The “Force that Kills”

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter considers how the concept of force is deployed in reference to the death of Homeric warriors. The final chapter begins by revisiting Simone Weil’s specific conceptualization of force from L’Iliade ou le poème de la force and her earlier essays. Although Weil’s treatment of force seems almost self-explanatory, there is in fact a rich genealogy to her thought. Through examination of essays prior to her essay on the Iliad, it is demonstrated that Weil’s thinking on Homer and force appears to be formulated as a direct response to the Marxist notion of “productive forces.” Marx’s own account of productive forces was designed to explain how humans lost their agency or “self-activity.” Weil formulates, as a counterpoint to productive forces, the destructive force of war both in the Iliad and in modern times, which also rob human subjects of active agency. Although Weil’s thinking on force does not apply to all Homeric terms, it is demonstrated how her specific conceptualization of force as the “subjugation of the subject” does pertain to the Homeric verb, damazō, as it appears in the three most iconic deaths of the Iliad—those of Sarpedon, Patroclus, and Hector. At the same time, the chapter demonstrates how the deployment of this verb presents a model of “co-agency” between the human and divine, which is distinct from Weil’s own assumptions about subjectivity.