Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE December 2017 Achilles and The Batman on the Plane of Immanence: Deconstructing Heroic Models Herman Frederick Filice Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Recommended Citation Filice, Herman Frederick, "Achilles and The Batman on the Plane of Immanence: Deconstructing Heroic Models" (2017). Dissertations - ALL. 799. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/799 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract Achilles and The Batman on the Plane of Immanence: Deconstructing Heroic Models attempts to reposition the way the reader views literary heroism. By defining heroism as a reaction to forces within and external to his society, heroism becomes a function of Michel Foucault’s concept of Otherness. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s notions of the Nomad, striated and unstriated space and schizoanalysis, as well as Foucault’s basic concepts of power and its two- way, invisible flow, one will find that heroism develops and functions in strikingly similar manners no matter what time or culture germinates it. The universal problems the hero creates for the culture in which he or she operates are further explicated, including the reasons that the hero often becomes as much a danger to his society as the threat he or she rises to combat. The analysis begins with Achilieus of The Illiad, a character who, in the opening line of the text, is described not as bringing death to his enemies but pains on his own people. The text address Odysseus’ problematic, but uniquely successful, metamorphosis from king to hero and back to king and the unsuccessful attempt by Beowulf to make a similar transition. The analysis ends with an exploration of the uniquely 20th century hero: the comic book super- hero. Explicating the Batman text, Arkham Asylum, by Grant Morrison, shows that trope as it is affected by the 20th century concepts of the metropolitan and urban identity. The secret identity of the comic book hero is an important, modern, perhaps even postmodern answer to the problems the unchanging hero most often encounters within his own society. Achilles and The Batman on the Plane of Immanence: Deconstructing Heroic Models by Herman Frederick Filice B.A. Florida State University 1993 B.A. Florida State University1993 M.A. Florida State University1996 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Humanities. Syracuse University December 2017 Copyright © Herman Frederick Filice 2017 All Rights Reserved Acknowledgments: Special thanks to: Jeff Carnes for picking up a broken project and putting it back together. Dad, Franz and Tric for their support in tough times. Charley Winquist for putting all sorts of crazy theory in my head. Allison, Mike, Sandy, Bill, and Tim for defining friendship. Sabra for loving me slightly more than she does the dogs. Stuart and David for being legal masterminds. Lauren for being the first person who saw past the monster. And Chip and Susan for disproving my theory that real heroes don’t exist by being a couple of heroes I never could have expected. iv Table of Contents Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 Whitehead ................................................................................................................................ 11 The Iliad .............................................................................................................................. 21 Menelaos’ loss of Helen to Paris .......................................................................................... 27 Disruptions ............................................................................................................................ 27 The Intensity Of Achilleus ..................................................................................................... 31 The Obituaries ...................................................................................................................... 36 Achilleus Returns .................................................................................................................. 39 The Loss Of Identity-The Loss Of The Armor ........................................................................ 48 The Re-Invention of Achilleus ............................................................................................... 51 The Armor and Shield ........................................................................................................... 48 The Immortals ....................................................................................................................... 61 Slaying of Supplicants ............................................................................................................ 71 The Killing of Hektor .............................................................................................................. 78 The Domestication of Achilleus ............................................................................................ 96 Slaying of Supplicants ............................................................................................................ 71 Heroism on the Plane of Immanence ................................................................................. 109 The Hero and the King ........................................................................................................ 113 The Odyssey ......................................................................................................................... 113 The Challenge ...................................................................................................................... 120 Finality ................................................................................................................................ 125 Beowulf ................................................................................................................................ 126 Problems/Solutions ............................................................................................................. 131 Continuity and Crisis .......................................................................................................... 135 The Creation Myth ............................................................................................................... 149 The Bat Identity ................................................................................................................... 151 v Who is The Batman? ............................................................................................................ 158 Bruce Wayne ....................................................................................................................... 162 An Episode of Madness: Arkham Asylum ............................................................................ 172 The Batman and Domesticity .............................................................................................. 191 The Batman and Others ...................................................................................................... 195 Batman’s Love Life/Issues of Sexuality ............................................................................... 197 Why Is The Batman in the JLA? ........................................................................................... 204 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 206 vi 1 Introduction: Where does the hero exist? It is possible for a person to behave heroically, and for us to recognize that heroic action even as we experience it, but what about heroic identity? What is the difference between a hero, an individual whose self is defined solely by the heroic, and the individual who performs a heroic action? Is there a difference? I would argue there is a significant difference between heroic action and heroic identity, and that difference is as fundamental as to be grounded in the a priori of Kant’s subject/object formula of consciousness- a difference at the very genesis of consciousness and being. Delving into the soft underbelly of being, however, requires tools for the not-so-delicate work of analysis so that we do not deconstruct the very concept we’re discussing. It is not my intention to write a book about Kant or Deleuze and Guattari, but they offer an understanding of the way consciousness forms that is very useful. To discuss the way the hero versus the individual who performs a heroic action interacts with his or her society, the work of Alfred North Whitehead offers interesting insight, and Foucault’s work will help explicate why the limitation of text is fundamental to a better understanding of the heroic. With the hope that my use of some of these concepts might be the best way to explicate them, I would still like to introduce some basic concepts and the understanding of them that best explicates the creation of heroism as an identity. At the forefront of this understanding is the Subject/Object dichotomy that is so important to the creation of consciousness as explicated by Kant. The Subject is the Internal and the