Download or read book Sovereignty and Intelligence written by John Michael Archer and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The book examines the configurations of surveillance, sovereignty, and the accompanying forms of subjectivity and knowledge in the transition to modernity. The association of sovereignty with intelligence extended far beyond the identification of sovereignty with the personal power of the sovereign. In Montaigne's France, sovereignty appeared in a disseminated form. Montaigne's Essais exemplify the situation of the courtier self-fashioned to serve an absent sovereign; like Lacan's subject, he is looked at from all sides. Montaigne's description of the search for self-knowledge as self-spying reveals how deeply this quest was implicated in a culture of courtly surveillance. At Elizabeth's court, observation evolved into political espionage based on a system of courtly patronage and employed as a means of policing sexuality centered on the unmarried monarch. Sidney's Arcadia inscribes ways of coping, with the anxieties produced by this surveillance-fraught environment.".