Giorgio AgambenThinkers

An Apparatus is a formation that at a given historical moment has as its major function the response to an urgency. It has a dominant strategic function.

An Apparatus is an articulation of technologies that are aimed at first specifying targets and then managing them. Its elements are resolutely heterogeneous (including discourses, institutions, architectural arrangements, philosophic, moral, and philanthropic propositions).

An Apparatus is anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure.

An Apparatus is essentially strategic in nature, which means that they constitute a rational and concrete intervention in the relations of forces, either so as to develop them in a particular direction, or to block them.

An Apparatus is, in a juridical sense, the part of a judgment that contains the decision separate from the opinion.

An Apparatus is, in a military sense, the set of means arranged in confor mity with a plan.

An Apparatus is, in a technological sense, 'the way in which the parts ofa machine or of a mechanism and. By extension. The mechanism itself are arranged.

An Apparatus is strategic in nature: It is a manipulation of relations of forces and an intervention in the relations of force, done so as to develop them in a particular direction.

An Apparatus is strategic in that it is a formation which has as its major function the response to an urgency.

An Apparatus pervades and disseminates its power in every field of life. The more it does so the more government will find itself effaced with an elusive element which seems to escape its grasp the more it docilely submits to it.

Apparatus is to be understood in a juridical, a technical, and a military sense. It is juridical in that it is that moment of 'decision'. It is technical in that it is the way in which the parts of a machine or mechanism are arranged. And it is military in that it is the set of means arranged in confor mity with a plan.