Lawlessness Controls the Laws: Nomos, “The Ethical,” and the (Im)possibilities of Anarchia in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis

Abstract

Lawlessness Controls the Laws: Nomos, “The Ethical,” and the (Im)possibilities of Anarchia in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis* Nicolas Lema Habash Is it possible to understand the sacrifice of one’s child? In Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis (IA henceforth),1 Agamemnon is required to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, under the compulsion of an oracle so that the Greek army could travel to Troy. The question about the intelligibility of such an event seems to be crucial in Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (1983) when he compares Abraham’s paternal anguish to Agamemnon’s. Kierkegaard concludes that Agamemnon’s deed is perfectly understandable since the sacrifice of Iphigenia lies within the ethical parameters of his tragic context. Through a reading of Kierkegaard’s reflections, I would like to suggest that the sacrifice of Iphigenia lies within an ethical context that permits violence and death to take place. This ethical context, which we can also conceptualize as nomos, participates in the action of IA by shattering the possibility of a critical contestation by the individual characters of the play who are opposed to the sacrifice. These individuals become an object of the nomos and thus fail to oppose death. The objectification [End Page 169] of Iphigenia has convincingly been analyzed from a feminist perspective. Nonetheless, the argument about the objectification of the characters of the play, I maintain, can be studied beyond a gender perspective. The nomic prescription and order that governs the play—related to characters whom we do not see on stage such as Calchas, Odysseus, or the Greek army—appears to be so beyond the control of the characters that not only women suffer objectification but also men. Thus I will argue that Agamemnon is also a figure who is shattered by the violence that his nomos requires. His sacrifice of Iphigenia becomes a duty to be fulfilled and not a willing action supporting Pan-Hellenism and the War of Troy. In order to seek for a way out of the dilemma of violence that this play advances, one must look for a notion of subjectification (or de-objectification) that could not be fulfilled within the parameters of the established law or nomos. Opposing death in this context requires an interpretation of a kind of subjectivity formed in the activity of opposing the law: effectively, that is, an act of anarchia or refusal to comply with the law. Even though Euripides does not show us this possibility within the actions of the play, he at least provides us with the opportunity to imagine what I will call a process of anarchistic subjectification, something that, I maintain, an Aristotelian ethics fails to do. Therefore, my intention in this article is certainly to attempt a literary interpretation of IA, but also, and most importantly, to reflect on the philosophical implications and outcomes that Euripides’ play proposes for thinking about law within a critical theory tradition. I Iphigenia’s decision to sacrifice herself so that the Greek army may be sent a good wind in order to leave Aulis and travel to Troy has been a matter of discussion since Aristotle.2 Political and personal reasons have been provided to explain Iphigenia’s decision to die voluntarily after she had begged her father Agamemnon not to kill her.3 One powerful interpretation explores the fact that Iphigenia is not really “free” when she makes her decision, and her apparent freedom is a kind of failure. Herbert Siegel (1980) argues against those who interpret Iphigenia’s change of mind as an act of free will. That [End Page 170] Iphigenia decides to die after her begging fails to convince her father (1211–52), after Agamemnon reasserts the need for the sacrifice (1255–75), and after Achilles does not succeed in his attempt to rescue her and is violently rejected by the Greek army for his effort (1345–70), means, for Siegel, that Iphigenia becomes a hostage. She does not want to die, but her decision is motivated by self-delusion. In a process of complete detachment from reality, she convinces herself that her sacrifice is for a noble cause, therefore idealizing the whole expedition to Troy. Thus “viewing her change of...