TY - JOUR

T1 - In the Antechamber of Power

T2 - Sovereign Divisibility from Schiller to Schmitt

AU - Bradley, A.

PY - 2023/2/28

Y1 - 2023/2/28

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Antechamber

KW - schiller

KW - kafka

KW - benjamin

KW - schmitt

KW - Dante

KW - Sovereignty

U2 - 10.1080/1462317X.2022.2105279

DO - 10.1080/1462317X.2022.2105279

M3 - Journal article

VL - 24

SP - 98

EP - 114

JO - Political Theology

JF - Political Theology

SN - 1462-317X

IS - 1

ER -