Abstract
In this chapter I try to explain why the nation, its unity and democratic legitimacy at a certain moment in history had to become visible, tangible, and more generally perceivable. There were indeed paradigmatic moments in which the nation was conceptualized, embodied and given sensory expression and it is to those events that this chapter refers, while trying to link the mediating power of aesthetics, the interrelation between sensible and intellectual knowledge, and the historicity of the single event and its exemplarity.
Images apparently occupy a curious position
somewhere between the statements of language,
which are intended to convey a meaning,
and the things of nature,
to which we only can give a meaning.
—Gombrich, Ernst, Hans, Jospeh. 1972. Introduction: Aims and Limits of Iconology, in Symbolic Images. Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, London: Phaidon Press, 2.
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Notes
- 1.
The philosophical possibility of existence of the nation state is essentially connected to its social production through linguistic operations. As John Searle repeatedly underlines in his work, recalling Austin’s theory of speech acts, when talking about institutions such as the state we are talking about the mode of existence of social objects such as the United States of America, the San Francisco Forty Niners football team, the University of California and the Squaw Valley Property Owners Association, as well as of such large-scale institutions as money or private property. Social facts, social objects, social processes and events, like citizenship, the value of a twenty-dollar bill, etc. - all these are the product of declarations and of an agreement on their status and on their functions. Searle develops these theories in various articles and monographs, among which in particular see Searle, John, Rogers. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: The Free Press and Searle, John, Rogers. 2010. Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- 2.
Deriving from the Greek statòs and the Latin status, the terms means the absence of movement: stability and a certain equilibrium.
- 3.
Schmitt, Carl. 1996 (1927). The Concept of the Political, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 19 and following.
- 4.
From now on when I use the term ‘mediation’ I refer to this idea of an aesthetic mediation.
- 5.
Schmitt, Carl. 1996 (1927). The Concept of the Political, Chicago: Chicago University Press, p.34.
- 6.
“Authority not truth makes the law”.
- 7.
Schmitt, Carl. 2009 (1956). Hamlet or Hecuba. The Intrusion of the Time into the Play, Candor: Telos Press.
- 8.
Goodrich, Peter. 2013. Devising Law. On the Philosophy of Legal Emblems. New York Law School Law Review 133 (57): 138–139.
- 9.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2015. Stasis. La Guerra Civile Come Paradigma Politico, Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Stasis: Civil War as a Political Paradigm. 2015. Edinburgh University Press.
- 10.
Hobbes, Thomas. 1998 (1642). De Cive, Cambridge-New York, Cambridge University Press, 12, 8.
- 11.
Kant, Immanuel. 1998 (1797). Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Ak VI: 479.
- 12.
Locke, John, Essay on Human Understanding, 1689, IV.vii.9.
- 13.
When Discussing the Two Perspectives on History, I Mainly Refer to Ginzburg, Carlo. 1993. Microhistory: Two or Three Things that I Know About It. Critical Inquiry 20 (1):10–35. and to Ginzburg, Carlo, 1980 (1976). the Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller, Baltimore: the Johns Hopkins University Press.
- 14.
Benjamin, Walter. 2009 (1940). On The Concept of History. Theses on the Philosophy of History, in CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
- 15.
According to what Stefan Huygebaert writes in his chapter, not only do images re-produce a meaningful moment, but - through the reproduction - they actually “produce” it anew. We did not know the moment in that way before that specific reproduction.
- 16.
In The Structures of Everyday Life, Fernand Braudel gives his purpose as introducing everyday life into the domain of history: see Braudel, Fernand. 1981. The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism, New York: Harper and Row.
- 17.
Braudel, Fernand, 1981, ibidem.
- 18.
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1989 (1986). Clues. Roots of an Evidential Paradigm. In Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
- 19.
Wind, Edgar. 1985. Art and Anarchy. Noyes: Northwestern University Press, 38.
- 20.
Ginzburg, ibidem, 101 and following.
- 21.
Ginzburg, ibidem, 103.
- 22.
The connection between meaning and necessity has been a central issue in philosophy of language since the publication of Rudolph Carnap’s Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Logic (University of Chicago Press, 1947). Another fundamental contribution in the field is Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (Harvard University Press, 1980).
- 23.
Summers, David. 1991. Real Metaphor. In Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation, eds. Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey, 231–259. New York: Harper Collins.
References
Agamben, Giorgio. 2015. Stasis. La guerra civile come paradigma politico. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
Baumgarten. 1986. Alexander Gottlieb, Aesthetica, 1750.
Benjamin, Walter. 2009 (1940). On the concept of history. Theses on the Philosophy of History, in CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Braudel, Fernand. 1981. The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism. New York: Harper and Row.
Carnap, Rudolph. 1947. Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1980 (1976). The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1989 (1986). Clues. Roots of an evidential paradigm. In Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1993. Microhistory: Two or three things that i know about it. Critical Inquiry 20 (1): 10–35.
Goodrich, Peter. 2013. Devising law. On the philosophy of legal emblems. New York Law School Law Review 133 (57): 138–139.
Gombrich, Ernst, and Joseph Hans. 1972. Introduction: Aims and limits of iconology. In Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, ed. Symbolic Images. London: Phaidon Press.
Hobbes, Thomas. 1998 (1642). De Cive, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1998 (1797). Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kripke, Saul. 1980. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Locke, John, 1689, Essay on Human Understanding.
Schmitt, Carl. 1996 (1927). The Concept of the Political, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Schmitt, Carl. 2009 (1956). Hamlet or Ecuba. The Intrusion of the Time into the Play, Candor: Telos Press.
Searle, John Rogers. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: The Free Press.
Searle, John Rogers. 2010. Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Summers, David. 1991. Real metaphor. In Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation, ed. N. Bryson, M. A. Holly, and K. Moxey, 231–259. New York: Harper Collins.
Wind, Edgar. 1985. Art and Anarchy. Noyes: Northwestern University Press.
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Condello, A. (2018). Aesthetic Mediation: Towards Legitimate Power. In: Huygebaert, S., Condello, A., Marusek, S., Antaki, M. (eds) Sensing the Nation's Law. Studies in the History of Law and Justice, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75497-0_11
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