ABSTRACT
This chapter examines that Sardanapalus, an 'Oriental despot' whose violent end was a favourite theme of European painting and literature, shows the complexity of determining a work's historical status, of interpreting its relations with other contemporary discourses and taking the word in the widest sense its politics. Christensen begins by re-envisioning as an anomaly what might seem natural or unsurprising: references in all sorts of contexts to despots and despotism, during the period of the consolidation of liberalism in Britain. Byron's despot's lies in his being 'roused' to swaying: being swayed by the image of his own sovereignty held up to him as a mirror by his Greek concubine, Myrrha. This is precisely the dynamics of consumerism's sway, the actual basis of the rule of liberalism, according to Christensen's analysis. Christensen draws upon psychoanalytic concepts developed by Jacques Lacan the mirror stage and the Imaginary that designate the primordial role in the psyche's development of identification with a mirror image.
