You are about to defend your thesis, what is it about and what does the title (inoperosità) mean?
My thesis distils the lessons that we, as organising beings, may derive from the work of Giorgio Agamben – arguably the most notable philosopher alive. Over the years, Agamben has become a fixture in critical discussions on biopolitics – understood as the rapacious inclusion of natural life in the mechanisms and calculations of power – across the humanities and the social sciences. Still, within management and organisation studies, an earnest, in-depth appreciation of this philosopher’s work has not yet occurred. My thesis seeks to change this. Specifically, relying on a case study analysis of unemployment-related management literature, I endeavour to show how Agamben’s work points to nothing less than a possible exit from biopolitics.
To highlight this, I have chosen ‘inoperosità’ as the title of my work. ‘Inoperosità’ is Italian, meaning ‘inoperativity’ or ‘worklessness’. It is a term Agamben uses to emphasise a possible dismantling of biopolitics. Concretely, it refers to the ex-position and exposition of language as it turns both on neutralising (ex-posing) biopolitical identities/positionings and, at the same time, on revealing (exposing) language in its suchness, untethered from the mechanisms and calculations of power.
In three words, how would you describe your years as a PhD student at LUSEM?
Friendship, study, revelation: Friendship, as a proximity that resists both representation (‘signifier’) and conceptualisation (‘signified’), is the mainspring of study, with study being a non-relational, i.e. non-appropriating, contact between physis and nomos—between the living being and the speaking being, between potentiality and actuality. Seen this way, friendship and study cannot but result in revelation: the pure, presuppositionless exteriority of thought—a way out.
What are you up to now?
Now, I am preparing for the viva, hoping to indwell friendship, study and revelation in the years that come.