Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King’s Two Bodies

Reed, Isaac Ariail. 2020. Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King’s Two Bodies. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

Power in Modernity

In Power in Modernity, Isaac Ariail Reed proposes a bold new theory of power that describes overlapping networks of delegation and domination.  Chains of power and their representation, linking together groups and individuals across time and space, create a vast network of intersecting alliances, subordinations, redistributions, and violent exclusions. Reed traces the common action of “sending someone else to do something for you” as it expands outward into the hierarchies that control territories, persons, artifacts, minds, and money.