Juridical dread and the self-disciplining subject

This article situates the popular protest slogan ‘Kill the cop in your head!’ in a long history of texts that employ violent personification allegory to foster ascetic upheaval. After considering a valuable (if acerbic) critique of the slogan by Louis Althusser, it contextualises the slogan as a bel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Postmedieval a journal of medieval cultural studies 2022-06, Vol.13 (1-2), p.55-79
Main Author: Megna, Paul
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Asceticism
Cultural and Media Studies
Digital Humanities
History of Medieval Europe
Literature
Medieval Literature
Medieval period
Original Article
Slogans
Violence
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Summary:This article situates the popular protest slogan ‘Kill the cop in your head!’ in a long history of texts that employ violent personification allegory to foster ascetic upheaval. After considering a valuable (if acerbic) critique of the slogan by Louis Althusser, it contextualises the slogan as a belated response to three premodern personification allegories, each of which asks its audience to imagine their psyche as a courtroom in which Fear dispenses disciplinary violence. It then explores a surprising connection between these three allegories and an important neuroscientific theory known as the Somatic Marker Hypothesis (SMH): they all portray fear as central to self-discipline. Instead of attempting to resolve the question of whether subjects are inherently self-disciplining or socially constructed as such, the essay’s conclusion asks how studying the ascetic traditions of the past might help us cultivate the psychic preconditions necessary for forging a revolutionary collective.
ISSN:2040-5960
2040-5979
DOI:10.1057/s41280-022-00226-2