The Royal Remains

The People's Two Bodies and the Endgames of Sovereignty

Eric L. Santner

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English

University of Chicago Press
15 May 2011

Philosophy; Religion: general

""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 the ""carnal"" dimension of the structures and dynamics of sovereignty hasn't disappeared from politics. Instead, it 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.

By: Eric L. Santner
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 23mm, Width: 15mm, Spine: 2mm
Weight: 425g
ISBN: 9780226735368
ISBN 10: 0226735362
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 15 May 2011
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

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.

Reviews for The Royal Remains: The People's Two Bodies and the Endgames of Sovereignty

Eric Santner's The Royal Remains stands out, not only as the most important book on political philosophy of the last decade, but as a classic at the level of Walter Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence' or Ernst Kantorowicz's The King's Two Bodies. It prolongs their analyses into today's world of micro-politics, raising the key question of what happens to the king's other sublime body in a democratic society where the people-collectively-are the new sovereign. My reaction to reading this book is of wonder and awe; it is as if a new Benjamin (with the added features of Freud and Lacan) is walking among us. -Slavoj Zizek