Gone with the (West) Wind: Shelley, Apostrophe, and Inept Interpellation

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this essay, I read Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’ as dramatizing the paradox of the apostrophe as a poetic device. Shelley presents a case where the speaker fails to understand the limitations of apostrophes before eventually realizing the revolutionary possibilities the serious (and embarrassing) employment of this device opens up. I read the poem alongside Althusser’s formulation of ‘interpellation’ and his ‘theatre’ of the encounter with the Police. Thus, reading Shelley’s ‘Oh hear!’ in the poem, alongside Althusser’s ‘Hey, you there!’, I argue, helps us better understand Shelley’s dramatization of the failure of the speaker’s attempts at interpellating the West Wind. This failure, however, quickly turns to admiration for the revolutionary non-subject that the Wind is in the poem. I show that Shelley’s desire to be the West Wind is not because it functions as a revolutionary subject but in fact because it doesn’t.