°Impietas, virtù
Some wandering notes. In Machiavelli and Us, but also elsewhere, Althusser combines Lucretius’s understandings of the clinamen, chance, repulsion and combination with that of Machiavelli’s argument that the Prince must ’seize fortuna by the hair at the right moment’, thereby realising (as Illuminati will put it) “all of its virtù-potenza“.
And yet, reading back through Lucretius, it is possible to find a fairly persistent critique of precisely this masculined, war-like - or perhaps, better: warlordist - characterisation of virtù. I will have to chase down Pamela Gordon’s “Some Unseen Monster: Rereading Lucretius on Sex” in The Roman Gaze, which seems to discuss this at some length. But for the moment, some remarks on – and meanderings around - De Rerum Natura.
Lucretius’s first illustration of the evil that religion nourishes – tantum religio potuit suadere malorum - is the sacrifice of Iphigenia in the name of war - the war to recapture Helen from Troy.
Addressing Memmius’s possible concerns about impiety, Lucretius writes:
Remember how at Aulius the altar of the Virgin Goddess was foully stained with the blood of Iphigenia by the leaders of the Greeks, the patterns of chivalry. … Raised by the hands of men, she was led trembling to the altar … slaughtered to her greater grief by a father’s hand, so that a fleet might sail under happy auspices. Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by superstition.
There are two versions of this same story. One that ends with Iphigenia’s sacrifice, and another which ends with her escape, of which there are also two version. Eurepides has her being saved by Artemis; while the lesser-known playwright Hyginus has the goddess Diana send down a fog under which Iphigenia makes her escape. In both of these latter versions, an animal is substituted on the alter for the body of Iphigenia, and Iphigenia escapes to Tauris.
Nevertheless, all this this reminds me of “How to do Sovereignty Without People? The Subjectless Condition Of Postliberal Power”, by Dimitris Papadopoulos and Vassilis Tsianos. Yet, the story of Iphigenia, unlike that of the Sabine women, is one of sacrifice rather than theft.
A couple of questions that I find myself mulling over as a consequence. Is it possible to discern in Machiavelli’s formulation of seizing fortuna by the hair something of the act of theft, the echo of the abduction of the Sabine women? And, what of the relation between Agamben’s homo sacer, who tends to be characterised as raced – as, following Foucault, a condition of the sacrifice - to the Lucretian denunciation of the sacrifice of Iphigenia? What is the difference between theft and - or analytical-political consequence of the paradigm of theft versus - sacrifice?
In any case, reading the Latin scholars of late, and as it happens, in “Fluctus Irarum, Fluctus Curarum” Julia Dyson draws attention to the parallels between Virgil’s “Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem” (from the Aenid) and that of Lucretius’s “Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum”. Dyson isn’t the first to do this. But she is I think the first to draw some interesting conclusions about piety and impiety – which I will have to think on some more, particularly as they segue with the impolitical.
Does Weil refer to Lucretius at all, I wonder?
That said, it previously occurred to me that Marx plays directly on Virgil’s “Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem“, substituting “the capitalist mode of production” for that of Virgil’s “the Roman race”. To restate what I drew from that in part, I argued that there is no sense in which the stabilisation of capitalism – insofar as this implies a particular combination of chance and necessity, of contractarian freedom and eternalised exploitation - might be separated, politically or analytically, from racism and sexism. As yet, I can find no contractarian understanding in Lucretius – it’s all about combination, impact, shapes, weight, movement and the clinamen. It might be there, but I’m working my way through rather slowly, if making some leaps hither and thereabouts in the meantime.
So, what of virtù? Of Machiavelli’s indifference to the pain of fortuna seized by the hair (or is it a pious pleasure at such pain, given Niccolo’s association of grace and glory)? Or Virno’s deafness to the colonial resonance of the frontier?
If Lucretius insists that it is doubtful what fortune tomorrow will bring (posteraque in dubio est fortunam quam vehat aetas), he nevertheless takes from Epicurus the two, principal conditions of being set upon the path of fortune: dispensing with the fear of gods and of death. Is this a way to draw a distinction between an implicitly virile virtù and an effeminate (recalling, of course, that Lucretius was denounced as effeminate) impietas ?
What I want to see is this mythologos applied to Battlestar Galactica.
One thing there, though, are you reading gentis as race? Are you sure that that is a transparent translation? Doesn’t it mean something more like ‘people’? Race is entirely shot through with biologistic and bionationalist meaning. Are you really sure that fits in Rome?
Another thing is the ide of capitalism needing the putative stabilisation of contractarian freedom, by which I am guessing you mean the permit concept of rights: the state grants you this freedom, and then there is some rubbish explanation as to why that is perfect (the contractarian deduction). As you know, I find this difficult to swallow because these contractarian freedoms aren’t plucked from the thin air. They are not invented by the state. In fact, they are demanded by people and they only come to play a role ’stabilising capitalism’ once the state has run out of all other options. As I see it, the meaningful content of freedoms precedes their statist mirror-images; this extends to the notion of contract itself. When I am done with Papua New Guinea, maybe I will write a book about this: there is a fascinating history of the notion of free association which everywhere begins in counterfactuality. These guys tilling the soil in feudal systems would be hit by the lightning and the next thing you know they have the visions of a society undetermined by bonds. In fact, during the English Revolution, this kind of stuff reached a complete fever pitch - and it is in reaction to that the classic contractarian theories were developed.
Incidentally, along these lines I would say that the possibility of an encounter that is not determined within the state is clearly the freedom potential of something like Lucretius’ writing; what I find odd, actually I find it completely incomprehensible so I must be reading it wrong, is the idea that such an encounter would be random . Capitalism is definitely contingent, the notion of the encounter is valuable, and everything could have combined in many other ways, but it is definitely not random.
TCO [May 19, 2006 @ 7:50 pm]
Well, if I don’t get around to a BSG reference again, which is unlikely, maybe Ben will oblige. Though, how I miss having some decent scifi to watch, and BSG in particular … Btw, I want someone to tell me whether I’m going to be riled and disappointed by X-Men again before I fork out unearned money.
I am reading ‘gentis’ as ‘race’, and I agree that’s anachronistic. But it’s variously translated as ‘race’, ‘people’, and ‘empire’ in what I’ve been reading, and since I’m blogging here rather than essaying, it works for me here as a shorthand for the discussion of populism - it’s about parables, yes? (Though, it would be worth learning something more about the civil war between the Populares and the Optimates that raged during Lucretius’s time - and, from what I can tell, his insistence on not taking part in such.)
I’m not sure Lucretius would say ‘random’. Though I’ll keep a lookout, for Lucretius it seems that chance has something much more determined about it, as in the exercise of ‘will’, or ‘wilfullness’. It’s not, however, at all clear that these words too can be so easily transposed.
As for books, these are initial notes for a first chapter. Where else would I begin other than Lucretius?
s0metim3s [May 19, 2006 @ 8:33 pm]
On translations:
gens, gentis is usually rendered as family and tribe respectively.
Sometimes also as nation, which seems the most anachronistic.
populus, populi, however, is people.
s0metim3s [May 20, 2006 @ 2:13 am]
Bataille’s essay on sovereignty would be a crucial hinge between sovereignty, sacrifice and the impolitical. I’d need to refresh my memory to take this further, which I can’t do just now, since all my books are packed away for a delayed house move.
Brett [May 20, 2006 @ 8:50 am]
[…] read s0metim3s’ Impietas, virtù & Lucretius’ clinamen:
Some wandering notes. In Machiavelli and Us, but also elsewhere, Althusser combines Lucretius’s understandings of the clinamen, chance, repulsion and combination with that of Machiavelli’s argument that the Prince must ’seize fortuna by the hair at the right moment’, thereby realising (as Illuminati will put it) “all of its virtù-potenza”. [+]
Nasio uses Lacan’s semblance, which i know nothing about but the translators point out is part of Nasio’s innovation. He associates the term with Lucretius’ simulacra in De Natura Rerum — the representation of an object carries its materiality. […]
northanger [May 23, 2006 @ 3:39 pm]
I’d be absolutely into hearing more of your thoughts re Luceritus and De Natura Rerum. I cannot offer at present anything precise as I haven’t been able to find the book in what is the mayhem that is my ‘dwelling’, and to be honest, I don’t remember it well enough to improvise. But if I may add to the above list of related texts, there is the one by Derrida ‘Mes Chances’, which has been translated by Avital in a book called “Taking Chances”. (The french version is in Psyché.)
I’d second Brett that Bataille would be well worth reading in this regard, as sovereignity and chance - and sacrifice - is ’something’ he writes about incessantly. The text of his called ‘La Souveraineté’ is in v.8 of his ‘complete works’ in french. I’m not sure but I think the eng. trans. is in vol.2 of the “Accursed Share.” (But it would not suffice to read that book as if it were his disseration on an academically delienated topic, as these questions are everywhere in his writing…and well GB is not one for dissertations…)
This is a strech, but I am somehow reminded of Antonioni’s comments during a discussion following the initial screening of L’Avventura at Cannes, where he refers at length to Luceritus. I don’t have a reference to an english version, though I imagine it exists?
I hope you do write more on this.
Amie [May 24, 2006 @ 11:23 am]
Amie, as always, you’re on the ball. Many, many thanks for the references. Of course, trawling my way through De Rerum with a Latin dictionary and a patience I’m not prone to might be far too amitious a project. But, for the moment, I persevere … if only because I hope it will shift the connections of the synapses just a little perhaps.
s0metim3s [May 24, 2006 @ 5:41 pm]
Sovereignty is the third volume of the Accursed Share, which is in compiled with the second volume, History of Eroticism, as a single book in English. But his talk about sacrifice, sovereignty, sacred, life, etc extends throughout the entirety of his work. The collection of the writings from College de Sociologie and Theory of Religion also discuss these topics extensively.
Craig [May 25, 2006 @ 2:11 am]
Well, yes. But, actually, I was considering an oblique detour - one already referred to in passing before during the Spivak reading, but perhaps more considered on this occasion - to Judith Surkis’s “No Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye: Transgression and Masculinity in Bataille and Foucault” (diacritics, 26:2).
Particularly given Lucretz’s rather non-ocular, but highly tactile, sense of knowledge. But also given the way I initially approached this as a question of vir and impietas.
s0metim3s [May 25, 2006 @ 4:40 am]