EVENT DETAILS

Raz Chen on Allegory, Mathematics, and Sovereignty: The Melancholic Prince Revisited

Group for the Study of Early Cultures
Lunchtime Lecture Series

Allegory, Mathematics, and Sovereignty: The Melancholic Prince Revisited

Raz Chen
Science, Technology and Society Program
Bar-Ilan University

In Giorgio Agamben’s recent analysis of Political-Theology, he points to a radical disjunction at the core of the notion of sovereignty between Glory and Government. Shakespeare’s Tempest explores this tension in its early modern form, adding to Agamben’s formulation the element of the prince’s search for sublime knowledge as a crucial formative force of the crown’s glory, differentiating it from practical knowledge needed for governing. The prince’s glory is dependent on his melancholic detachment from the world and on the figure of the prince becoming an allegorical trace of transcendental kingship. As the play evolves and Prospero’s phantasmagoria is played out, a new form of knowledge is generated, one that does not implicate the persona of the prince, but only indirectly represents his bureaucratic power. This new form of knowledge emerges in the New Science of Kepler, Galileo and Descartes where in re-interpreting magic, they also reform the notion of sovereignty overcoming its inherent melancholy.

Please rsvp to Lyle Massey: lmassey@uci.edu

Made possible by the Humanities Center and supported by w/Shakespeare, a Multi-Campus Research Group.