EIGENSINN AND DOMINATION IN LIBERAL AND ILLIBERAL SOCIETIES

Alf Lüdtke & Alexandra Oeser

History and Theory 65, no. 1 (2026)

This article is a posthumously published text that was written by Alf Lüdtke and Alexandra Oeser but was left unfinished when Lüdtke died in February 2019. It examines two central notions—and their articulations—that Lüdtke and Oeser use differently in their work: domination and Eigensinn. On domination, it focuses on perspectives of Max Weber's work and different translations in English and French that have led to distinct receptions of the notion of domination in these languages. While locating the notion of Eigensinn back in its 1980s academic context, this article reconceptualizes Eigensinn as a blind spot of Weber's definition of domination that addresses the question of how people produce a “will to obey,” which Weber's work does not tackle. The article also debates the possibilities of using the notion of Eigensinn for liberal and illiberal societies. Oeser has written an introduction to guide the reader through the text and to recall the conditions surrounding its production.

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