The image of the roi thaumaturge in Kleist and Gros

 

Sovereignty is frequently related to exception, most prominently in Carl Schmitt’s work. Whereas traditional scholarship understands this exception as related to the position of the sovereign above the law that enables the sovereign to decide about cases in which the law is suspended, the exception of the sovereign also has a different meaning: the sovereign is exempt from general predicaments and he is able to exempt others form them. Kleist and Gros are interesting examples of the survival of this imaginary in a more recent political scenario. Disease is a central example of this feature of the sovereign.