Suchness and the Threshold between Possession and Violence

Suchness is an ontological category that occurs often in the philosophical discourse of Giorgio Agamben, and that connects with Walter Benjamins articulation of violence. The essay demonstrates that Agambens suchness is philosophically contiguous to Benjamins notion of purity, and that suchness and purity are mobilized by the two thinkers to provide an alternative ontology predicated on forms of life that run contrary to established norms of competition, antagonism, possession and privatization. It argues that in Agambens later elaboration, the life embraced by the Franciscan friars, who elected to live with things rather than in pursuit of their possession, represents a clear example of such ontology. But contrary to the Franciscan experience, life should not seek to be justified legally but lived instead according to the irreparability of life as such or pure life.