Medusa's Head: Male Hysteria under Political Pressure

Author(s): Neil Hertz

Source: Representations, No. 4 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 27-54
Published by: University of California Press
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NEIL HERTZ

Medusa's Head: Male Hysteria under

Political Pressure
Alios age incitatos,alios age rabidos

IN THE PAGES that follow,I shall be consideringsome examples of a

recurrent turnofmind:therepresentation ofwhatwouldseem to be a politicalthreat
as if it were a sexual threat.Freud alludes to this at one point in his articleon
fetishism,wherehe is momentarily led intoa bitof dramaticmiming,simulatingthe
terrorhe imaginesthelittleboy feelswhenhe firstdiscovershismotherhas no penis:
"No," he writes,"thatcannotbe true,forifa woman can be castratedthenhis own
penisis in danger;and againstthatthererebelspart of his narcissismwhichNature
has providentiallyattachedto thisparticularorgan." Freudthenadds drily,"In later
lifegrownmen may experiencea similarpanic,perhapswhen the crygoes up that
throneand altarare in danger. 1 Questionsofsexual difference, ofperceptionand of
politicsare rapidlybroughtinto relationhere, and it is that set of relationsthat I
shouldlike to explore.My chiefexamples are Parisian,takenfromaccountsof the
1848 Revolutionand of the Commune,but in orderto suggestthatwhatI'm consid-
eringis not somethingmerelyfebrileand all-too-French, I shall glance firstat an
eighteenth-century Britishinstance.
Burke'sReflectionson theRevolutionin France was publishedin 1790; twoyears
later an anti-revolutionary cartoon appeared (fig. 1) which,like Classic Comics
generally,can be read as an inadvertentparody of the work it condenses and
illustrates.The "contrast" is Burke's, and so is the francophobiathat gives it its
edge. Its images are drawn fromthe pages of the Reflections:the composed scene
within"the shadow of the Britishoak" on the one hand, on the other the noble
victim"hanged on the lamppost" and servingas a backdrop, if that's the right
term,forone of those figuresBurkerefersto as "the furiesof hell, in the abused
shape of thevilestof women."2 She is, however,not Furybut a Gorgon-Medusa,
in fact-here depictednot as a petrifierbut as a beheader,her own head recogniz-
ably snakyyet stillfirmlyattached to her shoulders:Medusa usurpingthe pose of
Cellini's Perseus (fig. 7), a decapitated male at her feet. Still another way-the
printseems to suggest-in which the world has been turnedupside-down.The
question is, why should revolutionaryviolence be emblematizedin thisway,as a
hideous and fiercebut not exactlysexless woman?
A related question is promptedby the firstof the Frenchtexts,a briefone by
VictorHugo whichappeared in a posthumouslypublishedcollectionof fragments

REPRESENTATIONS 4 * Fall 1983 ? THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 27

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 TH L Co NTr~RL
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Fig. 1. The Contrast(unattributed),

1792. From a copy in the KramnickCollection,
Ithaca,N.Y.

assembled by his literaryexecutors and entitled,by them,"Things Seen," Choses

vues.3 It describesthe fighting
on the firstof theJuneDays in 1848, and it appears
to have been writtenshortlythereafter.Hugo's relation to the events of 1848
shiftedas the year went on, and could be describedas an incomplete(and never-
to-be-completed)process of radicalization.In February,after the overthrowof
Louis-Philippe,he had hoped fora regencyand had refusedto join Lamartine's
ProvisionalGovernment.He was elected to the National Assemblyin earlyJune
on a conservativeticket,but he was uneasy about governmentpolicy even then
and had mixed feelingsabout the closingof the National Workshops-the action
by the governmentthatprecipitatedthe fightingin lateJune. His apartmentwas
invaded by therevolutionariesonJune24th-the day followingthe day described
in this anecdote-and in succeeding weeks one findshim wavering,joining the
conservativemajorityin a vote of thanksto General Cavaignac forputtingdown
the rebellion,but votingagainstthemajoritywhen theywishedto prosecuteLouis
Blanc.4Some sense of those equivocal feelingscomes out in readingin his account
ofJune23rd:

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 The June uprising,rightfromthe start,presented strangelineaments. It displayed
suddenly,to a horrifiedsociety,monstrousand unknownforms.
The firstbarricade was set up by Fridaymorningthe 23rd, at the Porte St. Denis; it
was attacked the same day. The National Guard conducted itselfresolutely.They were
battalionsof the 1stand 2nd Legions. When the attackers,who arrivedby the Boulevard,
came withinrange, a formidablevolleywas loosed fromthe barricade and it strewedthe
roadway withguardsmen.The National Guard, more irritatedthan intimidated,charged
the barricade at a run.
At that moment a woman appeared on the crest of the barricade, a young woman,
beautiful,dishevelled,terrifying. This woman, who was a public whore, pulled her dress
up to the waist and cried to the guardsmen,in that dreadfulbrothellanguage that one is
always obliged to translate:"Cowards! Fire,ifyou dare, at the bellyof a woman!"
Here thingstook an awful turn. The National Guard did not hesitate. A fusillade
toppled the miserable creature. She fellwitha great cry.There was a horrifiedsilence at
the barricade and among the attackers.
Suddenlya second woman appeared. This one was youngerand stillmore beautiful;
she was practicallya child,barelyseventeen.What profoundmisery!She, too, was a public
whore. She raised her dress, showed her belly,and cried: "Fire, you bandits!" They fired.
She fell,pierced withbullets,on top of the other's body.
That was how thiswar began.
Nothingis more chillingor more somber. It's a hideous thing,thisheroismof abjec-
tion,when all that weakness contains of strengthburstsout; this civilizationattacked by
cynicismand defendingitselfby barbarism.On one side, the people's desperation,on the
otherthe desperationof society.

It's impossible to determine how accurate this is; though it purports to be an

eyewitness account, it differsin its details-and, particularly, in its most striking
detail: the women's gesture-from other descriptions of what must be the same
encounter.5 But regardless of whether the provocative actions it reports took
place or were a supplementary invention of Hugo's, there can be no doubt about
how intensely stylized is this telling of the story. The managing of local rhythmic
sequences (e.g., in the original, unefemmejeune, belle, e'chevele'e,
terrible),the dream-
like abruptness with which the women are made to appear, the fairy-taleprogres-
sion (firstone young woman, then another younger still: one almost expects a
third-the Cinderella of the barricades), the strong centripetal pull toward that
meaningfully terse one-sentence paragraph ("That was how this war began")-all
this heavy codification marks the anecdote as "representative," the story of a
beginning that is intended as a revelation of essence. But the point is made in a
still more telling way, one that has disappeared in translation. The feminine gen-
der of the word for an uprising-une emeute-allows for a startling double-en-
tendre to develop, retroactively, in the second sentence: Elle montrasubitementa la
societe'epouvante'edesformesmonstrueuseset inconnues.What the revolution is said to
be doing figurativelyis precisely what-in a moment-each of the women will be
represented as doing literally,suddenly displaying monstrous and unknown forms
to a horrified society. Or rather, to say that the women are doing "precisely" that
is to submit to the spell of this lurid equivocation: between the firstparagraph and

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 the sentencesdescribingthewomen's gesturea teasingrelationis establishedthat
holds out the possibilityof conflatingthe two actions. Once that possibilityis
glimpsed,thena numberof sentencesfurtheralong are renderedsimilarlylouche.
What was translatedas "Here thingstookan awfulturn"is, in French,"Ici la chose
devinteffroyable"(Here the thingbecame terrifying), a note thatis repeated in the
last paragraph's "It's a hideous thing"(C'estune chosehideuse),a glance back at the
formesmonstrueuses et inconnues.A context has been created in which the most
abstract characterizationof the revolution'sessential meaning-"all that weak-
ness containsof strengthburstsout"-can be read as a final,oblique allusion to
the source of the power of the women's gesture:thisbecomes a chosevue witha
vengeance.
One's warrantforreadingthe Hugo passage in thisway is provided,of course,
by Freud'snotes on Medusa's head:
We have not oftenattemptedto interpret individualmythological themes,but an
interpretationsuggests itselfeasilyinthecase ofthehorrifying decapitatedheadofMedu-
sa.
To decapitate= to castrate.The terror ofMedusais thusa terror ofcastration thatis
linkedto the sightof something. Numerousanalyseshave made us familiarwiththe
occasionforthis:it occurswhena boy,who has hitherto been unwilling to believethe
threatof castration,catchessightof the femalegenitals,probablythoseof an adult,
surrounded byhair,and essentially thoseofhismother....
IfMedusa'sheadtakestheplaceofa representation ofthefemalegenitals, orratherif
it isolatestheirhorrifyingeffects fromthepleasure-giving ones,it maybe recalledthat
displaying thegenitalsis familiar inotherconnections as an apotropaicact.Whatarouses
horrorin oneselfwillproducethe same effectupon the enemyagainstwhomone is
seekingto defendoneself.We read in Rabelaisof howtheDeviltookto flight whenthe
womanshowedhimhervulva.
The erectmaleorganalsohasan apotropaiceffect, butthanksto anothermechanism.
To displaythepenis(oranyofitssurrogates) is tosay:"I am notafraidofyou.I defyyou.I
havea penis."Herethen,is anotherwayofintimidating theEvilSpirit.6

Freuddescribesa gesturesimilarto thatofHugo's women and offersa compelling

account of why that gesturewould come across as, in Hugo's language, glaqant,
'chilling."In thisinterpretation,the strengthcontainedin the woman's weakness
is the power to frightenthe man by revealingto him the possibilityof his castra-
tion.At thebarricades,the women's-or therevolutionaries'-lack of"property"
betokensthe soldiers'-or society's-risk.7
But Freud is as concerned with counterphobicor apotropaic effectsas he is
with castrationanxiety proper. Indeed the interestof these notes, as Jean La-
planche has pointed out, is in the deftnesswithwhichtheydo justice both to the
affectof fear and to the mechanisms of its mitigation.Here are the thirdand
fourthparagraphsin Freud's text,elided in the citationabove:
The hairuponMedusa'shead is frequentlyrepresentedinworksofartin theformof
complex.It is a remarkable
snakes,and theseonce againare derivedfromthecastration

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fact that, however frighteningthey may be in themselves,they neverthelessserve as a
mitigationof the horror,fortheyreplace the penis,the absence of whichis the cause of the
horror.This is a confirmationof the technicalrule accordingto which a multiplicationof
penis symbolssignifiescastration.
The sightof Medusa's head makes the spectatorstiffwithterror,turnshim to stone.
Observe that we have here once again the same originfromthe castrationcomplex and
the same transformationof affect!For becoming stiffmeans an erection. Thus in the
originalsituationit offersconsolation to the spectator:he is stillin possession of a penis,
and the stiffeningreassureshim of the fact.

Laplanche's commentary draws attention to the multiple-in some cases, contra-

dictory-associations that are brought into concentrated focus in the symbol as
Freud unpacks it: following one strand of associations, for example, the snakes
curling around Medusa's face are penises, following another they are the pubic
hair surrounding the castrated (and-to the terrifiedchild-castrating) sex of the
mother. The symbol wouldn't function as a symbol, he reminds us, if such conden-
sation and concentration weren't operative; further,in addition to the effects of
"consolation" Freud attributes to specific elements in the mix (as when Medusa's
grim powers of petrification are translated, reassuringly, into the stiffeningof an
erection, or her snakes into replaceable parts), Laplanche insists on the primary
apotropaic power of symbolic concentration itself. The symbol of the Medusa's
head is reassuring not only because its elements can be read in those ways, but
because it is a symbol. Here Laplanche's analysis of Freud's notes rejoins one of
the main currents of his own thought about the castration complex, his insistence
on the reassurance implicit in any scenario (however scarifying) that structures
anxiety and, more particularly, in a scenario which links a theory (of how women
got that way) with a perception (of what their bodies look like). "It goes without
saying," he remarks, "that castration is precisely not a reality,but a thematization
of reality. A certain theorization of reality which, for Freud, is so anchored in
perception that to deny castration is finally the same thing as denying the percep-
tual experience itself . ..."8 Those final dots appear in Laplanche's text: the
paragraph ends with that nuance of inconclusiveness, partly, I suspect, because
Laplanche wants to leave the referent of "the perceptual experience itself' (ce
la mimechosede denierla castration
seraitfinalement percep-
que de denierI'expe'rience
tive elle-mime . . .) ambiguous. He is certainly referring to the specific perceptual
experience Freud's little boy is said to have of his mother's body; but beyond that
Laplanche would claim more broadly that perception and castration are inelucta-
bly linked, and linked by way of the child's narcissism, by the intensity of his
investment in representations of himself and by the predominance of his penis
among such representations.
Laplanche's discussion of anxiety can help us to formulate a litany of nervous
questions that may be imagined as the murmured subtext of writing like Hugo's,
questions that give expression to epistemological anxiety (can I trustmy eyes?), to

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 narcissism(can I hold myselftogether?),to sexual anxiety(can I hold on to my
penis?), to-beyond that-social and economic fears about propertyand status
(can I hold onto anything,includingrepresentationsof myself?)or-put more
grandlyby one of thiscentury'sgrandhysterics-Can the centerhold? or is mere
anarchyto be loosed upon the world?
To return to Victor Hugo, we can say that his choice to concentrate his
account of the beginningsof theJuneDays as he does, by focussingon the gesture
of those two women, is equivalent to the acts of condensationand focussingthat
went into the productionof the Medusa's head as a powerfulsymbol.It is appro-
priatethatHugo writesof theuprisingthatit "presentedstrangelineaments":the
lineaments may be strange, they may indeed, in the next sentence, be trans-
formed into "monstrous and unknown forms," but that they are namable as
"lineaments" gives them a physiognomiclegibilitythat is reassuring.Hugo's an-
ecdote is about horror,but it is shaped into an apotropaic emblem.9
I have said nothingabout that odd phrase in whichHugo apologizes, aftera
fashion,fornot being able to report the firstwoman's speech quite accurately,
when she "pulled her dress up to the waist and cried . .. in thatdreadfulbrothel
language thatone is always obliged to translate(danscetteaffreuselanguede lupanar
qu'on est toujoursforce'de traduire)'Cowards! Fire, if you dare, at the belly of a
woman!' " The gesturemightseem merelyprimon Hugo's part,or else unpleas-
antly,leeringlyallusive. More likelythisis as close as Hugo will come in thistext
to betrayingan uneasy self-consciousness about the activityof representationhe
is engaged in. Here it is productiveof a momentaryqualm; in the next selection
we shall be examining,fromMaxime du Camp's polemical account of the Com-
mune,we shall finda more elaborate excursusintoaesthetictheory-specifically
into a theoryof representation-bound up with a stillmore explicit linkingof
what is politicallydangerous to feelingsof sexual horrorand fascination.

Maxime du Camp-litterateur,photographer,memberof the Academie Fran-

caise, friend of Flaubert, man-about-town-was sufficiently disturbed by the
eventsof 1870-7 1 to publish,ten years later,a four-volumedenunciationof the
Commune and defense of the actions of the forces of order. He entitledit Les
Convulsions de Parisand in it he included an attack on the painterCourbet forhis
role in the destructionof the Vendome column,the Napoleonic monumentto the
victoriesof the Grande Armee. WhetherCourbet was in factresponsibleforthis
was a matterof some debate: Courbet denied it, but he was neverthelessfound
guiltyby the investigating panel, heavilyfinedand drivenintoexile.'0 Du Camp is
writingafterthe fact to justifythe verdicton circumstantialgrounds,claiming
thatboth in his theoryof paintingand in his practiceCourbetrevealed himselfas
just the sortofpersonwho would get mixed up injust thissortof thing:"The man
who ... could degrade his craftto thepointof abjectionis capable of anything.""

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 Everyweak case may be contested,and thispoor man did what he could, before the
militarytribunals,to fendoff,or at least to attenuatethe accusation thatweighed on him.
He was a conceited man whose self-lovehad drawn him into a path that was not his own.
His works,too much praised and too much denigrated,made him well-knownand provid-
ed himwitha comfortableliving.His absence of imagination,the difficulty he experienced
in composing a painting,had forcedhim to limithimselfto what has been called realism,
thatis, to the exact representationof naturalobjects, withoutdiscernment,withoutselec-
tion,just as theyofferedthemselvesto view: Thersitesand Venus are thus equally beauti-
fulsimplybecause theyexist; the humpbackof the one is equal to the bosom of the other.
This is the theoryof impotentmen, who erect theirdefectsinto a system;everyoneknows
the fable of the fox whose tail was cut off.

The rhetoric of political confrontation, like that of any specular facing-off,is

inclined to draw its force from figures of reversal: so, for Hugo, the effectof the
women's gesture-or of the e'meute"herself"-could be caught in that phrase "all
that weakness contains of strength." To speak of realism as "the theory of impo-
tent men, who erect their defects into a system" is to draw on the same resources:
du Camp is locating Courbet and his school where Hugo had placed women or the
unpropertied classes-impotent, with nothing to show for themselves, no natural
talent, they would instead display a theory in its place. Du Camp's language finds
its place somewhere between Freud's description of an apotropaic gesture ("To
display the penis [or any of its surrogates] . . .") and the metaphors with which
Burke castigated the revolutionaries of 1789: "Is it then true . . . that it was of
absolute necessity the whole fabric should be at once pulled down, and the area
cleared for the erection of a theoretic experimental edifice in its place?"'2 In this
view a system-a "theoretic experimental edifice"-whether it's a system of
government or a system of aesthetics, is phallic or-more properly-fetishistic: it
is an ersatz thing-in-itselfwhich can be erected, narcissistically invested and then
brandished in self-defense. Hence the castration jokes Maxime du Camp feels he
can make at the Realists' expense.
Nor are the Realists the only fetishists in this text: the accusation is made
explicit in du Camp's account of the toppling of the column. "This rage to take it
out on material things, this reversed fetishism [cefeftichismea 1'envers]which is the
height of fetishism, which was the sickness of the Commune, appeared in all its
intensity at the moment of the column's fall [lorsdu renversementde la colonne]."
Figures of reversal, including this image of a literal renversement(fig. 2), coexist
here with a polemical stance that is both given to and braced against tu quoque
retorts:

The materialismwhichdarkened the mind of these people led them to attach impor-
tance only to the exterior,to the materialityof things.... In this respect, as in many
others as well, the men of the Commune were medieval men. To set up an idol, to pull
down an idol, to be an idolator,to be an iconoclast-it's all the same; it is to believe in the
idol.

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 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OAR~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
,a,,l , _ >.... > . .
.

_iqpi a t - - v -

Fig. 2. Parts sousla Commune. ReprintedfromL'Illustration,

Chutede la colonneVendome.
Paris, 27 mai 1871.

It is part of the logic of such encounters that du Camp should himself sound
somewhat overwrought here, just as, in a more interesting moment in his text, he
seems peculiarly overexcited by what he finds obscene in a work of Courbet's:

All thatone may ask of a man-outside of the grand principlesof moralitywhichno

one should neglect-is to respectthe art he professes.He can be lackingin intelligence,in
learning,in wit,in politeness,in urbanity,and stillremain honorable,if he maintainsthe
practiceof his art aloftand intact.Now thiselementaryduty,whichconstitutesprofession-
al probity,Courbet ignored.To please a Moslem who paid forhis whimsin gold, and who,
fora time,enjoyed a certainnotorietyin Paris because of his prodigalities,Courbet, this
same man whose avowed intentionwas to renew Frenchpainting,painted a portraitof a
woman whichis difficult to describe. In the dressing-roomof thisforeignpersonage, one
sees a small picturehidden under a green veil. When one draws aside the veil one remains
stupefiedto perceive a woman, life-size,seen fromthe front,moved and convulsed, re-
markably
executed,reproducedcon amore, thelastwordin
as theItalianssay,providing
realism. But, by some inconceivable forgetfulness, the artistwho copied his model from
nature,had neglectedto representthe feet,the legs, the thighs,the stomach,the hips,the
chest,the hands, the arms, the shoulders,the neck and the head.
The man who, for a few coins, could degrade his craftto the point of abjection, is
capable of anything.

I have reproduced Courbet's picture here (fig. 3) to document that there is a

certain degree of overkill in Maxime du Camp's account of it: the artist hadn't, it

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 Fig. 3. GustaveCourbet.L'Originedu monde.Mu-
seum of Fine Arts,Boston.1866

would appear, entirelyneglected "the thighs,the stomach, the hips" or "the

chest." The intensityof focus,thatzeroing-inon the woman's genitals,is the work
of the beholder in thiscase, and it is coordinatewithotherfeaturesof his text:its
disingenuousair of moral indignation,the coyness of its negativeanatomy ("not
this,not that... but you knowwhat!"), its dragging-inof those innocentItalians,
presumablyso as to motivatethe appearance of the word con, so that du Camp
can surreptitiouslyname what is "difficultto describe" withoutopenly using
"that dreadfulbrothellanguage thatone is always obliged to translate."It would
be wrongto suggest,however,thatbehind all thisperiphrasisand moral outrage
lies no more thanthe prurienceof a closetvoyeur:du Camp's dismayis as genuine
and as powerfulas his fascination.Togetherthey produce an ambivalence that
informshis discussionof the Commune and the aesthetictheoriesof the Realists
as much as it does his response to Courbet's nude. To describe her body as
"convulsed," forexample, is to assimilateher horridappeal to thatof the political
"convulsions" du Camp is chartingin Paris. But the linksamong erotic,political
and aesthetic attitudesgo deeper than that,and they become easier to discern
when one collates the apparentlycontradictorystatementsthese pages on Cour-
bet contain. It is because Courbet had difficulty a painting,"du Camp
"composing
insists,that he was forcedinto realism, "the exact representationof natural ob-
jects ... just as they offered themselves to view." And yet "the last word in

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 realism" turnsout to be this representationof a woman's genitals "just as they
offeredthemselves to view," yet still composed,selected and focussed-in du
Camp's account-with an intensitythatwould be hard to match. Here the tradi-
tional paradoxes about what it means for a painter to copy "Nature" are ener-
gizedby the ambivalence-sexual and epistemological-that inheresin fetishism:
What is there to be seen in the object? How passive-or how willfullysystemat-
ic-is that seeing? How is what one sees shaped by what one thinksone has or
fearsto lose? These are the urgenciesthat are played out in Maxime du Camp's
pages: it is not unreasonablethathis hatredof the Commune should have led him,
by somethinglike freeassociation,to Courbet's nude.

Confrontedwithsuch extravagantresponses,we may decide to grantVictor

Hugo the license of a poet and novelistand to writeoffMaxime du Camp as not
much more than a panickyarriviste, the Norman Podhoretzof the Second Em-
pire.'3 But what of a serious historian?Let us look now at Tocqueville's recollec-
tions of the events of 1848, as he set them down in his posthumouslypublished
Souvenirs.Althoughnot a republican,Tocquevillewas neverthelessnot displeased
when Louis-Philippewas overthrownin February.Like Hugo, he momentarily
hoped that a regency could be established; when that did not materialize,he
adopted an attitudehe describes as one of somewhat remote curiosity,but by
June he had become disturbedby the turn events were taking and when the
fighting broke out he was verymuch on the side of the partyof order.I quote his
account of an incidenton June 24, the second day of street-fighting, as he made
his way to the Chamber of Deputies:
WhenI was gettingnearand was alreadyin themidstof thetroopsguardingit,an old
womanwitha vegetablecartstubbornly barredmyway.I ended by tellingher rather
sharplyto makeroom.Insteadofdoingso, she lefthercartand rushedat me withsuch
suddenfrenzy thatI had troubledefendingmyself.I shudderedat thefrightful and hid-
eousexpressionon herface,whichreflecteddemagogicpassionsand thefuryofcivilwar.
I mentionthisminorfactbecause I saw in it then,and rightly, a majorsymptom. At
momentsof violentcrisiseven actionsthathave nothingto do withpoliticstakeon a
strangecharacterofchaoticanger;theseactionsarenotloston theattentive eyeand they
providea veryreliableindexofthegeneralstateofmind.It is as thoughthesegreatpublic
emotionscreate a burningatmospherein whichprivatefeelingsseethe and boil.'4

This is a storywithtwo points.One is about the natureof theJune Days: like

Hugo's, this is a representativeanecdote, in which a woman's gesture encapsu-
lates the meaning of the revolution.But Tocqueville also intendsto tell us some-
thingabout how one comes upon representativeanecdotes, about the power of
that "attentiveeye" to grasp the meaning of a minor,possiblynegligible,inci-
dent,a power thatthe authorofDemocracy inAmericacan rightlyclaim forhimself.
He knows that an observer thoughtfuland canny and experienced enough will

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"see" the meaning of historical moments in such small details. But perhaps "see-
ing" is not quite the right verb for what Tocqueville is demonstrating here: rather
his power is that of someone who can "read" the meaning of a face in a rapid and
unperplexed fashion. For, like Victor Hugo, Tocqueville is interested in the "linea-
ments"-what he calls traits,"features"-of physiognomy, and indeed physiog-
nomy is his chief metaphor for historical interpretation. The Souvenirsopen with
these lines:

Now thatforthe momentI am out of the streamof public life,and the uncertainstate
of myhealthdoes not even allow me to followany consecutivestudy,I have in my solitude
fora time turnedmy thoughtsto myself,or ratherto those events of the recent past in
which I played a part or stood as a witness.The best use of my leisure seems to be to go
back over these events,to describethe men I saw takingpart in them,and in thisway,ifI
can, to catch and engrave on my memory those confused featuresthat make up the
uncertainphysiognomyof my time. (S29/R3)

A page later, describing the last years of the July Monarchy, he writes: "Only the
general physiognomy of that time comes readily to my mind. For that was some-
thing I often contemplated with mingled curiosity and fear, and I clearly dis-
cerned the particular features that gave it its character" (S30/R4). Readers
familiar with Hegel's critique of Lavater in the Phenomenology'5might assume
that, forty years later, it would be impossible for serious observers to use the
language of physiognomy in anything other than a figurativesense, as Tocqueville
does in these two citations: the face that he here contemplates "with mingled
curiosity and fear" is one he has conjured into existence and attributed to his
"times." But physiognomy's hold on the nineteenth-century imagination was te-
nacious. Lavater's works continued to sell, and even among intellectuals who
might deny its scientific status, the appeal of physiognomic lore in both the inter-
pretation of character and the elaboration of portraits was powerful. 16 So it should
not surprise us to find Tocqueville reading the meaning of his times out of the
quite literal face of a vegetable woman: literal faces could take on that synecdoch-
ic value. But why should it have been a woman's face? Why should that have been
the representative anecdote of the June uprising? To answer that we have to
follow a number of other threads in Tocqueville's Souvenirs,one concerning prop-
erty,one concerning the place of theory in the events of 1848 and, finally,one
concerning women.
Perhaps the firstremark to make about Tocqueville on property is that the
Souvenirs were begun quite literally on his property: facing the opening page of
text he had written Ecrite enjuillet 1850 a Tocqueville.We are reading the thoughts
of Tocqueville-from-Tocqueville and the relation between that signature and that
place-name is both more interesting and more elusive than that of a pun. If I were
to protest that I was writing to you "from the heart"-Herz von dem Herz-that
would indeed be a pun, and not an especially snappy one. Like all puns it would

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 express a certain willfulness. But it isn't clear that the same accusation of willful-
ness applies in this case: Tocqueville himself no doubt hardly gave a thought, as he
wrote that line, to the fact that his name was his place. Whatever self-satisfaction
inheres in that coalescence of an individual, a family and some acreage would
operate in ways that had, by time, been muted and quasi-naturalized. That
Tocqueville's investment in Tocqueville should be strengthened by whatever rep-
resentative-and self-representative-power that sign held for him, and not de-
pend simply on the value of the real estate, is something we take for granted, even
though we grant further that this area-where land, people and language inter-
act-is a hard one to chart. Tocqueville was himself alert to the ways in which the
notion of property had both a natural and a semiotic component. Here, for exam-
ple, is how he epitomizes the "socialist character of the February Revolution":

Inevitably[thepeople] were bound to discoversooner or later thatwhat held themback in

their place was not the constitutionof the government,but the unalterable laws that
constitutesocietyitself;and it was natural forthem to ask whethertheydid not have the
power and the rightto change these too, as theyhad changed the others. And to speak
specificallyabout property,whichis, so to speak, the foundationof our social order,when
all the privilegesthatcover and conceal the privilegeof propertyhad been abolished and
propertyremained as the main obstacle to equalityamong men and seemed to be the only
sign thereof,was it not inevitable,I do not say that it should be abolished in its turn,but
thatat least the idea of abolishingit should strikemindsthathad no part in itsenjoyment?
This naturalrestlessnessin the mindsof the people, withthe inevitablefermentin the
desires,thoughts,needs and instinctsof the crowd,formedthe fabricon whichthe innova-
(S96/R75-76)
and grotesquepatterns.
torsdrewsuchmonstrous

Tocquevillecould here be echoingBurke'sdictumin theReflectionsthatthe "char-

acteristicessence of property,formedfromthe combined principlesof its acquisi-
tionand conservation,is to be unequal." 17 For Tocqueville as forBurkeunequally
distributedpropertyfunctionsas a natural sign of legitimateinequalitiesand, as
such,can be expected to servenot simplyas the occasion formaterialgreed but-
more subtlyand dangerously-as an incitementto a sortof semioticrestlessness:
when all the other signsof privilegehad been removed,the itch to get past that
last sign to bare unaccommodated man, what Burke calls "naked, shiveringna-
ture,"becomes intolerablystrong.
But the semiotics of propertyare still more complicated, in Tocqueville's
view. If the distributionof propertyestablishes a set of natural-and, to that
extent,good-signs of inequality,and promptsa natural-and understandable-
"restlessness," Tocqueville's account also invokes a more reprehensibleset of
signs,those that are actively-willfully-traced by "innovators"on the "fabric"
provided by the people's restlessness.Like designs sketchedon a cloth ground,
these are "monstrousand grotesque patterns,"ratherlike the "monstrousand
unknownforms"VictorHugo discernedin the eventsof 1848. But ifthe language
of Hugo's text immediately associated the "monstrous and unknown forms" with

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the sight of a woman's body, the path of association in Tocqueville is less rapid
and direct: it goes by way of a denunciation of socialist theorizers as furiously
energetic, crazed producers of signs:

It was those socialist theories,which I have previouslycalled the philosophyof the

FebruaryRevolution,that later kindled real passions, embitteredjealousies, and finally
stirredup war between the classes....
Afterthe 25th Februarya thousand strange systemspoured from the impetuous
imaginationsof innovatorsand spread throughthe troubledminds of the crowd. Every-
thingexcept Throne and Parliamentwas stillstanding;and yet it seemed thatthe shockof
revolutionhad reduced societyitselfto dust, and that therewas an open competitionfor
the plan of the new edificeto be put in itsplace; each man had his own scheme; one might
publishhis in the papers; anothermightuse the postersthatsoon covered the walls; a third
mightproclaimhis to the listeningwinds. One was going to abolish inequalityof fortunes;
anotherthatof education; while a thirdattacked the oldest inequalityof all, thatbetween
men and women. (S95/R74)

Like Pope's madman who "locked from ink and paper scrawls/With desperate
charcoal round his darkened walls," the innovators are here conjured up in a
vision of semiotic behavior gone haywire: the paragraphs link socialism to the
grotesque proliferation of theories, to irregular publication, to the abolition of
inequalities and-in a cadence that should by now seem predictable-to the final,
one-would-have-thought ineradicable difference between the sexes. But how, ex-
actly, did Tocqueville get from writing to women? A final quotation should make
that clear: it is a vignette of a conversation Tocqueville had, in the spring of 1848,
with the writer-and socialist sympathizer-George Sand:

Milnesput me beside Madame Sand; I had neverspokento her,and I don't thinkI had
ever seen her before(forI have not lived much in the world of literaryadventurerswhich
she inhabited).When one of my friendsasked her what she thoughtof my book about
America,she replied: "Sir, I make it a habit only to read the books that are presentedto
me by the authors." I had a strongprejudice against Madame Sand, forI detest women
who write,especiallythose who disguisethe weaknesses of theirsex en systeme. . . (S150/
R134)

I have left the last two words in French because it's hard to find English equiva-
lents that are both easily colloquial and accurate: that may say something about
the long history of Anglo-American difficultieswith French systems. Tocqueville's
most recent translator writes "especially those who systematically disguise the
weaknesses of their sex," but that isn't the point here: Tocqueville is using en
systemein the only way it is generally used in French; that is, in the same way
Maxime du Camp is using it when he complains that the Realists are "impotent
men, who erect their defects into a system" (qui erigentleursdefautsen systeme):the
phrase should read "I detest women who write, especially those who disguise the
weaknesses of their sex by producing a system," however awkwardly that strikes
the ear. It is in this respect that George Sand serves as a transitional figure be-

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 tween Tocqueville's dismaywithsocialisttheoriesand the horrorhe feltwhen he
staredinto the face of the old woman.
If his use of en systemealigns Tocqueville's text with du Camp's, his remark
about women who disguisethe weaknesses of theirsex bringshis language close
to Hugo's "all thatweakness containsof strength."Tocqueville's writingis more
considered and less overwrought,but his implicationin this tangled set of atti-
tudes towards sexual differences,politicsand knowledgeis similarto theirs.All
threewritershave produced intenselychargedpassages thatare about a confron-
tation with a woman, a confrontationin which each findsan emblem of what
revolutionaryviolence is all about. To rehearse the chain of associationswe have
been followingin Tocqueville may allow us to see what is at work in the other
writersas well. An investmentin property,to begin with:propertyseen as a sign
of privilegeand set over against those other signs marked out by those without
property,the systemsand theoriesof socialists.It is theywho publishattackson
all inequalities-any old inequality-includingthe oldest of all, thatbetweenmen
and women. And in this they are like those women writerswho convert their
weaknesses into systems and would brandish these substitutesapotropaically,
defyingthose possessed of the more naturalsignsof privilege,of whichproperty
is the most fundamental.This would seem to be in defense of Tocqueville as a
man-of-property, Tocqueville-from-Tocqueville. But it is also a defenseof Tocque-
ville as the authorof thisresolutelynon-theoreticalaccount of what is happening
in the world,a physiognomicreading of the confusedfeaturesof his timewhich,
thoughhe contemplatesthem with mingled curiosityand fear,he nevertheless
imaginesto be lookableat, composable intofeaturesof the same face,ifnot charac-
tersof the greatApocalypse. What I'm suggestingis thatit is thisbelief-that one
can see historyas the featuresof a face, read it offa composed physiognomy-
thatTocquevillemustdefend,chieflyby castingout somethingthatresemblesit a
bit too closely forcomfort:that productionof "unnatural" systemswhich inter-
pret the historicalworld with a willed and artificialcoherence, and which are
manifestlyinvestedby theircreatorswiththenarcissisticchargeof somethinglike
property.They are threateningto the extent that theyraise doubts about one's
own more natural ways of looking at things;and it is that threatthat prompts
these powerfullyrenderedMedusa-fantasieswhen theyare offeredas substitutes
fora more patient,inclusiveaccount of politicalconflict.

A Vermiform Appendix: The Phrygian Cap

When I firstpresentedthismaterialto an audience at JohnsHopkins,

BeatriceMarie, of theHumanitiesCenter,suggestedthatsome connectionsmight
be drawnbetween the complex of sexual, proprietaryand epistemologicalinvest-
ments I had associated withthe appearance of Medusa-fantasiesin politicalcon-

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texts, on the one hand, and, on the other, the adoption, during the French
Revolution, of the Phrygian cap as an emblem of Liberty. She had in mind the
droopy-phallic look the cap takes on when its crown falls forward or to one side, as
it does in this mocking portrayal of Louis XVI (fig. 4), obliged to wear the cap
(apotropaically, but-as it turned out-ineffectively so) in June 1792; and she
wondered if the cap might not consistently, if surreptitiously,be associated with
the threat of impotence or castration. I had no ideas on the subject at the time,
but I've since had a chance to read around in histories of costume and of iconogra-
phy, and this reading would seem to confirm Ms. Marie's hunch. It also provides a
further illustration of the odd now-you-see-it/now-you-don't logic with which
these motifs appear and disappear, come together and disperse, in historical
enactment and in historical interpretation.
The usual understanding of the bonnetrougede la Liberte'is as an unequivocally
political symbol. The cap was taken to stand for liberty because it had stood for
liberty in Rome: under the Empire it had been awarded to slaves on the occasion
of their manumission; earlier still, it had been mounted on a staffand paraded
through the streets of the city by Caesar's assassins. I cite a recent summary of
this account from an article by JenniferHarris:

Along with other symbols borrowed fromthe period of classical antiquity(such as the
RomanfascesdenotingUnityand Indivisibility), [thebonnetrouge]earlyentersrevolutionary
iconographyas a symbolof liberty,having been worn in Rome by freedmenas a sign of
theirnew position,althoughit was also worn by several different nations of antiquityand
by various individuals.It is associated, forexample, withthe dress of Paris who is shown
wearingit in David's 1788 paintingParisand Helen. In Rome it does appear to have stood
forlibertyin the same way thatit was to in Franceafter1789, forit is representedon a coin
of Brutus,issued in Asia Minor in 44-42 B.C., positionedbetween two daggers and recall-
ing the Ides of March.'8

But here a slight complication develops: the cap on the coin Harris is referringto
(fig. 5) doesn't look like a Phrygian cap-it lacks the droop. Does that matter?
Apparently it does, at least to some historians, ancient and modern: as one reads
further in French accounts of the bonnet rouge and in descriptions of classical
headgear, the question of what the Roman cap of liberty actually looked like (and
what sorts of cap it was to be distinguished from) gets interestingly tangled and
generates more vehemence than you would think a hat properly should. It will be
worth our while to look firstat some discussions of Phrygian, Greek and Roman
versions of the cap before returning to modern France.
Harris cites the Pauly-Wissowa Encyclopddie,which, under pilleus, describes a
cap that, in Rome, became so firmly associated with "liberty" that one could
speak of "attaining the pilleus" or "conferring the pilleus" when a slave earned or
was granted his freedom.'9 This pilleus was rounded, like the one pictured on the
coin; there is no mention of a droop, nor of any Phrygian associations: the cap's
origins would seem to be Etruscan, its connotations political or, when religious,

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 Fig. 4. LouisXVIenbonnet
dela liberte,
1792. Paris,
BibliothequeNationale(photo:Bib. Nat.).

associated with the officialRoman priesthood.The Phrygiancap, on the other

hand, accordingto Pauly-Wissowa,is not properlya pilleusbut a variantof the old
Persiantiara.20In the words of one of the scholars whose work the Encyclopidie
draws on, "this tiarawas well knownto the Greeks; theyused it to designatenot
only Persians but Orientals in general: Scythians,Amazons, Trojans, and other
Easterners.It consistsof a highcap, apparentlyof felt,witha roundedpeak which
nods forward;to its lower edge a pair of lappets and a broad neckpiece were
attached."21It appears as an attributeof a varietyof Asiaticfiguresin Greek and
Roman art-of Ganymede, of Paris,of Mithraand of Attis,among others.If we
accept the authorityof Pauly-Wissowa,there is no connection to be made be-
tween the uses or symbolicvalues of these two quite distinctlyshaped caps: the
two encyclopedia entries-pilleus and tiara-are not cross-referenced, nor does
eitherallude to the other.It may be, then,thatthe Frenchrevolutionariessimply
made a mistake;lackingthe perspectiveof modernscholarship,theyconfusedthe
two caps and conferredon the droop of the one the political meanings of the
other.This conclusionwould be endorsed by a numberof contemporaryhistori-

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 Fig. 5. Romancoin commemorating theIdes of
March, 44 B.C. (greatly enlarged). Re-
drawnafterOlschki,TheMythofFelt(Berke-
ley,1949),pl. 3.

ans of costume and of symbolism;22 indeed it was even put forward-and very
forcefully,as we shall see-by a Frenchantiquarianwritingin 1796.
But the situation-at least, as it appears to an amateur, reading out of his
field-may be more complicated than thisconclusionwould suggest.For "mod-
ern scholarship"-even modern German scholarship-is not of one mind on the
subject. The Encyclopidiediscussion of the tiara was revised in 1974; in 1978
Eleonore Ddrner,an interpreterof Mithraicsymbolism,publishedan articleenti-
tled "Deus Pileatus" in which she traced a line of descent fromthe Persiantiara
throughthe "soft-falling" Phrygiancap wornby Mithradown to the
(weichfallende)
of Rome and on to the bonnetrougeof 1792.23Can Ddrner,like the
pileuslibertatis
eighteenth-century promotersof the Phrygiancap, be ignorantof more recent
archeological findings?That is possible, but less likelyin her case: her footnotes
referto currentscholarship,her manner of proceeding is cautious, she likes to
pointout what is "extraordinarily hard to decide" or what is "especiallyunclear."

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 Indeed, her articleis distinguishedby two things the care withwhichshe weighs
the materialsshe chose to include and, consideringthat care, the puzzlingomis-
sion of anotherset of iconographicassociationsthatwould seem to pertainto her
subject, those connected not with the cult of Mithrabut withthat of the Magna
Mater the goddess Cybele and her loverAttis.
Both cults were among the half-dozenEastern mysteryreligionstolerated
underthe Empire,24both gods were depictedin recognizablyOrientaldress,wear-
ing the tiarawithits rounded peak nodding forward.Furthermore,the two cults
coexisted,as one scholarputs it, "in intimatecommunion,"25so thattheirmonu-
mental traces are frequentlyfoundmingledwithone another,to the pointwhere
it oftentakes considerablearcheologicaland epigraphicalskillto establishwhich
of the two gods is being representedin a particularstatue.26But ifbustsof Mithra
and Attiscould be mistakenforone another,it would be harder to confuse the
adherentsof the two cults,or theirreligiouspractices.Mithraicceremonieswere
secret,austere and restrictedto male adepts (the cult was widespread among the
Roman legions),whereas the followersof Cybele and Attisincludedboth men and
women, as well as a group of semivirs, eunuchs who had castrated themselvesin
fervidemulationof theirgod. For the legend of Attisis that of a dyingand rising
god, a Phrygianshepherd beloved by the Great Mother who, in a moment of
eroticfrenzy, mutilateshimself,dies, thenrises deifiedand restoredto his virility.
In the ceremoniescommemoratinghis passion, death and rebirth held in Rome
in March some of the devout would mark the seriousnessof theirdevotionby
sacrificingtheirgenitalsto the goddess.27Thus initiated,thesegalli, as theywere
called, were recognizablethereafterin the streetsof Rome by the "Asiatic" ex-
travaganceof theirdress: theywore colored robes belted at the waist in what, to
the Romans, was a femininefashion,earrings,other ornamentsconsidered ef-
feminateand, tied under the chin,a Phrygiancap.28
This digressionon the cult of Attisis meant to supplement and complicate
still further Dbrner's conclusions on the pilleus and the tiara. Suppose she is
correctin believingthat the cap awarded to freedslaves resemblesthe headgear
of Mithra;thenit would also resemble the headgear of Attisand of thegalli. And
while the gods themselvesmightonly appear in representationsof one sort or
another,theirfollowersmightbe seen walkingabout the streetsof Rome, wearing
hats which,if not preciselyidenticalto those of the freedmen,would be notice-
ably similar.Did anyone in fact notice? And, if so, what, if anything,was this
taken to mean eitherat the time,by Romans accustomed to the sight,or later
by historiansseekingthe significanceof these signsof statusand allegiance? Did
anyone ask whythe cap thatmeant "liberty"could also mean "castration"?
Dbrner,who isn't concerned withAttis,has nothingdirectlyto say to these
questions,but her article does suggestsome ways to approach them. She tenta-
tivelyproposes that a connection mighthave existed, in the minds of Roman
worshippersof Mithra,between the egalitariantenetsof theircult theychose to

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thinkof themselvesasfratres,unitedin brotherhoodregardlessof theirsocial rank
in the city and their wearing a cap which, in another context, signifiedthe
raisingof a slave to the dignityof civicfreedom.The Phrygiancap, then,would in
both cases connote the dissolutionof hierarchicaldifference.This is plausible, if
hypothetical:Dbrnercites no explicittestimonyto thisway of thinkingabout the
cap. But she does quote, from Servius's fourth-century commentaryon Virgil,
some remarksthat could be taken as an attempt to assert in the face of the
possibilityof confusingone sort of hat with another a clear-cutdistinctionbe-
tweenwhat sortof cap was appropriateformen and what sortforwomen. Virgil
had, at certainpointsin theAeneid, used the noun mitrato designatea styleofhat,
and Serviusis explaining that the mitra is a Phrygianor Lydian item, a curved
pilleus withpendant laces, a femininecap, not by any means to be confusedwith
the truepilleus, which is worn by men. It is clear fromthe context in Virgiland
Servius that this moment of decisiveness is coordinate with the scorn Romans
directed at everythingthat seemed sexually equivocal or positivelyeffeminate
about "the East," includingits gods, their followersand theirheadgear.29The
Phrygiancap could become a targetforthisscorn: phallic but not erect,it could
functionas what Lacan mightterm a drooping signifier,elicitinguncertainties
about the stabilityof sexual difference,uncertaintiesthat could resonate with
those developingout of the blurringof differencesin social status-between, for
instance,citizens,freedmenand slaves.
All this is speculative and depends, as I've indicated,on accepting Dbrner's
assumptionsabout the look of the freedman'spilleus rather than those of the
scholars who would insistthat the pilleus and the Phrygiancap were obviously
distinctand unconflatable.It could be that the distinguishersare right,and that
Dbrneris repeating,uncritically, a mistakethe Frenchmade in the 1790s. But as
we shall see when we turnto the French,the act of insistingon distinctionshere
can take on its own ideological charge: scholarsas well as otherhistoricalagents
can get caught up in the driveto see thingsclearlyand distinctly.

When Voltaire'sBrutus was performedat the Theatre de la Nation in March

Jenni-
1792, a bonnetrougewas ceremoniallyplaced on the bust of the playwright;
fer Harris recounts the incident and reprintsa drawing commemoratingthis
crowningof Voltaireas patronsaintor poet laureate of tyrannicide.30However-
and thisis one reason foritslongevityas a symbol-the cap was also available for
less bloody-mindediconographicuses: ifyou look back at that anti-revolutionary
document,"The Contrast" (fig. 1), also workedup in response to what was hap-
pening in Paris in 1792, you will findthe Phrygiancap not on the head of the
Gorgon the snakes would make that difficult but over in the other vignette,
calmlytakingitsplace among the benignattributesof BritishLiberty,propped on
a rod beside her throne.This can serve as a synchronicinstanceof what Maurice

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 Agulhon,in the most comprehensiveand subtle account of the cap's vicissitudes
in France, has referredto as "the wavering of political imagery between the
notion of popular, dynamic,even vehement struggleand one of serene power
establishedin the wake of victory."3'
Because it had been settled,by the end of the Revolution,thatfiguresrepre-
senting Liberty,or the Republic, or France, would be female,32the political
themesplayed out in thiswaveringfashioncould draw,consciouslyor subliminal-
ly,on attitudestowards sexual differencefortheiraffectiveforce.A straightfor-
ward example of thiscan be foundin an editorialAgulhoncites fromL'Artiste of
March 1848: "The Republic will wear no red cap," it decrees, "she will be no
camp-followerbut a serene,gloriousand fertilemotherwho willhold festivalsand
shed smiles upon her children."33 But more bizarre and, for our purposes, more
tellingevidence that the Phrygiancap carrieda high sexual charge can be found
in a pamphlet entitledDe l'Origineet de laformedu bonnetde la Liberte(1796). Its
author, Esprit-AntoineGibelin, identifieshimselfas a Peintred'histoire,but he
mustalso have been a reader of considerablerange, capable of rapidlysurveying
the uses the cap was put to fromclassical times throughthe Renaissance. But
chieflyhe writesas a distinguisher,someone anxious to disseminate the "true
meaning" of the bonnetrougeby insistingthatits "true form"is thatof the simple,
rounded pilleus,just as it appears on the coin of Brutus: semi-oval,chaste and
droop-free.I cite at length,to conveythe urgencyof his insistenceand the sexual
polemic whichinformsit:

... ourFrenchartists, in themanypaintings, sculptures and engravings made sincethe

beginning of therevolution, have used theformof thePhrygian cap to adornthehead
evenofthefigure ofLiberty. Seducedbytherefined turnofthiseffeminate par
cap [SVduits
legalberecherchU de ce bonnet thatancientmonuments
effemine], haveconservedforus on
thegraceful headsofa Parisand ofa Ganymede, theyhavenotconsidered thatnothing is
less appropriate to designatelibertythanthePhrygian cap; thatit is an Asianheadgear;
thatliberty neverdweltin thoselands;thateventheAsiaticsectionofGreecewas unable
to conserveits own libertyand thatthe enslavedkingspicturedon Romanarchesof
triumph wearan almostsimilarcap.
In truth, whenthesemi-ovalformof theordinary cap is a littleelongated,thepart
thatexceedsthecrownof thehead foldsand falls,sometimesforward, sometimesback.
ThenitmoreorlessimitatestheformofthePhrygian cap, and thecaps ofthoseenslaved
kings,placedin Romeon thearchoftriumph ofConstantine, and on thestairway ofthe
Farnesepalace,seemto be ofthatsort;but,onceagain,thisis notthetruecap ofLiberty
as itis represented on ancientmedalsand monuments.
Itmustbe semi-oval, andifartists
maypermitthemselves, intheirimitation, to giveit
a littlebitmorefullness, inorderto obtainpicturesque folds,theymustnever,running to
excess,exposeto ourviewa Phrygian cap as a cap ofLiberty[ilnefautpointque,donnant
dansV'exc6s, ilsexposenta nosregards unbonnetPhrygien pourunbonnet dela libertt'].
It is especiallyessential,in a symbolicrepresentation of thissort,to avoidanything
thatcan misleadtheimagination byassociationsthatare seductive[d'`viter toutcequipeut

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egarer1'imagination par des rapportsseduisans]and contraryto the goal proposed by the
majority.It is necessaryto determinetfixer]a just idea of the emblematicmeaning of each
form.34

The dangers to be avoided here are indeterminately political, sexual and episte-
mological. Enslavement, seduction, the loss of manhood and the unfixing of deter-
minate ideas of what things mean are held up as equivalent threats, and these
baleful consequences inhere in the overly refined turn of the top of a cap, or-
more theatrically-in the possibility that, looking for Liberty (or for the Republic,
that "serene, glorious and fertile mother"), we may find, exposed to our glance,
the droop of the Phrygian cap. This is the rhetoric of male hysteria, playing out,
with an only slightly differentset of images, the Medusa-fantasies we have been
considering in the earlier pages of this paper. And I suspect that it is in these terms
that we can best understand an otherwise puzzling moment in Agulhon's history.
Here again he is citing L'Artiste,this time a set of instructions, published in April
1848, on how properly to represent the figure of the Republic. She should be
seated, thus expressing, as Agulhon notes, calm and order; she should manifest all
three of her aspects Liberty as well as Equality and Fraternity hence she
should wear the cap, but with a difference:
I nearlyforgotto mentionthe cap. I indicated above that the Republic should sum up the
three forces of which her symbol is combined. You are thereforenot in a position to
remove thissign of liberty.Only do findsome way of transfiguringit.

Agulhon quotes these lines then wonders, in a footnote, what they can mean,
exactly: "Although the intentions are clear, the concrete instructions are less so.
How can one 'transfigure' a cap but 'not make it disappear' in its accustomed
form?"35 I think the answer is simple: remove the droop and you transfigure the
cap. The author of those instructions shared, no doubt unconsciously, Gibelin's
feelings about the proper look, the "true form" of the cap of Liberty.
Untransfigured, the Phrygian cap aroused strong feelings; indeed, after the
Commune it became, in Agulhon's words, "an object of officialloathing," and the
last chapters of his book chart the intensities of opposition during the 18 7Os and
1880s. I have been implying that, whatever its political sources, some of that
intensitywas psycho-sexual in origin, the result of the cap's signifying,equivocal-
ly, both the possession and the lack of phallic power.36 Just as Gibelin urgently
repeats his identification of the effeminate cap with that of "the enslaved kings
pictured on Roman arches of triumph," so nineteenth-century men of property
could read in the cap the provocative lineaments of power and abjection, both "all
that weakness contains of strength" and, proleptically, all that their own strength
might conceal of weakness. For if caps can be removed, so can heads; and, not so
long before, a certain number of heads had been removed by people wearing
those very caps. Shortly after Louis XVI's execution, a print appeared showing his

Medusa's Head: Male Hysteria Under Political Pressure 47

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 'I \ I! T 18F. ' U;|:. IO
101, U'[)w tt I. F .i&)\(i.VI. i>ts 8lj fo~x \si ~
.. s.~~~~~~~~~~I

Fig. 6. "Matire iaRflectionpour lesJongleurs

Couronne'es," 1793. Padis, Bibliothe'que
Nationale(photo:Bib. Nat.).

head held aloftlike Medusa's (fig.6). Beneath it are two revolutionaryemblems,

the cap of Libertyand the Masonic level, the sign of Equality.Supportedby the
level, the cap has been carefullyaligned withthe King's head, so thatits tip,soft-
fallingto the right,echoes the fallof the King'shair. Detached in thisway,the cap
functionsas a mini-Medusa,and it seems to have been capable of producing
somethingof the samefrisson.
Agulhon,who is wary of psychoanalyticinterpretations, and who would no
doubt findthisassociation of the bonnetrougewithMedusa both far-fetched and

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tendentious,37neverthelessprovides furtherevidence of its plausibilityin his
chapter on the early 1870s. He describes,in fascinatingdetail, the conservative
polemic againstrepublicanism,the attemptsto keep representationsof the Moth-
erland free of any taint of revolutionaryimagery,attemptswhich included the
destructionof a statue wearingthe Phrygiancap, as well as officialproclamations
condemningthe cap as a violentand "seditious" emblem. In thiscontexthe takes
up a painting produced in 1872, "a representationof Evil entitled 'The Fatal
Fall' " whichdepictsMankindtopplingintothe abyss,apparentlypropelled there
by the powerfullymalign influenceof three allegorical personages, a sophistic
Blakean "Human Reason" and two bad women,whomAgulhondescribesin these
terms:
One of themlies therenaked,in a stateof abandon,witha wineglassin herhand-she
Evilin privatelife;theother,whoseupperbodyonlyis naked,mustbe
clearlyrepresents

Fig. 7 (left).BenvenutoCellini.Perseo,1545. Florence,NationalMuseum. After

pl. 44 in TuttaL'OperedelCellini,ed. EttoreCamesasca (Milan,1955).

Fig. 8 (right).AntonioCanova. PerseoTrionfante, 1797-1801. Vatican Museum,

Rome. Afterpl. 28 in L'Operacompletadel Canova,ed., G. Pavanello(Milan,
1976).

IJ

a - X~~~~~~~~~~~I

L-,. _ ,.

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 Evil in social life,namely Revolt. In her left hand she holds a torch and in her righta
dagger.We cannot failhere to recognizethe accessories thathave become so familiarto us
in their classic reactionaryinterpretation.The torch of Enlightenmenthas become the
brand that set Paris alight and the sword of political conflicthas shrunkto an assassin's
dagger.
We are bound, in all honesty,to admit that this furyis not wearing a Phrygiancap.
Her heavy locks could be interpretedratheras the serpentsof discord-a motifwhichis,
afterall, close to it.38

Close enough, I would agree.

One final example: in 1797 Antonio Canova began work on a statue of Perseus
Triumphant,holding at arm's length the head of Medusa (fig. 8); customarily such
depictions of Perseus-Cellini's, for example (fig. 7)-show him wearing the hel-
met given him by Hades, the helmet of invisibility In Canova's statue he is wear-
ing an odd conglomerate headpiece, combining the traditional winged helmet
with the lappets and the droop of the Phrygian cap. Perhaps there was precedence
for this, but I doubt it: it seems unlikely that Perseus could have been represented
in this way before 1793-that is, before the guillotining of the king. Canova has
also departed from Cellini's example by having Perseus rotate the head so that it
is almost-almost, but, for safety's sake, not quite-facing him. The result is to fix
in marble an emblem of the political and sexual specularity we have been consid-
ering, the interchangeability of the Phrygian cap and the head of Medusa.

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 Notes

1. SigmundFreud,"Fetishism,"in Sexualityand thePsychology ofLove,ed. PhilipRieff(New

York,1963),p. 215.
2. EdmundBurke,Reflections ontheRevolution inFrance,ed. Conor CruiseO'Brien(Baltimore,
1968),pp. 181, 166 and 165.
3. Oeuvrescompletes,tomeXXXI (Paris,1955),pp. 365-66.
4. My source for this biographicalinformationwas the AlbumHugo, ed. M. Ecalle & V.
Lumbroso(Paris,1964),pp. 188-96.
5. Cf. the followingaccountfromTheExaminer,a London weekly:
One of the females,a youngwoman neatlydressed,pickedup theflag,and leapingover
the barricade,rushed towardsthe national guards,utteringlanguage of provocation.
Althoughthefirecontinuedfromthebarricade,thenationalguards,fearingto injurethis
female,humanelyabstainedforsome timefromreturningit,and exhortedher to with-
draw.Theirexhortations, however,were vain,and at lengthself-preservation compelled
themto fire,and as the woman was in frontof the barricadea shotreached her and she
was killed.The otherfemalethenadvanced,tookthe flag,and began to throwstonesat
the nationalguards.The firefromthe barricadehad become feeble,but several shots
were firedfromthe sides and fromthe windowsof houses,and the nationalguards,in
returning the fire,killedthe second female.
Thisappeared in theissueofJuly1, 1848 and is describedas a translation ofan eyewitness
accountwhichhad appeared earlierin Paris.
6. "Medusa's Head," in Sexuality and thePsychology
ofLove,pp. 212-13.
7. Thiscombinationofoffenses-againstpropertyand decency-reappears in an American
NationalGuardsman'srecollections ofhisparticipation,tenyearsearlier,in theencounter
withprotestersin KentState:
"James W. Farrissadmitshe was excited when he heard his National Guard unit
was going to KentState. He had never been on a college campus.
"He recalls now that when he got to campus he was repelled by the students'
obscene gestures and filthylanguage. As a soldier sent to protect property,he was
outraged to see it destroyed.
"'It seemed like all the young women were shoutingobscenities or givingob-
scene gestures.I had never seen thatbefore,' said Farriss.'I've heard a few men talk
like that,but not women.'
"There were 75 guardsmen besides Farrisson the hill alongside Taylor Hall,
according to Guard reports.A 13-secondfusilladestilledthe din of an anti-warpro-
test" (froman Associated Press storypublishedin the IthacaJournalMay 4, 1979).

8. JeanLaplanche,Problematiques (Paris,1980),p. 66.

JI/Castration-Symbolisations
apotropaiceffectsof the Medusa's head derivefromits reappearanceon
9. The politically
Minerva'sshield and fromthe use of representations of that shield as symbolsof the
State'spowerto defenditselfagainstitsenemies.See, forexample,theceremonialuse of
theshieldin Rubens'sPhilipIVAppoints PrinceFerdinand Governor oftheNetherlands
(Fig.66
inJohnRupertMartin,TheDecorationsfor thePompaIntroitus Ferdinandi [Londonand New
York,1972]). In Detruire la peinture(Paris,1977), Louis Marin discusses a notoriousin-
stance,Caravaggio'sMedusa'sHead paintedon a circularshield,a workcommissionedby
a cardinalas a presentto the Grand Duke of Tuscany.Marin's analysisis detailed and

Medusa's Head: Male Hysteria Under Political Pressure 51

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 fascinatingand shouldbe read-especially the sectionentitled"Interm'de psychanalyti-
que -as a counter-irritant to the argumentof thispaper. Marinnotesthewaysin which
thinking aboutmattersofrepresentation can lead one intothethematicsofcastration,but
he is leery of what he takes to be the pathos-or bathos-of Freud's reading of the
Medusa's head.
10. The detailsofCourbet'sinvolvement in theCommune,histrial,and exile are summarized
in Marie-Theresede Forges'sBiographie in the catalogue of the centenaryexhibitof his
workin Paris, 1977-78, GustaveCourbet(1819-1877) (Paris,Editionsdes musees nation-
aux, 1977),pp. 46ff.A longeraccountmaybe foundin GerstleMack,Gustave Courbet (New
York,1951).
11. Les Convulsions de Paris,4 vols., 5th ed. (Paris,1881), vol. 2, chap. V ("La Colonne de la
GrandeArmee").I have translatedpassages frompp. 183, 184, 189-90 and 209.
12. Reflections,
p. 230.
13. This may seem like a gratuitousslur,but Podhoretzis, in fact,the interesting contempo-
raryanalogue and his book,Breaking Ranks(New York,1979),takesa positionin relation
to "The Movement" remarkablylike that of du Camp in relationto the Commune.
Comparedu Camp's sexual-political fulminations withthis,fromPodhoretz's"Postscript"
(addressed,instructively, to his youngson): "But if the plague seems forthe momentto
have runitscourseamongthesegroups[i.e.,"theyoung,theblacksand theintellectuals"],
itragesas fiercelyas everamongothers:amongthekindofwomenwho do notwishto be
women and among those men who do not wishto be men.... [T]herecan be no more
radicalrefusalof self-acceptance thantherepudiationofone's own biologicalnature;and
therecan be no abdicationof responsibility more fundamentalthanthe refusalof a man
to become, and to be, a father,or the refusalof a woman to become, and be, a mother"
(p. 363). PeterSteinfels,in TheNeoconservatives (New York,1979) offersa measured but
deftlywittydiscussionof the sociologyas well as theintellectualbackgroundofwritersin
Podhoretz'sgroup and indeed sees theirdependence on a traditionthat extends back
throughTocquevilleto Burke.For a less scholarlybut even funnierdiscussion,see Gore
Vidal's "PinkTriangleand YellowStar" in TheSecondAmerican Revolution and OtherEssays
(New York,1982).
14. OeuvresCompletes, 12, ed. Luc Monnier(Paris,1964),pp. 159-60. Souvenirs has been trans-
lated, by George Lawrence,under the titleRecollections, ed. J. P. Mayer and A. P. Kerr
(GardenCity,N.Y., 1970),wherethispassage appears on p. 145. I have generallyquoted
Lawrence's translation,occasionallymodifyingit to produce a more literalrendering.
Page referenceswillhenceforthbe givenin the text,in both French(S) and English(R)
editions.
15. ThePhenomenology ofMind (1807), trans.J. B. Baillie (New York,1967), pp. 342-50. "In
content,"Hegel remarksof insightsbased on physiognomiclaws, "such observations
cannotdiffer in value fromthese:'It alwaysrainsat theannual fair,'says thedealer; 'And
everytime,too,' saysthehousewife,'whenI am dryingmywashing.'" A whiff of misogy-
ny,perhaps,in thisanti-physiognomical stance?
16. See JudithWechsler'sA Human Comedy: Physiognomy and Caricature in 19thCentury Paris
(Chicago,1982) foran accountof thepersistenceof Lavater'snotionsin France.
17. Reflections,
p. 140.
18. "The Red Cap of Liberty:A Study of Dress Worn by FrenchRevolutionaryPartisans
1789-94," Eighteenth-Century Studies14 (1981), 283-312. Similarremarkscan be foundin
JulesRenouvier'sHistoire de l'Artpendant la Revolution,2 vols.(Paris,1863),vol. 2, pp. 394-
96, and in the introductory pages of the most recent,sophisticateddiscussionof the

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 iconographyof Libertyin France,Maurice Agulhon'sMarianneintoBattle:Republican
Imagery and Symbolism in France,1789-1880 (Cambridge,England,1981).
19. A. E von Paulyetal., PaulysReal-Encyclopddie derclassischenAltertumswissenschaft(Stuttgart,
1894- ), s.v.Pilleus.A variantspellingispileus.
20. Ibid.,s.v. Tiara.
21. JohnH. Young,"CommagenianTiaras: Royaland Divine,"American JournalofArchaeology
68 (1964), 29ff.
22. FrancoisBoucher,in hisencyclopedicsurvey,Histoire du Costumeen Occidentde l'AntiquitW
a
nosJours (Paris,1965),describesthepileusas "a feltcap ofdiverseforms,wornin Rome by
men: the Phrygiancap had a folded-down point,the Greekstylewas ovoid in form,and
that of Roman freedslaves was tubular"(p. 124). In TheMythofFelt(Berkeley,1949),
LeonardoOlschkiinsiststhatone shouldnotconfusethe "cap offreedom,"whichis semi-
oval, like those worn by Castor and Pollux,with the Phrygiancap, that "headgear of
slaves" (p. 39).
23. EtudesMithrai4ues (Leiden, 1978),pp. 115-22.
24. In TheDeath ofClassicalPaganism(New York,1976),JohnHolland Smithlistssix "great
mysteries"active and spread throughoutthe Empirein the second and thirdcenturies:
thoseof Cybele-Attis, of Mithra,of Demeter,of Dionysus,of Isis and of Orpheus(p. 11).
25. Henri Graillot,Le Cultede Cybele(Paris,1912), p. 193. This is the classic monograph.
Graillotgoes on to contrastthe austerityof Mithraicpracticewiththe "sentimentaland
sensual" aspectsof thecultof theGreatMother,a religion"made fortenderand passion-
ate souls" and particularly popularamong women.
26. A handsome marble head of a young man with his hair radiatingout in waves from
beneatha tiara,foundnear a sanctuaryof Cybelein Ostia and thought,by one scholar,to
be a head of Attis,has recentlybeen reidentified as thatof Mithra.See Entry396 (and
Plate CCXLVI) in M. J. Vermaseren,CorpusCultusCybelaeAttidisque (CCCA):III. Italia-
Latium(Leiden, 1977),p. 124. Othersuchinstancesmay be foundin Vermaseren'scollec-
tionof the remainsof thecult,partof the multi-volume projectof whichhe is the editor,
Etudespreliminaires aux religions dansL'EmpireRomain(Leiden,Brill,in progress).
orientales
Vermaseren'smore popular account of his research-The LegendofAttisin Greekand
RomanArt(Leiden, 1966)-has been helpfulin preparingthispaper. I am particularly
gratefulto himforreferring me to D6rner'sarticle.
27. Graillotdevotesa chapterto thegalli in Le Cultede Cybele(pp. 287-319). A more recent
summaryof scholarshipcan be foundin G. M. Sanders' articleGallosin vol. 8 of the
ReallexiconfiirAntikeundChristentum (Stuttgart, 1972),cols. 984-1034.
28. Edith Weigert-Vowinkel, in "The Cult and Mythologyof the Magna Mater fromthe
Standpointof Psychoanalysis," Psychiatry1 (1938), 347-78, offersa speculativeaccountof
therelationbetweenmatriarchalreligionsand the practiceof self-castration.
29. See, forexample,Ascanius'stiradein Aeneid9. 598-620. These lines,along withAeneid
4.216 are thosediscussedby Serviusand citedby Dorner(p. 119).
30. "The Red Cap of Liberty,"pp. 290-9 1.
31. MarianneintoBattle,p. 16.
32. LynnHunt,in "Herculesand theRadicalImage in theFrenchRevolution,"Representations
2 (1983),95-117, offersa morenuancedaccountof thisdevelopmentthanAgulhon's.See
also her Politics,Culture,and Class in theFrenchRevolution (forthcoming, Universityof
CaliforniaPress.).
33. MarianneintoBattle,p. 84.
34. De l'Origineetde laformedu bonnetde la Liberte(Paris,Buisson,1796) pp. 24-26. Renouvier

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 (see n. 18, above) drawson thispamphletforhis discussionof the bonnetrouge;he givesa
briefsketchof Gibelin'scareerin the firstvolumeof hisHistoire, pp. 132-34.
35. MarianneintoBattle,p. 82 and n. 73.
36. That thesesexual associationswould be repressedand would surfaceonlyin odditiesof
phrasingor of iconographicaldevelopmentis one of the (conventionalenough)assump-
tionsof thispaper. But thereare likelyto be exceptionsthatserve as proofof thisrule,
occasional acts of explicitness,marginalvoices more apt to be ignoredthansuppressed.
One of thesevoicesis thatofJoelBarlow,theConnecticutpoet (and friendof Tom Paine)
who was livingin Parisduringthe 1790s. Barlowleftbehinda brief,undatedmanuscript
entitled"Genealogy of the Tree of Liberty"which is now in the possession of the
HoughtonLibraryof HarvardUniversity (bMS Am 1448). Barlowtracesthefestiveuse of
theLibertyTree back to Bacchicand, beyondthat,Egyptianworshipof thephallus."The
libertycap,"he adds, "is preciselyfromthese[?]origins.It is takinga partforthewhole,as
theEar ofWheatis used, in some planispheres,to representtheharvest or Ceresin the
Virgin
Constellations.The LibertyCap is the head of the Penis,an emblemof Liberty.The first
civilor politicaluse thatwas made of it was by the Romanswhen theygave libertyto a
Slave. Theyput a Red Cap upon hishead, whichhe wore everafter,to denotethathe was
a FreedMan.-Neither masternor man knewthe originof thiscuriousemblem" (p. 13,
recto).I'm gratefulto the HoughtonLibraryforpermissionto reprintthe text,and to
RobertDawidoffand Eve KosofskySedgwickforhelp trackingit down.
37. See his "On PoliticalAllegory:A Replyto EricHobsbawm,"History Workshop8 (1979), 169:
"Certainlysuch areas need exploring,and the (onlyrecentlyabandoned) reluctanceto
explorethemwas undoubtedlymisguided.However,now thatthetaboo on thehistoryof
sexualityhas been lifted,thereis as muchdangerin attachingundue importanceto it,as
in the past therewas errorin ignoringit altogether."This is sensibleenoughand, in the
contextof Agulhon'squarrelwithHobsbawm,verymuch to the point.But considerthis
more elaborateexpressionof his scepticism,fromthe ConclusionofMarianneintoBattle.
He is speculatingon why"the Republic"was givena woman'sname and he notesthat"a
numberof subtlewritershave meditatedupon similarthemes."Fromone such medita-
tion,byJeanGiraudoux,Agulhoncitesthefollowingsentence-"He feltthatto changea
countryfroma kingdom(un royaume)intoa Republic(uneRepublique)was to changeits
verysex. . . "-then continues:"The sex ofa Nation!... One can imaginehow farup the
garden path of socio-psychoanalytical meditationone could be led if one pursued that
track.We mustadmitthatwe wouldputno greatfaithin sucha venture,believingthatto
apply categoriesof individualpsychologyto collectiveconceptscould lead one to make
themistakeoftakingmetaphorsforrealities"(p. 185).Neitherofthedistinctions reliedon
here-between "categoriesof individualpsychology"and "collectiveconcepts",or be-
tween "metaphors"and "realities"-seems refinedenough to justifya seriousmethod-
ologicalpartipris.
38. MarianneintoBattle,p. 159. The paintingis reproducedon p. 160.

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