The alt isn’t passive analysis but active resistance of neoliberal structures.

While human beings do not unfold like a programmed mechanism, their subjectivities, as Agamben recognizes, are nevertheless shaped by social, political, and economic apparatuses (Prozorov, 2014, p.24). This is where the concept of inoperativity comes into play. For Agamben, “inoperativity” means to deactivate the functioning of the apparatuses, which does not mean that these apparatuses do not continue to operate or do not continue to have effects (pp.31-34). Put another way, inoperativity vis-à-vis the subject means that she is not captive to the grammar of the apparatuses, even if they continue to have their effects. Bartleby, for instance, rendered inoperative the capitalistic apparatuses by choosing not to actualize his potentiality (impotentiality), though the end result was tragic. I want to stress that inoperativity is, for Agamben (2004), not passive (p.134). That is, inoperativity or “preferring not” does not “affirm inertia, inactivity or apraxia…but [is] a form of praxis that is devoid of any telos or task, does not realize any essence and does not correspond to any nature” (p.33). Inoperativity, then, is any action of impotentiality that does not actualize what is expected by society’s apparatuses. Bartleby’s “I would prefer not” is one example. Martin Luther King’s (and others’) nonviolent protests is another illustration of rendering inoperative the violence of racist apparatuses. In other words, King’s nonviolent actions were acts of impotentiality in that he was not allowing racist apparatuses to determine his subjectivity; that is, to actualize or act on his fear and hatred. Other recent examples of the impotentiality of inoperativity, with regard to climate change, are eco-villages, where people prefer not to operate out of the apparatuses of neoliberal capitalism. While Agamben does not use the term “resistance,” it is possible to interpret inoperativity as a form of resistance that preserves, in the case of Bartleby, his potentiality by way of living out his impotentiality. Bartleby, in preferring not to, resists his employer and capitalist apparatuses. This said, Agamben’s philosophical discussion does not include addressing how people come to actualize potentiality or impotentiality, which leads me to turn to a developmental perspective that offers a way of thinking about the emergence of resistance as inoperativity.