The Negative Potential of the Fool in King Lear and the Politics of Nothing
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This paper reveals that the Fool in William Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear exceeds its role as a traditional court jester as a figure of homo sacer. Lear’s Fool resembles a medieval court jester who is hired to entertain his royal master, but it is my contention that this particular Fool not only fulfills the traditional role but also deviates from a typical description of a court buffoon. In fact, Lear’s fool is generative in bringing about affective change in Lear from the solipsistic monarch to a self-conscious man. What allows this influential power to take effect is the Fool’s state of inclusive exclusion. His extra-judicial positionality conditioned by the suspension of the sovereign law once sanctions his belonging in Lear’s royal circle but simultaneously displaces him from it. The Fool inhabits a type of an ostracized life that Giorgio Agamben calls homo sacer. As such, his untethered status enables him to re-fashion the unfavorable connotation associated with the concept of non-belonging, and unearth the teeming potentiality inherent in the state of exception. In highlighting Lear’s fault and re-envisioning the nature of sovereignty, the Fool’s non-identity is crucial as well. The Fool’s namelessness allows the Fool to become a united subject, an alternative to a unified subject. The Fool troubles the division between the interior and exterior, and the public and private, on which Lear’s sovereign power rests. The paper argues that the Fool, as Lear’s expression of sovereignty, sheds light on the idea that to speak is to perform and to perform is to do politics.
Abstract
This paper reveals that the Fool in William Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear exceeds its role as a traditional court jester as a figure of homo sacer. Lear’s Fool resembles a medieval court jester who is hired to entertain his royal master, but it is my contention that this particular Fool not only fulfills the traditional role but also deviates from a typical description of a court buffoon. In fact, Lear’s fool is generative in bringing about affective change in Lear from the solipsistic monarch to a self-conscious man. What allows this influential power to take effect is the Fool’s state of inclusive exclusion. His extra-judicial positionality conditioned by the suspension of the sovereign law once sanctions his belonging in Lear’s royal circle but simultaneously displaces him from it. The Fool inhabits a type of an ostracized life that Giorgio Agamben calls homo sacer. As such, his untethered status enables him to re-fashion the unfavorable connotation associated with the concept of non-belonging, and unearth the teeming potentiality inherent in the state of exception. In highlighting Lear’s fault and re-envisioning the nature of sovereignty, the Fool’s non-identity is crucial as well. The Fool’s namelessness allows the Fool to become a united subject, an alternative to a unified subject. The Fool troubles the division between the interior and exterior, and the public and private, on which Lear’s sovereign power rests. The paper argues that the Fool, as Lear’s expression of sovereignty, sheds light on the idea that to speak is to perform and to perform is to do politics.
참고문헌 (27)
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