ABSTRACT
Chapter 4, “The Political Theology of the Family”, is divided into three parts, each of which approaches a different dimension of the political theology of the family – theological, romantic, algorithmic. The first takes up the notion of sovereignty and the problem of continuity found in Eric Kantorowicz’s classic work of political theology The King’s Two Bodies and Eric Santner’s response in The People’s Two Bodies. Not only is the migration of the double body of the king “incorporated” into the body politic of the People, but also care and memory along with other practices associated with intimacy and trust, confining access to such necessities. The second subsection considers the transfer of social authority via Freud’s concept of the neurotic family romance and Lynn Hunt’s reading of the French Revolution as a political family romance. The third subsection opens with a critique of Bernard Stiegler’s claim that technological saturation has led to the tragic disenchantment of generational relations. This critique of technology ultimately repeats the reactionary nostalgia lamenting the loss of the traditional family bonds. This section moves into a different critique of technology through an examination the algorithmic unconscious, with the intention of showing how technology has come to reinforce modes of stratification as well as naturalized family structures by objectifying them in the digitized world.
