This chapter elaborates on the political positioning of absolute and relative sovereignty and lays the foundation to establish the relationship between political property and poverty. To this end, regarding absolute sovereignty, insights from Derrida’s theory of sovereignty are prolusionary to building a bridge with political poverty. Indeed, he explains how the desire to pursue and obtain absolute sovereignty is a-political since it is also, and above all, self-illusory. As such, this desire exposes man to a possible condition of a-political self-isolation that makes it the subject of and is due to beastly rather than human self-affirmative instincts. As portrayed here through the political hermeneutics of powerful stories and images from Dante’s Comedy, the desire for absolute sovereignty paradoxically creates feral subjugation, restrains and even stops the human possible movement of access to and steady permanence in the political space of humanity itself. The impossibility of absolute sovereignty is revealed both in and outside politics. It pertains to the field of fiction—associable and thus comprehensible in an infantile context—but certainly not in that of politics properly so-called. The impossibility of the pursuit and obtainment of absolute sovereignty is thus political poverty for at least two reasons: (i) it implies omnipotence conceivable (albeit always aporetic) only in total isolation and therefore outside politics; (ii) the nature of man is subject to that law of nature that makes it political and also determines that unstoppable drive towards permanence within politics. Indeed, despite its possible opposing efforts, man cannot prevent the politics of which it is ontologically part, which requires an ontological evolution in awareness (very similar to a constant maturation with respect to stupidity). In this sense, the normative stake of ontological poverty of politics emerges because politics is not only not founded on, but neither does it allow to be associated with what Derrida defines as sovereign ipseity or an absolute affirmation of the self, phenomenologically independent from the other. Indeed, having so far established the ontological poverty of politics, the chapter takes a further step and discusses the guilty form of political poverty, namely theoretical poverty. Accordingly, human awareness of the irreconcilability between absolute sovereignty and politics does not result in a possible alternative. Indeed, man cannot escape the movement, the law, that pushes it towards and places it before politics without its humanity being endangered. Suppose a man wants to insist on a possible desire for absolute sovereignty. In that case, it must accept the idea of alienating itself from politics and jeopardising, at the same time, more or less temporarily, its natural human prerogatives. This evidence reverberates on the doctrine of potency on which Agamben and Derrida appear divided and the need to establish what constitutes pure political action. This consideration leads to the analysis of that second form of political poverty. Indeed, if, on the one hand, the ontological poverty of politics pertains to an inevitable law determining the human condition and the being/becoming political itself, there is, on the other hand, another form of poverty that politics deals with. The latter constitutes theoretical poverty or the possibility that politics is made to lose its relational property. Suppose the ontological poverty of politics describes an unavoidable fact about which politics cannot and must not worry because it simply defines and constitutes its nature. In that case, theoretical poverty is potentially much more problematic because it leads to a guilty impoverishment of politics. This impoverishment concerns issues such as the definition of a political relationship, how it happens and above all, why a relationship is essential and preferable to the alternative of a non-relation or isolation. Given the ontological premises, this chapter thus concludes by opening the door to the investigation for a purely political action concerning the normative justification of the political relationship and the difficulty it may entail in the face of the perhaps more attractive, though fictional, proposal for absolute sovereignty.

Fiction and Impoverishment: Derrida, Agamben and Political Poverty

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发表日期：

2025年

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Elia R. G. Pusterla,
Francesca Pusterla Piccin

摘要

This chapter elaborates on the political positioning of absolute and relative sovereignty and lays the foundation to establish the relationship between political property and poverty. To this end, regarding absolute sovereignty, insights from Derrida’s theory of sovereignty are prolusionary to building a bridge with political poverty. Indeed, he explains how the desire to pursue and obtain absolute sovereignty is a-political since it is also, and above all, self-illusory. As such, this desire exposes man to a possible condition of a-political self-isolation that makes it the subject of and is due to beastly rather than human self-affirmative instincts. As portrayed here through the political hermeneutics of powerful stories and images from Dante’s Comedy, the desire for absolute sovereignty paradoxically creates feral subjugation, restrains and even stops the human possible movement of access to and steady permanence in the political space of humanity itself. The impossibility of absolute sovereignty is revealed both in and outside politics. It pertains to the field of fiction—associable and thus comprehensible in an infantile context—but certainly not in that of politics properly so-called. The impossibility of the pursuit and obtainment of absolute sovereignty is thus political poverty for at least two reasons: (i) it implies omnipotence conceivable (albeit always aporetic) only in total isolation and therefore outside politics; (ii) the nature of man is subject to that law of nature that makes it political and also determines that unstoppable drive towards permanence within politics. Indeed, despite its possible opposing efforts, man cannot prevent the politics of which it is ontologically part, which requires an ontological evolution in awareness (very similar to a constant maturation with respect to stupidity). In this sense, the normative stake of ontological poverty of politics emerges because politics is not only not founded on, but neither does it allow to be associated with what Derrida defines as sovereign ipseity or an absolute affirmation of the self, phenomenologically independent from the other. Indeed, having so far established the ontological poverty of politics, the chapter takes a further step and discusses the guilty form of political poverty, namely theoretical poverty. Accordingly, human awareness of the irreconcilability between absolute sovereignty and politics does not result in a possible alternative. Indeed, man cannot escape the movement, the law, that pushes it towards and places it before politics without its humanity being endangered. Suppose a man wants to insist on a possible desire for absolute sovereignty. In that case, it must accept the idea of alienating itself from politics and jeopardising, at the same time, more or less temporarily, its natural human prerogatives. This evidence reverberates on the doctrine of potency on which Agamben and Derrida appear divided and the need to establish what constitutes pure political action. This consideration leads to the analysis of that second form of political poverty. Indeed, if, on the one hand, the ontological poverty of politics pertains to an inevitable law determining the human condition and the being/becoming political itself, there is, on the other hand, another form of poverty that politics deals with. The latter constitutes theoretical poverty or the possibility that politics is made to lose its relational property. Suppose the ontological poverty of politics describes an unavoidable fact about which politics cannot and must not worry because it simply defines and constitutes its nature. In that case, theoretical poverty is potentially much more problematic because it leads to a guilty impoverishment of politics. This impoverishment concerns issues such as the definition of a political relationship, how it happens and above all, why a relationship is essential and preferable to the alternative of a non-relation or isolation. Given the ontological premises, this chapter thus concludes by opening the door to the investigation for a purely political action concerning the normative justification of the political relationship and the difficulty it may entail in the face of the perhaps more attractive, though fictional, proposal for absolute sovereignty.