Auctoritas and Sovereignty in Julius Caesar
2
조회
0
다운로드
0
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
This essay surveys the Roman concept of “auctoritas” as a supra-juridical power in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Critics have contextualized the play within Shakespeare’s contemporary regicidal discourses, but, historically, Caesar’s official position before his death was as a dictator perpetuo, who could monopolize or silence the auctoritas of the Senate. In republican Rome, auctoritas signified the power of the Senate as fathers of the nation that could claim a justitium, the Roman version of the state of exception. The Senate’s declaration of senatus consultum ultimum suspended existing political powers (potestas) by creating a juridical vacuum. This basic premise allows us to read the play as a conflict between two supra-juridical powers—the Senate’s auctoritas and the singular sovereignty Caesar might claim. Seen from the perspective of sovereignty, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a peculiar narrative as it shows a series of sovereign acts of violence and exceptional states that can hardly be contained within juridical norms. The Lupercalia that foregrounds the main action of the play—the assassination of Caesar—demonstrates that Caesar is a wargus, a banned wolf. This is due to his sovereignty, a position located outside the legal body. The following Forum scene and the Roman deaths that fill the stage show that the clash between the Senate’s auctoritas and singular sovereignty can cause extended constitutional vacuums and anomie states. However, the result of the clash is more than an anomie as it generates a new political order by ultimately forming the very foundation of a new nomos, Augustus’s sovereign Empire.
Abstract
This essay surveys the Roman concept of “auctoritas” as a supra-juridical power in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Critics have contextualized the play within Shakespeare’s contemporary regicidal discourses, but, historically, Caesar’s official position before his death was as a dictator perpetuo, who could monopolize or silence the auctoritas of the Senate. In republican Rome, auctoritas signified the power of the Senate as fathers of the nation that could claim a justitium, the Roman version of the state of exception. The Senate’s declaration of senatus consultum ultimum suspended existing political powers (potestas) by creating a juridical vacuum. This basic premise allows us to read the play as a conflict between two supra-juridical powers—the Senate’s auctoritas and the singular sovereignty Caesar might claim. Seen from the perspective of sovereignty, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a peculiar narrative as it shows a series of sovereign acts of violence and exceptional states that can hardly be contained within juridical norms. The Lupercalia that foregrounds the main action of the play—the assassination of Caesar—demonstrates that Caesar is a wargus, a banned wolf. This is due to his sovereignty, a position located outside the legal body. The following Forum scene and the Roman deaths that fill the stage show that the clash between the Senate’s auctoritas and singular sovereignty can cause extended constitutional vacuums and anomie states. However, the result of the clash is more than an anomie as it generates a new political order by ultimately forming the very foundation of a new nomos, Augustus’s sovereign Empire.
참고문헌 (31)
- Agamben, Giorgio, "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life" (1998), Stanford UP
- Agamben, Giorgio, "State of Exception" (2005), U of Chicago P
- Arendt, Hannah, "On Revolution" (1990), Penguin
- Barber, C. L., "Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy" (2012), Princeton UP
- Bergmann, Martin S., "The Unconscious in Shakespeare’s Plays" (2013), Routledge
- Burke, Peter, "Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe" (1978), Harper and Low
- Carpi, Daniela, "Caesar’s Body in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: Sacralization and De-sacralization of Power", Pólemos, 9(2), pp.281~294 (2015)
- Derrida, Jacques, "Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida", pp.86~135 (2003), U of Chicago P
- Esposito, Roberto, "Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life" (2011), Polity
- Gil, Daniel Juan, "'Bare Life’: Political Order and the Specter of Antisocial Being in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar", Common Knowledge, 13(1), pp.67~79 (2007)
- Girard, René, "Julius Caesar: New Casebooks", pp.108~127 (2002), Palgrave
- Halpern, Richard, "Julius Caesar: New Casebooks", pp.210~228 (2002), Palgrave
- Hardt, Michael, "Empire" (2000), Harvard UP
- Hawkes, David, "Julius Caesar: New Critical Essays", pp.199~212 (2005), Routledge
- Foucault, Michel, "The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Vol. I" (1980), Vintage
- Kamm, Antony, "Julius Caesar: A Life" (2007), Routledge
- Liebler, Naomi Conn, "Shakespeare’s Festive Tragedy: The Ritual Foundations of Genre" (1995), Routledge
- Lucking, David, "Brutus’s Reasons: Julius Caesar and the Mystery of Motive", English Studies, 91(2), pp.119~132 (2010)
- Mahler, Andreas, "Julius Caesar: New Critical Essays", pp.181~195 (2005), Routledge
- Miola, Robert S., "Julius Caesar and the Tyrannicide Debate", Renaissance Quarterly, 38(2), pp.271~289 (1985)
- Öğütcü, Murat, "Julius Caesar: Tyrannicide Made Unpopular", Parergon, 34(1), pp.109~128 (2017)
- Paster, Gail Kern, "‘In the Spirit of Men there is no Blood’: Blood as Trope of Gender in Julius Caesar", Shakespeare Quarterly, 40(3), pp.284~298 (1989)
- Plutarch, "Life of Julius Caesar" (1907), George Gill and Sons
- Rebhorn, Wayne A., "The Crisis of the Aristocracy in Julius Caesar", Renaissance Quarterly, 43(1), pp.75~111 (1990)
- Schmitt, Carl, "Dictatorship: From the Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to Proletarian Class Struggle" (2014), Polity
- Schmitt, Carl, "Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty" (1985), MIT P
- Shakespeare, William, "The Norton Shakespeare" (1997), Norton
- Simmons. J. L., "Julius Caesar: New Critical Essays", pp.155~163 (2005), Routledge
- Smith, William, "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities" (1890), Taylor, Walton and Maberly
- Taylor, Gary, "Julius Caesar: New Casebooks", pp.188~209 (2002), Palgrave
- Wilson, Richard, "Will Power: Essays on Shakespearean Authority" (1993), Wayne State UP