Shakespeare’s Exceptional Violence: Reading Titus Andronicus with Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben

• Authors: Porcelli, Stefania

Abstracts

EN

In this paper I explore the multifaceted relationship between violence, speech and power in the most graphic of Shakespeare’s plays, Titus Andronicus. I take my cue from Hannah Arendt’s reflections on violence as opposed to power, and as something “incapable of speech,” but I read the play through the lens of Giorgio Agamben’s notion of sovereignty as the suspension of the law. I consider the dichotomy speech/muteness as an example not only of the dichotomy power/violence (Arendt) but also of the opposition between bios and zoe, that is the difference between a life worth to be included in the political realm and a life understood as the mere condition of being alive, a condition common to human beings and beasts (according to classical philosophy). In Titus Andronicus, these distinctions are blurred, and zoe becomes fully exposed to the sovereign decision. While the image of a mutilated and mute body cannot match Arendt’s idea of politics as the combination of speech and action bereft of violence, Agamben has developed the notion of a politics that renders life disposable, mute, bare, and can still be called politics or power, and precisely biopower. From this perspective, I argue, Lavinia and the other characters of Titus Andronicus are the embodiment of the concept of “bare life” as developed by Agamben, and Shakespeare’s Rome is a State of exception and of exceptional violence.

Keywords

EN

Titus Andronicus; violence and power; biopolitics; Giorgio Agamben; Hannah Arendt

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Analyses/Rereadings/Theories: A Journal Devoted to Literature, Film and Theatre
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 1

Dates

published

2016

Contributors

author

Porcelli, Stefania

other

The Graduate Center, CUNY

other

Dr. Stefania Porcelli holds a doctorate in Literature in English from “Sapienza” University of Rome. She is currently studying Comparative Literature at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She teaches Italian language and literature at Hunter College and at Queens College. Her research focuses on the intersection between political discourse, emotions and literature, both in English and Italian literature. She has published articles on Hannah Arendt, Elizabeth Bowen and Elsa Morante

Identifiers

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/11089/21772