TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...

Caesar‖ is an obvious case in point. It seemed obvious enough to Benjamin to argue that
if Julius Caesar could rewrite the Oedipal myth, basing it in the lived experience of his
age, then the substance of Julius Caesar‘s own story must have necessarily been different
in kind – making it susceptible to Shakespeare‘s rendition as trauerspiel. The play of
experience and blindness incorporate to the aesthetic education of kings was coupled, in
the baroque, by a concomitant change in the cultural expectations that that monarch
would use to attend his office.
―The sovereign is the representative of history. He holds the course of history in
his hand like a scepter‖ (OGT 65). A new concept of sovereignty emerged in the
seventeenth century, as a king‘s power became thinkable as an extension of his being the
agent and creator of myth and not its direct and inalienable subject. This new concept
descended from juridical discussions about kings in the middle-ages; the focal point was
the spectacle of tyrranicide. Murderous usurpers posed the ultimate problem to Baroque
political thought. Who had the authority to depose them? The Gallican articles of 1682
changed the Church‘s neutrality, arguing that the absolute right of the monarch had been
established before their curia and therefore held no sway over its decisions. The Gallican
articles produced a reversal in the Church‘s concept of kingship. Rather than being the
person endowed with autonomous power, the King becomes he who acts in accordance
with the needs of the state to avoid unnecessary emergency:
Whereas the modern concept of sovereignty amounts to a supreme
executive power on the part of the prince, the baroque concept
emerges from a discussion of the prince to avert this. The ruler is
designated from the outset as the holder of dictatorial power if war,
revolt, or other catastrophes should lead to a state of emergency.
(65)
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