緣定與善：阿甘本的潛勢倫理

The Quodlibet and the Good: On Agamben’s Ethics of Potentiality

阿甘本在《到來中共群》的開頭指出：緣定在的原意不是「不管什麼都一樣」而是「不論如何都不可忽視」。「不可忽視」不只是因為一次項保有獨一無二的內容，也是因為內容脫離交換而使價值潛勢純粹化、媒材化。理想共群是「到來中」共群而不是「未來」共群，正是因為潛勢不僅是潛態而是潛態的施力，所以可以實現的共群應該是由某處來，要到某處去的「運動」中共群。也就是說，潛勢雖然是潛在動勢，卻自己「會動」，涉及生存欲望導引下個體內部出現的共同性表達，並不是單純的虛擬。有表達就有給予、接受的關係，但是表達往往會被具體情境裡的個別性條件阻斷而體觸化，懸置在媒材性中而「潛入」動勢。本文從幾個方面檢討、澄清在表達阻斷中形成的緣定在為什麼與愛有關，又為什麼在生存欲望高度偏向自動裝置的格局下仍然保有對抗的力量，能防止潛勢世界的自動裝置暴力化而落入無所不為。透過阿甘本對德勒茲電影理論的挑戰，我們可以將體觸、純粹手段或媒材性等觀念帶入自動裝置的討論，透過運動的物質性以及政治性來修正德勒茲貶抑運動的傾向。依循緣定在與愛的關係，我們可以看到阿甘本的潛勢並不是單純的取消善惡區分的正確性框架，而是要要透過媒材性來「提供場所」，成立充分肯認潛正確的倫理觀。

At the beginning of The Coming Community, Agamben points out that quodlibet ens or whatever being is “being such that it always matters.” Such being “matters” not only because it is determined as singular but because the determining can become a pure place of potentiality. We need a “coming” community, not one imagined in the future, precisely because something takes shape in potentiality as if in a place or medium. A community that can be realized must be already moving, from some place to some other place. Thus potentiality is already movement. At issue is a will to live that adds an expressiveness to the individual experiencing potentiality. Expressiveness implies not only a give and take between interiority and a common space, but also a gesturality when its movement is interrupted by specifics in the actually existing context of bodies and desires. This gesturality suspends the expressiveness, turning its movement into potentiality. This article examines the quodlibet to clarify why it is said to lead to love and how it maintains a place of resistance even in an age when “self-moving” projects are typically expressed as violence. Based on Agamben’s comments on Deleuze’s disparaging critique of movement in his theory of cinematic images, a review of accounts of gesturality and pure means or pure mediality from various sources leads to a new understanding of the political relevance of movement. In addition, Agamben’s move to link the quodlibet to love allows us to see that an ethics of potentiality does not merely abandon the frame of propriety and with it the distinction between good and evil. Rather, the quodlibet returns propriety to a place of mediality where impropriety can be taken up as potential propriety. The last part of this paper explores connections with psychoanalytic theory, mainly through a look at the letter and the unary trait as elaborated by Lacan, and with the uncanny in accounts of the “uncanny valley” in robotics and animation technology, where the uncanniness of images of the human challenges us to accept the quodlibet in being. Agamben’s account of an ethics of potentiality pinpoints aspects of the uncanny left unexplored by Freud. Under this ethics, the robot does not need to be “properly” human, since impropriety is already a constant arriving at propriety. In the same way, the good is not an imagined destination or a peak to be accomplished, but a tarrying with the imperfect and a vigilance about the ethical vicissitudes of its movement.