Modern political authority is never present, only represented as standing apart

Evidence

These abstractions were no more than effects, and yet the very possibility and power of such effects was something new. They were created by the techniques that now divided the world into its two realms, the realm of mere things and the realm of order. The realm of order, of what was signified, was the new realm of authority, of the certainty of political power. Such political authority presides, as what is seemingly prior and superior. And yet it presides without ever quite being present. In the white mythology, it is that which stands apart from the world itself, as the meaning that things themselves represent. This political method is the essence of the modern state, of the world-as-exhibition. The certainty of the political order is to be everywhere on exhibit, yet nowhere quite accessible, never quite touchable. Like reality at the world exhibition, the world’s political truths are never presented, they are only ever represented. But we remain certain they exist – outside. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 553

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Baudrillard’s hyperreality and the world-as-exhibition theme in Mitchell’s earlier chapters; also resonates with Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. — connects to: A head of state governs only as a simulacrum of himself — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 95
• SEED: Could feed an essay on how modern states generate legitimacy through the perpetual deferral of ‘the real’ — representation without presence, exhibitionism without access.