East Asian History - ANU

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER15through an incorporated grasp of the overall terrain and the distribution offorces within it. Under these conditions, the acknowledgment of preeminenceis less a matter of rigorously maintained postures of deference thanan unspoken enactment of authority relations, in which there is a constantstruggle to maintain order. Sovereignty, even in its most codified andrigorously restricted definitions in juridical and political theory, depends onthis overall order of power, and on the technologies of comportment,recognition and judgment together with the awareness of space and timewhich constitute it 41The European formulation of sovereignty as a doctrine, an abstract anduniversal principle of legitimate governance, a problem of the sovereign willand its limits, was itself a manoeuvre in the field of sovereignty struggles. Thenotion of a permanent principle of government produces a more profoundand complete co-ordination of the conduct of those engaged in authoritystruggles, whose strategies henceforth cohere around a single stake: that ofpolitical power explicitly defined as sovereignty. The theory of sovereigntyis but one (historically specific) element of the practices of sovereignty. Theexercise of sovereignty, even in the narrow sense assigned to it in constitutionallaw and political philosophy, is a matter of sovereignty events and sovereigntyrelationships, political happenings and engagements that go far beyond thesphere of prohibitions and rights.Thus the ceremonies of the court, the details of the imperial diet andclothing, royal entertainments and pastimes, the animals in the emperor'sstables, parks, aviaries, kennels, mews and pasturelands, the perfumesscenting his chambers, and the brushes, ink, pictures and books in his studyare not a "superstructure" or a "representation" of sovereignty (and thus asource of legitimacy, i.e. an ideological device deSigned to generateacceptance of "power" through "belief")' Rather they are part of a practiceof sovereignty; they are inseparable from other domains of governance,which relate to the command of subordinates and of territory. Moreover, itis a domain of strategic relations in which the emperor is not simply a bodyamongst things, but a life politically engaged with other lives, and with thethings that sustain them. This engagement is not restricted to humans(ministers, eunuchs, palace women, servants, military men, tax collectorsetc.) but also includes other animate beings and inanimate objects.Alternatively, goshawks could be thought to have a profound kinshipwith a politics founded on seizure and death as principal modalities of power.Their co-optation by political interests might be interpreted as part of atheatrical and violent mode of governance, in which the vengeance of thewrathful king was a central theme:The sovereign exercised his right of life only by exercising his right to kill,or by refraining from killing; he evidenced his power over life through thedeath he was capable of requiring. The right which was formulated as the'power of life and death' was in reality the right to take life or let live. Itssymbol, after all, was the sword. Perhaps this juridical form must be referred41 These definitional struggles were indivisiblefrom a series of physical powers andtechniques of command and punishmentthat enacted themselves directly on bodies,those of the king and those of his subjects.Without these powers, which ranged fromthe art of royal comportment to the practicesof judicial interrogation, sovereignty had noreality.