In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

156 ARRAYS
case: "What can we learn about the roots of the crime if the culprit
herself does not know? And she is certainly the least qualified to
know ... It was enough that her thoughts and desires were centered on
[Dr. Seitz], that her sexuality had fixated upon him. He may have given
little cause for this, but whatever he did cost him his life. Twenty years
from now, the defense claims, such a trial will probably be unthinkablethere
will likely be sanatoriums for such people."
Countless reports of similar homicides and murder trials fill the front
pages of regional and international newspapers. But though they all deal
with the topic of death, they say little if anything about the widespread
debates on death as an aspect of the human condition. [see Airplanes,
Boxing, Bullfighting, Cremation, Gramophones, Mountaineering,
Mummies] The discussions of the existential dimension of death regularly
underscore the need to "confront one's own death" as a specific
form of self-reflection. But it is precisely the absence of such self-reflection
that becomes decisive in the Flessa case (and in many other murder
trials). The victim could by no means anticipate-let alone "confront"his
fate, and the defendant almost passionately refuses to become engaged
in any form of self-analysis: "That she so violently resists speaking
of the crime and her motives makes it clear that she doesn't want to face
it." Whereas "confronting one's own death" is a mode of heroic (or
tragic) agency, the legal system never succeeds in attributing a role of
agency to Flessa. [see Action = Impotence (Tragedy)] Therefore, through
a strange metonymic shift, the place of agency is taken over by the
defendant's sexuality: "her sexuality had fixated upon him." But since
the defendant's sexuality is not a possible subject for agency in the legal
sense of the word, and since the defendant's mind renounces that very
reflexivity which alone would constitute her as an agent, it is impossible
to say that Flessa is responsible for "her" crime.
Whenever such problems of attribution arise in murder cases, the
related public discussions become part and symptom of a profound
change in the relation between individual and society. [see Individuality
vs. Collectivity] For if, by renouncing a position of agency, individuals
make themselves inaccessible to the law, then agency, responsibility, and
guilt lose their point of reference and become free-floating categories. A
possible solution to this dilemma, a solution that many intellectuals
strongly advocate, lies in assigning responsibility to society as a collective
subject. Once this approach is accepted, however, it becomes the right