Sovereignty, Inc.: Three Inquiries in Politics and Enjoyment (TRIOS)

Schuster, Aaron,Santner, Professor Eric L.,Mazzarella, William

ISBN 10: 022666841X / ISBN 13: 9780226668413

Published by University of Chicago Press, 2019

About this Item

Good - Bumped and creased book with tears to the extremities, but not affecting the text block, may have remainder mark or previous owner's name - GOOD PAPERBACK Standard-sized.

Seller Inventory # M022666841XZ3

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Sovereignty, Inc.: Three Inquiries in Politics and Enjoyment (TRIOS)
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022666841X
• ISBN 13: 9780226668413
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

What does the name Trump stand for? If branding now rules over the production of value, as the coauthors of Sovereignty, Inc. argue, then Trump assumes the status of a master brand whose primary activity is the compulsive work of self-branding—such is the new sovereignty business in which, whether one belongs to his base or not, we are all “incorporated.”
 
Drawing on anthropology, political theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and theater, William Mazzarella, Eric L. Santner, and Aaron Schuster show how politics in the age of Trump functions by mobilizing a contradictory and convoluted enjoyment, an explosive mixture of drives and fantasies that eludes existing portraits of our era. The current political moment turns out to be not so much exceptional as exceptionally revealing of the constitutive tension between enjoyment and economy that has always been a key component of the social order. Santner analyzes the collective dream-work that sustains a new sort of authoritarian charisma or mana, a mana-facturing process that keeps us riveted to an excessively carnal incorporation of sovereignty. Mazzarella examines the contemporary merger of consumer brand and political brand and the cross-contamination of politics and economics, warning against all too easy laments about the corruption of politics by marketing. Schuster, focusing on the extreme theatricality and self-satirical comedy of the present, shows how authority reasserts itself at the very moment of distrust and disillusionment in the system, profiting off its supposed decline. A dazzling diagnostic of our present, Sovereignty, Inc., forces us to come to terms with our complicity in Trump’s political presence and will immediately take its place in discussions of contemporary politics.
 
 

About the Authors

Eric L. Santner is the Philip and Ida Romberg Distinguished Service Professor in Modern Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books and coauthor of Sovereignty, Inc.: Three Inquiries in Politics and Enjoyment, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Aaron Schuster is a senior research advisor at the V-A-C Foundation, Moscow.