Partei ohne Partei

Abstract‘Whatever’ as the ethical ground for the potentiality of a ‘party without party’ (Partei ohne Partei). Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the scrivener, says ‘I would prefer not to’ three times. This famous speech act constitutes the urtext ‘what if/ever potentiality’ of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s ethics for the contemporary philosopher (as) scrivener; the one who like the party without party (senza il partito) member, may engage in ‘an experience of the possible as such’. Does this privileging of potentiality in the political process coincide with the renunciation of the creative will to power in Guy Debord’s famous line from his film Critique de la separation (1961),Taking his cues from Aristotle’s Metaphysics ‘thought thinking itself, which is a kind of mean between thinking nothing and thinking something, between potentiality and actuality’, Agamben affirms the anaphorised potential of Bartleby’s speech act: ‘I would prefer not to prefer not to’. What if conventional party politics, partis...