What is the contemporary

"What Is the Contemporary?" is an essay by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, included in the collection What Is an Apparatus? and Other Essays, translated by David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella and published by Stanford University Press in 2009. The essay opens with the question of what it means to be contemporary, and develops the idea that genuine contemporariness is not simple belonging to one's own time but a disjointed relationship to it, a capacity to perceive and hold onto the darkness of the present rather than only its illuminated surface. Agamben draws on figures such as Nietzsche and Barthes to argue that being untimely, out of step with one's era, is what allows a thinker to truly grasp it. The essay is part of a collection that also includes Agamben's better-known piece on the concept of the apparatus, developed from Foucault, and a reflection on philosophy and friendship. Credits: Agamben, G. (2009). What is the contemporary. En G. Agamben, What is an Apparatus: and other essays (S. P. David Kishik, Trad., págs. 39-54). Standford: Standford University Press.