The Strategy of the Reverse: Relationships of Weakness and Force in Eduardo Lourenço’s Thought

Abstract

Eduardo Lourenço’s theoretical gestures are discreet, but radical. If we consider some of the most obsessive critical constructions in his work, such as the concept of community - which he expands to Europe and also, by an active analogy, to Portugal or other problematic subjects - a reflection emerges on the de-empowerment of the concept of force, precursor to a broad international discussion. Eduardo Lourenço’s thinking in this sense, in the case of the community considered, is part of a vast debate on the deconstruction of power that is very close to the thinking of contemporary philosophers involved in an indirect dialogue, in particular Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida. This develops, albeit indirectly, Saint Paul’s idea that power is realized in weakness, which returns particularly in Walter Benajmin’s thesis n.2 of “On the concept of history”. The idea of a constituent im-power as a force that disrupts structures thus leads to an approximation of the community imperfection, shaped by Eduardo Lourenço weak and sublime, that deconstitutes the most rigid configurations of power and finds its exemplary case study in the complexity of Portugal.