In The World Interior Of Capital – Peter Sloterdijk

Even the atrocities of the Spanish conquistadors in Central and South America were metastases of loyalty to their native majesties, who could be represented by extraordinary means. The title of vice-king thus has more than simply legal and protocol significance; it is also a category that sees to the very psychopolitical heart of the Conquista. The books of the vice-kings have yet to be written. It is because of them that the European kings were present always and everywhere in the outer expansions of the Old World, despite never visiting their colonies themselves.1 The conquistadors and princes’ pirates collected their spoils under imaginary majestic canopies – and whatever part of it they transferred home was appropriated by the treasurers of their kings like a wild tax.

In these happy days of globalization, the riches from across the ocean proved that the wide world followed no other destiny than to owe tribute to the European houses. In a sense, this is also true of the spiritual king of kings, the pope, who, as the wearer of the three-tiered crown, wanted to expand his throne into a hyper-majesty for the entire globe.

For it was his elite troops – the Jesuits, who were pledged to him with their fourth oath as the commander of martial Catholicism – who covered the globe with a net of prayers for the pope and considerations for Rome: an Internet of fervent obedience formed by distant devotees of the centre. This was the model for the worldwide operations of today’s telecommunications companies; the long-distance call was prefigured by the long-distance prayer for the pope.

The Jesuits were the prototypical news group, communicating via their organization- specific network. The other missionary orders – Franciscans, Dominicans, Theatines, Augustinians, Conceptionists, Clarists of the first and fifth rules, Hieronymites, canonesses, Barefoot Carmelites and many others – were likewise committed through their Rome connection to the project of procuring successes for the spiritual Conquista. It was their ambition to spread a papally supervised commonwealth over all the earth’s continents.

Only in the twentieth century did the pope have the mass-medially correct idea of travelling to the provinces of his moral empire as the ambassador of his own state. This marked Catholicism’s transition into undisguised telematic charismocracy: the Roman path to modernity. In keeping with the laws of metaphysical communication in large- scale social bodies, however, Catholic telecommunication before the age of actual papal presence could still not dispense entirely with magical-telepathic mechanisms.

First published in German as Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals © Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 2005 This English edition © Polity Press, 2013 Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4768-5 ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4769-2 (pb) ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-9473-3 (epub) ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-9380-4 (mobi) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press.

However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com OceanofPDF.com In memoriam Siegfried Unseld OceanofPDF.com First Part On the Emergence of the World System …

and the pirate globe drifts in the stormy ether. Henri Michaux, Inexpressible Places OceanofPDF.com 1 Of Grand Narratives The present essay is devoted to an undertaking of which it is unclear whether one should call it untimely or impossible. In recapitulating the history of terrestrial globalization, it seeks to provide outlines for a theory of the present using the means of a philosophically inspired grand narrative. Whoever finds this ambition outlandish should consider that while it is certainly provocative to assert it, it would be an act of intellectual defeatism to abandon it.

Philosophical thought has always tried to tell us who we are and what we should do; for over two hundred years, this has also included information about how to date ourselves in ‘history’. The penetration of the philosophical thought of Old Europe by time, however, has so far caused only a partial revision of the body of tradition. Now that the era of one-sided time-idolization seems to have ended, however, the lived space is also demanding its due.

Kant, at least, already knew that reason itself had its model in spatial orientation.1 Whoever follows this clue far enough s

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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