Cornelia Vismann

The paper outlines a brief theory of Power that frees the notion from its accustomed association with sovereignty, coercion and violence and uncovers its productivity for legislation and jurisdiction. Starting from Gaius' , a legal textbook from the 2 century that served as a model for Emperor Justinian's codification of law (, 6th century), the paper shows how Roman institutions established the legal structure of speech referring to persons, objects and actions.

The text mirrors a theory of cultural technology, which takes culture at its word and the technology of (cultural?) cultivation reclaims the word 'colore'. Cultural technology always asserts a predilection to symbolic order, but it not only institutes symbolic order, but contradicts it as well. After all, the conductors and media of cultural technology dare to put into question the presumption of a sovereign subject which is the master of the constituative processes for culture. Rectitude is challenged to respond to this break-down of the classic sovereign teachings of symbolic order and allow the conductors and media a position other than that of only a means to a legitimately sanctioned end.