Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper uses the figure of Cassandra, a character from ancient Greek myth and tragedy, to frame an investigation into a range of interlocking issues of importance to political thought. It draws on the representation of Cassandra utilized by Aeschylus in his Oresteia trilogy, a work which presents a mythologized account of the establishment of democracy in the Athenian polis. Different readings of the Oresteia have been used by liberal, Marxist, feminist and post-modern theoretical positions in order to support particular claims about the theory and practice of politics. By revealing Cassandra as a figure who simultaneously defines and transgresses the boundaries of what is considered political, this paper demands that we re-examine our assumptions about both what constitutes the political realm, and who may take part in political conversation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores the connections between John Ford's Western, "The Searchers," and Aeschylus' tragic trilogy, the "Oresteia." Both are revenge tragedies and use the theme to explore the relation between political and pre-political association. Both deal with the contrast between civilization and barbarism, and explore the way a number of border figures tragically move between the two states.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In Aeschylus’ trilogy the Oresteia, Clytemnestra, the wife of King Agamemnon, greets her husband’s victorious return from Troy with murder and deceit. The conflict in the Oresteia, its drama and its potential for a downward spiraling violence, inspires a revision of contemporary theories of agonistic politics developed by William Connolly, Bonnie Honig, and Chantal Mouffe. I argue that agonistic politics does not take to heart Freud and Nietzsche’s understanding that aggression is the deep ontological root underlying all forms of contestation. By returning to classical conceptions of the agon, understood broadly as the politics of contestation, my reading of the Oresteia seeks to demonstrate that contemporary agonistic theory displaces the bloody roots of contest and diminishes the propensity for contests to spiral into violence. Reading the Oresteia as a series of gendered, unequal contests of subjection and domination questions the assumptions of agonistic theory that contest leads to a mutual recognition of identities and differences. The Oresteia demonstrates that the challenge of agonistic theory is not to affirm the perpetuity of contests as Honig posits, but to question whether these aggressive tendencies can be controlled and channeled without eradicating differences or limiting the political. The Greek tragic agon links agonistic contests, persuasion, and violence in a way that raises doubts about agonistic theory’s claims that contestation can calm the violence stemming from struggles for political inclusion and power.