The Signature of All Things

The Signature of All Things is Giorgio Agamben's sustained reflection on method. To reflect on method implies for Agamben an archeological vigilance: a persistent form of thinking whose path is to expose, examine, and elaborate that which remains obscure, unthematized, even unsaid, in an author's thought. To be archeologically vigilant, then, is to return to, even invent, a method attuned to a "world supported by a thick plot of resemblances and sympathies, analogies and correspondences."

The range of authors and of topics Agamben collects in this slim but dense volume exemplifies this search to create a science of signatures that exceeds either a semiology or hermeneutics vainly attempting to determine the pure and unmarked signs that signify univocally, neutrally, and eternally.