Modern writing’s mechanical clarity produced an unproblematic mechanical political authority

Evidence

The new mode of writing and communication made the re-presenting of an author’s meaning appear an essentially unproblematic mechanical process. The unproblematic presence of an author in writing would now correspond, in all the other realms of ordering that characterise the world-as-exhibition, to the production of an essentially unproblematic and mechanical presence of authority in political life. … This political authority, produced in the modern state the way a modern text produces the unambiguous effect of an author, would appear continuously and mechanically present. At the same time, like an author’s meaning, this authority would somehow stand mysteriously apart. Just as meaning does not exist in the ‘material’ of the words themselves, but seems to belong to a separate mental or conceptual realm that words only ever re-present, political authority would now exist apart as something metaphysical, which in the material world is only ever re-presented. Authority would become something both mechanical and mysterious: as certain and straightforward as the process of meaning, and equally metaphysical. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 482 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Some time ago, looking at what one can only call the deconstructive deluge (as opposed to deconstructive turn) which had overtaken American literary studies, in its formalist mode, I tried to distinguish the extremely important theoretical and intellectual work which it had made possible in Cultural Studies from a mere repetition, a sort of mimicry or deconstructive ventriloquism which sometimes passes as a serious intellectual exercise. My fear at that moment was that if Cultural Studies gained an equivalent institutionalization in the American context, it would, in rather the same way, formalize out of existence the critical questions of power, history, and politics. Paradoxically, what I mean by theoretical fluency is exactly the reverse. There is no moment now, in American Cultural Studies, where we are not able, extensively and without end, to theorize power—politics, race, class, and gender, subjugation, domination, exclusion, marginality, Otherness, etc. There is hardly anything in Cultural Studies which isn’t so theorized. And yet, there is the nagging doubt that this overwhelming textualization of Cultural Studies’ own discourses somehow constitutes power and politics as exclusively matters of language and textuality itself. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 258 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Seemingly neutral mechanical communication introduced a modern political metaphysics; Writing’s material-mental split parallels how modern state authority was conceived — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 87; Modern political authority mirrors the unproblematic, mechanical presence of an author in written texts. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 482 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Modern political authority mirrors the unproblematic, mechanical presence of an author in written texts. #corroborates (0.95) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 482
• Over-theorizing power as textuality can empty it of real political meaning #complicates (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 258