Encompassing a wide range of subjects, the ten masterful essays gathered here may at first appear unrelated to one another. In truth, Giorgio Agamben's latest book is a mosaic of his most pressing concerns. Take a step backward after reading it from cover to cover, and a world of secret affinities between the chapters slowly comes into focus. Take another step back, and it becomes another indispensable piece of the finely nuanced philosophy that Agamben has been patiently constructing over four decades of sustained research. If nudity is unconcealment, or the absence of all veils, then Nudities is a series of apertures onto truth. A guiding thread of this collection―weaving together the prophet's work of redemption, the glorious bodies of the resurrected, the celebration of the Sabbath, and the specters that stroll the streets of Venice―is inoperativity, or the cessation of work. The term should not be understood as laziness or inertia, but rather as the paradigm of human action in the politics to come. Itself the result of inoperativity, Nudities shuttles between philosophy and poetry, philological erudition and unexpected digression, metaphysical treatise and critique of modern life. And whether the subject at hand is personal identity or the biometric apparatus, the slanderer or the land surveyor, Kafka or Kleist, every page bears the singular imprint of one of the most astute philosophers of our time. Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher and radical political theorist, is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Venice. Stanford University Press has published seven of his previous books: Homo Sacer (1998), Potentialities (1999), The Man Without Content (1999), The End of the Poem (1999), The Open (2004), The Time that Remains (2005), and, most recently, "What is an Apparatus?" and Other Essays (2009). NUDITIES By Giorgio Agamben, David Kishik, Stefan Pedatella Stanford University Press Copyright © 2009 Nottetempo SRL All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8047-6950-1 Contents Translators' Note..........................................................ix§ 1 Creation and Salvation.................................................1§ 2 What Is the Contemporary?..............................................10§ 3 K......................................................................20§ 4 On the Uses and Disadvantages of Living among Specters.................37§ 5 On What We Can Not Do..................................................43§ 6 Identity without the Person............................................46§ 7 Nudity.................................................................55§ 8 The Glorious Body......................................................91§ 9 Hunger of an Ox........................................................104§ 10 The Last Chapter in the History of the World..........................113Notes......................................................................115Credits....................................................................121 CHAPTER 1 § 1 Creation and Salvation 1. Prophets disappear early on in Western history. If it is truethat Judaism cannot be understood without the figure of the nabi ,if the prophetic books occupy, in every sense, a central place in theBible, it is just as true that early on there are already forces at workwithin Judaism that tend to limit the practice and the time frameof prophetism. The rabbinical tradition therefore tends to confineprophetism to an idealized past that concludes with the destructionof the First Temple in 587 BC. As the rabbis teach, "After thedeath of the last prophets—Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi—theholy spirit departed from Israel, though heavenly messages continueto reach them through the bat kol " (literally, "the voice'sdaughter," that is, the oral tradition, as well as the commentaryon, and interpretation of, the Torah). In the same way, Christianityrecognizes the essential function of prophecy and, indeed, constructsthe relationship between the Old and New Testaments inprophetic terms. But inasmuch as the Messiah appeared on earthand fulfilled the promise, the prophet no longer has any reason toexist, and so Paul, Peter, and their companions present themselvesas apostles (that is, "those who are sent forth"), never as prophets.For this reason, within the Christian tradition, those who claimto be prophets cannot but be looked upon by the orthodoxy withsuspicion. In this vein, those who wish to somehow link themselvesto prophecy can do so only through the interpretation of theScriptures, by reading them in a new way, or restoring their lostoriginal meaning. In Judaism as in Christianity, hermeneutics hasreplaced prophetism; one can practice prophecy only in the formof interpretation. Naturally, the prophet has not altogether disappeared fromWestern culture. He continues his labor discretely, under variousguises, perhaps even outside the hermeneutical sphere properlyun