Machiavelli's Double: Power, Simulation, and Hyper-Sovereignty

The article deals with the ideas of power and sovereignty in Jean Baudrillard's thought by looking at their relationship to the aesthetics of deception and dissimulation. The history of this politcs is traced back to Machiavelli's thought, and paricularly in the aesthetics of authority that emerge from The Prince and the Discourses. The article develops an account of the forms of power that accompany Baudrillard's history of the technological reproduction of the image: from Machiavelli's relationship to religious iconography to the forms of 'hyper-sovereignty' that have emerged within the global information economy.