Euripides’s Trojan Women: A Critique of Asymmetric Conflict?
Résumé
In this paper we attempt to answer to the following question: In Trojan Women, is Euripides criticizing a degeneration of agonism ―something we might label as ‘asymmetric conflict’? The question is worth exploring because Trojan Women is well known as a powerful, tragic play, which puts the condition of the enslaved (and barbaric, to a Greek eye) women of Troy on stage. The story is certainly well-suited to such a social criticism. Although interpretations and academic studies of Trojan Women are more than abundant, our argument is not inspired by secondary literature about the play. Rather, it is inspired by a problem that we continue to face nowadays, namely, that agonistic conflict can easily degenerate into asymmetric conflict―as when somebody too desirous of victory takes unfair advantage of a weaker enemy. Reading the Trojan Women, we had the impression that it offered a literary instance of this experience. After developing that first impression with a close reading of this text―and, of course, secondary literature about it—we believe that the Trojan Women offers an important and enduring critique of ‘asymmetric conflict.’
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