Ямпольский М. Физиология символического. Возвращение Левиафана: Политическая теология, репрезентация власти и конец Старого режима
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804 М. Ямпольский. Физиология символического
is fused into an organic unity of the king's body. In such terms —
nation is a heterogeneous artificial assemblage, and the king — it's
redeemer into an organic unity. Even Hegel claimed that the nation
as abstraction needs a face of a sovereign to acquire reality. Without
such a face the people remain, according to him, only an amorphous
mass. Allegorical reading of the monarchic body radically reverses
these relations. Now it's no longer a monarch that incorporates the
organic unity of the commonwealth, but contrariwise by his own
allegorical artificiality he obstructs the constitution of this unity.
A new model of a democratic representation was gradually
coined. It was no more a personification, an incarnation in one figure,
but (as a member of the Convention Jean-Louis Seconds formulated
it) the new political representation should imitate a polyp — which is
at the same time an animal and an "individual people" (un peuple
animal et individuel). The abstraction of the Nation should now be
represented not by a king but by Robespierre's Supreme Being that
preserved all characteristics of a politico-theological abstraction. The
composite allegorical being doesn't correspond to the task of
unification because of an increasing process of a homogenization of
the society itself. This homogenization is carried into effect thanks
to a growing exclusion of every heterogeneous element. The organicity
is achieved by exclusion, first of all, of the monarch himself'— a
figure above the social body, a monstrous allegory and mimetic mirror
of power.
The trial of Louis XVI was a dramatic attempt to dissociate the
society from the king. This dissociation expulsed the king outside
the community, i. e. the communal law and thus excluded the king
from the system of French jurisprudence. However the king was
generally considered as a constituting and not a representative power.
It meant that France itself was deriving its existence (its "face") from
the king and thus was not able to prosecute him for a break in a
contract of representation. Finally Robespierre tried to justify the
execution of the king as a simple murder on the account of the
Nation. Saint-Just claimed that the only way to deal with the king is
to look at him as at the external enemy. The execution of Louis XVI
had a clear savor of the murder that it never lost. It could be
"justified" only in terms of exception and sacrality. The ambiguity
of this event corresponded quite well to the ambiguity of the sacred
itself. Latin Sacer equally defines the divine and the most abject aspect
of a person who is sacrificed. The sacred aspect of the supreme
sacrifice revealed monstrosity of the figure of exclusion — of a
murdered king.
The fight between the defenders of the king and his persecutors
focused on the interpretation of the execution. For king's supporters
it was primarily a sacrifice, for his detractors — an event without
any symbolic significance. The revolutionaries planned the execution
as a final blow to monarchic symbolism. Louis XVI, however, tried
to transform his own beheading into a Christological gesture of a
Summary
805
redeeming martyrdom. He was consciously copying the behavior of
Charles I who succeeded to present his death as a sacrifice. In spite
of all the efforts Louis acted rather as a pharmakos — a purifying
sacrifice that absorbs into oneself all dirt, sins, wickedness without
any chance of his or her own redemption.
The failure to transform an execution into a sacrifice is grounded
in a new status of a sovereign body. First of all it's due to a general
collapse of symbolism of this body, but also to an impossibility to
imitate Christ's sacrifice whose meaning was exactly to stop all
sacrifices forever, i. e. to be the last and inimitable sacrifice. The
transfiguration of the sovereign body has already happened when it
was transformed into a pure representation of one's own image —
a "portrait of a portrait", according to Louis Marin. Monarchic power
is already an "effect of figuration" — a result of transfiguration of a
body into an image. Christ and the king are figures — both "leave"
their body in an excess of a figurative disembodiment. However both
figures are fundamentally different to a point of the absolute non-
similarity (Pascal). Paradoxically, only when the king is not
surrounded by an aura of figuration that generates his power,
similarity between him and the Man of Sorrows is unmistakably
revealed, i.e. the king reveals his similarity to Christ only when he
is no more a king.
The failure of the sacrifice also manifests the failure of a
mechanism of a discarnation that produces figures. The body of the
king preserves its materiality in spite of all manipulations applied to
it. This materiality takes form of the so called "corps d'effroi" —
allegorical composite monsters — or of simple bestiality. The beast
that usually represented the king in popular imagery was a pig. These
representations included the whole bunch of motifs associated with
hogs in popular mythology — impotence (castration), gluttony,
leprosy etc. Many of these motifs were usually applied to another
group of excluded individuals — the Jews. The weird contamination
of anti-monarchic imagery with the anti-Semitic one — is one of
the most striking features of a discourse desecrating the monarchy.
The association of the king with a pig and a Jew made any possibility
of sacrificial model unrealistic and doomed Louis to remain homo
sacer — a simple and unredeemable pharmakon. The sovereign's
transgressiveness had no more relations to a symbolic dimension of
a constituent power, but was confined to the domain of bestiality. During
the Revolution, animals were often used for a profanation of the
sacred, of the symbolical. Finally this role of the desecration is
prescribed to the incarnation of the symbolic par excellence. The king
made animal destroyed the foundation of his own symbolic power.
In such a situation an execution of the king-hog was nothing else
than a gesture of foundation of a new symbolic order, of a new society
and of a new state.
806 М. Ямпольский. Физиология символического
ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ
Предисловие: Символ и Политическое 7
Примечания к предисловию 21
Часть 1
ОТ СИМВОЛИЧЕСКОГО ТЕЛА
К РЕПРЕЗЕНТАТИВНОМУ ПРОСТРАНСТВУ
Сакральное тело: ордалии и меты 25
Символизм тела 35
Онтотеология и Закон 53
Дистанцирование 74
Закон как potentia и causa efficiens 93
Церемониал: Majeste vs Dignitas 113
Репрезентация, субъект и линейная перспектива 122
Субстанция и самообоснование репрезентации 142
Место Бога: суверен как узурпатор 153
Репрезентация как кризис 184
Театр репрезентации: мимесис и фантазм 199
Толкователь имен 218
Примечания к 1-й части 246
Часть 2
ТЕАТР РАЗУМА:
ПО ТУ СТОРОНУ ПОДРАЖАНИЯ
Мимесис и эмпатия: Мариво 287
Антимимесис: Дидро 305
Экспансия 325
Всеобщий человек 344
Общественный договор: театр без актеров 361
Возвращение Левиафана: «ничто» и
«искусственная личность» 373
Пустота и фетиш 389
Энтузиазм 412
Страх 427
Пространство репрезентации: между публичным
и внутренним 439
Аргумент исключенности: Сен-Жюст 461
Террор и Высшее Существо 475
Примечания ко 2-й части 506
Summary
807
Часть 3
ПОЛИТИЧЕСКАЯ ТЕОЛОГИЯ
И КОНЕЦ СУВЕРЕНА
Политическая теология и нейтрализация 549
Параллельные истории: языческие боги и астрология 572
Архаический символ как монстр 589
Монстры и аллегория 596
Король как аллегория 604
Составное тело монарха: народный суверенитет 621
Суверен и Палач 649
Попытка невозможного: суд над королем 670
Homo sacer 685
Подражание Христу: попытка жертвоприношения 697
Конец символа: король, свиньи, евреи и проказа 720
Postscriptum 754
Примечания к 3-й части 759
Summary 795