A way out
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, July 6, 2026
Often, amid widespread awareness that we are living in the end of a culture, the need — or hope — for a new beginning arises, that is, that after the collapse of a long tradition, a new and more alive one will sooner or later come into being. Against this naive expectation, one must remember that we don’t need a new beginning, but a way out. Assuming that a new beginning were possible, then everything would start again as before, possibly with different ideas and projects, but still within the frontiers of a historical age and a tradition somehow homogeneous with the previous one. After the collapse of the history of the West, the last thing we may want is a new historical age; rather, we want to put an end to ages, to get out once and for all, and not simply to start again. Get out where? We can’t say it, but this is well here. Our silence is more precious than chatters about the characters of an improbable future, which betray its solidarity with the past by repeating old-fashioned formulas such as “new or post- or transhumanism”. As the monkey in A Report to an Academy, which has become something radically other, says: “I didn’t want freedom, only a way out”.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, July 6, 2026
Often, amid widespread awareness that we are living in the end of a culture, the need — or hope — for a new beginning arises, that is, that after the collapse of a long tradition, a new and more alive one will sooner or later come into being. Against this naive expectation, one must remember that we don’t need a new beginning, but a way out. Assuming that a new beginning were possible, then everything would start again as before, possibly with different ideas and projects, but still within the frontiers of a historical age and a tradition somehow homogeneous with the previous one. After the collapse of the history of the West, the last thing we may want is a new historical age; rather, we want to put an end to ages, to get out once and for all, and not simply to start again. Get out where? We can’t say it, but this is well here. Our silence is more precious than chatters about the characters of an improbable future, which betray its solidarity with the past by repeating old-fashioned formulas such as “new or post- or transhumanism”. As the monkey in A Report to an Academy, which has become something radically other, says: “I didn’t want freedom, only a way out”.
(English translation by I, Robot)
Friedensreich Hundertwasser, 626 The Way to You, 1966. Courtesy of WikiArt. |
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