Ulysses in the Baltic

Abstract

Is Ulysses, tied to the mast of his boat and resisting the song of the Sirens, an allegorical figure of the Kantian subject required by the moral imperative if he is to resist the temptations of sensitivity? Kant himself suggested the analogy. But we can also see in this Homerian episode “the paradigmatic narrative of a defence against the excessive jouissance”. The question to be asked then is that of knowing what is the subject of this jouissance, and what jouissance precisely. The confrontation with the Flying Dutchman, the hero of the Wagnerian drama, can open up the possibility to answer this question, which is, as shown by Alenka Zupancic, also the Kantian question.