Lavinia is Philomel

In what way might a poem or a narrative serve not as a representation but instead as a nonhuman agent? From one perspective, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus seems like an extended meditation on this problem: Ovid’s story of Philomel’s rape “tampers directly with cau-sality” in Shakespeare’s play.1 Philomel appears first when the villainous Aaron comments, before the rape of Lavinia, “This is the day of doom for Bassianus,/His Philomel must lose her tongue today” (2.2.42–43).2 After the rape and mutilation, Lavinia is frequently on stage, the mute object towards which many of her male relatives direct their speech: Marcus posits that this is the work of “some Tereus” (2.4.26), or a “craftier Tereus” (46). And Lavinia finally seems to make herself legible only when she gets hold of her nephew’s copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and “quotes” (4.1.50) its leaves. Ovid’s story takes humans as a kind of “activation device,” as Eileen Joy puts it.3 It seems to preserve a self-replicating power and a cer-tain degree of organizational closure even as it takes its violent effects in the world of the play.4 What kind of agency is this, exactly?