Agamben, Experimentum Linguæ and the Problem of Infancy. Categories and Paradoxes of the Concept of “Pure Language”

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Document Type : Research Paper

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French Language and Literature Department, Faculty of Humanities, Bu Ali Sina University, Hamadan, IRAN

10.22084/rjhll.2025.30766.2368

Abstract

“What is an experience of language? How can one have an experience not of things, but of language itself? And within the realm of language, what experience can descend not upon the meaning of this or that proposition, but upon the pure existence of language, upon the mere fact of speaking? [...] These very questions have been the sole driving force behind my thoughts and the foundation of all my writings – both published and unpublished”. This is what Giorgio Agamben writes in 1989 in the preface to Infancy and History. The author’s reflections on the pure existence of language revolve around the idea of “pure language”, whose manifestations he examines on the one hand in the infant’s encounter with language and on the other in the philosophies of Kant, Heidegger, Benjamin, and others. Although Agamben perceives a striking similarity between the linguistic experiences of the philosopher and the ...

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