“Human beings,” Agamben remarks, “see shadows, they can experience darkness, they have the potential not to see, the possibility of privation” (181). But why darkness? Agamben plays with the motif of darkness because it evokes the idea of a potentiality that is outside the domain of actuality-as-light: when we are in the dark, external, phenomenal objects cannot take (actual) form, everything therefore remains in the domain of the potential. The link between darkness and potentiality is crucial for Agamben’s argument because it points to the fact that if potentiality existed merely for the purpose of actualizing light, then we would never be able to experience darkness as such, we could not have potentiality in-itself, only potentiality for the sake of actuality. Without this potentiality in-itself, without this ability to see darkness, sensation in general would be impossible, because sensation in-itself, sensation without an external object, is potential.