“Remnants of the World: Agamben and Messianic Affect” was published in the journal Crossings in 2003. It is my dissertation in contracted form. It seeks to re-think affect in Deleuze in relation to the state of exception. As far as I can tell, this remains the most sustained statement on that subject, as well as (to my mind) often neglected aspects of Agamben’s project, particularly his formulations on the eternal return and the exception. If I have time (a big if), I hope to write a brief afterward to the essay. In the meantime, I am preparing to post the introduction and first chapter from my dissertation, which expands a bit more on the material presented here (and eventually re-upload the rest of the book).

Please note that there is a typo and, perhaps, an interesting mistake: “being in force without signifiance” is transliterated as “being in force without significance.” A bit embarrassing—what was I even thinking!—but I follow Agamben in viewing mistakes as productive. This was corrected in the longer version in the dissertation, which, sadly, was never published. It is also indicative of how new Agamben’s work was at the time: There was really no one who could correct me because so little was known about his work. As Kate Bush once sang in a Nicolas Roeg film (Castaway), “Be Kind to My Mistakes.”

Remnants of the World: Agamben and Messianic Affect” (Crossings, No. 5/6, 2002/2003, 269-295.)