Love among the Ruins: The Erotics of Democracy in Classical Athens

343 Pages·2002·1.21 MB·English

by  Victoria Wohl

Love among the Ruins
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Love among the Ruins
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THE EROTICS OF DEMOCRACY
IN CLASSICAL ATHENS
Victoria Wohl
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright©2002byPrincetonUniversityPress
PublishedbyPrincetonUniversityPress,41WilliamStreet,
Princeton,NewJersey08540
IntheUnitedKingdom:PrincetonUniversityPress,
3MarketPlace,Woodstock,OxfordshireOX201SY
AllRightsReserved
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Wohl,Victoria,1966–
Loveamongtheruins:theeroticsofdemocracyinclassicalAthens/
VictoriaWohl.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0-691-09522-1(alk.paper)
1.Democracy—Greece—Athens—Psychologicalaspects—History.
2.Sex—Politcalaspects—Greece—Athens—History.3.Sexrole—
Politicalaspects—Greece—Athens—History.I.Title.
JC75.D36W642002
320.938′5—dc21 2002072289
ThisbookhasbeencomposedinSabon
Printedonacid-freepaper.∞
www.pupress.princeton.edu
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
For Erik
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CONTENTS
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Preface ix
Introduction:IdeologicalDesire 1
TheEroticsofDemocracy 1
“JustLove”:TheOriginofDemocraticEros 3
NormativityandItsDiscontents 12
SymptomaticReading 20
I. Pericles’Lovers 30
TheIdeal 32
TheLover 41
TheLove 55
TheBeloved 62
II. PornosofthePeople 73
ParodicPericles 73
PoliticsoftheOpenMouth 80
Cleon’sTurn 92
KingDemos 105
III. PerverseDesire:TheErosofAlcibiades 124
TheoriesofPerversion 124
Paranomia 129
De¯merastia 144
Socrates’Boyfriend 158
IV. TheEroticsofEmpire 171
HardonEmpire 174
Dusero¯sto¯naponto¯n 188
WorkingthroughtheSymptom 203
V. WhatDoestheTyrantWant? 215
Hipparchus’sHerms 215
DesireoftheOther 224
viii CONTENTS
TyrannicalEcstasy 236
AllorNothing 249
TheTyrant’sLackandDemocraticFantasy 260
VI. Conclusion 270
Bibliography 285
IndexLocorum 313
GeneralIndex 321
PREFACE
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THESPIRITOFAtheniandemocracyisafamiliartopic,butIhopeinthe
courseofthisbook todefamiliarizebothofitskey terms.The“spirit”I
seek to understand is not the ineffable Geist of the democracy but its
psyche or unconscious, its psukhe¯. The phrase “spirit of democracy”
oftenimpliesatautologicaldoubling,inwhich“spirit”and“democracy”
each means precisely the other: the demos is characterized by its demo-
cratic spirit and the democracy by the spirit of its demos. But when the
psukhe¯ is understood as the unconscious, the relationship between the
two terms becomes more complex, and a new reading of “spirit” yields
a new understanding of “Athenian democracy.” Behind the well-known
facade of Athenian democratic ideology lies a phantasmatic history of
longings and terrors, perverse desires and untenable attachments. These
fantasies constitute Athenian democracy as we recognize it: they are the
psychicscaffoldingofAthens’smanifestpoliticalstructure,holdingaloft
its political ideals and holding together its political relations. They can
also,however,disruptthesmoothsurfaceofAthenianideology,exposing
itsimpossiblesutures,itsdangerousgaps,andtheforcedlaborofitserec-
tion.Whentheyareuncovered,thesefantasiesshowusademocracyoften
atoddswithitsownspiritandrevealbothtermsaliketobelessfamiliar
thanwemayhavethought.
This study of the spirit of democracy is thus an analysis of the demo-
cratic psyche. What does it mean, though, to analyze the psyche of the
Athenian democracy or of the Athenian demos? The unconscious is a
notoriously elusive object, and all the more so when it belongs not to a
livingindividualbuttoalong-deadcommunity.First,Itake“demos”not
asatranscendentalsubjectbutasadiscursiveformation,acompendium
ofthingstheAthenianssaid(anddidnotsay)aboutthemselvesascitizens.
Thisfiguremightlackthecommonsenseorganicunityofahumansubject,
butasadiscourseitdoeshaveacertaininternalconsistency,alogicthat
governs both its expressions and its repressions. Available to us only
through textual representations, this discourse is also itself textual: it is
articulatedthroughpoliticallyinvestedtropesandstructuredbyideologi-
callyinflectedmetaphorsandmetonymies.Likeanydiscourse,itencom-
passesnotonlywhatitcananddoessaybutalsowhatitcannotsay—its
unspoken or unspeakable subtext—and hence is always marked by cer-
tain fundamental incoherences. Those incoherences are the locus of the
democraticunconscious,whichwillappearnotasacharacterwithinthis
“text” but as a distinctive quality of it: the shape of its silences and the