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This paper aims to construe Gollum's identity according to a new paradigm in light of the most recent studies in bio-politics and bio-law. Reframing Tolkien's narrative economy, at the intersection between metaphysical views and normative visions, it is of particular interest to investigate Smeagol's corporeal metamorphosis associated to its causes and effects. The departure from the old creature and the subsequent transformation into a disgusting and progressively hybridized being is grounded upon an original act of violence, the murderous plan against Deagol, which repeats Cain's homicidal behaviour. The new life after the former sin (both for the ancestor Cain and for his literary heirs, such as Beowulf's Grendel and Tolkien's Gollum) not only corrupts the primary features, but also necessitates or exacts a new identity and a different  nomos . Gollum – as his ancestor Cain – is an outcast, banished from his own community, from his natural space and consigned to a Land of wandering. Moving from these arguments, the essay intends to qualify Gollum as a  homo sacer , in the specific philosophical meaning given to the archaic figure of Roman Law by Giorgio Agamben. The original intellectual framework, which supports the present analysis inspired by the concrete shape of a literary character, is consequently devoted to investigate the determination of sacredness and the concept of geopolitics; the hermeneutics of the Self and the spatial architecture of ontologies; the geography of identity and the foundation of sovereignty.

Gollum's Sacredness and the Geopolitics of the Self: Reframing Tolkien's Normative World