Agon in the Administrative State AGON IN THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE: THE ART OF MISREADING IN REGULATORY LAW

1. AGON IN THE
ADMINISTRATIVE STATE: THE
ART OF MISREADING IN
REGULATORY LAW
CHARLES EDWARD ANDREW LINCOLN IV

2. PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS ON LITERATURE AND
POETRY — HAROLD BLOOM AND THE ANXIETY OF
INFLUENCE
• Bloom admits that influence has always been recognized
in literature and poetry.
• But it is not always a positive influence.
• Bloom states that “[p]oetic influence, as I conceive it, is a
variety of melancholy or the anxiety-principle.”
• He views influence on the poet in a quasi-Freudian way
of thinking.

3. SIX REVISIONARY RATIOS
• Blooms Hegelian anti-thesis provides that six “effects”
on literature exist. These are in part based on the
Freudian familial drama. The six are:
• · Clinamen
• · Tessera
• · Kenosis
• · Daemonization
• · Akesis
• · Apophrades

4. CLINAMEN
• Bloom states that clinamen is the “poetic
misreading or misprision proper.”
• I interpret this theory as the poet agreeing up to a
certain point. That point is the “swerve” Bloom
takes from Lucretius on the Nature of Things.

5. TESSERA
• The concept of Tessera means completion. Bloom
sees the successor in the literary tradition as
acting as a sort of completion from finding the
previous error in the clinamen.
• I interpret this is the first step breaking away from
the former poet’s former ideas.

6. KENOSIS
• Kenosis is the “emptying out” where the poet
clears and demystifies the “godlike father.”
• The poet after breaking with the tessera begins
going in another direction. The poet goes in
another direction.

7. DAEMONIZATION
• Harold Bloom states that the successor poet
adopts a sort of animus “antithesis.”
• I think this means that the poet after breaking
with the former poet creates their own version of
what is true, sublime, or beautiful.

8. AKESIS
• Akesis is the beinging of “truncating” the addition to the former poet’s tradition.

9. APOPHRADES
• Finally, apophrades is where the successor is so overwhelmed by the predecessor
that he “reverses” the father-son relationship. Perhaps, it could be argued this is
separate from the Freudian Odepial paradiagm.