In the Antechamber of Power: Sovereign Divisibility from Schiller to Schmitt
In this article, I offer an architectonic of what Carl Schmitt calls the “antechamber of power from Friedrich Schiller, through Franz Kafka, to Walter Benjamin. To summarize my argument, I contend that the “antechamber of power” may always have been a supplementary space within the conceptual imagin...
Main Author: | |
---|---|
Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group
2023
|
In: |
Political theology
Year: 2023, Volume: 24, Issue: 1, Pages: 98-114 |
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Schmitt, Carl 1888-1985
/ Schiller, Friedrich 1759-1805, Don Carlos
/ Kafka, Franz 1883-1924
/ Benjamin, Walter 1892-1940
/ Space
/ Rule
/ Power
|
RelBib Classification: | TJ Modern history TK Recent history ZC Politics in general |
Further subjects: | B
Sovereignty
B benjamin B Antechamber B kafka B schiller B schmitt B Dante |
Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
Summary: | In this article, I offer an architectonic of what Carl Schmitt calls the “antechamber of power from Friedrich Schiller, through Franz Kafka, to Walter Benjamin. To summarize my argument, I contend that the “antechamber of power” may always have been a supplementary space within the conceptual imaginary of sovereignty, but Schiller, Kafka, Benjamin, and Schmitt re-imagine it as the privileged space of an originary partage, sharing or division of power. If Jean Bodin defines sovereign power as “indivisible,” I instead trace the self-division of sovereignty into what Jacques Derrida famously calls “plus d’un” places of power. In a series of readings of philosophical, historical, and literary representations of the antechamber, I show how the allegedly private chamber of power occupied by the sovereign alone constitutively divides or itself into a series of new political antechambers occupied by a new class of political bodies: Schiller’s counsellor, Kafka’s bureaucrat, Benjamin’s clerk. |
---|---|
ISSN: | 1743-1719 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Political theology
|
Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/1462317X.2022.2105279 |