The unnumberable people
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, October 23, 2026
One of the fundamental political problems — if not the most urgent one — is how to think of a not-numberable multiplicity (or multitude). As a political concept, the people only makes sense on the condition that it cannot be numberable; if it can be counted, what becomes decisive is no longer the people as such, but rather a numerical quantity — the so-called majority — into which the people dissolves through the perverse device of elections or plebiscites. The people — as well as the human species — is not a whole constituted by numberable singularities: the “popular” or “generic” character — i.e., the political character — must fully belong to the individual as such. It is what Marx sought to think through the concept of Gattungswesen (“species-being”), which defines each human being and not a numberable quantity. Since every human being “relates to himself as to the present, living species”, this cannot be a numerical sum of individuals, but it is a reality which is essentially and completely present in each one. If the people, like the species-being, gets numbered, it divides not only into a majority and minority, but also into factions, among which civil war necessarily arises. In Leviathan, Hobbes attempted to unravel this aporia by hypothesising a numberable multitude — which he calls multitudo disunita (disunited mutitude) — that constitutes itself as a unity into the body of the sovereign; but this means that the people has no unity other than by abolishing itself into the artificial person of the sovereign.
How to think, then, of a not-numberable multitude? Popularity and politicality are not definable properties, which, like the racial unity for the Nazis, can be attributed to any individual. Rather, they arise from the absence of a common identity element, which determines its belonging to this or that whole, to this or that class, and thereby renders it numberable. Like the proletariat according to Marx, the people cannot coincide with itself: it is, by its own constitution, non-all. If one attempts to seize it as a non-all, it resists any definition — and this resistance, this unnumberable rest is the people; it is the genuine political element.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, October 23, 2026
One of the fundamental political problems — if not the most urgent one — is how to think of a not-numberable multiplicity (or multitude). As a political concept, the people only makes sense on the condition that it cannot be numberable; if it can be counted, what becomes decisive is no longer the people as such, but rather a numerical quantity — the so-called majority — into which the people dissolves through the perverse device of elections or plebiscites. The people — as well as the human species — is not a whole constituted by numberable singularities: the “popular” or “generic” character — i.e., the political character — must fully belong to the individual as such. It is what Marx sought to think through the concept of Gattungswesen (“species-being”), which defines each human being and not a numberable quantity. Since every human being “relates to himself as to the present, living species”, this cannot be a numerical sum of individuals, but it is a reality which is essentially and completely present in each one. If the people, like the species-being, gets numbered, it divides not only into a majority and minority, but also into factions, among which civil war necessarily arises. In Leviathan, Hobbes attempted to unravel this aporia by hypothesising a numberable multitude — which he calls multitudo disunita (disunited mutitude) — that constitutes itself as a unity into the body of the sovereign; but this means that the people has no unity other than by abolishing itself into the artificial person of the sovereign.
How to think, then, of a not-numberable multitude? Popularity and politicality are not definable properties, which, like the racial unity for the Nazis, can be attributed to any individual. Rather, they arise from the absence of a common identity element, which determines its belonging to this or that whole, to this or that class, and thereby renders it numberable. Like the proletariat according to Marx, the people cannot coincide with itself: it is, by its own constitution, non-all. If one attempts to seize it as a non-all, it resists any definition — and this resistance, this unnumberable rest is the people; it is the genuine political element.
(English translation by I, Robot)
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Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, The Living Torrent, 1895–1896. Courtesy of Pinacoteca di Brera. |
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