Nicolas Poussin, The dance to the music of time, c. 1634-36
Those who govern us today are trying to organise the survival of humanity, that is, they are trying to transform the living into survivors. But what survives is no longer alive; only those who do not survive their own way of life and their own world truly live. A bare life does not exist: it is nothing more than an abstraction of law and power. The survivors around us have no mouths or ears, they do not speak or listen, they only count. Talking to them is of no use. Poets and philosophers are dead; that is why we can talk to them.
Giorgio Agamben: To live or to survive
Those who govern us today are trying to organise the survival of humanity, that is, they are trying to transform the living into survivors. But what survives is no longer alive; only those who do not survive their own way of life and their own world truly live. A bare life does not exist: it is nothing more than an abstraction of law and power. The survivors around us have no mouths or ears, they do not speak or listen, they only count. Talking to them is of no use. Poets and philosophers are dead; that is why we can talk to them.
10/12/2025
Source: Quodlibet