Political despotism’s emergence required inventing the apathetic resigned subject to match it

Evidence

Yet this inventive gesture was structurally linked to another no less potent, if perhaps less visible invention: the “apathy” and the “faithful resignation” of the despot’s subjects. What emerged at this momentous historical point in the writings ofMontesquieu and others was also the invention of absolute subjection, its rapid and unceasing translation, “a quickly alternating attraction toward, and repulsion from, the same object” (as Kant describes the sublime), religion and politics as the conflictual union of incomparables. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 618

Categorization

• QUESTION: Anidjar claims subjection itself was an ‘invention’ paired with despotism — worth chasing what evidence supports this and when subjection was understood differently before.
• XREF: Parallels the ‘invention of traditions’ literature and Foucault’s genealogy of the subject, and echoes Milgrom on institutions being invented rather than emergent.