Biopolitics in Euripides' Bacchae
Giorgio Agamben examines biopolitics from a historical perspective dating back to Ancient Greece and, unlike Foucoult, considers the violence and oppression of the sovereign power as a policy that develops strategies that legitimize it. It is also possible to see how the authoritative includes the biological existence of man in his own politics and the dilemmas created by this, in the tragedies that frequently express the conflict between legal-political life and natural life. Among the three great tragedian writers, Euripides provides an opportunity to read through contemporary political relations in that he writes realistic and extraordinary works in terms of both content and form, and uses an unsettling and critical style instead of suggesting moderation. This study investigates the reflections of biopolitics in Ancient Greek tragedies in order to expand the field of political thought in tragedies and to make anachronistic aspects of biopolitics visible, and tries to find the equivalent of Agamben's determinations on biopolitics in Euripides's Bacchas. Bacchas, like Sophocles' Antigone, place the unjust domination of state law over bare life and the violence mechanism of the sovereign power in the tense conflict between the natural order and the social order. With such a reading, Pentheus and Dionysus assume the semantic counterpart of the dominant power and homo sacer figure and 'Bios' and 'Zoe'.