This paper is an attempt to think through paranoia’s epistemic and affective features, which pervade both the worldview presented in Senecan tragedy and the inner life of many of its protagonists. Drawing upon recent literary-critical work, I argue that paranoia is temporally and epistemically ambivalent: subjects simultaneously attempt to “get ahead” of a looming cataclysm—looking to the future in an attempt to avert disaster—while inevitably “falling behind,” failing to predict or preempt the future in time to protect themselves. Much of Senecan tragedy plays out paranoia’s future-oriented vigilance on the formal level. Foreshadowing, allusions, and meta-literary flourishes serve to render both readers and characters hyperaware of the earth-shattering horrors to come; however, in doing so, they also reveal that this forward-oriented bracing only serves to dredge up negative affect in advance. By contrast, I argue that Seneca’s Phoenissae thematizes in the character of Oedipus not only paranoia’s future-looking vigilance but also its inherent lagging, the failure to know and act in advance. These elements of slowness, stuckness, and delay open a space for stillness, relief, and intimacy, even within a narrative which hurtles toward cataclysm.
Oedipus Haerens: Paranoid Lagging in Seneca’s Phoenissae*
This piece was first conceived as a conference paper for a panel at the 2022 meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association entitled “Parallel Worlds: The Politics of Paranoid Solidarity.” I would like to thank the organizers of that panel, Andres Matlock and Ben Radcliffe, for the stimulating questions they posed in their call for papers. The audience at this panel, as well as at the University of Warwick’s Work in Progress series, helped me to clarify my thoughts. I am sincerely thankful to Victoria Rimell, Ted Parker, and the two anonymous reviewers at Classical Antiquity for the extensive and thoughtful comments they provided on earlier versions of this paper.
Chiara Graf; Oedipus Haerens: Paranoid Lagging in Seneca’s Phoenissae. Classical Antiquity 1 April 2024; 43 (1): 19–49. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ca.2024.43.1.19
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