Love among the Ruins ■ This page intentionally left blank Love among the Ruins ■ THE EROTICS OF DEMOCRACY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Victoria Wohl PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD Copyright©2002byPrincetonUniversityPress PublishedbyPrincetonUniversityPress,41WilliamStreet, Princeton,NewJersey08540 IntheUnitedKingdom:PrincetonUniversityPress, 3MarketPlace,Woodstock,OxfordshireOX201SY AllRightsReserved LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Wohl,Victoria,1966– Loveamongtheruins:theeroticsofdemocracyinclassicalAthens/ VictoriaWohl. p. cm. Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN0-691-09522-1(alk.paper) 1.Democracy—Greece—Athens—Psychologicalaspects—History. 2.Sex—Politcalaspects—Greece—Athens—History.3.Sexrole— Politicalaspects—Greece—Athens—History.I.Title. JC75.D36W642002 320.938′5—dc21 2002072289 ThisbookhasbeencomposedinSabon Printedonacid-freepaper.∞ www.pupress.princeton.edu PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 For Erik ■ This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS ■ Preface ix Introduction:IdeologicalDesire 1 TheEroticsofDemocracy 1 “JustLove”:TheOriginofDemocraticEros 3 NormativityandItsDiscontents 12 SymptomaticReading 20 I. Pericles’Lovers 30 TheIdeal 32 TheLover 41 TheLove 55 TheBeloved 62 II. PornosofthePeople 73 ParodicPericles 73 PoliticsoftheOpenMouth 80 Cleon’sTurn 92 KingDemos 105 III. PerverseDesire:TheErosofAlcibiades 124 TheoriesofPerversion 124 Paranomia 129 De¯merastia 144 Socrates’Boyfriend 158 IV. TheEroticsofEmpire 171 HardonEmpire 174 Dusero¯sto¯naponto¯n 188 WorkingthroughtheSymptom 203 V. WhatDoestheTyrantWant? 215 Hipparchus’sHerms 215 DesireoftheOther 224 viii CONTENTS TyrannicalEcstasy 236 AllorNothing 249 TheTyrant’sLackandDemocraticFantasy 260 VI. Conclusion 270 Bibliography 285 IndexLocorum 313 GeneralIndex 321 PREFACE ■ THESPIRITOFAtheniandemocracyisafamiliartopic,butIhopeinthe courseofthisbook todefamiliarizebothofitskey terms.The“spirit”I seek to understand is not the ineffable Geist of the democracy but its psyche or unconscious, its psukhe¯. The phrase “spirit of democracy” oftenimpliesatautologicaldoubling,inwhich“spirit”and“democracy” each means precisely the other: the demos is characterized by its demo- cratic spirit and the democracy by the spirit of its demos. But when the psukhe¯ is understood as the unconscious, the relationship between the two terms becomes more complex, and a new reading of “spirit” yields a new understanding of “Athenian democracy.” Behind the well-known facade of Athenian democratic ideology lies a phantasmatic history of longings and terrors, perverse desires and untenable attachments. These fantasies constitute Athenian democracy as we recognize it: they are the psychicscaffoldingofAthens’smanifestpoliticalstructure,holdingaloft its political ideals and holding together its political relations. They can also,however,disruptthesmoothsurfaceofAthenianideology,exposing itsimpossiblesutures,itsdangerousgaps,andtheforcedlaborofitserec- tion.Whentheyareuncovered,thesefantasiesshowusademocracyoften atoddswithitsownspiritandrevealbothtermsaliketobelessfamiliar thanwemayhavethought. This study of the spirit of democracy is thus an analysis of the demo- cratic psyche. What does it mean, though, to analyze the psyche of the Athenian democracy or of the Athenian demos? The unconscious is a notoriously elusive object, and all the more so when it belongs not to a livingindividualbuttoalong-deadcommunity.First,Itake“demos”not asatranscendentalsubjectbutasadiscursiveformation,acompendium ofthingstheAthenianssaid(anddidnotsay)aboutthemselvesascitizens. Thisfiguremightlackthecommonsenseorganicunityofahumansubject, butasadiscourseitdoeshaveacertaininternalconsistency,alogicthat governs both its expressions and its repressions. Available to us only through textual representations, this discourse is also itself textual: it is articulatedthroughpoliticallyinvestedtropesandstructuredbyideologi- callyinflectedmetaphorsandmetonymies.Likeanydiscourse,itencom- passesnotonlywhatitcananddoessaybutalsowhatitcannotsay—its unspoken or unspeakable subtext—and hence is always marked by cer- tain fundamental incoherences. Those incoherences are the locus of the democraticunconscious,whichwillappearnotasacharacterwithinthis “text” but as a distinctive quality of it: the shape of its silences and the