Seductions of Fate Tragic Subjectivity, Ethics, Politics

by Basterra, Gabriela

• ISBN13: 9781403921710
• ISBN10: 1403921717
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-05-14
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

If the tragic interpretation of experience is still so current, despite its disastrous ethical consequences, it is because it shapes our subjectivity. Instead of contradicting the ideals of autonomy and freedom, a modern subjectivity based on self-victimization in effect enables them. By embracing subjection to an alienating other (the Law, Power) the autonomous subject protects its sameness from the disruption of real people. Seductions of Fate stages a dialogue between this tragic agent of political emancipation and the unconditional ethical demands it seeks to evade.

Author Biography

Gabriela Basterra is in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction: Self-Denying Creativity	1	(13)
Necessary fate	5	(1)
The allure of tragic guilt	6	(1)
Tragic modern subjectivity	7	(2)
The fiction of fate	9	(2)
Tragic autonomy meets ethical heteronomy	11	(3)
1 Necessary Fate	14	(24)
A fractured source of authority	15	(3)
Agent and victim at once: Creon	18	(8)
Cooperating with death: Agamemnon, Eteocles	26	(4)
The constitutive act of self-blinding	30	(4)
Destiny's other side	34	(4)
2 The Allure of Tragic Guilt	38	(29)
Objective necessity as the desire of the Other: Phaedra with Lacan	38	(5)
Death as evasion	43	(5)
Exceeding sublime tragic sense	48	(5)
Failures of the imagination: Aristotle's plot and Kant's antinomies	53	(10)
Tragedy's refusal of mediation	63	(4)
3 Tragic Modern Subjectivity	67	(39)
Hegel and the double binds of consciousness	71	(7)
Self-created victims: Freud, Althusser, Foucault	78	(8)
Staying on this side of power or the subject's participation	86	(7)
Subjection for the sake of autonomy	93	(3)
Agency premised on constraint	96	(5)
Beyond sublimation or worse than tragic	101	(2)
Subjectivity as necessary fiction	103	(3)
4 The Fiction of Fate	106	(25)
Creating destiny: Lorca's Blood Wedding	107	(7)
Exiting death	114	(9)
From self-victimization to responsibility	123	(4)
Awareness of fictionality	127	(4)
5 Tragic Autonomy Meets Ethical Heteronomy	131	(38)
The enigma of Kant's ethics	135	(9)
Levinas and the ethical demand	144	(5)
A freedom ineluctably invoked	149	(5)
Authoring the other's decision	154	(3)
The limited perspective of autonomy	157	(5)
Tragic heteronomy and ethical heteronomy	162	(3)
A politics beyond commitment	165	(4)
Notes	169	(32)
Works Cited	201	(8)
Index	209