Contemporariness

Contemporariness is, then, a singular relationship with one's own time, which adheres to it and at the same time, keeps a distance from it. More precisely, it is that relationship with time that adheres to it through a disjunction and an anachronism. Those who coincide too well with the epoch, those who are perfectly tied to it in every respect are not contemporaries, precisely because they do not manage to see it; they are not able to firmly hold their gaze on it.

(Agamben, "What is Contemporary", p.41 in What is an Apparatus?)

Insult

An insult is effective precisely because it does not function as a constative utterance but rather as a proper noun; because it uses language in order to give a name in such a way that the named can not accept his name, and against which he cannot defend himself (as if someone were to insist on calling me Gastone knowing that my name is Giorgio). What is offensive in the insult is, in other words, a pure experience of language and not a reference to the world.

(Agamben, The Friend, in What is an Apparatus?, p.30)

Latife Tekin

Kimi zaman, çok pis oldukları, kötü koktukları için böyle insanlara karşı sevecenliğini yitirir, yüreği katılaşırdı ama düşkünler, özellikle de deliler...Gizli bir güç tarafından, onlardan yana çekildiğini hissederdi yine de. Yaşamın ortasına el birliğiyle bir delik açmışlar, sanki onun da görmesi gereken bir şeye bakıyorlardı. Kendi imgesi, gözünde canlanıveren bu kışkırtıcı görüntüyle iç içe titreşirdi hep.

Latife Tekin, Ormanda Ölüm Yoktu, s. 15.

Economy/ Agamben

Action (economy, but also politics) has no foundation in being: this is the schizophrenia that the theological doctrine of oikonomia left as its legacy toWestern culture.

(What is an Apparatus?, 10)

From Positivity to Apparatus/ Agamben

If "positivjty" is the name that, according to Hyppolite, the young Hegel gives to the historical element loaded as it is with rules, rites, and institutions that are imposed on the individual by an external power, but that become, so to speak. internalized in the systems of beliefs and feelings then Foucault, by borrowing this term (later to become "apparatus"), takes a position with respect to a decisive problem, which is actually also his own problem : the rclation between individuals as living beings and the historical element. By "the historical element," I mean the set of institutions, of processes of subjectification and of rules in which power relations become concrete. Foucault's ultimate aim is not, then as in Hegel, the reconciliation of the two elements; it is not even to emphasize their conflict. For Foucault, what is at stake is rather the investigation of concrete modes in which the positivities (or the apparatuses) act within the relations, mechanisms, and "plays" of power.

(What is an Apparatus?, 6)

If we now try to examine the definition of "apparatus" that can be found in common French dictionaries, we see that they distinguish between three meanings of the term:

a. A strictly juridical sense: "Apparatus is the part of a judgment that contains the decision separate from the opinion." That is the section of a sentence that decide. or the enacting clause of a law.

b. A technological meaning: "The way in which the parts of a machine or of a mechanism and by extension the mechanism itself are arranged."

c. A military use: "The set of means arranged in conformity with a plan."

(What is an Apparatus?, 7)

Toby Borrows / Water