Political power and magic

ABSTRACT

This paper considers how magic power – as a political resource, and as a metaphor for political power – is implicated in current and past thought about sovereignty and domination. Shakespeare’s treatments of politics, magic, sovereignty and domination are an illuminating source, relating as they do to the Machiavellian tradition, and to later treatments of the themes by Hobbes and Weber. The question is raised how articulated scepticism about political power relates to scepticism about alleged magic; and how the conduct of Shakespeare’s magicians casts light on their conduct qua political actors.

KEYWORDS:

• Sovereignty
• domination
• shakespeare
• magic
• power

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful for comments and questions from audiences to earlier versions of this paper at the conference Myth Violence and Unreason in the History of Political Thought, University of York 2016; the conference Political Demonology: the logic of evil in contemporary literature and theology, University of Oxford 2016; the Department of Politics and International Relations seminar Queen Mary University of London 2017; and to anonymous reviewers and the journal editor for guidance on revision. I am grateful to Wale Adebanwi, Moritz Reithmayr and Charles Dannreuther for comments on earlier drafts; and to Annette Zimmerman for information about Roumanian witches.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union 2017: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2017/5.html s.44.

2. For further articulations of magic and political power in the history of political thought: Galli (2012).

3. I am indebted to Mauritz Reithmayr who suggested the term ‘magic shortcut’ in comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

4. There’s a list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Wizard.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Frazer

Elizabeth Frazer is Official Fellow and Tutor in Politics, New College, Oxford. She is the author of The Politics of Community: Unity and Conflict OUP 1999; of journal articles and chapters on topics relevant to ethics and politics, in particular in the work of Hannah Arendt, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Shakespeare, and on citizenship education. She is the author jointly with Kim Hutchings of a series of journal articles on the relationship between violence and politics; and of Can Political Violence Ever Be Justified? (forthcoming Polity Press).