Sovereign Excess Legitimacy and Resistance

<p>When talking about his film <em>Salò</em> Pasolini claimed that nothing is more anarchic than power because power does whatever it wants and what power wants is totally arbitrary. And yet upon examining the murderous capital of modern sovereignty the fragility emerges of a power whose existence depends on its victims' recognition. Like a prayer from God the command implores to be loved also by those whom it puts to death. Benefitting from this political theurgy as the book calls it (the idea that a power like God claiming to be full of glory constantly needs to be glorified) is Barnardine the Bohemian murderer in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure as he called upon by power to the gallows answers with a curse: 'a pox o' your throats'. </p><p></p><p>He does not want to die nor indeed will he. And so he becomes sovereign. On a level with and against the State.</p>