Abstract

Abstract:

This article argues that elements of Michel Foucault's genealogy of governmentality, specifically his account of premodern Christian pastoral government and resistances to it, illuminate crucial aspects of Ben Jonson's 1610 comedy The Alchemist. Pastoral government, an array of tactics that seek to direct the intrinsic qualities of persons and things toward salvific ends, is a more relevant paradigm for understanding the alchemical plot of the play than sovereignty, which is focused on the assertion of autonomous rights and external laws. The sovereign challenged in this reading is primarily the figure of the sovereign individual, the agent of capitalism and liberalism that critics often discern emerging from Jonson's play. Analyzing the play in relation to a genealogy of governmentality throws the secularity and sovereignty of the individual characters into question insofar as they are compelled to act within an alchemical scheme governed by pastoral principles.

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