The grammar of fate in Lorca's Bodas de sangre

Abstract

Though tragic fate is traditionally taken as an emblem of what is inevitable and given, here I argue that Lorca’s tragedy Bodas de sangre at once re-enacts and disturbs fate’s inevitability. While the characters lament being controlled by destiny, they simultaneously construct their own destiny in their use of language. The revelation of fate’s fictionality is important for the present, because the modern philosophical versions of subjectivity that still define us today are predominantly tragic. Since the rational subject of law that enables liberal democratic politics emerges from tragic conditions, what would we gain by becoming aware that essentialized constructs such as destiny are not given but created? Would this realization free subjective agency from the constraints from which it emerges? What is the status of ‘necessary fictions’ such as destiny, the subject or the law, fictions that are created but we cannot easily renounce, because they constitute what we are?