| Can obedience be "turned" for purposes of social protest? If so, how? By whom? Under what circumstances? At what risk? And to what ends? In an effort to begin answering these questions, this dissertation excavates three minor political artifacts of Western thought in which techniques of strategic obedience find unique expression: Seneca the Younger's Letters to Lucilius (64-65CE), Christine de Pizan's letter to Queen Isabeau (1405), and Immanuel Kant's correspondence with Friedrich Wilhelm II (1794). In exploring the political and philosophical contours of these letters, I hope to illuminate some of the aesthetic norms, rhetorical devices, and political relationships—not to, mention the situational openings and occupational hazards—entailed in public discourse that, although noticeably obedient to the powers that be, can also be shown to prod figures of authority with venturesome amounts of dissent and self-assertion. |
