Abstract
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, traditionally, is held for a showcase ›insular fiction‹, since it unfolds basic questions of modern anthropology and politics ab ovo. In early modern island novels, modeled on Thomas Morus’ Utopia (1516), literally ›perfect‹ polities are delineated und described in the manner of a tableau. But the issue of political sovereignty is not dealt with any further. Not before the appearance of ›Robinsonades‹, human and social modes of being are actually recounted, i. e. genetically evolved from a hypothetical zero state. Because these narratives generally highlight the themes of land seizure and political founding, they appear like primal scenarios of sovereignty. But already Defoe’s novel rather sketches the guidelines of modern ›governmentality‹. And, moreover, Defoe’s writing exemplarily exhibits the corresponding conditions of modern authorship. Against this background, the article describes the emergence of ›post-sovereign‹ telling at the turn to the 18th century.
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