Abstract

This paper gives an account of how the king’s two bodies have been translated in the era of linguistic nationalism. My thesis is that the model Kantorowicz provides for understanding the king’s two bodies can be used to elucidate the model of language that lies at the heart, or the core, of linguistic nationalism – namely, that a 'national' language has two bodies, the first being tangible and touchable (which I will call the corps), and the second, intangible and untouchable (which I will call the core). It thus uncovers how the model of the king’s two bodies has had a certain after-life – and it is precisely a matter of what Benjamin calls Überleben, Fortleben and Nachleben – into the present era. The essay concludes by criticising this model of the two bodies, suggesting that there is no intact corps or core, and that what remains is only ever an encore. An encore that must be, due to its association with autoimmunity, distinguished from the encore of the king’s two bodies model.