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Dossier

Vol. 8 No. 14 (2023)

RE-Imagi(n)ing Leviathan

Submitted
April 19, 2023
Published
2023-06-30

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.

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