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RECENSIONI

Giorgio Agamben, Che cos’è reale? La scomparsa di E ore Majorana,
Neri Pozza, Vicenza 2016, 78 pp., 12 euro. (Giorgio Agamben, What
is real? The disappearance of E ore Majorana)

«Do not take me for an Ibsenian girl, because the case is different» (p.
8. The page numbers refer to the Italian edition, all translations are
mine). With these words, the Italian physicist, E ore Majorana, de-
scribes his situation and his decision to withdraw from academic life
before disappearing once and for all. Agamben’s book a empts to un-
ravel Majorana’s case, investigating what it is that makes it so «differ-
ent» and still meaningful, beyond the mere curiosity regarding Majo-
rana’s fate. As Agamben reminds us, Majorana disappeared leaving
behind contradictory farewell notes and elements that, rather than
pointing towards a resolution of his case, led to hypothesize and imag-
ine various scenarios (suicide, escape to Argentina or Germany, or re-
treat to a monastery). The lack of correspondence to reality of the dif-
ferent possible scenarios is, according to Agamben, key to the under-
standing of the nature of Majorana’s case. As he claims, «the disap-
pearance of Majorana is as certain as improbable (in the literal mean-
ing of the word: it cannot in any way be proved and verified on the
factual level)». (p. 10). Agamben suggests that Majorana skilfully
staged his case, where each scenario is probable but none can be con-
firmed by reality itself, in order to interrogate the science of possible
cases -probability theory- and its relation to reality. «Deciding, that
evening of March 1938, to disappear and to cover up any detectable
track of his disappearance, he asked science a question that is still wait-
ing an answer that cannot be demanded and which is, nonetheless, in-
evitable: what is real?» (p. 53)
To support his conclusion, Agamben reads a posthumously pub-
lished article (republished at the end of Agamben’s book) where Ma-
jorana reflects upon the nature of the laws of physics, and upon their
aim and their analogy with the laws of social sciences. Agamben’s
analysis points out possible tensions intrinsic to the nature of contem-
porary scientific debate, which radically changed when quantum
physics introduced probability among its laws. By providing the read-
er with the tools to understand the nature of this new conception of
science, this book paves the way to questioning it, testing its relation