Being, Time, Bios: Capitalism and Ontology

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Being, Time, Bios SUNY series, Insinuations: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Literature ————— Charles Shepherdson, editor Being, Time, Bios Capitalism and Ontology A. Kiarina Kordela Cover image: August Sander, "Bricklayer" / © 2012 Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur—August Sander Archiv, Cologne / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Published by State University of New York Press, Albany© 2013 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Kate McDonnell Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kordela, Aglaia Kiarina, 1963– Being, time, bios : capitalism and ontology / A. Kiarina Kordela.     p. cm. — (SUNY series, Insinuations: philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature) Includes bibliographical references (p.         ) and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-4589-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Biopolitics—Philosophy. I. Title. JA80.K67 2013 320.01'57—dc23 2012015235 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Is the task ahead of us to advance towards a mode of thought, unknown hitherto in our culture, that will make it possible to reflect at the same time, without discontinuity or contradiction, upon man’s being and the being of language? —Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences Until a new and coherent ontology of potentiality (beyond the steps that have been made in this direction by Spinoza, Schelling, Nietzsche, and Heidegger) has replaced the ontology founded on the primacy of actuality and its relation to potentiality, a political theory freed from the aporias of sovereignty remains unthinkable. —Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life One thinks of the perverse arguments of the so-called Capital-logicians: that what Hegel, in the process of making his exhaustive inventory of it, called Absolute Spirit, is now from our perspective rather to be identified as Capital itself, whose study is now our true ontology. It is indeed the new world system, the third stage of capitalism, which is for us the absent totality, Spinoza’s God or Nature, the ultimate (indeed, perhaps the only) referent, the true ground of Being of our own time. Only by way of its fitful contemplation can its future, and our own, be somehow disclosed. —Fredric Jameson, The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System ...