The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West by Silke-Maria Weineck

Abstract

Silke-Maria Weineck. Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and Politics of Paternity in West. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Pp. 208+ x. $29.95. That trope of has played an overwhelmingly dominant role in political, legal, and religious development of Western civilization is per se no monumental insight. visible disjunction between that tropic organization and existing family structures out of which it arose, however, might signal exhaustion of a certain of understanding what that civilization has been and what it might yet become. To understand vicissitudes and functioning of this trope is motivating force behind Silke Weineck's illuminating Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and Politics of Paternity in West. In her words: the father may still function as of law, but his traditional double function--to protect and prohibit--ha[s] long been absorbed by a state that ceased to resemble family and had become a disembodied system (4). father-trope is nothing more than an empty ideal, it fails to do justice both to (a) intellectual possibilities inherent in institutions of law, politics, and religion and to (b) actualities inherent in fatherhood (as well as in motherhood). Weineck's book is, therefore, not so much a critique of (although it is that as well) as it is a genealogical diagnosis of a crucial philosophical, artistic, political, and theological self-understanding of West. readers of this journal wonder why this book is being reviewed by a journal specializing in Romanticism, it perhaps suffices to mention category of figure. While of figure is as old as Homer and Hebrew Bible, concept of is given prominence in 19th century when thinkers both German and English begin to view literary categories--e.g., tragedy--as philosophical problems. Thus, to paraphrase Peter Szondi's famous remark, Aristotle may have given us a poetics of tragedy, but only with Schelling do we have a philosophy of tragedy. Thus, while Weineck's perfervid study spans works of Sophocles, Bible, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Lessing, Kleist, and Freud, optic she uses is (I believe) clearly one that emerges in Romantic period. Differently stated, if content of Weineck's study traverses multiple historical periods, its form finds its decisive measure in 19th century. One of [the] aspirations [of Tragedy] is to hear fathers speak, in however mediated a way (7). While paternity has dominated Western discourse, it does not speak in first person (this despite fact that Oedipus, qua literary character, speaks). Rather, one initially hears it through voice of sons: The absence of father's voice as anything but a distorted echo in writings of sons ... has led to a pervasive failure to articulate place of father as a subject position (7). paternity rules through traces or traumatic marks left on children, then it cannot be other than repressive and defensive. legal, political, and religious institutions that operate according to its logic amount, therefore, to a hollow standard that either bestows or robs legitimacy from concrete actors. This situation not only causes repression of these actors, but it also assures (in strict Athenian fashion) that of father will bestow a murderous destiny on his family: If fatherhood, as I argue, is at core always-tenuous incorporation of potentially conflicting ... claims to legitimacy, then its form is itself tragic (10). This is true no less for Freud, despite fact that he changed terrain on which father exacts his discipline and/or protection from politics, religion, and family to psychological fantasy (or, inner object [15]). …