在「我可以有一件襯衫」之後：論生命政治的失能與裸命的大能

After ''I'd Have a Shirt'': On the Impotence of Biopolitics andthe Potency of the Bare Life

阿岡本一方面不斷強調裸命的失能，但另一方面又主張生命的創造力，論述的兩面性時而為批評家所詬病。本文的目的不在填補阿岡本論述的裂縫，而是試圖透過班雅民在他那篇談論卡夫卡的文章最後講述的猶太笑話，證明裸命的失能跟生命的大能實為一體的兩面，兩者之間並無論述的斷裂存在。與一般阿岡本的批評家所持的意見不同，本文主張權力與能力之間的不對稱是造成裸命增能與生命權力失能的主要原因。但儘管權力與能力的不對稱有可能帶來階層排序的翻轉，我們不能將裸命超克生命權力部署的能力視為理所當然。只有在裸命的能力被導向促成裸命自我解離的當下，裸命才算真正具備抵拒生命權力部署的大能。因此我們可以說，裸命之所以具備倫理性的存有能力，主要的原因在於裸命的自我解離，而非畸零的生命存在本身。

Giorgio Agamben has often been criticized for the duality in his conceptualization of bare life. While the disempowerment of bare life takes the center stage of his multifaceted philosophical ruminations, there is no lack of remarkable references to potency and constituent power of life throughout his oeuvre. This paper aims less to bridge the gap than to argue for the inextricability of these two aspects, which, in my reading, is concisely encapsulated in the Jewish joke relayed in Walter Benjamin's Kafka essay. Pace Agamben's critics, I will argue that the dissymmetry between potere and potenza is the major contributory factor both to the empowerment of the damaged bare life and to the irrevocable failure of biopolitical governance. Notwithstanding the prospective inversion of hierarchy, the potenza of bare life cannot be celebrated without qualifications and banked upon without reserve when it comes to the overcoming of biopower. The biopolitical machine will keep rolling until, and only until the potenza of bare life is adequately harnessed to separate the wretched homo sacer from itself; hence the ethical power of being of bare life which enables it to defy the agile subsumption of biopolitical apparatuses. If there is an apt description for the potenza of bare life, it will be more the non-coincidence of bare life with itself, than the deprived existence as such.