Immortal subject, interpassive subject: the ambiguity of the epic character

Abstract

Transcending the human potentialities, the human animal reaches the status of immortal when resists and overcomes himself. Thus occurred with the Christian martyrs and also with the archetypes from universal epic. For Badiou (2002), the immortality, in short, consists in the man’s attitude who becomes subject before an event, in other words, that, from a moment of epiphany, it submits to the truth from the exceptional event, being called up to a fidelity. On the other hand, in addition to the immortality process, the interpassivity’s concept, exposed from  Slavoj Žižek’s studies (2006) and from its reading of Lacanian work, reveals another side to the epic characters, once that this heroes act through the Olympic Gods’ work; even seeming an active personality, the characters don’t act by free will and yes, to fulfill the pre-established by deities. It is intended, in this Article, to reflect about the dialogism immortal subject X interpassive subject, pointing marks of both domains in the world epic.