The Emperor's New Nudity

An analysis of contemporary authoritarianism and the medium in which it flourishes, the internet, as well as what lies at the complex intersection of authority and technology.

In recent decades, a new style of authoritarian politics has taken hold throughout the liberal-democratic world. The new authority figures are characterized by obscene, transgressive behavior, reminiscent of the “crowd” leader as theorized by Freud, only far less transient. In The Emperor's New Nudity, Yuval Kremnitzer considers the fraught intersection of authority and technology—the internet being the medium that has allowed contemporary authoritarianism to thrive—asking foundational questions such as: How can we think of the network as a social phenomenon? What can social and political phenomena teach us about the nature of the new technology? And how does technology reshape the very fabric of social and political life?

Technology, Kremnitzer writes, leads us toward an impersonal and hyperrational world to such an extent that it renders human subjectivity outmoded. Authority, on the other hand, anchors our subjective identifications to certain figures and seems to be hopelessly primitive and irrational. What is required, then, is a dialectics of the primal—a study of the way in which what strikes us as essential enters into the dynamics of historical change. From this perspective, authority and technology can be said to be divided by a common object—the unwritten law, and the special knowledge that pertains to it: a knowledge without knowers.Series foreword
Preface
1 The Emperor’s New Nudity—Authoritarianism, Old and New
2 Ground and Shadow: Unwritten Law in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
3 The Machine’s New Body: Technology, Old and New (Drive and Technology)
4 Human, Nature: Dialectics of the Primal
5 Caught in the Web: Authority and Power, Media and Technology
Bibliography and Notes"Let us be honest: Those of us attracted to The Emperor's New Nudity are in hopes of finding an intellectual hero who can lead us out of the digital, Fascist-tending labyrinth in which society now finds itself; and if we are to take into account qualities including a rational and penetrating investigative schema, astonishing erudition -- and a willingness to bare his own soul -- then Yuval Kremnitzer comes very close to being that hero for us."
—Leonardo“This deep and refined genealogy of the mutations of political authority in modernity allows us to grasp what is genuinely new about the new authoritarianisms of our time. It is not only a brilliant intervention in political theory and philosophy; in its relevance to our moment, it is a necessary one.”
—Eric Santner, University of Chicago, author of Untying Things Together: Philosophy, Literature, and a Life in Theory

“The Emperor’s New Nudity provides a powerful intellectual insight into one of the most imminent threats haunting contemporary democracies: the socio-technological fabrication of a new authoritarianism and its charlatan leaders.”
—Joseph Vogl, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Princeton University
 
“This book is like no other. To make sense of Trump and the other pseudo-authoritarian leaders of our day, he does not apply a theory but invents one. A careful reader of the book will learn that authority is gone in our world, and that politics in the twenty-first century became a self-parody by necessity.”
—Igal Halfin, History Department, Tel Aviv UniversityYuval Kremnitzer is a philosopher, literary scholar, and media critic. He is the author of How to Believe in Nothing: Moses Mendelssohn and the Media Theory of Tradition, and of research articles in contemporary philosophy, social theory, German idealism, Jewish philosophy, film, and psychoanalysis.