A Lever Is Pulled - A ritual of control, a machine that no longer moves - The Deeper Thinking Podcast

A Lever Is Pulled 
A ritual of control, a machine that no longer moves.

There is a moment—a gesture repeated in silence—that feels like power, even when it does nothing. A switch thrown. A lever pulled. The room responds with flashbulbs, the statement delivered like thunder. But nothing shifts. No factory restarts. No wage is restored. Still, the lever is pulled again.

This episode sits inside the silence after that gesture. It explores the symbolic mechanics of sovereignty in a world where economic systems have outgrown borders, and the theater of decision-making persists long after the machinery has disconnected. What does it mean to perform control rather than exert it? And why does that performance still hold emotional and moral weight?

We walk through the ideas of Giorgio Agamben, who defines sovereignty as the power to decide the exception—now a stage cue without a working spotlight. Wendy Brown and David Harvey chart the erosion of state autonomy under neoliberal pressure, showing how policies like tariffs become symbolic rituals in systems governed by financial abstraction. Iris Marion Young reframes responsibility in such diffuse networks, and Achille Mbembe reminds us that the fiction of sovereignty was never evenly granted in the first place. Cultural echoes from trade wars, Brexit, and pandemic logistics frame the stakes not as ideology, but as infrastructure—the fragile reality beneath slogans.

At the core of this reflection is not just a theory, but a feeling: that the lever still must be pulled, even if it no longer connects. Maybe because people still need the ritual. Maybe because silence would be worse. Maybe because, in that gesture, we glimpse the last surviving shape of power—a story told to hold back despair. In the end, the act continues. And the machine remains still.

Why Listen?

• The aesthetic of control vs. the reality of systemic disconnection
• Sovereignty as emotional spectacle in a networked, post-sovereign world
• How policy becomes ritual when systems outscale decision
• What do we do when the symbols outlive their substance?

Further Reading

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📖 Spaces of Hope by David Harvey – Reframes power and capital as spatial, not just economic, phenomena.
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📖 Responsibility for Justice by Iris Marion Young – Explores collective moral responsibility in global systems.
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📖 Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord – A foundational text on image, media, and the performance of power.
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