Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal

ISSN: 2278-9529  |  www.galaxyimrj.com

Abstract

At Opis in 324 BCE Alexander faced mutiny and answered with a speech. Its arguments are slight, yet its consequences are astonishing: within days the army was weeping at his tent and pleading to return. Scholarship has often attributed this reversal to persuasion, but persuasion seems too frail an instrument for so violent a turn. This article offers another account. It reads Arrian’s Opis episode (Anabasis 7.8–11) as ontological theatre. Andrew Pickering coined the term for cybernetics; here it is redirected towards rhetoric. Three registers converge at Opis: a material assemblage of scarred bodies, executed ringleaders, garments, and rivers; an affective ecology that converts anger into shame and shame into grief; and a cartographic performance that places an empire in rings around its king. At Opis, the army’s world is remade.

Keywords

Alexander the Great Arrian affect theory new materialism ontological theatre spatial theory

Article History

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How to Cite

Sharma, Yash Kartik, and Sounak Das. “Making a World at Opis: Ontological Theatre and the Limits of Persuasion in Arrian’s Anabasis.” Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, vol. 15, no. 5, Sept. 2026, pp. 1–17. https://doi.org/10.66376/galaxy.v15.n5.1

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