초서의 「의사의 이야기」에 나타난 주권 그리고 벌거벗은 생명
The Sovereignty and Bare Life in Chaucer’s “Physician’s Tale”
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The present essay investigates the logic of the “sovereignty” depicted in Chaucer’s “Physician’s Tale.” In the tale, a father (Virginius) cuts the head of his own flesh and blood daughter (Virginia), whereby it represents the most heinous violence in the entire Chaucerian canon. Strangely enough, however, the narrative tends to justify this extreme violence by approving the power of life and death (Vitae Necisque Potestas) that Virginius holds over his daughter’s life as the sovereign father. This essay surveys the political philosophy or logic that resides behind this extreme violence in terms of political theology. “The Physician’s Tale” begins with its debate on the sovereignty of Nature as the “vicaire general” of God, and Nature’s divine inscription of Her sovereignty on the body of Virginia--as represented by her beauty and virginity--makes her as a sacred subject. The very sacred inscription of Nature’s sovereignty upon her body, nonetheless, makes her as an accursed subject at the same time as her beauty and virginity invite Apius’s destructive gaze and desire for her. In other words, as its most ambiguous signification of the “homo sacer” denotes, because of the sovereignty inscribed on her body, Virginia becomes at once sacred and accursed being. The very logic of sovereignty makes her an object of her father’s violence, since homo sacer is, as Agamben puts it, “the life that may be killed but not sacrificed.” As a narrative of political theology, Chaucer’s tale depicts how the sovereignty is transferred in the narrative--from God, then to Nature as His chief deputy, then to Virginius as the paterfamilias, and finally to the people who ultimately subvert the entire political order toward the end of the tale. In this process, the tale depicts how the sovereignty, as the power of defining “bare life,” is deeply associated with the extreme violence that the tale represents.
Abstract
The present essay investigates the logic of the “sovereignty” depicted in Chaucer’s “Physician’s Tale.” In the tale, a father (Virginius) cuts the head of his own flesh and blood daughter (Virginia), whereby it represents the most heinous violence in the entire Chaucerian canon. Strangely enough, however, the narrative tends to justify this extreme violence by approving the power of life and death (Vitae Necisque Potestas) that Virginius holds over his daughter’s life as the sovereign father. This essay surveys the political philosophy or logic that resides behind this extreme violence in terms of political theology. “The Physician’s Tale” begins with its debate on the sovereignty of Nature as the “vicaire general” of God, and Nature’s divine inscription of Her sovereignty on the body of Virginia--as represented by her beauty and virginity--makes her as a sacred subject. The very sacred inscription of Nature’s sovereignty upon her body, nonetheless, makes her as an accursed subject at the same time as her beauty and virginity invite Apius’s destructive gaze and desire for her. In other words, as its most ambiguous signification of the “homo sacer” denotes, because of the sovereignty inscribed on her body, Virginia becomes at once sacred and accursed being. The very logic of sovereignty makes her an object of her father’s violence, since homo sacer is, as Agamben puts it, “the life that may be killed but not sacrificed.” As a narrative of political theology, Chaucer’s tale depicts how the sovereignty is transferred in the narrative--from God, then to Nature as His chief deputy, then to Virginius as the paterfamilias, and finally to the people who ultimately subvert the entire political order toward the end of the tale. In this process, the tale depicts how the sovereignty, as the power of defining “bare life,” is deeply associated with the extreme violence that the tale represents.
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