The Visibility of the State: Symbolic and Allegorical Representations in the Work of Carl Schmitt

This article argues that Carl Schmitt’s approach to the visual expression of political power evolves from an early reliance on symbolic form to a later adoption of allegory, influenced by Walter Benjamin. Initially attracted to the Catholic Church as a symbolic synthesis of bureaucracy and charisma, Schmitt grew disillusioned with its modes of visual representation. He then turned to political myth, envisioning the national leader as the symbolic incarnation of a unified people. This model, however, also proved untenable. In search of an alternative, Schmitt drew on Benjamin’s theory of allegory to retrieve the Baroque tradition of state personification: Sovereigns, like actors on a stage, outwardly represent the state without claiming to exhaust its meaning. I contend that this allegorical framework allowed Schmitt not only to sidestep the totalizing tendencies of political myth but also to open a conceptual path for reimagining Europe’s postwar fractured space.