Giorgio Agamben's The Time That Remains, Mini-Review
I like to write small reviews - recapitulations, really - of some of the books I've read. Here's one for Agamben's The Time that Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans: It’s hard to get to the end of The Time That Remains without feeling that one has been tricked in some way. The avowed goal is straightforward enough: to “restore (Saint) Paul’s letters to the status of the fundamental messianic text for the Western tradition”. The method, even more so: to read and comment on the first ten words(!) of the first verse(!) of the Letter to the Romans as the means of such a restoration. One would think this would entail a simple exercise in exegesis, especially since the book's format is set up so as to go through the verse almost word by word - chapter two is on "calling" ( Kletos ), three on "separated" ( Aphorismenos ) and so on. Ten words in all, over six chapters. Easy, right? Not in the slightest! As it turns out, Agamben's commenta...