ABSTRACT
In Remnants of Auschwitz Giorgio Agamben tries to define the condition of dead language. "Every language", he writes, "can be considered as a field traversed by two opposite tensions, one moving toward innovation and transformation and the other toward stability and preservation. In language the first movement corresponds to a zone of anomia, the second to the grammatical norm". In the writings of Agamben messianic motives, readings in the tradition of theological concepts are a conscious, deliberately staged theatrum philosophicum, a "play with" rather than "play within" the messianic tradition. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why every time Agamben is trying to illustrate his idea of the messianic time or messianic kingdom he refers to the notion of play. In Agamben's reflections playing gains a crucial status of something capable of neutralizing the structure of the ritual action on which the whole religious separation.
