UNSPOKEN ASSUMPTIONS - VOICE AND ABSOLUTISM AT THE COURT OF LOUIS-XIV

This paper indicates how what Norbert Elias described as the disciplin ing of the aristocracy in 17th-century France, which he took to be ess ential to the ascendancy of Louis XIV and the growth of the modem stat e, was itself part of a broader pattern of voiceless politics. The Fre nch political bureaucracy and the monarch in this period were able to accumulate power by restraining public political speech. and using a c ombination of rituals of subjugation and material forms like fortresse s to exemplify the power and social efficacy of this political regime. The result was a new form of power, importantly demonstrated in the l and and its people: what we have come to call the territorial state.