The architecture of authoritarian luxury

Featherstone, Mark

Abstract

Mark Featherstone In his Origin of German Tragic Drama (2009) , Walter Benjamin reflects upon the condition of tyranny in early modern German drama. The king sits uncomfortably upon his throne. The world is a maelstrom of events, and he is crippled by indecision. As his grip on power slips away, his sovereignty becomes an unbearable weight. Under these conditions, his palace, his luxurious seat of power, starts to feel like a prison. Paradoxically, he responds to incarceration by retreating further and further into his castle until there is nowhere else to hide, and he must confront the reality of his kingship. His palace, the architectural representation of his power, is a crumbling ruin, and he is a nobody. He is the same as everybody else. Now the splendor and grandeur of his office, which he once somehow believed came from within him and separated him from others, collapses onto...

Citation

Featherstone, M. The architecture of authoritarian luxury. In The Third Realm of Luxury (47-66). Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350062801.0007

• Online Publication Date: Oct 24, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jun 7, 2023
• Pages: 47-66
• Book Title: The Third Realm of Luxury
• Chapter Number: 3
• ISBN: 978-1-3500-6277-1
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350062801.0007
• Publisher URL: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/the-third-realm-of-luxury-connecting-real-places-and-imaginary-spaces/ch3-the-architecture-of-authoritarian-luxury