The Work of Giorgio Agamben Law, Literature, Life

Edited by Justin Clemens, Nicholas Heron and Alex Murray

Every true philosopher introduces something new into the world, perhaps even a new world. This novelty is an essential phenomenon, not simply an accident or  by-product of philosophy. As such, it cannot quite be evaluated, for no existing mode of thought is  able to account fully for its emergence, its enunciation, its elaboration. Novelty is untimely,  inasmuch as it irrupts into already established habits of thought, deranging or diverting customary  modes of atten- tion and expression, their rhythm and composition. Novelty is delo- calising,  insofar as it disrupts the standardised places of thought and resculpts their topologies. Taking  such novelty seriously is tanta- mount to being stupefied or deranged: one cannot simply know how  to respond, precisely because such a response would, by definition, fail to be up to the challenges of the novelty itself.