First & Last Emporers: The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot

by Kenneth Dean, Brian Massumi

Reagan/Bush vs 1st Chinese Empire

Genres: Philosophy, Theory

208 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1992

Reviews

[Jared Randall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dean and Massumi present the category of the "human" as inherent to the imperial drive to unity. This drive is built of a certain madness, a chasing after what is always just out of reach, unattainable, resulting in an ever-present gap between the body image of the emperor/president/nation, which claims unity, and the actual fragmentation/"dismemberment" of the same.. Within this drive, the state and its ever-increasing/varying collection of "apparatuses" limits "potential" by subjugating it to the state drive to unity, "interiorizing" "force" to the ends of the state. An example of the apparatus in use is the "command function" found in the "missile" whose guidance system becomes simultaneously the command and the effect, the "impersonal" destruction of a target.

In the end, hope is found in the possibility of the state's drive to unity, combined with the technological drive to apparatus, ultimately leading beyond the state idea to its own "underside" where a society characterized by the "horizontal" and the "network," as opposed to the hierarchical and subjugated/subsumed, might re-unleash the "forces" that are "potential." Of course, no one, including Dean and Massumi, know what such a society and its unleashed potentials might bring about. The inclination of the authors, however, which is an inclination that I share, is that the state idea has forestalled the evolution of what has been called mankind in the guise of an undesirable system characterized by the "human" as proceeding from the Enlightenment. The only way out is "through," so let's get on with it. The only thing standing in the way is the state itself and its "capturing" of "force" resulting in the limiting of "potential" -- a self-preservative state of affairs.

Anyone interested in the theory and politics of the present moment of protests and occupations should definitely check this out. It contains invaluable insights as to the vital dynamics of the current system and how these dynamics might be superseded.

[David Bjelland · Rating 3 out of 5]

An experience sort of like the academia equivalent of a basement noise show: punishing and seemingly self-serious, but made in the spirit of cheerful, well-meaning trollishness. To the extent that I was able to translate some of the deliberately obscure and silly jargon like "striation", "body without an image", and "apparatic", I'm not sure that the authors are really articulating a point about the expansion of absolute states that hasn't already been made in clear, understandable language by actual political historians, but they're too playful in their impenetrability to really hate on (there are some laugh-out-loud moments related to Reagan's digestive health and treating "The Bush-Thing" as an object of serious philosophical inquiry)

[Isham Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Witty, goofy, readable poststructuralist mini-classic, critical-semiotic reading of "Reagan" (always in quotes) and the "the Bush-thing."

[Sceox]

Strange theory of (/against) the State, concerned less with its origin or form and more with theorizing it as a drive for unification that grapples with and embodies its own contradictions non-dialectically.

Some thematic dovetailing with Agamben's The Kingdom and the Glory: both are genealogies of what is now called Spectacle and whose parallels can be found in the ancient world. Though both take genealogy to be concerned with discontinuity, Dean and Massumi's approach is much less continuous than Agamben's.

Those who follow the news might find this a very timely text: this odd exploration of the bodies and disembodiments of Reagan and Bush--and even of Qin Shi Huangdi--may give insight into the peculiar embodiment of the latest despot.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love this book. should be a paradigm of how to read contemporary politics and its use of imagery in light of actual history.