1

THE KING'S TRAVESTY

The theatrical gaze and the representation of the political and legal order

Klaas Tindemans

"I don't believe in an interventionist God,

but I know, darling, that you do"

(Nick Cave, Into my arms)

Introduction

The idea that ancient Greek tragedy sheds a revealing light on the processes of signification in the

Athenian polis as a paradigmatic political community, has become a commonplace. But whereas most

research into the political implications of tragedy concentrate on the relationship between (a literary

interpretation of) the canonical text and the practices of the polis, this essay proposes a different approach.

After a suggestive 'gloss' on The Bacchanals, Euripides' last tragedy, we will draw a sketch of both the

institutional and the (highly speculative) histrionic context of the performance of ancient tragedy.

Consequently, we analyze tragedy as a public experience, in which the reciprocity of the audience's gaze

(to see and to be seen) proves to be the crucial phenomenon. These three aspects (the festival as an

institution, the position of the players and the theatrical gaze) should provide a tentative answer to the

problem of the contribution of tragedy to political discourse of the Athenian polis. The implicit

assumption maintained in this analysis, an assumption which should equally show the relevance of this

study for contemporary legal philosophy, could be summarized as follows. The performance of tragedy,

as a representative political discourse, provided a strong paradigm for the development of political

representation and legitimation in the early Athenian polis. After the decline of tragedy - but not

necessarily due to it - political thought took a different road, namely: political theory and legal dogmatics.

From the 4th century b.C., political discourse didn't represent heroic virtues and their paradoxes

anymore, but devoted itself to the representation of concepts, natural or artificial1. In this essay, we

suggest some explanations for this radical change, commonly conceived as the shift from tragedy to

philosophy, as we find it particularly in Aristotle's Poetica. His normative treatment of tragedy reveals a

remarkable affinity with the process of 'juridification' as guaranteed by legal dogmatics: the disappearance

of any 'trans-social' conflict, the development of a discursive subject, etc.. The crucial issue therewith

becomes the loss of 'origin', of presence, in the (institutional) representation of meaning. Tragedy, as a

physical experience, confronted this 'original sin' in a direct, provocative way. The question remains if law

and legal discourse, being the central process of signification in western political thought, have eased the

1 See J.P. Euben, The tragedy of political theory. The road not taken (Princeton, 1990), p.45ff.

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pain, as caused by this visible and palpable experience of loss.

In a final paragraph we'll briefly mention some possible analogies in the modern age: Shakespeare's

'history plays' and the French 'tragédie classique'.

A case-study: The Bacchanals

The Bacchanals shows its Athenian spectators the breakdown of the political edifice,2 quite litterally, in

fact, since in the play the palace of Pentheus, the Theban king, collapses. Pentheus refuses to welcome

and recognize the god Dionysus, so the god-without-a-face, who can assume any outward appearance,3

punishes Pentheus' hubris without pity: he abducts all the women from the city and makes them

participate in ecstatic ritual, he destroys Pentheus' palace and Pentheus himself by making his own

mother tear him to pieces. The highlight of this process of tarnishing political power is a scene where

Dionysus transforms Pentheus into a 'bacchanal', not in a violent way, but by seduction and

enchantment.4 Dionysus performs the first phase of a sacrificial ritual in which the god of fertility

(Dionysus himself) must be killed to be born again.5 The performance of the god implies the loss of the

city's political leader and its mythical founder: Cadmus, Pentheus' uncle and the last human being to have

shared a meal with the gods.6 The political order is bereft of its personnel, but also and more importantly

of its legitimacy, which was based upon the suspension or even the removal of the gods from the political

logos, since their presence contradicts the political autonomy the polis nurses.

"The law and order of the state is based on miracles which happened in the past; but miracles which

occur in the present are the negation of all order. The coming of the living God is an offense to reason,

an offense to the king and a blasphemy."7 Jan Kott demonstrates precisely which transgression Dionysus'

appearance in the Theban polis represents. Present deities are a taboo inside the political order, whether

they display themselves by miracle or by (sacrificial) ritual. The Athenian polis stressed the distinction

between things religious and things secular, notably in its own political procedures. When decisions about

ritual matters had been reached, only strictly political business was debated, and the two matters could

2 Euripides wrote The Bacchanals in exile in Macedonia, when the Athenians lived between political crisis and civil

strife. For more insight into the political and mental context of the play, see R. Goossens, Euripide et Athènes, (Brussel, 1962),

p.724ff. Unfortunately, Goossens used the hypothesis that Euripides expresses his religious conversion and aversion to the

Sophists in The Bacchanals, which results in a doubtful interpretation of the play.

3 The popularity of Dionysus as a deity - and a fortiori as the god of the theatre - probably has to do with the ability to

project any experience of chaos and despair on him, in every imaginable shape. The reverse side of this is, of course, the fact

that Dionysus simply continues this chaos on a different level, as tragedy stresses (see C. Segal, Dionysiac poetics and Euripides'

Bacchae (Princeton, 1982), p.27ff).

4 The Bacchanals, v.912-976.

5 For the exact ritual structure of this scene (and the messenger's speech about the sparagmos, the ritual 'tearing up' of

the sacrificial animal), see H. P. Foley, Ritual irony. Poetry and sacrifice in Euripides (London, 1985) p.208ff.

6 See R. Calasso, The marriage of Cadmus en Harmony (New York, 1994) for the meaning of the foundational myth of

Thebes.

7 J. Kott, The eating of the gods. An interpretation of Greek tragedy (London, 1974), p.216. He adds that the same thing

happened in Christianity, when Jesus affirmed himself as the son of God (Lucas, XII, 67-70).

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not be mixed.8 Both ritual and politics are, within the same community, processes of symbolisation which

are, practically and ontologically, incompatible, with the exception of the myth of origin, which precedes

the political order as an (imaginary) event. But Dionysus, as he appears in The Bacchanals, wants to

introduce the reiteration of the myth of origin, the cycle of death and rebirth, in the political order itself

and therefore causes a 'crisis of symbols'.9 If tragedy, as I want to demonstrate in this essay, has continued

to problematize the sustained and ideologically grounded distinction between hiera en hosia ('things divine

and things humane'10), then this is done most radically by The Bacchanals, especially in the so-called

'travesty scene'. In the first epeisodion (act) of this tragedy, the seer Teiresias tries to subject the cult of

Dionysus to the (political) logos. He not only rationalizes the birth myth of the deity, he interprets his

concrete behaviour: Dionysus' agressiveness coincides perfectly with those military virtues which are

required in politics, and the enthusiasm of his entry is of the same kind as the praise directed at a good

king.11 But Teiresias' analysis lacks deeper insight - less instrumentally political - into the discursive ruptures

in the political community which are laid bare by Dionysus' appearance. Dionysus does not demand a

cult in a clearly demarcated location inside a polis that can continue to see itself as completely autonomous,

he rejects political logos as such. He dismisses the fundamental categories by means of which the polis

'signifies' itself: the distinction between city and wilderness, between 'nature' and 'civilisation' (Pentheus

inside the polis as a fortress, the Bacchanals on Mount Cithaeron, an unprotected place) and, most clearly,

the difference between male and female.12 Confusion about all these distinctions reaches its peak in the

travesty scene. The male king is dressed in a female robe, his 'civilised' aspect is transformed into that of a

wild animal and a barbarian and the (supposed) openness of political action disappears for the hidden

work of the spy, the voyeur.13 Dionysus' mania (madness, ecstasy) has subjected Pentheus to a politically

relevant kind of 'neurosis', as this fragment shows:

Pentheus On through the midst of Thebes usher me

I am their one man, I alone dare this

Dionysus Alone for Thebes thou travailest, thou alone

(...)

Dionysus High-borne shalt thou return ...

(...)

Dionysos ... on a mother's hands

8 See M. Detienne & G. Sissa, La vie quotidienne des dieux grecs (Paris, 1989), p.200-211.

9 Segal, o.c., p.272ff

10 Detienne & Sissa, o.c., p.209.

11 The Bacchanals, v.266-327

12 Segal, o.c., p.78-124 (city vs. wilderness) & p.58-214 (male vs. female).

13 Segal suggests that this travesty also has the characteristics of the Athenian rites of passage (the ephèbia): Athenian

boys on the brink of their majority were obliged to live in a 'wild' area of passage, both in a practical and an imaginary sense,

where they had to experience an inversion of the ethical model of the citizen (o.c., p.168-177); see also P. Vidal-Naquet, "Le

Philoctète de Sophocle et l'éphébie" in J.-P. Vernant & -, Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1972), p.159-184.

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Pentheus Thou wouldst thrust pomp on me

(v.961-969)

Pentheus asks implicitly whether he will continue to be able to 'represent' the polis in this disguise; he

wants to make its significance harmless - he stays an anèr, a man, and even more: the only citizen.

Dionysus welcomes this, as it is understandable, since in his logic Pentheus bears the burden of a

scapegoat. Pentheus indeed represents the political logos, but this incarnation, this identification, equally

signifies his death. Some moments before, Pentheus had identified himself with Agave, his mother, and

with his aunt, Ino, Dionysus' mother.14 This genealogical identitity is affirmed by Dionysus, but not without

ambiguity. Pentheus' mother will bear the head of her son as a trophy into the city, the head she tore off

herself. It is hardly surprising that Pentheus accepts this travesty and the inversions of meaning

accompanying this ritual. The desire for suppression of sexual difference is a theme which haunts Greek

thought15 and this 'castration complex' obtains full significance in this scene. Dionysus, the phallic god,

has to conjure the fear of the king, the only man left in the polis, by means of the sparagmos of this same

king (the anèr), the scapegoat himself. The political logos has suppressed myth to such an extent that only

death can give an answer. As psychoanalysis tells us, to 'cure' the castration complex, the Law of the

father has to be recognized, in this case, Zeus' law, Dionysus' father.

The Bacchanals, the summit of the interrogation of the political order by tragedy owes its importance

to the development of ancient political discourse not so much to its narration, but rather to the radical

theatricality in which this narration is embedded. The Bacchanals stages the god of theatre himself and

this Dionysus, in no other tragedy is he as present in the action, provides the audience with abundant

information, about the end of the drama, about his intentions and his own 'nature'.16 Consequently, the

metatheatrical level - theatrical codes as the subject of theatrical action - adds an important plus-value to

the significance of the theatrical experience. The Athenian audience gained insight in its own 'viewing

codes', but is hardly sure if they also lead to more political security, seen in the context of the crisis of the

politeia. Nevertheless, it is remarkable how political significance and explicit theatricality seamlessly

coincide in The Bacchanals, highlighting the central problem that tragedy, as an institution and an

experience, raises: the legitimacy of a society which conceives itself as being politically autonomous and

organizes itself accordingly.

14 The Bacchanals, v.925-929. According to Segal, Pentheus' situation indicates an Oedipus complex: he is confronted

with the fact that he is only able to legitimize his royal power from his mother's side, in contrast to Dionysus, son of Zeus. With

this reference, the drama touches a weak spot in the Athenian myth of origin, where a woman (Creusa) is needed to complete

the genealogy (see Euripides' Ion and K. Tindemans, "De geboorteakte van de tragische held" in F. Fleerackers (ed.), Mens en

recht. Essays tussen rechtstheorie en rechtspraktijk (Leuven, 1996), p.385-402).

15 See A. Saxonhouse, Fear of diversity. The birth of political science in ancient Greek thought (Chicago, 1982).

16 See A. F. Bierl, Dionysos und die griechische Tragödie. Politische und 'metatheatralische' Aspekte im Text (Tübingen, 1991),

p.188.

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1. The performance of ancient tragedy: institution and representation

It is appealing, especially in interpreting The Bacchanals, to consider tragedy as the representation of a

fertility ritual. The cycle of birth and death which can be traced in the structure of this tragedy seems to

justify this generalization, but there are also fundamental objections. Bertolt Brecht said the following

provocatively about attempts to revive ancient theater practices in a religious context: "Wenn man sagt,

das Theater sei aus dem Kultischen gekommen, so sagt man nur, daβ es durch den Auszug Theater

wurde."17 More generally, this observation means that all the theories of origin about tragedy, insofar as

they aim to give a comprehensive historical account,18 create the illusion that the cultic antecedents of

tragedy provide insight into the specific theatricality of a practice of performance and that ritual references

determine the identity of tragedy,19 the classical mistake of historism.20 For these reasons, an account of the

political place of tragedy requires synchronic research into performed tragedy, rather than an attempt to

analyse the historical-causal relations between myth, cult, and polis. At the same time, this demonstrates

epistemological modesty, a recognition that the 'form' of tragedy is as contingent as any other politically

relevant institution, e.g. the hoplite falanx.21 The claim that tragedy was necessary to recognize the polis as

a political order is a manifestation of the historiographer's hubris.

17 B. Brecht, Kleines Organon für das Theater [G.S.16] (Frankfurt a.M., 1967), p.664. From the viewpoint of cultural

antropology this remark is justified, but the institutional break between cult and performed tragedy is less obvious, as we will see.

18 As the 'Cambridge thesis' of e.g., Murray en Cornford, who saw Greek theatre (tragedy and comedy) as the

succession of a 'primal ritual' which itself constituted the transformation of a cycle of vegetation (F. Cornford, The origin of Attic

comedy (London, 1914) and G. Murray, The five stages of Greek religion (Oxford, 1925)). Nietzsche's book on tragedy (F. Nietzsche,

Die Geburt der Tragödie [Werke I] (München, 1966)) doesn't necessarily fall under this verdict, since it deals more with the

conditions of possibility of metaphysical thought and only indirectly tries to explain tragedy historically.

19 See R. Barthes, "Le théâtre grec" in -, L'obvie et l'obtus. Essais critiques III (Paris, 1982), p. 64 and J.-P. Vernant, "Le

moment historique de la tragédie grecque" in - & P. Vidal-Naquet, o.c., p.13.

20 See R. Vierhaus, "Rankes Begriff der historischen Objektivität" in R. Koselleck, W.J. Mommsen & J. Rüsen,

Objektivität und Parteilichkeit in der Geschichtswissenschaft (München, 1977), p. 64 & 69 and W. Benjamin, "Über den Begriff der

Geschichte" [G.S.I-2] (Frankfurt a.M., 1974), p.704.

21 See C. Meier, Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen (Frankfurt a.M., 1980), p.66ff.

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Tragedy and institution22

The annual festival of tragedy, the Great Dionysia, was of course dedicated to Dionysus. The feast

opened with the phallophoria, a procession with large wooden phalluses, one of the appearances of the

god. But the civil character of the event was equally important, expressed in a special session of the

ekklesia (people's assembly) after the festival, in order to judge all misdimeanors during the three days of

the festival (three tragedies each day, plus a satyr play). The Athenian generals bore libations, the 'allies'

offered presents, the children of the fallen soldiers walked by in procession. In other words, the festival

served as one big 'public display of the success in military and political terms of the city'.23 The form of

those political rituals refers to a recurring theme in the political history of 5th century Athens: the

transformation of the traditional oikos (family, household), and the virtues bound to it, into another, now

political discourse. The procession of war orphans is connected with the traditional ritual of the dokimasia,

the inscription in the phratria (the 'clan'), but in relating it to the (military-political) ideal of the hoplite, this

event acquired a completely different sense.24

It was not only the adapted rituals which stressed the institutional character of the performances of

tragedy, but the transformation of the public space as well. Before the construction of the theatre of

Dionysus by Pisistratus (at the end of the 6th century b.C.) and the removal of the ekklesia to the hill of

the Pnyx, some decades later, both theatrical performances and people's assemblies took place at the

agora, the religious and economic centre of the city. In spite of the dispersion of community activities over

the whole polis, the coincidence of theatrical and parlementary activities continued to be qualified as as

typically Greek 'disease', until Roman times. But there had been a fundamental change. A sort of political

'selfconsciousness', as expressed in Pericles' severe laws of citizenship, did away with the need to associate

the unity of the (political) community with one location: the polis had developed into a mental space. From

a structural viewpoint, a pile-up of institutional elements in one visible topos gave way to a broad parataxis

without any visible center. It is probably no coincidence that an analogous transformation in the

principles of narrative construction is visible in the change from 'authoritative' epic (i.e. under the authority

of one story-teller) to 'dispersed' tragedy (the distribution of roles between three players and a chorus).

On a symbolical level, the structure of the polis and the structure of the space for the audience continued

to be unified: the spectators sat together with their dèmos (neighbourhood) and there were reserved places,

hierarchically ordered, for religious and political functionaries (archontai).

Tragedy and representation (1): mimetic practice

Each political order has a specific representation of the community by the community. In the Athenian

22 For an overview of empirical material, see A. Pickard-Cambridge, J. Gould & D.M. Lewis, The dramatic festivals of

Athens (Oxford, 1988) and E. Csapo & W.J. Slater, The context of ancient drama (Ann Arbor, 1995).

23 S. Goldhill, "The Great Dionysia and civic ideology", in J.J. Winkler & F.I. Zeitlin, Nothing to do with Dionysos?

Athenian drama in its social context (Princeton, 1990), p.102.

24 Goldhill, o.c., p.103.

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dèmokratia, this representation did not coincide with (embryonal) dogmatics, guaranteeing a discursive

'protection' against virtual transgressions in the life of the community, but appeared as an explicit mimetic

practice, in which the excess seemed to determine the identity of the community: the performance of

tragedy.

An analysis of this mimetic practice starts with the functions of the hypokritai (the players) and the chorus.

The most important difference between the epic storyteller and the autonomous hypokritès was not the

use of direct speech (since many storytellers changed roles in their performance), but the disappearance

of authority: the storyteller, being able to create and to maintain a fixed context for direct speech,

disappeared from discourse. The voice became autonomous, not the role - since changes of roles, the

change of sex included, were the rule - any 'personal' unity in the narration was absent. Instead of

dramatic 'characters', representatives were created, who lived through situations in which they could not

leave their 'subjective' mark.25 This is politically relevant, since it means that the tragic figures were as

autonomous, as equivalent in principle, but equally as helpless before the social reality, as the citizens are.

Analogously to the relation between citizens and the political order, the players were in the same mimetic

position towards the handed down (adapted by the author) narratio in the muthos, the 'fable' of tragedy.

The context was provided by the chorus, although it did not have any authoritative position. Theatricality

was mainly marked by the 'invention' of the second player, the antagonist versus the protagonist, since this

confrontation created an 'autonomous' performative situation, in which the referential value of the muthos

was problematized: the most relevant action took place before the eyes of the spectator. The speech used

by the players and the chorus, still reinforced the performative context of this situation and is decisive for

the theatrical effect. The players, bearing names of traditional 'heroes', used the speech of political

practice itself, whereas the chorus, clearly representing the citizens of a (ficticious) polis, spoke a lyrical,

detached language:26 the linguistic context they suggest has no direct influence on the dramatic situation

of the 'heroes' no matter how frankly, how 'democratically' they were allowed to express themselves.27

The term hupokritès, which is difficult to translate, refers to the ambivalent position of the theatrical figure.

The substantive -kritès is a variation on krisis, an 'autonomous judgment', based upon a political (written)

law.28 But the prefix hupo- refers to the nearness of the gods, to a threat which forces a decision.29 This

'metaphysical' pressure is not compatible with the autonomy of (political) judgment. In the tragic scene,

conceived as 'Kopräsenz der Stimmen',30 an exciting confrontation takes place between hupokrisis, a

25 See H.-T. Lehmann, Theater und Mythos. Die Konstitution des Subjekts im Diskurs der antiken Tragödie (Stuttgart, 1991),

p.38.

26 See Vernant, o.c., p.14.

27 The chorus exercises its so-called parrèsia, the democratic virtue of 'frank speech' (see M. Foucault & J. Pearson

(ed.), Discourse and truth. The problematization of 'parrhesia' (Evanston (Ill.), 1985)).

28 See L. Gernet, "Sur la notion du jugement en droit grec", Archives d'histoire du droit oriental, I (1937).

29 See G. F. Else, "HUPOKRITÈS", Wiener Studien, LXII (1959).

30 Lehmann's term (o.c., p.45).

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mythically connotated judgment about the situation of and by the 'heroes', and parrèsia, the democratic

'frankness' of the chorus. But the discursive difference obstructs any solution within the framework of

one, unified political logos. This tension is most acute in Sophocles' Antigone, where the fundamental

difference between the last referents becomes clear from the struggle between Creon's written law and

Antigone's unwritten law/custom.31

Tragedy and representation (2): the theatrical gaze

The theatrical gaze is a shared gaze, but this observation generates more problems than it solves. What

kind of 'sharing' (which community) we can speak of in this context? How concrete or how imaginary is a

community of citizens-as-spectators? Put the other way around, the problem is, which community is the

theatre able to construct? From the perspective of the theatre, the gaze of the spectator appears as a desire

for something common in the representation, or better yet, for a 'representative community' - in the

audience, on stage, in the theatre. If this gaze is characterized by desire, then the community, as its

satisfaction, is, by definition, absent.32 This absence is felt in (the gaze upon) the spectacle itself, in the

elimination of the storyteller's authority and in the discontinuity between aural and visual perception. Any

visible reality is, in tragedy, 'delayed', e.g. in a messenger's story. Only the recollection of a (imaginary)

community is still present in the theatrical gaze, and this recollection enables the spectator to have a

provisional understanding of the autonomous symbolic order created by the performance. But at the same

time the physicality of the players renders the spectator unable to consider this independent system of

theatrical codes as completely representative. Since citizens are playing 'heroes' who appear to be

symbolically connected with deities as the projection of desires either suppressed and/or forbidden, the

ambivalence of those 'heroes' is re-projected on the citizen who wants to think of himself as a political

subject. Myth or cult, discourses in which the 'heroes' could normally have been put back, are not

alternatives for this ambivalence, due to the physical, unmediated presence of the player. Tragedy becomes

significant when the spectator catches himself with a kind of 'stain' on both his political and his religious

consciousness,33 a disturbance he suppressed in his civic existence, but which returns reinforced in this

gaze on the helpless 'hero'.34 If the common ground for political action which the tragic 'hero', by

definition, does not possess - since he is a hero, a representative of the gods and not a citizen, but

nevertheless represented (in a different sense) by a citizen - existed with the citizen-as-spectator, then the

31 See K. Tindemans, "And no one knows whence they appeared. Sophocles' Antigone and the setting of the law",

Current Legal Theory, XII-1 (1994), especially p.22-53.

32 "What is being played out, then, is not the image of an original unity but the mysterious rupture of social identity in

the moment of its emergence. The audience which has delegated itself to the stage discovers in its fantasmic figures that

something has been surrendered to an unforeseen authority - in the appearance of community as an invisible power - which

only produces more desire" (H. Blau, The audience (Baltimore, 1990), p.10-11).

33 Lacan calls this gaze ('le regard') 'the reverse side of conscience' (J. Lacan, Le séminaire XI. Les quatre concepts

fondamentaux de la psychanalyse (Paris, 1973), p.79).

34 H. Blau (o.c., p. 61 and further) makes a connection with the freudian 'Schaulust' in his analysis (see S. Freud, "Drie

Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie: I: Die sexuellen Abirrungen" [S.A. V] (Frankfurt a.M., 1972) and J. Lacan, o.c., p.165-167).

9

problem would be easy to solve. And tragedy, as an institution, would become completely superfluous,

reduced to mere 'entertainment'. But the representation of the gods, the real shock of the theatre, makes

this impossible, for the paradoxical reason that gods, outside the context of the cult, cannot be

represented at all, especially not by players, viz., human beings made of flesh and blood.

This shock - the presence (as opposed to 'representation') of the divine - exposes the political reach of

tragedy, even with respect to the development of political-juridical theory and dogmatics. Since the

theatrical gaze is not a collective experience, viz., not an experience whose significance, however painful, is

shared by an already formed community, the desire for political subjectivity is a particular one; the tragic

'hero' cannot be conceived as a 'bearer of contradictions' with whom this hypothetical community can

identify itself on a collective level.35 A collective identification assumes the presence of a norm which

buttresses the community qua community, also in its political action: the existence of such a

(meta-political) norm would render tragedy, as an institution which derives its validity from the

representation of ambivalence, immediately superfluous. At most, tragedy would function then as a kind of

'political memory', a living memory of the darkness of ages, not yet 'enlightened' by political order.36

If tragedy was indeed so crucial to the development of the (ancient) political order, then it has to

problematize fundamental categories of the political logos, instead of implying their pre-existence in the

consciousness of the citizens in the polis. Those categories are political time (= historicity) and political

subjectivity. If those principles had not been problematized by the institutional framework, as sketched

above, but had, on the contrary already functioned as a priori given conditions of possibility for the contingency

of the written (= political) law, we would be talking about true dogmatics, only of a less explicit kind. Quod

non.

A first indication of a reflection on time is offered by the structure of theatrical performance itself,

representing a break with the epic storytelling tradition. Because of the presence of situations and figures,

time has become irreversible, whereas at the same time resistance to the continuity of history has become

a structural characteristic of tragedy itself.37 However, the perception of the past as continuous is typical

for historicity as a condition of possibility for political action, since only with this premise does it become

possible to interfere in a historical process. In the perception of the ambivalent events on stage, there are

two elements which can explain this apparent contradiction: eleos (pity) and phobos (fear), defined by

Aristotle as forms of pain based on material (pity) or on imaginary (fear) proximity.38 In a performance, pity

is relatively easily neutralized, due to the awareness that the drama deals only with the visible (and

35 Contra O. Longo, "The theater of the polis" in J.J. Winkler & F.I. Zeitlin, o.c., p.19. There can be no question of

'theatrical community' as a sublimation of a political community experienced as 'unfinished'.

36 As K. Hermassi (Polity and theater in historical perspective (Berkeley, 1977), p.85) suggests. This implies that an

assumption of unambiguous certainty about those very things tragedy problematizes: in that case, the genre would be

non-committal or at least moralistic.

37 See J. de Romilly, Le temps dans la tragédie grecque (Paris, 1971), p.27ff.

38 The terms appear in Aristotle's definition of tragedy (Poetica, VI, 1449b) and are defined in his Rhetorica (II, VIII,

1385b: eleos and II,II,1382a: phobos).

10

recognizable) suffering of represented figures from which it is possible to distantiate, after initial

identification. But this does not work in the case of fear, since the dramatic reversal (technically: the

peripeteia) causing the 'affection', always comes to a 'break-in' of a divine, present order in the precarious

political conditions shown by tragedy. The citizen/spectator does not have any idea what is going to

happen; he cannot not interpret the change (metabolè39) from a political viewpoint, since it is necessary, even

fatal, and not contingent, viz., fundamentally reversible. In other words, the intervention of the gods in the

political community of a tragedy implies that the acknowledged representative order in which the figures

('heroes') seem to act is suddenly broken by the the presence of divine fate (tuchè). This intervention is no

longer understandable in terms of representation, viz., as an esthetic transformation of a known reality -

since the gods are in principle exluded from the political order as a structure of action and could only be

represented in the cult, i.e., within a severe code, within narrow mental and material limits. A divine

intervention in the political order itself, a divine time40 inside an historical order, is simply unthinkable and

can only mean chaos.41 In this fear of what could happen to the political order, or at least to its

representation, the 'stain' on the vision of the spectator appears, a 'stain' which cannot be erased by a

politicized 'hero' like king Pentheus, no more than by a return to the context of myth and ritual. Nor does

tragedy provide a relationship between religious and political order which is different from a simple

parataxis in separate institutions: the polis does not develop a political theology; it does not recognize a

transcendent origin of the political order as a form of social organisation, not even in a purely formal

way.

The second political category problematized in the theatrical gaze is the political subject. Subjectivity, as a

category of a symbolic order (in this case: the political logos), comprises three elements: an object of the

'predicative' act which must provide the subject with an identity, a directedness towards, an openness for this

object (something outside itself) and, finally, a foundation, a ground for this connection between an 'open

self' and an 'objective outside'.42 The first two conditions are clearly fulfilled with most tragic 'heroes'. In

the dramatic structure of The Bacchanals, the figures of Tiresias, the seer, and Cadmus, the mythical

founder of Thebes, are conditions of possibility for Pentheus as a full subject-as-identity: as objects of

attainable political desire they show a 'realistic' alternative, but their appearance also anticipates the failure

of Pentheus' 'totalitarian' concept of identity. Paradoxically, Pentheus' attitude shows his directedness

39 The notion of metabolè, reversal or change, has also a political meaning for Aristotle, by means of which ruptures in

the development of the polis can be explained teleologically (Politica, V, passim).

40 A divine time was, according to the Greeks, something like an eternal now: Aristotle says that 'now' (to nun) is no part

of time, that time is not a chain of 'nows' (Physica, IV, X, 218a).

41 "Le divin qui accapare l'action tragique est en lui-même incapable de contenir le monde, ni surtout la nouvelle cité.

Les Dieux grecs (...) [sont] tout-puissants uniquement dans le champ que leur épitète leur assigne. Ils ne peuvent fournir à

l'homme de destin écrit dans le temps." (J.-E. Joos, "Le 'catharsis' et le moment historique de la tragédie grecque" in Études

françaises, 15/3-4 (1979), p.30). This chaos is more or less imaginable by means of the notion of heterogeneity, i.e. this (shocking)

aspect of 'sociality' which escapes from productivity, which only comprises dissipation (see G. Bataille, "La notion de dépense"

[O.C.I] (Paris, 1970)).

42 See P. Gravel, Pour une logique du sujet tragique. Sophocle (Montréal, 1980), p.102ff.

11

towards the political object: he identifies himself completely with a polis which does not tolerate 'irrational'

gods like Dionysus - even when this deity destroys the priviliged symbol of the polis, i.e. the palace. In the

desperate confirmation of the political telos he is searching for, Pentheus risks everything, even the loss of

all political legitimacy. Concerning the third element of (political) subjectivity, Gravel says: "on pourra

même dire que l'un des lieux principaux du tragique sera d'occuper l'espace qui disjoint l'origine de tout

commencement assignable."43 The 'hero's' quest for identity means that he finds a (legitimate and

legitimizing) foundation ('origine', which also means origin) which he can connect with a historically

accepted (i.e., politically recognized) beginning ('commencement'). But his descent forces him to look for

this foundation in the mythical order. His urge represents the problem of the polis itself, a polis which

connects its autonomy with its autochthony, its mythical story of origin. With his appearance the 'hero'

reopens those wounds the polis tried to close. It is no coincidence that the presence of corpses

(Polyneikes' in Antigone, Agamemnon's and Clytaemnestra's in Aeschylus' Oresteia, etc.) forms the

occasion for the 'break-in' of the gods in the peripeteia. Only a radical historisation of the origin, an

operation the present gods want to preclude actively, can constitute a foundation for a political subject. It is

not enough that the 'hero' recognizes the alterity of the object of political desire (= the recognition of the

first two conditions), it is also necessary that this alterity is translated into political terms, without losing its

radicality: this can only happen through the (written) law. This law asserts that the myth of origin is no

longer present within the political order, that it is but a name - as in the case of any other mimetic practice -

for an (imaginary) historical moment, a representative event that fits in the 'esthetics' of the political order.

With this assertion, dogmatics break the deadlock of tragedy which has become politically superfluous.

43 P. Gravel, o.c., p.112.

12

2. The relationship between theatre, theory and dogmatics: beyond ancient tragedy

The scenes in which pain becomes almost physically palpable are the most disturbing in performed

tragedy: the moaning of Philoctetes (in Sophocles' play of the same name), which even affects the speech

of young Neoptolemus; the chained Prometheus (in Aeschylus' play) who forces the audience to listen,

Agave who wakes up from her ecstasy in which she tore off the head of her son Pentheus.44 In all these

cases, the distinction between presence and representation is blurred in the theatrical gaze itself: the visual

image is, of course, 'fictitious', but the sound is ineluctable, too present. The impact of the pain is even

reinforced by a narration about this pain, which refers to a mythical meaning, as if by that the unbearable

'literalness' of the experience could be softened, suppressed, or censured. This need is represented by the

chorus in the performance itself. The chorus requires a law, which puts an end to all speculation about the

origins of suffering, a juridification of pain45 which erases the 'stain' of the tragic experience. It becomes

clear why the political logos wants to control this pain, perhaps the only 'substance' of theatre.46

How did ancient political theory succeed in undermining the political significance of performed tragedy?

Not by excluding tragedy from the logos of the political community, as Plato suggested in his Republic.

Arlene Saxonhouse convincingly demonstrated how Socrates was forced to recognize desire and physicality

after all, as aspects of life-in-the-community that cross the ideal unity of the polis.47 Those who consider

the 'communality' of the oikos, the family, as the ethical foundation of the order of the polis, will never

succeed, practically or theoretically, in controling the ambivalences of social relationships. There are no

'natural' political relationships, the isonomia ('equity before the law') cannot refer to a (patriarchal)

hierarchy inside the oikos; those subjected in the oikos (women, children, slaves and non-citizens) are

simply excluded from the polis. This does not mean, at least not in Aristotle, who made this theoretical

'jump', that the oikos disappears from the polis. But it can mean that phronèsis ('practical reason') and philia

('friendship') - the virtues of a political community - start from different needs and are directed to different

teloi ('goals') than the oikos. Political ethics are dissociated from a necessary foundation, in contrast to 'pure'

philosophical contemplation.48 This ethical 'dualism' precludes the risk that the real political hero,

Aristotle's phronimos: the 'prudent' citizen himself, would make an epistemological error by asking the gods

for counsel in his own search for (political) foundations. But Aristotle's ethics lack a keystone, a notion

which explains the place of the will in the action of this phronimos who exercizes a spoudaia praxis, an

'honest way of action', in a normative way. There is no formal notion of intentionality49 as a connection

44 Sophocles, Philoctetes, v.751-754; Aeschylus, Prometheus bound, v.637-640; Euripides, The Bacchanals, v.1290-1329.

45 See J.M. Broekman, Intertwinements of law and medicine (Leuven, 1996), [I,2.,b.].

46 H. Blau (o.c., p.56) adresses the 'primacy of pain' in the theatrical experience.

47 A. Saxonhouse, o.c., p.132-184. She contrasts the harshness of Sokrates' model of Callipolis with de ambiguity

reigning at the Banquet.

48 See P. Aubenque, La prudence chez Aristote, p.143-149 and Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, VI, VII, 1141a and X, VII,

1178a.

49 J.-P. Vernant, "Ébauches de la volonté dans la tragédie grecque" in - & P. Vidal-Naquet, o.c., p.41-74.

13

between action and telos. Only tragedy, as Aristotle described it normatively in his Poetica, could provide

this connection: the same spoudaia praxis constitutes the perspective from which the suffering of the tragic

'hero' can be judged, in a representative political framework. The keystone of politics, seen as the

continuation of ethics at the community level,50 is embodied in the mimetic practice of tragedy, although

stripped of its ambivalent character, of its conflict about the foundations of the (political) order. In the

Poetica, Aristotle subjected tragedy (as a text, the performance did not contribute any specific quality, in

his eyes) to a strict requirement of continuity, to a pattern that corresponds with phronèsis, practical

reason.51 In order to trace this continuity in the theatrical experience as such, it should be assumed that the

spectator as a (political) subject is already given, whereas our analysis demonstrated quite the reverse, i.e.,

that the theatrical gaze, independent of the question whether this is the 'intention' of the performance,

problematizes the subject excessively. When Aristotle conceived tragedy implicitly as the model of

spoudaia praxis, he 'imputed' in tragedy a dramaturgy, a concept of representativity which was at most the

result of a theatrical experience, if this were ever the case.52 He underestimated the working of phobos by

supposing the preexistence of an ethical framework able to absorb this shock. This framework exists, but

it is his own philosophical construction and not provided by tragic performance as a practice. The 'traces'

of myth in tragedy, elements of a divine order dissociated from their ritual structure, broke constantly the

historical continuity assumed by the political action of sovereigns as Pentheus and Creon.

Aristotle's normative reinterpretation of tragedy as a mimetic practice has a remarkable affinity with

operations characteristic to legal dogmatics. Legal decisions have to fit into a legal discourse, to be conceived

as a continuity and a unity, in which even the implicit political evaluation, e.g., Dworkin's test of a

'substantive political theory', does not preclude the 'juridified' reassessment of this political criterium

before it can be allowed as part of the (legal) narration. Any text on the desk of a lawyer is indeed

'juridified', as for Aristotle any text of a tragedy belonged to the ethical-political order in the first place.53

Moreover, legal dogmatics requires that any construction of (legally relevant) subjectivity is representative,

viz., that it can be located in the symbolical order of law without any 'stain'. As Aristotle cleanses the 'hero'

from fate and erases any reference to a conflict with the divine order, law creates a legal other of the

subject to be subdued by its discourse, without paying any attention to the shock caused by this radical

alterity: does the legal subject still recognize himself in the juridical logos?

In both cases, legal dogmatics, as a representative discourse, postulates the unity of the law and the identity of

the legal subject as norms pre-existing the juridical norms themselves. This is an inevitable

50 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, X, IX, 1180b-1181b.

51 M. Gellrich, Tragedy and theory. The problem of conflict since Aristotle (Princeton, 1988), p.5, referring to Ethica Nicomachea

(VI,IV,1140a).

52 See H.-T. Lehmann, o.c., p.50-55.

53 See R. Dworkin, Law's empire (London, 1986), p.228ff & S. Fish, "Working on the chain gang. Interpretation

in the law and in literary criticism", Critical Inquiry, 9 (1982), p.201-206.

14

epistemological requirement.54 But to ground this norm, law has to refer to a hypothetical and

transcendent level of normativity (a Grundnorm), in the form of an abstract principle of non-contradiction:

the law is the law, and the law is valid, without being able to distance itself completely from the desire to

give a deeper sense to the law by referring to justice (the Greek dikè) as origin.55 The destructions caused by

this desire for a real presence of dikè are shown by Dionysus in The Bacchanals, whose claim for

recognition in Pentheus' polis is based on 'the good of mankind'.56

It can hardly be a coincidence that, since the Renaissance, there has been a renewed interest in the

relationship between theatre and the political-juridical order57. With the disappearance of a medieval

worldview based on a fixed position of both rulers and ruled, on a status being both diachronically

(historically) and synchronically (as the reigning order) fixed, fundamental political categories such as

sovereignty and (political) subjectivity have again become problematic. Absolute monarchy was, from the late

16th until the late 18th century, the priviliged form of appearance of the modern political order, since it

succeeded, at least in political facticity, in legitimizing both a transcendent sovereignty, by way of political

theology, and a full fledged concept of (civil) subjectivity.58 When status is transformed into a subjectivity

which no longer provides the security of a divine order or a divine 'plan', theatre is able to express this

uncertainty. The certainty of the role seems unassailable (the theatre holds a mirror, making identification

possible), but the performance manifests and is clearly a mimetic structure, implying the contingency of

performed roles and the relations between them (the mirror is empty). The function of 'modern' theatre

is therefore double: it offers a contribution to the constitution of the political subject (both ruler and

ruled) - an ideological function - but it also exposes, directly and indirectly, the doubts about the origin of

political power: the question of sovereignty.

We offer, briefly, two interesting examples of research on the significance of theatricality as a discursive

strategy. Christopher Pye studied the theatrical representation of the (absolute) monarch at the beginning

of the 16th century and, more generally, the theatre, as a specific discursive form to make the (limits of)

monarchy 'representable'.59 Christian Diet did a thematical analysis of the translations and adaptations of

Sophocles' Oedipus the King, a drama where the ultimate taboos of power and community itself -

54 See H. Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre (Wien, 1960), p.209-212.

55 See W.C. Conklin, "The invisible author of legal authority", Law and Critique, VII/2 (1992), p.173-192.

56 Dionysus, who hath risen at last a God,

most terrible, yet kindest unto men

(Euripides, The Bacchanals, v.860-861)

57 See e.g. G. Holderness, J. Turner & N. Potter, Shakespeare: The play of history (London, 1988). Shakespeare's history

plays show an extremely interesting tension between official historiography (e.g. Raphael Holinsheds chronicles) and the

'nakedness' of monarchical power in its theatrical representation.

58 The most important theoretical efforts in this direction are, considered from our a posteriori viewpoint: J. Bodin, Six

livres de la République (1567) and T. Hobbes, Leviathan (1651). The absolute sovereign himself participated in this intellectual

'debate': see e.g. The trew law of free monarchies (1598) of King James I.

59 C. Pye, The regal phantasm. Shakespeare and the politics of spectacle (London, 1990).

15

patricide, regicide, and incest - are expressed.60 Both authors use, albeit in a different way, a

psychoanalytical frame of reference. Pye was inspired by the lacanian notion of the (theatrical) gaze,61 in

which a 'stain' on virtual political subjectivity was revealed, whereas Diet referred to the work of Pierre

Legendre on the legal-dogmatic anchor of the name-of-the-Father in genealogy, the authoritative pedigree

of both sovereign and subjects.62

In Shakespeare's Richard II, a 'history play' about the humiliation of the sovereign, a courtier says to the

queen in tears:

For sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears,

divides one thing entire to many objects,

like perspectives, which, rightly gaz'd upon,

show nothing but confusion; ey'd awry,

distinguish form.

(II.ii.16-19)

This metaphor for sadness ('like perspectives') refers to the pictorial technique of the anamorphosis, in

which a change in direction of the look decisively changes the perception of the image. Hans Holbein's

The Ambassadors (1533) where a skull on the forefront (a known symbol of vanitas) becomes clear

when 'ey'd awry', is the most famous example. But the metaphor is ambiguous since both the

deformation of the gaze by the tears (the subject) as well as the deliberate deformation of the image (the

object) are included.63 Lacan suggests that a painting like Holbein's, created at a moment that the 'marvels'

of geometry and optics go with the self-affirmation of the 'autonomous' subject, exposes an aspect of the

organisation of the 'life of drives', viz., the desire to see in the gaze on the other mainly the 'self' - without

having to concede this 'mirroring' openly.64 The ambiguous use the courtier in Richard II makes of this

metaphor confirms this suggestion: it is more than an optical technique, especially in a drama where a

dethroned king makes spasmodic efforts to look at himself and his (imaginary) subjects from various

angles. The consciousness that the gaze - both of the sovereign and on the sovereign - constitutes the

political relations in the 'commonwealth', is not reserved for drama, but is also present in political theory,

in Thomas Hobbes in particular. Hobbes affirms the representation of the unity of the political community

in one physical person, the sovereign, since the political subject of this 'representative operation' (the subject

as a person) is already a part of this representation: "A person, is he whose words or actions are considered,

either as his own, or as representing the words or actions of an other man, or of any other thing to whom

60 C. Biet, Oedipe en monarchie. Tragédie et théorie juridique à l'âge classique (Paris, 1994).

61 J. Lacan, o.c., p.65-109.

62 P. Legendre, L'inestimable objet de la transmission. Étude sur le principe généalogique en Occident (Paris, 1985).

63 See W. Shakespeare/P. Ure (ed.), King Richard II (London, 1956), commentary at Act II, II, 18.

64 J. Lacan, o.c., p.83. Holbein's painting is reproduced on the cover of this book.

16

they are attributed, whether truly or by fiction."65 He borrows this definition from the theatre, from the

Latin notion of persona and the Greek prosoopon. This way he can legitimize the appearance of the

sovereign as an 'artificial person': if someone is able to be represented by a (masked) other - as the author

of someone else's actions - the sovereign is equally able to represent the 'general will' of the community,

viz., he has the required authority.66 But it does not end with a theory on the legitimacy of political

representation; Hobbes also goes into the structural ambiguity of the gaze upon the 'representative',

visible sovereign: the absolute monarch. In his visibility, the sovereign seems to part with the rational

legitimacy of his power, as based on the social covenant: he represents, as a 'sun king', the absolute

satisfaction of the desires of his subjects.67 Since his own desire is at stake, the subject, the true author of royal

power, is no longer able to resist the power of the sovereign or to accept its indeterminacy. The sovereign

erases any present (= non-represented) power of the individual subject, although he is the origin of the power

of the sovereign. Pye describes this mechanism as follows: "Precisely in his attempt to make the

sovereign presence the fully separate and fully visible object of his sight, the subject divides and displaces

himself, and so renews the spectacle's transgressive force."68 This abyssal 'dividedness' of the gaze (on the

power) is at its best on the frontispiece of Hobbes' Leviathan, the image of the magnus homo. This

sovereign is 'constructed' out of his subjects, as a coat of mail, and their gaze is directed towards the

'inner side' of his body, whereas the sovereign himself looks over them. The difference between the gazes

of the subjects and their reversal in the gaze of the sovereign is significant: in the attribution of authority to

the sovereign, the subjects lose themselves, the monarch looks over the origin of his power, he retires himself

from his 'bodily' constitution. By using this image as a device for his work, Hobbes stressed the idea that

the political subject wants to see his darkest, his most 'absolutist' desires mirrored in the gaze of the

sovereign: it is his own gaze that intimidates him now, not the gaze of ancient gods who threaten to

interfere in his precious 'autonomy'.69 This is the profound adjustment the Renaissance made to the

ancient ideal of the polis: a displacement of fear (phobos) for chaos to the 'self'.

Pye makes clear how a modern notion of sovereignty, as the representation of political subjectivity in the

'commonwealth', relies on a theatrical gaze in which a subject who imagines himself as undivided: the

anamorphosis, the image of the sun shining brightly and blinding to death. Diet shows how the

65 T. Hobbes/C.B. MacPherson (ed.), Leviathan or the matter, forme & power of common-wealth ecclesiasticall and civill (London,

1985), p.217.

66 C. Pye, o.c., p.50.

67 C. Pye, o.c., p.53.

68 C. Pye, "The sovereign, the theater and the Kingdome of Darknesse: Hobbes and the spectacle of power" in S.

Greenblatt (ed.), Representing the English Renaissance(Berkeley, 1984), p. 294 - an earlier version of chapter 2 of Pye's book. He

quotes, as an example of the 'blinding in the gaze', Shakespeare's King Henry V:

I will rise there with so full a glory

that I will dazzle all the eyes of France,

yea, strike the Dauphin blind to look on us.

(I.ii.278-280)

69 C. Pye, The regal phantasm, p.75-76.

17

uncertainty about the origin (of the power of the sovereign) continues to haunt the theatre of the Baroque.

Although he does not ask whether this theatrical representation effectively influenced the societal

legitimacy of absolute monarchy - he treats the dramatic adaptations of the Oedipus-theme as purely

literary material. He demonstrates that the question of sovereignty is not resolved by a simple

'contractualist' trick.70 In the story of Oedipus, the 'nature' of political power is affected to its deepest

core. Both father and king are killed and their murderer inherits the sexual power of the father/husband

as well as the political power of the king. This king, an usurper without knowing it, undertakes an

obsessional quest to the origin of his power, for his familial (and political) descent. Genealogy is the true

object of his quest.71 Not so much the body of Jocaste, mother and wife, but the quest itself is the

forbidden object of Oedipus' desires. Under the Ancien Régime it was strictly forbidden to start a

paternity inquiry, a fortiori about a royal child.72 The baroque adaptation of the fable of Oedipus staged

the pedigree, the genealogy as the ultimate system of representation of absolute monarchy - both of the

monarch as a 'body politic' and of the political order of which the king is the keystone. A double

representation: the image of the tree73 as a closed system and its theatrical representation. But the

representations seem to contradict each other. The state and the law assign each individual his place in

the genealogy - both subjects and sovereign - and forbid any transgression. However, the theatre

consciously shows the decomposition of this system, it imagines a total subversion of the legitimacy of

the monarchal-political order by introducing a problem law cannot solve, i.e., the problem of sovereignty

where it transcends the law. This spectacle is shown at the court itself, supported by institutions and with

the priviliged of the state ('les honnêtes gens') as spectators.74 But unlike Sophocles' Oedipus the King,75

French tragedy concludes with a clear, even 'juridified' assignment of responsabilities. Oedipus' father,

Laius, and Jocasta most of all, are held responsable, on the grounds of a juridified connection between

biological and political order: "Mater semper certa est" and "Pater is est quem nuptiae demonstrant" -

Roman adagia, later to be consecrated in the Code Napoléon. This juridification was unthinkable in

Greek tragedy, and ancient political theory has also continued to struggle for decades with the passage

70 As King James I did in his Trew law of free monarchies (1598). Concerning the 'contract' concluded with his people at

the occasion of his coronation, he said: "It follows therefore of necissity that God must first give sentence upon the king that

breaks, before the people can think themselves freed of their oath." (quoted in D. Wootton (ed.), Divine right and democracy. An

anthology of political writing in Stuart England (Harmondsworth, 1986), p.104). Political theology as an emergency gate?

71 C. Biet, o.c., p.414-415.

72 C. Diet, o.c., p.353-354. This assumption is contested, in a personal comment on this text, by G.C.J.J. van den

Bergh. The prohibition of inquiry into paternity is a product of the French Revolution. Napoleon saw personally to it that is

was maintained in the Code Civil of 1804.

73 A metaphor appearing in the Gospel of Mark (8, 24: the blind born, healed by Christ, sees people as trees), but also

in Shakespeare's Macbeth (IV.i.92-84 en V.v.33-37: the forest will beat the tyrant, as the prediction says, and will indeed be

fulfilled).

74 C. Biet, o.c., p.421.

75 See J.-P. Vernant, o.c., p.68-70.

18

from sexual to institutional reproduction.76 By means of strict (legal) taboos on exposure of children and

incest, the fault of the woman can easily be fixed and the legal fiction closed. But to this effect, a much

more important transgression was committed, i.e., the inquiry of paternity, even when in baroque logic

this could only lead to a more precise determination of the place of the juridical-political subject.77

Nevertheless, as Diet remarks, this can only happen in the theatre, in a representation of the transgression.

Unfortunately, he does not ask why this representation should indeed contribute to the legitimacy of the

political order by genealogy, whereas a 'real' inquiry would undermine this order. Pye remarks that the

theatre of the Renaissance, as Shakespeare's Henry V, possesses the structure of Lacan's 'femme barrée':

the woman does not constitute a positive identity (subjectivity), since she lacks a reference to the

'master-signifier', the phallus. In French classical tragedy on the Oedipus-theme, and probably elsewhere

too, the same operation takes place, by making Jocasta 'criminally responsible'. The indeterminate identity

of 'the female' is dominantly present in the gaze of the spectator: she is the 'stain' which cannot be

controlled by the legal dogmatics of genealogy, unless she is erased. The travesty of the king, his symbolic

castration as an essential aspect of his representation, in the theatre and outside, is made impossible in

classical tragedy.

Walter Benjamin pointed out that the baroque 'Trauerspiel' is more allegory than tragedy, that it presents

closed, dead meanings, ruins of thoughts, and no 'progressive' history. The work of art, the theatre, is

saved as 'matter', but its presence, its 'beauty' if you like, is sacrificed on the altar of the law, in an act of

sadism.78

76 About this problem in Plato's Republic, see A. Saxonhouse, o.c., p.154.

77 C. Diet, o.c., p.427-429.

78 W. Benjamin/R. Tiedemann (ed.), Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (Frankfurt a.M., 1982), p.152-167.