Digital Mind 🧠

🪵 The Threshold

Ritualized death faded because death escaped sovereign power's reach

Properties2
tagsja-picks, xref, causal_relationships, trade, singleton, category/causal-relationships
aliases@foucault_society_1997, loc. 262

2 min read

Ritualized death faded because death escaped sovereign power’s reach

Evidence

Now I think that the reason why death had become something to be hidden away is not that anxiety has somehow been displaced or that repressive mechanisms have been modified. What once (and until the end of the eighteenth century) made death so spectacular and ritualized it so much was the fact that it was a manifestation of a transition from one power to another. Death was the moment when we made the transition from one power—that of the sovereign of this world—to another—that of the sovereign of the next world. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 262

Categorization

  • XREF: Explains the famous ‘death is the most private thing’ claim — a touchstone for later biopolitics-of-death readings in the module. — connects to: In sovereign narratives, emancipation and killing are bound to truth and death — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 56; Nineteenth-century power added ‘make live and let die’ alongside sovereign right to kill — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 256; Sovereign power makes the subject’s very life and death depend on its will — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 255 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

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