Intimate Commerce
Exchange, Gender, and Subjectivity in Greek Tragedy
Published on 1. January 1998
Book
Paperback/Softback
332 pages
978-0-292-79114-5 (ISBN)
Description
Exchanges of women between men occur regularly in Greek tragedy-and almost always with catastrophic results. Instead of cementing bonds between men, such exchanges rend them. They allow women, who should be silent objects, to become monstrous subjects, while men often end up as lifeless corpses. But why do the tragedies always represent the transferal of women as disastrous?
Victoria Wohl offers an illuminating analysis of the exchange of women in Sophocles' Trachiniae, Aeschylus' Agamemnon, and Euripides' Alcestis. She shows how the attempts of women in these plays to become active subjects rather than passive objects of exchange inevitably fail. While these failures seem to validate male hegemony, the women's actions, however futile, blur the distinction between male subject and female object, calling into question the very nature of the tragic self. What the tragedies thus present, Wohl asserts, is not only an affirmation of Athens' reigning ideologies (including its gender hierarchy) but also the possibility of resistance to them and the imagination of alternatives.
Victoria Wohl offers an illuminating analysis of the exchange of women in Sophocles' Trachiniae, Aeschylus' Agamemnon, and Euripides' Alcestis. She shows how the attempts of women in these plays to become active subjects rather than passive objects of exchange inevitably fail. While these failures seem to validate male hegemony, the women's actions, however futile, blur the distinction between male subject and female object, calling into question the very nature of the tragic self. What the tragedies thus present, Wohl asserts, is not only an affirmation of Athens' reigning ideologies (including its gender hierarchy) but also the possibility of resistance to them and the imagination of alternatives.
Reviews / Votes
"An important new work from the perspective of gender (rather than exclusively feminist) theory, this volume should appeal to professors and graduate students in the classics."- ChoiceMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Austin, TX
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
544 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-292-79114-5 (9780292791145)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Victoria Wohl is a professor of classics at the University of Toronto.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Exchange, Gender, and Subjectivity
The Tragic Exchange
Reaffirmation, Resistance, Negotiation
The Social Economy of Exchange
The Subject of Exchange
Part One. Sovereign Father and Female Subject in Sophocles' Trachiniae
One. "The Noblest Law": The Paternal Symbolic and Its Reluctant Subject
The Final Exchange
Heracles: Subject under Siege
Hyllus: The Reluctant Ephebe
Two. The Foreclosed Female Subject
Iole, Deianira, and the Triangle of Exchange
Anti doron dota: Deianira's Gift-Giving
Status and Gender
A Woman's kleos
Three. Alterity and Intersubjectivity
Interpellation of the Other, Creation of the Self
Spatial Models of Self and Other: Pandora and kalokagathia
The Virgin in the Garden
Part Two. The Violence of kharis In Aeschylus's Agamemnon
Four. The Commodity Fetish and the Agalmatization of the Virgin Daughter
Marx and the Fetishized Economy
The Occluded Exchange
The Agalmatization of the Virgin Daughter
Five. Agalma ploutou: Accounting for Helen
The Disenchantment of the agalma
Khrusamoibos somaton: The Commodification of the Male Subject
Six. Fear and Pity: Clytemnestra and Cassandra
Androboulon kear: Clytemnestra's Transgressive Identity
A Lament for the Father
Part Three. Mourning and Matricide in Euripides' Alcestis
Seven. The Shadow of the Object: Loss, Mourning, and Reparation
Eight. Agonistic Identity and the Superlative Subject
The Matriarch of the oikos and Alcestis's Domestic Politics
The Superlative Subject and Her Husband
From Tragedy to the Symposium
Nine. The Mirror of xenia and the Paternal Symbolic
From Impossible kharis to the agalma Economy
From physis to praxis
Heracles and the Mirror of xenia
The Final Exchange
Conclusion. Too Intimate Commerce
Notes
Bibliography
General Index
Index Locorum
Introduction. Exchange, Gender, and Subjectivity
The Tragic Exchange
Reaffirmation, Resistance, Negotiation
The Social Economy of Exchange
The Subject of Exchange
Part One. Sovereign Father and Female Subject in Sophocles' Trachiniae
One. "The Noblest Law": The Paternal Symbolic and Its Reluctant Subject
The Final Exchange
Heracles: Subject under Siege
Hyllus: The Reluctant Ephebe
Two. The Foreclosed Female Subject
Iole, Deianira, and the Triangle of Exchange
Anti doron dota: Deianira's Gift-Giving
Status and Gender
A Woman's kleos
Three. Alterity and Intersubjectivity
Interpellation of the Other, Creation of the Self
Spatial Models of Self and Other: Pandora and kalokagathia
The Virgin in the Garden
Part Two. The Violence of kharis In Aeschylus's Agamemnon
Four. The Commodity Fetish and the Agalmatization of the Virgin Daughter
Marx and the Fetishized Economy
The Occluded Exchange
The Agalmatization of the Virgin Daughter
Five. Agalma ploutou: Accounting for Helen
The Disenchantment of the agalma
Khrusamoibos somaton: The Commodification of the Male Subject
Six. Fear and Pity: Clytemnestra and Cassandra
Androboulon kear: Clytemnestra's Transgressive Identity
A Lament for the Father
Part Three. Mourning and Matricide in Euripides' Alcestis
Seven. The Shadow of the Object: Loss, Mourning, and Reparation
Eight. Agonistic Identity and the Superlative Subject
The Matriarch of the oikos and Alcestis's Domestic Politics
The Superlative Subject and Her Husband
From Tragedy to the Symposium
Nine. The Mirror of xenia and the Paternal Symbolic
From Impossible kharis to the agalma Economy
From physis to praxis
Heracles and the Mirror of xenia
The Final Exchange
Conclusion. Too Intimate Commerce
Notes
Bibliography
General Index
Index Locorum