| The early modern period witnessed, along with the appearance of the modern family and the rise of the nation-state, the growth of discourses concerning governmentality i.e. the technologies by which to govern others and oneself. If government includes the acts of reading and writing by which such technologies are disseminated and inculcated, then rationalities of government can be said to inform literary practices, genres, and themes.;The intent of this study is to present an argument for the position that 17th and 18th-century German literature functioned as a form of government, i.e. a matrix of technologies of the self. Focusing on the discourse of householding, this study reinterprets on the basis of literary and non-literary texts the different periods of early modern German literature (Baroque, Enlightenment, Sturm and Drang, Empfindsamkeit, and Classicism) and their fundamental concepts (constancy, order, reason, happiness, friendship, sensibility, and renunciation) as technologies of govemmentality.;These literary topics functioned as the operative concepts around which the discourse of householding was shaped, and, more importantly, on which the modern family was grounded. Against the idea that the family is the historical and logical precursor to the state, this study claims the opposite, namely, that the state had a prime interest in the emergence of the family, not only to legitimize its own existence but also to free itself from the tedium of managing individuals so that it could turn to matters of state. The complex of governing technologies around which the state coalesced was also the same set around which the modern family emerged, and early modern literature was indispensable to this outcome. |
