Authority Without Subject
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article investigates the structural conditions under which authority can be enacted without subjective agency, intentionality, or interpretive judgment. Departing from traditional models grounded in enunciation and ethical justification, the analysis focuses on compiled systems where commands are produced and executed solely through formal grammar. Legitimacy in these environments is not discursively negotiated but structurally resolved. Drawing on a comparative corpus of theoretical contributions (including proposals on impersonal grammar, syntactic enforcement, and institutional automation) the article outlines how obedience is generated by compatibility, not persuasion. Particular attention is paid to how epistemic authority is being redefined in educational, bureaucratic, and academic systems, where interpretive roles are replaced by executable validation. The disappearance of the subject in these systems does not signal the absence of power, but the consolidation of a new form: structural authority without judgment.
Author: Perez, Carlos
Institution: Universidad de Buenos Aires
Language: English
Topic: Foucault, Power, and Ethics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6949715409
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