Achilles and the (sexual) history of being
pp. 167-186
in: Jessica Elbert Decker, Dylan Winchock (eds), Borderlands and liminal subjects, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
Koch examines the figure of Achilles as he appears in Homer's Iliad, arguing that Achilles is the first literary figure in the history of Western thought to exhibit the persistence of the drive, in Lacan's sense. Koch argues that Achilles' rage challenges the heroic paradigms of epic and the fantasy of immortality. Using Zizek and Heidegger, Koch argues that the drive is not merely an unconscious process but ontological in nature. Fantasy is a future-directed activity, but the pathe of Achilles rejects this future-oriented desire and, instead, focuses desire on the present; Koch argues that Achilles is emblematic of what Lee Edelman has called the sinthomosexual, and as such, he challenges the borders of the Symbolic system in which he finds himself.
