期刊名称：Cultural Logic : an Electronic Journal of Marxist Theory and Practice
电子版ISSN：1097-3087
出版年度：2007
出版社：Department of English and Foreign Languages
摘要：This paper is part of a larger, book-length study on two apparently unrelated concepts, sovereignty and labor, whose link must be temporarily, that is, analytically, established and then dissolved in a new synthesis, the reduction of the former to the latter. To be sure, a proper understanding of the problem investing sovereignty and labor can only be acquired through an analysis which includes a history, cursory though it might be, of the concept of sovereignty from Jean Bodin to Carl Schmitt, as well as aspects of the juridical critique of the concept of sovereignty. This I will endeavor to provide in the larger study I mentioned above. In the present paper, I will limit myself to the philosophical critique of the concept of sovereignty made by Jacques Maritain, but I will include several references to Schmitt. I will also deal with the special use that Georges Bataille makes of the concept of sovereignty. This is important because it is here that the link between sovereignty and labor becomes visible. My critique of Bataille, which in part relies on Maritain’s conceptual framework, seeks to show that the concept of sovereignty is untenable even in the unorthodox form presented by Bataille himself and to establish the ontology of labor as the only criterion, the only site, for an alternative way of thinking, not simply about democracy, but about common life.
