tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106797429392727612.post4444344998444561646..comments2023-11-02T03:03:51.375-07:00Comments on Now and Rome: Agamben emergencyIkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16954104097396714498noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106797429392727612.post-34834253795600938422007-11-15T09:13:00.000-08:002007-11-15T09:13:00.000-08:00This is probably too late for your workshop, but a...This is probably too late for your workshop, but anyway...<BR/><BR/>The mention of boundary stones made me think of the god Terminus, associated with boundary stones that were sacred to him.<BR/><BR/>Literally a 'terminal man' I suppose.<BR/><BR/>Did Turnus anger Terminus by using his sacred boundary stone as a weapon -- and thus Aeneas' was *justified* in killing in him i.e. Virgil is keen to find a noble cause behind the dirty business of war, as Aeneas is the ancestor of the Romans and cannot be portrayed as an anti-hero killing in cold blood.<BR/><BR/>Terminalia was celebrated at the end of the old Roman year, which at one level could be seen as the 'death' of the year, followed by the rebirth of the new year -- so death is not just linked to physical borders, but chronological boundaries too.<BR/><BR/>As an aside, one apocryphal tale states that the Red Hand of Ulster featured in Northern Irish heraldry symbolises an invading prince (i.e. the unnamed Irish counterpart of Aeneas) cutting his hand off and throwing it onto the shore as he disembarks as a claim of sovereignty.<BR/><BR/>The true origin of the symbol however is hazy.<BR/><BR/>It wouldn't surprise me if other European cultures had similar myth structures.<BR/><BR/>I guess that sacrifice is literally to make something sacred.<BR/><BR/>For the state to be founded and the boundaries asserted, blood of some kind must be shed for the Gods to be appeased. Your God wants steak.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08587401664278294147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106797429392727612.post-70250844197076056712007-10-25T08:38:00.000-07:002007-10-25T08:38:00.000-07:00I'd love to hear more from you about this - it loo...I'd love to hear more from you about this - it looks like you're thinking exactly about 'dead' political agents (or non-agents - the slave as socially dead), and about borders, which is the point of conjunction I'm worrying about at the moment... Agamben writes particularly about exiles, migrants, people in 'detention centres' etc, btw.Ikahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16954104097396714498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106797429392727612.post-15963175569029300132007-10-25T05:05:00.000-07:002007-10-25T05:05:00.000-07:00I have SO MUCH I would like to say in response to ...I have SO MUCH I would like to say in response to this... not that I knew Agamben before you posted, and not that I know really anything about the <I>Aeneid</I>. But reading up Agamben, I found out that he has done work on Simone Weil, and this does not surprise me. Her short essay <I>The Iliad or the Poem of Force</I> has these themes in it: the reduction of life to the barest necessity as a result of being in the continuous presence of violence or threat of extinction (through war, through slavery). <BR/><BR/>The other thing that comes to mind is Orlando Paterson's <I>Slavery and Social Death</I>, a vast comparative anthropological study of the internal dynamics of slavery which shows how the slave is almost universally perceived as socially dead. <BR/><BR/>I am just about to scoot off and teach, but I can write something longer if you think it would be helpful. I have been thinking about these things a lot recently, with particular reference to the non-people constructed by our ever-regulated citizenship and borders: exiles, migrants, the trafficked, the imprisoned.Una McCormackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08946949711109912505noreply@blogger.com