Wiels | EN

Speaking from the unsovereign position of a reader, rather than as an author, Sven Lütticken will discuss tropes, tendencies and tensions in the literature on sovereignty. Classical imperial sovereignty faces off against popular sovereignty, and collective conceptions are (seemingly) contradicted by the notion of the sovereign individual. Is sovereignty divisible, and can sovereignties overlap—or can they only clash? From cyberspace to seasteading, the libertarian right has created a veritable cult of new sovereignties for strong individuals and new elites, beyond the reach of a nation-state that is seen as having been corrupted by popular sovereignty. Is the notion of popular sovereignty salvageable, or must emancipatory politics dispel the sovereign ban?

Sven Lütticken (b. 1971, DE, based in Utrecht) studied art history at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Freie Universität Berlin. He teaches art history at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Lütticken publishes regularly in journals and magazines, and contributes to catalogues and exhibitions as writer or guest curator. He is the author of Cultural Revolution: Aesthetic Practice after Autonomy (2017), History in Motion: Time in the Age of the Moving Image (2013), Idols of the Market: Modern Iconoclasm and the Fundamentalist Spectacle (2009) and Secret Publicity: Essays on Contemporary Art (2006). The release of his Art and Autonomy reader is due later this year.