0176 The intellectual leaders of Shakespeare’s time made a simplification and propounded it as reality.

This simplification assumed that a citizen^regular possessed a sane soul and exhibited the spirit of rationality.  It ignored the Christian perspective inspiring both.

0177 The counselors of the early modern kings were experts in the maintenance of the king’s sublime body… I mean, the discipline of holding office.

They discovered that the king could rule without governing by allowing usury.  Crown^money surcharged surplus value.  Gold became valuable as a measure of national wealth.  Mercantilism was born.

0178 Before leaving this section, I want to generalize the model of spectral materialism applied to The Merchant of Venice.

I substitute the words “Marat” and “regular” for “Shylock” and “Antonio”.  However, I retain the key concept that Shylock wants a pound of Antonio’s joissance, that is, his “flesh”.

I suggest that citizen^Marat, like Shylock, desires a pound of citizen^regular’s libido.

In the organization tier, this actualizes into two values: adaptability (for citizen^regular) and control (for citizen^Marat).

0179 To me, this diagram expresses features of Santner’s multilayered claims.

0180 In the late medieval and the early modern period, the mortal body (or flesh) of the king magically established the flourishing and suffering of the entire kingdom.  His flesh bore the weight of kingliness, the expectations of the subjects.

If the king did not (literally) live up to the subject’s expectations, then the kingdom was vulnerable to sedition.  The theory of the dual body of the king directed expectations in a particular manner, investing the mortal body of the king with a sublime body.  This sublime body was answerable to God.

0181 Even with God removed from the picture, as Thomas Hobbes did in Leviathan, the subject’s expectations were profoundly simple.  Protect us.  Do not interfere with our contracts.  Contracts among subjects were regulated by tradition, particularly Christian aphorisms like the golden rule, which (according to Hobbes) goes like this: Do not do unto others what you would not want done to yourself.

0182 Surely, Shylock did not get the memo.  Neither did Marat, who planned to do to his political opponents what Charlotte Corday did to him.

0183 Indeed, in late medieval and early modern nations, the king was in a pressure cooker, watched from above by the very religion that his political theology expropriated, and watched from below by subjects who believed that Jesus was king.

0184 The immaterial surplus produced in this apparatus coincided with the flourishing and suffering of the entire kingdom.

The economic reason is straightforward.  When the king was in check, protecting the subjects and freely allowing contracts, the subjects were able to cautiously move in the direction of greater industry and specialization.  When the king was not in check, the subjects only did what they were told to do.  They resisted innovation and resented the king.

0185 Santner delineates a trail from the political theology of the early moderns to the political economy of the modern and postmodern period.  The sublime body of the king becomes dispersed among the citizens.

0186 However, to me, this portends two types of citizen.

Citizen^regular inherits the expectations of kingliness.  This is expressed as personal sovereignty.

Citizen^Marat inherits the sublime character that (supposedly) is subject to divine judgment.

0187 But, there is a catch.

With the perspective level completely occluded, the source that judges discipline is no longer apparent.  Citizen^Maratbecomes god-like to the extent that his organizational objectives are substantiated by sovereign power.

0188 In Santner’s evocative terminology, the regular citizen’s libido (like Antonio’s) becomes the flesh that is weighed and appropriated by the self-anointed citizen^Marat, acting in the domain of discipline and in the prospect of sowing and harvesting biopower.

The immaterial surplus produced in this apparatus fuels a repetition disorder called “regulation”.  Regulation applies to the organization tier.

0189 The citizen^regular adapts to this domination as short-sightedly as a sow finds comfort in her pen.

Regular humans have gone from sheep to pigs.  Kings have gone from shepherds to farm-administrators fatting up the hogs for… harvest.

0190 What do the busy bodies intend to harvest?

I suspect that it is the joy of being a pig.

0191 The lecture continues.

Santner returns to Derrida’s treatment of Marx.

Marx’ Communist Manifesto, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, begins with a specter.  From the very start, Europe has been haunted by an excess (a ghost).

This excess does not belong to the oikos (the household).  It belongs to commodities.  Or, rather, it belongs to the management of commodities.

0192 A German jurist (of ill repute) wrote an essay on Hamlet in 1956.  Carl Schmitt envisioned the play as intimation, prefiguring the clash between late medieval and early modern political theology of kingship and the emergence of England as a mercantile economy.

This is why I supplant the word “capitalism” with “mercantilism”.

0193 To Schmitt, England embraced the sea.  The sea provided the roads for its empire.  The sea set the stage for the Industrial Revolution.  The British mercantile economy flourished from the difference in productivity between local factories and distant agricultural colonies.

Shakespeare’s plays were first presented around 1600, when mercantilism was taking hold in England.

0194 Santner agrees with Schmitt.  The economic change transformed the production, circulation and accumulation of the immaterial stuff that once defined the glorious body of the king.  Now, the king’s glorious flesh characterizes social relations within modern commercial societies.

0195 How do I fit this into category-based nested forms?

Following Foucault, I associate the immaterial aspect that once defined the glorious body of the king with the term “discipline”.  Discipline is normative.  It becomes the normal context of a nested form.

I associate the aspect called “stuff” with the potential engendered by the normal context of the king’s glorious body.  This stuff weighs the term “flesh”.  It corresponds to Foucault’s term “biopower”.

This immaterial normal context and this material possibility bracket a somatic actuality, the king’s mortal body.

0196 In mercantilist England, the value-laden mortal body of the king changed to social relations within commercial society.  These relations are somatic, body-like, and organizational.

0197 To me, this sounds like the Preface, implying that lecture 1.3 starts a new iteration within a Semitic textual structure.

Semitic texts ask the reader to recognize a possibility.  Greek texts attempt to isolate the only (or most convincing) possibility by eliminating all other possibilities.

0198 Psychoanalysis follows the Semitic style.  The psychoanalyst is expected to recognize a possibility, rather than isolate an explanation.

Santner’s literary style of directed (almost free) association forces the reader to play the role of psychoanalyst.  The reader must interpret Santner’s stream of consciousness, which is intuitive, suggestive and difficult to lock onto.  Santner asks the reader (and psychoanalyst) to recognize a possibility.

0199 My diagrams are interpretations.  The following figure may be compared to earlier diagrams.

Here is a comparison between Santner’s generalizing intuition and his political theological and political economic models.

Remember that thirdness goes with normal context, secondness with actuality and firstness with possibility.

0200 The late medieval and early modern political theology of the king’s dual body and the middle and late modern political economy both share the structure of Santner’s general formula.

0201 They also both associate with the situation-level of the society tier.

Terms within each nested form resonate.  For example, the king’s sublime body₃ and discipline₃ matches sovereign office_3bC.

0202 Santner’s consciousness flows through these connections into a more evocative and indirect resonance.  His formula also applies to the 3-tier system, a nested form composed of three interscopes (or tiers).

0203 This is crucial.  Santner’s directed associations present a double vision.  One frame fits the society tier.  The other frame encompasses a model of institutions, organizations and individuals in community.

0204 To me, this portrays what Santner describes as the dispersion of the immaterial stuff of the one sublime king into the many bodies of the citizen. 

Both citizen^Marat and citizen^regular belong to the society tier.  Yet, the generalized structure of their nested formsextends into the domains of institutions, organizations and individuals.  

0205 This association between Santner’s general nested form and the 3-tier system also evokes Marx’s concepts of surplus value and commodity fetish.  Marx’s concepts apply to a circulation of immaterial stuff (in the realms of normal contexts and possibility) within and among the tiers.

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice illustrates.  A circulation of immaterial stuff encompasses the situation levels of all three tiers, plus the content-level of the society tier.

Here is the same association between Santner’s general formula and the 3-tier system.  The levels of the 3-tier system are explicit.

0206 Santner contrasts his general formula with the so-called “new materialisms” currently popular in academics.

He asks, “Which will it be, the circulation of immaterial stuff or the new materialism?”

0207 Santner examines Jean Bennett’s reading of Kafka’s famous story about Odradek.  Bennett envisions a vital materialism where Odradek is like… self-organizing matter.  Other scholars suggest the name refers to… od-radix and od-adresa… primal German and Slavic words for rootlessness and not-belonging.

In contrast, Santner finds, in Odradek, the figure of an un-economic man, a busy body who is not really necessary but cannot be disposed of.  Odradek is like a bureaucrat whose work is cut loose from purpose or legitimation.

To me, this character differs from citizen^Marat.

Citizen^Marat is a true believer.  Odradek holds the same political position as citizen^Marat, but pretends to belief.

0208 What difference, at this point, does it make?

After all, the citizens^regular are the ones uprooted and decimated by the busy bodies. 

These folk are typically the main characters of Kafta’s tales.

0209 Consider the example of dangerous work.

The foreman is a busy body.  He got the job because he is willing to snitch on the other workers.  The foreman is instinctively wary of any worker with talent or charisma.

Uh oh.  Enter the motivated worker.

Soon, a dangerous situation comes to pass.  The passive-aggressive foreman places the confident worker in danger because he is the only one who can get this job done.

0210 After the injury, the broken talent ends up meeting his insurance agent, Franz Kafka.

0211 Santner continues to explore The Merchant of Venice.

0212 What is the difference between Antonio and Shylock?

0213 Antonio is like the laborer who ends up injured because he is naive yet talented.  A laborer should never allow himself to be put into such a dangerous predicament.

Is his friend Bassanio worth the price?  Surely, he is.  Once married to Portia, Bassanio would be in hog heaven.  Antonio is along for the ride.

This is the game.  This is a gamble involving real risk.

0214 Shylock is like the foreman who puts the confident laborer into danger.  He is not taking a big risk. He really has no skin in the game.

0215 Is that enough?

Antonio is also a Christian.

Shylock is also a Jew.

0216 This contrast lit a fire beneath the butt of Karl Marx.

The unquenchable burning flatulence of Marx cannot be separated from the Western history of anti-Jewishness.

0217 Santner quotes David Nirenberg, who wrote a treatise on the subject, posing the question: If a society builds itself on Jewish foundations of commerce, contract, property and law, then can it consider itself Christian?

Is that the same question that Shakespeare addressed in The Merchant of Venice?

0218 Santner does not pause to contemplate answers.  After all, this is directed association.

0219 Santner jumps to this question: What kind of meta-work is required to enact the emergence of a mercantile society?

In other words, what pre-occupied Shylock?

0220 The answer is found in the transaction.

Shylock was full of discipline.  Antonio was not.  Antonio was full of love for Bassanio.

Shylock was jealous of Antonio’s charisma.  Shylock wanted a piece of Antonio’s biopower.

0221 Here is the kicker.

Shylock’s move transgressed even his Jewish foundations.  Shylock wanted more than what traditional Jewish commerce, contract, property and law permitted.  He wanted to usurp Antonio’s perverse charm, so characteristic of the flesh of Venice.

Shylock was miserable.  Everyone picked on him.  Everyone was happier than him.

Amorous love flowered all around Shylock.  Even his daughter fell for the buzz.

0222 Shylock wanted a pound of what made Antonio who he was.  Shylock did not care whether Antonio would bleed.

Where does Jewish tradition call for that?

0223 Shylock’s deal is crazy in the same way that Marat’s revolutionary zeal is crazy.  Citizen^Marat does not care whether blood is spilled.

Ironically, Thomas Hobbes, writing 50 years after Shakespeare, noted that the sovereign cannot order the subject to injure himself.  The third law of nature no longer applies once the king threatens the flesh of the subject.

0224 Antonio was not a very good Christian.

Shylock was not a very good Jew.

0225 To Santner, Shylock ends up representing the social disorder accompanying the emergence of a mercantile economy.  Blessed with discipline, Shylock aims to usurp Antionio’s biopower.

Needless to say, British mercantilism lived up to Shakespeare’s expectations.  One of the main commodities turned out to be African slaves.  Talk about usurping biopower.

0226 Happily, in Shakespeare’s play, Shylock fails and falls from his perch as citizen^Shylock.

He gets demoted to citizen^regular.

While Shylock sees this as a mortal blow, he actually has been redeemed.  Not only can he re-unite with his estranged daughter, but he can participate in the wondrous carnality that is Venice.

0227 The lecture continues.

What did the African slaves have that no one else did?

0228 They were outside the system.  They could not become citizens^regular.

0229 So there remains a threat, an extrapolation of The Merchant of Venice, not anticipated by even sweet Portia.  The threat is an inscription, a displacement within the flesh, connected to a political economic circumcision.

0230 With the American slaves from Africa, this inscription was as obvious as the color of their skin.

The inscription bore a message, “You cannot be a citizen^regular.”

The cut still rends the American fabric.

0231 But, that was not enough.

The American slave was also a commodity, a person emancipated (so to speak) from all traditional affiliations and packaged for those who value someone who will do the dirty work.

How did the theology of mercantilism justify this?

How could humans become the equivalent of machinery?

When did work become “dirty”?

0232 But then, didn’t the king also do a lot of dirty work, such as killing bandits, stopping marauders and addressing the constant bickering among the peasants (say nothing of those impious priests)?

No wonder he needed a glorious body to contextualize what his mortal body had to do to be kingly.

0233 Does the fetish of the person of the king (from late medieval and early modern political theology) translate into the fetish of the commodity (in modern political economy)?

0234 Has the site for the doxology of the sublime body of the king shifted to broadcast advertising?

Has liturgy turned into to pop songs about everyday life?

Songs extolling the joys of citizen^regular, in a strange way, exploit joissance for financial or political gain, substituting fantasies for affiliations and dreams for social bonds.

Do today’s American celebrities exemplify citizen^Marat?

Do they have discipline?

0235 According to Santner, Marx tried to figure out the secret of the commodity form.  He tried to see the sublime body of the citizen^regular who goes to work at a corporation and rarely gets paid enough to afford the products of his own factory.

0236 Every citizen^regular has a dream.

Is this dream the specter of capitalism?

Or is this dream another site for exploitation?

0237 Santner attempts to image a historic shift.

The sublime flesh of the king was a theory that situated the subject within the domain of kingship.  This can be seen in the actualities of the situation and content levels of the society tier, diagrammed as follows:

0238 This model, as The Merchant of Venice demonstrates, relies on the integrity of the suprasovereign religion.  The values that inform the theory of the dual body of the king are a mandate from heaven, weighing the king’s active soul.

0239 The shift to mercantilism transforms the king’s mortal body into an administrative body that would not be judged by the Christian object^relation.  This administrative body is self-anointed.  It grasps the sovereign authority to regulate (and therefore judge) actualities in the organization and individual in community (IIC) tiers.

The shift transforms the subject into a citizen sustained by a rational spirit and sane soul.

0240 The result may be diagrammed as follows:

0241 This is how I render Santner’s description of the dispersion of the sublime body of the king into the thingness of commodities.

0242 This model, as The Merchant of Venice demonstrates, runs afoul of what Christians call “original sin”.

Neither Antonio nor Shylock are sane.  If they were, they would not have cut their deal.

0243 Also, this model, as David’s painting The Death of Marat suggests, runs afoul of the fact that Marat (as the primordial image of all contemporary busy bodies) is both a messenger and recipient of a message: conform or die.

Marat is crazy without even realizing that he is nuts.  He feels invulnerable, even while encapsulated in his tub of mineral waters.

Why?

Marat embodies the Revolution.

0244 Citizens^Marat would learn to be more cautious.  They would disarm the population before um… striking at something other than what is there.

The goal is to usurp the regular citizen’s joissance, the pound of flesh that cannot be taken without spilling blood.

0245 However, take note.

This is my own psychoanalytic interpretation of Santner’s directed (almost free) associations.  As such, I rely on a vocabulary specific to Santner’s self-revelation.

Here is some of that terminology:

0246 Citizen^Marat designates those who thrive in the sovereign office of discipline.  Biopower has all the characteristics of order.  The active soul of citizen^Marat exhibits values potentiated by biopower.

The mortal body of citizen^Marat is busy.  Citizen^Marat is manic, quick to anger and always on the move.  Yet, once he starts talking, he puts any sane soul to sleep.

His rulebooks groan with details.

0247 Citizen^regular designates those who were once subjects, but now are supposed to be animated by a rational spirit.

0248 That is not all.

The citizen^regular will always run afoul of purportedly rational sovereign acts, laws and decrees.

0249 Why?

Citizen^Marat wants to regulate the activities of the organization tier.

0250 The regulations of the sovereign are grounded on simplifications.

Is that not the scientific method?

Reduce the problem to cause and effect.

But, that does not work for relational structures.

Reduction ends up representing only isolated features within a relational structure.

So, citizen^Marat, who is a well-indoctrinated expert, attempts to address problematic phenomena in the organization and iic tiers.

He does so through simplification.

The resulting regulations do not solve the problem.  

However, they advance the level of sovereign control addressing the issue.

0251 To me, Karl Marx was a purveyor of simplifications.

Santner’s directed associations show that Marxist terminology applies to the organization tier.  These terms label and moralize perceived distortions.  They fail to capture a complete picture of the organization tier.  Regulations based on Marxist dogma institutionalize and grow the target distortion.

0252 I suspect that Santner’s gambit applies to all the current social sciences.

These disciplines are structured to imitate the empirical sciences of the 1800s and early 1900s, where scientific reductionism required simplification.

For relational structures, simplification highlights some elements and occludes others.  Simplification necessarily distorts illumination.

0253 Ironically, the modern physical sciences have already abandoned knee-jerk reductionism.  Starting with quantum mechanics, scientific paradigms have slowly shifted. Very small and very large structures may be inherently relational, just like human society, organization and the individual in community.

0254 What is a fetish?

0255 A fetish is magical.

In late medieval and early modern times, the way that regal qualities endowed the mortal body of the king was magical.  The order of the kingdom was attributed to the health and wellness of the royal person.

Perhaps, the arrangement was not so magical.

After all, the king did the dirty work that no one else would or could do.  Protection from invasion was a basic.

0256 The king’s dual body may be juxtaposed against the sovereign level of the society tier as well as Santner’s general formula.

0257 Santner works backwards, from the end point of Marxist theory, to the starting point of the late medieval and early modern model of the sublime body of the king.

0258 The early modern model provides a soil for mercantilist attitudes to take root.  The mortal body of the king, incorporating regal values, associates to both (1) sovereign acts, laws and decrees and (2) corporate (somatic) commercial activities.  The transition from kingdom to corporation is already present.

0259 The organization tier is spontaneous.  It is governed by simple rules of conduct.  These rules are somatic.  They come across as gut feelings.  No one will trade with someone who cheats.  Everyone will short the dupe.  Commercial relations are based on mutual benefit and repetition.

0260 The sovereign office enforces its laws and decrees through the mortal body of the king.  These laws and decrees regulate commercial relations.  One could say, they also empower commercial relations by allowing them to exist and flourish.  For this reason, the wellness of the king and the health of the kingdom are confounded.

Occasionally, the sovereign makes exceptions.  The exceptions prove the rule and show that the sovereign office corresponds to the immaterial and normative sublime body of the king.  The exceptions also provide opportunities for more nuanced rules or alternative simple rules.

Finally, the sovereign office draws on the potentials of personal honor and political order.  These potentials arise from possibilities inherent in the stuff and the flesh of the subjects of the realm.

0261 Similarly, the active soul of citizen^Marat situates the potentials generated by the biopower of the regular citizen.

The administrative activity of citizen^Marat mimics the mortal body of the king, mirroring sovereign acts that go with somatic attitudes and commercial relations.

Plus, the immaterial and normative administrative authority of citizen^Marat, here called “discipline”, calls to mind the sublime body of the king.

0262 Compare the following three nested forms:

0263 Something magical changes vessels, from the king to citizen^Marat.

With the king, the magical thing is transcendent.  A perspective level elevates the king above the folk.  The transcendent becomes immanent.

With citizen^Marat, the perspective level gets painted over.  Something immanent becomes transcendent.  Something elevates citizen^Marat above citizen^regular.

0264 Where does this surplus of immanence come from?

The surplus of immanence comes from a re-contextualization of salvation in England and similar nations in Christendom.

In the medieval world, the spirit of the individual was defined in terms of a mystical union with God.  The world was modeled as a sacrament.

The theory of the sublime body of the king exploited the Christian concept of sacramental vocation.  It turned Christian revelation into a secret formula for glorifying the king.

0265 The Reformation (starting around 1550) got rid of such nonsense.

The sacraments became symbols, rather than icons and indexes of Jesus the King.

This left a vacuum.

Some other way of knowing needed to replace the superstition embodied by the sacraments and the Church.  Thus, a spirit of rational expectations replaced the spirit of the saintly individual.

0266 Here is the transition as an association of nested forms in the content level of the society tier.

0267 Note the subtle shift in nuance between feudal and mercantilist institutions.  This fits the scenario described by Max Weber.  Ideas have consequences.

0268 The battles among Christian factions in pursuit of sovereign power sealed the transition.

The Peace of Westphalia (around 1650) established a new normal.  The king now determined which Christian factions would be permitted in his realm.  Thus, the king became both a seat of reason and a pastor to the nation.

0269 According to Max Weber, the Protestant Ethic confounded saintliness and industriousness.

It glorified work, not the sacraments, as the passage to salvation.

In the process, it glorified whatever work produces, including commodities.

0270 Thus, I arrive at Marx’s simplification (around 1850), labeled “the commodity fetish”.

The commodity fetish considers the commodity to be an object reflecting the glorification of ‘something’, regardless of the management, production, and service underlying the presence of the commodity as thing.

0271 Note how Marx’s simplification leaves a key part of the Protestant Ethic begging.

If the construction of the commodity as a thing is the glorification of God through industriousness, then what explains Marx’s simplification, where the commodity glorifies something regardless of the industriousness going into its production?

Did the Protestant Ethic open a door to another Ethic, one that sees the commodity as an object that reflects the glorification of ‘something’ other than whatever went into its coming into being.

Did the glory of creation supplant the glory of the Creator?

0272 Marx’s simplification (It is a fetish about commodities.) implements a logic (The fetish produces a value (or price) greater than the generalized labor value of the thing itself.) that will inform organizational objectives demanding sovereign power (The regulation of commercial enterprises is necessary in order to compensate for the surplus value generated by the commodity fetish.).

0273 Since the commodity fetish simplifies a relation, it also distorts, so its implementation as a logic within the social sciences produces Kafkaesque constructions.

The logic of the commodity fetish produces two contradictory loops of busy-ness.

One develops and enforces organizational objectives that miss their targets.

One deconstructs and evades the misguided (and righteousness-fueled) objects^org mentioned above.

0274 Only by de-animating the industrious flesh of the citizen^regular can citizen^Marat achieve the goal of total conformity, hence purity, of administrative intent.

In the society tier, citizen^Marat obsesses and citizen^regular is petrified.

In the 3-tier system, citizen^Marat aggresses and citizen^regular evades.

0275 Why?

0276 In the society tier, citizen^regular clings to a spirit of rational expectations, remains industrious and focuses on the possibility of sanity.

Meanwhile, in order to demonstrate that objects^org are valid (even though they are unworkable simplifications), citizen^Marat must dispossess citizen^regular from the content level of the society tier and make the citizen^regular a slave to the organization tier.

0277 So what is citizen^Marat going to put in the content level of the society tier instead of citizen^regular?

How about institutions that depend on the sovereignty of citizen^Marat?

These institutions are collectively labeled “the party”.

0301 Taking these diagrams as interpretations, Lacan’s petit objet a correlates to the apparent element in the dyad of actuality.

0302 For the theory of the sublime body of the king, petit objet a consists of supplements adorning the mortal body of the king. 

The king does not show up like some unvetted carpenter at a temple.  No, the mortal body to the king is arrayed in fine robes, wearing a metal hat full of jewels.  Plus, advisors surround the king, concocting doxologies about the king’s glorious body.

0303 For the theory of the commodity fetish, petit objet a consists of price.

For any particular corporation, the sales price of what it produces will vary considerably, depending on the capricious perceptions of the buyers.

Entire markets may turn quickly.

To compensate, organizations advertise.

0304 What is advertising?

Advertising attempts to generate perceived value.  The advertising industry strives to induce the commodity fetish.

0305 Management, production and service are so indebted to the enhanced perception of perceived value that I have often heard engineers say, “The marketing department runs the business.”

0306 Here is one way to envision the role of advertising:

0307 Remember, an institution puts the organization tier into context.

Advertising puts a product marketed by a corporation into perspective.  It wraps the product in the mantle of righteousness.  It supplements the product with a purpose (object^organization).

0308 So, I return to petit objet a.  It is really is a subject, a thing that we can encounter.  Petit objet a is a subject (a piece of the Real) that supports an object.

0309 Lacan’s objet petit a corresponds to the mortal body of the king (in one theory) and price (in the other).  It is the apparent element in the dyad of actuality.

Actuality belongs to the category of secondness.  Secondness consists of two contiguous elements.  The appearance of one element is contiguous with the hidden presence of the other element.

0310 I hope this does not sound too much like Heidegger’s impression of Greek philosophy.

Here is how petit objet a looks in the current discussion:

0311 Price is the shocking piece of the Real that we encounter at market.  The market, then, exhibits a normal context of discipline.  

Market discipline is not the same as the discipline that contextualizes citizen^Marat.

0312 Market discipline is based on experience.  It contains rules, expressed in aphorisms such as “Let the buyer beware.”  It also implies control, especially self-control.

0313 Does the price reflect my perceived valuation?

The question itself turns the buyer’s attention away from the social machinations of the content-level and towards clues, influenced by advertising, that this commodity is supplemented with an organizational objective.

0314 What does this imply?

Humans value organizational objectives.

0315 An advertised organizational objective often answers the question, “What does this commodity mean to me?’

Plus, it addresses the question, “What does this commodity mean to everyone else?”

0316 So why does Santner bring up the word “debt” at the end of section 2.2?

0317 Clearly, the word “debt” means more than a financial arrangement similar to the one made between Shylock and Antonio in The Merchant of Venice.

0318 Is it more like the sigh of relief collectively released after Charlotte Corday plunged her once-concealed knifesuperior to the clavicle of the en-bath-ulated tyrant-to-be Jean-Paul Marat?

After all, she relieved the citizens^regular of Marat’s espousal of the organization objects belonging to his Friendship with the People, such as “murder the political opponents of the Jacobins”.  Unfortunately, Corday misjudged the importance of Marat.  He was just one of the contenders for regal citizenship.

0319 Is there a difference between the modern citizen^Marat and the late medieval and early modern royal personage?

So far, the answer to this question is not clear. 

But, the implications of the word “debt” becomes more obvious.

0320 Santner’s term, “debt”, derives from the acknowledgment of an organizational object as a situation-level value,supplementing the realness of the situating petit objet a.  This supplement enhances a fetish that benefits the content-level, providing it with a clear orientation and putting it in debt.

0321 For the late medieval and early modern world, doxologies to the sublime body of the king enhanced the subject’s self-perception as a participant in the kingdom.  They provided a site for organizing the active soul of the individual asa subject of the realm.

0322 Values virtually situate objects^org.  Organizational objects occupy the active soul, directly situating a potential for righteousness that moves the passive soul.

0323 Both Lacanian and Marxist terminology fit into the society-tier model of late medieval and early modern political theology.

0324 The same pattern fits the organization tier of the middle and late modern political economy.

0325 Two subtle questions now becomes a little more apparent.

0326 What is drawn upwards from debt into fetish?

What is drawn downwards from fetish into debt?

0327 The word “liturgy” combines the Greek words laos (people) and ergon (work).  The word translates into “public works”.  The word associates to an objective that brings people into organization.

0328 Thus, the sublime body of the king serves as a normal context for the regal values that virtually situate organizational objectives, bringing the individual into the organization of the kingdom (here on earth, rather than in heaven).

For this reason, the sublime body of the king calls for public works (that is, liturgies), extolling the potentials of both kingliness and order.  These public works treat the mortal body of the king like the well-dressed effigy that it may well be.

0329 Marx’s “fetish” has a lot in common with Freud’s “neurosis”.

The fetish neurotically attends to the apparent element that accompanies the hidden one.  For this reason, the fetish goes with both busy-ness (attending to literal appearances) and something else (attending to value perceptions).

0330 Giorgio Agamben insightfully characterizes the hidden element as glory, opening the door to an inquiry into the archaeology of (political) glory.

He raises the question: How are religious doxologies co-opted by political ones?

How are outward manifestations of political situations glorified?

0331 The fetish is a situation-level contiguity.

The situation-level puts the content-level in its place.  

For late medieval and early modern political theology, the fetish of a king’s mortal body puts the contiguity between an object^org and the (political) subject in debt.

A petit objet a (an index of kingliness) virtually situates an organizational object orienting the active soul of the subject.

Active soul [animates] body_2a becomes an organizational objective (inspired with indebtedness to the king) subject of the realm_2a.

Consider, for example, the custom of kissing the ring of the sovereign.

The ring is the petit objet a.  It is infused with regal value.

The ring reinforces an organizational object orienting the subject.  Kiss the ring.

This object^org is contiguous with the person as a subject of the realm.

This contiguity may be described using a variety of terms, such as inspiration, loyalty, duty and debt. 

0332 That is not all.

The readily apparent subject on the content level_2a emerges from and situates the possibilities inherent in joissance (here, the joy of being alive)_1a.

Joissance_1a, in turn, is virtually situated by the qualities of kingliness and order_1b.  These qualities_1b set the stage for a social form of surplus value_2b.

Consequently, the actuality of regal values [fetishizing] the king’s mortal body_2b generates something equivalent towhat Marx called “surplus value”.

This generation occurs in the society tier, suggesting that Marxism projects the operations of the society tier onto the organization tier.

0333 The feedback loop changes with time.

In the following diagram, history proceeds from top to bottom.

Only the content-level associations are shown.

0334 The nested forms represent religious theology, political theology and political economy, respectively.

0335 In political theology, the spirit of the individual standing before the king attends to the king’s personage (and the regal values that inform that personage).

With the Peace of Westphalia, the king also becomes the pastor of his nation (at least for the Northern Europeans).  The prince favors certain Christian factions over others.

0336 So what is an excluded Christian faction to do?

Many excluded Christian factions find joy in objects^org other than the objects^org of the sublime body of the king.  Directed by a spirit of rational expectations, typical of industry, these folks take the only sane path.  They make things that they can sell.

Thus, political economy overtook political theology.

The glory of the king passed into the glory of the fine commodities that the subjects produced.

0337 Here is how that looks in the 3-tier model:

0338 Indeed, the industriousness of the Protestants became their way of advertising.

0339 Few political theologians of the day saw what was coming.  

In the diagram, the reason is obvious.

The Protestant Ethic potentiates a new societal situation-level.  It supports a new authority, so to speak, which took Thomas Hobbes by surprise.  Hobbes published Leviathan in 1651, right around the time that the Puritans seized sovereign power and beheaded a mortal body that tried to live up to his regal values. 

The Leviathan is an extended and rational argument against the pope serving as spiritual sovereign over the temporal sovereign, the king.  Hobbes did not even mention the bloodthirsty Puritans.

Hobbes’ leviathan is depicted on the front cover of the original edition.  A giant human composed of small humanscarries a sword and a (bishop’s) staff, not a sowing machine and a ship.

0340 Oh, did I say “blood-thirsty”?  I meant to say “industrious”.

But then, can “industriousness” become an organizational object belonging to an institution capable of seizing sovereign power?

If so, then the institutions declaring industriousness to be righteous fit the definition of an infrasovereign religion.

An infrasovereign religion carries a capacity to grasp for sovereign power.

Sovereign power is empowered to spill blood.

0341 Let me look closely at this object^org.

Industrious labor (rather than self-sacrifice) glorifies the Creator.

0342 The message contains two contradicting actualities: work and faith.

By faith alone, I will be saved.  I must continually attend to my faith.  My faith justifies my righteous certitude.

At the same time, my work advertises my commitment to the glory of God.

0343 Do these two actualities contradict?

Do they combine into a single actuality?

The following intersection depicts the Puritan message.

A contradiction is presented as a single actuality: salvation.

0344 Salvation is a single actuality composed of two contradicting actualities, the business of faith and labor glorifying God.

The Protestant Ethic boasts certitude and industriousness.

The English Puritans at the time of Thomas Hobbes constituted an infrasovereign religion capable of contending for sovereign power.  They also developed the organization tier of the English economy by producing fine products that could be marketed.

0345 On one hand, Puritan leaders exhibited all the fervor of Jean-Paul Marat.

Indeed, their champion, Oliver Cromwell, prefigured Napoleon Bonaparte, as well as other tyrants.

The Puritan Revolution in England defines a phenomenon.

All varieties of mercantilism, fascism, communism and big-government (il)liberalism are constellations of infrasovereign religions.

As these constellations gain sovereign power, the nation tends towards tyranny.

0346 On the other hand, the English Puritans exhibited all the rationality of citizen^regular.

They were industrious and tolerant, in their own market-oriented way.  The Puritans blamed the sovereigns, rather than Christian factions, for the so-called “wars of religion”.

In many ways, they were correct.

0347 Aristocrats often manipulated Christian factions into openly fighting with one another.  They hoped to establish a need for order, which they were already prepared to supply.

Plus, factional conflicts justified looting the monasteries and taking their lands and property.

Little did the aristocrats know that they were next in line.

Remember the assignat in David’s painting, The Death of Marat?

0348 As Santner suggests, the subject matter of political economy includes some very un-economic (that is, political) subject matter.

In the Marxist-Freudian view, a fetish occupies the actuality of the situation levels of both the society and organization tiers of the West.

0349 A fetish connects expertise (as another term for citizen^Marat)_2bC with political objectives_2bC.

A fetish connects price_2bB with perceived value_2bB.

The apparent actualities of expertise and price are the sites of busy-ness and business, respectively.

0350 Now, I may wonder: Are the hidden actualities of political objectives and perceived value the sites of glory andadministration, respectively.

Or, is glory the same as administration?

0351 Consider this juxtaposition of three nested forms.  One is general.  The other two match the sovereign level of the society tier.

0352 Now, allow me to convert the dyadic actuality into a sign structure.

The structure of a sign goes like this: A sign vehicle stands for a sign object in regards to a sign interpretant.

0353 Take a look at the actualities in the above figure.

The apparent actualities are subjective.  The hidden actualities are objective. 

Thus, the dyad of actuality constitutes two elements of a triadic sign, the sign object and the sign vehicle.

The king’s mortal body stands for regal values according to a sign interpretant.

Citizen^Marat stands for political objectives according to a sign interpretant.

0354 The contiguity between the sign vehicle and the sign object is not the sign interpretant.  It is the referral making the sign interpretant possible.

0355 So, where is the sign interpretant?

Is it somewhere in the clouds of the perspective level?

Glory and administration hovers like incense above the king’s mortal body and citizen^Marat.

These spirits belong to the perspective level.

0356 The lecture continues. 

The words “policy” and “police” are both rooted in the word Greek word polis, meaning “city”.

I can describe a polis in terms of policy and policing.  But, these do not capture the splendor of the city.

0357 Cities are risky.

Every city is vulnerable.  Yet, most citizens proceed with confidence, reflecting the splendor of their city.  Policy makers may claim to have designed it.  Police may pretend to have kept it.  But, the foundation of confidence comes from a success that cannot be accounted for by policy makers or police.

0358 The confidence is aesthetic.

It is expressed in the liturgy of everyday life.

0359 Indeed, both policy makers and police may destroy the liturgy of the regular citizen.

They do so by usurpation.

What are they usurping?

0360 They are usurping the production of splendor.

But, what is splendor?

0361 Let me show a figure that has previously appeared.

0362 Policing runs horizontal.

The situation levels of all three tiers are subject to policing.

Each tier is vulnerable.

The police can break the discipline of citizens^Marat.  The police can undermine the contiguity between perceived value and price.  The police can force ideology into the reckonings and phantasms of everyday life.

0363 The citizens^Marat may use the police in order to regulate the organization tier and individual in community tiers.

Indeed, many of the political objectives that inform citizens^Marat attempt to alter perceived value by regulating prices.  They also teach myths about everyday stuff.

0364 Policy runs vertical.

The content level of the society tier is subject to policy.

Because the content level of the society tier contextualizes the organization and iic tiers, policy spills out into the entire 3-teir system.

In a democratic society, the citizens^regular supposedly validate the citizens^Marat through open and contested elections.

Is this the case?

The proof is in the pudding.

For example, turnover among elected officials in the United States of America, the home of big-government (il)liberalism, is remarkably low.  Most so-called “representatives” are career politicians.  Turnover in the non-elected federal administrative state is even lower.

0365 Consider Western society from 1945 on.

During this period, political objectives are increasingly determined by citizen^Marat, rather than citizen^regular.  The situation level of the society tier becomes more impressive, more splendid, while the content level falls into line.

Citizens^regular lose the capacity to participate with a rational spirit.

Will big government liberalism forgo democracy once the administrative state can survive without the approval of its citizens^regular?

Or will it rely on democracy to achieve its objectives?

What puts citizen^Marat into perspective?

Look at the painting The Death of Marat.

What is that blank space above citizen^Marat?

0366 Giorgio Agamben’s genealogy of economy and government supports Foucault’s conclusion: 

The modern person supplements and supplants medieval sovereignty with “govern-mentality” (that is, management of the political economy).

0367 Agamben claims that the Christian elaboration of the Trinity as a description of God is key.

Early Church writers transubstantiated the Greek term for “household”, oikos, into an image for the “oik”-onomy of God.  Later, Gnostic interpretation brought the term, “economy”, from heaven to earth.

0368 The latter transition may be phrased as a question: If Jesus is king, then who is sitting on the throne in yon castle?

The theological difference between general and special providence split into a host of late medieval and early modern distinctions.  Politics went with words “law”, “constituted power”, and “legal”.  Economics went with “order”, “constituent power” and “legitimate”.

0369 One irony of God’s Entrance into the Continuum of Time is that God does not want glory.

God wants flow.  Divine grace flows into human nature just like water fills an artisanal spring.

Grace (the hidden) and human nature (the apparent) are contiguous.

The contiguity is flowing in.

Grace [inflows] nature.

0370 Jesus is God’s Entrance into the Continuum of Time.

Early Christians addressed many questions. 

What happened?  How did this come to be?  How did time itself become divided by the presence of God?  Isn’t God outside of time?  How could a mortal being order the continuum of time?

Christians did not go about glorifying the One True (Time-Ordering) God as a public work.  They did so as a way to get in tune with one another.

If anyone heard Christians singing their doxologies, they could call Roman soldiers to break up the meeting.

0371 Yet, there is always the matter of advertising.

Doxologies to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit eventually translated into the political fetish_2bC, the commodity fetish_2bB, as well as the me-too fetish_2bA.

0372 Indeed, the story that Santner and Agamben tell begins when the kings of the fledgling realms of Europe began to ask, “What about me?”

Thus, the glorification of the One True (Time-Ordering) God was taken out of its theological box and fashioned into goofy theories like the king’s dual body.

The royal values imbuing the mortal body of the king were glorious.

0373 The transfer of glory from God to king fits the sovereign level of the society tier.

0374 The question that I have to ask is this:  Why would the One True (Time-Ordering) God need praise and glorification?

Surely, it is not to shore up His Sovereign Power through habituation.

0375 Maybe it is keep us on shore through habituation.  Otherwise we could be lost at sea.

The Church performs liturgy in order to remind herself of something the angels already know and do.

0376 Angels unite thought and action without contradiction.  In doing so, they think-do good and evil.

0377 For humans, the unity of thought and action is full of contradictions.

In fact, the unity goes under the label: good and evil.

0378 There are two actualities to good and evil: thinking and doing.

Since they contradict, their nested forms cannot hierarchically order themselves.  They do not interscope.  Instead, they intersect.  Two actualities combine into one.

0379 This is the basic intersection for the message that underlies the word “religion”.

0380 What does this imply?

Liturgy, to humans, habituates what angels already think-do.

0381 Santner mentions a 1935 book that Agamben found inspiring.

Eric Peterson’s Book of Angels: Their Meaning and Place in the Liturgy puts it simply: The hymnic glorification of Godconstitutes the very being of angels.

0382 To me, this implies that an angel goes with a liturgical office, occupying the normal context of the situation level of the society tier, just like the glorious body of the king.

An angel sings words about God, praising His laws, His actions, and His decrees, just as the mortal body of the king expresses the embodiment of noble values.

Finally, the angel, contrary to the strange bureaucratic characters in Kafka’s stories, emerges from the potential of ‘something to announce’.

0383 The angel is a messenger, emerging from and situating the potential of a message, just as the mortal body of the king actualizes the potential of kingliness.  

0384 That makes me wonder.

Is kingliness like a message?

0385 Here is how this looks as a diagram.

0386 The Greek word doxa means “glory”.

Christians perform doxologies in imitation of the angels.

Angels perform their songs of praise with felicity.

I don’t think that they even need practice.

0387 In contrast, doxologies habituate humans into the cognitive space potentiated by Jesus, the Messiah.

0388 God is One Household (or Oikos).

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three persons in One Oikos.

0389 One Oikos describes the potential underlying three divine manifestations within the Abrahamic and Pauline traditions: Yahweh, Jesus and the Spirit.

Three Persons are in One God.

0390 What is the doctrine of the Trinity?

Three Persons are in One Household?

0391 In order to appreciate this doctrine, I first re-present the basic interscope of the society tier.

0392 Consider the suprasovereign level.

The normal context is assume.

0393 The word “assume” has two referents.

One, the common use of the term is to take for granted.

Thomas Hobbes described Christian doctrine as a pill not to be chewed.  It is to be swallowed whole.

Two, the technical and religious use of the term means to take up into heaven.

For example, in Genesis, Enoch was taken into heaven.  In the Catholic tradition, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was assumed.

0394 These two uses do not exclude one another.

What does this imply?

There are nuances to the word assume.

So, there may be more than one model for a single suprasovereign religion.

However, these models cannot exclude one another.

Or, can they?

0395 The actuality of a suprasovereign religion is a relational object.

0396 Object^relation emerges from and situates the potential of bringing all into relation.

0397 Now, let me present one Christian model for the society tier.  Remember, this is not the only model.  This is a doxological model.

Look down the category of firstness.  The Trinity is the One, True God.

To me, that sounds like a line that could come from angelic voices.

0398 The Trinity manifests the all the elements of a suprasovereign religion.

The Holy Spirit brings the contiguity between the Father and the Son into relation with the possibilities inherent in the unity of The One House of God.  

0399 What is this contiguity between the hidden actuality of the Father and the witnessed actuality of the Son?

The contiguity is Real, therefore to name it reduces the contiguity to one of its facets.

0400 If the contiguity is begetting, the names are Father and Son.  If the contiguity is speaking, the names are The One Who Speaks and The Spoken Word.  If the contiguity is hand talk, the names are The Gesturer and The One Who Embodies the Gesture.  If the contiguity is creation, the names are The Creator and The One Who Embodies Creation.

0401 The divine names tell of a dyad of persons belong to secondness.

0402 The Holy Spirit is the Person defining the Contiguity.

0403 The names of the contiguities must be compatible with the Holy Spirit, else they are excluded.

The names of the contiguities virtually contextualize the divine values extolled by the angels.

0404 From the examples above, the angels sing praises to the divine potency, the divine voice, the divine gesture, and the divine creation.

Each lifts up one facet of the Contiguity between the Hidden and the Apparent Persons of God.

0405 On the situation level, the angelic officers gaze up to God.

The angels proclaim the divine attributes of God in word and song.

Each acclamation delivers a message.

0406 Christian doxologies bear witness to God Entering Time Itself.

0407 In the realm of potential, angelic messages_1b virtually situate righteousness_1b for the human being, the creature belonging to the content level of this model of the society tier.  

Furthermore, angelic messages are virtually contextualized by The One House of God.

0408 On the content level, the person hears sacred words and songs (the doxologies of the angels) and looks up, through the angels, into the clouds of divine unknowing.

0409 Within those clouds, the Holy Spirit virtually excludes, from the One House of the God, those angelic officers who re-interpret divine values.  They are cast into darkness.

0410 Fallen angels bear false messages.  Humans can pick up these little gems.  The gems turn into the righteousness of gods who are neither one nor true.  How captivating.

Then, humans situate these gems as organizational objectives.  The captivated humans paint over the One True God.  They may exploit some facet of the Contiguity between the Hidden and Apparent Persons of God.  But, they fail to recognize the entire divine relation.

0411 Is this how Jesus is King became Henry VIII is King?

Was Henry VIII Jesus with a sword and bishop’s staff, both weapons of sovereign power?

I love rhetorical questions.