Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer
Logo Conceptos Históricos

Dossier

Vol. 8 No. 14 (2023)

RE-Imagi(n)ing Leviathan

Submitted
April 19, 2023
Published
2023-12-01

Abstract

Over the years great care has been lavished by scholars of Hobbes on decoding the image produced for Leviathan by Abraham Bosse with the creative input of Thomas Hobbes. This article focusses instead on the reception and remaking of this image, arguably the most iconic image in the statist imaginary. Attention turns here, in particular, to two con­temporary artworks, Do-Ho Suh’s Some/One (2005) and Ernesto Neto’s Leviathan Thot (2006). Both of these artworks visually recall and re-pro­blematize Hobbes’s frontispiece: its depiction of the political body and of the complex relationships between the elements comprising it. They therefore offer us a curious perspective from which to re-engage with Hobbes’s work and the political aesthetics that has immortalized it.

References

  1. Alliez, Eric. Undoing the Image. Body Without Organs, Body Without Image: Ernesto Neto’s Anti-Leviathan. Falmouth, Urbanomic, 2013.
  2. Abizadeh, Arash. “Sovereign Jurisdiction, Territorial Rights, and Membership in Hobbes”, en Al P. Martinich y Kinch Hoekstra (eds.): The Oxford Handbook to Hobbes. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 397–431.
  3. Baumgold, Deborah. “Subjects and Soldiers: Hobbes on Military Service”, History of Political Thought, Vol. 4, N° 1, 1983, pp. 43–64.
  4. Bredekamp, Thomas. Hobbes Der Leviathan. Das Urbild des modernen Staates und seine Gegenbilder 1651-2001. Berlin, Akademie, 2006.
  5. ––– “Thomas Hobbes’s Visual Strategies”, en Patricia Springborg (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 29–60.
  6. Brett, Annabel. Changes of State: Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2011.
  7. Brito Viera, Monica. The Elements of Representation in Hobbes. Leiden, Brill, 2009.
  8. Brown, Keith. “The Artist of the Leviathan Title Page”, British Library Journal, Vol. 4, N° 1, 1978, pp. 24–36.
  9. Cooper, Julie. Secular Powers: Humility in Modern Political Thought. Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2013.
  10. Corbett, Margery; y Ronald W. Lightbown. The Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic Title-Page in England, 1550-1660. London, Routledge, 1979.
  11. Do-Ho Suh entrevista por Art21. Disponible en: https://art21.org/read/do-ho-suh-some-one-and-the-korean-military, acceso el 21 de septiembre de 2023.
  12. Dumouchel, Paul. “Mirrors of Nature: Artificial Agents in Real Life and Virtual Worlds”, en Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming y Joel Hodge (eds.): Mimesis, Movies, and Media. Sydney, Bloomsbury, 2016, pp. 51–60.
  13. Ernesto Neto au Panthéon. Video disponible en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZrL7ncLoVI , acceso el 7 de septiembre de 2023.
  14. Goldsmith, Maurice M. “Picturing Hobbes’s Politics? The Illustrations to Philosophical Rudiments”, Journal of Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 44, 1981, pp. 232–239.
  15. Gomes, Fernanda. “Interview: Ernesto Neto and Fernanda Gomes”, Bomb, N° 102, 2008, pp. 78–85.
  16. Herkenhoff, Paulo. “Leviathan Thot: A Politics of the Plumb”, Parkett, Vol. 78, 2006, pp. 128–143.
  17. Hill, Christopher. “Covenant Theology and the Concept of a ‘Public Person’”, en: The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill. Vol. 3: People and Ideas in 17th Century England. Brighton, Harvester Press, 1986, pp. 300–324.
  18. Hobbes, Thomas. The Elements of Law Natural and Politic. Edición a cargo de Ferdinand Tönnies. London, Cass, [1640] 1969.
  19. ––– “Answer to the Preface to Gondibert”, en David F. Gladish (ed.): Sir William Davenant’s Gondibert. Oxford, Clarendon Press, [1650] 1971.
  20. ––– Leviathan. Edición a cargo de Richard Tuck. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, [1651] 1996.
  21. ––– Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio Prima De Corpore, en: Opera Philosophica Omnia. Volumen II. Edición a cargo de Sir William Molesworth, London, [1655] 1839-1845.
  22. ––– Behemoth or The Long Parliament. Edición de Ferdinand Tönnies, Chicago: Chicago University Press, [1681] 1990.
  23. Jeong, Sarah. Dossier de presse: Ernesto Neto – Festival d’Automne à Paris 2006. S. e.
  24. Kristiansson, Magnus; y Johan Tralau. “Hobbes’s Hidden Monster: a new interpretation of the frontispiece of Leviathan”, European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 13, N° 3, 2014, pp. 299–320.
  25. Lefort, Claude. The Political Forms of Modern Society. Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1986.
  26. ––– Le Temps Présent. Écrits 1945-2005. Paris, Belin, 2007.
  27. Malcolm, Noel. Aspects of Hobbes. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002.
  28. ––– “The Name and Nature of Leviathan: Political Symbolism and Biblical Exegesis”, Intellectual History Review, Vol. 17, N°1, 2007, pp. 21–39.
  29. — Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012.
  30. Mitchell, John T. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1986.
  31. Nedham, Marchamont. The Excellencie of a Free State. Edición de Richard Baron. London, A. Millar and T. Cadell, [1656], 1767.
  32. Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation. Vol. I. New York, Dover, [1819] 1969.
  33. Skinner, Quentin. “The Material Presentation of Hobbes’s Theory of the Commonwealth”, en Dominique Colas y Oleg Kharkhordin (eds.): The Materiality of Res Publica: How to Do Things with Publics. Cambridge, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009, pp. 115–159.
  34. Slomp, Gabriella. “Limiting Leviathan: An Advice Book for Rulers? Larry May on Thomas Hobbes”, Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 41, N° 1, 2015, pp. 149–163.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.