Eric Santner (Chicago): The Weight of All Flesh

Eric L. Santners new book The Weight of All Flesh. On the Subject-Matter of Political Economy (with commentaries by Bonnie Honig, Peter Eli Gordon, Hent de Vries, ed. by Kevis Goodman, Berkeley Tanner lectures 10, OUP 2016)  offers a new interpretation of Marx's critique of political economy by situating its object in genealogical proximity to the political theology of sovereignty. It presents a new argument about the limits of secularization and links Freud's understanding of the drive to Marx's understanding of value-producing labor to develop a new take on forms and experiences of embodied subjectivity in modern capitalist societies.

Introductory talk by Eric L. Santner (Chicago): "On the Subject-Matter of Political Economy", responses by Daniel Weidner (ZfL): "The Reincarnation of Political Theology. Santner and the Return of Flesh," and Gal Hertz (ZfL): "From Grotesque Ambiguities to the Manageable Sublime. Reading Santner with Auerbach."

About the author

Eric L. Santner is the Philip and Ida Romberg Distinguished Service Professor in Modern Germanic Studies, Professor of Germanic Studies, Committee on Jewish Studies, and the College and Chair of the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago.
Santner's Website at the University of Chicago