Authority: Construction and Corrosion

What is authority? How is it constituted? How ought one understand the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) relations between authority and coercion? Between authorized and subversive speech? In this fascinating and intricate analysis, Bruce Lincoln argues that authority is not an entity but an effect. More precisely, it is an effect that depends for its power on the combination of the right speaker, the right speech, the right staging and props, the right time and place, and an audience historically and culturally conditioned to judge what is right in all these instances and to respond with trust, respect, and even reverence.

Employing examples drawn from classical antiquity, medieval Scandinavian law, Cold War scholarship, and American presidential politics, Lincoln offers a telling analysis of the performance of authority, and subversions of it, from ancient times to the present.

Using a small set of case studies that highlight critical moments in the construction of authority, he goes on to offer a general examination of "corrosive" discourses such as gossip, rumor, and curses; the problematic situation of women, who often are barred from the authorizing sphere; the changing role of religion in the construction of authority; the question of whether authority in the modern and postmodern world differs from its pre-modern counterpart; and a critique of Hannah Arendt's claims that authority has disappeared from political life in the modern world.

Analyzing the 1992 incident in which antinuclear activist Rick Springer disrupted a Las Vegas speech given by former president Ronald Reagan, Lincoln questions Arendt's claims. He does not find a diminution of authority or a fundamental change in the conditions that produce it. Rather, Lincoln finds modern authority splintered, expanded, and, in fact, multiplied as the mechanisms for its construction become more complex - and more expensive. A lively, wide-ranging exploration of the concept of authority, this book will interest anyone concerned with the production and contestation of authority in the modern world.

Intro; Contents; Acknowledgments; Chapter One: Constructing Authority; Buyers, Sellers, and Authorities; Authority and Authorities; Between Coercion and Persuasion; Authorized and Authorizing Objects, Times, and Places; Authorized Speech and Significant Silence; Conjunctions and Disruptions; Chapter Two: Oratory and Ridicule: Thersites and the Homeric Assembly; The Homeric Assembly: Forms and Procedures; A Jointly Hosted Assembly; The Flight to the Ships; The Basest, Most Hated of Men; The Taming of the Scold; The Sweetness of Laughter; The Halt and the Lame

Silenced Speakers and Erased TraditionsOdysseus's Weapon and the Legitimacy of Kings; Chapter Three: Rumors and Prophecies: Lucius Aurelius Cotta and the Roman Senate, 15 March 44 B.C.; Power and Authority in the Making of Kings; Attempts at Prompting the Voice of the People; Strategic Maneuvers: Military and Political; Enlisting the Voice of the Gods; The Sixteenth Quindecemvir and the Asian King; Prophecies and Rumors; Things Said and Unsaid; Chapter Four: Law, Curses, and Derision: Egil Skallagrimsson and the Gula; Violence and the Voice of the Law

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