Abstract

This article seeks to translate Ernst Kantorowicz' conception of the King's two bodies from the field of political theory into that of narratology. It suggests that we consider reading texts about sovereignty as rhetorically staged acts of sovereignty, acts transgressing established (interpretative or state-political) boundaries, subverting allegedly «natural» sovereign embodiments, thereby drawing on the very aporetic structure so characteristic of the notion of sovereignty. What might result from this is a heightened sensitivity toward the aporetic structure of sovereignty that frequently surfaces in works on sovereignty, tacitly transmuted by way of explicit discussion into the sphere of rhetoric.