ABSTRACT

Lord of the Flies, which depicts the life of a group of boys on a desert island, is a dystopian comment on war. Yet, for Golding, as well as for his contemporaries such as Adorno and Horkheimer, war was more than just a dark spot, an anomaly, in the history of civilization. Indeed, the life portrayed in the film is an ever-present possibility of our system: a state of exception. Following this, social life on the island oscillates between two poles: on the one hand, we have an image of a rule-governed society with its law-abiding citizens; on the ‘downside’, however, we encounter fantasies of transgression, potlatch and perversion. Democratic utopianism versus fascist violence, society versus mob. The two topologies coexist, which is also why the social bond is always based on a fragile balance between the two tendencies.