Voltaire – Mahomet

• Theme: Fanaticism, theocratic power, instrumentalized religion, psychological control.

Thinking Through Michel Foucault (1926-1984)’s Philosophy on the Art Essence

Voltaire’s Mahomet stages not merely a critique of Islamic theology (which he cloaked in historical fiction), but an allegorical dissection of how discourse and sovereignty entwine to enslave desire and subjectivity. In Foucaultian terms, the titular character Mahomet is not so much a prophet as a priestly sovereign who manipulates language, faith, and ritual to construct obedient subjects.

At its core, the play is a study in the technologies of domination: how the “truth” of revelation is fused with violence, how political seduction masks itself as spiritual transcendence, and how bodies become docile under regimes of meaning. Mahomet, as orchestrator of events, rewrites history through dispositifs—assemblages of institutions (the mosque), practices (confession, sacrifice), and discourses (divine will) that regulate knowledge and action.

In The Use of Pleasure, Foucault showed how ethics of the self in classical antiquity operated via care and moderation, rather than coercion. By contrast, in Mahomet, the ethical domain is utterly colonized: the individual is stripped of the right to navigate desire. The young followers, particularly Séide and Palmire, are tragic examples of subjectivation—not as self-formation, but as assimilation into a religious regime that annihilates interiority in the name of obedience.

The horror of the play lies in this inversion: truth is no longer a path to freedom, but a weapon of control. Mahomet's speech is performative and performatively sovereign—it constructs realities that bind the will of others. This aligns with Foucault’s concept of pastoral power, where the ruler’s task is to guide, shepherd, and ultimately consume the lives of his flock “for their own good.”

However, Voltaire’s counter-move, and the place where his Enlightenment ethos meets Foucault’s late ethics, is in the exposure of the apparatus. By placing Mahomet’s manipulations on stage—by turning private dogma into public spectacle—Voltaire reclaims the stage as parrhesia, the space of truth-telling.

Yet, in Foucault’s terms, this does not abolish power; it redistributes it. Truth is always embedded in relations of force. Thus, Mahomet is not simply a rationalist critique—it becomes a dramatic archaeology of religious authority, showing its fragility, its theatricality, and the possibility of resistance.

Ultimately, Voltaire stages a moment where subjectivity becomes aware of its alienation. Séide’s final cry, before killing Palmire under Mahomet’s orders and then himself, is not just tragedy—it is a rupture in the structure of obedience. It is the seed of ethical revolt: to think otherwise, to say no, to unlearn the truth of others.