Eric Santner offers a radically new interpretation of Marx's labor theory of value as one concerned with the afterlife of political theology in secular modernity. What Marx characterized as the dual character of the labor embodied in the commodity, he argues, is the doctrine of the King's Two Bodies transferred from the political theology of sovereignty to the realm of political economy. This genealogy, leading from the fetishism of the royal body to the fetishism of the commodity, also suggests a new understanding of the irrational core at the center of economic busyness today, its 24/7 pace. The frenetic negotiations of our busy-bodies continue and translate into the doxology of everyday life the liturgical labor that once sustained the sovereign's glory. Maintaining that an effective critique of capitalist political economy must engage this liturgical dimension, Santner proposes a counter-activity, which he calls paradoxological. With commentaries by Bonnie Honig, Peter Gordon, and Hent de Vries, an introduction by Kevis Goodman, and a response from Santner, this important new book by a leading cultural theorist and scholar of German literature, cinema, and history will interest readers of political theory, literature and literary theory, and religious studies.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Oxford University Press Inc
ISBN-13
9780190254087
eBay Product ID (ePID)
220706996
Product Key Features
Subject Area
Political Science
Author
Eric Santner
Publication Name
The Weight of All Flesh: on the Subject-Matter of Political Economy
Format
Hardcover
Language
English
Publication Year
2015
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
312 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
210mm
Item Width
144mm
Item Weight
410g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Eric Santner
Series Title
The Berkeley Tanner Lectures
Topic
Popular Philosophy, Art Theory
Country/Region of Manufacture
United States
Editor
Kevis Goodman
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