Dall’impolitico alle istituzioni. Transiti del negativo nel pensiero di Roberto Esposito

In Roberto Esposito’s thought, philosophy, politics and the humanities have always questioned and co-implicated each other. In the substantial constancy of this co-implication, however, certain decisive steps must be recognised. One of these is the ‘transit’ that leads Esposito from the first reflections on the question of the impolitic to the project of an instituent thought. A crucial role in this transit is played by the concept of ‘negation’. In the horizon of the impolitic, negation, as it were, ‘pushed out’ of political philosophy, which was considered incapable of accounting for conflict and thus for negation itself. The discourse on the institution, on the other hand, seeks to embrace the negative by considering its full potential. Esposito’s challenge, first and foremost to himself, was to overcome the saturation of the horizon of immanence. He did this by taking on the crisis of immanence itself, which was not by chance the starting point of the project of the Almanac of Philosophy and Politics that he directed. Exposito’s proposal is that of an affirmative reinterpretation of the concept of negation, which does not, however, translate into an affirmation without residue. Thus, the project is not to deny the negative, but to try to ‘transcend’ it by interpreting it differently, as difference, determination, opposition and, finally, institution. I will try to account for these ‘transits in the negative’ in my contribution.