Binding Violence: Literary Visions of Political Origins

347 Pages·2010·2.08 MB·English

by  Moira Fradinger

Binding Violence

B inding V iolence
Literary Visions of Political Origins
Moira Fradinger
stanFord uniVersity press
Stanford, California 2010
This book has been published with the assistance of
the Frederick W. Hilles Publication Fund, Yale University.
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
©2010 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
“Soldiers’ Rest” from Poems by Roque Dalton ©1984 by Roque Dalton.
Reprinted with permission of Curbstone Press.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of
Stanford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fradinger, Moira
Binding violence : literary visions of political origins / Moira Fradinger.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8047-6330-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Violence in literature. 2. Politics in literature. 3. Politics and literature.
4. Literature, Comparative. I. Title.
pn56.v53f73 2010
809'.933552—dc22
2009029231
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper.
Typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/14 Minion.
A Anamaría Lascano y Raúl Fradinger
A Erich y Sonia
A John

contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
Literature, Violence, and Politics 3
Part I: Sophocles’ Antigone or The Invention of Politics:
We the City
Antigone and the Polis 33
The Most Modern of Tragedies: The Politics of Burial 46
Creon’s Edict: The Barbarians at Home 54
Dying Democratically: Antigone’s Ritual 68
Interlude
Modern Tempo—Democratic Overture, State Finale 87
Part II: D. A. F. de Sade’s One Hundred and Twenty Days of
Sodom or The Reinvention of Politics: We the People
Sade’s Text and Sade’s Times 105
The Libertine Alliance: No Ordinary Pact in Times of War 118
Necrophiliac Cannibals: Dismembering “Nonpeople,” Membering
“The People” 127
Domestic Consistency: Not Laws, but Order 137
Frame within the Frame: Riveting Voices and Gazes 148
Interlude
Modern Sovereignty: Perversion of Democracy? 161
Contents
Part III: Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat or Sovereign
Politics: We the Nation-State
Vargas Llosa’s Appeal to History: Within and Beyond Latin America 185
Necropolitics I: From an “African Horde” to a Modern Country:
Trujillo’s Body Politic and the Haitian Enemy 202
Necropolitics II: Rebonding the Nation: Trujillo’s Body Natural and
the Specularity of Enmity 225
Epilogue
The Force of Imagination 241
Notes 253
Index 323
viii
acknowledgments
In a world such as ours, where three-quarters of the population live in poverty
or in the midst of war, writing about literature and violence—let alone writ-
ing—is a privilege. I am indebted to many people and institutions for having
granted me that privilege, and to my parents, Anamaría and Raúl, above all for
the efforts they made to grant their children the advantage of an education.
The ideas suggested in this book are the result of so many partnerships that
it is as difficult to do justice to them as it is to account for the times that led to
their crystallization.
Early work for this book was done under the auspices of Yale University’s
intellectual community and with Yale’s financial support, for which I am most
grateful. The book took its current shape partly during a postdoctoral Mellon
fellowship at the Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania; it was
completed during a sabbatical year granted to me by a Morse Fellowship at Yale
University. I wish to express sincere gratitude to the editorial board of Stanford
University Press: special thanks to Emily-Jane Cohen and Norris Pope for their
warmth, support, and professionalism; to Sarah Crane Newman, John Feneron,
and Martin Hanft for their extraordinary efficiency, kindness, and help in the
production process. I am also most grateful to Marcel Hénaff and an anony-
mous reader who so generously offered comments on the manuscript. A Fred-
erick W. Hilles Publication Fund grant from Yale helped with publication costs;
thanks, too, to Jon Butler and Emily Bakemeier, whose support at Yale has been
vital throughout.
I benefited from invaluable comments made by many readers at different
stages of work. For their advice on my early work, I am grateful to Shoshana Fel-
man, whose lessons in reading have been invaluable, and to Roberto González
Echeverría, Michael Holquist, and Rolena Adorno. I must also express immense
gratitude to Rosi Braidotti, who, in spite of not having been directly involved
ix