Binding violence : literary visions of political origins

__Binding Violence__ exposes the relation between literary imagination, autonomous politics, and violence through the close analysis of literary texts—in particular Sophocles' __Antigone__, D. A. F. de Sade's __120 Days of Sodom__, and Vargas Llosa's __The Feast of the Goat__—that speak to a blind spot in democratic theory, namely, how we decide democratically on the borders of our political communities. These works bear the imprint of the anxieties of democracy concerning its other—violence—especially when the question of a redefinition of membership is at stake. The book shares the philosophical interest in rethinking politics that has recently surfaced at the crossroads of literary criticism, philosophy, critical theory, and psychoanalysis. Fradinger takes seriously the responsibility to think through and give names to the political uses of violence and to provoke useful reflection on the problem of violence as it relates to politics and on literature as it relates to its times. Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction: Literature, Violence, and Politics 16 Part I: Sophocles’ Antigone or The Invention of Politics: We the City 44 Antigone and the Polis 46 The Most Modern of Tragedies: The Politics of Burial 59 Creon’s Edict: The Barbarians at Home 67 Dying Democratically: Antigone’s Ritual 81 Interlude: Modern Tempo—Democratic Overture, State Finale 100 Part II: D. A. F. de Sade’s One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom or The Reinvention of Politics: We the People 116 Sade’s Text and Sade’s Times 118 The Libertine Alliance: No Ordinary Pact in Times of War 131 Necrophiliac Cannibals: Dismembering “Nonpeople,” Membering “The People” 140 Domestic Consistency: Not Laws, but Order 150 Frame within the Frame: Riveting Voices and Gazes 161 Interlude: Modern Sovereignty: Perversion of Democracy? 174 Part III: Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat or Sovereign Politics: We the Nation-State 196 Vargas Llosa’s Appeal to History: Within and Beyond Latin America 198 Necropolitics I: From an “African Horde” to a Modern Country: Trujillo’s Body Politic and the Haitian Enemy 215 Necropolitics II: Rebonding the Nation: Trujillo’s Body Natural and the Specularity of Enmity 238 Epilogue: The Force of Imagination 254 Notes 266 Index 336 From the publisher. Binding Violence exposes the relation between literary imagination, autonomous politics, and violence through the close analysis of literary texts--in particular Sophocles' Antigone, D.A.F. de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, and Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat--that speak to a blind spot in democratic theory, namely, how we decide democratically on the borders of our political communities. These works bear the imprint of the anxieties of democracy concerning its other--violence--especially when the question of a redefinition of membership is at stake. The book shares the philosophical interest in rethinking politics that has recently surfaced at the crossroads of literary criticism, philosophy, critical theory, and psychoanalysis. Fradinger takes seriously the responsibility to think through and give names to the political uses of violence and to provoke useful reflection on the problem of violence as it relates to politics and on literature as it relates to its times Binding Violence exposes the relation between literary imagination, autonomous politics, and violence through the close analysis of literary texts—in particular Sophocles' Antigone , D. A. F. de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom , and Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat —that speak to a blind spot in democratic theory, namely, how we decide democratically on the borders of our political communities. These works bear the imprint of the anxieties of democracy concerning its other—violence—especially when the question of a redefinition of membership is at stake. The book shares the philosophical interest in rethinking politics that has recently surfaced at the crossroads of literary criticism, philosophy, critical theory, and psychoanalysis. Fradinger takes seriously the responsibility to think through and give names to the political uses of violence and to provoke useful reflection on the problem of violence as it relates to politics and on literature as it relates to its times. Content: Sophocles's Antigone or the invention of politics : we the city -- D.A.F. de Sade's One hundred and twenty days of Sodom or the re-invention of politics : we the people -- Mario Vargas Llosa's The feast of the goat or sovereign politics : we the nation-state. Through innovative readings of Sophocles, the Marquis de Sade and Mario Vargas Llosa, Binding Violence examines literary visions of the constitution of autonomous polities in the context of historical emergences of democracy