Title: Early Modern Media Theory: Comedy and Government in Machiavelli's Clizia
Abstract:This essay investigates how Machiavelli's Clizia problematizes any clear-cut distinction between the private and public realms by accenting that the proper governance of desire is crucial to avoid cat...This essay investigates how Machiavelli's Clizia problematizes any clear-cut distinction between the private and public realms by accenting that the proper governance of desire is crucial to avoid catastrophic socio-political disruptions. Integrating Louis Althusser's and Michel Foucault's takes on Machiavelli, I forefront the engaged dimension of the play. In fact, I argue that Machiavelli's account of the comic consequences of disorderly appetites constitutes a reflection on the impact that an effective management of people's embodied existences has on the life of a territorial formation. I also suggest that Machiavelli, by populating his play with characters insistently longing for remedies of all sorts, self-reflexively stages the comedic apparatus as an important medium of early modern government.Read More