Kratosbefore Democracy

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter focuses specifically on the relationship between force and politics in the Iliad. It begins with the infamous “one king” speech of Odysseus (Iliad 2.203–6), delivered on the verge of the dissolution of the Achaean army after Achilles has abandoned the war. In Rogues, one of Jacques Derrida’s last major publications, Derrida uses the one king speech in order to argue for kratos as an ipsocentric force that contrasts specifically with the institution of democracy, which, for Derrida, is a political manifestation of his philosophy of différance. Building on and at the same time differing from Derrida, it is shown in this chapter how the principle of différance may be seen to be at work already in the role that kratos plays both in the Iliad and in the larger mythological tradition pertaining to Zeus. More specifically, the chapter shows how the speeches of Odysseus (Iliad 2.190–206), Agamemnon (Iliad 2.110–41; Iliad 9.17–28), Diomedes (9.32–49), and Zeus (Iliad 8.5–27; Iliad 15.158–67), as well as Hesiod’s Theogony, all point to the unique ways in which the signification of kratos itself remains in a constant state of play through language.