ABSTRACT
The sovereign seeks out desires, attachments and drives that are embodied in the performance itself. An aesthetic approach insists that sovereignty is understood through the relations it engenders. For Edmund Burke, as the sovereignty of the sovereign, majesty is embodied in the king. In Burke’s early work, the sovereign is sublime in a relatively simple sense. Burke had insisted that good, calm, peaceful and effective sovereign orders were marked by a balance between the sublime majesty and the beautiful dignity. The sovereign order must be staged, but without the government to mediate the sovereign order adequately, it will lose its affective force. The people’s temper is what Ben Anderson calls ‘affective life’; the circulation of affects, atmospheres and moods as they move around and through moments of sovereignty. The staging of sovereignty is always tied to affects that might emerge in the populace: the right mixture of love and awe, the pure terror, the tempers rising or the calming governance.
