ABSTRACT
In the book The Open, Giorgio Agamben shows how the theoretical potential of Jakob von Uexküll is currently still relevant. The Italian philosopher draws on a well-known example of the Estonian biologist. Like any other form of life, the tick has its own environment. However, this apparently simple and vaguely repulsive animal shows a very unique ability: it can wait for its food even eighteen years, without moving or dying. According to Uexküll, the parasite would be in a sleeplike state similar to the one we experience every night. It is based on this apparently secondary remark that Agamben proposes a surprising move. The suspended state of the dormant tick is taken as the ridge on which the distinction, proposed by Heidegger, between the human “world” and the animal “environment” can find an articulation. The sleeping tick experiences the same condition humans find in the passion that we usually call “boredom.” This passion would then allow us to investigate a decisive crux known as “biopolitics": the relationship between animality and humanity.
