0448 At this point, I completed the task of exploring the meaning, presence and message underlying the word “Gnosticism”.

Part 4 concerns the neo-evangelical response.

The student should read chapters 11-17 of Burfeind’s text.

0449 The meaning underlying the word is a social construction that conjoins a cosmic and a personal origin story. The category-based nested form models social construction. The model matches the origin story related by Burfeind.

0450 The Gnostic origin myth is an ancient civilized fairy tale, just like the stories of Adam and Eve.  They point to the origin and development of our current Lebenswelt.

The Gnostic origin story is a fairy tale about something Real. The first singularity explains why our current Lebensweltis not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

The Gnostic origin myth is an expression of Original Sin.

0451 From one vantage point, the Gnostic origin story describes the pleroma as the eternal cycles of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in and Sophia and Yaltabaoth as the start of our current Lebenswelt.

From another vantage point, the fairy tale describes a pleroma within our current Lebenswelt.

The ages of each civilization appear as emanations of male and female pairs. The fairy tale describes our current age as Sophia emanating without a male cohort, becoming pregnant by her Self, then hiding the male child in a cloud. Unawares, Yaltabaoth creates the universe of this particular age, thereby generating the foundation for an ego that does not love its Self.

0452 The pleroma may be seen as a repetition of the drama of Sophia giving birth to her aborted Yaltabaoth.

Yaltabaoth, as lion, builds his world in a cloud.  Then, Yaltabaoth, as snake, exploits the egos that it created.  Finally, the age passes with Yaltabaoth’s dissolution.

0453 So the pair is both female and male as well as Self and ego.

The Monad contains the Zeitgeists past, the current Zeitgeist and the Zeitgeists to come.

0454 The presence underlying the word “Gnosticism” describes two types.

In type 1 Gnosticism, the evil and material Yaltabaoth is sovereign power.

In type 2 Gnosticism, the evil and material Yaltabaoth is market exchange.

One is escapist.

The other is interventionist.

0455 Gnosticism is opportunistic. It is a religion of politics, drawing believers to either escape or intervene.  Escape hastens social collapse.  Intervention produces totalitarian states.

0456 Finally, the message underlying the word “Gnosticism” views the person as a single actuality composed of two contradicting actualities, the ego and the Self.

0457 These actualities were first separated in the distorting field of immaterial-material. The contiguity was significant. The ego is responsible for the Self. The ego is free to act in the Name of the Self. 

0458 Then, the two actualities were placed into conflict with the introduction secret knowledge.  The person is a single actuality composed of two conflicting actualities, ego and Self.

0459 In Late Modernism, the person in internal conflict supports diverse industries of Self-development, including state-supported educational organizations.

Secret knowledge encourages and legitimates id^fantasy.

0460 In light of this definition of the word “Gnosticism”, the Neo-Evangelical approach may not seem that deranged.

0461 Burfeind has a point. The sacraments are key to defusing the foundational presumption behind the contradiction between the ego and the Self: The ego does not love the Self.

This contradiction should not occur in sacramental Christian religions. The sacraments are material and ritualistic (ego-driven), point to the immaterial (Self-experiencing) and encourage love (Spirit-enveloping). Grace inflows both ego and Self.  The ego grows in maturity. The Self grows in belonging.

The superego is the trellis. The ego is the vine. The Self is the grape, delicious and wholesome.

0462 Pietistic traditions do not have the sacraments available to them, so they must find different pathways to express the healing message that the ego should love the Self.

The Self will always be irresponsible.  The Self will always be a slave to “I like this” and “I don’t like that”.  The Self should never be truly free to act.  But, the Self is also who I am.

The pietistic tradition may say, “Love your Self.”

But, with that saying, comes an added message, “In order to love your Self, you must have an ego to be responsible for your Self. God calls you by Name. God expects your ego to act in the Name of your Self.”

0463 So where do I get this ego?

I read and listen to the word of God.  I learn to obey His commandments.

0464 If I fail to establish my ego in Christian truth, then I return to the beginning of the Gnostic origin myth.  My ego and my Self fall into conflict.

Gnosticism is a religion of the repetition disorder.

0025 Marat was in the busy-ness of cultivating biopower in the normal context of Jacobin discipline.  He confounded Reason and the Supreme Being.

Other citizens were in the business of keeping their heads attached to their bodies.  The way to do that was to keep busy.  No one wanted to get involved in the business of citizen Marat.

0026 Marat, the citizen, stands at the site of a surplus of immanence.

For this reason, I will use the term citizen^Marat to designate anyone whose actuality is supplemented by the normal context of discipline and the possibilities inherent in biopower.

Likewise, the term citizen^regular denotes the person subject to the sovereign.  Citizen^regular is the sane one who wants to keep out of trouble.

0027 Is the surplus immanence awarded to citizen^Marat the real subject matter of today’s political economy?  What about citizen^regular?

0028 Plus, how does the flesh enter into the picture?

Marx’s theory of labor concerns the flesh.  The flesh is a social substance materially abstracted from laboring bodies.  It applies to office work as well as factory work.  It does not depend on the mode of production.

0029 Does that make sense?

This flesh is material, yet spectral.  It is an object.  It is the subject matter of middle and late modern political economyas well as late medieval and early modern political theology.

The flesh becomes a subject of interest.  The flesh has value.

0030 To me, the flesh belongs to the realm of actuality.

0031 At the same time, value also belongs to the realm of actuality.

Since actuality belongs to secondness and secondness is dyadic, flesh and value may be contiguous.

For example, value may inform the flesh.  This may be written as value [informs] flesh, where inform is the contiguity between two elements.

Or, the flesh may embody value.  This may be written as value [embodied by] flesh, where being embodied is the contiguity between the two elements.

0032 Flesh is the actuality that I encounter.  Value is the actuality that accounts for ‘what I encounter’.  One is material.  One is ghost-like.

Value [informs] flesh occurs in a particular context and is powered by a specific potential. 

I am inclined to associate this dyad with the mortal body of the king (in political theology) and citizen^Marat (in political economy).

0033 Here is how that fits into the former diagram:

0034 Santner continues to examine David’s painting, The Death of Marat.

Marat trafficked in the potential of political rabble rousing.

The corpse in the tub had been busy.  Correspondence is in hand.  A letter of introduction appeals to Marat’s generosity.  Another paper, barely legible, contains the words de le patrie (for the country).  An assignat, paper money, is also in view.

0035 Do these clues point to something equivalent to the glorious body of a king?  

0036 Does this painting portray a transition from royal to popular sovereignty?

It seems so.  Here is a busy body, murdered in the conduct of power relations within the modern context of discipline.  His murder testifies to the actuality of value [informs] flesh.  The value that informed the body of Marat translates into correspondence, “[blank] of the country” and printed money.

0037 At the same time, the upper register of the painting is dark and empty, like the interior of a room that cannot be lived in.

Is this artistic trick a theological statement?

Unlike the glorious body of the king, discipline never rises above itself.  The flesh of citizen^Marat is never redeemed.

0038 Speaking of valuation, consider the 5-libre, I mean livre, assignat.  Santner notes that this currency was backed by the confiscated properties of the church and aristocracy.  The currency took seven years to fail.

Santner dwells on this valuation.  The currency was born in theft.  Or should I say, “confiscatory taxation”?  Printed to cover the costs of the political economy in Revolutionary France, it quickly collapsed.

0039 Does the assignat, plus the other clues, indicate an abstract material, proceeding from the corpse of Marat to the lack of representation in the upper register of the painting?

0040 It makes me wonder: Who was meant to view the painting?

The answer, of course, was the regular citizen.

0041 David rendered a splendid work to commemorate Marat on the event of his death.  David did not paint Marat as a monstrous busy body whose discipline organized the most terrifying party of the French Revolution.  The Jacobins were deranged.

In contrast, the citizens^regular were sane, keeping out of politics as much as possible.

0042 I can ask the same question about late medieval and early modern political theology: Who was supposed to sing the doxologies about the sublime body of the king?

The answer, of course, was the subject of the realm.

0043 Christianity borrowed from Greek philosophy in order to explain the subject.

The person is an individual in community.  The individual in community is a subject of a political realm.

The king is the political community writ small.  The king is also a person writ large.

God gives each person one soul with two aspects, one active and one passive.  The active soul animates the body.  The passive soul takes in impressions and is susceptible to feelings, especially the feelings of others.

0044 Middle and late modernism imbued the individual spirit with reason and burdened the passive soul with sanity.

0045 The resulting nested forms look like this:

0046 Clearly, the late medieval and early modern subject is close to the original Christian formulation of the person.  The middle and late modern citizen^regular is further removed.

0047 However, the relational structure is the same.

The subject belongs to the king and the citizen^regular “belongs to” citizen^Marat, as a content level to a situation level within an interscope.

0048 Here is the interscope for the subject and the king in late medieval and early modern political theology.

For the realm of actuality, I substituted the actual dyad for the king’s mortal body (on the situation level)_2b and the subject (on the content level)_2a.

0049 Now, the question arises:  How does the subject discover the qualities of kingliness?

The subject learns the qualities of kingliness from political doxologies.

Here, Christian theology, which is revealed knowledge, gets twisted into a gnostic formulation, which is secret knowledge.

In religion, a doxology is a litany praising the qualities of God.

Guess what happens when a doxology is applied to the royal person.

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?