Emily "Sal" Salamanca

Title: Redemptive Exemplarity and Popular Deference: The Role of Exile in Machiavelli’s Political Thought

Abstract: Despite the ample literature on exemplarity in Machiavellian scholarship, few authors have looked precisely at Machiavelli’s treatment of exiled individuals as a category in itself, despite the fact that exile plays a prominent role in many of Machiavelli’s chosen exempla. This article suggests that civic banishment serves, for Machiavelli, as an unparalleled institutional safeguard that offers elites a way of accommodating themselves into republican modi e ordini vis-à-vis the direct judgment of the people. Through various examples of felicitous and infelicitous banishment, Machiavelli shows how, in an uncorrupt republic, exile can serve as a reflexive way by which elites and the people can negotiate their dynamics relation to one another. In contrast, through his handling of a contemporary case of exile, that of Cosimo de’ Medici, Machiavelli reveals how exile can lose its productive, negotiative function under corrupt civic orders. For Machiavelli, exile is an important institution, not only because it offers a way for the people to hold elites accountable, but also because it offers elites the ability to communicate their sentiments to the people. This reading, in turn, reveals a Machiavelli much more attuned to civic dialogue, not just sheer threats, between the popolo and the grandi than has previously been discussed. Moreover, Machiavelli’s theorizing about political exclusion might offer a new way of conceptualizing contemporary mechanisms of accountability such as votes of no-confidence or recall procedures.

Title: Exilium and the Boundaries of Care: The “Exile” in the Roman Imaginary

Abstract: In the historiographical imaginary, Romans saw civic banishment (exilium) as a civic necessity to protect people from the abuses of the powerful. In civic practice, exilium, understood as ‘voluntary exile,’ served as a way for elites to avoid legal penalties (of either fines or capital punishment) and remove themselves (often temporarily) from the political sphere. On a personal level, Cicero never conceived of his banishment as exile at all, but rather a form of civic “ellipsis.” Yet, by the 1st century BCE, exile and its merits began to go through a structural change and moral reevaluation. Decrees and pointed political trials replaced popular proceedings, such that exiles, like Ovid and Seneca, came to associate their banishments with living death. Rather than focusing on the degradation of exilium as civic institution, this article instead helps recover and revive early Romans’ appreciation of “exile” as a weapon of the weak, means of elite reflection, and form of temporary civic suspension. In doing so, this article offers a reconceptualization of the work the figure of the “exiled citizen” does in constructing the Roman civitas’ own self-understanding and boundaries of civic care.

Title: Machiavelli and the French: Parlements, Institutional Ordering, and the “Third Judge”

Abstract: Despite being the French system being an unabashed monarchy, Machiavelli consistently lauds the French for their laws, constitutionality, and ability to suppress civil conflict. This should strike us as surprising, given Machiavelli’s emphasis on the need for civil tension and tumulti within any long-lasting political system. This article leverages Machiavelli’s unintuitive praise for the French system to help theorize an underappreciated side of the Florentine’s thought, namely, the role of “good orders” in non- republican settings and the prince’s positive entanglement in inherited aristocratic institutions. Through a comparative analysis and critical reading of the French in The Prince, The Discourses on Livy, Ritratto delle Cose di Francia, and Della Natura de’ Francesi, this article re-examines the institutions of aristocratic restraint both explicitly commended and implicitly prescribed by Machiavelli. Specifically, the article inspects Machiavelli’s commendation of French aristocratic law courts (parlements) and the inherited code of law—both of which serve as a necessary “third judge” to keep political conflict among elites within civic bounds. Read in this way, Machiavelli becomes a thinker of longing, not just of an ancient vivere civile, but also of an inherited tradition—for better, or worse.