Oh Agamben:

Even the pronunciation of your name is a complication to me.
Reading The Open, is like reading the Tao...in German.

In conversation with western philosophy figure heads, ‘The Open’ brings to the forefront the tension in the divide between animal and human as separate natures; a perceived truism prevalent in western societies. In opposition to this divide, Agamben proposes a potentiality to dismantle the ‘anthropomorphic machine:’ the hierarchization of a linear evolution with ‘Man’ as a complete project. Though he never quite pinpoints just how one can reorient this mode of thinking, Agamben proposes the ‘Open’, a state of being within the caesura of man and animal.

Yet this state within the ‘open’, and the subsequential unfolding of ‘oikinomia’, is articulated in a convoluted interpretation of Heidegger, leading to a matrix of aporias and paradoxes. And like the Tao, I assume this complication, this problematization of a complete answer, contributes to the meaning of Agamben’s- or perhaps to the entire canon of philosophy.

Particular to Agamben’s “The Open”, this intrinsic frustration symptomatic of the limits of language to express a particular philosophy, a concept, a the-meaning-of-life idea, is perhaps an empirical example of Hiedegger’s 'closedness’. Language, verbal/visual/any medium of communication is what limits yet makes available an acknowledgement of our existence.

Technology thus, comes into this frame of problematization by presenting an ‘objective’ language: science. Science presents a disjunction between the designation of Homo Sapien, and the humanistic distinction of Man, the latter being a product of the ‘Anthropomorphic machine’. This disjunction (along with many others examples) has stigmatized the language of science as the deconstruction of essentialism. Yet a view of the ‘open’ is perhaps science confirming essentialism- an essence Agamben calls ‘bare-life’.

Captivation in bare-life is illustrated in the perpetual routine of a bee, and man’s profound boredom in a train station; for in this state, man forfeits the narcissism of purposefulness, “the deactivation of possibility” (67) and is equated to the existence of an insect. A bee does not come into the world with the idea “I am an important component to the homeostasis of the environment.” The purpose and behavior of a bee as a pollinator, and as instinctive survival is a scientific inference. Likewise, the biological explanation for man’s behavior can equally bee seen as reactions to primitive needs for survival. Yet science can not satisfy the question of purpose. The idea of man having a purpose, greater than any other organism, is but a product of the “anthropomorphic machine”. In this light, technology, language, human effort becomes actions without purpose, like a bee that drinks honey though his abdomen has been removed. Science is thus, the animalization of the human, and consequently the humanization of animal.

It seems this interpretation has taken a nihilist spin, and whether that is a good thing or bad is questionable. But I suppose a better question is: am I even making any sense. It seems, only a Taoist can appreciate the paths in her travels of hyper-paradoxes.