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THE END OF THINKINGby Giorgio Agamben

It happens much as when, walking through the woods we are suddenly struck by the unheard variety of animal voices: trills, whistles^and gurglings; knells as of wood or metal splinters; chirps whirrsand whispers; springing imm ediately from him, each mmah^ownproper voice. In the end, the cuckoo's double note mocks our silenceand reveals the untenability of our being, unique, voiceless ^stjheboundless chorus of animal voices. Only then do we attempt to speak,to think.In our tongue, the word thinking bears originally th e M /anguish, of burning anxiety, as can still be found m ttejWvexpression "stare in pensiero," to be thoughtful, torvJheLaUnverb pendere, from which the word is derived m the ' " Jgnages, means "to be suspended.'' St. Augustine employs it ,n dnsseJe in order to characterize the ^ r ' ^ / ^ l n w l u s n e n d e ainherent in research ushers from the seeker *'om*Zh?nVe[pendet quodammodol doesn't rest in the end it seeks but when theseeker and what is sought find each other m unity.W hat is it that is suspended, what "hangs" ininking?M>^in language, so lely because language is andis notourvoice. Ifierespending, an unresolved question in language, and thai' ~ ^W^e i s o r i s n o t o a r v o i c e m e . a ^a donicey an d chirping that of a cricket. That iswny, v. r f e d .we can't do without thinking, w ithout keeping the words suspenaea.Thinking is the pending of the voice in language.(Obviously the cricket cannot think while chirping)W hen in the evening we walk through the X t u s h e S t Hne Zhear the rustling of invisible animals am idst the b ^ ? e s / p u s h e s orpath, knowing not whether they are lizards orPrcupmes*russnakes. The same h appens when w e think: what^"^.Su" we hearof the words we are traveling, but * y " A s ' " D ; S o m e t h i n goccasional moving by the edges, a fleeing animal or sosudden ly aroused by the noise of our footsteps.The fleeing animal, w e've been told, t h e / ^ ^ ^ a t d a n athe words, i s oar voice. We think - we hold A f ^ ^ Z t e l y weourselves hanging in language - we thinkJecau ^ ^ ^hope to find the voice there, m language. Unee,wjattguage isvoice wrote itself into language. The quest of the voice mm gcalled thinking.DIFFERENTIA 1 Autumn 1986

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DIFFERENTIA 58

That language surprise and ever an ticipate the voice; that the pending of the voice in language have no end: this is the problem mphilosophy. (How each one resolves this slant is called ethics.)But the voice, the human voice is not: there is no such thing called ourvoice that we can follow in the traces of language, enabling us togather-so as to remember it-the moment it vanishes into names, themom ent it inscribes itself in letters. W e speak with the voice we don'thave, the voice that was never written (Antigone, 454). And languageis always like "dead letter."Thinking: we can think only if language is not our voice, only if wefathom the bottom ofourvoicelessness. But in truth, there'sno bottom.Such an abyss is what we call the world.Logic shows that language is not my voice. It says moreover that thevoice, though it has been, is no longer, nor can it ever be. Languagetakes place in the non-place of the voice. W hich means that, concerning the voice, thinking has nothing to say. This we may call its piety.So then the fleeing, the pend ing of the voice in language must com e toan end. W e can finally stop holding language, and the voice, in asuspended state. If the voice has never been, if th inking is the thinkingof the voice, then it has nothing to think about A thought which isfulfilled, in other words, has no thoughts left to think.Of the Latin verb that, for centuries, indicated thinking, cogitare,scarcely a trace remains in our language, in the word tracotanza,haughtiness, arrogance. In the XIV Century, coto, cuitanza meant:THINKING. Tracotanza stems, by way of the Provencal oltracuidansa,from the Latin *ultracogitare: to exceed, to so beyond the limit ofthinking, overthinking, dis-thinking.What has been said can once again be said.But what has been thoughtcannot ever be said again. One takes leave of a though t word for ever.?lk trough the woods; suddenly, we hear a whirring of wings or7 * r a? j-\hen-pheasant flies up and we can barely see i^appear amidst the boughs, aporcupine delves deeper into the thickZrnL^,larC^d haves creak Qnd tumble under the slidingbhanima^ "* ^ encount slanguage. The way you arespeaking now, this is what we call ethics.[English version by Peter Carravetta]

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