The Nut

The shell of the snail

Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, May 23, 2024

Whatever the profound reasons for the decline of the West, of which we are experiencing its absolutely decisive crisis, it is possible to summarise its extreme outcome in what, taking up an icastic image of Ivan Illich, we could call the “theorem of the snail”. “If the snail”, the theorem reads, “after adding a certain number of spirals to its shell, instead of stopping, continued increasing, just one additional spiral would make the weight of its home sixteen times heavier and would inexorably crush the snail”. This is what is happening to the species that was once defined as homo sapiens with regards to technological development and, in general, the hypertrophy of the juridical, scientific and industrial apparatuses that characterise human society.
These have always been indispensable to the life of that special mammal that is man, whose premature birth implies a prolongation of the infantile condition, in cui the child is not able to provide for his survival. But, as often happens, a mortal danger just hides in what ensures its salvation. Scientists who, like genious Dutch anatomist Lodewjik Bolk, reflected on the singular condition of human species, actually have drawn consequences from it that are, to say the least, pessimistic about the future of civilization. Over time, the growing development of technologies and social structures produces a real inhibition of vitality, which heralds a possible disappearance of the species. Access to the adult stage is indeed increasingly deferred, the growth of the organism is increasingly slowed down, lifespan — and hence old age — prolonged. “This progressive inhibition of the vital process”, writes Bolk, “cannot exceed a certain limit without compromising the vitality and strength of resistance to inauspicious influences from outside, in short, man’s very existence. The more humanity advances on the path of humanisation, the closer it comes to that fatal point where progress will mean destruction. And it is certainly not in the nature of man to stop when faced with this”.
It is this extreme situation that we are living in today. The limitless multiplication of technological apparatuses, the growing subjection to constraints and legal authorisations of every kind and species and the complete subservience to the laws of the market make individuals more and more dependent on factors that are wholly beyond their control. Günther Anders defined the new relation that modernity produced between man and his tools with the expression: “Promethean gap” and spoke of a “shame” in the face of the humiliating superiority of things produced by technology, of which we can no longer consider ourselves masters in any way. It is possible that now this gap reached the point of maximum tension and man became completely incapable of assuming the governance of the sphere of the products he created.
To the inhibition of vitality described by Bolk is added the abdication of that very intelligence that could somehow curb its negative consequences. The surrender of that last connection with nature, which the philosophical tradition called lumen naturae, produces an artificial stupidity which makes technological hypertrophy even more uncontrollable.
What will happen to the snail crushed by its own shell? How will it survive the rubble of its home? These are the questions we must not stop asking ourselves.

(English translation by I, Robot)

河野薫 (Kaoru Kawano), Girl in Shell, 1960. Courtesy of WikiArt.