Giorgio Agamben, The Open

Sa The Open (2004), tinalakay ng Italyanong pilosopo na si Giorgio Agamben ang kaugnayan ng tao at ng ‘hayop’ sa pamamagitan ng mga teksto nina Heidegger, Kojeve at Hegel.  Sinalungguhitan ni Agamben ang kahalagahan, ngayon higit kaylanman, dahil sa paglitawan ng napakaraming hybrid na anyo ng pag-iral, sa pagkilala sa kinakailangang ‘sona ng pagsawalang-bahala’ (zone of indifference), na isisingit sa bawat dalawahang kategoryang namamayani sa ating kilos at paningin (‘kalikasan’ at ‘lipunan’; ‘tao’ at ‘hayop’, bilang ilan sa mga halimbawa). Ang ideyang letting-be mula kay Heidegger ay ginamit ni Agamben upang idiin ang panawagan na hayaan itong ‘antropolohikal na makina’—na mula pa sa simula’y laging abala sa pagiit ng mga bagay—na tumigil na sa pag-andar, pabayaang huminto, at huwag nang gamitin’:

‘not simply to let something be, but to leave something outside of being, to render it unsavable. Just as Titian’s lovers forgive each other for their own lack of post-coital mystery, life— neither open nor undisconcealable— stands serenely in relation with its own concealedness; it lets it be outside of being.’

Ano ang gagawin sa mga binaryong kategorya? Ganito ang pagbubuod ng isang mambabasa:

With any of the binaries that are used to determine the realm of the human (Society and Nature being only a representative example), it is in the double-articulation that the overdetermination of the terms as such is destructive. This lends itself not to hybrid thought, of linking Nature-Society or Human-Animal to make new beings, but rather anti-hybrids, Un-Natures, Un-Animals. It is in the space of the “un,” of the not-yet, that a politics of the essential can begin to be articulated, alongside bare life and the simplicity of “letting be.”

Ganito ang pagkasabi ni Agamben sa panghuling mga linya ng kanyang akda, na kailangang pagmunihan ng mabuti upang makita ang pagsisikap nitong mapalitaw ang isang anyo ng pag-iisip na nagbabadya bilang bago:

To let the animal be would then mean: to let it be outside of being. The zone of nonknowledge–or of a-knowledge–that is at issue here is beyond both knowing and not knowing, beyond both disconcealing and concealing, beyond both being and the nothing. But what is thus left to be outside of being is not thereby negated or taken away; it is not, for this reason, inexistent. It is an existing, real thing that has gone beyond the difference between being and beings.