Power, Representation, Imagination. Jacques Lezra’s Wild Republicanism Before the Phantasm of Sovereignty
Abstract
Taking as its point of departure the coimplication J. Lezra identifies between strong institutions and the psychic-political production of a phantasmatic sovereign self, this essay explores the link between sovereign power, representation, and imagination. To this end, it suggests and analyzes some intersections between Lezra’s and L. Marin’s works. In doing so, it purports to show how Lezra’s wild republicanism swerves off the discursive line of the metaphysics of subjectivity as well as of traditional political theories of sovereign representation ranging from contractualism to political-theology. Finally, it proposes that Lezra’s political inscription of the aleatory and transient dimensions of matter –in line with what Louis Althusser called “underground current of the materialism of the encounter”– as well as his identification of terror at the very heart of the modern republic, transform what we understand by democratic republicanism, both conceptually and institutionally, precisely by contesting the capture of imagination by sovereignty and representation.
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