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Tragic Constitution: United States Democracy and Its Discontents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Peter Lancelot Mallios
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Abstract

Tragedy is a recurrent subject in recent constitutional law scholarship. But this scholarship theorizes tragedy through a single narrow model, generally applies it to a limited conception of the domain of constitutional law, and ultimately conceives tragedy only as a liability rather than as a positive potentiality of constitutional practice. This essay critiques one theoretical understanding of tragedy and introduces three more, to argue for an open-ended praxis of pluralist tragic engagement with the United States Constitution that is necessary for the sober, mature, demystified, and deliberative functionality of the constitutional system. Each of these four models of tragedy is paired with a domain of constitutional law: Aristotle's model with interpretation, Hegel's with structure and institutions, the radical Brazilian theater director Augusto Boal's with performance and public effects, and Nietzsche's with cultural and educational accessibility.

Type
Special Topic: Tragedy Coordinated by Helene P. Foley and Jean E. Howard
Information
PMLA , Volume 129 , Issue 4: Special Topic Tragedy , October 2014 , pp. 708 - 726
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2014

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