Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“This description touches on the ritual, primarily, and the disciplinary, secondarily, “aspects” of center occupation—the disciplinary because all the knowledge acquired through the study of institutions of deferral would feedback into the process of setting the terms of succession. From the juridical standpoint, the occupant of the center (perhaps I should just start referring to that role as “the occupier”) is the highest judge, which is in fact a very pervasive and, next the that of presiding over or being the object of sacrifice, perhaps the most ancient function of the monarch. Since my diagnosis of the contemporary crisis of the liberal order has come to focus increasingly on the systematic vandalizing of the juridical (turning it into another means of conducting the very thing it was established to defer—the vendetta), this is probably the most direct way of thinking about interfering with and directing the uses of institutional power within this order towards another one.”

— Adam Katz, Through and Out of Politics · Sep 03, 2022 · Bouvard Substack