continent.

Covering Giorgio Agamben's Nudities

Gregory Kirk Murray
continent. 1.2 (2011) 145­147

Here I accoutred myself in my new habiliments; and, having em­

ployed the same precautions as before, retired from my lodging
at a time least exposed to observation. It is unnecessary to des­
cribe the particulars of my new equipage; suffice it to say, that
one of my cares was to discolour my complexion, and give it
the dun and sallow hue which is in most instances characteristic
of the tribe to which I assumed to belong; and that when my
metamorphosis was finished, I could not, upon the strictest ex­
amination, conceive that any one could have traced out the per­
son of Caleb Williams in this new disguise.
William Godwin
Caleb Williams (352).

A. The Protective Overcoat.

The most pervasive, resilient, robust, sneaky, and
significant concept in all of Giorgio Agamben’s essays is I
that of separation. This is not the same as alienation. The aim here is not to tap
Separation is more nostalgic, for Agamben valorizes an into an original state prior to the separation
ancient world in which human society and its beings were but to comprehend and neutralize the
not subject to such separation. He implies that these apparatus that produced this separation.
separations are damaging to human beings, crippling (66)
them at the very level of their identities.
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B. The Handsome Gloves. II
Giorgio Agamben’s Nudities, like Profanations before it, The contemporary is he
employs a wide range of subjects in order to establish who firmly holds his gaze on his own time
separation as a metaphor, in much the same way that so as to perceive not its light but rather its
interdisciplinary scholars have adopted Michel Foucault’s darkness.
concepts in order to rethink societies and texts. The (13)
longest essay from Profanations, entitled “In Praise of III
Profanation,” laments humankind’s inability to profane as We can therefore only
the result of what Walter Benjamin has called “the experience nudity as a denudation and a
capitalist religion.” Likewise, “Nudity” adopts a baring, never as a form and a stable
pessimistic stance on the Christian theological tradition’s possession.
perverse asphyxiation of the unclothed body. (65)
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ISSN: 2159­9920 | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
 Gregory Kirk Murray (146)

C. The Hoop Earrings. IV

Just as genius and talent
Religion separates humans from things by procuring for originally distinct and even opposite—are
itself items as “sacred,” thus taking them out of common nevertheless united in the work of the poet,
use. In this state, human beings are unable to play with so the work of creation and the work of
them, unable to change their use­value. They become off­ salvation, inasmuch as they represent the
limits, museified. two powers of a single God, remain in some
way secretly conjoined.
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D. The Uncomfortable Shoes.
V
Biometrics polices identity, replacing meaningful metrics In our culture,
of identity. It is a deplorable situation that leaves human the face­body relationship is marked by a
beings in danger of, and indeed already victims of, mass fundamental asymmetry, in that our faces
persecution. remain for the most part naked, while our
bodies are normally covered.
$111.75 (88)
E. The Prince Albert.
VI
One could characterize Giorgio Agamben’s desire to Every man initiates
catalogue a history of ignorance as a recognition that a slanderous trial
human beings are separated from knowledge by against himself.
language. Where then is the prophet, and how shall we be (21)
saved?
$49.50 + tip VII
The glorious body is not
F. The Corset. some other body, more agile and beautiful,
more luminous and spiritual; it is the body
Franz Kafka’s character of Joseph K. has put himself on itself, at the moment when inoperativity
trial, as in Roman trials when the Kalumniator was marked removes the spell from it and opens it up
with the letter K. The torture he undergoes is meant to to a new possible common use.
elicit a confession of the truth. It is possible that Giorgio (103)
Agamben perceives his role as a philosopher to be
confined to self­trial, and that with every passage he flays VIII
the unclothed page with prophetic intent. As Kleist understood
so well, the relationship with a zone of
$27.00 nonknowledge is a dance.
(114)
 Gregory Kirk Murray (147)

G. The Derby.
IX
Giorgio Agamben himself tries to bridge various The deactivation of this
separations through exploratory play. He is not a apparatus retroactively operates, therefore,
performative writer semantically, but his exploratory style as much on nature as on grace, as much on
is rooted in the play spirit. His strategy of numbering nudity as on clothing, liberating them from
points is almost comical, yet it is not misleading. It is play, their theological signature.
after all, not ruse. He denudes with pecks, like carrion on a (90)
tattered corpse.
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H. The Trousers. At any rate,
whether festive inoperativity precedes religion
Although Giorgio Agamben is elsewhere concerned with or results from the profanation of its
the profanation of religion’s apparatuses, in essay nine he apparatuses, what is essential here is a
would like to consider what is consumed during days of dimension of praxis in which simple, quotidian
inoperativity, how religion governs these, and how to human activities are neither negated nor
account for our binges and purges. Inoperativity is abolished but suspended and rendered
inextricably bound to feasting, to the festival. inoperative in order to be exhibited, as such,
in a festive manner.
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I. The Stylish Belt.
(112)

XI
The only essay in Nudities to contain photographs is the
essay entitled, “Nudity.” All of these photographs project This is just how much
human bodies. [of] the land [the] surveyor is allowed to catch
a glimpse.
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Giorgio Agamben. Nudities. Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.
144 pp. | 10 illustrations. | ISBN: 9780804769501 | $16.95

WORKS CITED
Agamben, Giorgio. Nudities. Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. Print.
Godwin, William. Caleb Williams. London: Colburn and Bentley, 1831. Print.