On the advantages of not being listened to
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, October 13, 2023
Untopical is, first of all, that word that is addressed to an audience which in no case will be able to receive it. But this is just what defines its rank. If a book that is addressed only to its deputed readers is quite uninteresting and does not survive the public to which it was directed, the price of a work, instead, is just measured by the temerity with which it interpellates those who will not be able to accept it. Prophecy is the name of this special temerity, bound to remain unheard and unreadable. This does not mean that one day — far away for now — it counts on being recognised: a work remains alive only as long as there are readers who cannot accept it. Canonisation, which makes its acceptance obligatory, is indeed the form par excellence of its decay. Only insofar as a work maintains a part of its non-topicality over time, it can find its authentic readers, that is, those who will have to pay for the indifference or aversion of others.
Therefore, the art of writing does not only consist, as has been suggested, in dissimulating or leaving unsaid the truths one cares most about, but first and foremost in the ability to select the audience which will not want to receive them. It goes without saying that this selection is not the fruit of a calculation or a project, but only of a language that concedes nothing to topicality — that is, to the rules that define what one can say and how one does say it. Whether it is clear and firm — or, as often happens, dark and stammering — that word is in any case prophetic, the effectiveness of which is precisely a function of its remaining unheard.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, October 13, 2023
Untopical is, first of all, that word that is addressed to an audience which in no case will be able to receive it. But this is just what defines its rank. If a book that is addressed only to its deputed readers is quite uninteresting and does not survive the public to which it was directed, the price of a work, instead, is just measured by the temerity with which it interpellates those who will not be able to accept it. Prophecy is the name of this special temerity, bound to remain unheard and unreadable. This does not mean that one day — far away for now — it counts on being recognised: a work remains alive only as long as there are readers who cannot accept it. Canonisation, which makes its acceptance obligatory, is indeed the form par excellence of its decay. Only insofar as a work maintains a part of its non-topicality over time, it can find its authentic readers, that is, those who will have to pay for the indifference or aversion of others.
Therefore, the art of writing does not only consist, as has been suggested, in dissimulating or leaving unsaid the truths one cares most about, but first and foremost in the ability to select the audience which will not want to receive them. It goes without saying that this selection is not the fruit of a calculation or a project, but only of a language that concedes nothing to topicality — that is, to the rules that define what one can say and how one does say it. Whether it is clear and firm — or, as often happens, dark and stammering — that word is in any case prophetic, the effectiveness of which is precisely a function of its remaining unheard.
(English translation by I, Robot)
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René Magritte, Forbidden literature (The use of the Word), 1936. Courtesy of WikiArt. |
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