Michel Tournier, Giorgio Agamben and A Golden Droplet

Abstract

Drawing upon a photograph that is “written” within Michel Tournier's novel The Golden Droplet and the idea of “special being” as presented in a chapter of Giorgio Agamben's Profanations, this text looks at how a particular photographic image plays between the two meaning of the term species: that which captures through classification and which is an implacable apparatus (dispositif) for the production of and principle of identity; and that which is pure visibility, communicability or “image” and is linked to specious, which means giving itself to be seen or, in other words, “beautiful”.