A01=Eric L. Santner
academic
analysis
Author_Eric L. Santner
carl schmitt
Category=QD
Category=QRA
close reading
death
democracy
democratic
dying
early modern
end of life
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
era
ernst kantorowicz
europe
european
freud
historical
history
hugo von hofmannsthal
interdisciplinary
kafka
king
kingship
monarch
monarchy
philosophical
philosophy
political
politics
rainer maria rilke
research
royalty
ruler
ruling
scholarly
social studies
society
sovereign
sovereignty
time period
Product details
- ISBN 9780226735351
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 15 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 15 May 2011
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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'The king is dead. Long live the king'! In early modern Europe, the king's body was literally sovereign - and the right to rule was immediately transferrable to the next monarch in line upon the king's death. In "The Royal Remains", Eric L. Santner argues that this carnal dimension of sovereignty hasn't disappeared from politics. Instead, it has migrated to a new location - the life of the people - where something royal continues to linger in the way we obsessively track and measure the vicissitudes of our flesh. Santner demonstrates the ways in which democratic societies have continued many of the rituals and practices associated with kingship in displaced, distorted, and, usually, unrecognizable forms. He proposes that those strange mental activities Freud first lumped under the category of the unconscious - which often manifest themselves in peculiar physical ways - are really the uncanny second life of these royal remains, now animated in the body politic of modern neurotic subjects.
Pairing Freud with Kafka, Carl Schmitt with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Ernst Kantorowicz with Rainer Maria Rilke, Santner generates brilliant readings of multiple texts and traditions of thought en route to reconsidering the sovereign imaginary. Ultimately, "The Royal Remains" locates much of modernity-from biopolitical controversies to modernist literary experiments - in this transition from subjecthood to secular citizenship. This major new work will make a bold and original contribution to discussions of politics, psychoanalysis, and modern art and literature.
Eric L. Santner is the Philip and Ida Romberg Professor in Modern Germanic Studies, professor of Germanic studies, and a member of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, most recently of On Creaturely Life: Rilke, Benjamin, Sebald, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
