M & D Deep Duck Misc.

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

On 10.01.2015 16:30, Monte Davis wrote:

> >hints, verbal whiffs
>
> I finished Empire of Necessity, and Benito Cerreno -- the (white) 
> Spanish "captain" whose rebellious slaves actually command the ship -- 
> will henceforward be closer in my mind to Weissmann/Blicero than ever
>

That's interesting because Carl Schmitt identified himself with Benito 
Cereno strongly.

     > Ich bin der letzte, bewußte Vertreter des /jus publicum/
    /Europaeum/ [...] und erfahre sein Ende so, wie Benito
    Cereno die Fahrt des Piratenschiffs erfuhr.

         (Carl Schmitt, /Ex Captivitate Salus/ 75)

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), specialist, as he tells us in the epigraph, in 
public and constitutional law, remains the most controversial figure in 
the history of German legal scholarship, and one of the few right-wing 
intellectuals to continue attracting interest from a variety of 
political spectra (Müller 272). He is also the most literary political 
thinker of the twentieth century, one who allowed myth and fiction to 
shape his ideas about law to create a unique "political theology," or, 
to use Ellen Kennedy's term, a "political expressionism" ("Politischer 
Expressionismus" 233–51). Kennedy has also suggested, controversially, 
that Schmitt's thought had a far-reaching influence on the theory of the 
Frankfurt School ("Carl Schmitt"). Nikolaus Müller-Scholl suggests that 
several early plays by Bertolt Brecht were meant to exhibit the aporia 
of state order that Schmitt theorized and that led to Nazi 
totalitarianism (supported by Schmitt at least through 1936) as its 
answer. Together with his friend Ernst Jünger, Schmitt read the American 
authors Herman Melville and Edgar Allen Poe as prophets of the global 
situation of World War II and of the postwar period, including, as the 
epigraph points out, the waning of the epoch of national sovereignty. 
Schmitt's student Armin Mohler claims that Schmitt cited Herman 
Melville's novella "Benito Cereno" more than any other work of world 
literature. Mohler states further that the title character of the 
novella "hat C. S. aufs intensivste beschäftigt" (Mohler and Schmitt 153 
n. 74). Two paradoxes accompany these facts: the first is that Schmitt, 
a German nationalist, would use an American piece as his personal motto; 
the second is that, despite his fascination for the story, Schmitt never 
published a complete essay on the novella, as he did on Theodor 
Däubler's /Nordlicht/, Shakespeare's /Hamlet/, and other works. 
Schmitt's reading of "Benito Cereno," or, more accurately, his use of 
"Benito Cereno" as a political and legal allegory and as a persona, does 
not find incorporation into a single treatise, but rather emerges 
indirectly from a series of reflections and diary entries and as an 
influence on Schmitt's treatment of the law of the sea. <


http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/seminar_a_journal_of_germanic_studies/v042/42.2beebee.pdf


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20150111/6a08a0f3/attachment.html>