Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 76/2014, p. 477-502 doi: 10.2143/TVF.76.3.0000000 © 2014 by Tijdschrift voor Filosofie. All rights reserved. LANGUAGE AND ANTHROPOGENESIS AGAMBEN’S PROFANITY by Tyler T ritten (Gonzaga University) Have we forgotten the numinous side of language — its magical and creative power — because our theories of language are dominated by nominalism or does nominalism dominate our linguistic theories because language has ceased to cast its enchanted spell upon us? Martin Heidegger, for one, siding with the latter option, laments, But the emptiness of the word ‘Being,’ the complete withering of its naming force, is not just a particular case of the general abuse of language — instead, the destroyed relation to Being as such is the real ground for our whole mis- relation to language. 1 Now, Giorgio Agamben, 2 in The Sacrament of Language. An Archaeol- ogy of the Oath, suggests that language, at least in the originary Tyler Tritten (1982) currently teaches philosophy at Gonzaga University and has recently pub- lished or forthcoming articles on contemporary continental philosophy in a number of journals. Cf. ‘Twilight of the Gods. Nancy, Schelling and Heo-Anthropomorphism’, Pli. He Warwick Jour- nal of Philosophy 25/2014 (forthcoming); and ‘After Contingency. Toward the Principle of Suicient Reason as Post Factum’, Symposium. Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 19/2015, 1 (forthcoming). 1 M. Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics. Trans. by G. Fried, with R. Polt, New Haven, Yale UP, 2000, p. 54. 2 Giorgio Agamben’s popularity has steadily risen in the Western philosophical world, but par- ticularly in America, since the publication in English of State of Exception just four years after 9/11 (2005). A recent example of this ascent can be seen in the fact that a special edition of Epoché 16/2011, n. 1 is dedicated to his philosophy. Among some of his most well-known works are: Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998);He Open. Man and Animal (2004); He Coming Com- munity (1990), Remnants of Auschwitz. He Witness and the Archive (1999) and He Man Without Content (1999). His list, however, still constitutes less than half of his monographs. 97520_TSVrFilo_2014-3_02_Tritten.indd 477 25/08/14 07:39