ABSTRACT
The Man Without Content (1999a[1970]) is Agamben’s first book, and although it is presented as a critique of the aesthetic, it contains several emerging elements that would become more explicit in his later works, including his reflections on praxis and the archaeological method. The main point Agamben is making here is the birth of aesthetic as the ‘science of art’ that alienated the work of art from its milieu, and its essence: that is, “the ‘dwelling’ of man on earth” (Salzani, 2013a: 13). His goal is to understand how and why art’s “illuminating face has turned away from us” (de la Durantaye, 2009: 26). For Agamben,
nothing is more urgent – if we really want to engage the problem of art in our time – then a destruction [distruzione] of aesthetics would, by clearing away what is usually taken for granted, allow us to bring into question the very meaning of aesthetics as the science of the work of art.
