White Revolutionary Subjecthood in Percy B. Shelley’s “Laon and Cythna”

Abstract

This essay reads Percy B. Shelley’s poem “Laon and Cythna” by focusing on the racial dynamics of the revolution it depicts. Placed at the center of a collective struggle as its self-appointed leaders, Laon and Cythna, the eponymous Greek protagonists of the narrative overshadow the agency of resisting multitudes. As such, the poem’s representation of revolutionary subjecthood foregrounds whiteness as a universal marker of political mobility. At the same time, “Laon and Cythna” confronts this problematic itself by concluding with a dramatic failure of its white revolution. The poem, thus, invites a critical interrogation of the racially determined universalism and the adjacent uneven distribution of sociopolitical capital that undergird its imaginary of revolution.