Ulysse

Legendary Greek king of Ithaca

Appears in 31 videos · 45 passages, 21 of them in depth.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani makes Ulysses the figure of repetition. He reads the Odyssey as a circle that runs from one slaughter to another: the sack of Troy, which the ingenious Ulysses himself brought about with the trick of the horse, then the massacre of the suitors on his return to Ithaca1 2. He describes this journey as an omega-shaped loop around the Mediterranean3. For him, the wandering is a detour to evade aggressiveness: at each stop, with a Nausicaa, a Circe or a Calypso, Ulysses thinks he has escaped, but the slaughter always catches up with him4 5. In the seminar on Nerval's Angélique, which runs "from Ulysses to Daedalus", he sets the ingenious man against the engineer and gives the journey the same structure as Nerval's voyage, in which the abbé de Bucquoy plays the role of Ithaca. From 2023 on, he presents Ulysses as the first Western hero, the founding figure of Western violence6 7. He also mentions him, bound to the mast, in connection with the relation between song and speech.

Summary produced automatically from 45 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Who is this?

In Greek and Roman mythology, Odysseus (, US also ; Ancient Greek: Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς, romanized: Odysseús, Odyseús, IPA: [o.dy(s̠).s̠ěu̯s̠]), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses (, UK also ; Latin: Ulysses, Ulixes), is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem, the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in that same epic cycle. […]

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Text: Wikipédia, CC BY-SA 4.0, excerpt · Portrait: Didier Descouens, Public domain

Search these passages

Series · 23 Mar 2020Introduction to the upcoming workshops

3:16He finds Ithaca again as Nerval finds the abbé de Bucquoy again.
5:54Instigator of both carnages, the Trojan horse and the massacre of the suitors: he is the invariant of the symmetry.
45:58At each stage a Nausicaa, a Circe, a Calypso: the carnage is eluded, not confronted.
1:37:40In the arms of Calypso, far from Ithaca, an image of history put in parentheses.

Cycle 3 · 1 Aug 2017#3.1 From Ulysses to Daedalus

23:40Instigator of the Trojan horse, hence of the initial carnage.
55:12His wandering would be a desperate attempt to escape the repetition of carnage, always caught up with.
1:39:16The ingenious one, king, whose every scheme in the head preludes a carnage.

Cycle 4 · 12 Apr 2018#4.7 Angélique (by Nerval)

49:30The seminar goes from Ulysses to Daedalus.
52:51The abbé de Bucquoy plays the role of Ithaca: one sets out from him and returns to him.
1:05:46Man of carnage, instigator of the sack of Troy and of the massacre of the suitors, and of his own return despite the detours.

Cycle 12 · 14 Aug 2024Too late?

1:10:49First Western hero, matrix-like: his cunning opens the sack of Troy and his return ends with the massacre of the suitors.

Cycle 12 · 11 Jul 2024After the vote: entering a zone of turbulence

18:23First Western hero: he begins with the carnage of the sack of Troy and ends with the massacre of the suitors, after an immense detour.
1:38:15Recalled as a figure of Western violence, who begins and ends with a massacre.

Cycle 11 · 22 Jul 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: the world as “cunning of reason”

1:09:33The first Western hero, starting from a carnage and ending in a carnage: escape into failure, from island to island.

Cycle 11 · 17 Feb 2023Roots or migration? From analytical reverie to current events, from Hölderlin to the war

8:37First great Westerner: from the sack of Troy to the massacre of the suitors, he cannot escape carnage at every stop.

Cycle 11 · 19 Oct 2022“Speech is the best and the worst of things” (Aesop)

11:24Chained to the mast and listening to the sirens' song: this is the image of the session, which questions the relation between song and speech.

Cycle 10 · 7 Apr 2022#12 From Kafka to Proust, the dialectical passage from the intermezzo to the perpetuated edge

21:27Instigator of the Trojan Horse, then wandering for ten years along the shores of the Mediterranean before the massacre of the suitors.

Cycle 9.2 · 30 Jun 2021#9.24 “Ruled like music paper!” Nerval, Baudelaire (part 2)

38:22Mentioned with Jason among the sailors.
1:19:43Figure of repetition: at each stage he believes he has escaped, and the massacre catches up with him again.

Cycle 7 · 26 Apr 2020#6 Harnessed to confinitude

54:49His journey goes from one massacre, the sack of Troy, to another, the slaughter of the suitors.
1:35:42He learns only in danger; as soon as he pauses, he catches his breath, until misfortune catches up with him.

Cycle 6 · 10 Nov 2019#6.1 Prelude: Lacan, “Function and field of speech and language”

1:13:32The instigator of the sack of Troy repeats the carnage upon his return with the massacre of the suitors: a loop shaped like an omega.

Cycle 6 · 23 Oct 2019#6.1 The logic of the subject

1:20:47The ingenious inventor of the Trojan horse repeats the carnage on every return to land, up to the massacre of the suitors.

Cycle 4 · 15 Mar 2018#4.6 Angélique (by Nerval)

11:29The Odyssey begins and ends with a massacre he instigates; the journey is a detour to evade his own aggressiveness.

Cycle 4 · 15 Jan 2018#4.4 Angélique (by Nerval)

1:38:28His going round in circles from Ithaca to Ithaca, from slaughter to slaughter, figures repetition; he is in no hurry to return home.

Cycle 4 · 24 Sept 2017#4.0 Presentation of the 2017-2018 workshop: Nerval's “Angélique”

3:43Figure of repetition in the cycle "from Ulysses to Daedalus."
11:33His story begins with the ruse of the Trojan horse and ends with the massacre of the suitors: a circle of repetition of carnage.

Cycle 11 · 3 Sept 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: desiring what? Through whom?

1:20:22The bow that the suitors cannot bend.

Cycle 11 · 9 Jul 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: the clash of worlds?

59:14Twenty years before returning home; his companions turned into swine by Circe.

Cycle 11 · 12 Dec 2022Hesitation fascinated by hearing and by sight: Siegfried and Perceval

16:51Like Perceval the hunter, he sheds blood: the Trojan horse, the massacre of the suitors.

Cycle 11 · 23 Nov 2022The aporias of anthropology

51:09Not all versions send him down to the underworld.
1:25:12Mentioned in connection with men who go to sea.

Talks · 19 Mar 2022Hölderlin, poetry and politics

1:02:28He is often mistaken for a god in the Odyssey.

Series · 5 Mar 2022Panzer-philosophy against the cogito: neo-fascism or the ideology of nature (Heidegger, Descartes)

40:37Opposed to Daedalus in earlier developments.

Series · 4 Oct 2021#4 Nomad and sedentary: the case of Nerval

1:34:38His sailors evoked apropos the song of the sirens.

Cycle 9.2 · 9 Jun 2021#9.23 “Ruled like music paper!” Bach, Nerval, Lévi-Strauss

13:31His journey, of the same structure as the journey of Angélique.
2:19:31The journey around the Mediterranean, figured by the letter omega.

Cycle 9.2 · 18 Feb 2021#9.15 How can sciences of history be real?

53:26The carnage of Troy catches up with him on his return: repetition.

Cycle 8 · 21 Jun 2020#11 Return to the logics of the subject

31:50We know nothing of her tastes: the Greek individual is an ineffective shadow.

Cycle 8 · 11 Jun 2020#10 Return to the logics of the subject

1:04:45Allusion to the bow that no one can draw anymore.

Cycle 4 · 12 Nov 2017#4.2 Angélique (by Nerval)

32:30A figure of repetition, going from one carnage to another.

Cycle 4 · 18 Oct 2017#4.1 Angélique (by Nerval)

1:22:35Reminder of the previous year's cycle: repetition, carnage, death at the beginning and at the arrival.
1:40:44The ingenious Ulysses, opposed to Daedalus the engineer.

Talks · 18 Jun 2016At the bistro (part 1)

1:09:01Discreetly named at the end of Angélique.

Talks · 8 Aug 2015Mythology and truth

11:28The current success of films about Ulysses shows the return of myth.