One day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that humanity may eventually manipulate laws not to follow them, but to liberate society from their constraints.
Giorgio Agamben's quote reflects on the evolving relationship between humanity and the laws that govern it. He posits that in the future, people may interact with laws in a playful, almost carefree manner, not to enforce or adhere to them, but rather to dismantle them and move beyond their traditional meanings. This implies a transformation in societal norms and a shift towards a more liberated existence where laws are no longer the controlling force they once were.
In practice
In a debate about the evolving nature of justice, you might quote Agamben to emphasize the need for a re-evaluation of legal constraints.
Modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system
To believe that will has power over potentiality, that the passage to actuality is the result of a decision that puts an end to the ambiguity of potentiality (which is always potentiality to do and not to do) — this is the perpetual illusion of morality.
Remembrance restores possibility to the past, making what happened incomplete and completing what never was. Remembrance is neither what happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their becoming possible once again.
Any black person who clings to the misguided notion that white people represent the embodiment of all that is evil and black people all that is good remains wedded to the very logic of Western metaphysical dualism that is the heart of racist binary thinking. Such thinking is not liberatory. Like the racist educational ideology it mirrors and imitates, it invites a closing of the mind.
The concept of substitution lies at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.
The man who in view of gain thinks of righteousness; who in the view of danger is prepared to give up his life; and who does not forget an old agreement however far back it extends - such a man may be reckoned a complete man.
We live always under the weight of the old and odious customs... of our barbarous ancestors.
I was born in 1948, so I'm a '60s kid, and in the '60s everyone talked all the time, endlessly, about socialism versus capitalism, about political choices, ideology, Marxism, revolution, 'the system' and so on.
Sometimes thinking back on things is a mistake arising out of pride, but I guess you live inside a moment for years, move with it and feel it grow, and it sends out roots until it touches everything in sight.
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