Désoeuvrer, résister: Poétique et politique du refus dans l’oeuvre de Giorgio Agamben

According to the epigonic method he advocates, Giorgio Agamben has forged his concept of inoperativity from a constellation of both literary and philosophical references. The use of such a concept derives as much from Paul the Apostle, Walter Benjamin, Simone Weil, Maurice Blanchot, as from Bartleby – a central figure in his work. If, according to him, philosophy and poetry should not be separated, it is because they both have the capacity to inoperate language in order to let a speech prevail and to be capable of freeing us from the subjugations in which we are enmeshed. In this sense, inoperativity corresponds to a refusal to participate in the world language by opposing it with a speech of resistance of which Bartleby, Pulcinella and Pinocchio are, among others, incarnations. A return to the genealogy of the inoperativity concept in Agamben's work thus allows us to foresee the way it offers a model of a poetic and resistant form of life.