SOURCE: Gearhart, Suzanne. “Racine's Politics: The Subject/Subversion of Power in Britannicus.” L'Esprit Créateur 38, no. 2 (summer 1998): 34-48.

[In the following essay, Gearhart discusses the politics of Britannicus and uses the play to show that psychoanalytic theory has a significant role to play in the critique of the subject.]

For some time numerous forms of literary and cultural analysis have been shaped by a multi-faceted critique or questioning of the subject. As many would agree, one of the most prominent of these has come to be known as the new historicism. In contrast to older forms of historicism that sought to write the history of a fundamentally unchanging human subjectivity as it manifests itself in the literary and cultural productions of various ages, the new historicism has argued that the human subject is, as Stephen Greenblatt puts it, “the ideological product of the relations of power in a particular society.”¹ Unlike those who have assumed the universality and naturalness of subjectivity, Greenblatt and other new historicists have asserted that it is essentially a construct of impersonal historical forces and more specifically of power relations in a given historical period. Both implicitly and explicitly, new historicists have thus tended to assimilate the critique of the subject with the interests of new historicism.

This assimilation has involved a number of consequences (as well as ironies). From the perspective of Greenblatt, one of the most important has been the discrediting of alternative approaches to literature and culture, perhaps especially those of a psychological or psychoanalytic nature, on the grounds that they take the concept of subjectivity as an unproblematic point of departure. As Greenblatt presents it, Freud is above all the romantic theorist of the “alienated self,” that is, of a self that can be recovered through psychoanalytic interpretation.² Freudian psychoanalysis thus for him appeals to and confirms our own (ultimately false) sense of selfhood as well as our sense of autonomy with respect to our historical situation. Equally important, psychoanalysis serves an essentially conservative political and social purpose, because it denies or obscures the role of power relations in the construction of the subject and in doing so helps to solidify those relations. In contrast, Greenblatt's position is that the subversion of power is impossible for an individual subject because the subject itself is a construct of power relations, and in that sense his/her actions—even subversive actions—are always already determined by them. In Greenblatt's terms, this recognition of the fundamental lack of freedom of the subject makes new historicism the truly subversive theory, even if its subversion takes the highly ironic form of proclaiming the impossibility of subversion.

It might seem a bit arbitrary to evoke the name of Racine in the context of the contemporary critique of the subject and the turn it has taken in the work of new historicists. But when one considers a significant segment of the criticism devoted to Racine's work and to seventeenth-century French literature in general, it seems fairly obvious that much of what is argued today by new historicists was already being argued by another generation of historicists in connection with Racine's texts and those of many of his contemporaries. For these older historicists, the psychological character of seventeenth-century French literature was one of its major defects, and their criticisms of the psychological realism of neo-classical authors anticipated the new historicist critique of psychoanalytic theories for presupposing a natural or universal form of subjectivity.

Despite the many important differences between the historicisms of Jean-Paul Sartre and Erich Auerbach, when each looks at neo-classical literature, what they share with each other and with the new historicism becomes clear. In Qu'est-ce que la littérature?, for example, Sartre asserts that in classical literature “l'image de l'homme classique est purement psychologique parce que le public classique n'a conscience que de sa psychologie.”³ In a similar spirit, Erich Auerbach argued that the prevalence of “a trend toward psychological types” in the plays of Racine and the work of many of his contemporaries had the effect of inhibiting the representation of the political and historical milieu, thus making impossible even “the slightest trace of … social or economic criticism.”⁴ Taken as a whole, Auerbach concluded, French neo-classical drama “accepts the prevailing structure of society, takes for granted its justification, permanence, and general validity, and [merely] castigates the excesses occurring within its limits” (Auerbach, 322). In this respect, too, Auerbach's interpretation recalls that of Sartre, who also argues that the psychological outlook adopted by seventeenth-century writers reflected their suppression of any sense of history (Sartre, 99).

It would certainly be an understatement to say that much has changed since Qu'est-ce que la littérature? and Mimesis first appeared. But the general view implied or explicitly articulated by Sartre and Auerbach can still be found, not only in the writings of a new historicist like Greenblatt but also in more recent treatments of seventeenth-century French literature.⁵ According to that view, psychological or psychoanalytic approaches to literature inevitably depend upon and promote unquestioned assumptions about “subjectivity” and its universality, while historical approaches to literature provide a more solid basis for the theoretical and political critique of subjectivity and also of the historical configurations that are held to determine it.

In the reading of Racine's Britannicus that follows, my aim is to discuss the “politics” of Racine's play. By that, however, I do not mean the conservative politics that have been imputed not only to the skillful courtier Racine unquestionably was but also to the playwright whose mastery of psychological realism has been both widely admired and criticized. My broader aim is to show that psychoanalytic theory does have a significant role to play in the critique of the subject. In doing so, I will also question the manner in which that critique and its “subversive” effects have been identified with historicism and opposed to psychology in general and to psychoanalysis in particular.⁶

The choice of Racine in this connection is not as arbitrary as it might at first seem, because, as I have indicated above, what is at stake in the question of method being discussed here is not method alone but also the nature of the literary canon and the value attached to certain authors, periods, and traditions in relation to others. My aim, however, is not to establish the preeminent merits of Racine or the demerits of the authors who have been more readily and enthusiastically canonized by historicisms old and new. It is rather to question the grounds of such canonization, specifically insofar as it has involved the devaluation of a certain form of French literary classicism and of the “psychological realism” associated with it.

It is important to note here that the historicists' critique of psychoanalysis has not been entirely off the mark. In taking the position that psychoanalysis can play a critical role in the analysis of the historical and cultural dimension of literature I recognize that it would be difficult, even impossible, to characterize psychoanalysis as a whole. Nor would I argue that certain aspects of Freudian psychoanalytic theory or of certain psychoanalytic theories other than that of Freud cannot legitimately be used to defend traditional concepts of subjectivity. But despite the great diversity and aims of various psychoanalytic theories and of Freud's own writings on psychoanalysis, it would also be difficult to dispute the significance of the work of numerous figures who have drawn on psychoanalysis in order to question traditional concepts of the subject.

Though several names come to mind in this connection, the work of Michel Foucault suggests itself as being particularly relevant to a consideration of the psychoanalytic dimension of the work of Racine. Not only has Foucault provided a psycho-sociological portrait of what could be called the underside of neo-classical culture in both Histoire de la folie and Surveiller et punir,⁷ but perhaps more importantly, he has also demonstrated the centrality for history and politics of the problem of the eroticization of power, a problem, most would readily concede, that is central to the dramatic universe of Racine as well.

The theme of the eroticization of power has also obviously been central to the new historicists' critique of the subject, and their treatment of it grows in large part out of their reading of Foucault. As they have repeatedly stressed, one of Foucault's most important insights is his idea that repressive political power is not only imposed on the subject but also manifests itself as the subject. In Surveiller et punir Foucault shows his reader that the “prison” in which criminals were incarcerated in nineteenth-century France was certainly not only a building of brick and mortar or even a mere set of imposed constraints derived from prevailing social norms. It was also a form of subjectivity interiorized by the criminal (and ultimately by members of the society at large) and thus affecting not only his (their) outward conduct but also his (their) innermost thoughts and desires. In this manner, power was not merely opposed to or repressive of desire, but was also reinforced by the desires it had created.

As I have argued elsewhere,⁸ the situation described by Foucault in Surveiller et punir does not mean, however, that in his terms a challenge to prevailing norms or power relations was or is impossible, Greenblatt's assertions notwithstanding. On the contrary, Foucault's analysis of the eroticization of power shows rather that no challenge to existing forms of society can be serious if it does not encompass a challenge to “the subject,” understood both as a concept and a form of experience. A psychoanalytic perspective is thus highly relevant to the extent that it can provide a basis for a critical questioning of the purported integrity and coherence of the subject, whether the subject is assumed to be a natural given or an historical construct.

It is from a psychoanalytic perspective such as this that Racine's Britannicus needs to be reread. Numerous critics who have considered the play from a psychoanalytic standpoint have viewed the sadistic character of the play's principal character, Néron, as a form of self-assertion, and treated Néron himself as an egomaniac who throws off all of the constraints standing in the way of his pursuit of power and pleasure. In contrast, I will analyze Racine's depiction of Néron and also of Junie in terms of another, more complex model of subjectivity, one that accounts both for the emperor's sadism—or rather, sado-masochism—and the heroine's resistance to his power. My argument is that this model of subjectivity is neither romantic nor conservative—that is, neither blind to the reality of domination and its psychological bases within the individual nor supportive of a view that power relations are stable and inevitable even in a specific configuration of power or a specific historical period.

The psychological character of Néron is clearly delineated in a passage from Act I, Scene 2, which a number of critics have identified as providing an important key to the understanding of Néron and the play as a whole. Not only does the passage in question depict the defining moment in Néron's relation to Junie, it also complicates the received historical image of a cruel or sadistic Néron—an image which has been ratified by psychoanalytic critics for the most part—by revealing that his sadism is inextricably linked to masochism.⁹ In the passage in question, Néron relates his first “encounter” with Junie, which is also the moment he becomes enamored of her.¹⁰ This encounter is in fact a non-encounter, because Néron flees his opportunity to make actual contact with Junie, thus offering an initial indication of the masochistic component of his sadism. Significantly, he has not sought pleasure in harming Junie in person, as simple sadism would presumably have required.

The subsequent pleasure Néron experiences from the encounter with Junie that he imagines once he has retired to his chambers is even more explicitly masochistic. What he fantasizes about and takes pleasure in is not merely a violation of Junie. Instead, Néron's pleasure is derived indirectly from her imaginary violation through the mediation of his conscience, which prompts him to ask for Junie's forgiveness—but, as he readily confesses, “trop tard” (2.2.403). Néron's sadistic pleasure, in other words, is derived masochistically from the displeasure caused by guilt, conscience, or repression. Néron oppresses and represses Junie, but he in turn is oppressed and repressed by his own conscience, which in effect reduces him to the status of another Junie. The blurring of power and pleasure and of pleasure and pain in this imaginary scene thus coincides with a blurring of “subject positions” in which it is impossible to say if the pain, pleasure, or power in question is his own or that of another.

The character of Néron provides Britannicus with a key element of its psychological framework—a sado-masochism in which Néron's identification with his own conscience and with the object of his persecution disrupts and conditions his identification with himself. The contrasts between Néron and two additional characters—on the one hand, Néron's virtuous stoic mentor, Burrhus, and, on the other, the Machiavellian advisor, Narcisse—make it possible to connect the psychological portrait of the young emperor to the ethical and political dimensions of the play.

Burrhus's first confrontation with Néron occurs when Néron tells his mentor of his passion for Junie, a passion which Burrhus perceives as disastrous in both ethical and political terms. Burrhus's immediate reaction is to invoke the ethical principles of his stoicism in order to argue that “on n'aime point, Seigneur, si l'on ne veut aimer” (3.1.790). This argument clearly falls on deaf ears. The play suggests, however, that it does so not because Néron is already a hardened criminal, but rather because his passion cannot merely be opposed to morality. Instead, it is intensified by his sense of morality, that is, by the suffering Néron experiences due to his pangs of conscience and by the transformation of that suffering into pleasure and therefore into an incentive to renew his persecution of Junie. As Agrippine, his mother, puts it towards the end of the play in a passage in which she predicts her son's dreadful future: “Tes remords te suivront comme autant de furies, / Tu croiras les calmer par d'autres barbaries” (5.6.1683-84). She clearly implies that while Néron will try to calm his remorse by committing other crimes, they will in fact only heighten his sense of guilt, which will lead him to commit still other crimes in a pattern that will be reinforced and accelerated by its own inner dynamic.

While this first scene underscores the ethical complexity of Néron's sado-masochism, the second reveals its correspondingly complex political implications. In response to Néron's revelation that he plans to have Britannicus killed, Burrhus clearly sees that he can no longer appeal to Néron's ethical sense. He must also appeal to his political interests and his fears. If Néron takes this fatal political step, Burrhus argues, he will be “craint de tout l'univers,” but “il [lui] faudra tout craindre” (4.3.1352). In the short run, Néron lets himself be persuaded by such arguments. But, in the long run, they are cast aside and Britannicus is killed. The reason that suggests itself is that Néron's sado-masochism cannot be interpreted as a mere defense or expression, however pathological or perverse, of his self-interest, and therefore it cannot be countered by an appeal to that same self-interest. What Burrhus misunderstands, in other words, is the profoundly self-destructive nature of Néron's passion for Junie and of his related project of putting Britannicus to death. In the “logic” of Néron's sado-masochism, along with the suffering of others, his own suffering has become a dominant aim—or pleasure. In this sense he identifies with his victims in a reversal of roles which intensifies his will to dominate but which also potentially undercuts it.

The sense of the complex nature of Néron's sado-masochism is further enhanced in Racine's depiction of the relationship between Néron and Narcisse, Burrhus's Machiavellian counterpart. In the light of the lack of force of Burrhus's arguments, Narcisse might initially be thought to represent the true, political and psychological center of Britannicus. But a full reading of the play suggests that his outlook is not only profoundly different from that of Burrhus but of Néron as well.¹¹ In the most succinct terms, what Narcisse constantly assumes is that Néron's sole aim is to conquer and to retain power, whether over Junie or over the Roman people—or both. At the same time, he also assumes that power-relations determine not only the character of Néron but also of Junie and of the Roman people—that their attitudes and interests will be dictated by Néron's power. When Néron confesses to Narcisse that he fears Junie is already in love with Britannicus, Narcisse responds by arguing that Néron, as the ultimate Roman power, has nothing to fear from any less powerful rival: “Commandez qu'on vous aime, et vous serez aimé” (2.2.458). In a similar spirit, he argues in a subsequent scene that the relationship of the Roman people to their leaders is not based on respect for authority but rather on a slavish adoration of power: “Ils adorent la main qui les tient enchaînés” (4.4.1442).

The cynical discourse of Narcisse, no less than the ethical discourse of Burrhus, is based on the idea that the actors in the political drama are “egos” with coherent identities. From Narcisse's perspective, this means that one is either in the position of the dominator or the dominated. Narcisse is thus no more successful than Burrhus in influencing Néron, because his outlook, like that of Burrhus, does not correspond to Néron's situation. Narcisse's death can be seen as the result of his lack of perspicacity in this respect. He is killed by the Roman crowd as he seeks to prevent Junie from entering the temple where she seeks refuge. His single-minded pursuit of her seems fairly obviously to represent his own sense of what the emperor wants and therefore expects of him. In a marked and deliberate contrast with Narcisse, Racine depicts Néron as hesitating to impede Junie and her guides (“César les voit partir sans oser les distraire” [5.8.1747]), just as he hesitated to approach her the first time he saw her. In each instance the suggestion is that Néron is paralyzed by an ambivalence or inner contradiction emblematic of his sado-masochism, which makes him “better”—but also “worse”—than Narcisse.

The morally repugnant nature of Narcisse's teachings and the superiority of Burrhus's ethical principles are not in question in Racine's play. But the failure of both Burrhus and Narcisse to influence Néron's conduct decisively nonetheless constitutes a challenge to any ethics or politics whose theoretical principles are derived from a concept of the subject and from the presupposition that subjectivity implies consistent interests or aims, whatever their nature. The gravity of this challenge, however, hinges on the question of whether or not Néron represents a unique exception, that is, a form of deviance or madness from which he alone suffers, even in the very particular universe of Racine. Racine's depiction of Junie is of crucial significance from this standpoint. Though no character in the play differs more from Néron in terms of upbringing and ethical and political outlook, in fact she, too, at least in one particularly pivotal scene, is forced to play a role in the drama of the sado-masochist, acting as an agent of the power she seeks to resist.

It is crucial to note that Junie takes on this role only because Néron has threatened to kill Britannicus if she does not tell her beloved that she no longer loves him or if she allows Britannicus even to suspect that she is making this declaration against her will. But, for at least this brief scene, Junie becomes a product of power, a creation of Néron and an instrument he uses to torture Britannicus. It is not just that her every word, gesture, and expression are under Néron's control as she speaks with Britannicus. The destructive effect of Néron's power in this scene includes perhaps above all a violation of Junie's interiority, in which she is forced not only to do and say certain things but even to think and feel in terms of an interiorized image of Néron's cruel gaze.

In trying to pass a message to Britannicus despite the strictures Néron has imposed on her, she succeeds in describing her relation to Néron's power in the following terms: “Vous êtes en des lieux tout pleins de sa puissance./Ces murs mêmes, Seigneur, peuvent avoir des yeux;/Et jamais l'empereur n'est absent de ces lieux” (2.6.712-14).¹² These lines evoke what could just as easily have been the spirit of the court of Louis XIV as of Néron, and, more generally, of any political order insofar as it dictates the behavior and attitudes of its members. But they also identify the element of such orders that is potentially the most insidious, precisely because it is based on the idea of a hidden spectator, who may be there or who may not be there, but who is in a sense ever-present precisely because his gaze is now imagined as being ever-present. The passage suggests that in a situation such as this each individual watches him or herself. In this sense power becomes interiorized and its destructiveness is intensified insomuch as it comes not only from without but from within as well.

As more than one critic has noted, the dramatic structure of Britannicus is one in which each character who watches is in turn being watched. But, as Jean Starobinski and Charles Mauron have further argued, the “étrange construction visuelle” of Britannicus should be understood as including not only the various characters in the play but also the audience.¹³ In the scene I have been discussing, this means that a chain is in effect constructed in which Junie watches Britannicus, Néron watches Junie, and the audience watches Néron. What Starobinski does not say but Mauron does is that one of the play's most powerful and terrible ironies becomes apparent when the audience is considered in connection with this visual construction. Within its framework, the audience is not only in the position of an ultimate judge, who pities Junie and condemns Néron, but also in the position of Néron himself.

Like Junie, who in the scene I have been discussing is transformed into another Néron by a situation of domination, so the audience is transformed into another Néron through an identification that is not subjective and contingent, but rather, in the terms of the play, structural and necessary—the identification of each position on the chain with every other. The parallel between Néron and the spectator does not imply that the sado-masochistic logic he exemplifies is universal or instinctual, but it does mean that the members of the audience enter into this logic as they become spectators of the play. Burrhus's ethical principles are seriously challenged above all because the play suggests that anyone can be drawn into such a structure of domination, which can take the form not only of a physical destruction, as in the case of Britannicus, but also of a psychic violation, as in the case of Junie.

The psycho-political implication of Racine's play is thus that, in order to understand political situations in which absolute power is in question, we cannot stop with the analysis of the clash of interests or of the greater power of certain groups in relation to others. We must also analyze the exercise of power in terms of a different, sado-masochistic logic, which has important implications with respect to both the dominator and the dominated. In the case of the dominator, this logic means that the ruler or the ruling group not only uses his/its power but also abuses it according to a pattern in which every abuse leads only to increasingly greater abuses.

This is an aspect of Racine's play that attracted the attention of Albert Memmi, whose influential work, Portrait du colonisé, précedé de Portrait du colonisateur, presents an analysis of power relations in colonial societies from the standpoint of their psychic or unconscious dimensions. In these and other works, Memmi himself testifies to the special significance Racine's work holds for him when he relates his own analysis of the psychology of the colonizer to Racine's depiction of Néron.¹⁴ Though the term “sado-masochism” is obviously absent from Memmi's text, the “Nero complex” he attributes to the colonizer connects strongly nonetheless with the logic of sado-masochism I have been discussing. According to Memmi, the wrong done by the colonizer to the colonized gives the colonizer a sense of illegitimacy. But that sense of illegitimacy, instead of lessening the severity of his attempts to persecute and humiliate the colonized, only intensifies them, propelling them towards their most extreme manifestations—the racism and proto-fascism of colonial societies.

For Memmi, then, racism is not only congruent with the material interests of the colonizer—and in fact, he implies, it may at times conflict with those interests. It represents rather an attempt to justify the exorbitant privileges and power of the colonizer. As such it can only exacerbate the “Nero complex,” because the very need for such justification becomes an additional indication of the illegitimacy of the position of the colonizer and even heightens that illegitimacy by contributing to the further depreciation of the colonized. Memmi was obviously not proposing a psychotherapy that would have freed the colonizer from his sense of guilt and in doing so have softened the excesses of colonialism, any more than Racine is suggesting that Néron's atrocious acts would have been less egregious if they were disconnected from his sense of guilt. In each case, the point is that the psychic is not a mere reflection or expression of relations of power but rather a crucial element serving in their construction and in the process complicating their significance.

The psychology of sado-masochism underlying Racine's tragedy is as closely related to Memmi's portrait of the colonized, however, as to his portrait of the colonizer. Memmi argues, against Fanon, that the colonized passes a negative judgment on himself as a member of colonial society and that in this sense he himself is “fabriqué,” that is, “produced” or “manufactured” by colonialism (80). Memmi insists that such a negative judgment is neither natural nor instinctual. It is a product of the colonial situation. He also insists, however, that it not only shapes the external conduct of the colonized but is experienced by him in his affective and intellectual life as well. As Memmi describes it, the interiorization of colonial stereotypes of the colonized by the colonized himself is nothing less than an interiorization of the perspective of the colonizer in which the colonized becomes as much the colonizer as he is himself. With his portrait of the colonized Memmi takes the full measure of the destructive nature of colonialism, which involves not merely the negation of the material being of the colonized but of his psychic being as well.

Racine's play does not end with Junie's subjection, however, any more than Memmi's analysis of colonialism ends with the subjection of the colonized. The figure of Junie also illustrates how an interiorization of the logic of sado-masochism by the dominated can lead not only to a reinforcement of power but to its subversion. This is especially true in the final scene, where Racine depicts a reversal of power. In the scene in question, Albine, a confidant of Néron's mother, Agrippine, recounts for Agrippine and Burrhus what she saw in the final moments of the unfolding drama between Néron and Junie. Significantly, Albine's narration involves not only characters with whom the audience is already familiar, but a new “character,” “le peuple,” who is alluded to in the earlier parts of the play by the principals but who now takes on an active role.

The theatricality of the concluding situation and of the people's response to it is suggested by the specific terms of Albine's narration. As she describes it, the encounter between the fleeing Junie and her pursuers, Narcisse and Néron, becomes a kind of street theater, a “spectacle” which astonished the crowd. Correspondingly, the crowd itself becomes an audience, which is moved by Junie's tears and which pities her because of her suffering (5.8.1739-42). The “étrange construction visuelle” of Britannicus, in which the spectator also occupies the position of the victimizer, is thus being evoked one last time through this description. But in this instance the powerful Narcisse becomes the victim of the less powerful spectators when he is beaten to death by the crowd, which also interposes itself between Néron and Junie and accompanies her into the temple.

There are obvious parallels between Albine's account of how the people intervene to rescue Junie from her persecutors and Foucault's lively and by now classic descriptions in Surveiller et punir of how monarchic power under the ancien régime could be upset in the course of those spectacles designed to display its imposition. It also finds an echo in Memmi's portrait of a colonized people and its conquest of freedom. That freedom, according to Memmi, is not won because some part of the colonized, either conscious or unconscious, has remained untouched by colonialism but, quite the contrary, because it has not. In his discussion of assimilation, in particular, Memmi argues that, paradoxical though it may seem, the interiorization of the manichean structure of colonial society and the suffering connected with this process have potentially subversive implications and effects.

Though assimilation can be seen and has been seen as the ultimate form of submission to colonial power, Memmi argues that the colonizer consistently “refused” those colonized who became assimilated, and that it should come as no surprise that this was the case (141). Implicitly for Memmi, assimilation revealed that the privileges enjoyed in the colonies by the colonizers as citizens of the colonizing power were the result of acquisitions such as the language and culture of the colonizers, acquisitions that were and are available at least in principle to everyone, rather than the natural prerogative of the colonizers alone. In this sense, assimilation undercut the stability of the hierarchy between the dominator and the dominated and subverted, rather than affirmed, colonial relations of power.

But, it could be objected, is not the deeper meaning of assimilation merely destructive with respect to the subjective freedom of the dominated? In taking on the perspective of the dominator, does the dominated not in effect acquire a subjective identity, one related negatively to his freedom, since it is produced by relations of domination? The answer to this question is “not necessarily,” because for Memmi assimilation not only implies a positive identification with the colonizer but also a self-condemnation connected to the rejection of his “own” perspective and culture by the colonized—what Memmi calls “le refus de soi” (138). Ultimately the source (the “self”) of this self-condemnation is not clear. Does it come from an interiorized agent of colonialism, who leads the colonized to condemn himself along with his own culture? Or does it come from the colonized self, who condemns the betrayal of self by the (interior) agent of colonialism? In Memmi's terms it would be impossible to say, as he indicates when he stresses that, in important respects, the colonized who seeks assimilation and the colonized who revolts are identical (153). But what is clear is that this self-condemnation provides evidence of the complexity of the colonized subject, and this complexity means that the colonized is not only subjugated by colonial power relations but also free to resist them.

The term “complexity” needs to be used carefully, because, from Memmi's perspective, it would obviously be false to speak of different or distinct locations in the psyche (or, for that matter, in society), some of which are governed by the principle of freedom and others by the principle of domination. Memmi's emphasis, instead, is on the objective and subjective ambiguity of every one of the colonized's gestures, each of which can be understood as an expression of colonial power relations, but each of which is also potentially a sign of the freedom of the colonized.

Significantly, the scene in which Junie is watched by Néron as she carries out his orders has an outcome similar to the drama of colonial assimilation recounted by Memmi. The similarity becomes apparent in the confession Néron makes to Narcisse after Britannicus and Junie have both separately left the stage. Though Néron cannot fault Junie for having done anything other than what she was ordered by him to do, her resistance to him, he says, “a paru jusque dans son silence” (2.8.748). Given the parallel drawn throughout the play between Junie and the Roman people, this scene foreshadows the reversal of power relations in the final confrontation between Néron and Narcisse, on the one hand, and Junie and the Roman populace, on the other, and suggests that the mechanisms at work in both scenes are fundamentally similar. The dominated can never fully reassure the dominator or be fully subjugated by power relations, because the freedom of the dominated is a condition and not just a casualty of interiorization. Memmi acknowledges a debt to Racine when he describes the self-destructive psychology of the colonizer. But he is also indebted to Racine for the equally complex model of subjectivity that he uses to account for both the interiorization of repression by the dominated and the capacity of the dominated to free themselves from or subvert that repression.

My purpose in this essay is not to defend the classicism of Racine if this would mean making Néron into what some Freudians and perhaps Freud himself thought Oedipus was—a universal model of the subject equally relevant to every historical context or specific situation. Like any other psychoanalytic concept that might be invoked and generalized, sado-masochism (the “Nero complex?”) can be used just as easily as the Oedipus complex to evade important issues relating to historical (and psychic) diversity and specificity. Nonetheless, if the work of Memmi, Foucault, and others attests to the existence of significant new paths for historical and literary-historical criticism (as well as for psychoanalytic investigation), I would argue that it is because of the way they and others have drawn on psychoanalysis in order to challenge and question punctual models of the subject of history.

It is obviously not within the power of new historicism either to keep open or close off these paths. But it would be unfortunate if, in the wake of new historicism, historical and psychoanalytic criticism continued to be seen as fundamentally antagonistic. We obviously need a strong yet nuanced sense of history to remind us of the particular situation and context of various literary movements and perhaps especially of classicism, precisely because of the insistence with which it and those who studied it have traditionally promoted its claims to universality and naturalness. But certain forms of psychoanalytic literary criticism can be equally valuable in reminding us of the historical situation of historicism itself, which was and in certain instances continues to be determined by a dogmatic rejection of classical literary models and of psychological or psychoanalytic lines of critical inquiry.

By the same token, I would not argue that Britannicus is a unique example of the way relations of power are constructed and also diffracted by the “subject of power.” But given the traditional association of French literary classicism with psychology and psychoanalysis, it seems to me that Racine's theater in general and this play in particular provide an important proving ground for testing and exploring the possible implications of a psychoanalytic approach to literary-historical problems. If newer approaches to the complex relation between the psychic and the social are useful in highlighting the complexity of Racinian tragedy and of the Racinian subject, it is because Racine's “classicism” is not just “classical” and relevant to its own immediate historical context alone, but also “critical” and of continuing relevance even today.

Notes

1. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980), 256.

2. Stephen Greenblatt, “Psychoanalysis and Renaissance Culture,” Literary Theory/Renaissance Texts, eds. Patricia Parker and David Quint (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1986), 213.

3. Jean-Paul Sartre, Qu'est-ce que la littérature? (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 100, my emphasis.

4. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957), 341-42.

5. Jean-Marie Apostolidès's Le Prince sacrifié: Théâtre et politique au temps de Louis XIV (Paris: Minuit, 1985) is a case in point. Though, on the surface, his interpretation of Racine seems to be the opposite of that of Auerbach and Sartre (for example, Apostolidès claims to have discovered a politically-oriented writer beneath the surface psychological perspective of Racine's work), the framework within which he interprets Racine and seeks to demystify certain aspects of his dramaturgy is the same as theirs. Like Sartre and Auerbach, Apostolidès holds or assumes that in itself the psychological dimension of Racine's plays is without historical or political significance (93). Equally important, he also assumes that Racine's work played a significant role in the consolidation of the power of the monarchy, because his psychological emphasis contributed to a mystification of the political realities of seventeenth-century French society and thus to the neutralization of political opposition (101).

6. In Racine: Le Jansénisme et la modernité (Paris: José Corti, 1986), Marie-Florine Bruneau argues that Racine's dramas, and Athalie in particular, should be read as politically subversive texts. For Bruneau, however, the critical political implications of Racine's theater are wholly unrelated to its psychoanalytic dimensions (116-17).

7. Michel Foucault, Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique (Paris: Gallimard, 1972) and Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1972).

8. Suzanne Gearhart, “The Taming of Foucault: New Historicism, Psychoanalysis, and the Subversion of Power,” New Literary History, 26:3 (Summer 1997): 457-80.

9. For example, in L'Inconscient dans la vie et l'œuvre de Racine (Paris: CNRS, 1957), Charles Mauron writes of the “sadisme spectaculaire” of Néron, that is, the sadism of a subject who finds pleasure in seeing his victim suffer while he himself remains hidden (78). More recently, Barbara Wohinsky has described Néron's psychological tendency as a “refinement of sadism” (The Linguistic Imperative in French Classical Literature [Palo Alto: Stanford French and Italian Studies, 1991], 70). In apparent contrast, Serge Doubvrovsky writes of Néron's masochistic tendencies as well as his sadistic ones. But for Doubrovsky Néron's masochism is little more than the perversion of a “normal,” masculine sadism, which remains the dominant force in Néron's character. Serge Doubrovsky, “L'arrivée de Junie dans Britannicus: La tragédie d'une scène à l'autre,” Littérature, 32 (1978): 27-54.

10. Excité, d'un désir curieux,
    Cette nuit je l'ai vue arriver en ces lieux,
    Triste, levant au ciel ses yeux mouillés de larmes,
    Qui brillaient au travers des flambeaux et des armes,
    Belle, sans ornements, dans le simple appareil
    D'une beauté qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil.
    Que veux-tu? Je ne sais si cette négligence,
    Les ombres, les flambeaux, les cris et le silence,
    Et le farouche aspect de ses fiers ravisseurs,
    Relevaient de ses yeux les timides douceurs.
    Quoi qu'il en soit, ravi d'une si belle vue,
    J'ai voulu lui parler, et ma voix s'est perdue:
    Immobile, saisi d'un long étonnement,
    Je l'ai laissé passer dans son appartement.
    J'ai passé, dans le mien. C'est là que, solitaire
    De son image en vain j'ai voulu me distraire.
    Trop présente à mes yeux je croyais lui parler,
    J'aimais jusqu'à ses pleurs que je faisais couler.
    Quelquefois, mais trop tard, je lui demandais grâce;
    J'employais les soupirs, et même la menace.

    (2.2.385-404)

11. I would thus take issue with Barthes (Sur Racine [Paris: Seuil, 1963], 87) and Mauron (76), who see Narcisse as the victor in his tug-of-war with Burrhus for Néron's allegiance.

12. John Campbell has closely analyzed these lines in terms of the role played by alliteration and repetition in the construction of the image of a form of power he characterizes as totalitarian. John Campbell, Racine: Britannicus (London: Grant and Cutler, 1990), 51.

13. Mauron, 78. See also Jean Starobinski, L'Œil vivant (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), 89.

14. Albert Memmi, Portrait du colonisé, précédé de Portrait du colonisateur (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), 75-78.