0050 Let me shift to middle and late modern times.

Here is the interscope for the citizen in a modern and postmodern political economy.

Again, I substituted the dyad in actuality for the citizen^Marat (on the situation level)_2b and the citizen^regular (on the content level)_2a.

Consistent with Santner’s argument, I also substituted the word “busy-ness” for the word “flesh”.

0051 A comparison of the past two diagrams show a development that accounts for the upper frame of David’s The Death of Marat.

The late medieval perspective level for the dual body of the king is veiled, but Christian.

The modern perspective level for citizen^Marat is completely occluded.  Maybe, it is Reason Personified.  Maybe, it is the Supreme Being.  Maybe, Personified Wisdom is the Supreme Being.

Santner senses an abstract material rising from Marat’s corpse to the upper half of the painting.

This abstract material associates to Marx’s concept of surplus value.

Or, is it labor value?

Instead of angels and saints welcoming the deceased king into the heavenly realm, surplus (labor) value floats like incense from Marat’s dead body.  It vaporizes into the blankness above.

0052 Is surplus value distilled from the body of labor?

In the mid 1800s, Marx portrays surplus value as the medium of the social bond in capitalist societies.

0053 A little over a century later, Jacques Derrida critiques Marx through the lens of a literary work involving a ghost.

What does the ghost in Shakespeare’s Hamlet have to do with Marx’s specter of communism?

Both concern a surplus of immanence sublimated from social bonds.  One is staged in an ill-fated Danish kingdom.  The other appears in an exploitative capitalist… er, mercantilist society.

The King’s Two Bodies goes with Hamlet.  Everybody’s busy-ness goes with global enterprise.

0054 But, what is the distribution of value?  Has the distribution of value changed?

Santner says (more or less), “Yes, the spectral materiality, the value realized by the king’s glorious body informing the king’s mortal flesh, becomes dispersed in modern societies, since the citizen assumes the mantle of sovereignty.”

Citizens bear political weight.

0055 However, David’s painting, The Death of Marat, tells otherwise.

The spectral value realized by discipline informs the citizen^Marat_2b.  Citizen^Marat_2b sits in a tub between the commonsense reason of the content-level citizen^regular_2a and the perspective-level anti-Christian opportunistic blank facade of the Cult of Reason (or is it the Supreme Being?)_2c.

0056 If Santner’s work expresses a directed (almost free) stream of associations, then my last comment would be regarded as an interpretation.  In psychoanalysis, interpretations are guesses.  The above statement constitutes my guess.

I now proceed to preface three.

0057 Enter the ubiquity of global capitalism.

The citizen of the new world order never sleeps.  Production and consumption colonize all human rhythms.  God’s creation has been revoked.  Civilized humans have de-created the natural world.

The global economy bubbles with emergencies and exceptions.  The sowing and harvesting of surplus value runs around the clock.  From entertainment to resentment, the life of the citizen is always preoccupied.

0058 To Santner, this manic state is reflected in Franz Kafka’s masterpiece: The Castle.  The citizen^regular is interpellated to do… something.  But, there is a problem with the interpellation.  Or maybe, it is with citizen^regular.

0059 The hero of the Kafka’s story asks, “What am I called to do?  What am I called to be?”

He expects something reasonable.  He gets The Castle.

0060 Kafka wrote between 1900 and 1924 AD.  He follows Marx by about 50 years.  He precedes Michel Foucault by about 50 years.

0061 Santner reviews commentaries on Kafka’s tale.  The hero’s question calls to mind the voices interpellating the global citizen.  Nothing ever makes sense.

So the global citizen wonders, “Is this crazy?  Or is this the way it is supposed to be?”

0062 The answer comes from citizen^Marat.  The name of Marat is first glorious.  Later, it is disgusting.  This Jacobin comes in like a lion, then goes out like a snake.

0063 Citizen^Marat sees other citizens through the lens of an organizational objective.

0064 The slogan of citizen^Marat is “a friend of the people”.  He wants liberty (from church and aristocracy).  He demands equality.  But most of all, he desires fraternity, where everyone thinks of Marat as the Most Brotherly Citizen.  Or, maybe I should say, “Big Brother.”

0065 The sane global citizen^regular responds, “Okay, I don’t want to make waves.  I will join the cause.  But, you will have to pay me a salary.”

0066 The unhinged global citizen^Marat responds, “These are the words I long to hear.”

Why?

Citizen^Marat can print the money.

0067 Thus, there are two types of citizens in the middle and late modern world, citizen^regular and citizen^Marat.

0068 Similarly, there were two social levels in the medieval and early modern era.

The king is the shepherd.  The folk are the sheep.

The shepherd watches his sheep 24/7.

The shepherd also fleeces his sheep.

0069 Santner looks to Michel Foucault for elaboration.

Instead, I offer a thought experiment.

0070 Imagine wool as labor value.  Wool is the labor value of the sheep simply being what they are.

The sheep go under the heading “flesh”.  Sheep flesh produces something that matters: wool.

Sheep grow wonderful fur coats in order to protect themselves from the cold.

The shepherd takes that protection as the price for another guarantee, protection from wolves.

0071 The shepherd has policing powers.  The police serve to protect both the flesh and the something that matters.

Are wolves to be loathed because they kill sheep (the flock’s point of view) or because they lower the amount of wool harvested in the fleecing (the shepherd’s point of view)?

0072 To the sheep, flesh is what matters.  Wool can be sold for protection.  They can always grow a new coat.  They cannot undo being eaten.  

The labor value of the wool is warmth.  The surplus labor value is the shepherd’s protection.

For the shepherd, the wool is labor value.  It will contribute to his salary when the sheep are sheared.  The decision (of how much wool or other compensation he will get) depends on decisions by his employer.  Sovereign actions, laws and decrees back the employer’s decisions.

0073 So far, none of this sounds too crazy.

The employer, bound within the web of sovereign actions, laws and decrees, compensates the shepherd.  She then contracts designers, spinners, and weavers.  Her company constructs wool coats.  These wool coats can be regarded as a sum of the labor contributions of each of the specialties involved.

0074 Now, the scenario becomes dicey.

The wool coats sell for whatever the market will bear.

Humans are picky sheep.  They will not be content with merely keeping warm.  Their wool coats must be fashionable.  They must be comfortable.  They must be splendid.  Humans have (an impressionable) sense of value about the wool coats that they cannot grow themselves.

Indeed, some prefer more than wool.  They prefer fur coats.

Perhaps, sheep have something to be thankful for.

0075 The manufacturers of wool coats confront a ruthless world.  Fashion is fickle.  If I make an unfashionable coat, it may languish on the sales rack.  It may be sold in a liquidation sale.  If I make a fashionable coat, then everything comes together and I make a killing.

Oops.  I should not have used that word around the flock.  Perhaps, the word “congelation” will do.

0076 Then, my accountants weigh in, along with investors and other stakeholders.  If all goes well, the selling price is higher than all the costs that went into making a coat.  If not, my organization operates at a loss.

0077 Thus, the scenario ends with a decision on an important question, “Do we (my organization) continue to make wool coats?”

0078 This scenario, in part, describes the business of the economy.  It also describes the organization tier, which is an interscope with three levels.

0079 The organization tier demands that all participants act sensibly.  This is the world of citizen^regular (the person who thinks that things should make sense).  Only fashion, in this scenario, does not make sense.  However, it makes sense in that it accounts for (or explains) price.

0080 The organization tier is abuzz.  Commodities are produced at the corporate level.  Commodities are exchanged for money in the market exchange level.  The consequences are considered in the assessment level.

0081 Assessors must take many factors into consideration.  Factors range from packaging to shepherd satisfaction.

One necessary, but not sufficient, consideration is the difference between price and costs.  The entire organization tier succeeds when price times units sold is greater than the total costs of the corporation.

0082 Marx labels this difference “surplus labor value”, implying that corporate profits belong to the worker, not the investor.

If they belong to the worker, the social system is called communism.

If they belong to the owner or investor, the social system is called capitalism.

0083 Are these definitions rhetorical?

If so, then the rhetoric suggests the existence of a specialized class of people (belonging to the society tier) devoted to putting the organization tier into context.

0084 To some, surplus labor value should go to the worker.  Communism is righteous.  Capitalism is unrighteous.

Here, an institution (a society-tier party) contextualizes organizations that do not belong to it.  This explains why Marxist movements pursue and concentrate sovereign power.

0085 To others, surplus labor value should go to the owner or investor.

This is not a moral decision.  This is simply part of an assessment.

If a corporation borrows money in order to achieve an organizational objective (that is, in order to do what is right), then the money must be paid back with interest.  The owners keep whatever else the investment earned.

In other words, righteousness belongs to the institution contextualizing its own organization.

This explains why some businesses try to avoid or get around sovereign power.  The sovereign can re-direct its surplus value.  This also explains why other businesses seek a cozy accommodation with sovereign power.  The sovereign can restrict markets and guarantee surplus value.

0086 But that is not all.  What about the money that a corporation borrows?

Money is magical.  It unnaturally increases itself in an environment of risk.

To me, this sounds like mercantilism.

Mercantilism is animist.  Money is alive.  Money reproduces itself.

The crowns (or money) acquired by investment demonstrate God’s favor.

If the crown (or power) can get its paws on this manifestation of God’s favor, then the mortal body of the king may increase in all things.

0087 In mercantilism, the crown (power) encourages the flow of crowns (money).

The institutions of mercantilism proclaim, “Let the sovereign encourage a thousand crowns (money) to be lent.  The magical process will enrich the crown (power) with crowns (money).”

0088 Is there a category-based model for mercantilism?

Here is how the society, organization and individual in community tiers fit together into a system.  Each tier is an interscope, having three levels.  Each tier composes a vertical column.  Each label describes a level.

0089 The logic of the organization tier_B is the logic of functionality and business.

There is something crass about it all.  Money circulates throughout every level of this complex tier.  Yet, money is not the end-point.  Money is always a means to a reasonable end.

0090 So who decides that money should be an end in itself?

An institution_aC does.  The content level_a of the society tier_C puts the organization tier_B into perspective.

What better way to do that than a promise that borrowed money will be returned with interest?

With that promise, money becomes more important than whatever money can buy.

In early modern mercantilism, the acquisition of money (in the form of gold) became an organizational objective demanding the attention of the sovereign.

0091 Today, why does the global economy never sleep?

Is the world economy possessed by an infrasovereign religion similar to mercantilism?

Is a sleepless king gathering a horde of gold?

Or, is everyone just trying to get the most from their investments?

0092 I find it hard to tell.

Everyone wants to avoid a bad assessment.  Everyone wants make a good investment.

Opportunities can occur at any time and in any place on the globe.

Each application seeking investment money is configured to be reasonable.  The documentation serves to clarify.  Or does it conceal?  Look into any deal and see.

The details are overwhelming.  So, an expectation arises.  The government will mitigate the risk through guarantees.

Here is an organizational objective worthy of being called “an infrasovereign religion”.

0093 The question then becomes: How to guarantee success?

In the book 24/7, Jonathan Crary describes a world of global commerce, interconnectedness, production, consumption, indebtedness, liquidity and profit-orientation.  Each regular character in the global economy is motivated by something that makes sense.  Yet, the whole ecology is beyond anyone’s comprehension.

0094 Incomprehension poses a problem.  In order to operate within the organization tier, one must behave sensibly.  However, the economic ecology is so complicated, the entire system does not seem sensible.

0095 So, someone offers an explanation that appears comprehensible.

Then, government agents incorporate that simplifying explanation into an institutional organizational objective.  These actors are the citizens who would be Marat.  They fashion themselves Friends of the People.

Incomprehensible details_2a are simplified by citizen^Marat into sovereign decrees_2b in a normal context of regulatory discipline_3b.

But, the simplification never works.  The resulting regulated system ends up as unpredictable and furious as the original unregulated circumstances.  It is as if the society tier takes on the character of the organization tier.

0096 The business of citizen^Marat allows me to appreciate Santner’s association of busy-ness to Kafka’s imagery of a manic world where everyone is busy but nothing makes sense.  

Santner recalls the main character in The Castle.

Someone requested that the poor fellow serve as a land surveyor.  K. tries to figure out that call.  He wants a proper summons.  He expects a written document, just as anyone would expect in the organization tier.  But, he never gets what he wants.  He just goes from one problematic situation to another.

0097 Here is an example of the simplification of complexity in the modern political economy:

The Marxist concept of surplus labor value simplifies a very complicated assessment process in the organization tier, producing a demand (an object^org) that profits go to the worker.

The Marxist concept simplifies the organization tier through a moral (not economic) value judgment.  This produces an object^org requiring sovereign power to implement.

0098 Implementation by sovereign power leads to a corresponding adaptation within the organization tier.  Assessors react by reducing profits in order to maintain organizational viability.  Mechanisms for reduction might include replacing perfectly good factory machines.  Profits dry up through increased expenditures.

Who would have predicted that?

0099 But that is not all.

The society tier ends up divided between institutions with objects^org requiring sovereign power and those that do not.

The ones demanding sovereign power are drawn upwards, into the sovereign level, long before their policies fail.

Indeed, a failure of implementation indicates that an infrasovereign institution has been incorporated into the sovereign religion.

Failures cannot be analyzed within the language of the incorporated religion.  Therefore, consequences of the failed policies will always be attributed to others.  Or, failure will lead to a demand for reform through additional regulations.

0100 The premises of each object^org may never be repudiated.

Why?

The object^org embodies a simplification, making the incomprehensible organization tier comprehensible.

The purpose of the simplification is to create a cognitive space in which the organization tier makes sense.

The busy-body works within this cognitive space, even when the busy-body’s activities make the originating problem worse.

The worsening consequences of a simplification must be discussed in terms of the simplification.  Otherwise, the topic becomes incomprehensible.

We must use the terms that led to the bad consequences in order to cope with a problem that cannot be codified within established parameters.

0101 The reader may laugh.  Of course, this makes no sense.

No regular citizen gets to the point where this logic seems sensible.

Only citizens^Marat make the leap of faith.

Say that again?

0102 A simplification that contextualizes the organization tier becomes institutionalized.  Then, it is implemented by sovereign power.

The simplification may diagnose what is really happening in the organization tier.  But, it cannot account for the entire system.  The diagnosis is never comprehensive.  It only addresses one cause and one symptom.

0103 So, the policy that the simplification evokes may have no effect (or have weird effects) on the phenomena that is being simplified.

This means that a phenomenon in the organization tier sustains a behavior in the society tier that both simplifies and intervenes, but misses the mark, because the simplification neglects the fact that the phenomenon is relational and therefore, difficult to reduce to cause and effect.

Indeed, the organization tier may adapt to interventions based on simplifications in unexpected ways.

Ah, that sounds more like Kafka.

0104 Indeed, the normal contexts discussed so far, the early modern sublime body of the king and the modern discipline, are Kafkaesque in precisely the way that Santner describes.  They push against human embodiment.  They distort active soul [animates] flesh.

0105 Santner talks about sleep.

The 24/7 of global mercantilism denies sleep.  The characters in Kafka’s stories fall asleep at the wrong time.  For example, K. falls asleep during a lecture on vigilance.

0106 For modern times, these may be linked to three actualities within the 3-tier system.

0107 Note how the organization tier comes into play.

The rational soul (animates) flesh-body is the person as an institution.  Santner sees a dispersion of sovereign authority to the citizen.  I see a transformation of king into citizen^Marat and subject into the citizen^regular.

Both citizen^Marat and citizen^regular exhibit an actuality congruent with the content level of the society tier.  Each displays a variation of active soul [animates] body-flesh.  For citizen^Marat, the actuality is biopower value [animates] busy-ness.

0108 The institutions of citizen^Marat put the organization tier into context through simplification and objectification. They belong to the content-level, along with citizen^regular.

However, they may displace citizen^regular.  The size and longevity of collective infrasovereign institutions provide an authority not available to the regular citizen.

0109 For example, broadcast media are very effective as sounding boards.  Censorship in social media favor established voices… er… “establishment values”.

0110 Finally, the implementation of certain organizational objectives by the sovereign generates long-lived state-supported bureaucratic institutions that may be described as sovereign religions.

0111 In contrast, in late medieval and early modern times, the society tier did not diagnose problems in the organization tier.  Instead, the organization tier was already fixed by traditions honed through conflicts within the crucible of Christendom.  Contending parties could appeal to the church as an arbitrator.

In those days, only the king never slept.

0112 In his Tanner lectures in 1979, Michel Foucault argued that the vigilance of the king was compared to a shepherd tending to his flock.  The original Christian image did not focus on the fleecing of the sheep.  But, hey, the king has to keep warm, especially during the Little Ice Age.  So, the transcendent image became a little more mundane.

0113 The funny thing is… the king did not keep warm by clothes of wool.  The king wore animal furs.  Animals had to die, providing an image of adornment and strength to the king’s mortal body.  Thus, the glorious body of the kingexpressed a dimension that might not have been admired by the angels and saints.

0114 Santner also mentions Gil Anidjar’s recent book on the historical semantics of the word “blood”.

The flesh of the sheep and the blood of wild animals address the same subject matter in the political theology of the king.  The king is shepherd, protecting and fleecing the sheep.  The king wears the furs of wild animals, who lost their skins through bloody combat.

0115 All this was incorporated into how the subject made sense of his world.  Revealed Christian knowledge was transubstantiated into secret knowledge about the qualities of the king.

0116 By the end of the preface, Santner sets the stage for his two lectures.

Here, I want to review and tie some strings together.

0117 To start, look at the partially complete interscopes of early modern political theology (the dual body of the king) and modern political economy (the nature of citizen^Marat).

The first looks like this:

Here, the actualities of both nested forms are written as dyads.  These actualities are king_2b and subject_2a.

The second looks like this:

Again, the actualities of both nested forms are written as dyads.  These actualities are citizen^Marat and citizen^regular.

0118 Santner’s thesis goes like this:

The late medieval and early modern glory of the sublime body of the king has been dispersed, in middle and late modernism, to all citizens in the modern political economy.

0119 The category-based nested forms (that associate to terms in Santner’s discussion) suggest that the logic may be framed as a historic transition from one partial interscope to another.

In other words, there is an historic transition in primordial images.

0120 Next, the general form of the society tier looks like this:

0121 The previous two models resonate with the general interscope of the society tier, as developed in the foundational work How to Define the Word “Religion”.

For example, the early modern sublime body of the king_3b and the modern normal context of discipline_3b resonate with sovereign office_3b.

0122 What does this imply?

The story begins with Christianity as a suprasovereign religion.  

But, this beginning does not appear in Santner’s inquiry.

0123 In the historical sequence of Santner’s two interscopes, the original perspective level of Christianity as a suprasovereign religion is increasingly occluded.

In late medieval and early modern political theology, the king became pastor as well as sovereign.  This point is explicit in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651 AD).  The famous Peace of Westphalia (1648 AD) declared that the sovereign determines which Christian factions may congregate within the realm.

In middle and late modern political economy, citizen^Marat substitutes for the mortal body of the king.  Christianity is completely occluded.  The immanence of the organization tier is made transcendent through ideological critique.

0124 Finally, Eric Santner’s style may be described as directed association, similar to the free association that characterizes Freud’s analytic dyad.  In my reading of these associations, both the society tier and the 3-tier system come into play.

0125 The 3-tier system looks like this:

Each label designates a nested form.

0126 So far, the elements that stand out associate with what communists call “capitalism” and what I call “mercantilism”.

0127 Here are the nested forms that stand out:

0128 Now, let me examine the lectures.

0129 What is the subject matter of the term “political economy”?

The subject matter demands a special sort of materialism.  A surplus of matter, similar to (if not derived from) the sublime body of the king, is entangled with the pursuit of the national wealth (mercantilism).  This surplus transforms the rational pursuit of ends into a drive.

0130 Santner calls this matter “improper”.  This surplus is “dirty”. 

Dirt is matter in the wrong place.

From a Freudian point of view, it is almost like excrement.  Producing it is a secret pleasure.  Otherwise, no one wants to deal with it.  It needs to be managed.

Oh, and by the way, the English translators turned Freud’s word “it” into “id”.

0131 What about the qualifying word “subject”?

Santner recalls Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction, entitled The Specters of Marx.

0132 Marx conjures the specter of communism.  Derrida associates this apparition to the spookiness of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

The liminal element, value (informs) price, exhibits a spectral materiality similar to the ghost of the murdered king.  Value makes actual the potential within a commodity.  This is very similar to the way that kingly values informed the mortal body of the late medieval and early modern king.

0133 Value accounts for the price of a commodity in the modern world.

If the price is greater than corporate and regulatory costs, there is surplus value and the organization continues to do what it is doing.  I call this “congelation”.  If the price is less than corporate and regulatory costs, there is no surplus value and the organization suffers.  I call this “liquidation”.

0134 Value accounts for the royal surplus contained in the mortal body of the king.

If the mortal body exhibits the qualities of kingliness, as defined by the expectations engendered in the subjects by the current political theology, then the king grows in stature.  If the mortal body of the king fails, through various shortcomings, then the king shrinks in stature.

When the king dies, the question arises: What do we do with the sublime body of the king?

The answer is: Let’s build an effigy and place it on the throne until the next king takes over.

0135 Weirdly, the Bible also tells of value as a surplus of immanence.  Biblical writers called it “idolatry”.

Late medieval Gnostics fashioned their theories of the sublime body of the king from what was available to them.  So, they idolized all sorts of expressions of royalty, including the lineage of the royal family.

Did the kings of Judah have sublime bodies?

Read the Bible to see.

0136 Postmodern philosopher Slavoj Zizek says, “We must strike at something other than what’s there.”

This is the job of a messiah, who is capable of altering the potential that underlies value.

0137 How does idolatry work?

Why is the king so special?

Why does a commodity have a particular price?

0138 The answer is found in the word “fetish”.

A fetish connects an invisible value to a real thing.

0139 Fetish empowers Jacques Lacan’s petit objet a.

Petit objet a is a little piece of the Real that cannot be hidden by reality.  Ghosts are great examples.  So are wedding rings.

The mortal body of the king, then, would be a petit objet a, a little piece of the Real that is connected to the values of kingliness.

If I toured kingdoms in the Late Middle Ages, asking people about the qualities of the king, I would get a list of adjectives that may, or may not, describe the mortal body of, say, England’s Charles I.

Charles I was a nice guy, the very opposite of a king.  He would have made a great subject.

0140 Similarly, the price of a commodity is a petit objet a, a little piece of the Real connected to the capricious values of say… fashion.

Fashion values inform price.  It pays to be in demand.

But what is demand?  It arises from a potential supplied by the presence of the commodity itself, plus the potential of a buyer.

Remember that the category of firstness follows the logic of inclusion and allows contradictions.

0141 The Baroque scholastics got into this mess with the question: What is mind-dependent being?

Mind-dependent being accounts for our connection to mind-independent being.

Similarly, spectral value accounts for both the mortal body of the king and the price of commodities.

0142 So, what does this have to do with the word “fetish”?

A fetish is the contiguity of value with a petit objet a.

0143 An objective value connects with the subjective matter of a petit objet a.

The contiguity allows signification.

A petit objet a stands for an objective value.

0144 Fetish appears in the situation levels of the society tier, the organization tier and, by extension, the individual in community tier.

Here is how I see fetish appearing in the 3-tier system.

A fetish informs.

Now, let me go from thirdness to firstness.

0145 Third, citizen^Marat occupies the situation level in the society tier.  Citizen^Marat labels a fetish about sovereign actions, laws and decrees.  The fetish idolizes an organizational objective within a sovereign religion.  Citizen^Marat’s actions are the petit object a to the spectral value of biopower.

Second, the commodity fetish occupies the situation level of the organization tier.  The price is petit objet a to the spectral value of say… fashion.

First, the situation level in the iic tier is me in the situation, trying to figure it out.  Theoretically, my reckonings and phantasms may be described as a fetish, where spectral values account for my views and attitudes.

I may be either sane (citizen^regular) or insane (citizen^Marat).  If sane, I participate in the organization tier.  If insane, I strive to occupy a position in the society tier.

0146 Thus, a feedback loop becomes apparent.

Is this the subject matter of the political economy?

0147 Shall I continue with the lecture?

The productivity of spectral material confounds everyone.

0148 Benjamin Franklin captured the confounding when he compared the productivity of a sow to a king.  Murder a sow and lose future generations of pigs.  Murder a crown (power) and end up losing future crowns (money).

The confounding ties together natural (reproduction, manufacture) and unnatural (interest, usury) productivities.

It also ties together citizen^regular, the citizen with a rational mind, and citizen^Marat, the citizen with a discipline.

Is one like a sow and the other like a king?

0149 That is a trick question.

One point is clear.  Citizen^Marat is far more likely to end up with his portrait on coins than citizen^regular.  Similarly, a portrait of the king decorated many late medieval and early modern coins.

0150 What does this confounding imply?

Did the surplus immanence of late medieval kingship transform into what Marx calls “surplus value”?

Similarly, did the rational spirit attributed to citizen^regular become laden with the glorification of… everyday life?  Crowns (money)?  How about the organizational objectives of citizen^Marat?

0151 Finally, does the unnatural fertility of money keep both citizen^Marat and citizen^regular afloat?

0152 Aristotle regards the fertility of crowns^money as unnatural.  Earning money to maintain the household (in Greek, oikos) is natural.  Getting rich through usury is not.  The latter has no proper measure.

0153 Freud says the same thing about human sexuality.  There is an excess of pleasure over the teleological function.  Imagine that.

0154 Money acts as a medium for transactions.  Instead of me trading my two goats for a cow, I sell my goats for 2 crowns and use that to buy a cow.

0155 One problem is this: What if you would trade me a cow for two goats directly, but you would not sell your cow for 2 crowns?

What happens if the value of money enters into the determination of the value of a commodity?

0156 I tried to tell this to my goats, but they would not pay attention.

I said, “You two are far more valuable than one cow.  If the cow dies, there is nothing.  If one of you dies, there is another still around.”

0157 Actually, one did reply.  She said, “Your friend is a miser.”

0158 Misers think that their commodities are worth more money than they actually are worth.  They also think that their crowns^money are some type of um… protection.

The miser exhibits a desire that cannot be quenched, since no amount of coin can forestall every emergency.  In fact, the more the miser hoards, the more the potential threats multiply, increasing the need for more protection.

The miser does not joust at windmills.  The miser tries to insure against the potential that windmills will come jousting.

0159 Misers are so crazy that Aristotle longed for the days when everyone bartered.

0160 But, crowns^money offer more than the assurance of safety.  Crowns^money facilitate other, more theatrical, enjoyments.

Santner chooses Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice for exposition.

This play displays the joys of a miser in service to his jealousy.

Money can purchase the flesh of a sow.  Why can’t money buy human flesh?  Money is normative.  Flesh is somatic.  One figures into the political economy of the wealth of nations.  The other enters from the political theology of sovereignty.

0161 Oh, that reminds me of Benjamin Franklin’s aphorism (point 148).

Before I go further, allow me to associate various items of the previous discussion to a diagram of the 3-tier system.

0162 Franklin’s clever comparison captures two cycles that are very similar, except for one thing.  The terminus for the productivity of the sow is the citizen^regular.  The terminus for the productivity of crowns is citizen^Marat.  

0163 What does this imply?

The productivity of the sow stands for the work of a corporation.  As long as its commodity yields surplus value, the organization flourishes.  It continues to generate.  Every household knows this.  Most people are industrious.

Meanwhile, the productivity of money supplements an assessment of the corporation.  Invested money may enhance or drain surplus value from an organization.

0164 But, what if the state guaranteed that the money I invested would be paid back, with interest?

Here is the trick.  Franklin’s comments are about mercantilism.  The mercantilist regards money as something that reproduces itself.

0165 The unnatural productivity of crowns^money requires enforcement by the crown^power. 

Usury may be allowed or disallowed by the state.

Without usury, the king reigns by governing.

With usury, the king reigns without governing.  Crowns^money do the governing for the throne.  The sovereign acts to enforce already established contracts.  What a job!

0166 Santner points out that The Merchant of Venice was staged during the historical transition from the political theology of the dual body of the king to the mercantilist political economy.

0167 The Merchant of Venice turns on the question of collateral and the expectation that the sovereign enforces voluntary contracts.

0168 The two main characters are merchants.

(Already, the audience senses trouble, because merchants are associated with the irrational goal of getting wealthy.)

The two merchants are Shylock, an old Jew, who has loads of money, and Antonio, a young citizen of Venice, who is full of spunk.

0169 Antonio’s friend needs money for his pursuit of the wealthy and clever Portia.

Antonio is tapped out.  But, he thinks that his pal, Bassanio, can make the catch.  He wants to help.  So, he asks Shylock for a loan.

Antonio has no collateral.  Shylock suggests an unusual collateral for the loan.  It will be a pound of Antonio’s flesh, cut from wherever Shylock determines.  Antonio, who obviously has no clue as to what he is doing, agrees.

0170 Why this crazy deal?

Santner frames the deal in terms of the normative and the somatic.  The money is normative.  Antonio is somatic.  The joint between the two is an excess of the normative and somatic.  Freud associates this excess to the libido, which is all about flesh.

0171 Here is how the play unfolds within the 3-tier system model for spectral materialism.

0172 Benjamin Franklin’s mercantilist aphorism still applies, even though it was uttered over 150 years after Shakespeare.

Antonio is the sow.  Shylock is the king.  The term “normative” goes with the society tier.  The term “somatic” goes with the organization tier.  The term “flesh” goes with the IiC tier.

But the term “flesh” is more than matter that can be weighed.

It refers to Antonio’s libido, his joy of living, which, as mentioned before, is full of spunk, typical of Venice at the time.  Shylock wants a pound of it.  A pound is a unit of crown^money.

0173 Santner explores why citizen^Antonio resembles a sow.

He is full of himself.  But, he is pregnant with stupid plans that avoid industry.  He gambles that his friend can bed and wed a woman who is more intelligent than he and his pal put together.  This woman is so clever that she can dress as a man, walk into a courtroom and demonstrate that Shylock’s deal violates the Christian morals of Venice.

Ironies abound.

Portia fits the ideal of the citizen^regular.  She industriously and cleverly executes a daring, but rational, course of action that appeals to the sanity of her… I mean, his fellow citizens.  At the same time, as a woman, she cannot be a regular citizen.

Meanwhile, Antonio, typical of many not-so-bright souls of Venice, demonstrates an irrational spirit that risks his own life for some impetuous emotional attachment.

Yes, fellow citizens^regular, we are not the rational creatures that the coming Enlightenment will claim us to be.

Shakespeare played it first.

0174 Santner dances around this.

The early modern dual body of the king explicitly accepted the suprasovereign presence of Christ, honoring it by pathetic imitation.  The modern formulation of a mercantilist political economy occludes the suprasovereign presence of Christ.  It extols this lack of perspective with a doxology of crowns.

0175 In fact, as Portia argued, a mercantilist political economy productively functions only within the perspective of Christ.  Christians are not humiliated (as Antonio was) by industriousness.  Christians will not lend money to fools (as Shylock did).

Yes, Portia speaks rightly.  A rational spirit defines the Christian citizen.  The Christian citizen exhibits a sane soul.  Contracts are valid only when both parties are not crazy.

0176 The intellectual leaders of Shakespeare’s time made a simplification and propounded it as reality.

This simplification assumed that a citizen^regular possessed a sane soul and exhibited the spirit of rationality.  It ignored the Christian perspective inspiring both.

0177 The counselors of the early modern kings were experts in the maintenance of the king’s sublime body… I mean, the discipline of holding office.

They discovered that the king could rule without governing by allowing usury.  Crown^money surcharged surplus value.  Gold became valuable as a measure of national wealth.  Mercantilism was born.

0178 Before leaving this section, I want to generalize the model of spectral materialism applied to The Merchant of Venice.

I substitute the words “Marat” and “regular” for “Shylock” and “Antonio”.  However, I retain the key concept that Shylock wants a pound of Antonio’s joissance, that is, his “flesh”.

I suggest that citizen^Marat, like Shylock, desires a pound of citizen^regular’s libido.

In the organization tier, this actualizes into two values: adaptability (for citizen^regular) and control (for citizen^Marat).

0179 To me, this diagram expresses features of Santner’s multilayered claims.

0180 In the late medieval and the early modern period, the mortal body (or flesh) of the king magically established the flourishing and suffering of the entire kingdom.  His flesh bore the weight of kingliness, the expectations of the subjects.

If the king did not (literally) live up to the subject’s expectations, then the kingdom was vulnerable to sedition.  The theory of the dual body of the king directed expectations in a particular manner, investing the mortal body of the king with a sublime body.  This sublime body was answerable to God.

0181 Even with God removed from the picture, as Thomas Hobbes did in Leviathan, the subject’s expectations were profoundly simple.  Protect us.  Do not interfere with our contracts.  Contracts among subjects were regulated by tradition, particularly Christian aphorisms like the golden rule, which (according to Hobbes) goes like this: Do not do unto others what you would not want done to yourself.

0182 Surely, Shylock did not get the memo.  Neither did Marat, who planned to do to his political opponents what Charlotte Corday did to him.

0183 Indeed, in late medieval and early modern nations, the king was in a pressure cooker, watched from above by the very religion that his political theology expropriated, and watched from below by subjects who believed that Jesus was king.

0184 The immaterial surplus produced in this apparatus coincided with the flourishing and suffering of the entire kingdom.

The economic reason is straightforward.  When the king was in check, protecting the subjects and freely allowing contracts, the subjects were able to cautiously move in the direction of greater industry and specialization.  When the king was not in check, the subjects only did what they were told to do.  They resisted innovation and resented the king.

0185 Santner delineates a trail from the political theology of the early moderns to the political economy of the modern and postmodern period.  The sublime body of the king becomes dispersed among the citizens.

0186 However, to me, this portends two types of citizen.

Citizen^regular inherits the expectations of kingliness.  This is expressed as personal sovereignty.

Citizen^Marat inherits the sublime character that (supposedly) is subject to divine judgment.

0187 But, there is a catch.

With the perspective level completely occluded, the source that judges discipline is no longer apparent.  Citizen^Maratbecomes god-like to the extent that his organizational objectives are substantiated by sovereign power.

0188 In Santner’s evocative terminology, the regular citizen’s libido (like Antonio’s) becomes the flesh that is weighed and appropriated by the self-anointed citizen^Marat, acting in the domain of discipline and in the prospect of sowing and harvesting biopower.

The immaterial surplus produced in this apparatus fuels a repetition disorder called “regulation”.  Regulation applies to the organization tier.

0189 The citizen^regular adapts to this domination as short-sightedly as a sow finds comfort in her pen.

Regular humans have gone from sheep to pigs.  Kings have gone from shepherds to farm-administrators fatting up the hogs for… harvest.

0190 What do the busy bodies intend to harvest?

I suspect that it is the joy of being a pig.

0191 The lecture continues.

Santner returns to Derrida’s treatment of Marx.

Marx’ Communist Manifesto, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, begins with a specter.  From the very start, Europe has been haunted by an excess (a ghost).

This excess does not belong to the oikos (the household).  It belongs to commodities.  Or, rather, it belongs to the management of commodities.

0192 A German jurist (of ill repute) wrote an essay on Hamlet in 1956.  Carl Schmitt envisioned the play as intimation, prefiguring the clash between late medieval and early modern political theology of kingship and the emergence of England as a mercantile economy.

This is why I supplant the word “capitalism” with “mercantilism”.

0193 To Schmitt, England embraced the sea.  The sea provided the roads for its empire.  The sea set the stage for the Industrial Revolution.  The British mercantile economy flourished from the difference in productivity between local factories and distant agricultural colonies.

Shakespeare’s plays were first presented around 1600, when mercantilism was taking hold in England.

0194 Santner agrees with Schmitt.  The economic change transformed the production, circulation and accumulation of the immaterial stuff that once defined the glorious body of the king.  Now, the king’s glorious flesh characterizes social relations within modern commercial societies.

0195 How do I fit this into category-based nested forms?

Following Foucault, I associate the immaterial aspect that once defined the glorious body of the king with the term “discipline”.  Discipline is normative.  It becomes the normal context of a nested form.

I associate the aspect called “stuff” with the potential engendered by the normal context of the king’s glorious body.  This stuff weighs the term “flesh”.  It corresponds to Foucault’s term “biopower”.

This immaterial normal context and this material possibility bracket a somatic actuality, the king’s mortal body.

0196 In mercantilist England, the value-laden mortal body of the king changed to social relations within commercial society.  These relations are somatic, body-like, and organizational.

0197 To me, this sounds like the Preface, implying that lecture 1.3 starts a new iteration within a Semitic textual structure.

Semitic texts ask the reader to recognize a possibility.  Greek texts attempt to isolate the only (or most convincing) possibility by eliminating all other possibilities.

0198 Psychoanalysis follows the Semitic style.  The psychoanalyst is expected to recognize a possibility, rather than isolate an explanation.

Santner’s literary style of directed (almost free) association forces the reader to play the role of psychoanalyst.  The reader must interpret Santner’s stream of consciousness, which is intuitive, suggestive and difficult to lock onto.  Santner asks the reader (and psychoanalyst) to recognize a possibility.

0199 My diagrams are interpretations.  The following figure may be compared to earlier diagrams.

Here is a comparison between Santner’s generalizing intuition and his political theological and political economic models.

Remember that thirdness goes with normal context, secondness with actuality and firstness with possibility.

0200 The late medieval and early modern political theology of the king’s dual body and the middle and late modern political economy both share the structure of Santner’s general formula.

0201 They also both associate with the situation-level of the society tier.

Terms within each nested form resonate.  For example, the king’s sublime body₃ and discipline₃ matches sovereign office_3bC.

0202 Santner’s consciousness flows through these connections into a more evocative and indirect resonance.  His formula also applies to the 3-tier system, a nested form composed of three interscopes (or tiers).

0203 This is crucial.  Santner’s directed associations present a double vision.  One frame fits the society tier.  The other frame encompasses a model of institutions, organizations and individuals in community.

0204 To me, this portrays what Santner describes as the dispersion of the immaterial stuff of the one sublime king into the many bodies of the citizen. 

Both citizen^Marat and citizen^regular belong to the society tier.  Yet, the generalized structure of their nested formsextends into the domains of institutions, organizations and individuals.  

0205 This association between Santner’s general nested form and the 3-tier system also evokes Marx’s concepts of surplus value and commodity fetish.  Marx’s concepts apply to a circulation of immaterial stuff (in the realms of normal contexts and possibility) within and among the tiers.

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice illustrates.  A circulation of immaterial stuff encompasses the situation levels of all three tiers, plus the content-level of the society tier.

Here is the same association between Santner’s general formula and the 3-tier system.  The levels of the 3-tier system are explicit.

0206 Santner contrasts his general formula with the so-called “new materialisms” currently popular in academics.

He asks, “Which will it be, the circulation of immaterial stuff or the new materialism?”

0207 Santner examines Jean Bennett’s reading of Kafka’s famous story about Odradek.  Bennett envisions a vital materialism where Odradek is like… self-organizing matter.  Other scholars suggest the name refers to… od-radix and od-adresa… primal German and Slavic words for rootlessness and not-belonging.

In contrast, Santner finds, in Odradek, the figure of an un-economic man, a busy body who is not really necessary but cannot be disposed of.  Odradek is like a bureaucrat whose work is cut loose from purpose or legitimation.

To me, this character differs from citizen^Marat.

Citizen^Marat is a true believer.  Odradek holds the same political position as citizen^Marat, but pretends to belief.

0208 What difference, at this point, does it make?

After all, the citizens^regular are the ones uprooted and decimated by the busy bodies. 

These folk are typically the main characters of Kafta’s tales.

0209 Consider the example of dangerous work.

The foreman is a busy body.  He got the job because he is willing to snitch on the other workers.  The foreman is instinctively wary of any worker with talent or charisma.

Uh oh.  Enter the motivated worker.

Soon, a dangerous situation comes to pass.  The passive-aggressive foreman places the confident worker in danger because he is the only one who can get this job done.

0210 After the injury, the broken talent ends up meeting his insurance agent, Franz Kafka.

0211 Santner continues to explore The Merchant of Venice.

0212 What is the difference between Antonio and Shylock?

0213 Antonio is like the laborer who ends up injured because he is naive yet talented.  A laborer should never allow himself to be put into such a dangerous predicament.

Is his friend Bassanio worth the price?  Surely, he is.  Once married to Portia, Bassanio would be in hog heaven.  Antonio is along for the ride.

This is the game.  This is a gamble involving real risk.

0214 Shylock is like the foreman who puts the confident laborer into danger.  He is not taking a big risk. He really has no skin in the game.

0215 Is that enough?

Antonio is also a Christian.

Shylock is also a Jew.

0216 This contrast lit a fire beneath the butt of Karl Marx.

The unquenchable burning flatulence of Marx cannot be separated from the Western history of anti-Jewishness.

0217 Santner quotes David Nirenberg, who wrote a treatise on the subject, posing the question: If a society builds itself on Jewish foundations of commerce, contract, property and law, then can it consider itself Christian?

Is that the same question that Shakespeare addressed in The Merchant of Venice?

0218 Santner does not pause to contemplate answers.  After all, this is directed association.

0219 Santner jumps to this question: What kind of meta-work is required to enact the emergence of a mercantile society?

In other words, what pre-occupied Shylock?

0220 The answer is found in the transaction.

Shylock was full of discipline.  Antonio was not.  Antonio was full of love for Bassanio.

Shylock was jealous of Antonio’s charisma.  Shylock wanted a piece of Antonio’s biopower.

0221 Here is the kicker.

Shylock’s move transgressed even his Jewish foundations.  Shylock wanted more than what traditional Jewish commerce, contract, property and law permitted.  He wanted to usurp Antonio’s perverse charm, so characteristic of the flesh of Venice.

Shylock was miserable.  Everyone picked on him.  Everyone was happier than him.

Amorous love flowered all around Shylock.  Even his daughter fell for the buzz.

0222 Shylock wanted a pound of what made Antonio who he was.  Shylock did not care whether Antonio would bleed.

Where does Jewish tradition call for that?

0223 Shylock’s deal is crazy in the same way that Marat’s revolutionary zeal is crazy.  Citizen^Marat does not care whether blood is spilled.

Ironically, Thomas Hobbes, writing 50 years after Shakespeare, noted that the sovereign cannot order the subject to injure himself.  The third law of nature no longer applies once the king threatens the flesh of the subject.

0224 Antonio was not a very good Christian.

Shylock was not a very good Jew.

0225 To Santner, Shylock ends up representing the social disorder accompanying the emergence of a mercantile economy.  Blessed with discipline, Shylock aims to usurp Antionio’s biopower.

Needless to say, British mercantilism lived up to Shakespeare’s expectations.  One of the main commodities turned out to be African slaves.  Talk about usurping biopower.

0226 Happily, in Shakespeare’s play, Shylock fails and falls from his perch as citizen^Shylock.

He gets demoted to citizen^regular.

While Shylock sees this as a mortal blow, he actually has been redeemed.  Not only can he re-unite with his estranged daughter, but he can participate in the wondrous carnality that is Venice.

0227 The lecture continues.

What did the African slaves have that no one else did?

0228 They were outside the system.  They could not become citizens^regular.

0229 So there remains a threat, an extrapolation of The Merchant of Venice, not anticipated by even sweet Portia.  The threat is an inscription, a displacement within the flesh, connected to a political economic circumcision.

0230 With the American slaves from Africa, this inscription was as obvious as the color of their skin.

The inscription bore a message, “You cannot be a citizen^regular.”

The cut still rends the American fabric.

0231 But, that was not enough.

The American slave was also a commodity, a person emancipated (so to speak) from all traditional affiliations and packaged for those who value someone who will do the dirty work.

How did the theology of mercantilism justify this?

How could humans become the equivalent of machinery?

When did work become “dirty”?

0232 But then, didn’t the king also do a lot of dirty work, such as killing bandits, stopping marauders and addressing the constant bickering among the peasants (say nothing of those impious priests)?

No wonder he needed a glorious body to contextualize what his mortal body had to do to be kingly.

0233 Does the fetish of the person of the king (from late medieval and early modern political theology) translate into the fetish of the commodity (in modern political economy)?

0234 Has the site for the doxology of the sublime body of the king shifted to broadcast advertising?

Has liturgy turned into to pop songs about everyday life?

Songs extolling the joys of citizen^regular, in a strange way, exploit joissance for financial or political gain, substituting fantasies for affiliations and dreams for social bonds.

Do today’s American celebrities exemplify citizen^Marat?

Do they have discipline?

0235 According to Santner, Marx tried to figure out the secret of the commodity form.  He tried to see the sublime body of the citizen^regular who goes to work at a corporation and rarely gets paid enough to afford the products of his own factory.

0236 Every citizen^regular has a dream.

Is this dream the specter of capitalism?

Or is this dream another site for exploitation?

0237 Santner attempts to image a historic shift.

The sublime flesh of the king was a theory that situated the subject within the domain of kingship.  This can be seen in the actualities of the situation and content levels of the society tier, diagrammed as follows:

0238 This model, as The Merchant of Venice demonstrates, relies on the integrity of the suprasovereign religion.  The values that inform the theory of the dual body of the king are a mandate from heaven, weighing the king’s active soul.

0239 The shift to mercantilism transforms the king’s mortal body into an administrative body that would not be judged by the Christian object^relation.  This administrative body is self-anointed.  It grasps the sovereign authority to regulate (and therefore judge) actualities in the organization and individual in community (IIC) tiers.

The shift transforms the subject into a citizen sustained by a rational spirit and sane soul.

0240 The result may be diagrammed as follows:

0241 This is how I render Santner’s description of the dispersion of the sublime body of the king into the thingness of commodities.

0242 This model, as The Merchant of Venice demonstrates, runs afoul of what Christians call “original sin”.

Neither Antonio nor Shylock are sane.  If they were, they would not have cut their deal.

0243 Also, this model, as David’s painting The Death of Marat suggests, runs afoul of the fact that Marat (as the primordial image of all contemporary busy bodies) is both a messenger and recipient of a message: conform or die.

Marat is crazy without even realizing that he is nuts.  He feels invulnerable, even while encapsulated in his tub of mineral waters.

Why?

Marat embodies the Revolution.

0244 Citizens^Marat would learn to be more cautious.  They would disarm the population before um… striking at something other than what is there.

The goal is to usurp the regular citizen’s joissance, the pound of flesh that cannot be taken without spilling blood.

0245 However, take note.

This is my own psychoanalytic interpretation of Santner’s directed (almost free) associations.  As such, I rely on a vocabulary specific to Santner’s self-revelation.

Here is some of that terminology:

0246 Citizen^Marat designates those who thrive in the sovereign office of discipline.  Biopower has all the characteristics of order.  The active soul of citizen^Marat exhibits values potentiated by biopower.

The mortal body of citizen^Marat is busy.  Citizen^Marat is manic, quick to anger and always on the move.  Yet, once he starts talking, he puts any sane soul to sleep.

His rulebooks groan with details.

0247 Citizen^regular designates those who were once subjects, but now are supposed to be animated by a rational spirit.

0248 That is not all.

The citizen^regular will always run afoul of purportedly rational sovereign acts, laws and decrees.

0249 Why?

Citizen^Marat wants to regulate the activities of the organization tier.

0250 The regulations of the sovereign are grounded on simplifications.

Is that not the scientific method?

Reduce the problem to cause and effect.

But, that does not work for relational structures.

Reduction ends up representing only isolated features within a relational structure.

So, citizen^Marat, who is a well-indoctrinated expert, attempts to address problematic phenomena in the organization and iic tiers.

He does so through simplification.

The resulting regulations do not solve the problem.  

However, they advance the level of sovereign control addressing the issue.

0251 To me, Karl Marx was a purveyor of simplifications.

Santner’s directed associations show that Marxist terminology applies to the organization tier.  These terms label and moralize perceived distortions.  They fail to capture a complete picture of the organization tier.  Regulations based on Marxist dogma institutionalize and grow the target distortion.

0252 I suspect that Santner’s gambit applies to all the current social sciences.

These disciplines are structured to imitate the empirical sciences of the 1800s and early 1900s, where scientific reductionism required simplification.

For relational structures, simplification highlights some elements and occludes others.  Simplification necessarily distorts illumination.

0253 Ironically, the modern physical sciences have already abandoned knee-jerk reductionism.  Starting with quantum mechanics, scientific paradigms have slowly shifted. Very small and very large structures may be inherently relational, just like human society, organization and the individual in community.