessimist of the 1850’s? Can’t we hear behind your confession the annunciatory sounds of the usual romantic finale: rupture, collapse, return, and prostration before an old faith, before the old God…. Come now, isn’t your pessimistic work itself a piece of anti Hellenism and romantic moonshine, fit to “befog and intoxicate,” a kind of drug – in fact, a piece of music, and German music to boot? Just listen to this: “Let us imagine a rising generation with undaunted eyes, with a heroic drive towards the unexplored; let us imagine the bold step of these St. Georges, their reckless pride as they turn their backs on all the valetudinarian doctrines of optimism, preparing to ‘dwell resolutely in the fullness of being’: would it not be necessary for the tragic individual of such a culture, readied by his discipline for every contingency, every terror, to want as his Helena a novel art of metaphysical solace and to exclaim as Faust did:

And shall not 1, by mightiest desire,
In living shape that precious form acquire?

Would it not be necessary?” – no, indeed, my romantic fledglings, it would not be necessary. But it is quite possible that things – that you yourselves – might end that way: “metaphysically solaced” despite all your grueling self discipline and, as romantics usually do, in the bosom of the Church.xxvi

What is active nihilism? And, what is this necessity that Nietzsche is critical of here?

The active nihilism which Nietzsche is accusing himself of is the critique which he directed in Zarathustra to “The Higher Men,” in whom he traces a replacement of God with man. As Deleuze put it:

Nietzsche’s idea is that the death of god is a grand event, glamorous yet insufficient, for nihilism continues, barely changing its form. Earlier nihilism had meant depreciation, the negation of life in the name of higher values. But now the negation of these higher values is replaced by human values (…) Nothing has changed, for the same reactive life, the same slavery that had triumphed in the shadow of divine values now triumphs through human ones. (…) That is why Nietzsche, in book IV of Zarathustra, traces the great misery of those he calls “the higher men.” These men want to replace God: they carry human values; they even believe they are rediscovering reality, recuperating the meaning of affirmation.xxvii

At this juncture, I would like to propose that we have to excavate more in the question of replacement and application, for it will throw light on 1) how, as we will see soon, Nietzsche criticizes himself in 1886 introduction, 2) how the differences between active and reactive nihilism are maintained in Nietzsche and also 3) how the application, as such, “the character of being on becoming,” is provided in Agamben.

For one thing, it is obvious that Nietzsche realises in 1886 introduction that he committed such a replacement and therefore his position in The Birth of Tragedy with regard to God carries the risk of enthroning such higher values in the spirit of Romanticism, in the form of “rupture, collapse, return, and prostration before an old faith, before the old God….” For such a “rising generation,” what Nietzsche declared as destiny was to “dwell resolutely in the fullness of being,” the necessity of which was found nowhere but in the quotation from Goethe. Now, we have “fullness of being” and its “necessity” on the one hand, and the criticism of this necessity on the other.

Furthermore, in the chapter VI of 1886 introduction, we read Nietzsche complaining about another failure in terms of an application:

And yet there remains the great Dionysiac question mark, intact, apart from all those rash hopes, those wrong applications (my emphasis) to contemporary matters, which tended to spoil my first book; remains even with regard to music. For the question here is (and must continue to be), “What should a music look like which is no longer romantic in inspiration, like the German, but Dionysiac instead?”xxviii

What Nietzsche criticises here “as those wrong applications” was to apply what passed for him intially as the principles of tragic art to Wagner’s music. Romanticism, as he understands years later, was “rupture, collapse, return, and prostration before an old faith, before the old God….” This is actually the god of nothingness that is replaced by the old god by an active nihilism and, “the truly metaphysical activity of man” that Nietzsche claimed in the 1871 introduction is now depreciated as “aesthetic metaphysics – a metaphysics which would rather believe in nothingness, indeed in the devil himself, than in the here and now?”

What is Nietzsche proposing here as a kind of metaphysics which has a belief “in the here and now”? A critique of application, not simply of what passes for the old to the new, but a critique of application as that which can be applicable? And also, a critique of necessity? If this is so, can we discern in this belief “in the here and now” an intention to cast a light on Nietzsche’s critique of “fullness of being”? And does Nietzsche have a name for that? It seems like the name Dionysos, which he employed in order to oppose it to morality, metaphysics, the Christian God and theWestern art, does not suffice anymore when Nietzsche realises what underlines his position: active nihilism, application of the old to the new, replacement. What he does then upon this realisation – upon a new critique of “fullness of being” which he depreciates as unnecessary – is to confess:

Thus it happened that in those days, with this problem book, my vital instincts turned against ethics and founded a radical counterdoctrine, slanted aesthetically, to oppose the Christian libel on life. But it still wanted a name. Being a philologist, that is to say a man of words, I christened it rather arbitrarily – for who can tell the real name of the Antichrist? – with the name of a Greek god, Dionysos.xxix

In the first place, in the late introduction, Nietzsche had realised that that which reveals itself as a question of name in fact is a question of Being, a question of full being, which he supposed to fully embody itself in the name of Dionysos but it was a replacement, an application, of the old being to the new one, which he now opposes with “here and now.” Now the way Nietzsche realises this in the later introduction takes the form of a criticism of Being, or basically the philosophy of Being, which polluted the way he produced a criticism of metaphysics: from The Birth of Tragedy, to Zarathustra and to Will to Power, Nietzsche realises that what he had been critical of – Being – cannot be maintained with an absolute rejection of Being and without the introduction into his thought the idea of “eternal recurrence” – that is, Becoming. Given these circumstances, I think, one is faced with preferences when one considers this quotation from Nietzsche: “Recapitulation: To impose upon becoming the character of being – that is the supreme will to power.” The question is twofold: Is one supposed to replace Being with Becoming according to Nietzsche (which can be seen as an alibi when circumstances for doing so are obscure)? Or, is there another, possible way of negotiating such an imposition? In other words, what really happens when such a replacement takes place? (Is such a replacement, in the form of an application, possible and, basically, is it possible for Nietzsche?) Does not this move, this replacement, send one back to a determination which one was critical of a second ago (as Nietzsche realises in 1886 introduction)? Is it possible to see in becoming a determination which conditions the relationship between universal and particular? Can one produce a determination out of “becoming”xxx?

I guess these questions also pave the way for further questions about Nietzsche and the question of style: after all, can it be a philosophical issue to be true to Nietzsche when one considers the place of style in Nietzsche? It is a question of reading Nietzsche as closely as possible to Nietzsche, yet to be close does not always endow one with being true to Nietzsche for if approximation is what is thought to be the ultimate result of “being close to,” then Nietzsche would be the last of the philosophers who would exchange style with approximation. If the philosopher in question is Nietzsche, then one is required to formulate a “being close to” him, always with an eye to the abyss, due to his styles, in accordance with such concepts as “becoming,” “eternal recurrence,” or “will to power” – concepts which function in Nietzsche as forces by which all the negativity of concepts like “being,” “essence,” “god” is disappropriated to be reappropriated by active forces. What happens, for example, in a process of becoming?

The importance of double affirmation also becomes visible at such a juncture: double affirmation in Nietzsche is a move taken with the intention of producing a critique of Hegelian “aufhebung.” As Deleuze put it:

The will to power, says, Nietzsche, consists not in coveting or even in taking but in creating and giving. Power, as a will to power, is not that which the will wants, but that which wants in the will (Dionysos himself). The will to power is the differential element from which derive the forces at work, as well as their respective quality in a complex whole. Thus it is always given as a mobile, aerial, pluralist element. It is by the will to power that a force commands, but it is also by the will to power that a force obeys. To these two types or qualities of forces there correspond two faces, two qualia of the will to power, which are ultimate and fluent, deeper than the forces that derive from them, for the will to power makes it that active forces affirm, and affirm their difference: in them affirmation is first, and negation is never but a consequence, a sort of surplus of pleasure. What characterizes reactive forces, on the other hand, is their opposition to what they are not, their tendency to limit the other: in them negation comes first; through negation, they arrive a semblance of affirmation.xxxi

What does Agamben do in that sense? First, affirmation: the opposition between ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos) is affirmed in order to atemporalise the ruqmoz (rhutmos), yet at this very moment this affirmation – in which the negative is preserved as negation – yields to another negation and thus an opposition between “everything” and its “outside”: thus the issue of atemporalising ruqmoz (rhutmos) is achieved by introducing another opposition of, another border between, inside and outside.

Whereas what Nietzsche would do in such a situation would be to affirm the opposition between ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos) not by way of producing another opposition but by way of offering an affirmation of ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos) as differences. To do so, empowers one with appropriating the negative by active forces and the latter requires a second affirmation. Negation loses its power and the border between active and negative, affirmation and negation thus do not disappear nor become concrete but punctured.

7.

Is it timely to talk about resonance now? Or is it better to wait until things, fragments, get into a resonance – or lay bare the resonance between the “thought” and the “unthought,” ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos), the “heard” and the “unheard”?

In other words, can we talk about a passage between ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos) without privileging an Agambenian experience of ruqmoz (rhutmos) which enables one with hearing the unheard? What is the aim of an approach which “sees” in ““Everything is rhythm, the entire destiny of man is one heavenly rhythm, just as every work of art is one rhtyhm, and everything swings from the poetizing lips of the god.”” a possibility of applying what stands for “art” to “everything”?

8.

For as long as tympanum will not have been destroyed … which cannot be achieved by means of a simply discursive or theoretical gesture, for as long as these two types of mastery will not have been destroyed in their essential familiarity – which is also that of phallocentrism and logocentrism – and for as long as even the philosophical concept of mastery will not have been destroyed, all the liberties one claims to take with the philosophical order will remain activated a tergo by misconstrued philosophical machines, according to denegation or precipitation, ignorance or stupidity. They very quickly, known or unknown to their “authors,” will have been called back to order. xxxii

What are the preconditions for resonancexxxiii? A vibrating source which will create vibrations in another element: that is, a relationship between a model and a copy is what determines our understanding of resonance. What kind of a resonance – if there is one – can be said to exist between Nietzsche and Heidegger/Agamben? Or, on what conditions can it be said that there is a resonance between them? Or, what kind of a resonance does Nietzsche offer between himself and his future readers?

Once again: Is it possible to hear the unheard in what is heard? Bearing in mind this question, I think, facilitates one with being cautious towards rhythm – if what is supposed to be heard is ruqmoz (rhutmos) in opposition to ariqmoz (arithmos). Since we can take it for granted that this opposition is there in Agamben’s text, we can speculate according to which premisses Agamben puts forward this opposition. If resonance should be taken at its face value, that is as mentioned above, then it can be said that the way Agamben proposes or plays with this opposition is largely based on this type of resonance. First: there is a source and it is by means of this source, the ariqmoz (arithmos) is made audible. Then, a series of questions follow: What is this source? Can this source be formulated as determined with an opposition of temporal and atemporal. As Agamben notes: “we perceive rhythm as something that escapes the incessant flights of instants and appears almost as the presence of an atemporal dimension in time.”xxxiv And “the incessant flight of instants” is the realm where we can hear the rhythm (i.e., ariqmoz) as such, that is as a piece of music… In the atemporal dimension, on the other hand, “we are as though held, arrested before something, but this being arrested is also a being-outside, an ek-stasis in a more original dimension.”xxxv

Now if one follows this route which proceeds by giving way to distinctions such as, ruqmoz (rhutmos)/ ariqmoz (arithmos); temporal/atemporal; inside/outside, the source of rhythm comes to the foreground rather as the origin of rhythm. Agamben does not tell much about this origin of rhythm except via referring to etymolgy of the word “gift” (epoch) in Ancient Greek. Gift (epoch), in the sense that Agamben uses the word, as both “to hold back and to present” (epecw ) is equated with “rhythm” and “to be” or “to be present.” Then, the atemporal, thought within the oppositional structure of ruqmoz (rhutmos)/ ariqmoz (arithmos) and inside/outside, is what empowers man with an “opening [to] his authentic temporal dimension”xxxvi. After this series of maneuvres, the final point of which is to lay bare the centrality of “Being” or “presence,” the origin of rhythm can be seen in the outside, the capacity of ek-stasis of man, which endows him with an experience of what holds back and presents itself at the same time, that is, as what we know from Heidegger, aletheia.

What might be the implications of this theoretical framework for our theory of resonance? If ruqmoz (rhutmos), that is the atemporal dimension where man opens himself to his authentic dimension with the intention of hearing the unheard in rhythm – for ariqmoz (arithmos) is the ordinary, arithmetic, that is calculable rhythm – then I think we can talk about a hierarchical or rather a metaphysical structure between ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos). First comes ruqmoz (rhutmos) and the ordinary, daily experience of ariqmoz (arithmos) is just a bad, base copy of what is original. Or, in other words, ruqmoz (rhutmos), since it can be experienced only by leaving the inside for an outside, is what presents itself only in the outside, as the source of ordinary rhythm that we are capable of hearing. In order to have the experience of the unheard – in order to hear it – we have to go outside.

The origin, then, as we have made clear, can be located in the outside – as the source of rhythm – which, only by means of getting into resonance with, we can hear, though as the bad copy of the original within the linear temporality of ariqmoz (arithmos). Now I guess the idea of resonance that is hinted here by Agamben can be thought in its all novelty as an idea of resonance which, by forcing the hearer – or, shall we call it, simply, the ear – to the outside, aims to set the ear free from a former hierarchy – the hierarchy of inside and outside. What happens in the outside? An experience of authentic temporal dimension, where “the poetic status of man on earth finds its proper meaning. Man has on earth a poetic status, because it is poiesis that founds for him the original space of his world.”xxxvii

Without going further than this, or let us say, without submitting what is already forced by Agamben’s reading (of ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos) within the context of ousia) once more to a puncture between an inside and outside, to a punctured tympanum, nothing can be obtained at such a juncture. That is, if there is a limit between inside and outside and, if Agamben forces this limit to open man to an experience of authentic temporal dimension, then there should have left no question of “going further than this” because, then, there would have left no limit to be surpassed, to be trancended, any more. In other words, if this puncture caused by Agambenian force on the tympanum opens a way from inside to an outside by way of obliterating the limit, it puts the “man” in a dimension (atemporal) where he is supposed to hear what he did not hear before. Yet, does this position of man enable him to get rid of the ear that he formerly supposed to have got ridden of? If we look at the structure, that is, what makes man able to hear the unheard, it is nothing more than the same hierarchy which has been abolished before. In other words, the former hierarchy between ruqmoz (rhutmos) and ariqmoz (arithmos) is re-paired in man’s new position: although the limit is abolished, or the tympanum punctured, it is now replaced by another limit between “being,” or “presence” on the one hand, and the man’s ear, his/her capacity of hearing this “presence” on the other. It is again the source of rhythm, which is “presence,” with which man resonates, with a repaired ear, that makes the authentic experience of man what it is. And this move, surpassing limit just in order to constitute another limit, as we all know well, is a move of Aufhebung.

Replacement and application: don’t they belong to the question of re-pairment? Repairing the punctured tympanum by way of re-pairing oppositions?

What might be the function of this punctured tympanum which is re-paired as soon as man passes to the other side? What might be the function of this punctured tympanum if it were left punctured? First: Would man need to pass to the other side (outside) if the punctured tympanum were left punctured? Second: What would the preservation of a punctured tympanum as punctured mean for a theory of resonance?

9.

Philosophy has always insisted upon this: thinking its other. Its other: that which limits it, and from which it derives its essence, its definition, its production. To think its other: does this amount solely to relever (aufheben) that from which it derives, to head the procession of its method only by passing the limit? Or indeed does the limit, obliquely, by surprise, always reserve one more blow for philosophical knowledge?xxxviii

What I would like to lay bare here is what is implicitly proposed and missed by Agamben’s criticism. For this purpose what I offer is to read Derrida’s essay “Tympan” with the intention of opening a discussion on “resonance” – the type of “resonance” which is proposed and missed by Agamben.

Following the line of thought quoted above, Derrida elaborates the Hegelian move, Aufhebung as an insistence “upon thinking its other: its proper other, the proper of its other. (…) In thinking it as such, in recognizing it” he writes, “one misses it. One reappropriates it for oneself, one disposes of it, one misses it, or rather one misses (the) missing (of) it.”xxxix Furthermore, using tympanum as a metaphor for the limit between inside and outside, Derrida raises the following questions with a concern for the possibility of a resonance between inside and outside which would give way to a vibration on a punctured tympanum: “Can one violently penetrate philosophy’s field of listening without its immediately – even pretending in advance, by hearing what is said of it, by decoding the statement – making the penetration resonate within itself, appropriating the emission for itself, familiarly communicating it to itself between the inner and middle ear, following the path of a tube or inner opening, be it round or oval? In other words, can one puncture the tympanum of a philosopher and still be heard and understood by him?”xl

Derrida does not say it but that what the philosopher would hear – when no inside/outside hierarchy left and the tympanum is punctured – would be a mixture of vibration and distortion can be obtained by way of underlining the missed opportunity by Agamben. We have already said that what is implicitly proposed but missed by Agamben, or better, in Derrida’s terms, what Agamben “misses the missing of” in this matter is the possibility of preserving an already punctured tympanum punctured: this is a situation when resonance is no more understood in the hierarcical order of an outside and inside, but as what comes to itself as a distorted (failed?) rhythm produced on the punctured tympanum as a result of bodies on both sides already in resonance in themselves. That when the tympanum is punctured it will yield to distortion and hence it will put the understandability – or, rather, “the proper,” “the authentic,” “the presence,” “the Being” – at stake can be furthermore questioned within the question of the thought and the unthought or, better, since it would suit the context, the question of the heard and the unheard in Agamben, and, not without Heideggerian reverberations.

As already mentioned, one of the reasons why Agamben misses this point can be found in the insistence of a move of Aufhebung which insists on reappropriating the limit it has disappropriated. In Derrida’s terms, “For this is how Being is understood. It assures without let-up the relevant movement of reappropriation.”xli This is where actually the specific resistance of philosophical discourse to deconstruction takes place: “It is the infinite mastery that the agency of Being (and of the) proper seems to assure it; this mastery permits it to interiorize every limit as being and as being its own proper.”xlii This move in Agamben is what transforms what is proposed as the unheard in rhythm as hearable as long as one opens oneself to the experience of authentic temporality which makes itself “heard” as presence, as Being.

Can one puncture the tympanum so that the unheard remains as the unheard without reappropriating the limit?

10.

This impression, as always, is made on some tympanum, whether resonating or still, on the double membrane that can be struck from either side. xliii

Nevertheless, the question of the heard and the unheard should not be thought as a separate issue from the fact that Nietzsche prefigures as a source in Agamben’s essay, “Poiesis and Praxis.” It is so, because, first of all, admittedly, Agamben’s is a question of getting into resonancexliv with Nietzsche rather than being true to him. If one should approach what resonance is, rather than understanding the question of resonance, then that Nietzsche appears as a source in Agamben’s text is not surprising. Yet, it is surprising at the same time, because it does not only present us with another case of “missing the missing” of Nietzsche, but also, by way of extending this missing to another one, with an introduction into Nietzsche of the voice of Being – which is presumably there but cannot be made into something which resonates with Being without not preserving the punctured tympanum punctured.

Nietzsche: the question of style and the question of resonance?

Does Nietzsche ever become what he “is”? Where do we locate the “Ecce”? Can we locate the “Ecce”?

Hölderlin: everything is rhythm: can it be heard?

Re-pairing the puncture leads to aestheticization of life – from this side or that side – does it really matter? Nevertheless one crosses the abyss, despite Nietzsche.

Have I heard it?

NOTES

i This article was originally published in Pli – The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Vol 14, 2003, Warwick: United Kingdom.

ii Concerning the question of the “unthought,” particularly, in Heidegger, I would like to acknowledge my debt to Lacoue-Labarthe’s essays “Obliteration” and “Apocryphal Nietzsche,”( Lacoue-Labarthe, P., The Subject of Philosophy, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 1993) and to his work in general. However, the way I approach Agamben’s works in this essay should be seen as an intention of foregrounding a new concept of “resonance” by way of inventing strategies in order to disappropriate “the unheard” which is projected as that which can be experienced in a relationship to “ousia” in Agamben.

iii Both included in Agamben, G., The Man without Content, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California:1999

iv Agamben, p. 94.

v Agamben, p.85.

vi Both included in Lacoue-Labarthe, P., The Subject of Philosophy, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 1993.

vii Agamben, pp. 68-69.

viii Agamben, p.70.

ix Agamben, p.71.

x Agamben, p.72.

xi Agamben, p.71.

xii Agamben, p.75.

xiii This is the last sentence of the preface that Nietzsche wrote to his The Birth of Tragedy in 1871. The sentence appears in Kaufmann’s translation as follows: “Let such serious readers learn something from the fact that I am convinced that art represents the highest task and the truly metaphysical activity of this life, in the sense of that man to whom, as my sublime predecessor on this path, I wish to dedicate this essay.” Nietzsche, F., The Birth of Tragedy, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, The Modern Library, New York: 2000, pp. 31-32.

xiv Heidegger, M., “Who is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?,” Review of Metaphysics, vol. 20, no.3, issue no. 79, March 1967, pp. 411-31.

xv Agamben, p. 93.

xvi Nietzsche, F., The Will to Power, Random House, New York: 1967, aphorism 617, p. 330.

xviiSee Lacoue-Labarthe’s essay “Typography” which is of invaluable importance for the issue of madness in philosophy. In this essay, and also in “Obliteration,” Lacoue-Labarthe traces Nietzsche’s “madness” and Heidegger’s treatment of it (Lacoue-Labarthe, P., Typography, Harvard University Press, London: 1989). On the other hand, looking at the question of the visible with regard to the question of “rhythm” in Hölderlin raises more questions about whether the issue at stake here is the one related to “mimesis as imitation.” Yet, I think this issue cannot be discussed here within the limited space of this essay.

xviii Agamben, p. 95.

xix Agamben, p. 96.

xx Agamben, p. 97.

xxi Agamben, p. 97.

xxii Agamben, p. 97.

xxiii Agamben, p. 98.

xxiv Agamben, p. 99.

xxv See especially, Derrida’s essay, “The Ends of Man” in Margins of Philosophy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 1982

xxvi Nietzsche, F., The Birth of Tragedy, Anchor Books, New York: 1956, pp. 13-14.

xxvii Deleuze, G., Pure Immanence, Zone Books, New York: 2001, pp. 80-81.

xxviii The Birth of Tragedy, p. 13.

xxix The Birth of Tragedy, p. 11.

xxx Here, a brief reference to Deleuze is illimunatory. He warns us about following points: “What nihilism condemns and try to deny is not so much Being, for we have known for sometime Being resembles Nothingness like a brother. It is, rather, multiplicity; it is, rather, becoming. Nihilism considers becoming as something that must atone and must be reabsorbed into Being, and the multiple as something unjust that must be judged and reabsorbed into the One. Becoming and multiplicity are guilty – such is the first and the last word of nihilism . (…) Multiplicity is affirmed as multiplicity; becoming is affirmed as becoming. That is to say at once that affirmation is itself multiple, that it becomes itself, and that becoming and multiplicity are themselves affirmations. (…) Multiplicity is no longer answerable to the One nor is becoming answerable to Being. But Being and the One do more than lose their meaning: they take on a new meaning. Now the One is said of the multiple as the multiple (splinters or fragments); Being is said of becoming as becoming. (…) Becoming is no longer opposed to Being, nor is the multiple opposed to the One (these oppositions being the categories of nihilism),” Deleuze, G., Pure Immanence, Zone Books, New York: 2001, pp. 84-86.

xxxi Deleuze, G., Pure Immanence, Zone Books, New York: 2001, pp. 73-74.

xxxii Margins of Philosophy, p. xxii.

xxxiiiThe Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which spanned a length of one mile over the Tacoma Narrows in Bremerton, Washington, was nicknamed the Galloping Gertie because of its constant rocking and twisting in the wind. These oscillations became so great that on November 7, 1940, a support cable near the middle of the bridge snapped, causing the entire structure to crash into the river below. Luckily, the only casualty was a cocker spaniel, and the failure has taught engineers since then valuable lessons. Experts still argue over what caused the failure in the first place, but they do know what contributed to the failure. The original designers of the bridge should not be blamed for the failure, since their knowledge of all the forces acting on the bridge was incomplete. They more than likely progressed the field of engineering through their failure.

Even today, no one is sure exactly what caused the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to collapse. Several theories exist explaining the problem, all involving the effects of aerodynamic forces on the bridge. Three of those theories were listed in the Federal Work Agency’s (FWA) report on the collapse: the wind blowing against the bridge had the same frequency as the resonance frequency of the bridge, causing vibrations to build up disproportionate to the force of the wind; vortices generated around the bridge matched the resonance and cause oscillations to gradually build up; random fluctuations in wind turbulence were enough to cause the bridge to collapse. Whatever the reason, the forces acting against the bridge on the morning of November seventh were enough to cause a cable band to slip, which put enough stress on the other parts of the bridge that it failed.

Leon Moisseiff, the designer of the bridge, said, “I’m completely at a loss to explain the collapse,” which is true, considering he did not anticipate the need to calculate for aerodynamic forces on the bridge design. Even the FWA reported after the collapse that the bridge construction was the most suitable for its uses, economics, and location. Therefore, the engineers cannot be placed totally at fault; their understanding was incomplete. After the collapse of the bridge, engineers realised that there is a need to fully understand all the forces acting on their design. They also learned in hindsight the dangers of exceeding a design paradigm. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was the most flexible bridge of its time, exceeding previous bridge’s designs in terms of the ratios between length, depth, and width. Whether or not they knew it at the time, the designers were taking a risk by trying something completely new. In this case, they failed, but in their failure, they probably contributed more to engineering science than they would have had they succeeded.”Hart, Terence, for CES120: Engineering Communications at Alfred University http://maclab.alfred.edu/students/harttm/intro.html.

xxxiv Agamben, p. 99.

xxxv Agamben, p. 99.

xxxvi Agamben, p. 101.

xxxvii Agamben, p. 101.

xxxviii Margins of Philosophy, pp. x-xi.

xxxix Margins of Philosophy, p. xi.

xl Margins of Philosophy, p. xii.

xli Margins of Philosophy, p. xvi.

xlii Margins of Philosophy, p. xix.

xliii Margins of Philosophy, p. xxv.

xliv “If we tune our minds to the resonance proper to this aphorism, if we hear in it the voice of of the one who teaches the eternal recurrence of the same, it will open for us a region in which art, will to power and eternal recurrence belong to one another reciprocally in one circle”: Agamben, p.88.

“On Rhythm, Resonance and Distortion”. It was originally published in Pli – The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Vol 14, 2003, Warwick: United Kingdom.

 

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