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    Comments on Eric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh
    Comments on Eric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh
    Comments on Eric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh
    Ebook154 pages1 hour

    Comments on Eric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh

    By Razie Mah

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    About this ebook

    In The Weight of All Flesh: On the Subject-Matter of Political Economy (2016), professor Eric Santner presents an idea: Late medieval and early modern political theology transubstantiated into middle and late modern political economy.
    He does this through directed association, drawing on references that - at first - do not seem linked, then pulling them into an image of an abstract materiality shifting from the glorious body of the medieval king to the everyday regular citizen of the modern world.
    His argument sounds like a dream, demanding psychoanalytic interpretation.
    My interpretation uses the category-based nested form. This form permits different levels of complexity, ideal for examining Santner’s multilayered and intuitive presentation. The forms visually demonstrate that modern materialism is relational in nature.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRazie Mah
    Release dateNov 17, 2016
    ISBN9781942824268
    Comments on Eric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh
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    Razie Mah

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      Comments on Eric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh - Razie Mah

      Comments on Eric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh

      By Razie Mah

      Published for Smashwords.com

      2016

      Notes on Text

      This 23,700 word essay comments on a recent book by a Professor of Literature about the subject matter of the political economy. Eric Santner tries to figure out its immaterial measure.

      Why do I say immaterial measure?

      Consider the complete title: The Weight of All Flesh: On the Subject Matter of Political Economy.

      Weight is a measure of something material. However, weight itself is not material.

      Similarly, matter ought to be material. But, subject matter is not.

      Also, the economy processes materials. Politics does not.

      Will literalism do under these circumstances?

      Once the flesh has weight, then it is no longer simply what it is.

      Once matter is taken to be a subject, then it is no longer merely what it is.

      Once the economy is taken to be political, then it is no longer only what it is.

      To me, the category-based nested form applies.

      The actualities of flesh, matter and economics exist by themselves. But, humans evolved to consider more than what is at hand. We are designed to put actuality into a nested form.

      So, these actualities exist, for us, in the normal contexts of weight, subject and politics. These are not the only normal contexts. They are the contexts raised by this author.

      The contextualization of actuality raises another question.

      What potentiates the weight of flesh, subject matter and political economy?

      You may already know the answer. I do not. Consequently, I turn to this text to see what I may discover. This will be a fairly close reading, so have Santner’s book at hand.

      ‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.

      Table of Contents

      Introduction 0001

      Preface 1 0006

      Preface 2 0016

      Preface 3 0057

      End of Preface 0116

      Lecture 1.1 0129

      Lecture 1.2 0147

      Lecture 1.3 0191

      Lecture 1.4 0206

      Lecture 1.5 0211

      Lecture 1.6 0227

      Lecture 2.1 0254

      Lecture 2.2 0278

      Lecture 2.3 0327

      Lecture 2.4 0356

      Lecture 2.5 0366

      Lecture 2.6 0425

      Lecture 2.7 0472

      Lecture 2.8 0494

      Lecture 2.9 0523

      Lecture 2.10 0547

      Introduction

      0001 Eric Santner wrote The Weight of All Flesh: On the Subject-Matter of Political Economy (Oxford University Press, 2016). The main body of the book consists in a preface and two lectures. The two lectures constitute chapters 1 and 2. These chapters are broken into parts.

      Santner’s presentations are works of art, composing the 2014 Tanner Lectures on Human Values at the University of California, Berkeley.

      0002 The front piece is an introduction by Kevis Goodman. The end piece is a suite of comments by Bonnie Honig, Peter E. Gordon and Hent de Vries, followed by a reply by Eric Santner.

      The responses are very challenging. How does one reply to something that sounds like free association?

      Unfortunately, the front and end pieces will not be covered in these comments. However, the end piece may be used as an exercise in the methodology that composes these comments.

      0003 Why is this interesting?

      My interest is obvious once one looks at How To Define the Word Religion plus the first ten associated primers.

      The tenth primer ends before the majesty of sovereign power. Primers 8, 9 and 10 tell of the difficulty of seeing beyond these mountains. Anyone who argues about politics can stir up an avalanche.

      What does Primer 8 tell me?

      Infrasovereign religions grasp for sovereign power in order to impose their organizational objectives on those outside their organization.

      What about Primer 9?

      Socrates had to drink hemlock. Why did he have to do that?

      Primer 10?

      Rene Girard proposes that a scapegoat mechanism is apparent in all civilizations. Plus, the mechanism comes into play when power structures try to preserve themselves.

      Overall, politics and religion map a dangerous landscape. Eric Santner walks where angels fear to tread.

      0004 Primers 8, 9 and 10 explore the presence underlying the word religion.

      Institutions occupy the content level of the society tier. They contextualize the organization tier. These institutions harbor organizational objects, objectsorganization, that call the individual into organization. These objectsorg are virtually situated by sovereign acts, laws and decrees.

      0005 Eric Santner reads literature. He observes art. He sees that something changed in the West over the past few centuries.

      What is this something?

      It is completely missed by the current social and political sciences. However, it appears in Western paintings, poems, novels, plays, and other artistic works. This is the stuff that Eric Santner studies.

      Preface 1

      0006 Subject matter. What is it?

      Matter is stuff. Subject is something that ends up objectified.

      Okay, now what?

      Does subject matter signal the objectification of matter?

      Or does subject matter signify the objectification of something that matters?

      0007 At the end of the Latin Age and the beginning of the Age of Ideas, around the 1600s AD, the subject matter of political theology was the king’s two bodies. One body was mortal. The other was sublime.

      The object of the king’s glorious body supplemented the subject of the king’s mortal body. Santner labels the process spectral (glorious body) materiality (mortal body).

      0008 To me, the glorious body is the normal context for the actuality of the king’s mortal body.

      The nested form looks like this:

      Sublime body3( mortal body2( potential of kingly being1))

      0009 Does this express the character of the subject matter?

      The mortal body is matter. The sublime body is the normal context that objectifies the mortal body. Thus, the king’s mortal body becomes a subject for political theology. The something that underlies the mortal body, giving its flesh weight, is the quality of being king.

      0010 Moving to the present day, the matter of political theory falls to the people, rather than the king. The subject gets dispersed from one king to many citizens. The glorious body translates into what Michel Foucault calls discipline. The qualities that weight the mortal body of the king turn into biopower.

      0011 To me, modern political theory translates into the following nested form:

      Discipline3( citizen2( possibilities inherent in biopower1))

      0012 The two nested forms are shown below:

      0013 Normal context3 and possibility1 surcharge actuality2.

      0014 The mortal body of the king is more than it otherwise would be in any other context. Its actuality possesses a surplus of immanence because it now has potential.

      Similarly, one citizen may heroically rise above others as an expression of the biopower released by discipline. Other citizens are weighed and measured in the exercise of biopower.

      0015 The pressure cooker of the royal person expanded to the business of the citizen. Medieval and early modern political theology gave way to modern political economy.

      Preface 2

      0016 Take a look at a painting. Jacques Louis David painted the extraordinary Death of Marat, during the French Revolution.

      Compare this image to a wax effigy of a dead medieval king, or some other memorial, placed on the throne during official mourning.

      0017 Jean-Paul Marat, the citizen, dies in his tub. David paints the death scene.

      The king’s mortal body is buried. An icon of his sublime body is placed on the throne.

      Clearly, David paints the equivalent to the sublime body of the citizen, Marat.

      0018 One could say

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