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APPARATUS?
MERIDIAN
Crossing Aesthetics
Werner Hamacher
Eitor
WHAT IS AN
APPARATUS?
and Other Essa
y
s
Giorgio Agamben
lranlud by D(wid KisJuk
and S PItuell
S'I'ANlURD UNIVfItSITY PRESS
STAl:ORll. CALIFORNIA !009
Stanford Univcrsil Pre
Stanford. Cli fornia
Englis trnslation and Tslator' Note 109 by the Board of Trtees
of the Lland Staford Junior Univeril. All rights rr.
"Wat Is an Appar!lJ?" w originally published in Italian in 20 under
te tte C cos' U dipos;t;wtO 20. Nottetemp. "Te Friend w
originaly publihd in Ita in 20 uer te tite L'mir 27.
Nottetemp. "Wt" the Cntempra?" wa orinay publihed in Ital
ian in zo under the tide Ch cos il cont
j
rann? 208. Nonetemp
No pa of thi bk may b rpruce or trmited in any fr or by
any mrRS. detrnicor mechanical. including phorocpyng ad rcr
ing. or in ay inormtion storg or retriel sysem withom the prior
wrtten prmiion of Stnfr Univeril Pr.
Printe in the United States of Americ on acid-fre. arhiva quail paper
Libral of CngrC Ctlogn-in-Pblication Data
Agmbn. Giorgo. 1942-
[Ey. Engih. S1=onsl
Wat is a apptu? ad othe ey I Giorgio Agamben ;
ualate by David Kshik and Stefn Pedaella.
p. cm.-(Meridia. crsing aethetic)
Indu< bibliogaphica rferc.
ISBN 978 0 8047 6219 8 (clot: ak ppr)
ISBN 978-0807-6230-4 (pbk. : alk. P1P)
I. Power <Philosphy) 1. Kowlege Tery of. 3. Fucult. Michel.
1926-1984. 4. Friendship. 5. Cntempr. Te.
I. ltle. II. Srie: Meridian (Stanfr. (.alit
B3611.A4ZEs 1009
19S-dc22
108043113
I
Frontispiece image: Dt:il of Giovnni Srodin. 1 ApJteJ Peu am Paul
on t Rd 1 Mlrtm (162 45). oil on clOth. Rome. Paa Babrini.
Contents
Tranltor Not
What Is an Apparatus?
The Friend
What Is the Contemporary?
Notes
I
25
3
9
55
Translators' Note
English translations of sC<lloary sources have
been amended i n order to take i nto account the au
thor's someti mes distinctive Italian transl ations. Man
dclstam's poem on pages 42-4
3
was translated from
the Russian by Jane Mikkelson. We would l i ke to
thank Giorgio Agambcn for his generous assistance,
which has i mproved the grace and accuracy of our
translation.
WHAT IS AN
APPARATUS?
What Is an Apparatus?
I.
Terminoloical questions are i mportant in philoso
phy. As a philosopher for whom I have the greatest re
spect once said, terminology is the poetic moment of
thought. This is not to say that philosophers must al
ways necessarily defne thei r technical terms. Pato
never defned idea, his most i mportant term. Others,
l i ke Spinoza and Lei bni z, preferred instead to defne
thei r termi nology more geometrico.
The hypothesis that I wish to propose is that the
word dispositi or "apparatus" in Engl ish, is a decisive
technical term in the strategy of Foucault's thought.
He uses it quite often, especially from the mid 1970s,
when he begi ns to concern hi msel f wi th what he
calls "governmental i ty" or the "goverment of men."
Though he never offers a complete defniti on, he
2 What Is an Apparat?
comes close to something like it i n an interview from
1977:
What I'm trying to si n
g
le Ollt with thi s term i s, frst and
foremost, a thoroughly hetergeneous set consi sti ng
of di scourses, instituti ons, architectural forms, regul a
tory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientifc
statements, philosphical , moral, and philanthropic
propositions-in short, the said as much as the unsaid.
Such are t he elements of the apparats. The apparatus it
sel f is the network that can be established between these
elements ...
. . . by t he term "apparatus" I mean a kind of a forma
tion, so to speak, that at a given historical moment has as
its major function the response to an ur
g
ency. The appa
ratus therefore has a dominant strategic function . ..
. . . I said that the nature of an apparatus is essentially
strategi c, which means that we are speaking about a
certai n manipulation of relations of forces, of a rational
and concrete interventi on i n the relations of forces, either
so as to develop them i n a particular di rection, or to
block them, (0 stabi l i ze them, and to util ize them. The
apparatus is thus always i nscribed into a play of power,
but i t is also always l i nked to certain l i mits of knowl edge
that ari se from it and, to an equal degree. condition it.
The apparatus is precisely this: a set of st rate
g
ies of the
rel ations of forces supporti ng, and spported by, certain
tpes of knowledge.2
Let me briefy summarize three points:
a. It i s a heterogeneous set that includes vi rtually
anythi ng, l i nguistic and non l i ngui stic. under [he
2.
Wlt Is an Apparat?
3
same heading: discourses, institutions, bui ldi ngs,
l aws, police measures, phi losophical proposi
tions, ad so on. The a
p
aratus itself is the net
work that is establ ished between these elements
b. The apparatus always has a concrete strate
gic function and is always located in a power
relation.
c. As such, it appears at the intersection of power
relations and relations of knowledge.
I would l ike now to try and trace a brief genealogy
of thi s term, frst in the work of Foucault, and then in
a broader histori cal context.
At the end of the 196s, more or less at the time
when he was wri ti ng The Archeolog of Knowledge,
Foucault does not yet use the term "apparatus" in or
der to defne the object of his research. Instead, he uses
the term p
o
sitivit!, "positivity," an etymological neigh
bor of dispositi again without offering us a defni tion.
I often asked myself where Foucault found this
term, until the moment when, a few months ago, I re
read a book by Jean Hyppol ite entitled Introducion a
la philoJophie de l'bistoire de Hegel. You probably know
abollt the strong l ink that ties Foucault to Hyppolite
4
What I an Apparat?
a prson whom he referred to at time as "my mas
ter ( Hyppol ire was in fact his teacher, frst during the
khJge i n the Lycee Henri-IV [the preparatory course
for the Ecole normale superieure] and then in the
Ecole norma Ie).
The thi rd part of Hyppol ite's book bears the tide
"Raison et histoi re: Les idees de positivitc et de des
ti n" ( Reason and History: The Ideas of Posi tivity and
Desti ny). The focm here is on the analysis of two
works that date from Hegel's years i n Bern and Frank
furt (1795-96): The frst is "The Spi rit of Christianity
and I ts Desti ny," and the second-where we fnd the
term that i merests us-"The Positivity of the Chris
tian Rel i gion" (Die Positivitit der christliche Religion).
Accordi ng to Hyppolite, "desti ny" and "posi tivity"
are two key concepts in Hegel's thought. In particu
l ar, the term "positivity" fnds in Hegel its proper place
in the opposition between "natural rel igion" and "posi
t ive religion." While natural rel igion is concerned with
the i mmediate and general relation of human reason
with the di vi ne, posi ti ve or historical rel igion encom
passes the set of bel iefs, rules, and rites that i n a cer
tai n society and at a certai n hi storical moment are ex
teral ly imposed on i ndividual s. "A posi ti ve rel igion,"
Hegel writes in a passage ci ted by Hyppol ite, "i mpl ies
feel i ngs that are more or less impresed through con
strai nt on suul s; these are actions that are the effect of
What Is an Appardtu?
5
command and the result of obedience and are accom
pl i shed without di rect i nterest.f.
Hyppol i te shows how the opposition between na
ture and positivity corresponds, in this senseg to the
di alectics of freedom and obligation, as well as of rea
son and hi story. In a passa
g
e that could not have fai led
to provoke foucault's curiosity, because it in a way
presages the notion of apparatusg Hyppolite writes:
We see here the knot of questions i mpl icit in the concept
of positivity, as well as Hegel's successive attempts to
bring together dialectically-a di alectics that is not yet
conscious of itself-pure reason ( theoretical and aove all
practical) and positivity, that is, the historical dement. I n
a certain sense, Hegel consider positivity as an obstacl e
to the freedom of man, and as sllch it is condemned. To
i
nvestigate (he positive elemenrs of a religion, and we
might add, of a social state, means to di scover in them
that whi ch is imposed through a constraint on man, that
which obfuscates the purity of reason. But, in another
sense-and this is the aspect that ends up havi ng the
upper hand in the course of Hegel 's development pos
iti vity must be reconciled wi th reason, whi ch then loses
its abst ract character and adapts to the concrete richness
of l ife. We see then why the concept of positivity is at the
center of Hegel ian perspective:
If"posi ti vjty" is the name that, accordi ng to Hyp
polite, the young He
g
el
g
ives to the historical ele
ment-loaded as it is wi th rules, rites, and i nstitutions
that are i mposed on the i ndi vidual by an external
6 What Is an Apparatu?
power, but that become, so to speak. i nternal i zed i n
the system
s
of bel iefs and feel i ngs-then Foucault,
by borrowing this term ( later to become "apparatus"),
takes a position with respect to a decisive problem,
whi ch is actually also hi s own problem: t he rcl ation
between i ndividuals as l i vi ng bei ngs and the hi stori
cal element. By "the historical element," I mean t he set
of i nstitutions, of processes of subjectifcation. and of
rules i n which power relation
s
become concrete. Fou
cault's ul timate aim is not, then. as i n Hegel, the rec
oncil iation of the two elements; it is not even to em
phasize their confict. For Foucaul t, what is at stake
is rather the i nvestigat ion of concrete modes in which
the positivities (or the apparatuses) act within the rela
tions, mecha nisms, and "plays" of power.
3
It should now h clear in what sense I have ad
vanced the hypothesi s that "apparatus" i s an essen
tial technical term in Foucaulc's thought. What is at
stake here is not a parti cul ar term that refers only to
this or that technology of power. It is a general term
that has the same breadth as the term "positivity" had,
according to Hyppol itc. for the young Hegel. Withi n
Foucault's st rategy. it comes to occupy the place of
one of those terms that he defne
s
, crit ical ly, as "the
What Is an Aparatu?
7
universal s" (ls univeux). Foucault, as you know, al
ways refused to deal with the general ctegories or
mental constructs that he calls "the universals," such
as the State, Sovereignty, Lw, and Power. But this is
not to say that there are no operative concepts with a
general character in his thougt. Apparatuses are, in
point of fact. what take the plce of the universals in
the Foucauldian strategy: not si mply this or that po
lice measure, thi s or that technology of power. and not
even the generality obtained by their abstraction. In
stead, as he clai ms in the interview from 19. an appa
ratus is "the netork [Ie rleau1 that can be established
b
etween these elements."
If we now try to examine the defnition of "appara
tus" that can be found i n common French di ctionar
ies, we see that they distinguish between three mean
i ngs of the term:
a. A strictly juridical sense: "Apparatus is the part of a
judgment that contai ns the decision se
p
arate from
the opinion." That is. the section of a sentence that
decides. or the enacti ng clause of a law.
b. A technological meani ng: "The way in which the
parts of a machi ne or of a mechanism and. by exten
sion. the mechanism itself are arranged."
c. A mi l
i
tar use: "The set of means arranged in confor
mity with a plan.
"
8 What f an Appart?
To some extent, the three defniti ons are al l pres
ent in Foucault. But dictionaries, in
p
articular those
that lack a historicaletymological character, divide
and separate thi s term into a variety of meani ngs. This
fragmentation@ nevertheless, generally corresponds
to the hi storical development and articlliacion of a
unique original meani ng that we should not lose sight
of What is this original meaning for the term appa
ratus"? The term certainly refers, in its common Fou
callidi an use, to a set of practices and mechani sms
(both linguistic a nd nonlinguisticg juridical , techni
cal, and milit ary) that aim to face an urgent need and
to obtain an efect that is more or less immediate. But
what is the strategy of practices or of thought, what is
the historical context, from which the modern term
originates?
4
Over the
p
ast three years, I have found mysel f i n
creasi ngly involved i n an i nvestigation that i s only now
beginni ng to come (0 its end, one that I can roughly
defne as a theological genealogy of economy. In the
frst centuries of Church history-lt's say, between
the second and sixth centuries c.E.-the Greek term
oikonomia develo
p
s a decisive theological function. In
Greek, oikonomia signifes the admi ni stration of t he
oikos (the home) and, more general ly, management.
What Is an Apparat?
9
We are deal i ng here, as Ari stot le says (Politics 1155b21),
not with an epistemic paradi gmg but with a praxi s,
with a practical activity that must face a problem and
a particul ar situation each and every t i me. Why, then,
did the Fathers of the Church feel the need to intro
duce this term into theological di scourse? How did
they come to speak about a divi ne econom
y
"?
What is at issue here, to be precise, is an extremely
del i cate and vital problem, perhaps the decisive ques
tion in the history of Chri stian theology: the Trini ty.
When the Fathers of the Church began to argue dur
ing the second century about the threefold nature of
the divine fgure (the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit), there was, as one can i magine a powerful re
sistance from reasonable-mi nded people in the Church
who were horri fed at the prospect of rei ntroduc-
i ng polytheism and paganism to the Christian faith.
In order to convi nce those stubborn adversaries (who
were later called "monarchiam," that is, promoters of
the government of a si ngle Go), theologians such as
Tertul l i an, I renaeus, Hippolyts, and many others
could not fnd a better term to serve their need than
the Greek oikonomia. Thei r arument went some
thing l ike this: "God, insofar as his bein
g
and sub
stance is concerned, is certai nly one; but as to hi s oiko
nomia-that is to say the way i n whi ch he admi ni sters
hi s home, his life, and the world t hat he created-he
10 What Is an Aparatus?
is, rather, triple. JUSt as a good father can entrust to
his son the execution of cenai n functions and duti es
without in so doing losing his power and his uni ty, so
God entrusts to Christ the 'economy,' the administra
tion and government of human history." Oikonomia
therefore became a special i zed term signi fyi ng in par
t icul ar the incarnation of the Son, together with (he
eonomy of redemption and salvation (this is the rea
son why i n Gnostic sects, Christ is called "the man of
eonomy," ho anthropos tes oikonomias). The theolo
gans slowly got accustomed to distingui shi ng between
a "discourse-or lgos-of theology" and a "logos of
economy." Oikonomia became t hereafter an apparatus
through which the Trinitarian dogma and the idea of
a divine
p
rovidential governance of the world were in
troduced into the Christian faith.
But, as often happens, the fracture that the theo
logians had sought (0 avoid by removing it from the
plane of God's being, reappeared in the form of a cae
sura that separated in Him being and action, ontoloy
and praxis. Action (economy, but also pol itics) has no
foundation in being: this is the schzophrenia that the
theological doctrine of oikonomia left as its legacy to
Western culture.
5
What Is an Apparts? 11
I thi nk that even on the basis of t his brief exposi
ti on. we can now account for the central ity and im
portance of the function that the notion of oikonomia
performed i n Christi an theoloy. Already in Clement
of Alexandria. oi
k
onomia merges with the notion of
Providence and begins to indicate the redemptive gov
ernance of the world and human hi story. Now, what is
the translation of this fundamental Greek (erm in the
writi ngs of the Lati n Fathers? Dispositio.
The Lat i n term
d
ispositio, frm which the French
term
d
ispositi or apparat us. derives. comes therefore
to take on the complex semantic sphere of the theo
logical oi
k
onomia. The "dispositi fs" about which Fou
cault speaks are somehow l i nked to this theological
legacy. They can be in some wa
y
traced back to the
fracture that di vides and. at the same ti me, articulates
in God being and praxis. the nature or essence, on the
one hand. and t he operation through which He ad
mi nisters and governs the created world, on the other.
The term "apparatus" designates that in which. and
through which, one realizes a pure activity of gover
nance devoid of any foundation in bei ng. This is the
reason why apparatuses must alwa
y
s i mply a process of
subjecti fcation. that is to say, they must produce t hei r
subject.
12 What Is an Aparat?
In l ight of thi s theological genealogy the Foucaul
dian apparatuses acquire an even more pregnant and
deci sive signi fcance, si nce they intersect not only wit h
the context of what the young Hegl cal led "positiv
ity," but also with what the later Heidegger called Ges
tel (which is similar from an etymological poi nt of
view to dis-positio, di-ponere, just as the German stl
im corresponds to the Latin ponere). When Heidegger,
in Die Tchnik un die Kehre (The Question Concern
ing Technology) , writes that Ce-stl means in ordi
nary usage an apparatus (Cerit), but that he i ntends
by this term the gathering to
g
et her of the (in}stalla
tion [Stelm] that (in)stalls man, this is to say, chal
lenges hi m to expse the real in the mode of orderi ng
[Bestelm]," the proxi mity of this term to the theologi
cal dispositio, as well as to Foucauh's apparatuses, is ev
ident.
'
What is common to al l these terms is that they
refer back to this oikonomia, that is, to a set of prac
tices, bodies of knowledge, measures, and institutions
that aim to manae, govern, control, and orient-i n
a way that purports to be useful-the behaviors, ges
tures, and thoughts of human bei ngs.
6.
One of the met hodological pri nciples that I con
stantly follow in my i nvestigations is to identif in the
texts and contexts on which I work what Feuerbach
What Is an Apparl? 13
used to cal l the phi losophical element, that is to say,
the poi nt of their Entwicklunghigkeit (l iterallyg ca
paci ty to be developed), the locus and the moment
wherei n they are susceptible to a development. Never
thelessg whenever we i nterpret and develop the text of
an author in thi s way, there comes a moment when we
are aware of or inability to proceed any further with
out contraveni ng the most elementary rules of herme
neutics. T
h
is means that t
h
e development of the text
in question has reached a point of undecidabi l ity
where it becomes impossible to disti nguish between
the author and the i nterpreter. Although this is a par
ti cul arly happy moment for the i nterpreter, he knows
that it is now time to abandon the text that he is ana
lyzi ng and to proceed on his own.
I invite you therefore to abandon the context of
foucauldi an phi lology in which we have moved up to
now i n order to situate apparatuses in a new context
I wish to prpose to you nothing less than a gn
eral and massive parti tioning of beings into two large
groups or classes: on the one hand@ living bein
g
s (or
substances), and on the other, apparatuses in whi ch
living bei ngs are incessantly capturede On one side,
then, to return to the termi nology of the theologians
l ies the ontology of creatures, and on t
h
e other sde,
the oikonomia of apparatuses that seek to govern and
guide them toward t he good.
]
4
What J$ an Apparat?
Further expandi ng the already large class of Fou
cauldian apparatuses, I shall cal l an apparatus literally
anythi ng that has in some way the capaci ty to capture,
orient, determine, i ntercept, model, control, or secure
the
g
esturesg behaviors, opi nions. or discourses of liv
ing being
s. Not onlyg therefore. prisons. madhouses.
the panopticon. schools. confession. factories disci
plines@ juridical measures. and so fort h (whose connec
tion with power is in a certain sense evident), but also
the pen, wri ti ng@ literature, phi losophy. a
g
ricult ure,
cigarettesg navigation, computers, cellul ar telephones
and-why notl anguage itself. which is perhaps the
most ancient of a
p
paratuses-one i n which t housands
and thousands of years ago a pri mate i nadvertently let
hi mself be capturd, probably without real izi ng the
conse
q
uences t hat he was about to face.
To recapi tulate. we have then two great classes: l iv
ing bei ngs (or substances) and apparatuses. And. be
tween these two. as a third classg subjects I call a sub
ject that which results from the rclation and. so to
speak. from the relentless fght between livi ng be
in
g
s and apparatuses. Naturally. the substances and
the subjects as in ancien metaphysics. seem to over
lap. but not completely. I n this sense, for example the
same indi vidual the samc substance can be the place
of mul tiple processes of subjecti fcation: the lIser of
cel l ul ar phones, the web surfer. the writer of stories.
What Is al Apptrtu? 15
the tan
g
o afcionado, the antiglobal izt ion activist,
and so on and so forth. The boundless growth of ap
paratuses in our ti me corresponds to the equal l y ex
treme prol i ferat ion in processes of subjectifcation.
This may produce the impression that in our time, the
categor of subjectivity is waveri ng and l osing its con
sistency; but what is at stake. to be precise. is not an
erasure or an overcomi ng. but rather a di ssemi nation
(hat pushes (0 (he extreme the masquerade that has al
ways accompanied every personal identi ty.
7
It would prbably not be wrong to defne the ex
treme phase of capital i st development i n which we l ive
as a massive accumulation and prol i feration of appara
tuses. It is dear that ever si nce Homo sapiens frst ap
peared. there have been apparatuses; but we could say
that today there is not even a single instant in which
the l i fe of i ndividuals is not modeled, contaminated,
or control led by some apparatus. In what way, then,
can we confront this situation, what strategy must we
fol low in our everyday hand-to-hand st ruggle with ap
paratuses? What we are looki ng for is neither si mply to
destroy them nor, as some naively suggest, to us them
in the correct way.
For example, I l i ve in Italy. a country where the ges
t ures and behaviors of i ndivi dual s have been reshaped
16 What Is an Apparat?
from top to toe by the cel l ul ar telephone (which the
Ital ians dub the tlenino). I have developed an i mpla
cable hatred for this apparatus, which has made the re
l ationship between people al l the more abst ract. Al
though I found mysel f more than once wondering
how to destroy or deactivate those telefnini, as wel l
as how t o el i mi nate or at least to punish and imprison
those who do not stop using them, I do not bel ieve
that this is the right solution to the probleme
The fact is that accordi ng to al l i ndications. appa
rtuses are nor a mere accident in which humans are
caught by chance, but rather are rooted in the very
process of "humanization" that made " humans" out
of the ani mal s we classif under the rubric Homo sa
piense In fact, the event that has produced the human
constitutes. for the li vi ng beingg something l i ke a divi
sion, which reproduces i n some way the division that
the oikonomia i ntroduced in God between bei ng and
acti on. Thi s di vi sion separates the l ivi ng being from it
sel f and from its i mmediate rel ationship wi th its envi
ronment-that is. wi th what Jakob von Uexktll and
then Heidegger name the ci rcle of receptors-di si nhib
itorse The break or interruption of this relationshi p
produces in l i vi ng beings both bordom-that is. the
capacity to suspend (hi s immediate relationshi p with
thei r disi nhibitors-and the Open whi ch i s the pos
sibi l i ty of knowi ng bei ng as such. by const ructi ng a
Whlt Is ln Apparts? 17
world. But. al ong with these possibilities. we must also
i mmediately consider the apparatuses that crowd the
Open with instruments. objects. gadgets. odds and
ends. and various technologies. Throu
g
h these appara
tuses. man attempts to nulli fy the ani malistic behav
iors that are now separated from hi m. and to enjoy the
Open as such. to enj oy bei ng insofar as it is beinge At
the root of each apparatus l ies an all-too-human de
sire for happiness. The capture and subj ecti fcation of
thi s desi re i n a separate sphere constitutes the specifc
power of t he apparatuse
8.
Al l of this means that the strategy that we must
adopt in our hand-to-hand combat wi th apparatuses
cannot be a si mpl e one. This is because what we are
dealin
g
with here is the l iberation of that which re
mai ns capt ured and separated by means of appara
t uses, i n order to bri ng it back to a possible common
use. It is from this perspective that I woul d l i ke now
to speak about a concept that I happen to have worked
on recentlye I am referring to a term that origi nates
in the sphere of Roman l aw and rel igion (law and re
ligion arc closely connected, and not onl y i n ancient
Rome): profanation.
Accordi ng to Roman law objects that belonged
in some way to the gods were considered sacred or
18 What Is an Aparatu?
rel igious As such these t hi ngs were removed from
free use and t rade among humans: they could nei
ther be sold nor given as securityg neither rel i nquished
for the enjoyment of others nor subjected to servitude.
Sacri legious were the acts that violated or transgressed
the speci al unavail abi l ity of t hese objectsg whi ch were
reserved either for celestial beings (and so they were
properly cal led "sacred") or for the bei ngs of the neth
erworld (i n thi s case, t hey were si mply cal led "rcli
gious"). Whi le "to consecrate" (sacrare) was the term
that designated the exit of thi ngs from the sphere of
human l aw, "to profane signi fed, on the contrary, to
restore the thi ng to the free use of men. "Profane," the
great j urist Trebatius was therefore able to write, "is, in
the truest sense of the word, that which was sacred or
rl igiousg but was then restored to the use and prop
erty of human beings."
From thi s perspctive, one can defne rel igion as
that which removes thi ngsg places animal s. or peo
pie from common use and transports them to a sepa
rate sphere. Not only is there no rel igion without sep
aration, but every separation contai ns or conserves in
itself a genui nely rel igious nucleus. The apparatus that
acti vates and regul ates separation is sacri fce. Throuh
a series of mi nute ri tual s that vary from cul ture to cul
ture (which Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss have
patiently i nventoried) , sacri fce always sanctions the
What Is an Apparatu? 1
9
passage of something from the profane to the sacred,
from the human sphere to the divi ne But what has
been ritually separated can also be restored to the pro
fane spheree Profanation is the counter-apparatus that
restores to common use what sacrifce had separated
and divided
9
From thi s perspectiveg capitalism and other modern
forms of power seem to general ize and push to the ex
t reme the processes of separation that defne reli
g
ione
If we consider once a
gain the theological genealo
g
y of
appa ratuses that I have traced above (a genealogy that
connects them to the Christian paradigm of
o
ikon
o