Non esistono saperi non agonici = There is no knowledge without agonism

Abstract

There is no knowledge without agony. In 1986 Formenti wrote Prometheus and Hermes, in which the sunset of the Titan – as the icon of the emancipation of the nineteenth-twentieth century’s working class – has been put in relation with the crisis of the Fordist industry and the workers’ achievements. The rise of Hermes has been differently associated with the development of new communication technologies and their positive effects. Afterwards, Formenti reshaped such hopes. In this note, the author rethinks about this metaphor and the relationship between Prometheus and Hermes. He argues that the figure of Hermes as a messenger of the new world presented by the French philosopher, Michel Serres, is opposite to his idea. Serres has no intention of giving conflicting meanings to Hermes. According to Formenti, the choice of putting communication (but not production and industrialism) at the heart of his philosophical thinking is the result of an ethical concept tending to exclude the conflict from the horizon of knowledge.