This essay offers an exegesis and critique of the moment of community formation in Agamben’s Homo Sacer Project. In The Sacrament of Language, Agamben searches for the site of a non-sovereign community founded upon the oath [horkos, sacramentum]: an ancient institution of language that produces and guarantees the connection between speech and the order of things by calling the god as a witness to the speaker’s fidelity. I argue that Agamben’s account ultimately falls short of subverting sovereignty, however, because the sacramentum derives its power, at a fundamental level, from the ‘monothetic’ structure of truth—what Agamben calls ‘the name of God’ [il nome di Dio]. I propose we may yet salvage the oath as a means of subverting sovereignty, however, if we reconsider it in the context of polytheism, where the names of the gods [i nomi degli dei] can be many, while remaining powerful. First, through a reading of Aeschylus’ Eumenides, I argue that the Greeks understood the oath to function even where truth and falsity were inherently undecidable. Second, I argue that if we separate the truth and power functions interwoven in the sacramentum, we find a second formula, the decisory oath, which can be taken in order to produce a community even in the absence of one sovereign truth. As a kind of magical speech, the decisory oath provides the limit conditions for the possibility of distinguishing true from false in the sacramentum, and thus founds it.

中文翻译：

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I Nomi Degli Dei：重新考虑阿甘本的誓言情结

本文对阿甘本的“圣人计划”中社区形成的时刻进行了解释和批判。在《语言的圣礼》中，阿甘本寻找了一个建立在誓言之上的非主权社区的地点 [horkos, sacramentum]：一个古老的语言机构，通过称神为产生并保证语言与事物秩序之间的联系说话者忠诚的见证。然而，我认为阿甘本的叙述最终没有颠覆主权，因为圣礼在基本层面上的力量来自真理的“单一”结构——阿甘本所谓的“上帝之名”[il nome di Dio] . 我建议我们仍然可以挽救誓言作为颠覆主权的手段，但是，如果我们在多神教的背景下重新考虑它，众神的名字 [i nomi degli dei] 可以有很多，同时又很强大。首先，通过阅读埃斯库罗斯 (Aeschylus) 的欧美尼德斯 (Eumenides)，我认为希腊人理解誓言即使在真假本质上无法确定的情况下也能发挥作用。其次，我认为，如果我们将圣礼中交织的真理和权力功能分开，我们会发现第二个公式，即决定性誓言，即使在没有一个主权真理的情况下，也可以采用它来建立一个社区。作为一种神奇的演讲，决定性誓言为圣礼中辨别真假的可能性提供了限制条件，从而奠定了它的基础。其次，我认为，如果我们将圣礼中交织的真理和权力功能分开，我们会发现第二个公式，即决定性誓言，即使在没有一个主权真理的情况下，也可以采用它来建立一个社区。作为一种神奇的演讲，决定性誓言为圣礼中辨别真假的可能性提供了限制条件，从而奠定了它的基础。其次，我认为，如果我们将圣礼中交织的真理和权力功能分开，我们会发现第二个公式，即决定性誓言，即使在没有一个主权真理的情况下，也可以采用它来建立一个社区。作为一种神奇的演讲，决定性誓言为圣礼中辨别真假的可能性提供了限制条件，从而奠定了它的基础。