Seductions of Fate

Acknowledgements INTRODUCTION: SELF-DENYING CREATIVITY Necessary fate The allure of tragic guilt Tragic modern subjectivity The fiction of fate Tragic autonomy meets ethical heteronomy PART I: NECESSARY FATE A fractured source of authority Agent and victim at once: Creon Cooperating with death: Agamemnon, Etocles Destiny's other side PART II: THE ALLURE OF TRAGIC GUILT Objective necessity as the desire of the Other: Phaedra with Lacan Death as evasion Exceeding sublime tragic sense: Oedipus, Antigone Failures of the imagination: Aristotle's plot and Kant's antinomies Tragedy's refusal of meditation PART III: TRAGIC MODERN SUBJECTIVITY Hegel and the Double Blinds of Consciousness Self-Created Victims: Freud, Althusser, Foucault Staying on This Side of power or the subject's participation Subjection for the sake of autonomy Agency premised on constraint Beyond sublimation or worse than tragic Subjectivity as necessary fiction PART IV: THE FICTION OF FATE Creating destiny: Lorca's Blood Wedding Exiting death From self-victimization to responsibility Awareness of fictionality PART V: TRAGIC AUTONOMY MEETS ETHICAL HETERONOMY The enigma of Kant's ethics Lévinas and the ethical demand A freedom ineluctably invoked Authoring the Other's decision The limited perspective of autonomy Tragic heteronomy and ethical heteronomy A politics beyond commitment Notes Works Cited Index