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V

The system of homologies that I have here described defines all the names that our protagonist assumes, all the identities that he tries to create or that others create for him, as fundamentally contradictory—"impossible." An individual human being cannot become coterminous with the polity into which he is born, or separate himself entirely from it: no man can become his own father, and no man can name himself. "Coriolanus" has no "self that stands prior to the social and familial and linguistic systems which define his possibilities of existence. Moreover, the plurality of such systems within the play suggests that the issue here is not the state or the family or even language, but relationship itself. The self exists only as a shifting point within a network of relationships. Yet the sole ambition of our protagonist is to become an autonomous being, the author of himself, standing apart from and uncontaminated by any relationship. As it brings into focus this...

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1. Introduction
2. Ii
3. Iii
4. Iv
5. V
6. Copyright