Gustav Klimt’s “Jurisprudenz”: law, public sphere and sovereign violence

Abstract

This research aims at discussing a possible reading of Gustav Klimt’s picture Jurisprudenz, from a juridical perspective, in order to explain its potential of meaning regarding the relation between law, sovereign violence and public sphere in peripheral countries like Brazil. In order to do so, this paper is based on three analytical aspects, which are deeply interconnected: The Renaissance revival of pagan Antiquity, Freud’s psychoanalysis, and the ambivalent relationship between Law and sovereign violence. Klimt articulates these three dimensions through a) elements of Greek mythology; b) in a Freudian dream-like atmosphere; c) placing the observer in the political role of one of its main characters. Methodologically, this research identifies the references of Klimt at his lifetime and proposes a dialog with the previous interpretations and reflections made by Schorske, Minkkinen, Rodriguez and Manderson, among other authors that dedicated themselves to study the Jurisprudenz of Klimt. Jurisprudenz presents a visual narrative that allows one to understand the rupture of the cogito self by the desire self (Freud), the exception/sovereign violence of Law (Schmitt, Benjamin, Agamben), and the creative construction of the Law by democratic participation in new forms of public sphere (Habermas).