CLASSICAL PRESENCES

The texts, ideas, images, and material culture of ancient Greece and Rome
Interrogating Antigone
have always been crucial to attempts to appropriate the past in order to
authenticate the present. They underlie the mapping of change and the
assertion and challenging of values and identities, old and new. Classical
in Postinodern
Presences brings the latest scholarship to bear on the contexts, theory, and
practice of such use, and abuse, of the classical past.
Philosophy and
Criticisin

Edited by
S. E. WILMER
AND
AUDRONE ZUKAUSKAITE

OXFORD
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PART I . P H IL OS O P HY A N D P O L I T I C S
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Published in the United States 1 . Antigone's Political Legacies: Abjection in Defiance of Mourning 19
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York
Tina Chanter
©Oxford University Press 2010
2. Naked Life; Arendt and the Exile at Colonus 48
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker) Cecilia Sjoholm
First published 2010 3. Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim 67
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, Audrone Zukauskaite
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data 5. Lacan's Antigone 101
Data available Terry Eagleton
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
6. Psychoanalysing Antigone 1 10
Data available
Mark Griffith
Typeset by SP! Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain 7. One Amongst Many: The Ethical Significance of Antigone
on acid-free paper by the and the Films of Lars Von Trier 135
MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King's Lynn
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ISBN 978-0-19-955921-3
8. Antigone, Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of the Law 1 47
Ahuvia Kahane
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
9. Sophocles' Antigone and the Democratic Voice 1 68
Judith Fletcher
1 0. Antigone and the Law: Legal Theory and the Ambiguities
of Performance 185
Klaas Tindemans
VI Contents

PART I I I . G E N D E R A N D K I N S H I P
1 1 . Between Myth and History: The Tragedy of Antigone 197
Luce Irigaray
Acknowledgements
1 2. Antigone with( out) Jocaste 212
Bracha L. Ettinger We wish to thank University of Chicago Press for permission to reprint
1 3. Autochthonous Antigone: Breaking Ground 229 extracts from Mark Griffith's essay 'The Subject of Desire in Sophocles'
Liz Appel Antigone', The Soul of Tragedy: Essays on Athenian Drama (Chicago, 2005)
1 4. Antigone and her Brother: What Sort of Special Relationship? 240 and Mosaic for permission to reprint a revised version of Judith Fletcher's
Isabelle Torrance 'Citing the Law in Sophocles' Antigone', which she presented at the 'Inter­
rogating Antigone' conference in Trinity College Dublin and that subsequent­
1 5. Reclaiming Femininity: Antigone's 'Choice' in Art
ly appeared in Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 4 1
and Art History 254
(2008) . We are also grateful to Marcus Tan for his help in compiling the
Martina Meyer
Bibliography, and Gabriella Calchi-Novati for her assistance in organizing the
'Interrogating Antigone' conference at Trinity College Dublin in October
PA R T IV. T R A NSLAT I O N S , ADA P TAT I O N S , 2006.
AND PER F ORMAN C E
1 6. Reading Antigone in Translation: Text, Paratext, Intertext 283
Deborah H. Roberts
1 7. Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau and Sophocles 313
Sean D. Kirkland
1 8. Politicizing Antigone 329
Erika Fischer-Lichte
1 9. From Ancient Greek Drama to Argentina's 'Dirty War';
Antigona Furiosa: On Bodies and the State 353
Maria Florencia Nelli
20. Revolutionary Muse: Femi Os6fisan's Tegonni: An African
Antigone 366
Astrid Van Weyenberg
2 1 . Performing Antigone in the Twenty- First Century 379
S. E. Wilmer

Bibliography 393
Index 419
 List of Illustrations List of Contributors

Fig. 8.1 Moebius strip 160 Liz Appel is originally from Toronto, Canada. She is currently a Ph.D.
Fig. 15.l Lucanian red-figure panathenaic style amphora by the candidate in the Department of English at Yale University. She holds an
Brooklyn-Budapest Painter, early fourth century BC. Paris, M.Phil. and a BA from the University of Cambridge, and a BA from Lewis
Louvre CA 308. 258 and Clark College.
Fig. 15.2 Lucanian red-figure nestoris by the Dolan Painter, c.380 BC. T ina Chanter is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University, Chicago. She is
London, British Museum, F 175. © Trustees of the British the author of Ethics of Eros: Irigaray's Re-writing of the Philosophers (Routle­
Museum. 261 dge, 1 995), Time, Death and the Feminine: Levinas with Heidegger (Stanford
Fig. 15.3 Attic white lekythos by the Sabouroff Painter, c.440 BC. University Press, 200 1 ), Gender (Continuum Press, 2006), The Picture of
Athens, National Museum, 1926. 265 Abjection: Film Fetish and the Nature of Difference (Indiana University Press,
Fig. 15.4 Apulian red-figure panathenaic style amphora, Ruvo, 2008). She is editor of Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas (Penn
Museo Jatta 423. Drawing by J. Lowry after a photograph. 267 State University Press, 200 1 ) , co-editor of Revolt, Affect, Collectivity: The
Fig. 15.5 Nikiforos Lystras, Antigone and Polinikis, oil on canvas, Unstable Boundaries of Kristeva's Polis (State University of New York Press,
1865. National Gallery and Alexandros Soutsos Museum, 2005), and co-editor of Sarah Kofman's Corpus (SUNY Press, 2008). She is
Athens, Greece, inv. no. 3758. 273 also editor of the Gender Theory series at the State University of New York
Fig. 15.6 Jean Cocteau, ink drawing, 1923. © 2009 Artists Rights Press. Her current book project is Antigone's Affect: Political Legacies.
Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. 275 Terry Eagleton currently serves as Distinguished Professor of English Litera­
Fig. 15.7 Wieslaw Grzegorcyzk, Antygona, 1998. 277 ture at the University of Lancaster, and as a Visiting Professor at the National
University oflreland, Galway. He is the author of some forty works of literary,
cultural, and political theory, including Literary Theory: An Introduction
(1 983/1 996) , The Ideology of the Aesthetic ( 1 990), Heathcliff and the Great
Hunger ( 1 996), Crazy John and the Bishop atid Other Essays on Irish Culture
(1 998), Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (2002), After Theory (2003), and
Holy Terror (2005).
Bracha L. Ettinger is a prominent international artist and a psychoanalyst
(member of NLS, WAP, and TAIC:P). She is Professor of Art and Psychoanal­
ysis at the Media and Communications Division (Visiting Faculty) at the
EGS, Switzerland. Ettinger's paintings were shown in many exhibitions in
major museums, among them the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp;
Kiasma Museum, Helsinki; Gothenburg Museum of Art; Israel Museum,
Jerusalem; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Pompidou Centre, Paris; ICA,
Boston; Whitechapel, London, and more, with one-person exhibitions at
the Drawing Center, New York; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Pori Art
Museum, Finland; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Museum of Modern Art,
Oxford; The Russian Museum, St Petersburg; Pompidou Centre, Paris, and
more. Recent one-person exhibitions have been held at the Freud Museum,
x Contributors
London (June 2009) and the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki (August 2009).
Her most recent one-person exhibition was at the Tapies Foundation, Barcelona
(May 2010) . Her book The Matrixial Borderspace (Essays from 1 994--99) ap­
peared in French in 1 999 (La lettre volee) and in English in 2006 (University of
Minnesota Press).
Erika Fischer-Lichte is Professor of Theatre Studies at the Freie Universitat
Berlin. From 1 995 to 1 999 she was President of the International Federation
for Theatre Research. She is a member of the Academia Europaea, the
Academy of Sciences at Gottingen, and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of
Sciences, and also holds the chair of the Institute for Advanced Studies on
'Interweaving Performance Cultures'. She has published widely in the fields of
aesthetics, theory of literature, art, and theatre, in particular on semiotics and
performativity, theatre history, and contemporary theatre. Among her nu­
merous publications are The Transformative Power of Performance: A New
Aesthetics (2008, German 2004), Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual: Exploring Forms of
Political Theatre (2005), History of European Drama and Theatre (2002,
German 1 990) , The Show and the Gaze of Theatre: A European Perspective
( 1 997), The Semiotics of Theatre ( 1 992, German 1 983), and The Dramatic
Touch of Difference: Theatre, Own and Foreign ( 1 990).
Judith Fletcher is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Ar­
chaeology and Classical Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo,
Ontario. She has published articles and book chapters on issues of voice,
gender, and authority in Classical Greek Drama and Epic Poetry, and the
Underworld in Postmodern Fiction. She has recently co-edited (with Alan H.
Sommerstein) Horkos: The Oath in Greek Society (Exeter, 2007) and (with
Bonnie Maclachlan) Virginity Revisited: Configurations of the Unpossessed
Body (Toronto, 2007). At present she is completing a book on the oath in
Classical Greek drama.
Mark Griffith is Professor of Classics, and of Theater, Dance and Performance
Studies, at the University of California, Berkeley. He was educated at Cam­
bridge University, and during his career at Harvard and Berkeley has taught a
wide variety of courses in Greek literature and culture, focusing especially
on drama and other aspects of ancient performance. He has published
editions of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and Sophocles' Antigone (in the
'Green and Yellow' series, Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics), along with
several articles on the socio-political and psycho-social impact of tragedy
and satyr-play in Classical Athens. He is currently writing a book on Aris­
tophanes' Frogs.
Luce Irigaray was the Director of Research in Philosophy at the French Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique and is now a Visiting Professor at the
Contributors XI
University of Liverpool. She trained as an analyst with the Lacanian Freudian
School of Paris, and her work ranges over philosophy, psychoanalysis, lin­
guistics, and social critique. Acknowledged as one of the most influential
theorists of our epoch, her work focuses on a culture of two subjects,
masculine and feminine, particularly through the liberation of a feminine
subjectivity. Her many books include The Way of Love (2002), An Ethics of
Sexual Difference ( 1 993), This Sex Which Is Not One ( 1 985), and Speculum of
the Other Woman ( 1 985).
Ahuvia Kahane is Professor of Greek and Director of the Humanities and Arts
Research Centre at Royal Holloway, University of London. His most recently
published book is Diachronic Dialogues: Continuity and Authority in Homer
and the Homeric Tradition (2006). He is currently completing a book entitled
Epic, Novel, and the Progress of Antiquity and a study of Monumentality and
the Illegible, and is editing a multi-author volume on Antiquity and the Ruin.
Sean D. Kirkland is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at
DePaul University. He has written a number of articles on subjects ranging
from Plato, Aristotle, and ancient Greek religion and tragedy, to Heidegger's
phenomenology and Foucault's philosophy of history. He is currently finish­
ing a manuscript entitled 'Ontology and Self-Knowledge in Plato's Early
Dialogues'.
Martina Meyer is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at
Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto
in Art History. Her particular focus is ancient Greek art and iconography and
its creation, circulation, and adaptation in the ancient world, as well as its
reception in the minor and monumental arts of Renaissance and Baroque
Europe. She is currently working on a book ei;ititled Household Names: Mythic
Imagery in the Domestic Sphere, which investigates how images created for
feminine spaces engage gender paradigms in ways unique to the domestic
context and its female viewers from the ancient world to Renaissance exam­
ples. Other forthcoming publications include 'The Iconography of Desire and
Desirability: Penelope's ethos Reconsidered' and 'Niobe's Children: Gender
Parity and the Visualization of Grief in Ancient Greek Art'.
Calum Neill lectures in Critical Psychology at Napier University in Edin­
burgh. He is on the editorial boards for the Annual Review of Critical
Psychology and the International Journal of Zizek Studies (IJZS). He has
published a number of articles on Lacanian theory, focusing primarily on
the ethical dimension in Lacan's work. He has recently edited a special edition
of the journal Subjectivity entitled A Space Between: Intersubjectivity and the
(Im)possibility of Connection and a special edition of the IJZS on points of
distinction and difference between Lacau and Zizek.

Xll Contributors
Maria Florencia Nelli graduated from Universidad Nacional de La Plata
(UNLP), Argentina, with a degree in Spanish Language and Literature in
1 998 and a second degree in Classics in 2002. She holds a Master of Philoso­
phy in Ancient Greek Language and Literature from Oxford University and is
currently about to complete her doctorate on Sophocles' Trachiniae and
Philoctetes at UNLP. She is also pursuing a D.Phil. in Greek Language and
Literature at Oxford University on the demonstrative pronouns of early Greek
dialects. She has taught Ancient Greek Language and Literature at Universi­
dad Nacional de La Plata since 2000, and worked for many years as an
assistant property master, assistant stage manager, and actress at the Experi­
mental Theatre Company, Taller de Teatro de la UNLP, in Argentina. She has
published several articles on Sophocles, Homer, and ancient lyrics in interna­
tionally recognized Classics journals.
Eugene O'Brien is Senior Lecturer, Head of the Department of English
Language and Literature and Director of the MIC Irish Studies Centre in
Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. His publications include: The Question
of Irish Identity in the Writings of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce ( 1 998);
Examining Irish Nationalism in the Context of Literature, Culture and Religion:
A Study of the Epistemological Structure of Nationalism (2002); Seamus Hea­
ney: Creating Irelands of the Mind (2002); Seamus Heaney and the Place of
Writing (2003); Seamus Heaney: Searches for Answers (2003). He co-edited: La
France et la Mondialisation!France and the Struggle against Globalization
(2007); Reinventing Ireland through a French Prism (2007) and Modernity
and Postmodernity in a Franco-Irish Context (2008).
Deborah H. Roberts is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Classics and
Comparative Literature at Haverford College. She has published work on
Greek tragedy, on Aristotle's Poetics, and on the reception and translation of
ancient literature, and co-edited (with Don Fowler and Francis M. Dunn)
Classical Closure: Reading the End in Greek and Latin Literature (Princeton
1 997); her translation of Euripides' Ion appeared in the Penn Greek Drama
series, edited by D. Slavitt and P. Bovie (Philadelphia 1 999). She is currently
working with Sheila Murnaghan (University of Pennsylvania) on a book on
childhood and the reception of the Classics; her most recent article, 'Transla­
tion and the "Surreptitious Classic": Obscenity and Translatability' in Trans­
lation & the Classic, edited by A. Lianeri and V. Zajko (Oxford 2008), is part of
a projected study of the translation into English of obscenity in Greek and
Latin literature.
Cecilia Sjoholm is Professor of Aesthetics at Sodertorn University, Stockholm.
She has a PhD in Comparative Literature and a PhD in Philosophy. She is the
author of, among other works, The Antigone Complex: Ethics and the Invention
Contributors Xlll
of Feminine Desire (Stanford University Press, 1 994) and Kristeva and the
Political (Routledge, 1 995). She has published numerous articles on philoso­
phy and literature in Swedish and English. She is currently working on a book
on public space and the origins of aesthetics.
Klaas Tindemans teaches dramaturgy at the theatre schools of Brussels and
Antwerp, and at the University of Antwerp. He also works as a dramaturge and
a playwright. He obtained his Ph.D. in Law at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
( 1 996) with a thesis titled 'Law and Tragedy: The Scene of the Law in the Ancient
Polis: As a playwright, he was awarded the prestigious F6rderpreis fur neue
Dramatik at the Berliner Theatertreffen (2008). His publications include a
Dutch translation of Euripides' Medea ( 1 993), a book on youth theatre in
Brussels (2002), a collection of articles on the American playwright David
Mamet (2005)-as an editor-and publications on legal philosophy and dra­
maturgy. In recent years, he has published articles on various subjects, such as
theatrical adaptations of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the place of Shakespeare in the
work of the Flemish theatre group Needcompany, and the interpretation of
Aristotle in seventeenth-century French theatre.
Isabelle Torrance is Assistant Professor of Greek Literature in the Classics
Department at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. She is the author of
Aeschylus: Seven Against Thebes (London: Duckworth, 2007) and of several
articles on Greek tragedy and its reception, and is co-author of the online database
'Oaths in Archaic and Classical Greek Texts' ( <http://www.nottingham. ac. uk/
classics/research/projects/oaths>).
Astrid Van Weyenberg earned her MA in English Literature from the Univer­
sity of Amsterdam, after which she took the MSc course, Nation, Writing,
Culture, at the University of Edinburgh in Sc9tland. She currently holds a Ph.
D. position at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (University of
Amsterdam). Van Weyenberg has written on language and textuality in
contemporary Scottish fiction and on the Field Day Theatre Company of
Northern Ireland. Her current research focuses on the complex implications
and meanings of African reworkings of Greek tragedies. Van Weyenberg's
publications include the articles 'Ireland's Carthaginians and Tragic Heroines'
(Xchanges 2.2: Confrontation, Conflict, and Negotiations of National Space,
Wayne State University, 2003) and "'Rewrite this Ancient End!" Staging
Transition in Post-Apartheid South Africa' (New Voices in Classical Reception
Studies, ed. Lorna Hardwick, Open University, spring 2008).
S. E. Wilmer is the Head of the School of Drama, Film and Music at Trinity
College Dublin and author of Theatre, Society and the Nation: Staging Ameri­
can Identities (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and (with Pirkko Koski)
The Dynamic World of Finnish Theatre (2006). Other recent publications
include Native American Performance and Representation (2009); (with
XlV Contributors
Anna McMullan) Reflections on Beckett (2009); National Theatres in a Chang­
ing Europe (2008); (with Pirkko Koski) Humour and Humanity (2006); and
(with John Dillon) Rebel Women: Staging Ancient Greek Drama Today (2005).
He is also a playwright and a member of the executive committee of the
International Federation for Theatre Research, and has been a Visiting Pro­
fessor at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.
Audrone Zukauskaite, Ph.D., is a senior researcher at and Deputy Director of
the Culture, Philosophy, and Arts Research Institute, Vilnius. She is the
author of the books Beyond the Signifier Principle: Deconstruction, Psychoanal­
ysis, Critique of Ideology (Vilnius: Aidai, 200 1 ) , and Anamorphoses: Non­
Fundamental Problems of Philosophy (Vilnius: Versus Aureus, 2005), transla­
tor and editor of the volume Everything You Always Wanted to Know about
Zizek but were Afraid to Ask Lacan (The Zizek Reader, Vilnius: LRSL, 2005).
She also recently completed the draft of a book entitled Gilles Deleuze and
Felix Guattari's Philosophy: The Cultural Consequences. With research interests
comprising contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis, gender studies, and
visual studies, she is based in Vilnius.
Introduction
S. E. Wilmer and Audrone Zukauskaite
Sophocles' Antigone is one of the most important cultural texts in Western
civilization. It has been reinterpreted not only by classicists but also by poets
from Holderlin to Heaney, novelists such as Virginia Woolf and Grete Weil,
philosophers including Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida, the psychoanalytic
.
theorists Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Zizek, feminists and gender studies theor­
ists Irigaray and Butler, and playwrights and theatre practitioners including
Artaud, Brecht, Cocteau, Gide, Kantor, and Fugard. Antigone has received
more than fifty translations into the English language in the last century and
many adaptations all over the world. Why Antigone? What unresolved ques­
tions lie in the play and why does the Antigone character still capture our
imagination?
George Steiner in his Antigones raises the question what would have
happened if psychoanalysis had chosen Antigone rather than Oedipus?1
This question presents the Antigone character as having the same cultural
weight as Oedipus but at the same time as lacking recognition and acceptance
in the patterns of our cultural norms. The re�son for thi� non-acceptance can
be traced in the most influential interpretations of Antigone formulat�d by
Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit ( 1 807) and Jacques Lacan in The Ethics of
Psychoanalysis ( 1 986). Both Hegel and Lacan locate Antigone at the margins
of universal values: for Hegel, Antigone represents the private sphere of the
family, which is in conflict with the public sphere of the state, and for Lacan,
Antigone is a transgressor of universal laws, incarnating the pathological
desire for death. These interpretations have been counterattacked by feminist
criticism: if Antigone is located on the margins of universal values, this is the
result not of her private interests or pathological inclinations, but of the
prejudices of the philosophical and psychoanalytical discourse itself. The
clash of philosophical, psychoanalytical, and gender interpretations provides
the background for this volume; using philosophical, political, psychoanalyti-
1 Steiner (1984: 18).
2 Introduction
cal, juridical, feminist, gender, and performative approaches, the authors
consider how Antigone speaks to us today.
But first let us outline the main conflict in interpretation. As we mentioned
before, one of the most influential interpretations of Antigone is formulated
by Hegel who refers to the play in his lectures on aesthetics as 'one of
the most sublime'. Hegel interprets the Antigone character more pro­
foundly in Phenomenology of Spirit where he introduces Antigone as a heroine
representing the interests of her family and relying on the unwritten laws of the
gods, and Creon as representing the public space and the laws of the state.
Hegel interprets the conflict between Antigone and Creon as the conflict
between two forms of legality-divine law and human law-and as a conflict
between the private sphere of kinship relationships and the public sphere of
the state. As far as the unwritten laws of the gods are in conflict with human
laws, and the private interests of the family confront the universality of the
state, Antigone, as a symbol for womankind in general, is seen as 'an internal
enemy' and 'the everlasting irony [in the life] of the community'.2 Hegel
contrasts universal reason, expressed in the community and protected by
human laws, with the particularity of Antigone's act: Antigone cannot act
politically and in this sense she represents perversion and particularity. As
Tina Chanter points out in making a distinction between different ethical
substances into which Spirit divides itself (the human law and the divine law),
Hegel excludes Antigone from the realms of self-consciousness and the com­
munity. 3 The human law represents the ethical substance of the community
and is 'conscious of itself '; the divine law has the form of an immediate ethical
substance which is expressed in the family. For Hegel, Antigone embodies
this immediate ethical substance in burying Polynices, acting in accordance
with the divine law and on behalf of the family, but is not conscious about
the ethicality of her act. Hegel asserts that the law of the family is implicit
and not exposed to the daylight of consciousness. In reacting to this, Chanter
questions why Antigone, according to Hegel, cannot be conscious of the
ethicality of her act. She points out that Hegel makes a distinction between
Antigone's point of view and that of spirit as self-consciousness: 'In differ­
entiating between Antigone's knowledge of her own action and the point
of view of spirit as self-consciousness, Hegel locates sexual difference. Or
perhaps it is the other way around? Perhaps it is in differentiating between
the sexes that Hegel knows Antigone cannot be consciously aware of the ethical
content in her ethical act as ethical.'4 This insight questions the neutrality of
2 Hegel (1977: 288).
3 Chanter (1995: 87).
4 Ibid. 92.
Introduction 3
western philosophical discourse: far from representing universal knowledge,
Hegel's argument works as a mechanism for female exclusion. Antigone
cannot act ethically and be conscious of her act because she is confined by
her sex, immersed in her body and particularity.
The conflict between particularity and universality re-emerges in Lacan's
reading of Antigone in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. In contrast to the Hegelian
dialectics of absolute reason, Lacanian psychoanalysis works in the realm of
the unconscious, which is structured by the law of desire. If for Hegel, the
main conflict is between juridical law and divine law, for Lacan, the main
conflict lies between morality and ethics. To act ethically, Lacan suggests, is to
act not in conformity with the external laws of the state or community, but in
conformity with one's inner desire: 'the only thing one can be guilty of is
giving ground relative to one's desire'.5 In this sense, Antigone is an excep­
tional figure for Lacan: 'She has a quality that both attracts us and startles us,
in the sense of intimidates us; this terrible, self-willed victim disturbs us'.6
Lacan interprets the unusual nature of Antigone's desire as not a desire for the
Other (another human being) but the desire for death and self-annihilation.
Lacan claims that Antigone 'pushes to the limit the realization of something
that might be called the pure and simple desire of death as such. She
incarnates that desire'.7 Antigone moves to the limit space between life and
death, or, as Lacan calls it, to the space 'between two deaths'. Antigone's desire,
according to Lacan, is linked to the desire of her mother; in this sense, it's not
only self-annihilating but also a criminal desire. Not incidentally, Antigone is
compared with the Marquis de Sade: their attempt to act in conformity with
their particular (or pathological, as Kant would say) desire defines them both
as transgressors and as ethical figures. In this sense, Antigone simultaneously
behaves as a transgressor of external laws and �s a fascinating figure, attracting
us with the purity of her desire.
The Lacanian interpretation of Antigone in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis has
given inspiration to other generations of psychoanalysts. For example, the
Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Zizek refers to Antigone as a proto-totalitarian
figure who refuses any rational argumentation and blindly sticks to her
decision.8 Zizek interprets Antigone's act in terms of a Lacanian 'ethics of
the Real' : this is a kind of ethics which focuses neither on some imaginary
form of the good nor on a symbolic form of universal duty but on the
5 Lacan ( 1992: 321). (Originally published in French under the title Le Seminaire, Livre VII,
L'ethique de la psychanalyse, 1959--1960, Paris: Les Editions du Seuil, 1986.)
6 Ibid. 247.
7 Ibid. 282.
8 Ziiek c2000: 666J.
4 Introduction
unconditional injunction toward the Other qua Thing. According to Zizek, a
Lacanian 'ethics of the Real' implies that the ethical act is not mediated by any
universal form of law but in fact breaks with this law: 'the ethical act proper is
a transgression of the legal norm-a transgression that, in contrast to a simple
criminal violation, does not simply violate the legal norm, but redefines what
is a legal norm'.9 The ethical act proper doesn't follow the good-it generates a
new shape of what counts as good. In this sense, Antigone's gesture of civil
disobedience can be seen as the incarnation of the 'ethics of the Real':
'through her insistence on giving her dead brother a proper funeral, she defies
the predominant notion of the good'.10 That means that psychoanalytic
theory reads Antigone as a transgressor, standing beyond the universally
accepted notion of the good and ignoring symbolic laws of the community.
Here we see how differently Oedipus' and Antigone's deeds are interpreted
in psychoanalysis: Oedipus, who makes a transgression unknowingly, initiates
a pattern of symbolic law known as the 'Oedipus complex'; Antigone, who
makes a transgression and consciously acknowledges that, is seen as a criminal
figure. This criminalization probably is one of the reasons why such a thing as
the 'Antigone complex' doesn't exist. This is the focus of Cecilia Sjoholm's
book, The Antigone Complex: Ethics and the Invention of Feminine Desire.
Sjoholm argues that Antigone does not constitute a feminine paradigm of
desire comparable to that of Oedipus; nevertheless, 'she changes the premises
from which the question of desire must be thought: rather than inverting the
gendered bias of Oedipus as a symbolic structure, Antigone challenges the
idea that desire can be reduced to a symbolic structure at all-be it social,
linguistic, or something else.'11 Analysing the Lacanian definition of feminine
sexuality, according to which woman is an empty signifier in the Symbolic,
Sjoholm observes that 'Lacan's intuition is similar to Hegel's on this point:
woman is a threat or eternal irony to the same order that has created her'.12
Moreover, Sjoholm reconsiders Antigone as an ethical figure: Antigone is part
of our ethical sensibility because she touches the void inherent in any norma­
tive order. 13
As indicated earlier, the alleged neutrality of philosophical and psychoana­
lytical discourse and the exclusion of Antigone from the sphere of reason and
self-consciousness have become the target of feminist critique. Luce Irigaray
explicitly demonstrates in Speculum of the Other Woman that Hegel's inter­
pretation of Antigone is guided by his reductive understanding of the female
sex as an inferior version of the male sex. Irigaray compares Hegel's interpre­
tation of Antigone with his account of sexual difference in his Philosophy of
10 11
9 Zizek (2000: 672). Ibid. Sjiiholm (2004: 82-3 ).
12 13
Ibid. 96. Ibid. 107-8.
Introduction 5
Nature. This comparison reveals the unconscious presuppos1t1ons which
ground the investigations of absolute reason: man is seen as a universal
being, capable of resolving all blood ties between individuals into abstract
universality; woman is seen as a side effect of this miraculous transforma­
tion.14 As Chanter points out, 'Irigaray suggests that Hegel does not simply
reduce women to biology. Rather, he reads the feminine ethic back into his
account of the sexual body, reading the organism according to the circumscribed
ethical action that has been allotted to women in advance of any inquiry into
their bodily existence'.15 Irigaray provides an alternative reading of Antigone,
seeking to recreate the bodily conditions of her existence. In her interpretation,
Antigone's act is seen as being determined by incestuous family relationships and
by Antigone's blurred sexual identity. As Irigaray points out in An Ethics of Sexual
Difference, 'Antigone, the antiwoman, is still a production of culture that has
been written by men alone. But this figure, who, according to Hegel, stands for
ethics, has to be brought out of the night, out of the shadow, out of the rock, out
of the total paralysis experienced by a social order that condemns itself even as it
condemns her:16 In contrast, Irigaray seeks to postulate a different kind of
ethics-an ethics of sexual difference-which reasserts ethics not in terms of
universal values but in terms of respect for the order of nature, the order of
generations, and the order of sexuate difference.
Judith Butler in her Antigone's Claim: Kinship between Life and Death
challenges the interpretations of Antigone made by Hegel, Lacan, and Iri­
garay. First, Butler defies feminist interpretations of Antigone, pointing out
that Antigone can hardly be taken as a representative of feminist politics
because her own identity is in crisis. Secondly, Butler refuses to interpret
Antigone in terms of kinship relationships. Butler argues that the way in
which Antigone has been read by Hegel, Lacair,:and Irigaray is not satisfactory
because they have regarded Antigone not as a political figure, but rather as
'one who articulates a prepolitical opposition to politics, representing kinship
as the sphere that conditions the possibility of politics without ever entering into
if. 17 By contrast with Hegel et al., Butler argues that Antigone occupies a space
where 'kin positions tend to slide into one another, in which Antigone is the
brother, the brother is the father, and in which psychically, linguistically, this
is true regardless of whether they are dead or alive'. 18 According to Butler,
14
Irigaray ( 1985: 220). (Originally published in French under the title Speculum de f autre
femme, Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1974.)
15 Chanter (1995: 119-120).
16
Irigaray (2004: 101). (Originally published in French under the title Ethique de la
Difference Sexuelle, Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1984. )
17
Butler (2000: 2); emphasis in original.
18
Ibid. 67.
6 Introduction
Antigone should be interpreted not in terms of gender or kinship relation­
ships, but in terms of the political. For this reason, Butler is also sceptical
about the Lacanian interpretation of Antigone's desire in terms of crime and
the death drive. The problem with psychoanalysis is that it privileges the
symbolic which is governed by the law (and the name) of the father; in these
coordinates, the desire of Antigone becomes 'insupportable within the sym­
bolic' and inescapably 'turns desire toward death'.1 9 Butler situates Antigone
in a 'postoedipal dilemma', which destabilizes sexual positions and questions
kinship norms, especially because of her abnormal position as the half-sister
of her father. 'Although not quite a queer heroine, Antigone does emblematize
a certain heterosexual fatality that remains to be read'. 20 According to Butler,
Antigone's example not only refers to the tragic fate of someone who dares to
transgress the lines of kinship that ground our culture, but also gives rise to
another question: 'What in her act is fatal for heterosexuality in its normative
sense? And to what other ways of organizing sexuality might a consideration
of that fatality give rise?'21 Butler implies that Antigone's desire does not
conform to patriarchal norms and sexuality based on heteronormativity. This
is why such a desire as hers should be locked in a tomb, expelled from the city.
These questions redirect us from the issues of gender and kinship to the
sphere of the political. Instead of enjoying Antigone's 'fatality' as a sign of her
psychic complexity or a symptom of her gender, we should think about the
political alternatives that her position suggests. This is why the first part of
this volume, entitled 'Philosophy and Politics', seeks to question and reframe
the political space using the conceptual tools taken from contemporary
philosophy. Tina Chanter's chapter 'Antigone's Political Legacies: Abjection
in Defiance of Mourning' gives a rich outline of the interpretations of
Antigone in the philosophical and psychoanalytical tradition. Besides its
philosophical and psychoanalytical implications, the chapter raises a question
that constitutes the political impetus of Antigone's legacy. Chanter opposes the
fetishistic logic which fuels Lacan's and Zizek's psychoanalysis and the logic of
abjection which motivates Antigone's mourning. Instead she redefines Antig­
one as a political figure who has a capacity to transform her abject, victim
status into the possibility of a new political order. In mourning her brother
Polynices, Antigone is mourning not only for the end of the Oedipal legacy
and patriarchal order, but also for her lost future, a future she will not share.
Nevertheless she celebrates this future as the possibility of a different political
order for those who will come after her.
20 21
19 Ibid. 54. Ibid. 72. Ibid.
Introduction 7
Cecilia Sjoholm in her chapter 'Naked Life; Arendt and the Exile at
Colonus' provides a reading of Antigone which radically differs from the
one that she gave in her book The Antigone Complex. This time Sjoholm
discusses the political potentialities of Antigone through the readings of
Hannah Arendt. Arendt does not perform a reading of Antigone or comment
upon the political readings of that tragedy made by, for instance, Hegel and
Heidegger. However, Sjoholm argues that Arendt's theory of the public space
and her notion of the refugee indicate a way of rereading Antigone in con­
junction with the later work by Sophocles, Oedipus at Co/onus. The imaginary
Antigone of Arendt will lead us to the question of the interdependence
between the political ontology and the exceptional state of the refugee, the
man stripped of the qualities of human rights. This reading not only defines
the refugee as a 'naked life' to be found outside the political, but also reveals
its political potentiality and capacity to redefine what counts as political.
Sjoholm demonstrates that by rereading Antigone with Oedipus at Colonus, we
discover Antigone the refugee, claiming the right to political space.
Following on from Sjoholm's discussion of Arendt's ideas, Audrone
Zukauskaite's chapter 'Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim' examines the same
'dark continent' which Arendt entitled as 'naked life' and which in Giorgio
Agamben's texts is conceptualized as 'bare life'. Agamben develops Arendt's
ideas further, establishing a clear connection between what he calls 'bare life'
and modern state power. Far from representing the margins of political order,
'bare life' reveals the secret ties between sovereign power and biological life: it
is the privilege of sovereign power to decide which life counts as 'human' and
is worth living. Analysing the figure of homo sacer, Zukauskaite implies that
the figure of homo sacer gives some insight into the limit position in which
Antigone stands. Although these two figures can't be considered as being
homological, because they belong to different-Greek and Roman-worlds,
they share the same indistinct place between human jurisdiction and the
religious sphere, between bias and zoe, between life and exposedness to
death. When Agamben writes that not simply natural life, but life exposed
to death (bare life or sacred life) is the originary element, this definition of
'bare life' .rerfectly suits Antigone.
Eugene O'Brien's chapter 'The Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility
and the Responsibility of Ethics' analyses the aporia of justice and responsi­
bility, or the aporia of the different responsibilities enunciated in Sophocles'
play, such as concerning family and the state. Evoking Jacques Derrida's
notion of responsibility, O'Brien asserts that responsibility to any particular
individual can often result in irresponsibility towards the others. Responsibil­
ity starts when there is no rule, no law to follow: an ethics which guarantees is
not an ethics. Following Derrida, O'Brien asserts that ethics and responsibility
8 Introduction
can't be grounded in general knowledge and so he insists on the radical
singularity of every ethical act. This is what Antigone does in the play: she
invents a singular rule based on a particular human bond, and in this sense
anticipates the responsibility of ethics.
The second part entitled 'Psychoanalysis and the Law' continues the dis­
cussion of ethics and moral law in the context of Lacan's psychoanalysis. The
notion of law in psychoanalysis is similar but at the same time opposite to the
understanding of law in the juridical sense. Whereas in juridical discourse
the law presupposes externally imposed rules or norms, the defiance of which
?as legally binding consequences, the law in psychoanalysis relates to symbol­
ic rules and norms to which the individual subjects himself entering into the
int�rsubjective sphere of society. Lacanian psychoanalysis specifies these sym­
bolic rules and norms, making a distinction between the moral law and the
law of desire. When speaking about the moral law, Lacan invokes the Kantian
definition, according to which the moral law has a universal content (the
Good). This means that moral law can and should be applied in a universal
way, that is, it functions as a norm for every individual. The law of desire, by
contrast, is always particular for every individual. Lacan insists that the realm
of the ethical is achieved not by following the common assumptions of
universal Good, but by acting in conformity with one's desire. So if the
moral act is grounded on the universal notion of the Good, the ethical act
follows its particular, or, in Kantian terms, 'pathological' desire. As Lacan
clearly demonstrates, commenting on a Kantian example, psychoanalysis
reveals a subject of desire who seeks not only the satisfaction of desire but
22
also the transgression of the norm.
The contradiction between morality and ethics is reflected in Terry Eagle­
ton's chapter 'Lacan's Antigone'. One of the most fundamental concepts for
Eagleton is the notion of the Real, which is 'the perennial deadlock between
this desire and the Law or superego'. On the one hand, the Real is that lethal
drive which pushes us towards 'pathological' transgressions; on the other
hand, it is the Real which enables us to break the illusory consensus of
conventional morality. Eagleton defines the ethics of the Real not as a specific
psychoanalytic theme but as the main current of French philosophy: Derrida,
Lacan, Levinas, and their confreres oppose the universal, conventional, regu­
lative realm of morality and the singular, absolute, unpredictable realm of
ethics. 'Ethics is for demi-gods, while morality is for grocers', Eagleton quips.
In this theoretical context, Creon comes to represent the failures of authority,
22
For Lacan commenting on Kantian examples see: Lacan (1992: 188-90).
Introduction 9
politics, collectivity, and conventional morality, while Antigone is represented
as 'the eternal transgressor with a hotline to the transcendent'.
Mark Griffith's chapter 'Psychoanalysing Antigone' gives a detailed analysis
of Antigone's desire, enquiring into the object and subject of this desire.
According to Griffith, the play raises important theoretical questions about
the status and nature of the 'object' of Antigone's desire: is the object real,
imaginary, or is it experienced as a 'lack' in the Symbolic? And who is the
'subject' of this desire: Antigone or Sophocles, the Athenian or post-Freudian
audience? Griffith argues that Antigone's 'desire of the impossible' not only
questions the incest taboo grounding the social order, but also reminds us
that a 'natural desire' can be felt outside the constraints of socially approved
norms. Such a possibility makes itself felt in an unexpected and disturbing,
yet emotionally engaging, way. While Antigone opens up new spaces in which
'we' may imagine alternatives to the (moral, sexual, marital) laws that others
have imposed on us, a psychoanalytic reading reveals our own confused
responses to Antigone's message which is too challenging, too difficult to
deal with.
Calum Neill, in his chapter 'One Amongst Many: The Ethical Significance
of Antigone and the Films of Lars von Trier', argues that desire must be unique
for each subject: desire is not pre-given but created by the subject, so it must
be particular for that subject. As Neill points out, to follow his desire, the
subject has to go beyond the law to accomplish an act of transgression. It is
precisely this act of transgression that should be interpreted in terms of the
ethical: in contrast to the ethical example, which is the expression of a
universal moral code, the ethical is an instance of exception. For Lacan,
Antigone embodies 'the ethics of psychoanalysis' precisely because of the
indeterminacy of her act, which, according tcr Neill, should be taken not as
an example of some (feminist, revolutionary, familial) ethical action, but of
what might appear as the ethical itself. An example of the ethical presupposes
the generalization of a structure of the law; in this sense, an example functions
as a moral code; by contrast, the instance of exception breaks the smooth
functioning of the law and introduces the realm of the ethical.
Ahuvia Kahane's chapter 'Antigone, Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of
the Law' questions 'the law of psychoanalysis itself', namely, the structuralist
baggage of psychoanalysis and of Lacan's thinking. Following Butler, Kahane
argues that Antigone cannot be interpreted in terms of the law and its
perversion because they both operate within a structure that relies on exclu­
sion. Contrary to that, Butler suggests that Antigone seems to compel a
reading that is exactly the opposite, that challenges structure, and that 'does
not prefigure a final restitution of the law'. Nevertheless, Kahane is looking for
a different reading of structure within the play Antigone 'itself', and, perhaps,
10 Introduction
within Lacan's reading of Antigone. Antigone's Order of Law, he argues, is an
object which is also like the Moebius strip: its structure is bound with the
order of events and the order of time and mortality. Kahane stresses that this
order of time, like the point on the Moebius strip, is absolutely unique. It is
precisely this dimension of time and mortality which enables the possibility to
challenge the principle of synchrony in psychoanalysis.
The following two chapters discuss the structure of the law not in a
psychoanalytical but in a more common juridical sense. The conflict between
Antigone and Creon usually is analysed as a conflict between two different
notions of the law: the juridical law and the divine law, to which Antigone
refers as the 'unwritten laws' of the underworld. In fact, the understanding of
the nature of the law frames our reading of Antigone's act: if Antigone is
relying on inexplicit but self-evident (hence 'unwritten') patterns of beha­
viour, her act of burial can be considered as a conservative rather than
revolutionary act; if she is announcing a law which is equally strong as that
of Creon's, Antigone is accomplishing a transgressive act. Judith Fletcher, in
her chapter 'Sophocles' Antigone and the Democratic Voice', tries to solve this
problem by asking if the fifth-century Athenian audience could conceive of
Creon's interdiction as a law. Analysing Sophocles' text as well as a wide
spectrum of classical scholarship, Judith Fletcher interprets Creon's edict not
in terms of a 'law' (nomos) but in terms of kerugma ('announcement').
Antigone performs her act in a symmetrical way to that of Creon, insisting
that the burial of her brother should be 'announced'. In this respect, the
conflict between Antigone and Creon should be regarded not as a conflict
between different kinds of law, but as a conflict between different kinds of
performatives. Evoking Searle's theory of speech acts and Austin's theory of
performative utterances, Fletcher argues that both Creon and Antigone fail to
perform their utterances: Creon's interdiction pretends to fit into the category
of an institutional speech act or law, but in fact falls into individual speech
acts such as promises, wagers, threats. Antigone's performative utterance lacks
the particular circumstances to be effective; nevertheless, this utterance ex­
poses Creon's considerable failures at language and becomes the embodiment
of democratic debate, and the voice of true law.
Similarly Klaas Tindemans, in his chapter 'Antigone and the Law: Legal
Theory and the Ambiguities of Performance', analyses the intertwinements of
law and drama in Antigone: both are illocutionary discourses, both are
performative practices. Tindemans deconstructs the notion of 'unwritten
laws', showing that they cannot be inscribed into a set of laws. In this respect,
the debate on the legal-theoretical meaning of Antigone's claim is irrelevant to
the interpretation of both her and Creon's tragic fate. In contrast, Tindemans
suggests that Antigone's claim should be analysed as a manifestation of pure
Introduction 11
performativity, as a barren deed without justification. The performative
nature of Antigone's claims resonates not only with the performative charac­
ter of the play as such, but also with the performative force of any legal
statement.
The third part, entitled 'Gender and Kinship', develops the critical insights
directed against western philosophy and psychoanalysis. As was mentioned
earlier, many feminists and gender theoreticians observed that both western
philosophy and psychoanalysis represent only a masculine point of view,
which at the same time is presented as a universal and neutral viewpoint of
humanity. The female sex is considered either as a 'second sex' or as a lack or
absence in the dialectics of subjectivity. In fact, psychoanalysis adopts the
myth of Oedipus as a convenient theoretical means to justify the historical
subordination of women and the inequality between the sexes. In this sense,
the Antigone character can be transformed into a new theoretical concept
enabling the possibility of formulating an alternative account of sexual differ­
ences and kinship system. Antigone's identity is defined not by her desire for
Haemon but by her emotional relationships with her family: her brother,
sister, and, first of all, her mother. It is precisely this relationship with the
mother and not with the Oedipal father which first constitutes us as subjects
and only later as sexual individuals.
This idea of a pre-Oedipal kinship relationship is discussed in Luce Irigar­
ay's chapter 'Between Myth and History: The Tragedy of Antigone'. Irigaray
argues that Antigone risks her life for three principles that are Jinked together:
respect for the order of the living universe and living beings, respect for the
order of generation, and respect for the order of sexuate difference. Irigaray
uses the term 'sexuate identity' instead of 'sexual identity', meaning that
Antigone prefers the burial of her brother D.ecause he represents a singular
sexuate identity that must be respected as such. Sexuate difference is primary
because the individual is first a son or a daughter of his/her mother and only
afterwards a sexualized individual. In contrast to the psychoanalytical notion
of sexual difference, which privileges the masculine, Irigaray reconsiders the
maternal as prior to sexual difference. Irigaray argues that Antigone's prefer­
ence for p aying respect to Polynices as to the 'son of my mother' expresses her
respect for the maternal genealogy. It is between sister and brother that
genealogy becomes the generation of two different horizontal identities.
This is not only a bodily identity but also a cultural identity because it creates
different worlds for man and woman.
The idea of the maternal is echoed in Bracha Ettinger's chapter 'Antigone
with(out) Jocaste'. Introducing the complex notion of the matrixial space,
Ettinger argues that the matrixial is at the origin of sexual difference. Every
human being is defined by his or her incestual though non-sexual matrixial
F.H. LAGUARDIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE LIBRARY
12 Introduction
relationships with his or her mother's body. This insight carries several
consequences. First, every human being's sexual identity is defined in relation
to a woman; in that sense, desire doesn't lack any object as is stated in
Lacanian psychoanalysis. Secondly, the fundamental relationship grounding
the psychic life is not between a child and his father (Oedipus complex), but
between a child and his mother (Jocasta complex?) . Thirdly, the incestual
though non-sexual matrixial relationships between children generated from
the same matrix (mother) are so unique that the siblings always strive to
reconnect with each other. In this context, Antigone's desire to bury her
brother and her 'death drive' acquire another meaning: the possibility of
their reunion beyond life and time. Ettinger's analysis also focuses on the
mother and daughter relationship, whose destruction in the play leads to
disastrous consequences. This issue is reminiscent of the idea, raised earlier by
Irigaray, about the perceived absence of social bonds between women: not
only between mother and daughter, but also between sisters, which marks the
more general lack of female solidarity.
The next chapter takes into consideration the significant intervention of
Judith Butler, who, in her Antigone's Claim: Kinship between Life and Death,
discusses Antigone's ambivalent position in the kinship system. Referring to
multiple familial designations (Antigone is both sister and daughter to Oedi­
pus), Butler exposes the contingent character of Antigone's kinship and
familial relationships. Following this line of argument, Liz Appel in her
chapter 'Autochthonous Antigone: Breaking Ground' reintroduces the term
of autochthony as a tool to envision Antigone's challenge not only to tradi­
tional kinship structures, but also to the representational realm itself. Appel is
introducing the concept of autochthony as a kind of spontaneous generation
that is not predicated on conventional notions of parentage or lineage.
Explaining autochthony not in terms of content but in terms of form or
structure, Appel argues that Antigone erases her own genealogy, and repre­
sents an origin from nowhere, a creation from the void. Taking Butler's
question: 'What has Oedipus engendered?' even further, Appel suggests that
Antigone has engendered herself and might be seen as a sort of autochtho­
nous figure.
Isabelle Torrance, in her chapter 'Antigone and her Brother: What Sort of
Special Relationship?', discusses various versions of the Antigone story from
ancient Greek and Roman times, including Euripides' Phoenician Women,
Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, Seneca's Phoenician Women, and Statius'
Thebaid, before considering more recent French-language adaptations from
the seventeenth and twentieth centuries (Jean de Rotrou's Antigone and Andre
Gide's play CEdipe). Torrance illuminates a common theme about Antigone's
relationship with Polynices, demonstrating that it has been consistently pre-
Introduction 13
sented as bordering on the incestuous. Torrance points out that, by exposing
this incestuous dimension, Gide is reacting to the Freudian theory of the
Oedipus complex. Gide's play contains many allusions which show that Gide
knew Freudian theory well, but also that he refused to adopt it wholesale. By
emphasizing the possibility of an incestuous relationship between brother and
sister, Gide questions the validity of the Oedipus complex. As Torrance
formulates it, 'Gide's Oedipus, ironically, does not have an Oedipus complex'.
Similarly, Martina Meyer, in her chapter 'Reclaiming Femininity: Antigone's
"Choice" in Art and Art History', considers the evolving representation of
Antigone over the centuries, but in other visual art forms rather than on the
stage or in literature. She shows that ancient decorators of pottery frequently
chose Antigone as a subject, but transformed her powerful opposition against
the state by depicting her in a more restrained or subservient pose. Similarly
most nineteenth and twentieth-century iconography has continued to depict
her in a domestic or passive mode. Despite recent political interpretations of the
text that have featured Antigone as a rebellious figure, most recent visual
depictions of her have not featured this aspect of her character. Surprisingly,
only Jean Cocteau, in advertising for the staging and publication of his version in
the 1 920s, portrayed her in an aggressive pose against the authority of the state.
The final part of the book, entitled 'Translations, Adaptations, and Perfor­
mance', concerns the many translations, adaptations, and performances of
Antigone, particularly in the last century. According to Steiner, the cultural
prominence of Antigone came about as a result of several factors: the publica­
tion of Le Voyage du jeune Anacharsis, an influential novel by Barthelemy in
1 788, in which the ancient Greek protagonist is overwhelmed by a production
he sees of Antigone; the French revolution (and the rights of women as well as
men) and the Napoleonic invasion of Europe;' during which time the public
invaded the space of the private; the Hegel, Holderlin, Schelling camaraderie
at Tiibingen in the 1 790s, where all three authors agreed on the significance of
Antigone; and the production in 1 84 1 of Antigone with music by Mendelssohn
that spread across the continent. Steiner also refers to the Romantic enthusi­
asm in the nineteenth century for brother and sisterly love which could
overcome Kantian alienation and which found an emblematic figure in
Antigone. Since the seventeenth century, the Antigone story has often been
adapted for opera. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it has
continued to be turned into opera by such artists as Arthur Honegger, Carl
Orff, and Mikis Theodorakis. It has also been adapted for novels (such as
Virginia Woolf 's The Years, Hochhuth's Der Berliner Antigone, and Grete
Weil's My Sister Antigone), as well as for television and film, but most often
for the theatre. Productions of Antigone have been staged throughout the
world, from the Inuit in North America to prisoners (including Nelson
14 Introduction
Mandela) on Robben Island. Amongst the many versions are those by
Holderlin and Brecht in Germany; Racine, Cocteau, Artaud, Gide, and
Anouilh in France; Salvador Espriu and Maria Zambrano in Spain; Leopoldo
Marechal and Jorge Andrade in Brazil; Kennelly, Paulin, and Heaney in Ireland;
Judith Malina for the Living Theatre and Mac Wellman in the USA; Glowacki
in Poland; Kemal Demirel in Turkey; Os6fisan in Nigeria; Sylvain Bemba in the
Congo; Griselda Gambaro in Argentina; and Satoshi Miyagi in Japan.
In the first chapter in this part, 'Reading Antigone in Translation: Text,
Paratext, Intertext', Deborah Roberts considers the original text in relation to
its translation into English. She observes that for most people encountering
the play, Antigone is not the original play but a modern version, and she
identifies many of the ways in which the various versions are quite different
from the original. Roberts considers the different approaches that translators
have adopted, whether it is bringing the original writer to the reader, or the
reader to the original writer, and whether it uses, for example, Shakespearean
language to create a tragic effect or a modern idiom to bring it up to date. By
focusing on particular terms in the ancient Greek play such as nomos and
autadelphon, as well as key speeches such as the ' polla ta deina' ode, Roberts
demonstrates how translators have helped to shape modern understandings
of the play. In addition to discussing various philosophical and political
interpretations that have encumbered the text with various meanings and
which have influenced the work of translation, she indicates a trend in recent
translations towards a more informed representation of the original text.
Sean Kirkland, in 'Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau and Sophocles', focuses
on a particular French adaptation, that of Jean Cocteau in 1 922. Kirkland
analyses the quick tempo in Cocteau's contracted version as a defining feature
of the original tragedy. Illuminating the speed that results from the 'over­
determining power of Fate', Kirkland cites the ' polla ta deina' ode as indicating
the hubristic quality of humans in their ability to approach the unknowable
future with speed and confidence. In the original text, Antigone, like Oedipus,
plunges relentlessly into the future, and only undergoes a moment of doubt in
her final scene. According to Kirkland, this scene exhibits the features of
recognition (anagnorisis) and reversal (peripeteia) common to Aristotelian
tragic figures. It is only at this point in the play that her pace slows, as she
expresses doubt for the first time.
In 'Politicizing Antigone', Erika Fisher-Lichte discusses three productions
that coincided with pivotal moments in Germany: the Tieck version staged in
Potsdam in 1 84 1 with music by Mendelssohn, the 1 940 production by
Karlheinz Stroux in Berlin under the Nazi government, and the 1978 perfor­
mance by Christoph Ne! in Frankfurt at the height of the Baader-Meinhof
controversy. Fischer-Lichte analyses the performances within the social and
Introduction 15
political context of the day, demonstrating that because of its conflict between
the state/community and the individual, the play will always be political, but
that the ways in which it works politically will vary in relation to the particular
situation and circumstances.
Florencia Nelli, in her chapter 'From Ancient Greek Drama to Argentina's
"Dirty War"; Antigona Furiosa: on Bodies and the State', moves the discussion
to Argentina where Antigone took on a special relevance in the 1 970s and 80s,
during the period of military dictatorship (La Dictadura), when many oppo­
nents of the government 'disappeared'. Nelli recalls the women who risked
(and sometimes sacrificed) their lives by demonstrating in the streets of
Buenos Aires, carrying emblems of their loved ones and demanding informa­
tion about their whereabouts (an open wound in the society that continues to
affect Argentina today). In this context, the Greek tragedy took on new
meanings, as Antigone, in such plays as Griselda Gambaro's Antigone Furiosa,
adopted the characteristics of the mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and daugh­
ters of the victims of the regime, and Polynices became a symbol for all those
who had disappeared. ,
Astrid Van Weyenberg, in her chapter 'Revolutionary Muse: Femi Os6fi­
san's Tegimni: An African Antigone', examines the play by the prominent
Nigerian playwright Femi O s6fisan that is set in the nineteenth century
during British colonial rule. A Yoruba princess, Tegonni, defies the edict of
a British colonial governor, and becomes a revolutionary heroine, leading an
uprising. However, Os6fisan complicates the binary opposition of oppressor/
oppressed by introducing a romantic relationship between Tegonni and a
British officer, and by revealing the oppression of women under traditional
Yoruba customs. The connection with the orig}}1al play becomes more explicit
as the Greek Antigone appears as a separate cnaracter and interacts metathea­
trically with the Nigerian princess. As Van Weyenberg illustrates, the play is
not simply historical, but is equally critical of the recent spate of military
dictatorships in Nigeria. Tegonni/Antigone is a metaphor not only for cri­
tiquing the colonial past, but also.for manifesting the potential for social and
political change in the future.
Steve Wilmer's chapter: 'Performing Antigone in the Twenty-First Century',
discusses various versions that have called attention to political and social
issues in recent years. In particular, he analyses the production of Seamus
Heaney's The Burial at Thebes, first staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in
2004, as a critique of British and American imperialism and patriarchal
oppression. The Irish Nobel prize-wining poet wrote his version of Antigone
in the wake of the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the numerous
revelations about the torture of prisoners by the American occupying forces
and their rendition to secret destinations in different parts of the world.
 r

16 Introduction

Heaney's text evokes comparison between Antigone as a character in a liminal

state 'between two deaths' and those detained by the American military in
such places as Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison.
At a significant moment in the German film Deutsch/and in Herbst (direct­
ed by Brustellin, Fassbinder, and others in 1 978) , broadcasting executives
discuss the possibility of transmitting a production of Antigone based on the
Part I
original text. The company decides that it would be too dangerous to show it,
given the social and political context in Germany. That a 2,500-year-old play
could still be considered too risky to transmit in the late twentieth century Philosophy and Politics
tells us something about its continuing relevance. As Steiner writes, 'When­
ever, wherever, in the western legacy, we have found ourselves engaged in the
confrontation of justice and of law, of the aura of the dead and the claims of
the living, whenever, wherever, the hungry dreams of the young have collided
with the "realism" of the ageing, we have found ourselves turning to words,
images, sinews of argument, synecdoches, tropes, metaphors, out of the
grammar of Antigone and of Creon'. 23 Indeed, there seems to be increasing
artistic and scholarly interest in Antigone in the twenty-first century, with the
Women's Project in New York staging an 'Antigone Project' consisting of five
new versions of the play as a response to the Patriot Act in 2004, with such
journals as Helios in 2007 and Mosaic in 2008 devoting special issues to the
topic,24 with DePaul University in Chicago hosting a year-long 'Year of
Antigones' event in 2008, and with a forthcoming performance history of
A ntigone edited by Helene Foley and Erin Mee to be published by Oxford
University Press. Meanwhile, theatres around the world carry on enlisting
writers for new versions and staging new performances of Antigone as opera,
drama, dance, and multimedia, including an opera in 2008 with a libretto by
Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott. Performances of Antigone continue to
resonate in response to specific geopolitical conflicts, and raise troubling
issues about gender and family relations, state power, individual and spiritual
needs, and questions of identity. The fact that the play has been adapted into
so many different media and in so many different cultures reflects its ability to
unearth the underlying conflicts and uncertainties in human behaviour that
persist in haunting us today.

23 Steiner (1984: 138).

24 Helios, vol.33, supplement, 2007; Mosaic, vol. 41, no. 3 (Sept. 2008).
 1

Antigone,s Political Legacies: Abjection

in Defiance of Mourning

Tina Chanter

There is, it would seem, something monstrous about Antigone. And yet, if we
are to believe Hegel, there is also something noble. A tendency has surfaced in
recent Lacanian interpretations to reduc� the figure of Antigone to the
uncanny, reading her as monstrous (or as the Thing, the Lacanian Real) .
Lacanians are not the first to have emphasized the monstrous, o r relied upon
the trope of the uncanny in interpreting Sophocles' Antigone. Martin
Heidegger put forward such an interpretation in An Introduction to Metaphys­
ics, making the focal point of his discussion the second choral ode, in which
man is said to be 'the strangest of the strange [to deinotaton]' or the 'strangest
of all'. 1 For Heidegger, humans are deinon: the uncanny or unheimlich is both
'terrible', in the sense of 'overpowering' and fearful, that to which we are
'exposed', and it communicates the sense in which humans are 'powerful' in
the face of the overpowering. To be human is to be one who 'uses power' and is
'violent'.2 As Cecilia Sjoholm puts it, for Heidegger, 'Human existence is tragic,
because human being_s, as the most deinon, .bring disaster upon themselves
through their propensity to respond with violence to their own constitutional

1 Heidegger (1959: 149, 151).

2 Ibid. 149-50. Marianne McDonald translates deinos as 'wondrous', 'monstrous' (2002: 58).
or 'amazing' (2000: 15). This 'manner of being', Heidegger tells us, 'is not that of every day'
( 1 959: 165). 'One who is thus (namely the strangest of all) should be excluded from hearth and
council' (164). Although the attitude of the chorus is one 'of rejection', Heidegger reads in it a
'direct and complete confirmation of the strangeness and uncanniness of human being' (165).
He underlines the 'strange ambiguity' of deinos, which he translates as unheimlich, the uncanny
(see 150). The uncanny 'casts us out of the "homely", i.e. the customary, familiar, secure' (151).
It 'prevents us from making ourselves at home and therein it is overpowering' (151). In the
uncanny, the 'deinon as the overpowering (dike) and as the violent (tekhni!) confront one
another' (160). "'Dike" is the overpowering order. Techne is the violence of knowledge' (165).
 Antigone's Political Legacies 21
20 Philosophy and Politics
words in which Antigone herself explains her action.9 The words in which
exposure'. 3 Or as J. Peter Euben says, 'We are simultaneously capable of
Antigone identifies the cause of her action neither appeal merely to 'a being',
prodigious power but often powerless to govern ourselves; able to control
nor do they accept the judgement of herself in terms of the uncanny, but
the forces of nature but not our own nature; inventors of civilization-that is, of .
rather articulate a law (nomos) to which Creon remains blind.10 This law
language, thought, and the sentiments that make human concourse possible­
I shall provisionally describe as a law that sketches a future of a politics yet to
and destroyers of what we have made, including tragedy and ourselves'.4
come. The future of the law that Antigone announces is one that lies not
Taking up Holderlin's Remarks on Antigone, Heidegger deepens and refo­
between the familiar and the unfamiliar, between the human and the inhu­
cuses his interpretation, so that Antigone, rather than humanity in general,
man, between life and death, nor even between the tame and the monstrous.
becomes a more explicit topic of enquiry. Going beyond the words of the
Rather it lies between Antigone's defiance-which I shall understand as
chorus, Heidegger comments on other instances of the word deinon, suggest­
ultimately a political protest-and the defiance .o f all those political protesters
ing that Antigone takes on her uncanniness-rather than merely submitting
to have followed in her steps, some of whom are still to come. The inheritance
to it-and that, as uncanny, the meaning of her expulsion from the polis must
of this defiance-a genealogy of Antigone's political legacies-is what con­
remain philosophically indeterminate.5 The meaning of Antigone's uncanni­
cerns me here.
ness, her being both 'unhomely' and 'homely', can be 'said poetically', thereby
Before turning to this inheritance, let me say a word or two to anticipate my
always remaining 'only as a potential for being'.6 Heidegger dismisses those
later disc�ssion, of how the l:gacy of Heidegger's reading of Antigone as
who look to A
' ntigone's "words" for an explanation of her actions', searching
uncanny 1 s taken up by Slavoj Ziiek in a politically reactive way. The trouble
for what 'causes her deeds' as only concerned 'with finding some reference to
with this reading is that Antigone is reduced to a representative for the human
beings'. Such interpretations, for Heidegger, 'fail to recognize that in her
propensity for destruction, while humanity's creativity is apportioned else­
words Antigone' is speaking not of beings 'at all', but rather, the implication
where:-to the political realm of which Creon is understood to be representa­
is, of Being.7
tive. Ziiek not only confines the scope of the monstrous to the figure
Yet in his quest to find the true meaning of the tragedy in Being (Sein)
Antigone, particularizing that which both Heidegger and Lacan understand
rather than beings (Seiendes), Heidegger neglects to acknowledge that to read
in the light of a more general human trait, but goes as far as suggesting that
Antigone as unheimlich is ultimately to submit to Creon's judgement of
Antigone as uncanny (deina), and to fail to take seriously Antigone's own
�ntigone i� 'proto-totalitarian'. 11 In a gesture that is symptomatic of a perva­
sive strategic resource of which Lacanians tend to avail themselves, the mythic
judgement of herself.8 It is to ignore, to read over, to fail to interpret, the
proportions of Antigone's monstrosity are then recuperated according to the

3 Sjoholm(2004: 69).
4 Euben( 1986: 25). Patchen Markell makes a similar point when he refers to 'the notion of
human beings as constitutively caught in a double bind, rendered vulnerable by their potency'
(2003: 80).
5 See Heidegger(1996: 103).
6 See Heidegger( 1996: 121 ). In An Introduction to Metaphysics, based on lectures from 1935,
while Heidegger is not explicit in associating Antigone with the uncanny, given his discussion of
the 'rejection' and 'exclulsion]' (1959: 164-5) of the uncanny, as that which brings us out of the
familiar, preventing us from 'making ourselves at home' (ISi), it seems fair to say that he has
Antigone is mind. In the 1942 lecture course, Holderlin's Hymn 'The lster', this is rendered
completely explicit (Heidegger 1996). When Antigone applies the word deinon to herself in her
opening exchange with Ismene, she is expressing not her own, but Ismene's view(Storr 1981:
322).
7 Heidegger(1996: 115-16.
8 Storr( 1981: 384). Although Creon is not the only one to describe Antigone in this way, my
point here is that for many commentators, among them Hegel, Heidegger, and Lacan, there is a
tendency to conflate the meaning of the play with Creon's interpretation of events at crucial
points. In an otherwise highly illuminating essay, Samuel Weber (2004) is critical of this reading
of Hegel, insisting that it ignores the 'dialectical structure' of the phenomenology, and 'all the
figures that people this "world", Creon no less than Antigone, are equally implicated in its
li�itations and the_refore share its destiny'(2004: 125). Yet Weber does not take into account the
v1e�s Hegel puts forward o� marriage, w?men, and politics in other texts, views that betray his
?ehef m the need to subordinate the family-and women in so far as they are representative of
lt-�o the n�eds of t�e s�ate. Nor does he account for the ways in which Antigone is con­
taminated wit? the abiect1on of the corpse, an abjection that she must purify, but from which
she cannot ult1mately be separated for Hegel. Derrida sees this when he asks, 'Isn't there always
an ele�ent e.x �luded from the system that assures the system's space of possibility? ... The
sy stem s vo rrnt ( 1986: 162), and when he explores the abject in relation to Genet, associating it
. .
with the animal decomposition of Polynices' corpse( 144).
� .
Heidegger is far from alone in this neglect. As Mary Beth Mader argues (2005), a long
tradition has neglect�d to take s�riously Antigone's own explanation of her action . Perhaps it
takes a woman, who 1s also a philosopher, to take Antigone at her word!
10 Storr(l981:384).
11• See Ziiek (2005: 344). There are moments at which Ziiek provides a more nuanced
readmg of the figure of the monstrous or inhuman, as when he suggests that it is an 'indivisible
� '.
remainder' of umanity. :nar�ed by a .terrif'.Ying excess which, although it negates what we
.
? ?
un er�tan as hu�amty, 1s inherent in being-human' (2006a: 22). David Hart makes this
point in his unpublished paper, 'An Ethics and Politics of the Inhuman: Ziiek on Antigone'.
22 Philosophy and Politics
:lynamic of fetishism, a symbolic strategy that is adopted in order to defuse
her disruptive potential, and to reassert the phallic primacy of the symbolic,
which is thereby purified of monstrosity, while the logic according to which
Antigone understands her own action is consigned to some imaginary, unin­
telligible, unreadable, apolitical realm.
1. ANTIGONE'S POLITICAL LEGACIES:
TRANSLATING ANTIGONE
In tension with psychoanalytic readings of the play which take up Sophocles'
Antigone in terms of the trope of the uncanny and posit her as that which is to
be expelled, as a disruptive force whose harmful potential must be reined in
for the preservation of the stability of the social order, stands a remarkably
varied tradition of translations and adaptations that draw inspiration from
the figure of Antigone as a radical political resource. From the resistance to
Nazi-occupied France in World War II to the struggle against apartheid in
South Africa, far from being construed as a largely negative force, the Sopho­
clean Antigone has proved inspiration for generations of freedom fighters. 1 2
Athol Fugard recounts the story of how performances of the play-in which
Antigone's is a 'lone voice of protest raised against an unjust law'-became, in
the words of Nicholas de Jongh, 'a timeless survivors' guide' for 'political
prisoners', including Nelson Mandela, held in South Africa's notorious prison
Robben Island.13 Fugard calls Antigone the 'greatest political play of all time'. 1 4
Describing the circumstances that gave rise to his version of the play, The Island,
which was first performed in Cape Town in 1973 and subsequently in Ireland,
Fugard refers to the system of apartheid, which deprived 'black and coloured
South Africans (to use the racial categories of the old South Africa) ... of all their
basic human rights' as 'monstrous'.15 For Fugard, it is not Antigone who epito­
mizes the monstrous, but those who sustained the political regime of apartheid,
12
See Anouilh (1951). Kofman (1978), Fugard (2002), and Fugard et al. (1974). Fugard
recounts the history oC the production of the play in South Africa during the years that Nelson
Mandela was imprisoned. Kofman's article refers to a 1978 production of the Antigone per­
formed in Strasbourg with the collaboration of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Michel Deutsch.
The production transpo�ed the play into World War II France. In the early 1960s there were at
least four productions of the play in Poland (see Roche 1988: 221 ).
13 Marianne McDonald and Michael Walton quote Nicholas de Jongh in their introduction
to Fugard (2002).
14 Fugard (2002: 13 ).
1 5 Fugard (2002: 130).
Antigone's Political Legacies 23
which split humanity along the lines of those who were entitled to basic human
rights, and those who were not, according to the colour of their skin.
Complementing this rich political tradition of dramaturgical interpreta­
tion, feminist theorists, including Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, and Sarah
Kofman, have drawn critical resources from Antigone, attesting to her socially
progressive legacy. 16 What are we to make, then, of the contrast between the
conservative impulse driving Lacanian and Zizekian readings o f Antigone as
monstrous, as a dangerous figure, not merely detrimental to established law
and order, but a harbinger of totalitarianism on the one hand, and on the
other hand, those who read her as a defender of human rights against the
monstrosity of tyrannical, repressive regimes? To articulate the logic accord­
ing to which Antigone has accrued political significance cannot be merely a
matter of invoking her as representative of political rights in any banal or
straightforward way.17 Whatever function Antigone might take on in relation
to the political, that function is complicated by the way in which Antigone
positions herself in relation to the polis,' and by the reception of Antigone,
which has been overdetermined by numerous critical attempts to come to
terms with the divergent authoritative, interpretive legacies issuing from
Aristotle's Poetics, Hegel's dialectical manoeuvres, and Freudo-Lacanian psy­
choanalytic theory. 18 The language in terms of which Antigone couches the
law to which she appeals-which is antithetical to the particular version of
politics evidenced by Creon-coupled with the fact that the version of
democracy at play in Sophocles' Athens positions women as always already
excluded in advance from making a meaningful contribution to the political
realm, dictates that any attempt to assess Antigone politically must be alert to
a dual requirement.19 The cultural limitations imposed on Antigone by
-
16 See Butler (2000). lrigaray (1985), and Kofman (1978).
17 Butler (2000) reads Antigone as indicative of a crisis in representation. Antigone can no
more stand in any straightforward way for a political principle than she can for the bonds of
kinship.
18
Lane and Lane offer an interpretation of Antigone that is cast as a rebuttal of'the postulate
of family-polis conflict', which they consider to be 'highly misleading' (1986: 162). While they do
not cite Hegel, dearly he is a major source of readings that highlight 'the interrelated opposi­
tions of nature/convention, female/male, Hades/Olympus, intuition/reason, divine duties/
human-made duties' (1986: 162). Patchen Markell (2003) seeks to recuperate Aristotle's insis­
tence on the importance of action in tragedy, in the face of what he casts as the over-emphasis of
character in recent interpretations. He does not address the fact that for Aristotle, Oedipus Rex,
not Antigone, is the exemplary tragedy. Butler (2000) asks us to consider Antigone, rather than
Oedipus, as the dominant figure for psychoanalysis.
19 As is well known, in fifth-century Athens women were confined to the oikos, conceived as
· a realm in which the necessities of life were met. Only on the basis of such an arrangement, could
political actors be freed from the requirements of necessity, so as to pursue what Hannah Arendt
has caUed 'the life of the mind' (1978).
26 Philosophy and Politics
t he ine quitie s of a st ate w hic h has con si ste ntly di scrimin ated ag ai nst t hem',
Ber nadette Devli n ' st and ing up ag ai nst ' oppre ssio n and p atri arc hy,or,i n P at
Murp hy' sfilm, Anne Devlin,t he un her alded hou sekeeper oft he revolution ary
figure Robert Emmet.27
T he aim of w hat follow si snot so muc hto al g
i n A ntigo ne and Creo nwit h
speci fic hi storic al figure sor p articul ar politic al in stitution s,not to c hampi ­
on one met ap horic al re ading over anot her. The attempt i sr at her to di sen ­
t angle t he line sof in herit ance accord n
i g to w hic ht he politic al ge ne alogy of
Sop hocle s' s Antigone have pl ayed t hem se lve sout, not on t he b asi sof e st ab­
li shing t he true me aning of t he pl ay, as if t hat trut h could be po sited as a
prior que stio n, sep ar able r
f om it s hi storic al and politic al leg acy. In ask i ng
w hat co nst ti ute s t he pol ti ic al m
i petu s of Antigone's leg acy, I w lil re affirm
A ntigo ne' sr adic al pol ti ic al sig nific atio nnot by attempti ng to cont ai n her i n
some myt hic al,immut able sp ace de fi ned aspre-politic al, nor by celebr ati ng
her as an eter nally recurre nt sacrifici al figure i n a ge sture t hat would
compre he nd t he true me aning of A nt g
i one as co nsi sti ng in her service to
t he politic al st atu s quo, asif A ntigo ne tr an sgre sse st he pol ti ci al only in order
to ultim ately reconfirm it s aut hority u nc hanged.28 I sugge st t hat Sop hocle s'
A ntigone anticip ate s a future politic al order, r at her t han t he pre sent i n t he
n ame of w hic h Creo n assert s hi s ab so lute aut hority, and t hat at t he same
time, she conte st s hi s re aso ni ng, t he ab so lute n ature of hiscl aim s, and t he
r e strictio nof T heb anroy al,pol ti ic al line age to one sex only. Tr anspo sed into
new polit c
i al context s, A ntigone' s act come s to repre se nt t he buri al of
v ariou s aberr atio ns, and a coroll ary re-birt h of v ariou s politic al ide al s, a
dem and to recog ni ze a r ange of rig ht s for t ho se hi storic ally excluded by
v ar iou s st ate s-i nclud ing t ho se st ate st hat de ny rig ht s b ase d on r ac ist pre­
m ise s. T hroug ht he multiple politic al tr ansliter at o
i nsof Antigone-transla­
tio ns, ad apt atio ns, interpret at o
i n s, and perform ance s t hat toget her
con stitute t he politic al hi story of t he pl ay- apolitic al hi st ory of t he tr agic
work of Antigone emerge s, bre at hi ng new life i nto an activi st tr adition of
. .
po I t1 1c aIrevo t.
I 29
I attempt to negoti ate ap at hbetwee ntwo problem atic assumption s about
t he rel atio nbetwee npolitic s and art in t he context of deb ate sover n ation al -
27
See Roche (1988: 223 and 247).
28
Sjoholm observes that for Heidegger, 'Antigone is the very incarnation of the prepolitical'
(2004: 78). See also Bestegui (1998), to whom Sjoholm also refers.
29 It is striking that the attempt to refer to the figure of Antigone, to her proper name, so often
leads to confusion. Since the referent of the proper name Antigone finds its double in the title of the
tragedy, the echo of the proper name is sometimes lost, left to reverberate in the chamber of the
play. In this regard, one thinks of the hollowed out abyss around which the 1978 production of
Antigone on which Lacoue-Labarthe collaborated, and Kofman ( 1978) commented.
Antigone's Political Legacies 27
i sm and myt h. On t he o ne hand, I w ant to avoid assu m n
i g t hat He aney' s
tr ansl atio n con st ti ute s a poetic attempt to t ap i nto an at av istic, myt hic al
Irel and in order to produ ce an allegedly aut henti c, ae st het ci ally pure, d
i eo ­
log ci ally u nco nt am inated sp ace t hat would serve to ground some future
Irel and still to come. O nt he ot her hand, Iw ant to avoid assumi ng t hat any
tr an sl atio n wroug ht in a politic ally self -co nsciou s rel ation ship o
t Briti sh
hegemo ny and Americ an imperi ali sm mu st pre sent it self as adirect polit c
i al
m anife st o fo r a nation al ist (or anti -nation al ist for t hat m atter) sentime nt or
agend a.30 If Cl air Will si srig ht to sugge st t hat t he form al aspect of poetry, and
not merely it spolitic al co nte nt,c anreco nfigure t he divide betwee nt he public
and t he priv ate re alm s, and i ndoi ng so c ancon stitute apolitic al i nterve ntio n
n
i and of ti self, He aney' s ver sio n of Antigone pre se nt s it self as p articul arly
fert lie fo r co nsidering suc h areco nfiguri ng, e speci ally in t he lig ht of Hegel' s
notor o
i u sly sc hem atic re adi ng of t he pl ay preci sely n
i term s of t he public/
pr vi ate or st ate/f am ily oppo sitio11, and i n t he lig ht of t he co ntempor ary
politic al sit u atio nsHe aney re ad sinto t he pl ay.31
30 In this, I share the emphasis of Clair Wills, who argues that 'poetry refuses to be contained
either within the boundaries of nation-states, or in the available aesthetic categories and theoretical
paradigms of current literary discourse' (I 993: 3). Wills argues for the need to go beyond both the
'redemptive' model of poetry, where art 'offers a "resolution" of political difficulties in the realm of
aesthetics', of which she sees Heaney as representative, and the 'engaged' model, 'which professes a
direct political purpose', and which Paulin has been read as representing, 'to the detriment of an
understanding of the ways in which his poetry works at altering definitions of the political' (9). Wills
argues that in both cases the 'value of art' is assumed to be its capacity to 'find a way out of the
misrecognition of reality by forging a heightened self-consciousness, a knowing, ironic, or rational
stand towards the mystifications of myth' (28). There is a shared belief that 'it is possible to stand
outside myth in art' (28). Both positions assume 'a fundamental connection between the role of the
artist as spokesperson for his people, and the role of myth in supposedly symbolizing the atavistic
thought of those people. Myth is the means by which the poet can approach the timbre of the
community, and it is therefore through the harnessing of myth that the poet can speak "for"
his community. The underlying assumption here is that by opening himself up to the psyche of the
community, the poet's cultural artifacts will exist in continuity with the desires and beliefs of
the community. The political thrust of such poetry thus inheres in its capacity to stand or speak
for a tribe' (33 ). In contrast, for Wills, Paulin stands as exemplary 'of the need to read "politically", not
only because of the dearly political nature of much of [his] subject-matter, but crucially because the
formal nature of [his) work reconfigures the division between public (political) and private spheres
and modes of discourse' (9). However, Wills also goes on to criticize Paulin for not managing to
sustain his attempt to 'construct an alternative vision of the political' (157). For Wills, 'poetry, rather
than being a symptom or reflection of the social, is actually engaged in an intervention in public or
political discourse, in its alteration of the relationship between public and private discourses' (26).
While Wills explains Heaney's redemptive view of art on the basis of works from the 1970s and I980s,
I am suggesting that his 2004 translation of Antigone can be read as making a political intervention
that would rework the earlier redemptive position Wills attributes to him. My focus here is Heaney's
version of Antigone. ! cannot engage here with the question of how far Heaney's views have
transformed over time, but for a more sympathetic reading of his earlier work, see Catterson (2004).
31 See Wills (1993). Paulin reminds us that for Hegel 'neither the right of the family, nor that
of the state is denied; what is denied is the absoluteness of the claim of each' ( 1984: 28).
 28 Philosophy and Politics Antigone's Political Legacies 29

I nwh at s ens e,th en,do es Heaney r ec reate th e tragic form in ord er to m ak e Th eb es.Antigo ne w arns Cr eon of t his tu rn of ev ents: Y
' ou t hi nk I'm jus t a
a poli itc al in terv en tion into th e ord ering and discrimin ation of h
t e public r eckl ess wom an,bu t-N ev er, C reon,forg et:You you rs el fcould b e ther eckl ess
rfom t he priv ater ealm?And how migh tsuc h ar e-ord ering hel p to r ec as t the o ne'.34 Th eimm edi at er es po ns eof th ec horus to Antigon eis to alig n her wi th
qu es iton o fA ntigon e's mo ns trosity? In fac t, far from end ang ering th e ci ty, O edi pus, her fa th er, ar es po ns e th atis echo ed by C reo n,fo rw hom An itgo ne
w hat has b een read as A ntigon e's d eat h driv e, h er urg e o
f r s el -fd es rt uction, ' Had the fat her's m ad ness i n her from h
t es tart'.35A ntigo ne to o w an ts to dr aw
h er b ei ng in lov e with d eath, will its el fturn ou t to hav e b een a m eans of attentio n to the g enealogy th at s peci fi es h er as th e d augh ter o fh er father,
discrimin ating an ew, in r el ation to the qu es tio n of s exu al di ffer enc e, th e O edi pus, not i n ord er to r epeathis error, bu tin ord er to r ev ers ei st eff ec st .
bound ari es s epar ating public from priv at e, but also, in a mor e singul ar Des pi te th ei r schooli ng in Heg eli an di al ec tics, L ac ani ans hav e prov ed
m ann er, bro ther from fa th er and rfom so n. As such, o ne might s ay that th ems elv es som ewh at r esis tant to r eadi ng t he rev ers als t hat orch es trate the
A ntigo ne's ac tis l ess an end ang ering o f acurr entcity than i tis th e eng end er ­ play, pr eferring to o
f cus o nAn tigon e's mo ns tr osi y
t . I n par ticul ar, this r esis ­
ing o f a u
f tur e o ne. In th e act of buryi ng her b rot her,A ntigo ne will in fac t tanc e m anif ests i st el f in r elatio n to th e rev ers al t hat loc ates t he c aus e o f
pr ecis ely dis ti nguish h ers elf rf om themons rt osi ty thatwould s eem to d efine pollution i n Poly nic es' d ecom posing, ab jec t co rps e, th e buri al o f w hic h
her i n adv anc e. In doing so, So phocl es' An itgon em ak es a public int erv ention Cr eon has forbidd en.W hil ei twould b edising enuous to d eny any sugg estio n
h
t at r eaffirms th e pro hibi tion o f inc es t w hic h O edi pus has tr ansg ress ed, o fmo ns rt osi ty,i t would also s eem n a"iv e to t ak eth e word o f C reon and h
t e

'dis ambigu at[ing]' hers el f rfom hermons rt ous famili al li ne.3 2 If sh e appears
to b e mons trous i n doing so, h
t is is no t her own doing so much as i t is a
fu nc ito n of the refus al o f her comm en tators to i nter pr et her comm en tary
u po nh er ac t, to r ead w hat it sig ni fies, to fol low h er logic.W ere h
t ey to hav edon e
so,th ein rtinsic co nnectio nb etw een A ntigon e's appar en ti nstr ansig enc e and th e
v ery l aw and ord er that Cr eon s eek s o
t pro tec twould h av e em erg ed.T his is no t
to sugg es t that w em erely endo rs e a Heg elian logic,w hich i nsists,to b esur e,o n
the mu tu al im plic ation o f Cr eo n's poli itc al and A ntigo ne's famili al l aws, bu t
w hic h also d em ands as acrifici al ex em pl ari ty of A ntigo neth at fails o
t sus tain h
t e
his to ric al dy namism of di al ectic al h
t i nking that Heg el hims elf i nsis ts u pon.Th at
Antigon eis r equir ed to occu py azon eo fmo ns trosi y
t ,b etw een li fe and d eath,
b etw een the hum an and theinhum an,c an b e expl ain ed l ess by wh at An tigo ne
do es, how s he ac ts, than by a r efus al o n the par t o f So phocl es' r ead er s to
recogni zeA ntigon e's ac tio n asconsti tu itng adis ti nc tiv e poli tical co ntribu iton,
ar efus al to allow i t to sig nify as am eaningful symbolic ac t.
2. REV ER S I N G MO N S T ROU S R EA D I N G S O F A NT I GO N E
Tru e to Aris totl e's cl aim for tr ag edy, as eri es o fr ev ers als o rg aniz es So phocl es'
An tigone33 Lik e thato f O edi pus, Cr eon's ki ngly s tatus is rt ans o
. f rm ed in to the
c aus e o f pollu tio n. C reo n, no tTir esi as, turns ou t to b e theon e afflic ted wi th
bli nd ness. C reo n, not An tigon e, is ex pos ed as h avi ng end ang er ed theci ty o f
c ho rus for gr an ted.A ntigo ner epo�. ts th at Cr eon has d ecl ar ed, 'Who ev er isn' t
for us/ls ag ai ns tus in this c as e'.36 C� eo nl ater confi rms t his wh en h es ays to th e
c ho ru s, 'you' reno t to l end th el eas tsu ppor t/ to anyon ew ho'd go ag ai ns t the
o rd er'.37As Hean ey s ays in the appendix to his tr ansl ation, J' us t as C reon
forc ed th eci ti zens o fTh eb es in o
t an eit her/o rsi tu atio nin rel ation to Antigo ­
ne, the Bus h admi nis rt ation i n th eW hit ehous ew as using thes am e tac tic to
o
f rw ard its argum en t o
f r w aro n Ir aq. Cr eon puts i t to the Chorus in thes e
terms: Ei ther you ar e a patrio t, a loy al ci ti zen, and r eg ard A ntigo ne as an
enemy of thest ateb ec aus es hedo es honour to her trai tor bro th er,or els eyou
you rs elv es are rt ai torous b ec aus eyou s tand u pfor awom an w ho has b rok en
the l aw and d efi ed my au thori ty. And Bus h w as usi ng a simil ar s rt ategy,
asking, in eff ec t:A re you in favou r o fs tate s ecuri ty or ar e you no t? I fyou
do n' tsu ppor t the er adic atio nofthis tyr an ti n I raq and the thr eat he pos es to
th e fr eeworld�you ar eo n thewrong sid ein " th ew ar on terro r".'3 8 Lik e Bus h,
C reon extols the virtu es o f patrio tism. Hean ey's Cr eon d ecl ares, 'For the
patrio t/ P erson al loy al ty alw ays mus t giv e w ay/To patriotic duty', and as
An itgon e obs erv es, thechorus is ' af raid to sou nd un patrio tic'.39 If Polynic es
is, in the words of C reon, an 'obsc eni ty ', ' an exil e', ' a rt ai tor', who is s aid to
hav e ' terroriz ed' Th eb es,An itgon e is s aid to b e no t o nly 'wild',bu t 'd efi an t'
[ hub ris itc ], m
' a[d]', a 'bloodsuck er', a 'v i per', and a 'l eec h'.40 A ntigon e's
monstrosi ty- her all eg ed alli anc ewith anim ali ty-is ex plo red in amul titud e
o fw ays .Y etits appearanc ei nL ac an's tex t,in anim position on th e polyv al enc e
Heaney's tr ansl atio n ex plor es,is shi eld ed,v eil ed,o rdissimul ated.

34 Heaney (2004: 30). 35 Ibid. 37. 36 Ibid. 7.

37 Ibid. 18. 38 Ibid. 76. 39 Ibid. 16, 32.

32 See Mader (2005: 17). 33 Aristotle ( 1 999: 65 ). 40 Ibid. 17-37. By association, Haemon too is 'wild' (40-1).
30
Antigone's Political Legacies 31
. Philosophy and Politics

Lacan introduces the word m

' onstrous' only to draw back from it. If Lacan importantly, in laying to rest an aberration, to what does it give new birth? If

prefers to emphasize what he calls the 'beauty effect' of Antigone over her raw Antigone corrects the aberration that the incest of Oedipus,her father,represents,

monstrosity,issuing the advice that,unlike the chorus, 'we shouldn't situate her symbolically curtailing his familial line by taking her own life, hanging herself

at the level of the monstrous',it doesn't take much to read between the lines.41 with her wedding veil, how does the play that is named for her lay to rest

The chorus presents the e

' nigma' of Antigone as i' nhuman',but Lacan is careful aberrations against the law of justice in the new political contexts into which it
to draw a distinction between how Antigone is presented to u
' s' and what she is is translated?

for the chorus.42 For Lacan, the emphasis is on the veiling function that Lacan's right-hand man, Ziiek, is much less coy, much less elliptical than

Antigone performs to cover up what must be h Lacan himself.He calls a spade a spade. While Lacan demurs when it comes to
' idden from view'.43 Though he
�aming Antigone monstrous,distancing himself from the word of the chorus,
himself draws back before the word m
' onstrous', Lacan has no qualms about
Zizek has no trouble in naming Antigone's 'monstrosity',which he associates
emphasizing that for the chorus, Antigone is i' nhuman' and u
' ncivilized', one
with her 'uncompromising' stance, and which consists in 'the directidentifi­
who g
' oes beyond the limits of the human'. For Creon she is c
' old', 'inflexible',
cation of her particular/determinate desire with the Other's (Thing's)injunc­
and fir gid.44 If Antigone is monstrous for the chorus, but not for Lacan,it is
tion/call'. 51 Antigone's insistence on her act renders her 'no-longer-human'.52
because for him, Antigone g
' oes beyond the limits of the human ...her desire
The place in which Antigone finds herself is 'uncanny'.53 That place is 'be­
aims at ... the beyond of Ate.45 Lacan adopts for Antigone the Kantian trope of
twee� two deaths'; Antigone is 'symbolically dead while biologically alive'.54
sublimity-that which is measureless,terrifying,resistant to categories.46Hence
For Ziiek, Antigone puts herself beyond the scope of the symbolic order,
his constant emphasis on her being beyond ate,and on the i' mage of the limit',
e
' xcluding herself fo
r m the community regulated by the intermediate agency
around which he claims t' he whole play turns'.47To defuse the terror of the
of symbolic regulations'.55 She exemplifies, claims Zizek, 'the unconditional
sublime Antigone,he falls back not on Hegel's determinate negation but on the
fidelity to the Otherness of the Thing that disrupts the entire social edifice.
tried and trusted trope of Freudian fetishism. Antigone, not once but twice,
From the standpoint of the ethics of Sittlichkeit,of the mores that regulate the
covers up with dust, disguises, or veils the monstrous wound that Polynices'
intersubjective collective of the polis, her insistence is effectively "mad",
corpse has become,festering just outside the limits of Thebes,so anxious is she
disruptive, evil'.56This should give us pause.Whose understanding of Sittlich­
not to repeat her father's error. She hides the corpse fo
r m her own eyes, fo
r m the
keitor communal ethics does Zizek have in mind here? It is certainly not Hegel's,
eyes of Thebes,and Sophocles orchestrates the action so that it happens offstage,
out of sight of the audience,so that what exactly happens remains contestable. for whom,let's recall, Antigone's culpability is inseparable from her nobility.57
I n a comment that ig�ores the very specific argument Antigone provides and
The audience only hears second-hand of both acts in reported speech,as if the
that Mader unpacks, Zirek asks, i' s not Antigone the anti-Habermas par excel­
sight of the corpse would be too much to bear, too monstrous.48 Antigone
diverts our attention from monstrosity;and yet she is still irrevocably contami­ lence?No dialogue,no attempt to convince Creon of the good reasons o
f r her

nated by it on Lacan's reading. The corpse figures as a condensation for the acts through ra�ional argumentation,but just the blind insistence on her right'.58

monstrosity of the Oedipal line, which Antigone truncates. For Lacan, this In short, for Zizek, we confront in the figure of Antigone the ahistorical

means that the law by which she acts is not 'developed in any signifying chain'.49 L
' acanian Real'.59 Despite Ziiek's disavowal, not only does Antigone in fact

If Lacan takes this to confirm Antigone's monstrosity,there is another way of appeal to an argument,one that,although some commentators have dismissed

reading it,one that takes seriously the series of texts that inherit Antigone's legacy, it as spurious,follows a specific logic,she also stipulates that it is a
' rule of life'. In

political translations of Antigone that concatenate the law she enunciates. If the doing so,she identifies herself with the u
f ture possibility for her community that
act of Sophocles' Antigone is precisely designed to bring an end to the incestuous, she engenders through her death: 'Not for a husband,not even for a son/Would
bloody history ofthe house of Laius, when it is transposed into new historical I have broken the law' says Antigone.60 The logic of this argument has been
contexts,the question becomes:what new aberrations does it lay to rest?50 More
51 Ziiek FOOS: 347). 52 Zizek (2004c: 52). 53 Zizek (2006b: 223).
54 Ibid. Ziiek is quoting the subtitle of the final section Lacan gives to 'The Essence of
41 Lacan (1992: 286). 42 Ibid. 263. H Ibid.264.
Tragedy: A Commentary on Sophocles' Antigone', which is 'Antigone clans l'entre-deux-morts'.
44 Ibid . 263, 280. See also ibid. 274, 281. and 283. 45 Ibid. 263.
See Lac an (1986: 315).
�� �ee Zizek (2005: 347). •56 Ibid. 344. 57 Hegel (1974), vol. 2: 1215.
46 See ibid. 30 I. 47 See ibid. 263, 268. 48 See Butler (2000) .
60
so Ziiek (2005: 344). 59 Zizek (2006b: 267) . Heaney (2004: 54).
49 Lacan (1992: 278). See Roche (1988: 240).
32 Philosophy and Politics
dismissed, like the signs of the birds, as monstrous, as unreadable. Perhaps
commentators have merely been seduced by the Hegelian convention that
Antigone, by definition, falls outside the law of the symbolic, fails to be sublated,
falls short of mediation, and thus cannot be taken up as universal. Not only her
keening, but also her words, must therefore be unintelligible, according to Lacan
and his followers, who recuperate Antigone's monstrosity through the trope of
fetishism, thereby sustaining the phallic, symbolic law as unchallenged.
3. FETISHISM: THE SYMBOLIC LAW OF THE
PHALLUS-AND WHAT'S WRONG WITH LACAN
The emphasis on veiling the phallus in Lacan's reading ofAntigone alerts us to
the implicit appeal to the logic of fetishistic disavowal that fuels his interpre­
tation. According to this logic, the power of the phallus is preserved through
its constant displacement and renunciation. A series of denials maintains as
operative phallic discourse. One might even say that the phallus is kept in
circulation by the very structure of fetishism that both produces and disavows
castration: I know very well (je sais bien) that the symbolic authority of the
phallus is dispersed, but all the same (mais quand meme) let me explain to you
its true meaning.6 1 The truth of the phallus is thereby gathered up, its
consolidation performed through a series of disclaimers, which purport to
keep a distance between the signifying agency of the phallus and its symbolic
referent. Anyone who dares to contest the authority of the phallus is rein­
scribed in the fantasy of castration.
The cluster of problems that typify recent Lacanian interventions into
politics, among which the political allegory of Sophocles' Antigone finds its
place, can be read according to a politics of decentralized investment. The
nexus of signifiers that comprise such circuits sustains the power of the
impossible status of the phallus, which stands in for the insatiable quest of
desire. The castrated status of the phallus allows it to vacate the void at the
centre of Lacanian psychoanalytic discourses, facilitating the deflection of
arguments about its transcendental status. This empty centre of power, this
absence defined by castration theory, is articulated through various regional
loci, so many delegates amongst which power is distributed, circulating
61 See Octave Mannoni (2003). See also Zii.ek, who in a discussion of the relation between.
Hegel and Lacan applies the logic of fetishism to the 'monster' of Hegel's 'panlogicism', but does
not extend this logic to the pivotal role of lack performed by Lacan's notion of symbolic
castration itself (2005: 26).
Antigone's Political Legacies 33
between discourses of fetishism, the uncanny, sacrificial logics, and mourning
and melancholia. Each in turn comes to occupy a regional centre of power,
from which the invisible hand, the absolute power of the phallus, can absent
itself, secure in the knowledge of effective delegation. The following three
steps are representative of this logic.62
Step one: the uncanny
There is an appeal to the uncanny, as that which is both horrific and
fascinating. The fusion of the frightening and the familiar is figured as
monstrous, which both threatens us from within our midst, and approaches
us from afar. The ambivalence embedded in the doubling inherent in the
motif of the uncanny, as that which is both distant and unfamiliar, and at
the same time near to us and all too familiar, is played out in terms of the
proverbial nature/culture dichotomy. In order to assure ourselves of our
morality, to mark ourselves as civili�ed, we construct some purified, idealized
myth of ourselves against the background of some equally mythical other, in
opposition to which we define ourselves, an Other which comes to stand for
the uncivilized, for animality, the inhuman. The threat embodied by this
Other emanates from some ghostly, pre-historical past which must be warded
off, a threat that haunts the social order and has the potential to disrupt its
stability if it is not contained. The prevailing political interests thereby define
themselves as charged with the duty to protect a fragile present, endangered
by a spectral, monstrous past, the disorder of which could break lose to
disrupt the stability of the future at any moment. This monstrosity proves
itself to be conveniently malleable-taking on the shape of the tyrannical
Islamic despot, the terrorist as religious zealot, as easily as it accommodates
the political W!lr protestor (Michael Moore or C indy Sheehan), all of whom
haunt us, all of whom are characterized as 'beyond the pale', untrammelled,
uncontrolled, running amuck.63 Whether in some far-flung Middle Eastern
country, or embedded in our own community, the threat must be identified,
demonized, and ousted. What is made clear is that we must 'close ranks' in
order to pre-empt the canker that will fester in our midst unless drastic action
is taken to root it out.64 In this sense, the threat is both near and far, inside
and outside, familiar and unfamiliar-it is at once untameable, foreign,
62 Mladen Dolar ( l 998) is a case in point.
63 'When she defied the general order/ Antigone had already gone too far/But flaunting that
defiance in my face/Puts her beyond the pale ... It was she who put herself beyond the pale',
Heaney (2004: 30-1, 53).
64 Heaney's translation reads 'The whole crew must close ranks. The safety of our state
depends on it' (2004: 16).
·
34
Philosophy and Politics
horri fic, an d ju st ar ou nd t he c orn er, lurki ng in ev ery nook a nd c ra nny, i n
da ng er of erupti ng rf om wit hin th ecity wall s. I nit sambi val ent doubling,t he
da ng er i spr eci sely u ncanny .
Step two: fetishistic disavowal
Th el ogic of f eti shi sm i scall edup ont oformali zeth e st ructur e of di sav owa lat
w ork i n t hi s ambival enc e, acc or ding t o w hic h w hat t he sub ject kn ow s t o b e
t heca sei s suppl em ent edby a b eli ef that not only pr ovi desth ec ont ra ry of thi s
k nowl edg e, but mak est hi sc ont ra ry b eli ef sub sta ntial. F eti shi sm mat eriali zes
b eli ef, bring s it i nt o b eing, p roduc es a n ob ject that sub stitut es for what
kn owl edg e ha s ju dg edt o b e non- exi st ent . W oma ni sca strat ed,but th ef eti sh
m or e than c omp ensat es for t hi s lack. A c ertain obj ectivity i s t hereby pr o­
duc ed, a rou nd whic h a c ommunity bi nds it self, subj ect s b rought t og eth er
thr oug h t he di sav owal of ca strati on.65 Th e fact that t he ca st rat ed statu s of
w oma nit self p roc eedsfr om a fa nta sy of sam eness,that i s, f rom t he exp ecta ­
ti on that w om en b e n o di ffer ent from m en, i s n ot a llow ed t o figur e i n thi s
l ogic, si nc e fanta sy it self i s sai d t o u ndermi ne a ny divi si on b etw een ' firm
r eality on t he one han d an d imagi nary ficti ons on t he oth er' .66 I t i s rea dily
a dmitt ed t hat t he fa nta sy serv es no purp ose i n eluci dati ng it s supp osed
ob ject.67T he structur e of desir eat stak ei sth epu rvi ew of t hosewh o a ssum e
not so muc h th ei r rig ht of acc ess t o th e p hallu s-a fter all, at t he c ent re of
ca st rati on t heory w e fi nd nothi ng but a voi d-a s t he rig ht t o c ont rol th e
m ea ni ng of it sci rculati on.
Fa nta sy b ec om es kn owl edg e, th e f eti sh fill s t he voi d, a nd b eli ef b ec om es
obj ecti vity .T he a
f nta sy of w om en' sca strati onc onti nu est o u
f el feti shi stic m odel s,
but it s fanta smatic statu si sc on vert edint okn owl edg e. Now a l t hep hal lu sha st o
doi n or der t o a ssu reit sli velih oodi sc onti nu et op roduc ea seri es of f eti shi stic
sta nd-i ns, o
f rg etting t hat t hei r mat erial pr oducti on repr esent s nothi ng but a
fanta smatic sc enari o of na rci ssi stic sam eness.W ea re not t ob e di sapp oi nt ed.
Step three: commodity fetishism
T he form that t hi s forg etti ng tak es i s a pr edictabl e a nal ogy. Psych oa nalytic
f eti shi sm i s equat edwit h Marx 'sc omm odity feti shi sm . 'I kn ow very w ell (t hat
65See Oolar ( 1998, p. xv).
66Ibid. 194 n. 6.
67 As Dolar says, 'The fantasy, useless to explain its object, can shed light upon its producers
and adherents. It projects on to the screen of this distant Other our own impasses and practices
in dealing with power, and stages them' ( 1 998, p. xvi).
Antigone's l'olitical Legacies 35
t hec omm odity r elati on s b etw een thi ng s ar eju st a di sgui se fo r t he relati ons
b etw een p eopl e, etc . ], n ev ert hel ess I b eli evethat t hec omm odity i s en dow ed
wit h my stical qualiti es'.68Th e di fferenc ethat g et sl ost i n thi sa nal ogy i s t hat
t he ' relati ons b etw een p eopl e' ob scur ed by th e my stical quality of th ec om­
m odity a re real, whil e th e mi ssing p eni s wa s alway s a fanta sm . Comm odity
f eti shi sm ha s c on sequ enc es fo r th ose r eal r elati ons b etw een p eopl e t hat
c omm odity f eti shi sm ob fusc at es,c onsequ enc es with whic h Marx 'sth eory of
f eti shi sm i s c entrally c onc erned, wh erea s, arguably th e occa si on fo r p syc ho­
a nalytic f eti shi stic th eori zi ng, w om en a re only ev er repr esent ed by a a
f nta sy
pr oc eedi ng rf om t he my th of t he sam e, w hich mak es p sych oanalytic t heory
only ever capabl e of taki ng seri ou sly p hallic desi rea sa machin efor rep rodu ­
cing it s ow nf eti shi stic delu si ons.W om en can only b ec onsi der edi n so fa ra s
th ey ar eca st rat ed-t hat i s a s imagi na ry b ei ng s, a sth epr oduct s of a ma scu ­
li ne, f eti shi stic imagi nary that del egitimat es i n a dva nc e a ny c hal leng et o t he
fanta sy t hat fu el s it . T he ea se with w hic h c omm odity f eti shi sm c om est o b e
equat edwit hp sych oa na y
l tic f eti shism i s sympt omatic of th e ea sewit hwhich
fa nta sy not only sub stitut es fo r reality, but di sba rs a ny i nt err ogati on of it,
m erely p ositing it a sa nunfath omabl e enigma,w hic h Antig onei sam ong t he
fir st of ma ny myt hical w om en t or epr esent.
4 . AN TIGON E'S W I L D SIGNS
T he c horu s p roclaim s of A ntig one that th e 'wil dness i n her c om es f rom
O edipu s/ S heg et sit f rom h er fath er. S hew on't rel ent'.69 Laca n draw satt enti on
t ot hew or dH ea ney t ra nslat esa s w
' il dness', wµov,a w or dthat t hec horu su ses
t ounit e A ntig onea nd her fath er.70 Evok ing ca nnibali sm,th ew or dcall sup for
Lacan 'eat ers· of ra w fl esh', 'som ething unci viliz ed, som et hing raw ', th ereby
a ssociati ng A ntig onewit h th e bi rdswh of eed onth eca rri on flesh of Polyni ­
c es.71 Th e a ssociati on will b e c em ent ed by t he ' stra ng e imag e' of A ntig one
herself a sa 'bir dt hat ha s ju st l ost it sy ou ng ', on ew hose sig ns,lik eth ose of t he
bir dswh ose sig n s Tir esia swill lat err ep ort ha vi ng fail edt o rea d,ar e o
f un dt o
b eu nint elligibl e,inhuma n, sensel ess.72 S om ek ind of stat e of natur ec onfront s
u si n an dt hr oug h th em eani ngl ess i nt o whic h Cr eon att empt s t oca st Anti ­
g one'sact . Antig one, for her part, i nsi st s on a rticulati ng th e l ogic of h eract,
t helaw acc or di ng t ow hic h sh eact s,a sserti ng it s sig ni ficanc e.H er act of burial
i s denied sig ni fica nc eby Creon,a nd Laca n' s rea di ng-i n sofar a sit supp ort s
68
Ibid. 1998, p. xv. 69 Heaney (2004: 30). 70 Storr (1981: 350).
71 Lacan ( 1992: 263 ) . 72 Ibid. 264.
36 Philosophy and Politics
the singularity of a symbolic that cannot tolerate as significant any challenge
to its logic-merges with Creon's single-minded interpretation of his law as
the only possible law. Antigone is thus said to reside in a realm that is beyond
reason, beyond the reach of the symbolic, beyond a limit that is marked by
ate, but which at the same time constitutes the bounds of reason, the
accepted, conventional understanding of social order, the stability of which
is aligned with the masculine authority of a male king, whose authority is
taken to fuse with any possibility of the law, with the law as such. For Tiresias,
it is not Antigone's wildness that is at fault, but Creon's refusal to bury
Polynices that pollutes the city. ' The body lying out there decomposing/Is
where contagion starts. The dogs and birds/Are at it day and night, spreading
reek and rot/On every altar stone and temple step, and the gods/ Are
revolted. That's why we have this plague/This vile pollution. That's why
my birds in flight aren't making sense. They're feeding on his flesh'.73 The
decomposition of Polynices' corpse causes the revulsion/revolt of the gods.
The very sky itself is said to 'vomi[t] black air'.74 In his last words, Creon
acknowledges, just as Antigone had warned: 'My recklessness and pride
I paid for in the end'.75
Creon sees bribery and corruption where there is none, yet, like Oedipus,
fails to see, until the final moment, that he himself is the cause of the
pollution that infects Thebes.76 The words of Tiresias underline this identi­
fication, aligning Creon with the unwitting Oedipus, as do Creon's own
words. Lack of good practical judgement, 'unwisdom', or 'witlessness' is the
'greatest threat' the chorus tells Creon, who declares after Antigone has hung
herself, 'Hide me, and hide me from myself'.77 In his last speech, C reon says,
'hide me, blindfold me', again echoing (or anticipa ting-depending on
whether we appeal to the chronological order in which the plays constitut­
ing the Oedipal cycle were written, or that of the historical time they
represent) Oedipus, who blinds himself in order not to look upon the effect
of his deeds.78 'The man that's blinded always needs a guide', warns Tiresias,
and it is not himself, but Creon, whom he regards as blind: 'I have the power
to see and warn'.79
The keening Antigone makes, becomes indistinguishable from, the cries of
the birds that Tiresias will later describe to Creon as 'meaningless', finding
73 Heaney(2004: 58). 74 Ibid. 28. 75 Ibid. 74.
76 'There's always money lurking and I never/Underestimate the lure of money' (Heaney
2004: 19). See also 22-3, 56, and 59-62.
77 Storr (1981: 395), and Heaney(2004: 60, 68).
78. See Heaney (2004: 74), and Storr ( 1981: 119). Creon is thus said to be lacking in the good
_
pra;i1cal Judgement (phrones1s) that Aristotle expounds in the Nicomachean Ethics.
Heaney(2004: 56-7 ) .
Antigone's Political Legacies 37
them unreadable as signs. She is, according to the guard, 'like a wild bird
round an empty nest'. She 'lets out a screech' when she sees that the corpse she
has covered is bare. 80 Tiresias will say to Creon: 'never in aU my years have
I heard the like/Of the screams and screeches that I heard this day. There was
no meaning to them. I knew by the whirl of wings/And the rips and spits of
blood the birds were mad'.81 As Carol Jacobs observes, alluding to how
Antigone evades Hegelian universality, 'Antigone becomes . . . interchangeable
with a force of Nature, and specifically the bird which threatens the integrity
of the body and threatens pollution, she who was to guarantee the complete­
ness of shape, and universality. . . . In the figure of the bird, Antigone shrieks,
echoing in advance the birds of augury, shrieks of a kinship that leaves
obscure the difference between foretelling and predation, intelligibility and
frenzy'.82 Rather than quickly resolving the unreadability of Antigone's meta­
morphosis int0 monstrosity, the abject cause of that monstrosity. needs to be
borne in mind: Polynices' decomposing body.
Antigone is depicted as mournl'ng a !ost future that will never arrive,
mourning progeny who will never exist. As if already dead, she knows that
her burial of Polynices condemns her to a future that can only exist in the
wake of her death. Were she to accept the judgement of the chorus that she is
her father's daughter in the sense that she will commit a similar error, that her
tragic fault merely repeats that of Oedipus, she would be accepting precisely
what, as Mader has argued so persuasively, she is determined to reject. As
Mader puts it, 'Most importantly, she is establishing (or attempting to
establish) her brother as only her brother by symbolically refusing a family
precedent, namely that of generating one's own sibling'.
83 By insisting upon the
irreplaceability of Polynices, then, Antigone insists, again as Mader has made
clear, not upon the fact that her parents are dead and that therefore she can
never have another brother born of them, but rather upon the moral law that
she must not, should not-even if it were possible-generate a child that
would also be her brother. This would be a repetition of the Oedipal trans­
gression. She must mourn Polynices as if he were the child that she will never
have, since only in mourning this lost possibility, and not in generating it, can
she both realize it as a possibility, and definitively put it to rest as a possibility.
She must fantasize the future in order to negate it. Only then can her fantasy
be laid to rest. Since this fantasy is impermissible, according to the dictates of
her society, there can only be one resolution, that which follows inevitably
from her burial of Polynices: Antigone's death. Her mourning for Polynices,
then, is also a mourning for her own lost future, of the children she can never
80 81
Ibid. 28. Ibid. 57-8.
82
Jacobs (1996: 903-8). 83 Mader(2005: 14).
38 Philosophy and Politics Antigone's l'olitica/ Legacies

l bra tio n o f a fu ture to come i n w hi ch s he will not s hare.

have, a nd a ce e ere ntpol itical co ntext,t ha t co nte xt
W he n Antigoneis tra nsposed i nto a di ff
A f ture
u tha t s he is adama nt i n de nyi ng herse fl , si nce to do o therwise ers o n t he figure o f A ntigo ne t he possibili ty o fi nterve ni ng i n diverse
co nf
would be i ndeed to be Oedipus 'daug hter ; ti would be to fail to di ff t
ere ntia e poli tical orders, not by rei ns tati ng a pro hib itio n o f i nces t tha t had bee n
hersel ff rom his fault, to co nti nue his lega cy . suspe nded, a nd o fw hich her very existe nce co ns titu ted a tr a nsgressio n, nor
om Pauli n had also used the word 'wild 'f or A ntigo ne i n The
Like Hea ney, T by co nte s ti ng Creo n's ex clusively masculi ne rig ht to i nherita nce, bu t by
i n o f A ntigo ne, a word he pu ts i nto Isme ne's mou th, a nd
Riot Act, his vers o re call ing a nd embodyi ng ot her ideals,t he f uture of w hic h are assured by the
o ne, as he observes i n a n ear il er essay in the co nte xt of a discussio n o f pu tti ng to res t, the burial of, t heir viola tio n. A ntigo ne s' du ty to mour n a
' it h a dis it nctive usage i n Irela nd .84
A ntigo ne, w ' ea st 's poem
Paul in quotes Y u ere ntly eac h
f ture tha t s hould never come to pass is t hereby co nstrued di ff
eats remembers the pre -revo u
' O n a Polit ical Priso ner ', i n w hi ch ' Y l tio nary ts a
time t he play is rebor n. Inlayi ng to res ta dead fu tu re, A ntigo ne a nticipa e
t nce Gore -Boot h "Wi th all you th's lo nely wild ness s tirred "'.85 Com ­
Co ns a i Sou th Af rica, a Naz i-free
di ffere nt fu ture -a f ree Irela nd, a pos t-apar the d
i o ne,
me nti ng o n w hat he calls t he 'chara cterizi ng epit het' of Pauli n's A nt g Fra nce,a time w he n Bus hwill no lo nger be able to dismiss wi thimpu nity t he
Ro che observes, ' This wild ness is no t a barbarism t be se t over agai ns t
o i -a nd so o n. In order not to assure ­
cr i ti cs of the Ira q war as u npatriot c
civilisatio n si nce t he terms of these polarities have bee n too lo ng co -opted complete assura nce would be impossible-but to provide the possibili ty of a
by the Britis h, cas ti ng t hemselves i n t he lig ht of the bearers of civilisatio n, ere nt future f or t hose w ho come a fter her,a post colo nial,pos t-r a cist,a nti­
di ff
i n, a nd t he Iris h as t he u nkemp t barbaria ns w ho
orders, rule a nd moderat o i list
repressive, a nti-imper a f ture, A ntigo ne is repeatedly re figured . Her
u
wi JI not be tamed bu t Caliba n-like i nsist o nwallowi ng int he mud' .86 Hea ney's mour ni ng be comes no t o nly the mou 'rni ng f or a brot her or a
f m liy member
i nsiste nce,t he n,o nt he use o ft he word wild ness by those w ho judge A ntigo ne w ho, i n dea th has be come t he casual ty of t he s rt uggle f or the poli ti cal
s hould be read i n terms o ft he i nsig ht t ha t w hatever it mig ht mea n to call i ndepe nde nce of Irela nd , f or example . Nor is i t t he mour ni ng of some lost,
i e n, the posi tio nfrom w hic h
A ntigo ne wild, w hatever co nte nt t he term is g v a ncie nt, au the ntic, tribal ide ntity w hic h could some how be re trieved ou t of
t or
su cha judgeme nt si made si o ne t hat arrogates to itsel f the rig ht to leg si la e w hole clot ha nd pro e f ture.W ha ta n Iris h
t olo nial u
j cted,prist ine,i nto a pos c
arbi rt a te w hat co ns ti tutes s tabil ity a nd order,a nd w ha t fa lls ou tside the social i o ne mig ht mour nis the passi ng of suc ha nideal,su ch tha ta not her idea l
A nt g
i
co ntrac ti nto some hypo thes zed t d i nto the pas t. The
s tate of nature ,pro jec e i ht emerge, neit her de termi ned by some esse ntial qua il ty of w ha t Irela nd
mg
i o ne's a ctio n is to be fou nd else­
ques tio n of w het her t he mea ni ng o f A nt g t i n has
o nce mig ht have bee n, nor de term ined by its opposi ito n to w hat Bri a
.w here, nei ther i n the curre ntsocial order, nor ou st ide t ha tsocial order,is o ne made o f Irela nd .
t hat is fore closed by those w ho i nsist o n A nti go ne s' mo nstrosity. Rat her tha n
falli ng outside t he rule of law,o nt he net her side of politi cal order, A ntigo ne
rege nera tes t he poli it cal order, i n o ne se nse rea ffir m ing t he social co ntract,
bu ta tt he same time questio ni ng w hat mig ht appear to some to be built i nto C O N C L U D I N G R EM A R KS
f i ng,or
it. I n the case of Sop ho cles,s he does so by k nowi ngly rec itfyi ng,puri y
t d by Oedipus,a nd i ndoi ng
restori ng order i n the wake of t he disorder crea e i of t he f etis h,
Isugges t tha t,ra ther t ha ncapi tula ti ng to t he log c Antigone ca n
so, s he co nfro nts bo th t he co nte nt o f Creo n's edi ct a nd the pri nciple of his be read as exposi ng t he logi cof ab je ctio n,w hic h f unctio ns by a ck nowledgi ng,
au thority ; no t of au thori ty as su ch, but o nly o f Creo n's assump ito n t hat his ects o f t he excluded
rat her t ha n disavowi ng, t he ma terial a nd psyc hi c e ff
rig ht to be ki ng is bot habsolu te a nd grou nded i n his mas culi ne preroga itve . grou nd o ff etis hism . That w hi ch se rv es as a pas t f or t he s to ry of symbolic
As Maria nne Mc Do nald has Isme ne say t A ntigo ne, simply a nd clearly,
o castra tio nt hat logi cs of fe tis hism te llt hemselves,a ccordi ng to classi cpsy cho ­
' Creo n si the law' .87 t d as myt hical, a nd as su chmarked as
a nalyti c t heory,is delegitima ted,posi e
o i nterroga te t he fa ntasy o f cas tratio n, we are
out of bou nds. T told, is to
84 Paulin ( 1985: 11, 1984: 33). Paulin objects to Co nor Cruise O'Brien's reading of Ismene.
mis co ns true t he rules of commu nicatio n, to miside nti fy the functio n of
In having lsmene call Antigone wild, he is associating lsmene with Creon, whose 'misuse of la nguage, to m si take t he purpose of society . To questio n t he aut hority of
power', as Clair Wills says, 'seems loosely analogous to the British rule oflaw' ( 1993: 137). the law is to i nhabit t he illegitima te realm of the imagi nary ;i tis to fail to abide
85 Paulin ( 1984: 33); Yeats ( 1 962: 87).
86
Roche (1988: 226). by the co nve ntio ns of phalli cdis course.W ha tt hi slogi c fails to a ccou nt for,i n
87 McDonald (2002: 4). the case of Antigone,is tha tt he t hreat ema nates from i nside t he city,f rom no
 rnuosopny ana l'ol1t1cs
less a person than the king himself. Unable to deal with the body of a
traitorous subject, Creon wields the law, as if to establish by fiat that Polynices
is nothing. In declaring him null and void, in refusing his burial, Creon
invests Polynices with a power even in death.ss He is nothing but a threat.
The abject body of Polynices comes back to haunt Creon, whose imagina­
tion proves to be limited when it comes to explaining not only who might
have gone against his express prohibition to bury Polynices, but why they
might have done so-he can only think that a man must have done it for
money. The only possible cause he acknowledges is that of bribery, fore­
stalling the possibility of an honourable motive or a viable political chal­
lenge, and the only form of corruption he recognizes is greed, refusing the
possibility that, left to rot, Polynices' corpse will pollute the city, and in so
doing, invoke the wrath of other cities, inciting precisely the kind of political
instability Creon seeks to foreclose.s9 Creon's belief in the power of money
to corrupt takes on fantasmatic proportions, releasing him from any obli­
gation to think through an alternative logic, Antigone's logic. To take
Antigone at her word would be to acknowledge that there is a different
way of looking at things, a way that might have its own legitimacy. This
difference is what Creon cannot countenance. Even after Antigone freely
admits she did the deed, and explains her logic, Creon does not see it, and
many of us still miss it. It remains invisible to Creon, who insists that
Tiresias is being bribed to deliver 'fake truths'.90 His belief in the importance
of material gain, his inability to give credibility to any other motive, and his
commitment to establishing his power as absolute, blinds him to the truth,
· to the claim of family ties, and to history. He sees plots where there are none.
The fetish, one might say, takes on a life of its own, reproducing its own
fantasmatic, phallic, logic, according to which Antigone can only be read as
a monstrous aberration from the only game in town.
Heaney's version of Antigone reiterates Antigone's political resistance in a
context that particularizes its concerns, not only resignifying the future
towards which her action points, articulating a political ideal that is specific
to theAnglo-Irish conflict, but at the same time, challenging the idea that to
protest an unjust war is traitorous, thereby gesturing towards a refiguration of
the relationship between private and public. Heaney transforms Sophocles'
Antigone from one who sacrifices herself in order to preserve the sanctity of
contingent kinship laws, so that she comes to resonate with more than one
88 Tiresias warns Creon: 'Don't stab a ghost/What can you win when you only wound
a corpse?' (Heaney 2004: 59).
89 Ibid. 22-3, 59--61.
90 Ibid. 59.
Antigone's Political Legacies 41
political conflict, conflicts with different, but not conflicting, parameters.
Antigone resonates not only with all the women whose lives have been
sacrificed in Ireland's struggle for independence from Britain, but at the
same time, she resonates with the Cindy Sheehans of this world, those who
have sacrificed their sons to an unjust war, and whose protest against that war
is deemed unpatriotic by those who wilfully misled the public about the
legitimacy of the war.9 1 Heaney thereby builds into his version of the play
not one but two determinate-but not conflictual-political resonances,
multiplying the ways in which Antigone signifies beyond the political context
of ancient Greek mythology.92 Antigone no longer acts to preserve the Jaws of
kinship endorsed by the Oedipal prohibition. The new ideality in which she is
enlisted is that of Irish postcolonial nationality on the one hand, and on the
other hand that of a world in which political protestors against the war on
Iraq are not conflated with terrorists, but rather recognized as calling for a
future for democracy that is yet to come, a future in which the rhetoric in the
service of freedom is not merely an empty ideal, but one with determinate
content, a future in which Britain and America do not pay lip-service to such
ideals while financing and providing weaponry for Israel's attack on Lebanese
democracy.
Heaney recreates the tragic form in order to make a political intervention
into the ordering and discrimination of the public from the private realm. In
the appendix to his translation of Sophocles' Antigone, The Burial at Thebes,
Seamus Heaney evokes the musical-one might call it semiotic- affect of
Antigone, attributing the 'writerly urge' that provided him with the 'poetic
go-ahead' to re-translate the play to a 'sudden discovery'.93 In the 'drive and
91 I am thinking of the challenge Irigaray issues to us to think according to a logic that goes
beyond the Platonic model of the one and the many. not by a mere reversal of that logic, but
developing, for the first time, a logic of the more than one. lrigaray sees herself not only as
subverting the Platonic model which assumes the priority of the one over the many, but also
what she construes as an inversion of that model-the priority of the multiplicity over the one.
'Even in the reversal which the privilege of the many over the one represents, a contemporary
reversal in the name, amongst other things, of democracy . . . we remain subjected to a blind
model of the one and the many, of the one and the same, a model on which a singular subject
imposes one sense rather than another. Similarly, granting precedence to concrete singularity
over ideal singularity is inadequate in challenging the authority of a universal valid for all men
and all women' (2000: 128-9).
92 If Heaney deliberately multiplies the resonances of Antigone, he is not alone in having
done so. Here is what Roche says about Aidan Carl Matthews's commentary on his translation
of the play: 'The chorus informs us by way of the programme that "The dream is set in Ireland in
the 1980s o.c., soon after Sparta has entered the war on the German side". The classical Greek
allusion points to one, but only one, of the play's several frames of temporal, spatial and cultural
reference' (Roche 1988: 231).
93 Heaney (2004: 75-6).
42 Philosophy and Politics Antigone's Political Legacies 43

pit ch' of Eibhl in Dhubh Ni Cho na lil' s 1773k eenf orh erhu sba nd, 'cut dow n abu siv e autho rity of pow erf ul l ead ers is co nt est ed , i n whi ch th eir lo gic is
a nd l eft',lik e Polyn ices, 'u nbu ried ',H ea ney d iscov ered 'a not ethat th e st rick en refut ed i nth enam eof f reea ct o
i n that f ollow sa diff erent lo gi c,a pp eali ngto
A nt igo ne m ight sound i n th e speedy , haunt ed op en ing mov em ent of th e valu es that hav e b een ob scu red by th e pow ers that b e. Thi s is not ju st a
play'.94 ' Gr eek t ra gedy ', ob serv es H ea ney, ' is a s mu ch mu sical sco re a s it is matt er of co nt rib uti ngto a ma rgi nal hi st o ry of f reedom fi ght ers, o r elu ci­
d ramat ic script'.95 I n th e pref ace to hi s t ra nslatio n of ' Th e Lam ent fo r A rt datin g f urth er exampl es of wom en r esi stor s , but of ex pl icat ing th e lo gi c
O'L ea ry ', F ra nk O' Connor d
i ent ifies, say s H ean ey, a d
' ef ensiv e not e' in ti s of resistan ce, a lo gic n
i whi ch a pp eal ing to an id eal that i s i n da nger
op ening lin es ( l 09), th e not e that enabl ed H ean ey to co nn ect 'th e w fi e of perv ersion,and a ssu ringa futur efo rthat id eal,do es not m ea n endo rsing
t raumat zi ed by th ed eath of h er hu sba nd at th e hand s of th e En gli sh sold iery a parti cula r, d et erm inat e id eal , b ut preserv n
i g a th eat ri cal sp a ce n
i wh ich
in Ca rri gan m
i ma a nd th e si st erd riv enw lid by th e ed ict of a ty ra nt n
i Th eb es' pol ti i cal id eal s ca n b e r egenerat ed. Fo r Anti gon e, giv en h er f am liy h isto ry,
(78).96 Mour nin g b ecom es o
' ut ra ge' .97 Th e o
' utbu rst of gri ef a nd a nger' of d eath wa s th e o nly solutio n, b ecau se of th e peculia r n
i cestuou s lo gi c of
Eibh lfn Dhubh and of So pho cl es' Ant igo ne is p rovok ed in both ca ses by an h er fam liy. Had th ings b een oth erw ise n
i th e an ci ent Greece in wh ich
n
i u
j sti cethat can not b e contain ed by ratio nald iscou rse,a nd in both ca sesthat Sopho cl es' set th e play -had Anti go ne a s a woma n b een abl e to look
in ju st i ce i s emb edd ed in a h eav ily ov erd et erm ined pol tii cal a nd h isto rical fo rwa rd to a futu re oth er than that of reprodu cin g ch lid ren, had sh e b een
cont ex t. Th er e isan a ffect of an gry mou rnin gthat refusesto b e co ntai ned by gra nt ed th epot ential to contr b
i ut e produ ct v
i ely to th e poli sin so m e oth er
ratio nal di scou rse, a nd whi ch H ean ey fi nd s ex pressed in th e pit ch of two way-a s a pol ti i cal fi gu re, f or exa .rnpl e, h er d eath mi ght not hav e b een
wom en, sepa rat ed by 2,500y ea rso r so, but is perha psd iscernibl ea ga in inth e n ecessary.
an gu ish ed cri es not o nly of th e I ra qi sist ers,dau ght ers, a nd moth ers, but al so Th e polit ical l ega cy of A nt igo nes need not b e a matt er of id ealiz ing th e
broth ers, son s,a nd f ath ersof tho se cut down by Bu sh a nd Blai r's jo n
i t d ecisio n sa cri ficial mod el f or wom en. To stand u p f orwhat you b el iev eto b er ight,a nd
to atta ck a count ry that po sed no imm inent th reat to eit h ero fth eir stat es, cri es to insist o n ex pli cati ng ti slo gi c,to commit o neself to that lo gi c,to d ist n
i gu ish
supp ressed by mai nst ream w est er nm edia si nce 2003. o neself from a hi sto ry that m ight seem to d et erm ine on e's a ction is th e
At th e sam e t m
i e that H ean ey allow s A nt igon e to evok e th ese multi pl e pol ti ical law Ant igon e ex empli fies. An A nn e Devl in mi ght b e m
i priso n ed,
regi st ers, th e Cindy Sh eehan s of thi s wo rld, a nd th e Eibhl in Dhubh Nf a nd a moth er mou rni ng th e d eath of h er so n n
i a n un ju st wa r m ight b e
Chona ill sof thi swo rld, Hean ey ca nb e said to hav eadd ressed th eu nt enab le a rrest ed f or w ea ringa t -sh irt n
i a sho ppi ngmall,a nd many oth er ev entual ti i es
ex empla rity that H egel d ema nd s of A nt igon e, who stand s f or th e et ernal m ight o ccu .
r For Sh eehan, it i s a qu est o
i n of standin g up fo r f reedom a nd
i ro ny of o nly o ne hi sto rically situat ed po ilti cal commu nity, a nd y et who i s ju st i ce, mobilizin g resista nce, a rt iculati ng a rgum ent s, sayin gth ings that po ­
mad e to sta nd a s th e all but lo ne representativ e of wom en n
i general , su ch liti cian s seem to b etoo self -int erest ed o r amb ti o
i u s to say. I nth e co nt ext of
that wom en' s cultu ra l , h isto ri cal,a nd pol ti ical d v
i er sity th ro u ghout h isto ry colo niali sm a nd empi re, to refuse to allow th e mon st rou s a spect s of t riba l
is outlaw ed. By recreati ng Anti go ne i n th e specific pol ti i cal co nt ext of d
i ent ti y to d et er:m ineth em ea nin gof o ne' sow nid ent ti y m ea nsto reject th e
co nt em po ra ry I reland,a nd n
i th ewid er cont ext of th efi ght a ga inst m
i p eri ­ t erm sin whi ch th ed ebat e ha s b een set up , to red efin etho se t erm s. I rela nd.
al ism,H ea ney r esi gni fi es A nti go ne. H e seek s neith erto tam e h er wild ness, A pha ntom of th e m
i a gi nation,a p rodu ct of a Brit ish so ciety that d efin esit self
nor to cel eb rat eh ermo nst ro sity,a s fi to rest co nt ent w ti h th e jud gem en tof a s civ ili zed a gain st som eoth er,mo nst ro sity.
h isto ry to sepa rat eh er f rom huma nity. No r y et do esh e co ntai n h er w ti hin Co ntra Ziz ek, Anti gon e' s cultu ral m emo ry isk ept aliv e, not,to b e sur e,i n
som e Hegel a
in na rrat v
i e, wh ereby h er sa cri fice a ssu res th e stabil ti y and th e nam e of th e dom n
i ant ord er, but n
i th e nam e of tho se who fight th e
pu rity of th e so cial o rd er. Mult p
i ly ing A nt igon es, H ean ey ca n b e sa d
i not inju st ice of su ch o rd ers. Dom n
i a nt pol ti i es hav ean u nca nny way of emb ra c­
so mu ch to writ eth e figu reof Anti go neba ck i nto th ehi story of ph lio sophy, i ng un ju st law s in th e nam e of th ei r own su rv v i al, o r sa fety, o r stabil tiy, in
so that th e ext inct o
i n w ti h whi ch H egel 's lo gi c th reat ens h er isf orest al led. reckl ess di srega rd fo r th e i nstab li ti y un lea sh ed el sewh ere, i nstab li ti y that is
Rath er h e con solidat esa pol ti ical t raditio ni nwhi ch A nt igon e stand su pf or liabl eto r etu rn to hau nt i ts initiato rs. A nti go ne's pri nci pl ed, forth right, a nd
a hi story of resista nce, k eep ing aliv e a t rad ti o
i n of reb ellion, in wh ich th e un com pro m isin g rejection of h er f ath er' s n
i cest , h er i nt ent to sta nd by h er
d eci sio nto bu ry ti sl ega cy w ti h Poly nices,i sat th e sam etim ea call f ora new
94 Heaney (2004: 75-6) 77. 95 Ibid. 79. politi cal ord er, not a n a na rch ist o r t erro ri st o r mo nst rou s cel eb ratio n. Sh e
96 Ibid. 109, 78. 97 Ibid. 78. t ran sfo rm s h er ab ject, v ictim statu s, a s on e hau nt ed by th e ho rror of h er
44 Philosophy and Politics
father's unknowing act, into a hope for the future. Roche claims that 'Creon's
refusal to temporize in the matter of Polynices springs from the contradiction
at the heart of his rule: the need to separate himself as much as possible from
the acts of blood through which he came to power'.98 He goes on to say that
this 'contradiction lies at the heart of a11 countries that emerge as republics
through an act of violent revolution, as Ireland did, and subsequently require
frequent and bloody reprisals to distance the affinities between those main­
taining the new state and those still committed to attacking it'.99 Roche
thereby explains why for Creon the law must be 'immutable and unchanging',
namely to 'conceal the violent and disruptive methods by which his authority
was established'.100 No doubt Creon is anxious to distance himself from
disorder, to establish firm rule. Creon's denial of any familial claim in the
death of Polynices is mirrored by the extremity of Polynices' revolt against
Oedipus' incest in the murder of his own brother. Despite the frequent
alignment of Antigone with the monstrous, Antigone's non-violent response
is in fact both more temperate and more rigorously effective than either
Creon's denial of all family claims, or Polynices' and Eteocles' mutual obliter­
ation of one another. In his imposition of iron rule over Thebes, in his refusal
to compromise, come what may, Creon acts as a tyrant, refusing to listen to
the advice of his son, Haemon, to yield to public opinion. He reaps the
dubious benefits accordingly in the suicides of Eurydice and Haemon.
Creon disregards the fact that respect for familial blood relations and for
royal lines of inheritance go hand in hand.
It could have been otherwise. Sophocles created Antigone in an epoch in
which something contingent about being a woman, the ability to reproduce,
was taken as the ground of what it meant to be female, taken as the absolute
truth, the essence of being female. For this reason, Antigone speaks of herself
as already dead: as a woman, the only productive thing she can contribute to
the polis is children. As Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, she prohibits herself
from doing so, because she does not want to continue the incestuous family
line, and because she wants to reaffirm Polynices as a brother and only a
brother. Polynices comes to be, in a sense, her surrogate, still-born child. At
the same time as Antigone's burial of Polynices works to disambiguate the
familial relations that Oedipus had confounded, it symbolically confirms
Creon's right-as brother of Jocasta-to be king. Yet if Antigone recognizes
Creon's authority at the formal level of confirming his kinship relation to her
mother, she challenges his authority in and through her disagreement with
100
98 Roche ( 1 988: 239). 99 Ibid. 240. Ibid. 239.
Antigone's Political Legacies 45
the content of his proclamation. She thereby demonstrates a political insight
that shows Creon's limitations as a political leader.
The fact that Antigone's only productive potentiality as a woman is the
begetting of children is a contingent fact about the time and place in which
the play is set. It is a fact that has been successfully contested by women in
many cultures-although this success has taken a good long while and still
cannot be taken for granted everywhere. Perhaps precisely because of the
successes that have been achieved, however, successes that have been in­
formed by the figure of Sophocles' Antigone, the political legacy Antigone
bequeaths has become more variegated. Antigone has been taken up by
those denied basic political rights on the basis of some contingent fact about
their existence-whether it be the inability to have children whose skin
colour is seen as stemming from a gene pool that might 'contaminate' a
gene pool construed as white, construed as pure, whether it be religion,
gender, sexuality, disability, or some other contingent fact. When such a
denial of rights is legislated by a state, a contingent truth is taken up and
made into the central, defining fact about a person's existence. When
someone is excluded from the political sphere on that basis, such facts are
taken up as grounds on which to exclude persons from political rights
granted by a public sphere, the membership of which is thereby defined in
and through the exclusion of such persons.
Sophocles' Antigone contests Creon's absolute assumption of his rule.
The highly sexualized verbal jousting that characterizes both the exchanges
between Antigone and Creon and between Haemon and Creon is not a mere
embellishment of the logic of the play, but integral to the logic of Antigone.
In and through her deeds, in and through her refusal to back away from her
deeds, Antigone proves herself in death to have had the potential to be a
more effectiv_e political leader than Creon could ever be. She herself is
denied the right to become such a leader because the political status quo,
represented by Creon in Antigone, ridicules the idea that women might be
effective political leaders. Yet she bequeaths that potential not only to future
women but to future war protestors, future protestors of apartheid, future
protestors of attacks on gay identity-and so on. Heaney's The Burial at
Thebes, Fugard et al. in The Island, and Butler's Antigone's Claim help to
1
articulate this legacy, one that is not to be dismissed lightly. 1 0 If Creon
1 01 There is, at least on the surface, a tension in my embracing in this chapter both Mader's
and Butler's arguments, which differ in important respects. By identifying the aberration in
kinship relations that plagues the Oedipal family with Oedipus' incest, and refusing Butler's
suggestion that Antigone's relation to Polynices is incestuous, Mader seems to distance herself
from an important aspect of Butler's argument. In the larger projed of which this chapter
constitutes a part, I suggest that by focusing attention on the political implications of the
46 Philosophy and Politics Antigone's Political Legacies 47

could not hear Antigone, giving no credibility to her words, unable to see and literary theorists that have provided us with multiple and conflicting

the logic to which she appeals, she continues to speak through the history interpretations of Antigone. There is no purely poetic, or purely philosophi­

of political translations and performances of Antigone, which, even as they cal, or purely political reading of the play. What can be said, however, is that

re-signify her, articulate and renew the law she introduces. texts named for Antigone will continue to inspire generations of poets,
I have attempted to follow to its logical consequences the political legacy thinkers, and political actors to come, just as they will no doubt continue
of Antigone's argument, the argument of a mythical figure, endowed by to elicit rebuttals from generations of politicians to come, who will, like
Sophocles with the abililty to see that which neither her mythical father, nor O'Brien and Zizek, insist on the unadulterated, unreadable, singular mon­

her mythical uncle, could see. Antigone sees what she is, and she acts to strosity ofAntigone.

. change it, acting upon her fate in order to protect a binding principle of her
community. The fact that Sophocles' Antigone does so in a drama that
would originally have been performed in a political context that not only
excludes women from meaningful political participation, but also from
acting or seeing the play, and that nevertheless, through her intervention,
her transformative potential, enters into the politics of history, should not
be underestimated. It was perhaps a decisive influence on Plato's argument
to the effect that contingent facts like having no hair or having a reproduc­
tive capacity should not be seen to disqualify bald men or women from
being philosopher-kings.
Antigone's suicide illuminates a principle that had been violated, and in
doing so, restores it, renewing it for others, entrusting it to future actors,
future thinkers. That principle is that one should not mix up the categories
of mother and wife, of brother and husband, and so on. Yet, performatively,
Antigone also introduces another principle, one that says women should be
r.ecognized as capable of political wisdom. This p rinciple contests the politi­
cal interpretation that accompanied the incest prohibition, which recog­
nized only the male line of inheritance as qualified to rule. For us, there is no
going back to the original text of Antigone, no return to a pure Sophoclean
drama that would be shorn of all the translations and adaptations it has
inspired. There is no returning to a Greek text somehow outside the political
genealogy of its multiple translators. There is no pre-political text named
Antigone. There are only the multiple resonances, between Sophocles and
Heaney, between Heaney's Sophocles and McDonald's Sophocles, between
McDonald's Sophocles and Fugard's Sophocles, and so on, ad infinitum.
Neither these translations nor the history of their multiple resonances are
innocent of the philosophers, psychoanalysts, historians, political theorists,

particular law according to which the act of burial by Sophocles' Antigone can be construed,
Mader's argument can be extended in a productive way that helps uncover the multifarious laws
that Antgione comes to signify in various political appropriations of the play. In this way,
contrary to initial appearances, Mader's argument opens up an even more radical reading of
Antigone than Butler's, since it can be expanded beyond questions of sexuality.
 Naked Life; Arendt and the Exile at Co/onus 49

hand, and her ideas on the position of the refugee in modernity on the
2 other, indicate a way of rereading An tigone with the later work by Sopho­
cles, Oedipus at Co/onus. Such a rereading points to an intrinsic relation
between the notion of public space, and the question of 'naked life', a
Naked Life; Arendt and concept produced through Arendt's critique of the hidden ideology of the
enlightenment. The characters of Antigone and Oedipus appear to unravel
the Exile at Colonus the exception and the foreclosure of the refugee in relation to political
space. But to what extent can we really claim that the refugee is to be
found outside of the political? A reading of An tigone, through the philoso­
Cecilia Sjoholm phy of Arendt, will necessarily lead us to question a notion of th� political
that is based on public space. But it will also indicate, to us, that 1t may be
the very exception of the refugee which, in the end, will serve to enforce the
validity of such a space.
INTROD U CT ION

Almost always, the Antigone referred to in the philosophical and theoretical

debates of today is the heroine of Antigone. This is, however, not the only REREADING A N TIG O NE THRO UGH
politically and philosophically poignant figure that Sophocles has offered us.
O EDIPUS A T C OL O NUS
Indeed, Oedipus at Co/onus by Sophocles stands out as the tragedy which
more than any other points to the political consequences of the hiatus
If King Oedipus is a tragedy of male desire, the law, and the unconscious, a �d
between human law and divine law, between the avant-garde freedom of
if Antigone is a tragedy of feminine desire, pitting family against state, ethics
exile and the freedom created in a political community. What is the relation
against politics, then Oedipus at Co/onus is a tragedy of the relation be�wee�
between political life and 'naked life'? In what way can outer exile be trans­
exile and political community. In King Oedipus, the downfall of the kmg is
posed into a figure of consciousness, or as internal exile? The philosophical
brought upon himself because of his actions, challenging the visions of the
readings of Sophocles, from Hegel to Irigaray, have largely considered trage­
gods. In An tigone, Antigone seeks to die for her brother Polynices. She �s
dies in terms of isolated plots, looking at Antigone or King Oedipus in their
buried alive as punishment for her refusal to follow the laws of Creon. What is
own right. Oedipus at Co/onus, in turn, has rarely been made the object of a
guiding her actions are, she says, divine laws, in contrast to human laws. The
philosophical reading. And yet Oedipus at Co/onus puts together pieces from
great philosophical question that has been debated, then, from Hegel to
An tigone, laying them out in a new pattern, and making a 'retroactive'
Heidegger and Irigaray, is how we are to interpret the status of the two
reinterpretation possible.
kinds of law. Oedipus at Co/onus, in turn, poses questions about the condi­
Oedipus at Co/onus presents to us a figure of high political significance: the
tions and definitions of political life, and of what lies beyond the presump­
refugee. What happens when we read Antigone with Oedipus at Co/onus? As
tions concerning the political that we are usually dealing with. Sophocles' final
this chapter will argue, such a reading may well alter our view of Antigone
work inquires into the dialectics between invisibility and appearance, intimate
from the way her character has been interpreted in the philosophical tradi­
space and public space, thinking and acting. The fate of the characters
tion, displacing Antigone as a symbol of a feminine position in society into a
pertains to the definition of human life as an object of politics-leading
figure for the refugee. If we are to perform such a reading, we may resort to
towards the contemporary issues of biopolitics.
the work of Hannah Arendt. Arendt does not herself perform a reading of
Oedipus at Co/onus was left incomplete, or at least found that way. It has an
Antigone or comment upon the political readings of that tragedy made by, for
interesting place in Sophocles' body of work; whereas no trilogy on Oedipus
instance, Hegel and Heidegger, readings that both in various ways discuss
properly speaking is left to the afterworld, the plays on King Oedipus, Antigo­
political space and what is marginalized in relation to it. As I will argue,
ne, and Oedipus at Co/onus do form a kind of a trilogy, although they were
however, Arendt's philosophy of the polis and of public space on the one
 F
50 Philosophy and Politics
written in the 'wrong' order and not performed together.1 Oedipus at Colonus
describes what happened in the royal house of Thebes after Oedipus cut out
his eyes in King Oedipus, but before the burial by Antigone of her brother's
body, defying the laws of Creon, in the tragedy of Antigone. This means that
we may choose to read it as if it is fil ling in the blanks and giving us a
background to the events of Antigone. I n itself, the Oedipus at Colonus is
usually regarded as referring to the religious life of an ageing Sophocles, and
in addition, as the tragedy where the political vision of Sophocles comes
across most clearly.2 Although it is barely mentioned in the tradition of the
philosophy of tragedy, with the exception of Nietzsche, it is highly relevant to
the issues discussed in the many readings of Antigone, for instance. 3
The tragedy takes place outside the city of Athens, in the same place where
the Eumenids, or the female spirits of the underworld, come from. Antigone
is guiding to this place her blinded father, Oedipus, who is exiled from Thebes
since he has brought plague upon the city. They have been wandering for
several years. Oedipus has aged and Antigone is guiding her blind father. She
represents vision, whereas Oedipus is helpless. Oedipus, also, is lawless, and
exiled to a foreign country. He is not just blind; he barely exists and calls
himself a ghost, a shadow of his former self. It is as if exile is threatening his
whole existence. Blindness, in Greek tragedy, is often used as a figure with
reversed implications: Oedipus cannot see, but he has the capacity of inner
sight and access to inner wisdol)1. At the same time, the relation between
appearance and blindness appears particularly threatening. Oedipus is not
just affected by lack of vision, his physical body will eventually disappear to
the world. Physical disappearance is obviously a figurative transposition of
exile; as a refugee, Oedipus is invisible.
Athens is the only city giving help and protection to a stranger, Oedipus
says. Antigone is leading the way to Athens: she is the eyes of Oedipus,
showing the road from exile, guiding her father into a community where
Thebes has failed. As the family approaches Athens, the chorus calls for them
to tread the path that everyone should take:
Oedipus: Daughter, which way should our thoughts go?
Antigone: Father, we should share the concerns of the citizens, giving way and
obeying when we must. ( 170-3 )4
1 Antigone was the first of the Theban plays, written around 442 BC, Oedipus at Co/onus was
the last and was performed after Sophocles' death in 40 1 BC.
2 See for instance the work of Charles Segal ( 1998).
3 A quote, called The wisdom of Silenius, for instance, is present in Nietzsche's Zarathustra,
see discussion of the quote a few sections below. Hegel, in turn, in his lectures on aesthetics, on
the whole admired Oedipus at Co/onus as a drama of reconciliation.
4 Sophocles: Oedipus at Co/onus, translated and edited by Lloyd-Jones ( 1 994).
Naked Life; Arendt and the Exile at Colonus 51
We are here facing an image reversing the tragedy of Antigone. I n the latter,
Antigone is challenging the law of Thebes, refusing to recognize the law of
Creon the king. In Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone is not an anti-gnome, or a
voice opposing the existing order. She is, rather, the voice and eyes guiding her
father into the polis of Athens. Rather than challenging the order of the city,
she represents the law founding Athens. As I will argue, this shift in the
position of Antigone does not necessarily occur because the character differs
greatly between the two tragedies. The question is what law of the city
Antigone challenges or supports, respectively.
Theseus, king of Athens, welcomes Oedipus into the city. He has, himself,
lived in exile and is therefore offering sanctuary. However, Creon, ruler of
Thebes, arrives and attempts to talk Oedipus into returning to Thebes; it has
been said that his grave will ruin the city, when set outside of Thebes. Theseus'
welcoming of Oedipus is thereby a threat to Thebes. Antigone persuades
Oedipus to allow Athens to negotiate with Thebes so that the cities will not
go to war with each other, and so that her brothers, who are now threatening
each other over the control over Thebes, will not kill each other. She does not
want evil to perpetuate itself, as alluded to in the most famous lines of the
tragedy, called the wisdom of Silenius: not to be born is the best, second best is
to leave life as quickly as possible, the chorus says ( 1 225-8).
As the tragedy approaches its end, we are given some clues as to what will
continue in An tigone. Antigone attempts to persuade her brother Polynices
not to fight his own brother but fails-instead, she promises to bury him.
Oedipus, in order to punish Thebes, begins the walk towards his own grave.
'Daughters, follow me this way! For I am now revealed to you as guide, as
formerly you used to guide your father!' (1542-3). Oedipus takes his own
death as a guarantee for the power of Athens. At the end of the drama, he
reveals his insight into the mythical ground on which the tragedy stands: the
grave of Oedipus the blind king. Oedipus chooses to die and be buried in a
secret place, of which only Theseus and his successors will have knowledge.
Oedipus' grave is a guarantee of the dignity of Athens: 'I myself, with no guide
to lay a hand on me, shall now show you the place where I must die. Do
not reveal to any human being either where it is concealed or the region
in which it lies; for its perpetual nearness renders you a protect ion stronger
than many shields or spears brought in from outside!', he says to Theseus
( 1 520-3 ). Oedipus walks away and dissipates at the horizon, transformed into
invisibility. Antigone attempts to follow him and says that she wishes to die in
the same grave. However, she is not allowed to do so. Towards the end of the
tragedy, she returns to Thebes in order to ward off a battle between her
own brothers.
52 Philosophy and Politics
We are here given some clues to a possible reinterpretation of Antigone.
Often we interpret her reverence for divine laws as if she stands for a principle
connected to ancient customs, protecting the family, respecting the dead,
etc., or maybe, as I have done myself, for a desire informing what she simply
must do, thereby transgressing the distinctions between good and evil. 5 As
we look more closely at Oedipus at Co/onus, more clues are given about
the choices she makes in Antigone, and a more complex image of the relation
to the law, the city, and the political order begins to emerge. The events
of Oedipus at Co/onus will be mirrored in An tigone, and so motivate a form of
retroactive reading: Antigone is longing for the same death, the same grave as
her father. When she takes her life in Antigone, this occurs in the light of a
gesture protecting Athens, founding the city that has received her father, the
exiled and stateless Oedipus. Thebes, the intolerant city ridden with conflicts
and violence that has exiled Oedipus, will annihilate Antigone. As we have
seen, the tragedy of An tigone has been interpreted in the light of a conflict
between divine law and human law, between universal and particular, be­
tween symbolic order and feminine desire. Seen through Oedipus at Co/onus,
however, we see that it is not the principle of human law as such that Antigone
is turning against, but the law of Creon. His law lacks the power of divine
foundation claimed by Athens and sanctioned by Oedipus her father. Antigo­
ne, hurrying to Thebes in order to prevent a civil war towards the end of
Oedipus at Co/onus, dies in Antigone, for a divine law which applies not only
to her family, or to the feminine, but to the foundation of another kind of city,
the city of Athens. She dies for another kind of justice than the raw power of
Thebes, and she dies for a city welcoming the exiled. Athens stands for a
higher political dignity than Thebes, the latter being marked by abuse of
power and internal conflicts.
This is certainly a reading that must be considered a construction, bringing
the two tragedies together. But it is a construction relevant in this context;
if we are to read Antigone through Oedipus at Co/onus, the divine laws
appealed to by Antigone apply not only to the ethical sphere, as Hegel has
claimed, or to a principle of maternal legacy, as Irigaray has claimed. 6 Divine
laws are rather the sanction of the polis itself. Divine laws, appealed to by
Antigone, are laws protecting political space, laws holding the community
together, and protecting the contingent laws set by the members of that
community.
5 See Sjiiholm (2004, ch. 5).
6 See e.g. Irigaray ( 1 993b: 1 1 9-21 ). See also Hegel ( 1 977: 261 , 284) .
Naked Life; Arendt and the Exile at Colonus 53
THE SPACE OF LAW
Arendt, famously, closes On Revolution with a quotation from Oedipus at
Co/onus: 'Not to be born comes first by every reckoning;/ and once one has
appeared, to go back where one came from is the next best thing.' ( 1225-8) 7
What may set out the limits oflife, as a measure of finitude, rather than death,
is the city, of the political community. Polis makes it possible for both young
and old to carry the burdens of life; in polis, the space we have for action, life
acquires its sparkling lights: ton bion lampron poieisthai. The human life worth
living must be set in a political community. What is crucial in this chorus, for
Arendt, is the antithesis represented by Theseus, the founder of Athens, in
encountering the suffering of Oedipus. Oedipus has no other life than that
which he himself is able to end. He represents the naked life of exposure,
biological l ife. Therefore he and his family are cursed. Only in the political
community does life acquire a force and a meaning, and only in a political
community does it acquire the power of natality, the particular dimension of
temporality which marks political life, according to Arendt. Natality is the
temporality through which our life and our actions are tied into the life and
actions of others, affecting and moving them. 8
Many have remarked on the fact that Arendt is using the wisdom of Silenius
in this context. 9 As argued above, however, the philosophical strength of this
tragedy has remained largely untouched when compared to Antigone. Hannah
Arendt herself is restrained with references to An tigone as well as to Oedipus at
7 Arendt ( 1 990: 28 1 ) .
8 '. action has the closest connection with the human condition o f natality; the new
• .
beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer
possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting.' Arendt ( 1 998: 9). This
very quality of action distinguishes it from metaphysical thought and is evoked, in The Human
Condition, as the temporality specific to the political.
9 Peter Euben has argued that tragedy in general, and Oedipus at Colonus in particular, appears
to mark Hannah Arendt's way of thinking without being explicitly discussed in her work. Arendt's
own vocabulary makes us think of the theatre, since Arendt is particularly interested in questions
of identity, appearance, and spaces of appearance, theoria and theatre, which for the Greek citizen
was a political space Euben (2003: 42). Euben dedicates a chapter of his book to Oedipus at
Co/onus, since he sees strong affinities with Arendt through the theme of exile. In Euben's book,
tragedy is above all affecting Arendt's idea of how the political word appears: it stands for an
'enlarged mentality', it allows us to through a variety of perspectives, it helps us understand the
concepts of plurality and judgement. See 'Hannah Arendt at Colonus', Euben (2003: 40-63. In his
book on Hannah Arendt and the politics of tragedy, Robert Pirro remarks that Arendt does not
refer to Oedipus in exile, or to Theseus, the founder of the democratic state, or to Odysseus, who
returns home after his travels. Pirro (200 1 : 1 1 ). For Pirro, the reference to Theseus is what is
important: Theseus shows that political authority cannot be based merely on foundations, similar
to Rome. It must also be linked to the project of political freedom (200 1 : 73-89).
 Naked Life; Arendt a nd the Exile at Colonus 55
54 Philosophy and Politics
to protect the city, its freedom, and its hospitality. His gesture is therefore a
Colonus. The few places where she mentions Antigone, however, are crucial in
token for the sake of Athens. Oedipus' sacrifice is not only a political gesture but
this context. In Between the Past and the Future, Arendt returns to the same
a sacred one, performed in the name of the gods. The family of Oedipus,
places as Heidegger does in his reading of 'Hymn to Man', the chorus in which
thereby, incarnates both the destiny of naked life, and the sacrifices taking
the uncanny dimension of humanity is revealed. 'Manifold is the uncanny, yet
place in the name of political life.
nothing I more uncanny looms or stirs beyond the human being' (332 - 3 ) ,10
When Hannah Arendt chooses to quote Oedipus at Colonus towards the end
the chorus sings; man is unravelling his own power of destruction in con­
of her book On Revolution, Oedipus stands not only for the naked life of the exile,
quering sea and earth with his technology. What is so frightening in human
but as a protector of political space, and for the principle of natality and the kind
beings is that which appears to go against the cycles of nature. Man is uncanny
of engendering which takes place in the city.13 Only a city cherishing the plurality
because of his will to domesticate nature, and his tendency to erect himself as
of political space, capable of welcoming the stranger, is worthy of such a sacrifice.
a finite projection in this endeavour. The life of nature is cyclical: it flourishes,
In contrast, the city of Thebes is marked by conflicts and abuse of power. In The
fades, and dies. What will eventually make man so frightening is that he is not
Human Condition, Arendt quotes the end of An tigone in order to point out that
only zoe, or biological life, but also bias, individual life, with an individual life
the political is also a question of truth: 'The great words of boasters are always
history.11 Thereby, Arendt's references to the two tragedies are resonating with
punished with great blows, and as they grow old teach them wisdom' ( 13 50).14
each other, illuminating the ways in which political space creates the condi­
Oedipus knows the truth of old age, and he has passed that knowledge on to
tions under which human life acquires its meaning. What changes between
Antigone. When she sacrifices herself in the name of divine laws, these laws are
zoe, or biological life, and bias, individual life history, is not just a question of
not the protectors of the 'ethical sphere' or the family, as Hegel has argued. They
terminology, but the definition of life itself. As Arendt herself points out in
are rather the laws that belong to the city protected by divinity, the city of Athens.
The Human Condition, Aristotle has shown human life to be characterized not
just by necessities, but by what stretches beyond, towards an irreducible aspect This is perhaps also the reason why Arendt does not perform a reading of
of freedom that belongs to human life.12 Bias is qualified life, the life of Antigone, or involve Antigone in key moments of her philosophical argument,
worthiness and dignity, bias politikos encompasses the most worthy aspect of unlike Hegel, Heidegger, and others. In the philosophy of Arendt, it is rather
Oedipus at Co/onus that offers the key to the philosophizing of political space.
human life altogether. Zoe, however, is unqualified life, apolitical life, life
Antigone is the tragedy of law. Oedipus at Co/onus indicates the way in which the
reduced to sheer necessity, beyond politics. This is precisely what is at stake
in the tragedies of Oedipus and Antigone, most clearly shown in Oedipus at law produces space. The law seen through Greek etymology, Arendt writes in The
Human Condition, is a border, and has a spatial connotation. To the Greeks, the
Colonus. The tragic conflict is set between naked life and political life.
construction of the law was a question of architecture, of making and not of
The wisdom of Silenius appears to refer to the doom of the family of
Oedipus. The chorus is sounding with the same poeticization of human, action. The law is a wall, staking out the limits of the political community: 'This
uncanny powers that we encounter in Antigone's 'Hymn to man'. The destiny wall-like law was sacred, but only the inclosure was political. Without it a public
of the Oedipus family unravels the tragic core of human existence as they realm could no more exist than a piece of property without a fence to hedge it in;
incarnate both the exposure of naked life and the lost possibilities of political the one harbored and inclosed political life as the other sheltered and protected
life. The family of Oedipus gets to know the exposure of naked life after having the biological life process of the family.' 1 5 No natural or divine law can protect the
been exiled from the city: they are mere life, and thereby also close to death. exiled. But there is also a political potentiality connected to the state of exile, the
However, they prove the potential power associated with this position. From possibility of another law and another political space. That is why Arendt turns
the position of exile, they will become the protectors of the city of Athens and to Oedipus at Colonus. Here, we discern an Antigone sacrificing to another divine
of the political community. Oedipus is using his exposure and submission law than the one protecting the family and ancient customs. Instead, Antigone
becomes a protector of the city. Through the call for divine laws, she sacrifices
herself in the name of a political community.
10 Translation from Heidegger ( 1 996: 1 2 1 ) . See Heidegger's reading in Hiilderlin's Hymn der
Ister (Heidegger 1 996: 1 1 5-22).
11 13 Arendt ( 1 990: 28 1 ) .
Arendt ( 1 96 1 : 42).
14 Arendt ( 1 998: 25).
12
This is the way I interpret the freedom attaching to the actions of which political man is
15 Arendt ( 1 998: 64, see also 1 94-5).
capable; see Arendt ( 1 998: 22-8).
 r---
1
56 Philosophy and Politics
I Naked Life; Arendt and the Exile at Co/onus 57

has also not been able to enjoy any rights. Arendt sees a direct link between
the suspension of citizenship of the German Jews and the Holocaust. The
RE FUGEES
sovereignty that was the triumph of the enlightenment changed into a
monstrous weapon in the hands of a nation that nobody dared to disarm,
The gesture of Antigone, and her protection of divine laws, motivates a
so as not to challenge the principle of sovereignty. Hannah Arendt, who spent
further questioning of how this 'other' Antigone may serve as a protector of
most of her life in exile, and whose life was itself threatened during her escape
the refugee, allowing us to conceive of a political space protected by other laws
from Europe, came to look upon the political organization of the West
than those set up by the city-state. Hannah Arendt has made this issue a focal
through eyes that were formed by this particular history. Her own state of
?oint in her political philosophy. To what extent can we claim that the refugee
exile shapes the way she sees things. But what is interesting with this perspec­
1s to be found outside of the political? To what extent can we really claim to be
tive is not that she is writing from a point of view of marginalization, or from
able to define human life through contingent, historical communities? The
the point of view of an outsider. Nor is the interesting aspect her identity or
tragedy of Antigone will allow us to pose these questions in relation to
her language, but the way in which the concept of exile is interwoven into
Arendt's philosophy, disclosing the exception and the foreclosure of the
Arendt's own political philosophy. 'We Refugees' describes the refugee as the
refugee in relation to the political. The tragedy will necessarily lead us to
vanguard of the peoples from Europe. Those that are exiled have understood
question an ontology of the political that is based on public space. But it will
that the history connecting a people with a country, or a nation, is not written
also indicate, to us, that it may be the very exception of the refugee which, in
in stone, but changeable and susceptible to revision. Therefore history can
the end, will serve to enforce the validity of the very same ontology. Oedipus at
never serve to safeguard a people within the confines of a nation-state. Just
Co/onus points to the hiatus between the avant-garde freedom of the exile and
because a people has been protected by its borders, it does not mean that
the freedom created in a political community. Exile acquires another mean­
the nation will be their destiny. The refugee that was forced to flee in the
ing; the text illustrates the metaphorical connection between inner and outer
European crisis of the 1940s merely gave a premonition of a condition that
exile. We are faced with the tension between the subjective freedom of exile
was to strike other people. Those that were exiled were thereby to be consid­
and the possibility of another, worldly freedom in the polis. This tension is
ered a vanguard-undoing the ties between sovereignty and the nation-state,
incarnated by characters that are all placed in exile: Oedipus and his daughters 16
between people and history, between destiny and origin.
Antigone and Ismene.
In her book on totalitarianism, Arendt shows that the rights of man do not
'The perplexities of the rights of man', where the idea of human life in its
define the essence of humanity. Humanity cannot be essentialized; we can,
abstract form or as 'naked' is put forward, is a text that developed into a short
however, talk about what is not human: life outside of the political community:
article, 'We Refugees', written for The Menorah Journal in 1943. The discus­
sion of the rights of man, which was made part of The Origins of Totalitaria n­ ... the calamity of the rightless is not that they are deprived of life, liberty and the
ism ( 1973 ), demonstrates the historical reality of a horrific paradox: the pursuit of happiness, or of equality of the law and freedom of opinion ...but that they
establishment of human rights which took place through the enlightenment no longer belong to any community whatsoever, Their plight is not that they are not
has not served to protect the individual, but rather to expose her beyond the equal before the law, but that no law exists for them; not that they are oppressed but
_
protection of the laws. Human rights and universalist laws have been for­ that nobody wants even to oppress them.17

mulat :d during the same period as the sovereign state, and the capacity of the
sovereign state to create and protect its own laws has proven to be more
powerful than the universalist ideas on human rights, outside of the protec­
tion of the state. The sovereignty and the autonomy that the enlightenment
.
has claimed have been overtaken by the state. While the nation-state has
pr�ven to be a powerful organization when it comes to protecting its own
_
citizens, those that have not enjoyed the protection of the nation-state have
come to be doubly exposed. The human being who is exiled by force and not
recognized as citizen in any state has proven not only to lack nationality, but
It is this status, of naked or invisible man, that shapes the absolute negativity
of the political being that inhabits political space. Even a slave has a place in
society, he therefore surpasses 'the abstract nakedness of being human and
nothing but human'. 18 The condition of the refugee has proven that the
assumption that human rights have the capacity to protect humans in an
abstract state as 'human' is wrong: 'the world found nothing sacred in the
18
16 Arendt (1943: 1 0- 1 2). 17 Arendt ( 1 973: 295-6). Ibid. 297.
58 Philosophy and Politics
abstract nakedness of being human'. 19 What is lost by the excluded is not
primarily the freedom offered by the state of sovereignty. The threat of
exclusion outside of a state brings with it a loss of humanity:
if a human being loses his political status, he should, according to the implications of
the inborn and the inalienable rights of man, come under exactly the same situation
for which the declarations of such general rights provided. Actually the opposite is the
case. It seems that a man who is nothing but a man has lost the qualities which makes
it possible for other people to treat him as a fellow-man.20
Displaced to a position outside of political space, man loses not only his rights
but his humanity. Arendt is arguing against a simple definition of'the human'
as being equated to 'the political'. Loss of humanity is not something that
takes place in spite of the invention of human rights; the very notion of a
human being deprived of humanity is something that human rights has
helped produce. In the Germany of the 1 9 3 0s, the Jewish population was
deprived of citizenship so that it was also possible to haunt and annihilate
them. These people were exposed, beyond their identity as citizens, as 'naked',
as human beings that were not fully recognized as such. This shows, according
to Arendt, that natural law, or the idea that the political community may be
founded on a basic law such as the prohibition of killing or stealing, is
incapable of facing the challenges presented to us by totalitarian ideologies.
These ideologies may reduce the human who is 'just' life to naked life, to
ethnic or biological difference: the Jew is just a Jew, the black man is just a
black man, a woman is just a woman. If modern biopolitics aims to control
human life, rather than political life, this is a consequence of the idea of 'the
human' displacing the dynamic of politics as a function of public space.
Certainly the refugee, or the exile, is an aspect of naked life such as it has
presented itself in the twentieth century. However, Arendt's own view on the
refugee is double. On the one hand, the exiled refugee is exposed and
unprotected, a naked existence that is also threatened by annihilation. On
the other hand, in 'We Refugees', she sees a politically powerful force
connected to the state of exile, a kind of resistance to the towering forces of
a world empire. The very definition of totalitarianism is proven in its threat to
extinguish the plurality and differentiation that, for Arendt, is the very core of
political society. If one looks at the Life of the Mind,21 a piece is added to the
idea of exile as a kind of historical potentiality ; provokingly, through a kind of
mythical colonization. The potentiality connected to the state of exile is a new
freedom, created beyond the idea of sovereignty of the enlightenment. Those
that are exiled serve not only as an avant-garde, but also as the vanguard,
20 2
19 Arendt (1973: 295-6) 299. Ibid. 300. 1 Arendt (1978b).
Naked Life; Arendt and the Exile at Co/onus 59
a group that appears to be naked and depri;ed �f their �ome country. They
.
are also carrying the promise of a new order m this cond1t1on. The refugee, set
in exile, must develop another principle for rights than those resting on the
shoulders of the sovereign nation-state. In The Origins of Totalitarianism,
Hannah Arendt formulates the principle that human rights ought never to be
founded on a specific content but rather 'the right to have rights', the right to
belong to an organized political community.22
In Homo Sacer, Agamben contributes to the contemporary d1scuss1on on
• •
biopolitics through pointing to the politico-philosophical development
through which the notion of man as biological life, 'bare life', has been
separated from politics, and then made the very aim of politics. Agamben's
primary source is Walter Benjamin's text 'Critique of Violence' from 1927,
but also Hannah Arendt. Arendt, however, in Agamben's view, was not
aware of the biopolitical implications of her own philosophy. 'Bare life' is
the object of politics in modernity, according to Agamben, captured in a
zone between zoe and bias, between natural and human life. To Agamben,
bare life is not the life of the subject of oppression, or the same thing as
Arendt's 'naked life', a life without rights, excluded through the principles
of sovereignty. Bare life is 'cared life', a life brought within a state of
exception where laws no longer apply. In a contested conclusion, Agam�en
argues that the concentration camp has become the nomos of modernity,
with the implication that the status of bare, undifferentiated life is the aim
of power in postwar politics. Victim and butcher belong to the same body
in the state of exception, where any claim to rights is caught in the
biopolitical trap.23
Why did Hannah Arendt not see the consequences of her own political
ontology, why did she not end her critique of modernity with the sombre
prediction of the victory of biopolitics over the open life of the polity? To
Agamben, her philosophy is the result of an oversight, perhaps caused by the
fact that it would be too horrifying to draw the conclusions he does himself
towards the end of Homo Sacer. To Jacques Ranciere, who has commented
extensively on Arendt and who is much more critical than Agamben, she is, if
not a biopolitician in disguise, then at least an essentialist through her
insistence on equating 'the political' with 'the human'.24
22
Arendt (1973: 296-7). 2 3 Agamben (1998: 179-93).
.,
24 In his well-known text 'Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?' (2004), Jacques Ranc1ere
denounces what he calls the 'archipolitical' position of Hannah Arendt. In onto � ogizing t� e
question of the political, through equating the political subject with the subject that 1s present �n
public space, Arendt, in Ranciere's view, misses the point with democracy. Democracy, m
Ran ciere's version, is not a question of freedom, but rather of subjectivation. Democracy �ives
through the kind of dissensus that creates subjectivation, or through the kind of antagonisms
60 Philosophy and Politics
What Ranciere is forgetting throughout his critique of Arendt is that the
question of the political is not ontologized through a specific definition of 'the
human', a concept that can only be understood in the plural sense. As Arendt
herself has pointed out, repeatedly, there is no metaphysical definition of
humanity involved in her way of ontologizing the political. What is human
can only be talked about in terms of differentiation and plurality, historicity
and change.2 5 Moreover, the exile in Arendt, the refugee that nobody even
wants to oppress, is not a victim but rather the avant-garde of its people, and a
potentially revolutionary force.
The critiques of Arendt have failed to look closer at the complex relation
between what is 'life', what is 'human', and what is to be ontologized as 'the
political' in her philosophy. Arendt may well have been turning away from
biopolitical visions because they were too horrifying a reality, but to her,
the notion of naked life has nothing to do with victimhood or oppression.
The notion of a life stripped of rights is a consequence of the ideology of the
enlightenment, where what is to count as human has been confused with the
notion of rights. The notions of 'the human', 'life', and 'the political' need to
be reworked and renegotiated. Famously, the argument of The Human Con­
dition is that we need to reconsider these concepts according to the categories
that will leave those spaces open through which rights can be claimed, even through those that
may not be counted within the democratic legislation itself. Hannah Arendt's critique of human
rights in their abstract version, as presented in the famous text 'The perplexities of human
rights', was actually a critique of democracy, according to Ranciere. Arendt's critique rested on
the idea that revolutionaries had wasted their ideals on pity for poor people, confusing political
and social freedom. Ranciere criticizes the tendency to equate human rights with the rights of
the victim, and thereby to rationalize a new kind of colonization. The tendency to equate
human rights with humanitarian aid to, for instance, people that are fleeing suppression or even
genocide is, to Ranciere, a way of depoliticizing the question of human rights. Most importantly,
. oppression', that nobody
however, in Ranciere's view, Arendt's idea that there are people 'beyond
wants even to oppress, is the result of her opposition between public and private. It is the result
of a process of depoliticization. Arendt is ontologizing politics through a space of consensus:
'Consensus means closing the space of dissensus by plugging the intervals and patching over the
possible gaps between appearance and reality or law and fact . ..Consenus is the reduction of
democracy to the way of life of a society, to its ethic-meaning by this word both the abode of a
group and its lifestyle' (p. 306). Instead, we must de-ontologize politics, and focus on the
question of who we are to define as a political subject, argues Ranciere. If we do that, we can
escape the logic of the victim which pervades Arendt's critique of human rights.
2 5 This has been pointed out by, for instance, Peg Birmingham. Hannah Arendt's idea of the
rights to have rights is based on the principle of natality and not on a metaphysical foundation,
since humanity, clearly, is not based on any metaphysical principle of human nature. The right
to have rights is the right to appear, in the interpretation of Birmingham. This right is not based
on the notion of human beings as sovereign with inalienable rights. The rights take on a tangible
form when they belong to the 'actor' of public space that will always have the right to appear.
The right to have rights as such, however, is not based on the public sphere but rather on 'the
fundamental event of human existence-natality'. Birmingham {2006: 57).
Naked Life; Arendt and the Exile at Co/onus 61
made available to us by the Greeks and the Romans. I f we read her text on
human rights together with Oedipus at Co/onus, we are offered another key to
this discussion.
TR A G EDY AS THE OTHER S P A C E O F POL IT I CS
Arendt's writings are abundant with literary examples, and abundant with
references to the Greeks. Strangely, however, she does not offer any sustained
discussion of Greek tragedy. The absence of such a discussion calls for reflection.
The space of tragedy is perhaps ignored or bypassed since it appears the very
opposite of the principles of public space. Whereas the public space of the polis
creates appearance and reality, what is real and visible is threatened by disap­
pearance and annihilation in tragedy. Tragedy calls into question what we know
and how we think we know it, both unravelling and producing lures, disguises,
and appearances. Though we are not allowed to know, Greek tragedy indicates
that what goes on inside of a house is uncanny and impossible to control. What
is haunting the city is suppressed and invisible, hiding in the oikos or home, cut
off from public affairs.
In contemporary political thought, the idea of public space often represents
the promise of democracy. Then the goal of democracy is to have as many
people as possible participating in public space. For Habermas, as for Kant,
the importance of public space lies in the way its discourse is transcending
private interests.2 6 In a similar way, Hannah Arendt has idealized the polis of
ancient Greece as a retrospective vision of political freedom. Hannah Arendt
constructs her political ontology through a particular definition of the public
sphere as a space of plurality and differentiation, where multiple singularities
create a reality that is more than the sum of its parts. In modernity, public
space is threatened not only by the social sphere and by capitalism, as argued
in The Human Condition, but also, as argued in The Origins of Totalitarianism,
by the mechanisms of empire created by the enlightenment. All three factors
are threatening to undo the very mechanisms of differentiation and thereby of
plurality. Public space serves to unravel what is real and what is true, through
the principles of plurality and differentiation.
Public space is not equal to the state. As famously indicated in The Human
Condition, 'the polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical
location; it is the organisation of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking
6
2 See Habermas {1992); Kant (1991: 54-61).
62 Philosophy and Politics
together, and its true space lies between people living for this purpose, no matter
where they happen to be'.27 Indeed, the relation between the state and the public
sphere seems to involve reversed positions; the cult of the nation-state, as well as
the principle of sovereignty, have overtaken and overshadowed the possibilities
of political life such as they presented themselves in cultures of public space. In
The Origins of Totalitarianism, we are shown that there are certain conditions
under which public space is foreclosed. The condition of the refugee, or enforced
exile, is a symptom of such a foreclosure. In a world where the nation-state has
overtaken the responsibility of rights for the individual, the refugee has become
an exception which points to the great problem of modernity: how are we to
define a political community?
Arendt discusses this not just in historical or legal terms, but also through a
phenomenological analysis, in order to prove that a contemporary political
community must be based on public space. Only through public space can the
world truly appear, through the sharing of perspectives. The private sphere
locks the subject within himself, whereas the polis offers a space in which it
becomes possible to think and act in the place of others. In 'Politics and truth',
Arendt describes political imagination as a capacity of 'enlarged mentality' or
a capacity to consider what lies beyond the experiences of the self. Such
enlarged mentality can only arise within a political community based on
the public sphere. Only in a contemporary political community, modelled
through the Greek polis, do concepts such as freedom, plurality, and political
act10n acquire a meanmg.28
. • •
In modernity, however, the true function of public space has been compro­
mised. Therefore exile, to Hannah Arendt, is not just the situation of the
refugee in the twentieth century, but also an escape into inner exile, as
performed by artists and writers. In her book on vita contemplativa, such an
intimate world of emotions and experiences is moulded together with litera­
ture and philosophy, and in Men in Dark Times, where she celebrates in various
ways the writer in exile, the state of inner withdrawal becomes intertwined
with outer exile. The writer in exile withdraws from the world into a state of
introspection. To what extent, she asks, does the world still deserve our
attention? ' . . . to what extent do we remain obligated to the world even
when we have been expelled from it or have withdrawn from it'.29 Philosophy,
like literature, appears to be a logical answer to a historical situation where the
flight into intimacy formulates an answer to the destitution of public space. In
The Human Condition, Arendt argues that modernity is marked by a flight into
the intimate sphere of emotions and subjective experiences. Thinking, to
27 28
Arendt (1998: 198). Ibid. 50-8. 29 Arendt (I 968: 22).
Naked Life; Arendt and the Exile at Colonus 63
Arendt, involves a metaphorical disappearance from this world. If philosophy
has shown hostility towards politics, it has to do with the way in which
thinking is experienced. Philosophical reflection involves, by necessity, some
kind of exile from worldliness: 'The meaning of what actually happens and
appears while it is happening is revealed when it has disappeared'. 'The man
who does the revealing is not involved in the appearances; he is blind, shielded
against the visible in order to be able to "see" the invisible'. 30 Such a metapho­
rical disappearance is contrasted with the appearances and the visibility of
political life. If we look closer at Arendt's conception of public space, and the
fate of Oedipus, we find a metaphorical relation between invisibility and exile
where the flight of the refugee is a consequence of the corruption of public
space. Whether that flight is discussed in terms of inner or outer exile, the
disappearance from the world is evoked as invisibility.
NEW B E GINNIN G S
I t would appear that Arendt's idealization o f bias politikos fails to take
alternative political spaces into account. As both Agamben and Ranciere
have pointed out, the question of the refugee becomes particularly problem­
atic in her ontology of public space. Judith Butler, for her part, talks about a
'melancholy of the public sphere', when part of that which is to be considered
human is deemed to remain in what Arendt herself calls 'the shadowy sphere'.
Butler, also, asks the question of what we are to make of Antigone within a
philosophy that strictly sets up marks of demarcation between the public and
the private, considering that Antigone is delegated to an outside in which she
. .
has no given ngh t to act.31
Life of the Mind, however, suggests an inherently double status of human
beings that would complicate the definition of the public sphere. The double
status of humans as subject-object, perceiving and perceived, is a condition
for the notion of plurality. To appear always means to appear for others. There
is an urge towards 'self-display' among beings, implying that the development
'of life itself' is one of exposure towards the plurality of spectators. Such a
notion of plurality is defined through a differentiation inherent in the relation
30 Arendt (1978a: 133).
31 Butler (2000: 81-2). In Antigone's Claim, Judith Butler has related Antigone to a 'melan­
choly' of the public sphere. Antigone is perceived as less than human, that is, she is relegated
from the state. In claiming the law, she begins to talk, which means she also claims to be part of
political space.
64 Philosophy and Politics
between meaning and truth, rather than simply a variety of perspectives or
viewpoints, and indicates a complex notion of public space as a space of
becoming, rather than a given sphere that is socially and historically deter­
mined. In this sense, one may return to the issue that has been raised above:
how can we rethink public space beyond the tradition of enlightenment?
Arendt shows that public space as plurality calls into question what we
know and how we think we know it. Just like tragedy, public space produces
something that is much more than deliberative discourse; it takes issue with
the lures, disguises, and appearances that are themselves the product of public
space. In refusing to equate public space with its socio-historic determina­
tions, Arendt thereby indicates its use beyond the Greeks.
Life of the Mind ends with two myths of state-foundation that she takes to
be foundational for the political life of the West, one Hebrew and one Roman:
the biblical story of the exodus of the Israeli tribes from Egypt and Virgil's
story of Aeneas wanderings until the establishment of Rome. Both of these
founding legends bear witness to the birth of a political community through
the formation of a 'we' born through a love of freedom that is doubly
inspired: through the liberation from oppression and through the establish­
ment of a new kind of freedom as a stable tangible reality.32 Both of these
founding legends establish themselves through a historical exodus from
slavery into a new world of freedom. These founding legends are relived not
least on the American continent. What is interesting above all, however, is the
abyss that opens up between the exile of the oppressed and the tasks of
colonization. There is no continuity between the escape from oppression
and the founding of a new state, but a hiatus. Once the process of colonization
begins, the exile faces an 'abyss of freedom'.33
The founding legends, with their hiatus between liberation and the constitution of
freedom . . . point to the abyss of nothingness that opens up before any deed that
cannot be accounted for by a reliable chain of cause and effect and is inexplicable in
Aristotelian categories of potentiality and actuality. In the normal time continuum
every effect immediately turns into a cause of future developments, but when the
causal chain is broken-which occurs after liberation has been achieved, because
liberation, though it may be freedom's conditio sine qua non, is never the conditio per
quam that causes freedom-there is nothing left for the beginner to hold on to. The
thought of an absolute beginning-creatio ex nihilo--abolishes the sequence of
temporality no less than does the thought of an absolute end, now rightly referred
to as 'thinking the unthinkable'.34
32 Arendt (1978b: 203). 33 Ibid. 208.
34 Arendt (1978b: 208).
L
Naked Life; Arendt and the Exile at Colonus 65
The founding legends that end the discussion of Life of the Mind do not only
tell the story of how the exiled found another land to colonize, like Aeneas
coming to the river of the Tiber and founding Rome. They also tell of a hiatus
between the state of exile and of colonization respectively that is symptomatic
of the story of Western politics. This hiatus represents an impossibility at the
core of human life; a space where neither time nor space can exist-they come
to be only through the creation of the political community. To Arendt, exile
and colonization are two mythical, foundational modes that complement
each other in the creation of political life. The refugee represents, as she writes
in 'We Refugees', the avant-garde for its own people. This means that the
refugee is confronted with the threat of a permanent homelessness, but also
with possibilities that open up beyond the borders of existing nations. The
moment of colonization, on the other hand, opens up an abyss in represent­
ing a newly found freedom. In this abyss of freedom, we are facing an
unknown that is not death, but that which opens up in a future together. In
the abyss of freedom, and through the formation of a we that is created here,
we see the temporality called natality take shape: it is not death that marks the
finite limits of our being, but birth, or the temporality through which our
actions give rise to chains of events that are impossible to fully encompass.
The abyss of freedom opens up not only through the colonization explored in
the founding legends, but also in the temporality defining the age of revolu­
tion. Here, human beings are forced to confront, over and over again, the
necessity of recreating the 'we' of freedom. A human being that is forced i nto
exile will not confront this abyss until she is united with others in a political
community. But what is most important to understand is that the political
community, neither in the founding legends nor in the modern age of
revolution, is to be considered a given model. It is rather an ever present
possibility. Polis is not a physical location but rather the community that
appears in and through public space. Thereby polis cannot be tied to a
geographical border or an economic organization, in the way that the na­
tion-state is. Polis for Arendt is simply tied to the realization of public space,
and is thereby the only space in which man can realize his freedom.
The question of who is to enjoy human rights, for Arendt, is intrinsically
bound up with her notion of public space; in this, Ranciere is right. The
question of who enjoys such rights is intrinsically bound up with visibility, the
subject of politics being made visible through such rights. Oedipus at Colonus
is blind, exiled, and excluded. His blindness must also be interpreted as a
reve rsed image for the fact that he cannot be seen: his existence is beyond
appearance. Naked man is not just existing outside of the law, but lacking a
place in the space of the political. Naked life is lived in exclusion from the
polity, the possibilities of participating in public space being foreclosed: the
66 Philosophy and Politics
life of the refugee, the exile stripped of rights. Such a life is the very antithesis
of that which is lived in and through public space. The life outside of the
polity is the life that is foreclosed because of the impossibilities inherent in the
polity itself. It is, in short, not simply the life of the victim, but rather another
life, a life that has been excluded or even foreclosed from the definition of
what is to count as human.
The law sets out the borders of political space, but the law in itself is not
what politics is about. Rights, also, are not what politics is about. Politics,
rather, is about the making visible of reality, of truth, and of those who are
present in the space of politics. But unlike Ranciere, Arendt is not primarily
interested in the subject of politics, but the processes creating the spaces
making politics possible. The question of politics is not bound up with the
movements undoing the laws that are set to define the subject of politics
through mechanisms of exclusion. To this, the exile or refugee is the witness,
as well as the proof, the promise of another space to arise.
The divine laws that Antigone, famously, is claiming, are not laws that are
compatible with human ones. They do not compete with other principles, in
the sense that one could claim the one or the other. Instead, they could be
referred to a more ancient use of the concept of law, a concept connoting
border or limit. Divine laws, in this sense, are the laws protecting political
space, the laws protecting the laws. They are the laws instituting political space
as a space of plurality, a space of natality and new beginnings, superior to the
contingent human laws. The laws protecting the laws, or divine laws, would
then adhere to the same principle as 'the right to have rights', the principle
replacing the notion of human rights in the philosophy of Arendt. Rereading
An tigone with Oedipus at Colon us, we find Antigone the refugee claiming the
right to political space.
3
Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim
Audrone Zukauskaite
1. ANT I GONE: THE CON FL I CT
O F INT ER PR ETAT IONS
The figure of Antigone has always been the object of conflicting interpreta­
tions and theoretical disagreements. Hegel, Lacan, Irigaray, Butler, and many
others have given such different interpretations of the meaning of this char­
acter that finally we are left without any definite answer. It seems that every
attempt at interpretation reveals not the hidden truth of Sophocles' character,
but says something about the interpreter's position and his/her theoretical
background. This situation of conflicting interpretations reminds me of the
definition of trauma: the non-representability of a traumatic event is usually
signalled by the impossibility of defining its content. Every new network of
symbolic representation re-creates a traumatic event in a new way, but the
'real' event is always hidden and missing. Having this in mind, I shall not try
to reconstruct the 'real' meaning of Antigone's event. The most useful way to
interpret the event of Antigone is, I think, to ask what it means in the recent
geopolitical situation.
As a starting point, I will take Judith Butler's book Antigone's Claim, in
which she examines, line by line, arguments made about Antigone by Irigaray,
Hegel, and Lacan. First of all, Butler is distancing Antigone from what she
calls 'feminist politics'. Butler says that Antigone, who is described by Irigaray
as an anti-woman,1 can't represent any claim to feminism. 'Can Antigone
herself be made into a representative for a certain kind of feminist politics,'
Butler asks, ' if Antigone's own representative function is itself in crisis? . . . She
hardly represents the normative principles of kinship . . . And she hardly
represents a feminism that might in any way be unimplicated in the very
1 'Antigone, the antiwoman, is still a production of a c ulture that has been written by man
alone. But this figure, who, according to Hegel, stands for ethics, has to be brought out of the
night, out of the shadow, out of the rock . . .' Irigaray (2004: 1 0 1 ).
68 Philosophy and Politics
power that it opposes. Indeed, it is not just that, as a fiction, the mimetic or
representative character of Antigone is already put in question but that, as a
figure for politics, she points somewhere else, not to politics as a question of
representation but to that political possibility that emerges when the limits to
representation and representability are exposed.'2 The point Butler makes
here is that Antigone should be interpreted not in terms of 'representation
politics', but, instead, in terms of the 'politics of the unrepresentable'. It's very
important not to misinterpret Antigone's position as being pre-political, or
opposed to politics. Butler points out that 'Antigone has been read by Hegel
and Lacan and also by the way in which she has been taken up by Luce Irigaray
and others not as a political figure, one whose defiant speech has political
implications, but rather as one who articulates a prepolitical opposition to
politics, representing kinship as the sphere that conditions the possibility of
politics without ever en tering into it.' 3
The whole argumentation of Butler's book aims to undermine these pre­
political interpretations of Antigone and to show the precarious character of
any kind of kinship she can be involved in. The fact that Antigone is
simultaneously the daughter (and sister) of Oedipus makes any consideration
about the kinship laws in advance ambivalent and even impossible. As Butler
formulates the problem, 'Antigone is the offspring of Oedipus and so raises
the question for us: what will come of the inheritance of Oedipus when the
rules that Oedipus blindly defies and institutes no longer carry the stability
accorded to them by Levi-Strauss and structural psychoanalysis? In other
words, Antigone is one for whom symbolic positions have become incoher­
ent, confounding as she does brother and father, emerging as she does not
as a mother but-as one etymology suggests-"in the place of the mother".
Her name is also construed as "anti-generation" (gone [generation ] ) . She is,
thus, already at a distance from that which she represents, and what she
represents is far from clear.'4 In her precise analysis, Butler proves that all
kinship positions are sliding into one another, undermining Oedipal codes,
and inviting us to think about post-Oedipal territories. 'This equivocation at
the site of the kinship term signals a decidedly postoedipal dilemma, one in
2
Butler (2000: 2 ) .
3
Ibid. 2 ; emphasis i n original.
4 Ibid. 22. In note 24, Butler cites Stathis Gourgouris: 'The proposition anti means both "in
opposition to" and "in compensation of "; gone belongs in a line of derivatives of genos (kin,
lineage, descent) and means simultaneously offspring, generation, womb, seed, birth. On the
basis of this etymological polyphony (the battle for meaning at the nucleus of the name itself ) ,
w e can argue that Antigone embodies both a n opposition o f kinship t o the polis ... a s well a s an
opposition to kinship, expressed by her attachment to a sibling by means of a disruptive desire,
phi/ia beyond kinship.' Quoted from Gourgouris (2003: 133).
L
Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim 69
which kin positions tend to slide into one another, in which Antigone is the
brother, the brother is the father, and in which psychically, linguistically,
this is true regardless of whether they are dead or alive; for anyone living in
this slide of identifications, their fate will be an uncertain one, living within
death, dying within life.'5 The death B utler is speaking about is not physical
death, but 'social death', because Antigone lacks the normative model of
kinship identification, which gives shape to our social existence.
Butler opposes not only any attempt to interpret Antigone as a figure of
pre-political order (in terms of kinship). She also opposes the attempt
(mainly by Hegel) to interpret the deeds of Antigone in terms of unwritten
laws of ancient gods. Butler points out that these laws have no precise form or
content, because they are not communicable through a written language.
'This law', Butler writes, ' is in opposition to public law; as the unconscious
of public law, it is that which public law cannot do without, which it must, in
fact, oppose and retain with a certain necessary hostility'. 6 Antigone refers to
the unwritten laws, but refers to them in her speech, and that, according to
Butler, gives these laws a form of catachresis because ' the laws of which she
speaks are, strictly speaking, before writing, not yet registered or registerable
at the level of writing. They are not fully knowable, but the state knows
enough about them to oppose them violently.'7 What kind of law is this?
Hegel sometimes refers to it as to another law, but also acknowledges its
mysterious status. Butler develops this idea further, wondering if this myste­
rious law could be the trace of an alternate legality. 'One might reapproach
Antigone's "fatality'", Butler says, 'with the question of whether the limit for
which she stands, a limit for which no standing, no translatable representa­
tion is possible, is not precisely the trace of an alternate legality that haunts
the conscious, public sphere as its scandalous future'. 8
What kind of legality do Hegel and Butler have in mind? Where can we
situate Antigone with her unstable, even impossible identification? Jacques
Lacan, in his book The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, refers to the sphere of A te,
which designates 'the limit that human life can only briefly cross . . . Beyond
this A te, one can only spend a brief period of time, and that's where Antigone
wants to go . . . Her life is not worth livinlf.9 This is a liminal space between life
and death, 'a place where it is impossible fo r a mortal being . . . to go beyond'.
Like Butler, Lacan describes this liminal space as subjected to or ruled by the
'unwritten' laws of gods: 'These are no longer laws, . . . but a certain legality
which is a consequence of the laws of the gods that are said to be "unwritten". . . .
5 Butler (2000: 67). 6 Ibid. 38.
7 Ibid. 39. 8 Ibid. 40.
9 Lacan (1992: 262-3). Emphasis added.
 ,....
70 Philosophy and Politics
I nvolved here is an invocation of something that is, in effect, of the order oflaw,
but which is not developed in any signifying chain or in anything else.' 10 This
indefinable position between life and death, between regular legality and what he
calls the 'unwritten' laws of gods, Lacan describes as being 'between two deaths'.
He writes: 'Her punishment will consist in her being shut up or suspended in the
zone between life and death. Although she is not yet dead, she is eliminated from
the world of the living . . . From Antigone's point of view life can only be
approached, can only be lived or thought about, from the place of that limit
where her life is already lost, where she is already on the other side. But from that
place she can see it and live it in the form of something already Iost.' 1 1 I f her first
death, let's say, 'social death', was the result of her conflict with the edict of
Creon, the second death is 'authorized' by Antigone's decision. According to
Lacan, Antigone is driven by something that he calls 'the pure and simple desire
of death as such'. Lacan stresses that Antigone puts herself at this limit position,
driven by some pathological desire, more precisely, by a death instinct. She
appears as a victim of the tragedy, but at the same time is caught by desire to
transgress the limit between life and death: 'She is there in spite of herself as
victim and holocaust', Lacan suggests.12
The Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Zizek points out the same ambivalence of
Antigone's deeds. On the one hand, Ziiek develops the Lacanian idea and
interprets Antigone as a figure driven by some pathological desire, being
attached to the Other (Polyneices) without the mediation of symbolic rules
and laws. In this sense, Antigone's decision to bury her brother is seen as an
authoritarian or even totalitarian act: 'Is not Antigone . . . a proto-totalitarian
figure? . . . Does not Antigone stand for the exclusive and uncompromising
attachment to the Other qua Thing, eclipsing the Other g ua Third, the agency
of symbolic mediation/reconciliation?' 1 3 According to Zizek, Creon acts like
a pragmatic state politician, while Antigone reacts like a totalitarian figure:
she makes a gesture of sublimation elevating the Other into the Thing-the
unconditional object that the subject values more than life itself. On the other
hand, the same gesture, which is seen as pathological and totalitarian, can also
be interpreted as an ethical act par excellence. This ambivalence defines the
very nature of transgression: transgression is the violation of a norm, but at
10
Ibid. 278.
11
Ibid. 280.
1
2 Ibid. 282.
1 3 Zi:lek (2005: 344). Zizek contrasts 'the Other qua Thing, the abyssal Otherness that
addr_esses us with an unc?nditional injunction, and the Other qua Third, the agency that
mediates my encounter with others (other "normal" humans)-where this Third can be the
figure of sym!JO lic authority but also the "impersonal" set of rules that regulate my exchanges
with others'. Ziiek (2005: 344).
Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim 71
the same time it creates a new understanding of what counts as a norm.
Transgression is an ethical act, which is not only beyond the reality principle:
'it rather designates an intervention that changes the very coordinates of the
reality principle'. 14 Defining the very nature of an ethical act, Zizek gives as an
example the 'standard case of Antigone': 'an act is not only a gesture that does
the impossible but an intervention into social reality that changes the very
coordinates of what is perceived to be possible; it is simply beyond the good, it
redefines what counts as good. Let us take the standard case of civil disobedi­
ence (which, precisely, is the case of Antigone) . . . Antigone's gesture of civil
disobedience is much more radically performative: through her insistence on
giving her dead brother a proper funeral, she defies the predominant notion
of the good'. 1 5 So what kind of reality is opened by this 'standard case of civil
disobedience'? And what is the nature of Antigone's desire? Is Antigone really
motivated only by a 'pure and simple desire of death'? Is she a 'radically
destructive character', a criminal driven by the desire to destroy social nor­
mality? Ziiek's definition of an ethical act reinterprets Antigone as a revolu­
tionary figure and in fact reveals the limits of a Lacanian psychoanalytical
approach: psychoa�alysis (as well as structural anthropology) converts every
gesture into symbolic structures of the unconscious (or kinship, as was
demonstrated earlier) . From my point of view, it's more productive to rethink
the deeds of Antigone not in the context of anonymous symbolic structures
but in the context of power and political order.
2 . B IOPOL IT I C S : B AR E L I F E
AND SOVER E I GN POW ER
If we agree with Zizek that Antigone's transgression is an ethical act, which
inte rvenes into social reality and changes the very coordinates of what is
perceived to be possible, we have to delineate the limits of these coordinates.
These coordinates, as I suggested, can't be explained either in terms of
kinship, or in terms of the unconscious. The very idea of transgression
acquires meaning only in a more general framework of the analysis of
power relationships. But what kind of power relationships could we have in
mind and what is Antigone's position in it? As Hegel, Irigaray, Butler, and
many others have pointed out, Antigone is not a part of the public life of the
polis, although she tries to appropriate the 'totalitarian' discourse of Creon.
14
Zizek (2000: 67 1). 15 Ibid. 671-672.
72 Philosophy and Politics
The Chorus describes Antigone as 'inhuman' and we have to decide how to
interpret this 'inhumanness'. Lacan points out that inhuman 'literally means
something uncivilized, something raw. And the word "raw" comes closest,
when it refers to eaters of raw flesh'. 1 6 It is precisely this 'raw flesh', this
' inhumanness', on which I would like to focus my interpretation.
Two thinkers, Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, are very important
in order to reconsider this 'rawness' of Antigone not as an insignificant
feature, but, probably, as the main conflict of the tragedy. This 'rawness' or
biological life of man, which Foucault made the main object of his research,
appears to be not the 'natural condition' of human life, but a result of power
relations. At the end of the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Foucault
describes how natural life begins to be included in the mechanisms of state
power, and politics gradually turns into biopolitics. 'For millennia', Foucault
writes, 'man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the
additional capacity for political existence; modern man is an animal whose
politics places his existence as a living being in question'. 17 Foucault examines
the mechanisms of disciplinary control and political techniques, which pro­
duce a kind of bestialization of man in the modern state. It is precisely this
'bestialization' of man, this new possibility to explore the corporeal dimen­
sion of human life, which enabled modern state power to manipulate human
life to an unprecedented degree. ' For the first time in history, the possibilities
of the social sciences are made known, and at once it becomes possible both to
protect life and to authorize holocaust', Foucault argues.1 8
Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition ( 1998) also gives an analysis of
what she calls 'naked life'. Agamben points out that Foucault and Arendt
come very close to the problematic of biopolitics but fail to make a connec­
tion between the corporeal dimension of man or 'naked life' and sovereign
power. 'That Foucault was able to begin his study of biopolitics with no
reference to Arendt's work . . . bears witness to the difficulties and resistances
that thinking had to encounter in this area', Agamben suggests. 'And it is most
likely these very difficulties that account for the curious fact that Arendt
establishes no connection between her research in The Human Condition
and the penetrating analyses she had previously devoted to totalitarian
power (in which a biopolitical perspective is altogether lacking), and that
Foucault, in just as striking a fashion, never dwelt on the exemplary places of
modern biopolitics: the concentration camp and the structure of the great
totalitarian states of the twentieth century: '9 Agamben develops Foucault's
and Arendt's ideas further, establishing a clear connection between what he
16
Lacan (1992: 263). 17 Foucault ( 1 990: 143).
18 Foucault (1994: 719). 19Agamben (1998: 4).
Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim 73
calls 'bare life' and modern state power. 'The inclusion of bare life in the
political realm constitutes the original-if concealed-nucleus of sovereign
power . . . Placing biological life at the centre of its calculations, the modern
State therefore does nothing other than bring to light the secret tie uniting
power and bare life.'20
Foucault, Arendt, and Agamben invoke the coordinates of modern state
power. The question which I would like to ask is this: are these theories of
sovereign power relevant in interpreting the Sophoclean play? Can we pre­
suppose that the limit, for which Antigone stands, is 'the trace of an alternate
legality that haunts the conscious, public sphere as its scandalous future' and
that comes into existence in modern times?
Let's examine how Agamben describes this liminal phenomenon, which he
calls 'bare life'. Agamben points out that 'the Greeks had no single term to
express what we mean by the word "life". They used two terms . . . : zoe, which
expressed the simple fact of living common to all living beings ( animals, men,
or gods), and bias, which indicated the form or way of living proper to an
individual or group:21 These two terms mark out a zone of indistinction,
where one can replace another. When Aristotle describes man as a rational
animal, or when he gives a definition of man as politicon zoon, he points out
precisely this animality of man, adding to it some specific traits ( differentia
specifica), such as rationality or capacity for political existence. Foucault relies
on this definition when he refers, as I mentioned earlier, to 'modern man' as
'an animal whose politics calls his existence as a living being into question'.
Agamben thinks that this Foucauldian thesis will then have to be corrected or,
at least, completed, because 'what characterizes modern politics is not so
much the inclusion of zoe in the polis . . . Instead the decisive fact is that . . . the
realm of bare life-which is originally situated at the margins of the political
order-gradually begins to coincide with the political realm, and exclusion
and inclusion, outside and inside, bias and zoe, right and fact, enter into a
zone of irreducible indistinction.'22 That means that the political system has
the power to decide not only who deserves to have 'human rights', but also
which life counts as 'human' and is worth living.
The first example of such 'a zone of irreducible indistinction' Agamben
finds in an obscure figure of archaic Roman Jaw-the figure of homo sacer.
Homo sacer (or sacred man) is a man who may be killed and yet not sacrificed.
In this figure, 'human life is included in the juridical order . . . solely in the
form of its exclusion ( that is, of its capacity to be killed) . . . At the same time,
however, this ancient meaning of the term sacer presents us with the enigma
20 22
Ibid 6. 21 Ibid. Ibid. 9.
 Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim 75
74 Philosophy and Politics
contracts, from the point of view of sovereignty only bare life is authentically
of a figure of the sacred that, before or beyond the religious, constitutes the
political', Agamben argues.2 9
first p aradigm of the political realm of the West.'23 This definition, according
. This ambivalent status of homo sacer, I think, gives some insight into the
to which homo sacer may be killed and yet not sacrificed, reveals the contradic­
liminal position in which Antigone stands. Although these two figures can't
tion implicit in the term, because 'while it confirms the sacredness of a
be considered as being homological, because they belong to different-Greek
person, it au�h � rize � (or, more precisely, renders unpunishable) his killing . . .
and Roman-worlds, they share the same indistinct place between human
The contrad1ct10n 1s even more pronounced when one considers that the
jurisdiction and the religious sphere, between bias and zoe, between life and
person whom anyone could kill with impunity was nevertheless not to be put
exposedness to death. When Agamben writes that ' not simple na tural life, but
to death according to ritual practices . . . In what, then, does the sacredness of
life exposed to death (bare life or sacred life) is the originary political element', 30
the sacred man consist?'24 Agamben tries to resolve this contradiction, saying,
this definition of 'bare life' perfectly suits Antigone. On the one hand, both
that, on the one hand, this figure could be seen as 'a residue of an archaic
figures belong to this zone of indistinction between the profane and the
phase in which religious law was not yet distinguished from penal law and the
religious, and have inexplicit ties with the 'gods of the underworld': in this
death sentence appeared as a sacrifice to gods'. On the other hand, homo sacer
sense, they can't be sacrificed because they are already possessed by gods of the
can be seen as an archetypal figure of the sacred-consecration to the gods of
underworld. On the other hand, both figures are exposed to death and this
the underworld. In this case, homo sacer, according to Karol Kerenyi, 'cannot
eventual death not only lacks the dimension of sacredness but also does not
be the object of sa�rifice, � f a sacrificium, for no other reason than this very
. qualify killing as homicide. Quite paradoxically, Agamben points out that
simple one: what is sacer is already possessed by the gods . . . of the under­
classical Greece ignored the principle of sacredness of life: 'Even in those
world, and so there is no need for it to become so through a new action'.25 But,
societies that, like classical Greece, celebrated animal sacrifices and occasion­
Agamben argues, having these explanations, it remains even more incompre­
ally immolated human victims, life in itself was not considered sacred'. 31
hensi �le why anyone �a � !<i ll homo sacer without being stained by sacrilege.2 6
. Against this claim, we can recall that at least some sacrifices, for example,
!h �s mcomprehens 1b ihty comes from the standard understanding of the
the sacrifice of Iphigenia, have some significance or value. What strikes me
pnnc 1ple of the sacredness of life, which is also often invoked in recent debates
when thinking about Antigone is that her self-sacrifice lacks any sacredness
�bout the right to abortion or euthanasia. What Agamben is trying to explain but nevertheless invokes some unique significance or 'surplus-value'. Anti­
is that the sacredness of life means not the 'right to live', but the inner
gone's self-sacrifice touches upon some universal principles and in this sense
relationship between life and power: 'The sacredness of life . . . in fact origi­
can be contrasted with Bataillian examples of sacrifice: Bataillian ideas of
nally expresses precisely both life's subjection to a power over death and life's
sacrifice and transgression relate to individual or even idiosyncratic experi­
irreparable exposure in the relation of abandonment'. 27 In this sense, the
ence and leave the power structures untouched. In this sense, the Bataillian
principle of sacredness of life establishes a zone of indistinction between
notion of sacrifice is unable to grasp the universal logic which grounds the
sacri � �e and h � micide, where it is possible to kill without committing
concept of homo sacer or motivates the deeds of Antigone: 'Bataille immedi­
homic1de and without celebrating a sacrifice. Walter Benjamin, in his Critique
. ately exchanges the political body of the sacred man, which can be killed but
of Violence, was the first to discern the link between violence and law in the
not sacrificed and which is inscribed in the logic of exception, for the prestige
figure of 'bare life' ( blosses Leben) . This figure for Agamben establishes an
of the sacrificial body, which is defined instead by the logic of transgression',
essential lin� �etween bare life and juridical violence. 2 8 Paradoxically enough,
. . Agamben points out. 'Yet what Bataille is unable to master is precisely . . . the
hu n:ian life is mclu?ed m the political order not through assertion or dispos­
bare life of homo sacer, which the conceptual apparatus of sacrifice and
sess10 � ofh � man r� ghts (Arendt) but through exposing itself to the possibility
eroticism cannot grasp.' 32 In contrast to Bataille, the examples of homo sacer
of bemg killed without punishment. 'Contrary to our modern habit of
and Antigone operate not in the field of idiosyncratic experience, but in the
representing the political realm in terms of citizens' rights, free will, and social
framework of sovereign power. The position they occupy in this framework­
that of an exception-simultaneously implies the act of transgression, of

23 Ibid. 8-9. 24 Ibid. 72.

29 Ibid. I 06; emphasis in original. 30 Ibid. 88; emphasis in original.
25 Kerenyi (1940: 76). Cited by Agamben (1998: 73). 26 Agamben (1998: 73).
31 Ibid. 66. 32 Ibid. 1 1 3.
27 Ibid. 83. 2 8 Ibid. 65.
 -
76 Philosophy and Politics
overcoming, which should be interpreted not as a pathological or 'criminal'
inclination, but as a universal claim opposing power structures.
3 . UNIVER S AL EXCEPTION, UNIVER S AL
TR AN S GR ES SION
How does the state of exception become possible in the juridical order? Who
has the power to create an exception and in relation to whom? Agamben, in
his book State of Exception, analyses the state of exception as a paradigm of
sovereign power. He refers to Carl Schmitt's definition of sovereignty, accord­
ing to which the 'Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception'. The
state of exception refers to the shadowy sphere between public law and
political fact, between juridical order and life. Agamben points out that 'if
the law employs the exception-that is the suspension of law itself-as its
original means of referring to and encompassing life, then a theory of the state
of exception is the preliminary condition for any definition of the relation
that binds and, at the same time, abandons the living being to law'.33 In this
sense, the 'force of law', using Jacques Derrida's term, consists precisely in this
capacity of law to make an exception. 'The state of exception is an anomic
space in which what is at stake is a force of law without law', Agamben points
out.34 Historically, the state of exception appears in cases of necessity, like civil
war, insurrection, and resistance. In these cases, the state of exception is
opposed to normal order. Nevertheless, in the course of the twentieth century,
a new phenomenon appears that can be defined as a permanent state of
exception. Agamben gives as an example the Nazi regime: the Third Reich
proclaimed the Decree for the Protection of the People and the State, which
suspended the Weimar Constitution and this state of exception lasted twelve
years. 'In this sense, modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establish­
ment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the
physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories
of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system.
Since then, the voluntary creation of a permanent state of emergency . . . has
become one of the essential practices of contemporary states, including so­
called democratic ones.'35 The main feature of the state of exception in the
twentieth century is that it becomes a universal condition.
33 Agamben (2005: 1). 34 Ibid. 39. 35 Ibid. 2.
Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim 77
Another interesting point is the relationship between 'the force of law
without law' and space. Interpreting Carl Schmitt, Agamben states: 'What is
at issue in the sovereign exception is not so much the control or neutralization
of an excess as the creation and definition of the very space in which the
juridico-political order can have validity. In this sense, the sovereign exception
is the fundamental localization ( Ortung) , which does not limit itself to distin­
guishing what is inside from what is outside but instead traces a threshold
(the state of exception) between the two . . . ' 36 Agamben points out that
the link between localization ( Ortung) and ordering ( Ordnung) is even
more complex than Schmitt suggests: 'When our age tried to grant the
unlocalizable a permanent and visible localization, the result was the concen­
tration camp. The camp-and not the prison-is the space that corresponds
to this originary structure of the nomos. This is shown, among other things,
by the fact that while prison law only constitutes a particular sphere of penal
law and is not outside the normal order, the juridical constellation that guides
the camp is . . . martial law and the state of siege.' 37
Having in mind this context, we can return to Antigone and think about her
position in terms of power and space. There is an uncanny symmetry between
the unburied body of Polyneices, which is exposed publicly, and the body of
Antigone, which is still alive, enclosed in the tomb. Both of them are located in
these specific spaces by the sovereign's decision, and both of them are sub­
jected to the sovereign power in the state of exception. Using Agamben's term,
we can say that in terms of the law it is an inclusive exclusion: they are included
in the public sphere of law only in the form of exclusion. If we think about
them in terms of sacrifice (or scapegoat) , we can name their position as an
exclusive inclusion, because they are killed or sentenced to death without
inscribing them into the sacred order: these bodies are deprived of any dignity
and sacredness, that means their deaths lack any symbolic value. Here again we
see the striking similarity between the figure of Antigone and the figure of
homo sacer: ' in the case of homo sacer a person is simply set outside human
ju risdiction without being brought into the realm of divine law . . . If this is
true, then sacratio takes the form of a double exception, both from the ius
humanum and from the ius divinum, both from the sphere of the profane and
from that of the religious. The topological structure drawn by this double
exception is that of a double exclusion and a double capture, which presents
. . .
more than a mere analogy with th e structure o f th e sovereign exception.' 38
This double structure of sovereign power and exception reappears in the
totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. The main biopolitical effect of
36 Agamben (1998: 19). Emphasis added. 37 Ibid. 20. 38 Ibid. 82.
78 Philosophy and Politics
the totalitarian regime is that life may be killed but not sacrificed. 'The Jew
living under Nazism is the privileged negative referent of the new biopolitical
sovereignty and is, as such, a flagrant case of a homo sacer in the sense of a life
that may be killed but not sacrificed. H is killing therefore constitutes . . . nei­
ther capital punishment nor a sacrifice, but simply the actualization of a mere
"capacity to be killed" inherent in the condition of the Jew as such . . . The
dimension in which the extermination took place is neither religion nor law,
but biopolitics.'3 9 The paradigm of such a biopolitical effect for Agamben is the
concentration camp. The concentration camp perfectly combines localization
( Ortung) and ordering ( Ordnung): it is a special place where the 'force of law
without law' can exercise its power. Agamben thinks that Foucault's analysis of
the mechanisms and places of discipline and control was incomplete because
he never managed to make a connection between what he called the grand
enfermement in hospitals and prisons and the biopolitics of the great totalitar­
ian states of the twentieth century. He also is critical of Hannah Arendt, who
analysed the structure of totalitarian states but missed its biopolitical perspec­
tive.40 Only when politics was transformed into biopolitics did it become
possible to introduce the state of exception to an unprecedented degree. 'If it
is true that the figure proposed by our age is that of an unsacrificeable life that
has nevertheless become capable of being killed to an unprecedented degree,
then the bare life of homo sacer concerns us in a special way', Agamben points
out. 'If today there is no longer any one clear figure of the sacred man, it is
perhaps because we are all virtually homines sacri.'4 1
This last statement radically changes the understanding of the notion o f
homo sacer: bare life i s n o longer confined to a particular place o r t o a
particular social group. 'It now dwells in the biological body of every living
being.'42 The 'politicization' of l ife implies that every society decides which
particular group will take the role of homo sacer. The figure of homo sacer
starts to function as an empty signifier, which can be filled with different
content. This is why the position of homo sacer in contemporary society is
constantly shifting: from the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to refugees, or
immigrants, or the receivers of humanitarian aid. 'When life and politics­
originally divided, and linked together by means of the no-man's-land of the
state of exception that is inhabited by bare life-begin to become one, all life
becomes sacred and all politics becomes the exception', Agamben argues.43
In this sense, the state of exception represents not a contingent condition,
but at some point starts to represent universality, a universal condition
common to all of us. Butler ends her book on Antigone with reference to
39 Ibid. 1 1 4. 40 Ibid. 119-20. 41 Ibid. 1 1 4- 1 5.
42 Ibid. 140. 43 Ibid. 148.
Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim 79
Agamben, saying 'that we live increasingly in a time in which populations
without full citizenship exist within states; their ontological status as legal
subjects is suspended . . . Indeed, how are we to grasp this dilemma of lan­
guage that emerges when "human" takes on that doubled sense, the norma­
tive one based on radical exclusion and the one that emerges in the sphere of
the excluded, not negated, not dead, perhaps slowly dying, . . . indeed, from
the premature circumscription of the norms by which recognition as human
can be conferred . . . '44 Not without melancholy, Butler believes that this
exclusion could be 'softened' if the excluded could have his/her discourse
and, like Antigone, being inhuman, still speak in the language of the human.
But does this discursive representation of what is excluded change the real
constellation of power? Zizek criticizes Butler's position, saying that 'there is
no place in Agamben for the "democratic" project of "renegotiating" the limit
which separates full citizens from Homo sacer by gradually allowing their
voices to be heard; his point is, rather, that in today's "post-politics", the very
democratic public space is a mask concealing the fact that, ultimately, we are
all Homo sacer.'45
This conclusion enables us to rethink the state of exception in terms of
universality. Universality starts speaking on behalf of Antigone and on behalf
of all those who lack recognition as being human. Zi:lek states that 'Antigone
formulates her claim on behalf of all those who, like the sans-papiers in today's
France, are without a full and definite socio-ontological status . . . in our era
of self-proclaimed globalization, they-the non-identified-stand for true
universality'. 46 We are continuously confronted with bodies, which are not
dead, which are not dying, but are not alive either, or, more precisely, which
are not worth liv ing ( this is exactly what Lacan says about Antigone). These are
the bodies of prisoners, political and economical refugees, asylum seekers,
tortured bodies, unrecognized bodies. Zizek, speaking about the prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay, noticed that in a recent NBC debate they were described as
'those who were missed by the bombs'. 'Since they were the target of legitimate
US bombings in Afghanistan and accidentally survived, no one can complain
about what happens to them afterwards as prisoners: whatever their situation,
it is better than being dead. Such reasoning puts the prisoners in the position
of the living dead', Zizek points o ut.47 Guantanamo prisoners are put in the
space 'between two deaths': biologically, they are still alive, but with an
indeterminate legal status. Zizek also says that the 'disclosures from Abu
Ghraib make plain the consequences of putting prisoners in this space
"between two deaths" '. 4 8 This inhuman condition is equally common to all
44 Butler (2000: 81). 45 Zizek (2002a: 100).
46 Zizek and Dolar (2002: 186). 47 Zizek (2004a). 48 !bid.
 Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim 81
80 Philosophy and Politics
actress who is playing Antigone (the actress survived after Auschwitz and
receivers of humanitarian aid, to all those bodies dislocated around European
needs a wig for her mutilated head). This symbolic gesture of giving her hair
railway stations and public toilets. Agamben and Zi:lek do not take the
connects Agnieszka's fate with Antigone's. Like Antigone, she insists on
'promise of democracy' for granted: the regime of democracy is inseparable
building the gravestone for her brother notwithstanding others' opinions
from the production of those, who are still considered as being 'inhuman', and
who are locked in the condition 'between two deaths'. and her sister's (echoing Ismene's) persuasion to adjust to the new political
order because nothing will ever change. To her sister's question, 'Are you
How can we cope with this situation? What political means can we take
taking sides with the dead?', Agnieszka replies: Tm taking sides with those
against politics as an exception? It's clear that the traditional discourse of
who were killed'. She condemns herself to death (the last time we see her, she
� uman rights or the democratic promise of negotiations is of no use here.
disappears into the basements of the NKVD), but by this act she identifies
Zizek proposes to reverse the logic of order and exception, universality and
particularity, and identify the position of exception with true universality. with those who were killed but not sacrificed. Her universal transgression can
be interpreted as an ethical act because it not only does the impossible
'This procedure of identifying with the symptom is the exact and necessary
obverse of the standard critical and ideological move . . . , of denouncing the (witnesses the secret crime), but intervenes in the social reality and changes
the very coordinates of what is perceived to be possible; it's not simply beyond
neutral universality as false: in it, one pathetically asserts (and identifies with)
the good, it redefines what counts as good.
the point of inherent exception/exclusion, the "abject'; of the concrete positive
order, as the only point of true universality, as the point which belies the
existing concrete universality.'4 9 For example, if people are divided into 'full'
citizens and temporary immigrant workers, it's clear that 'full' citizens are
privileged and immigrant workers excluded from the public space. In this
case, the political decision would be to identify with the point of exclusion
and to say 'we are all immigrant workers'.50 This is precisely the same
procedure that Antigone undertakes: she transgresses the law and identifies
with the position of those who are unidentifiable, who are beyond the order of
law. Antigone's act is not an idiosyncratic transgression, motivated by her
'pathological' desire, but a universal transgression, identifying with the posi­
tion of those who lack recognition in the public space.
A similar example of a universal transgression occurs in Andrzej Wajda's
film Katyn (2007) . The film depicts the story of Polish officers murdered by
the NKVD in Katyn during the Second World War. After Nazi Germany's
in�asion of western Poland in 1 9 3 9, Stalin also ordered units of the Red Army
to mvade eastern Poland. As the result of this, all Polish officers were arrested
by Soviets, and about 4,000 of these were deported to the Katyii. forests in
Russia and brutally massacred. Even when, in 1 94 3 , Germans discovered mass
graves in Katyn, the Soviets continued to deny what had happened. The film
concentrates on the lives of wives, mothers, and sisters who have to cope not
only with the undocumented fact of their relatives' deaths but also with the
official lies. One of them, Agnieszka, a sister of a pilot who disappeared in
Katyn, decides to build a gravestone for her brother, and in this way make his
absence public. To get some money she sells her beautiful blond hair to an

so
49 Ziiek (2006b: 178-9); emphasis in original. Ibid. 179.

l

4 does not promise a solution to either 'accusing crowd' or 'helpless accused :
The Body Politic:
The Ethics of Responsibility
and the Responsibility of Ethics
Eugene O'Brien
I would begin this chapter with the body of a woman and stones; I would
conclude this chapter with the body of a woman and stones. The two women
are different and their stories are different, as are their fates. What connects
them is the power of words and ethical decisions, a power which is ethical in
its import on language and the law, but which is practical and potent in its
import on the bodies of these women, who stand as synecdoches for millions
of other bodies upon whom the consequences of the decisions of the body
politic are enacted. I will not begin with the caving in of Antigone as one
might expect, given the title of this book, but with another woman who stands
accused by men in a story that has come down to us from the time before and
beyond.
In the title essay of The Governmen t of the Tongue, Seamus Heaney is
discussing the 'paradox of poetry and of the imaginative arts in general', 1
and muses on the efficacy of poetry. He says, in one sense, the efficacy is 'nil­
no lyric has ever stopped a tank'; however, in another sense, he sees its efficacy
as 'unlimited' and goes on to cite the metaphor ofJesus' writing in the sand­
'in the face of which accusers and accused are left speechless and renewed'-as
an example of the status or force of poetry. Quoting from chapter 8 of John's
Gospel, he cites Jesus' writing, in the face of the scribes and Pharisees who
were accusing the woman caught in adultery. He sees poetry as analogous to
this writing, a 'break with the usual life but not an absconding from it'. In
terms redolent of Jacques Derrida's notions of difference and the trace,
Heaney speaks of the epistemology of poetry as paralleling the writing in
1 Heaney ( 1 980: 1 0 7 ) .
Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility 83
the sand, a process which is ephemeral in the extreme. As he puts it, poet�y
Instead in the rift between what is going to happen and whatever we would wish to
'.
happen poetry holds attention for a space, functions not as distraction but as pure
_
concentration, a focus where our power to concentrate 1s concentrated back o �
�
ourselves. This is what gives poetry its governing power. At its l:\reatest mo me ts tt
_ _
would attempt, in Yeats's phrase, to hold in a single thought reality and JUsUce.
Here, we see different, but parallel, statements about the field of force. Poet�y
can be the space through which reality and justice can operate, not overtly m
the political sphere, but in terms of influencing the writer �nd the re_ader; he
goes on to describe poetry as 'more a threshold than a path and sees it as one
which is 'constantly approached and constantly departed from', and w�ich
affects reader and writer by the experience of being 'at the same time
summoned and released'.3 The focus of this exemplary reading of the gospel
story is on the single body of a woman, of a woman abou_t to _b e stoned to
death because of the law, and of an intervention, of an erupt10n, m that law of
a new law. The 'governing power' of poetry here stands for the governing
power of language. Jesus took an ethical decision which violated the .law of
Moses, but which he saw as ethically correct. In this way, he was enacting the
power of language to alter the body politic and to address it with ethical
imperatives which force a change in the material of that very body.
This governing power is an act of responsibility, of deciding whether hands
should hold stones or attempt to communicate, even in the knowledge that all
such communication is ephemeral in the extreme and that writing in the san_d
is destined to be transient. The question of responsibility is at the core of this
text. Posing an ethics of the question, Derrida makes the point that the 'li_berty
of the question' must be 'stated and protected', and he goes o � to say that if this
'commandment' has an ethical meaning, it is not 'that it belongs to the
domain of the ethical, but in that it ultimately authorizes every ethical law
in general'.4 The force of such open-ended questions within Irish cultu�e has
been seismic in recent years. It has underpinned the gradu�l de�en:nng_ of
church and state as unmoved movers in an Irish context. While this s1tuat10n
may lead to something of an epistemological voi�, nev_ertheles_s it provides the
opportunity to reshape or refashion the culture m which �e.hve. The �as_t,_ or
our received notions of the past, can be seen as either a straitJacket, dehm1tmg
progress or development of the present culture, or as something to be
2 Ibid. 1 08.
3 Ibid. 1 08.
4 Derrida (I 992: 80).
84
Philosophy and Politics
renegotiated. It is this project of reimagining the historical, cultural, linguis­
tic, and societ�l givens that I see as central to the role of theory in developing a
fresh conception of the structures that govern society.
In this chapter, I want to look at a number of bodies in literature and in
politics and use them as a lens through which issues of ethics, responsibility,
and choice can be discussed and examined. At the core of his 'writing in the
sand' metaphor is the wounded female body, the body as victim, and in
Antigone, the body as victim occurs again and again. The sense of Antigone's
responsibility for her actions, of her responsibility as a daughter of the royal
house of Thebes to the politics and polis of Thebes, is one of the central cruces
of the play, and can be seen as the inheritance of the play in terms of what it
says to us in contemporary culture. One of the reasons why Antigone has been
so enduring is that questions of different responsibilities and of the ethical
import of political decisions are raised, and here I would like to interrogate
the notions of the different responsibilities enunciated in the play-Anti­
gone's to her brother's memory and Creon's to the polis of Thebes. In Specters
ofMarx, Derrida speaks of the fractured notion of an inheritance, which, far
from issuing from a fixed centre, and from containing an unequivocal mean­
ing, ' is never gathered together, it is never one with itself'.5 It is always in need
of interpretation, and this can be hierarchically imposed or can be achieved by
a form of critique, which is precisely the role of the process of theoretical
questioning which will be the subject of this chapter.
Seamus Heaney makes a similar point in 'The Settle Bed', a poem from his
volume Seeing Things: 'an inheritance' is from 'the long ago', and yet it can be
made 'willable forward/Again and again and again', because: 'whatever is
given/can always be reimagined'.6 These lines could serve as a rubric for the
transformation of the men talite of Irish society over the last twenty years or
so. Heaney here is suggesting that any culture which predicates its values on
the past, and which adopts hegemonic attitudes as 'givens' within a culture is
only taking one possible narrative pathway in terms of its development. The
value of deconstructive theory has been questioned a lot in recent years. In
the context of this discussion, however, a deconstructive critique brings to the
fore the other face of deconstruction which is: 'its hair-raising radicalism­
the nerve and daring with which it knocks the stuffing out of every smug
concept and leaves the well-groomed text shamefully dishevelled'.7 I am not
sure if Antigone can be seen as a well-groomed text, but I hope that this
chapter will probe the issues of responsibility and irresponsibility and will
5 Derrida ( 1 994: 1 6) .
6 Heaney ( 1984: 4 9 ) .
7 Eagleton ( 1 9 8 1 : 1 34).
Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility 85
problematize these concepts and the reactions to her decisions within the
play. I also hope to look at the contexts called to mind by this text, and to
show how the text speaks to us across time, space, and culture to pose
deconstructive questions of our contemporary moment and the body politic.
Both Derrida, in Glas, and Heaney, in The Burial at Thebes, look at
Antigone, with particular reference to this ethical issue of responsibility.
Both writers approach the play through Hegel, and for both writers, the
dead body of Polyneices becomes a site of ethical resistance to the general
will of the polis. The body becomes a synecdoche of the resistance of the
singular human experience to the general ideological current and the ultimate
value of voice and agency of the individual to effect a degree of societal
change. For Derrida, writing about Hegel's comments on Antigone, the family
is an example of a structure which exists in opposition to the political, and
Antigone's opposition to Creon is based on the notion of her responsibility to
her brother's memory, as manifested in his dead body. In this sense, she
exemplifies Derrida's conception of an ethics of responsibility which must
always be irresponsible to one group if it is to be responsible to another. The
family for Derrida is both an index of the Hegelian system but also a site of
that system's rupture:
If the family's thing is pure singularity, one belongs to a family only in busying oneself
around the dead: toilette of the dead, institution of death, wake, monumentalization,
archive, heritage, genealogy, classification of proper names, engraving on tombs,
burying, shrouding, burial place, funeral song and so on. The family does not yet
know the universality producing labor in the city, only the work of mourning.8
For Derrida, the issue is one of the singularity of her relationship with Polyneices
as opposed to the iterability of her relationship with her polis. But is she then, as
is often suggested, irresponsible as a member of the Theban royal family, to her
polis and to the future stability of Thebes by disobeying Creon? Or is Creon, in
his act of responsibility towards political stability, being irresponsible to his
family commitments and to another member of the royal family? In short, who
is right and who is wrong? Are the ethical and political compatible? What is the
play trying to communicate to us on these issues?
To begin our process of deconstructive questioning, it is necessary to
question the origins of the word responsibility itsel£ It derives from the
Latin spondere meaning 'to promise', with an inbuilt sense of answering to
one's community and promising to obey the rules of that community. Thus
the concept is very much a social one, which relates the individual to his or
her community, with the community providing the codes which must be
8 Derrida ( 1 986: 143).

86 Philosophy and Politics
obeyed, or conformed to, by the individual either voluntarily or through
some form of societal pressure. The sense of the promise to conform, or of an
obligation, presupposes that a relationship to the social and consequently the
inculcation of responsibility is one of the core values of western liberal
democracy.
Issues of decision, calculation, responsibility, language, inauguration all
combine in anastomosis to create the context which permeates and allows the
discussion on the force of law and the force of justice. As Derrida has noted:
However careful one is in the theoretical preparation of a decision, the instant of the
decision, if there is to be a decision, must be heterogeneous to the accumulation of
knowledge. Otherwise there is no responsibility. In this sense not only must the person
taking the decision not know everything . . .the decision, if there is to be one, must
advance towards a future which is not known, which cannot be anticipated.9
So too Derrida sees justice as intimately connected with notions of responsi­
bility to the 'absolute singularity of the other', '0 and to an 'endless promise' to
the future. 1 1 In Specters of Marx, Derrida's recent intervention into the
legacies of Marx offered a similar possibility: a chance now to call for justice:
Not for calculable and distributive justice. Not for law, the calculation of restitution, the
economy of vengeance or punishment .. . not for calculable equality therefore, not for
the symmetrizing and synchronic accountability or imputability of subjects or objects,
not for a rendering of justice that would be limited to sanctioning or restituting, and to
doing right, but for justice as incalculability of the gift and singularity of the an­
economic ex-position to others. 1 2
I s this the sense o f justice that the dead body of Polyneices provokes in
Antigone?
The scene is set after an invading army from Argos has been defeated by the
Thebans under their new king Creon. Two of the sons of Oedipus, brothers to
Antigone and Ismene, died in this battle; Eteocles perished defending Thebes,
but his brother, Polyneices, was part of the attacking army and hence a traitor:
Their banners flew, the battle raged
They fell together, their father's sons. 13
The Theban king, Creon, outraged by this treachery from one of the royal
family, decrees that Polyneices shall not receive the normal purifying burial
9 Derrida (2002b: 2 3 1 ).
10
Derrida ( 1997: 25).
11 Derrida ( 1992: 38).
12 Derrida ( 1 994: 22-3).
13 Heaney (2004: 8).
Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility 87
rites and places under interdict of death, anyone who will attempt to provide
these rites to the corpse. He decrees that Polyneices, that 'Anti-Theban
Theban', will not be accorded burial, but will be left to rot in the open. The
results are that 'The dogs and birds are at it day and night, spreading reek and
rot'. 14 Creon justifies this:
This is where I stand where it comes to Thebes
Never to grant traitors and subversives
1
Equal footing with loyal citizens. 5
His decision is taken with the authority o f the king-his is a decision that is
responsible to his society, his culture, and his polis. That one of the royal
family should betray his country is an act that he feels the need to respond to
through an invocation of the law. Through the symbolic order, Creon sets out
a responsibility of the loyal citizen to his or her polis. As a law has b� en broke�
by the desire of Polyneices to achieve power in Thebes, a desire that is
irresponsible from Creon's perspective, so Creon sees the � eed to ma�e a�
.
example of the body of Polyneices in order to enforce an ethic of respons1b 1h­
ty in all Theban citizens. He asserts this through the symbolic order of
language and through a meta-signification at the level of the dead body.
The body o f a traitor will become the ultimate signifier of the fate of
irresponsible desire. The natural processes of death and decay will become
part of the symbolic order and will signify the fate of traitors in life and in
death. It is also an exercise of Creon's own power within, and control of, the
symbolic order of Thebes.
The symbolic order is made up of those laws and restrictions that control
both desire and the rules of communication, which are perpetuated through
societal and cultural hegemonic modes. Jacques Lacan condenses this func­
tion in the term the 'Name of the Father'. Through recognition of the Name
of the Father, one becomes a member of a society or culture. The symbolic is
about language and narrative. Once a child enters into language and accepts
the rules and dictates of society, it is able to deal with others. The symbolic
is made possible because of the acceptance of the Name of the Father, those
laws and restrictions that control both desire and the rules of communication:
'it is in the Name of the father that we must recognize the support of the
symbolic function which, from the dawn of history, has identified his person
with the figure of the law'. 1 6 Through recognition of the Name of the Father,
entry into a community of others is made possible. The symbolic, through
14 Ibid. 44.
15 Ibid. 1 1 .
16 Lacan ( l 977a: 67).
88 Philosophy and Politics
language, is 'the pact which links . . . subjects together in one action. The
human action par excellence is originally founded on the existence of the
world of the symbol, namely on laws and contracts'. 17 But again, there is
the exchange with desire, which is always deferred by language and deflected
by language.
For Lacan, the nature of desire means that it is always unfulfilled. Madan
Sarup sums up this up by saying, 'I always find my desire outside of me,
because what I desire is always something that I lack, that is other to me'. 18 In
this play, the dead body of Polyneices is just such an attempt to fill a lack-for
Creon, it is a lack in his own perception of his power; for Antigone, it is the
lack of her family relationships, sundered by death. Desire is therefore a
relationship to a lack and not a relationship to an object. However, desire
itself is partially narcissistic, because the subject's desire for the other is also
the desire for reciprocation: ' [t ] he first object of desire is to be recognized by
the other'. 19
Moreover, it is through the other, as well as through the subject's own
image, that desire is located and recognized. The subject thus recognizes his
desire in the body of the other. T his means that his desire has passed over to
the other because the subject's desire is fragmented, and what is fragmented is
essentially dismemberable. Thus, 'the subject becomes aware of his desire in
the other, through the intermediary of the image of the other which offers
him a semblance of his own mastery',20 much like the semblance of mastery
that is experienced during the mirror stage. In this play, the body of Poly­
neices becomes the signifier of conflicting desires. For Creon, the decaying
body outside the walls will signify his ultimate power over life and death in
Thebes. It will satisfy his desire to be seen in the role of the Name of the Father
of his culture. For Antigone, giving the body burial will signify her desire to
do what she sees as the right thing for her connection with her family and her
brother. Each one is acting according to a sense of responsibility, but a
responsibility to two very different ethical imperatives: living versus dead;
law versus moral choice; an ethics of the polis versus an ethics of the family.
For Creon, his words enact responsibility; for Antigone, the act of burial
enunciates responsibility. For Creon, his is another law, enacted by his decree
and this is his social function within the polis. The ruler is coterminous with
the fountainhead of law: his voice is coterminous with the law. His law is for
the common good.
17 Lacan ( 1 99 1 : 230).
18
Sarup ( 1 992: 68-9).
19 Lacan ( 1 977a: 64) .
20
Lacan ( 1 99 1 : 1 55 ) .
Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility 89
Many societal laws and contracts involve the valorization of the social over
the individual and the suppression of desire. When one looks at the ten
commandments, the precepts that govern the Judea-Christian ethos of west­
ern Europe and America, the imperative towards responsibility is expressed as
a series of prohibitions:
Thou shalt not kill;
Thou shalt not steal;
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour,
Thou shalt not commit adultery,
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours's goods,
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.
Clearly, the responsible is in some way seen as counter to the natural instincts
of people. Logically, commandments are set out to counter aberrant beha­
viour and if all of the above are cited, then again, logically, they must have
been popular practices that were deemed as unsuitable, and irresponsibl: . All
.
of the above could be seen as instances of desire and as Lacan notes, desire is
born through the acquisition of language, but so also is prohibition. T he
Name of the Father is invoked through the commandments handed down by
the father, and the familial relationship is clearly an attempt to transpose the
values and responsibilities of the family onto a socio-cultural platform.
For Antigone, the duty she has to her brother as human far surpasses her
duty to the T heban notion of patriotism as laid down by Creon, and interest­
ingly, she cites a higher law than that of Creon or T hebes itself:
I disobeyed the law because the law was not
The law of Zeus nor the law ordained
By Justice. Justice dwelling deep
Among the gods of the dead.21
By positing a higher order of the treatment of the other than that of the polis,
or group, Antigone is voicing the perennial debate between ethics and patri­
otism or nationalism, and more crucially in terms of Heaney's work, between
the society, or tribe, and the individual.
Her stress is on the rights and duties of the individual to other individuals,
or in Levinasian terms, to the 'face of the other'. 22 Interestingly, Creon is not
depicted as some sort of political fundamentalist; he is a heroic figure in is�
own right who has done the state some service. He has saved Thebes from its
enemies and voices a sense of patriotic philosophy which underwrites his
21
Heaney (2004: 20- 1 ) .
22
Levinas ( 1 969: 188).
 pa
90 Philosophy and Politics
personal ideology. His views on the polis and its need to impose order could
well serve as a credo for many states in the world:
For the patriot
Personal loyalty always must give way
To patriotic duty.
Solidarity, friends,
Is what we need. The whole crew must close ranks.
The safety of our state depends upon it.23
For Creon, the binary is simple: one is either a patriot or a traitor, and this
carries through in life and death:
This is where I stand when it comes to Thebes:
Never to grant traitors and subversives
Equal footing with loyal citizens
But to honour patriots in life and death.2 4
The need to see these bodies as signifiers of patriotism or betrayal after death
is a potent trope in nationalist rhetoric in an Irish as well as classical context.
The images of dead martyrs or traitors are the motive forces behind so many
of the commemorative parades, processions, and demonstrations that have
caused such tension, bloodshed, and death throughout the history of North­
ern Ireland. The honouring of one's own glorious dead and the dishonouring
of those who broke the code of the tribe is a vital signifier in nationalist and
unionist rhetorical structures. By so doing, he attempts to attenuate the
humanity of Polyneices; he is to be buried without 'any ceremony whatsoever'
and is adjudged to be merely a 'carcass for the dogs and birds to feed on'.25
To treat the dead correctly and with honour, Antigone implies, is very much
an index of our own humanity. The treatment of people as less than human, as
often demanded by the voice of the tribe, is the antithesis of her own actions.
Antigone's is an evocation of a higher, intersubjective sense of ethics:
This proclamation had your force behind it
But it was mortal force, and I, also a mortal,
I chose to disregard it. I abide
By statutes utter and immutable­
Unwritten, original, god-given laws.26
23 Heaney (2004: 1 0 ) .
24 Ibid. 1 1 .
25 Ibid. 1 1 .
6 29
2 Ibid. 2 1 .
Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility 91
One of the strongest points about this translation is the degree of moral
complexity involved. Antigone is not a particularly attractive character; she is
unyielding, especially to her sister Ismene, and can be seen as almost naive in
her demand for honour for her brother. From his own perspective, and
indeed, from that of the chorus, Creon is to be admired:
Creon saved us
Saved the country, and there he was, strong king,
Strong head of family, the man in charge. 27
However, so is Antigone, as in death she teaches Creon that: 'until we breathe
our last breath I we should keep the established law',28 and in this line we see
the credo of both original and translation: our common humanity should
transcend our differences. It is the treatment of the dead, themselves no longer
part of politics as agents, that is seen as wrong in the dramatic logic of the play
and the translation. Here is Derrida's incalculable justice, and the fact that we
can question her decision and that Creon, in the world of Realpolitik, is
correct, is what lies at the heart of the play. Her choice is difficult, and ethical
in the sense used by Derrida in that she has no rule to guide her, no definite
sense of right and wrong, only her strong sense that she must do this.
Derrida makes the point that ethics is precisely what is required for these
decisions:
There are ethics precisely because there is this contradiction, because there is no rule.
There are ethics because I have to invent the rule; there would be no responsibility ifl
knew the rule. There is responsibility only because there are these two aporetic
structures in which I have to respond to two injunctions, different and incompatible.
That's where responsibility starts, when I don't know what to do. Ethics start when
you don't know what to do, when there is this gap between knowledge and action, and
you have to take responsibility for inventing this new rule which doesn't exist. An
ethics which guarantees is not an ethics. 29
Antigone has no rule and her decision can be seen as parallel responsibilities
and responsibilities: her responsibility to her dead brother necessitates irre­
sponsibility to her king; her responsibility to her family necessitates irrespon­
sibility to her polis and her responsibility to a broader human bond
necessitates irresponsibility to her own life, as she will ultimately sacrifice it.
Hers is a singular decision and is ethical in the Derridean sense because it is a
singular response to its context.
27 Ibid. 49.
28
Ibid. 48.
Derrida (2003: 32).
92 Philosophy and Politics
The result is that the tapestry of the power structure that Creon is attempt­
ing to consolidate unravels in a litany of dead bodies: Antigone, Haemon,
Eurydice all lie dead by the end of the play. The dangers of the hegemony of
the polis, as opposed to the rights of the individual, are signified in the tragic
conclusion of the play. Heaney, in his classical translations, has made the
choice of the individual over the group an ethical trope, and this trope can be
seen to derive from his Field Day pamphlet An Open letter, wherein he
prioritizes the individual over the group for the first time.
I would argue that to ponder abut the rightness or wrongness of Antigone's
decision is very much to miss the point of the play's ethical imperative. There
is no right or wrong decision here. Creon is enforcing the law of the polis and
protecting Thebes from further treachery. Antigone is protecting the memory
of her brother and upholding a common humanity against political ideology .
In both cases, we need to look at a different ethical paradigm and that is to be
found in the work of Derrida.
In The Gift of Death, Derrida speaks of the different types of responsibility
which make ethical demands on us. He uses the story of Abraham being asked
by God to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, and of the struggle between Abraham's
responsibility to the call of the transcendent, to the call of his own family, to
the call of his future (in the sense of his son carrying on his genes), and of his
responsibility to his community. For Derrida, there is no programmatic right
or wrong decision here: 'Abraham is at the same time, the most moral and the
most immoral, the most responsible and the most irresponsible'.3° For Der­
rida, an ethical decision is one which must make an 'undecidable leap' beyond
all prior ·preparation for that decision.31 Abraham can never be sure whether
his decision is right or wrong, and yet he must make the decision: he is in that
aporia that exists between the force of justice and the force of law:
I am responsible to anyone (that is to say, to any other) only by failing in my responsi­
bility to all the others, to the ethical or political generality. And I can never justify this
sacrifice . ... What binds me to this one or that one, remains finally unjustifiable.32
In real terms, this means that the force of justice is an ethical, singular, and
individual one, rooted in the call of an impossible future: 'justice remains to
come, it remains by cominl33 Each individual case is an event not governed by
the past applications of the rules of law, but by a present and future interpre­
tation based on singularity.
30 Derrida ( 1 995: 72).
31 Ibid. 47.
32 Ibid. 70.
33 Derrida (2002a: 256).
Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility 93
Nevertheless, it is relatively clear that in The Gift of Death, Derrida intends
to free us from the common assumption that responsibility is to be associated
with behaviour that accords with general principles capable of justification in
the public realm. In opposition to such an account, he emphasizes the 'radical
singularity' of the demands placed upon Abraham by God34 and those that
might be placed on us by our own loved ones. Ethics, with its dependence
upon generality, must be continually sacrificed as an inevitable aspect of the
human condition and its aporetic demand to decide.35 As Derrida points out,
in writing about one particular cause rather than another, in pursuing one
profession over another, in spending time with one's family rather than at
work, one inevitably ignores the 'other others',36 and this is a condition of any
and every existence. He argues that: 'I cannot respond to the call, the request,
the obligation, or even the love of another, without sacrificing the other other,
the other others'.37 For Derrida, it seems that the Buddhist desire to have
attachment to nobody and equal compassion for everybody is an unattainable
ideal. He does, in fact, suggest that a universal community that excludes no
one is a contradiction in terms. According to him, this is because responsibil­
ity to the one necessarily means irresponsibility to the other, as already cited.
Derrida hence implies that responsibility to any particular individual is
only possible by being irresponsible to the 'other others', that is, to the other
people and possibilities that haunt any and every existence. Thus, if one looks
at the points made by Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad, he suggests
that the victims of the holocaust should not have been located in Palestine, as
this act caused a further disenfranchisement of a completely blameless people,
the Palestinians. His point is that the responsibility felt by the western world
towards the Jews because of the holocaust, blinded them to the effects of this
resettlement programme on the indigenous people living in Palestine. Re­
sponsibility to the one can often result in irresponsibility towards the other,
and very often the ethical decision is not as easy as it might sound.
And the responsibility-irresponsibility aporia is also to be found through­
out the political sphere in contemporary society just as it was in the time of
Creon and Antigone. We may blame George W. Bush and question his
decisions to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. We may question him on the
issue of the supposed weapons of mass destruction. We may question the
ethics and integrity of the incarceration of terrorist suspects in Guantanamo
Bay and the policy of rendition of prisoners into jurisdictions where torture of
34 Derrida ( 1 995: 60, 68, 79) .
35 Ibid. 70.
36 Ibid. 69.
37 Ibid. 68.
94 Philosophy and Politics
suspects who have not been proven guilty takes place as a matter of course.
However, if we were in charge of a country which had suffered the cataclysmic
event of 9/1 1 and if we were told that the torture of some suspects could
prevent a similar attack, what decision would we take? Would we be respon­
sible to the polis, as was Creon, or would we see ourselves as responsible to a
more intersubjective ethics which valorized the individual human being?
This has been the dilemma of Antigone and of Creon-I would argue that it is
both of their tragedies and not just that of the eponymous heroine. They each
have enacted the ethical aporia of singular responsibility and irresponsibility,
and this is a dilemma that has strong resonances in the political world generally,
as we have seen. In this text, as in The Cure at Troy, there is an almost allegorical
level of connection between classical Greece and contemporary Northern Ire­
land. Indeed, in the aftermath of the play, the image of a woman pleading, and
then demanding, justice for a dead brother had a particular resonance in Ireland.
On 30 January 2005, Robert McCartney was murdered outside Magennis' pub
in the Short Strand area of Belfast. Reputedly, the murderers were members of
Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA, and in the aftermath of the murder, the pub
was cleaned of fingerprints, CCTV evidence was removed, and threats were
issued to the witnesses of the act as to the consequences of reporting any of this
to the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
The sisters of Robert McCartney-Catherine, Paula, Claire, Donna, and
Gemma-and his partner Bridgeen, have spoken out in a campaign to see
justice done to their brother in death, and this is eerily resonant of the voice of
Antigone in defence of her own dead brother. Their demand is for justice to be
done for their brother, a demand that echoes across the centuries, and that
could be spoken in the words of Antigone: 'Justice dwelling deep I Among the
gods of the dead'. 38
It is significant that Heaney, in describing the genesis of this text, compares
the treatment of the body of Polyneices with that of Francis Hughes, the hunger­
striker; and neighbour of his in County Derry. Heaney stresses the body of
Hughes as a site of struggle between the security forces and the nationalist
crowd who came to take possession of it. Ownership of the body becomes a
seminal metaphor here, as it becomes a potent signifier of the contest between
the 'instinctive powers of feeling, love and kinship' and the 'daylight gods of
free and self-conscious, social and political life', to quote Hegel.39 Heaney sees
the motivation behind the 'surge of rage in the crowd as they faced the police' as
an index of what he terms duchas,40 and it is here that we come to Antigone's
38 Heaney (2004: 20-1 ) .
39 Heaney (2005a: 1 3) .
40
Ibid.
Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility 95
retitling. For her sense of propriety and integrity come from that feeling of
kinship with the other as a fellow human, regardless of the political differences
that separate us. As a woman, though not expected to speak, and running the
risk of being seen as irresponsible if she does, nevertheless she accepts the
responsibility of voicing her own ethical perspective and questioning the status
quo as set out by Creon. It is even more significant that this play deals with the
voice of women, then, as now, seen as not quite part of the public sphere, women
who are totally focused on obtaining justice for the dead:
I never did a nobler thing than bury
My brother Polyneices. And if these men
Weren't so afraid to sound unpatriotic
They'd say the same.41
The partner and sisters of Robert McCartney have suffered the same fate as
that of Antigone; they are seen as unusual voices in the public sphere:
'women were never meant for this assembly',42 says Creon, words that
have a chilling echo in the warning for the sisters by Martin McGuiness
about being used by other political forces. Here, the ethical has engaged with
the political, and the political is found wanting in the face of that imperative
towards justice that has become symbolized by the name and body of Robert
McCartney. The bodies of Francis Hughes and of Polyneices are answered, in
the contemporary moment, by the body of McCartney; someone who was
killed within his polis, but who, metaphorically, is a revenant, unable to rest.
The women who spoke out for their brothers, both in classical drama and in
the contemporary world of the political, are ethical voices who demand
justice, and common human decency that goes beyond narrow loyalty to the
polis, the tribe, or any ideology that seeks to dehumanize those who are on
the other side.
The following lines have a double resonance, within both the text and
the current political situation, as they state the role of women in the public
sphere:
Two women on our own
Faced with a death decree­
Women, defying Creon?
It's not a woman's place.
We're weak where they are strong.43
41 Heaney (2004: 23). 42 Ibid. 27. 43 Ibid. 5.
 Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility 97
96 Philosophy and Politics
notion of inauguration, notes that there are no guarantees, and 'we have to
This public sphere, which is deemed to be not a woman's place. is both ancient
invent the rules'4. 6 This is what Antigone does in this play: she invents the rule
Thebe � and �ontemporary Belfast. One can do no better then wish that those
with no guideline as to the rightness or wrongness. She keeps faith with
who killed him can take the advice of Tiresias, the blind prophet:
immutable laws, as she terms them, but only to break another law-it is the
Yield to the dead. Don't stab a ghost. dialectic of responsibility and irresponsibility at work again.
What can you win when you only wound a corpse?44 He goes on, in this context, to make a keynote statement about the
T� is venera�le text still s_reaks to us across the centuries, and the language of operative mode of deconstruction, something which, as is clear from his
. 'Letter to a Japanese Friend',47 he has often been at pains to avoid. Speaking
this translat10n, lucid, cnsp, and intelligent, makes that voice seem ever more
releva�t. The ghosts of decision� taken, and of the impossibility of a decision about the moment of inauguration, he suggests that:
that :"ill be completely responsible to all, are the inheritance of this seminal There is no responsibility, no decision, without this inauguration, this absolute break.
play m western culture. To take a decision which is responsible to the other IS, That is what deconstruction is made of: not the mixture but the tension between
.. .
·

bY defi �1t10n, t� be irresponsible to all others. Each decision is singular and memory, fidelity, the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the
�ach will have irredeemable consequences. In a culture where women had same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new, and a break.48
little value, and little poli�ical power, Antigone defies the law, the state, and This tension is a trope which carries through in all of his answers, and in his
. _
the kmg and ultimately triumphs by proving her point and obtaining proper discussion of the aporetic relationship between law and justice. On discussing
.
bun�! for h�r brother. Her triumph is ethical and not political, and costs her
Greek philosophy, Derrida notes that what he looks for is the heterogeneity in
her life. Agam, the strength of this text is the focus on the individual. Creon is the texts, how the kh6ra, for example, is incompatible with the Platonic
far �rom the two-dimensional figure of evil with whom we have become
�amihar .
over recent years, as complex political issues are attenuated into a
system, before going on to speak more broadly about how a specifically
Greek philosophy had within it an 'opening, a potential force which was
JUSt �ar against 'bad guys' whose names have been almost domesticated for
. . Saddam, Bin Laden, Arafat. At the end of the ready to cross the borders of Greek language, Greek culture'.49 From this
famihanty: play, as Creon discussion, he progresses to the concept of democracy, a further thread in the
ponders the wrec�age of his .
personal and political life, he utters the poignant ethical theme of these answers, making the point that while the concept of
phrase: , I have wived and fathered death'.45
democracy is a Greek heritage, it is a heritage that 'self-deconstructs . . . so as
Thus the pla �eaves us _with the question of decision and of the responsibil­
. for that dec�s1 n that 1s
ity central to our lives and to our ethics and politics.
to uproot, to become independent of its own grounds'.50
.� � . His discussion of justice is similarly contextualized. He immediately distin­
The body politic is co�pnsed of such decisions and their consequences can
often cause the body et�ICal much pain and the body physical suffering or even
guishes between justice and the law, and makes the point that the law can be
deconstructed. In an argument that follows logically from his view of inaugu­
de�th. The decons�ructtve approach taken in this chapter allows the relation­ ration as both a break with, and a continuation of, a tradition, he goes on to
.
s�1,r betwe�n political �nd ethics, the iterable and the singular, and responsi­ speak of the legal system as a history of transformations of different laws:
. .
�1lity and irrespons1b�hty to be theorized, and hopefully to shed some new
light on this. text, an? its dishevelled context. On being asked about the role of You can improve the law. You can replace one law by another one. There are constitu­
. .
�eco�struct10n w1thm the academy, Derrida says that the life of any institution tions and institutions. There is a history, and a history as such can be deconstructed.
implies tha � 'we are able to criticize, to transform, to open the institution to its Each time you replace one legal system by another one, one law by another one, or you
improve the law, that is a kind of deconstruction, a critique and deconstruction. So the
�wn future· He oe on to t �lk abo�t the paradox of the moment of inaugura­
. ? � whICh, law as such can be deconstructed and has to be deconstructed. 51
t�on of any mst1tut10n, whde starting something new, is at the same
tlm � true to a memory of the past, and to things received from the culture,
addmg t�at such a moment must 'break with the past, keep the memory of the 46 Derrida ( 1997: 6).
47
.
past, while maugurating something absolutely new'. Derrida, looking at the Derrida ( 199 1 : 270-6).
48 Derrida ( 1 996: 6 ).
49 Ibid. 9.
so
4 Ibid. 1 0.
4 Heaney (2004: 23) 44. SI
s Ibid. 1 6.
4 Ibid. 54.
98 Philosophy and Politics

This perspective is completely in line with the already outlined practices of

deconstruction. The single concept of 'law' is situated within a system and
each part of the system, in a process of anastomosis, crosses the borders of
other parts of the system in an ongoing play of difference. Thus Derrida will
stress that 'justice is not the law' and goes on to add that 'justice is what gives
us the impulse, the drive, or the movement to improve the law, that is, to Part II
deconstruct the law'.52 That is what Antigone does in this play. Her decision
deconstructs the law of Creon and is singular and responsible to her own
ethics of an intersubjective human bond. Hers is a profoundly ethical Psychoanalysis and the Law
decision as, to paraphrase Derrida, there are ethics precisely because there
is this contradiction, because there is no rule. There are ethics because the
rule has to be invented every time; because the inheritance has to be
reinterpreted every time; because it is only in this situation that there can
be responsibility. It is the same crisis of conscience that faces us every day in
our own lives and for which there is seldom a right or wrong answer-we
can only decide before we know the outcome and invent the rule with no
security or certainty that we are right. And this, I would suggest, is the
lasting value of this play: it foregrounds the responsibility-and the con­
comitant and necessary irresponsibility-of ethics.

52 Derrida ( 1 996: 6).

 5

Lacan's Antigone

Terry Eagleton

We are all aware that there is a gulf between the study of the classics and the
general populace, but it is perhaps as well to have a concrete illustration to
keep the fact in mind. Some years ago in New Orleans, the city fathers decided
to give classical names to some of their street cars. One of them was called
Clio. The locals referred to it as C.L.TEN.
Let me start by suggesting this. Whenever one stumbles in literary works
across a desire which starkly isolates a protagonist; renders him or her deeply
strange to themselves; gives voice to what seems an ineluctable need beyond
one's power to master; manifests an ambivalently admirable and exasperating
refusal to compromise; invests itself in an object more precious than life itself;
maroons the bearer of this desire between life and death, in some solitary
twilight region beyond conventional mores; prefigures the absoluteness of
death in the absolutism of its moral claim; and in the end shears through the
petty complexities of ordinary, sublunary existence to bear a man or woman
inexorably to the grave-whenever we come across all of this bundled into
one, it is a fair bet that one is in the presence of what Lacan calls the Real. And
this, in his celebrated discussion of the play in one of his seminars, is for him
the inner truth of Antigone. 1
What is real for psychoanalytic theory is not everyday reality, which is
mostly a matter of fantasy, a kind of low-grade Soho of the psyche, but desire.
One might claim more exactly that the Real is the perennial deadlock between
this desire and the Law or superego-the traumatic, repetitive cycle by which
the Law sadistically punishes desire for its guilty transgressions, desire mas­
ochistically relishes such reproval, feels all the more guilty for doing so, and
longs to be punished again, in a drearily closed circuit. It is this eternal
deadlock, this trauma or impasse of the Real at the core of the self, that
only love can undo. And since the high-minded terrorism of the superego is
an example of what Freud calls 'a culture of the death drive', one which spurs

1 See Lacan ( 1 992).

102 Psychoanalysis and the Law
us to the obscene enjoyment of our own dissolution, the Real has much to do
with the death drive or the perpetual war between Eros and Thanatos.
Like God, the sublime, alcohol, and the unconscious, the Real is Janus­
faced, with both a creative and a destructive dimension. Negatively speaking,
as we have just seen, it signifies the jouissance which the death drive persuades
us to derive from the process of our own dismemberment. In effect, Lacan
remarks of Antigone, she has been declaring from the outset 'I am dead and
desire death'-and tragedy, one might add, is above all the art-form that
investigates the problematic relation of humanity to its own mortality, and
thus in Heideggerian style, to its own essential being. But there is also a
positive aspect of the Real-a way of plugging into this lethal drive which can
carry us beyond the fudges of the so-called symbolic order, the domain of
conventional morality, law, and social consensus, into some far-flung outpost
of being where one is in a sense both alive and dead, and where one manifests
the kind of purity or integrity of selfhood which Lacan so admires in
Antigone. The avatars of the Real are those who stay faithful against all the
moral and political odds to the desire which makes them what they are­
which is to say, in Lacanian terms, to the lack which makes them what they
are, and therefore-since this lack prefigures the absolute absence which is
death-to their own morality.
The Real, let us be clear again, is not to be confused with common-or­
garden reality. It is rather that in myself which makes me what I am but is at
the same time more than me, that enigmatic core or profoundly impersonal
register which lies at the very core of our being yet which is also implacably
indifferent to us, and which in the course of modernity has gone by a whole
series of names from Hegel's Geist and Schopenhauer's Will to such grandiose
generalities as Language, Structure, and the Unconscious-or, more specifi­
cally in the case of the Lacanian Real, the death drive. A more traditional
name for this reality was God, who in Thomas Aquinas' view is closer to us
than we are to ourselves, and by belonging entirely to whom we are able to be
entirely ourselves. God is that wedge of absolute otherness at the pith of one's
identity by which we are able to be who we are.
One of the great scandals of Freudian thought is not infantile sexuality,
which a lot of people (not least infants) had known about for some time, but
the claim that desire is nothing personal but a profoundly alien register, one
which I can create or control no more than I can language itself, that thing at
the very heart of my being that I can neither know nor master and which
always precedes me. It is that thing or place radically exterior to knowledge to
which we give the name of the unconscious-a medium into which I am born
but which has no particular regard for me, a force which passes straight
through its object and out the other side in its perpetual love-affair with
Lacan's Antigone 103
itself. In contrast to this sublime infinity of desire, all earthly objects appear
trivial and degraded. The archetypal myth of modernity-the Faust legend­
is a fable of unstaunchable desire and the asceticism of this desire, the way it
spurns any particular material piece of the world in its impossible hankering
to be everything.
In my book Trouble With Strangers, I look at an incongruously assorted
bunch of such rapt, demonically possessed literary figures, all the way from
Shakespeare's Shylock, Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas, and Emily Bronte's Heath­
cliff to Melville's Ahab and Arthur Miller's Willy Loman. 2 It is surely not hard
to see what is appealing about this sort of ethics, not least because it sets
scornfully aside the whole callow postmodern cult of choice-the present plus
more options, as one postmodern thinker excitedly described the future.
Instead, it grasps the truth that all the important things in ethics, politics,
and desire are really things we do not and cannot choose-a notion especially
scandalous to the crazed American cult of voluntarism (you can crack it if you
try hard enough, where there's a will there's a way, and suchlike pernicious
ideological illusions). There is no human identity which is not primordially
oriented, always-already interested, weighted, and ballasted before the possi­
bility of choice even raises its head. The kind of commitments which most
deeply constitute the self are not of the sort one can put on and off like hats, as
though one might decide to wear the little Buddhist or existentialist number
because it happens to be Wednesday. This does not of course mean that our
commitments are insulated from rational critique-simply that there is a
sense in which they live us more than we live them. (Much the same goes for
religious faith, which is gift rather than achievement.) What defines us in this
view is whatever it is we find we can't in the end walk away from, however
hard we try; and it is this incapacity to back down, this refusal to give way on
one's desire, that Lacan sees in Antigone. Though this also means for Lacan
being open like Sophocles' heroine to one's own death, since, to repeat, the
lack inherent in desire is a foretaste of the absolute lack of death. ('Be absolute
for death', as the Duke advises the condemned Claudio in Measure for
Measure.)
So the celebrated Lacanian ethical imperative-Do not give way on your
desire!-also means not disavowing the lack of being which we are, signified
by stuffing it with idols and fetishes of various sorts. It is rather a question of
holding it open and empty, in what may look like a life-denying asceticism but
is actually a fidelity to that which makes a life precious. And this means
whatever it is that it is worth surrendering it for. Which in Antigone's case is
2 Eagleton (2008).
104 Psychoanalysis and the Law
burying her brother. To back down on certain constitutive commitments
would be to betray one's very being, and thus paradoxically would not be
one's own act at all. It is this deathly extremity which marks a certain vein of
Western tragic thought. It is a current of tragedy summarized by the final
Choric speech of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, as the hard-nosed
lawyer Alfieri reflects with appropriate ambiguity on the futile destruction of
the play's hero Eddie Carbone:
Most of the time now we settle for half and I like it better. But the truth is holy, and
even as I know how wrong he was, and his death useless, I tremble, for I confess that
something perversely pure calls to me from his memory-not purely good, but
himself purely ...and for that I think I will love him more than all my sensible clients.
And yet it is better to settle for half-it must be. So I mourn him-I admit it-with a
certain ...alarm.
'I take it', Miller comments of another of his protagonists, Willy Loman, 'that
the less capable a man is of walking away from the central conflict of the play,
the closer he approaches a tragic existence'. 3 Which is to say, for this style of
thought: the more ethical, the more tragical. There is a lot of this in Ibsen, by
whom Miller was deeply influenced. By announcing Willy's death in its very
title, Miller's play positions its protagonist in the region of the Real, on the
cusp between life and death. A good many Ibsenite characters inhabit the
same shadowy borderland, hostages to an ambiguously creative and annihi­
lating truth of which they may finally perish.
The formalism of this tragic ethics, in an epoch of ethical formalism from
Kant to Sartre, is very striking. In a modem era where no moral commitment
can apparently be securely founded, what matters is less the substance of your
claim than the preternatural tenacity with which you cling to it. In a post­
heroic, relativist, drably bourgeois age, the only remaining idealism lies not in
the nature of one's desire, as Aristotle or Aquinas would maintain, or indeed
in its specific object, but in the terrible splendour of its intensity, which then
becomes-like much modern tragedy itself-a kind of secular form of tran­
scendence all of its own. There are dim echoes here of the so-called acte
gratuit, with all its glamorous, spendthrift, patrician refusal of some mean­
minded petty-bourgeois reckoning. 'What makes Philoctetes a hero?' Lacan
asks himself, before issuing the remarkably cavalier reply: 'Nothing more than
the fact that he remains fiercely committed to his hate right to the end'.4
Whether someone who remains fiercely committed to his paedophilia right to
the end qualifies for heroic status as well remains less than clear. The problem
3 Miller ( 1 958, p. xiii). 4 Lacan ( 1 992: 32 1 ).
Lacan's Antigone 1 05
with such intensity is that it is always potentially pathological. It makes
Antigone sound more like a suicide bomber than a dutiful sister.
An ethics of the Real is in this sense an ethic of extremity-one which in the
case of Lacan descends to him variously from the absolutism of the Kantian
moral Jaw, the radical-Protestant ethics of Kierkegaard, everything in Heideg­
ger that Adorno detested, and the existentialist cult of authenticity. Like all
such high-modernist morality, it betrays a profound contempt for everyday
existence, which is assumed in a venerable lineage of Gallic thought to be
inherently alienated and inauthentic. It is what one might dub the Room 1 0 1
theory of ethics (I have George Orwell rather than Paul Merton in mind), for
which it is what one utters or performs on the extreme outer limit of the
symbolic order, the spot where mere conventional rules and mores crumble,
the room in which a cage of starved rats is being strapped to one's face, that is
definitive of the self. What an extraordinary idea-to imagine that what one
says when one's tongue is about to be devoured by a bunch of ravenous rats
must be the truth! Personally, I would say anything whatsoever. It is hard to
think of anyone I would not instantly sell out, as Winston Smith instantly sells
out his partner in Orwell's dystopian fiction.
So it is understandable to feel ambivalent about an ethics of the Real. What
is positive about it is not only its anti-voluntarism, but its recognition that no
human solidarity will endure which is in Lacanian terms merely imaginary or
symbolic-which is based, that's to say, either on mere spontaneous recipro­
cal sympathies or on some more impersonal, administrative notion of law and
order. Such moral and political fellowship must rather be founded on the
Real-on that lethal Thing (Lacan is well aware of the horror-movie analogy)
in each of us and in the other which is horrific, recalcitrant, monstrous,
traumatic, death-dealing, disgusting, life-yielding, unmasterable, and un­
budgeable. It is that Medusa's head which, if we are to have the slightest
hope of redemption or transformation either individually or collectively, we
must confront in the hope that it won't turn us entirely to stone, that we won't
simply perish of the truth.
What is at stake here is the faith that this traumatic encounter with death or
Thanatos (as Freud calls it) can be harnessed to the fruitful service of Eros or
life. Or-to cast the point in a more Christian idiom-that only by the well­
nigh impossible acknowledgement that the reality of human history is the
tortured and executed body of one who stood up for love and justice-that
this is the scandal or stumbling block on which all fancy idealist schemes
founder, that this broken and mutilated body given over to death is the very
last word-only thus might this breaking and mutilation represent not quite
the last word after all. And this movement from weakness to power, frailty to
transcendence, from cast-out polluted scapegoat to the cornerstone of a new
 T
I
106 Psychoanalysis and the Law
human order-all this sketches the traditional trajectory of what we call
sacrifice, as the unclean reviled thing becomes the language of a new sort of
polis or social order. It is a movement from a descent into hell or suffering
solidarity with dispossession to a transfigured existence. And this is 'so
whether one imagines it in Judaeo-Christian, psychoanalytic, or political
terms, three outlooks which share a great amount in common. It is also,
need one say, the classical trajectory of the tragic. Those, like Oedipus, who
can gaze upon the image of themselves and discern there not an imaginary
alter ego but a loathsome monster, acknowledging this thing of darkness as
their own and undergoing in the process a radical self-destitution-only such
scum and refuse (what St Paul rather racily calls the shit of the earth) possess
the sacred power of renewal, as we will discover at Colonus. The stumbling
block rejected by the builders, the architects of our conventional world, will
become the cornerstone.
What then of Antigone? Have we finally arrived at her? Not quite. Before
we turn to Sophocles' protagonist, let me look quickly at some rather less
alluring aspects of this ethics of the Real. What distinguishes the work of
Lacan on this topic, the later Jacques Derrida, the greatest living French
philosopher Alain Badiou, and to some degree the writings of Emmanual
Levinas, is an avant-gardist contempt for the quotidian or everyday. In one
sense, it is odd to find this disdain in the nation which invented the very
concept of everyday life, not least in the mighty works of Henri Lefebvre. The
Surrealists and Situationists devoted microscopic attention to the matter, and
Jean-Paul Sartre is reputed to have turned pale with excitement when Maur­
ice Merleau-Ponty, hotfoot from reading the phenomenologists, broke to
him the excited news that one could make philosophy out of the ashtray
(perhaps French philosophy will now ground to a halt with the smoking ban
in cafes).
Yet despite this, there is a very Gallic sort of elitism lurking behind this
whole ethics of the Real, for all its radical attractions. In the post-political
climate of post-1968 France, politics gives way to ethics, or if you prefer, Marx
and Hegel yield ground to Kant. No philosopher is more revered in contem­
porary France. It is ironic that Kant, with his duty-centred morality, has staged
such a triumphal return at just the moment when some Anglophone moral
philosophers (Bernard Williams, for example, in his Ethics and the Limits of
Philosophy) have been rightly challenging the whole anaemic assumption that
morality primarily has to do with duties, responsibilities, and obligations. For
Aristotle, Aquinas, and Marx, along with other moralists in the so-called virtue
tradition, morality is primarily about enjoying oneself-about flourishing,
abundance of life, high spirits, self-fulfilment. It was the middle classes who
turned it into something bloodless and boring, so that the devil came to have
Lacan's Antigone 107
all the best tunes. For Derrida, Lacan, Levinas, and their confreres, the political
becomes the drearily commonplace business of law, regulation, administra­
tion, the collective, conventional, contingent, abstract, and universal; whereas
ethics becomes a far more sexy affair which (again in an unholy fusion of Kant
and Kierkegaard) involves the unique, ineffable, transcendent, singular, abso­
lute, infinite, gratuitous, sublime, enigmatic, self-grounding, unconditional.
Absolute value deserts the political realm to take up a purely formal kind of
existence in the sphere of the ethical-a sphere of heroic commitments,
gratuitous acts, and absolute yet arbitrary demands to be sharply distinguished
from the merely moral, about which the Lacanians are notably sniffy. So-called
morality-love, compassion, friendship, happiness, utility, welfare, consensus,
sexual fulfilment, routine sympathies, and solidarities: all these, which for
Kant are purely 'pathological' motives to be well-behaved, are for Lacan really
little more than ruses of the unconscious, forms of narcissism, distinctly
inferior to the sort of ethical stance he finds in Antigone. Ethics is patrician
and heroic, whereas morality is boring and petty-bourgeois.
It would seem that for an ethics of the Real, the ethical is in the end really
nothing to do with anybody but oneself, and one's definitive encounter with
death. Whereas for Christian faith, one's relation to death and one's relations to
others are intimately allied. Ethics is for demi-gods, while morality is for grocers.
One must not, Lacan warns, confuse the laws of the earth and the commands of
the gods. There is a good deal of Nietzsche in this, too, despite the fact that Lacan
himself hardly mentions him. It is then not hard to project this distinction
between the phenomenal realm of the 'merely' moral, and the noumenal,
opaque dimension of the properly ethical, onto the conflict between Creon
and Antigone. Creon then comes to represent all that has apparently been
discredited by the failures of the late 1960s-in a word, authority, politics,
collectivity, public good, conventional morality, social responsibility; while
Antigone herself is that far more ontologically glamorous figure, the eternal
transgressor with a hotline to the transcendent--one, moreover, superior to the
moralists and politicos in not being concerned about success. Only the suburban
middle classes concern themselves with utility.
This is part of what one might call the politics of the death cult. It is a
distinction between the seductively ethical and the meagrely moral which one
might also draw between comedy-a social or moral mode par excellence-­
and the supposedly metaphysical register of the tragic. Lacan himself, for
whom desire is infinite and unstaunchable, is nothing if not a tragic thinker;
and he certainly would have regarded that as a compliment. In the modern
epoch, it is tragedy which becomes the home of an imperilled transcendent
value in a degraded bourgeois world; which is also to say that tragedy, along
with Art and Culture, becomes as yet one more grossly insufficient substitute
 ,...
I

108 Psychoanalysis and the Law Lacan's Antigone 109

for religion. Resolutely misappropriated in a certain way, tragedy becomes a only by embracing the monstrous can we be redeemed, but in the fact that
displaced critique of modernity-of a rational, scientific, egalitarian, callowly both find the sublime in the commonplace, uniting the transcendent and the
progressive, instantly intelligible culture which has turned its face from immanent. As Charles Taylor reminds us in his Sources of the Self, it was
tragedy's enigmas, heroic mythologies, reverence, cult of blood guilt, sacfed Christianity that invented the concept of everyday life. And it was, one might
rituals, sense of original sin, hierarchies of being, absolute value, disdain for add, French intellectuals who tried to talk us out of it.
the contingent and empirical, spirit of transcendence and imposing pantheon
of gods and aristocrats. As a critique of hubristic Enlightenment reason, it is
the last refuge of nostalgic reactionaries such as George Steiner. No wide-eyed
trust in material progress and political reform could patch up Philoctetes'
foot, no social engineering redeem Phaedra from her doom. The ethical is
aestheticized, as Lacan speaks of Antigone's beauty and sublime splendour.
The only problem is that the heroic ethic Lacan reads into the drama isn't
anything like as sublime as the idea that you enter the kingdom of heaven
simply by giving bread to the hungry. Christianity, with its embarrassing
failure of a Redeemer, is a critique of all such heroic moral virility.
Lacan's Antigone, then, makes rather more sense in post-1968 Paris than
one suspects that it would have done in ancient Athens. His comment on
another hero of ethical Realism, Oedipus-'unyielding right to the end,
demanding everything, giving up nothing, absolutely unreconciled'5-
sounds rather more like a Parisian philosophical prima donna, one not a
thousand light years removed from le maitre himself, than that the pharma­
kos, whose reviled, disfigured humanity at Colonus becomes the guardian of a
political order which has the courage to recognize something of its own visage
in the hideous terror at its gates. (Unlike, one might add, Downing Street and
the White House today.)
Yet this talk of the Real cannot just be dismissed as 'elitism' either, that
rather mindless mantra of the postmodernists. Because the Real is also in a
sense the revolutionary. Kant writes that the move from the pathological to
the ethical involves a kind of new creation in which the human subject is
reborn; and an ethics of the Real inherits this fertile doctrine, pivoting as it
does on some 'impossible' claim, revelation, or extremity which turns our
symbolic universe upside down, some tumultuous event which disrupts the
smooth running of quotidian life and throws us out of joint, re-totalizing our
world and violently recasting the foundations of our existence. It is just this,
of course, which Christianity calls conversion or metanoia, and which the
Marxist lineage calls political revolution. What such an impossible ethics of
the Real sets its face against is the so-called political realists. Where both
Marxism and Christianity differ from such an ethics is not in their belief that

5 La can ( 1992: 342).


6 During the 1 960s and 1970s, knowledge of Lacan's reading of the play, with its
Psychoanalysing Antigone
Mark Griffith
Antigone is probably the most widely admired of all Greek tragic heroines.
Her speeches of absolute devotion to her brother, individual defiance against
paternalistic governmental repression, and allegiance to divine authority,
continue to be cited by philosophers, humanists, feminists, and political
resisters around the world. At the same time, as the daughter of Oedipus
and strident rejecter of her sister, fiance, and (in the end) all living human
beings, she is presented in Sophocles' play as one whose language and very
being are tainted and doomed by reason of birth and peculiar family circum­
stances. This is a strange and confusing combination.
In recent years, Sophocles' Antigone, which had long occupied centre stage in
critical discussions of the political dimensions of Greek tragedy, has attracted
increasingly intense discussion as well from psychoanalytic critics and cultural
theorists of all stripes. 1 Whereas earlier generations had tended to focus on The
Bacchae, The Oresteia, or Hippolytus (in addition, of course, to Oedipus the King)
as the key texts for psychoanalytical exploration of Greek drama, since the 1970s
Antigone has taken over as perhaps the single most psychoanalysed text of all.
There seem to be two main reasons for this. The first is the increased attention
paid by Classicists to issues of gender in Athenian tragedy, and by feminist critics
in general to the project of revising Freud's unabashedly masculinist theories,
with a resultant shift of focus away from the exclusive scrutiny of male heroes
such as Pentheus, Orestes, Hippolytus (and Oedipus) as paradigms of this or
that form of neurosis. The second-not entirely disconnected from the first-is
the impact and aftermath of Jacques Lacan's famous Paris 'Seminar', which for
This is an abridged and otherwise slightly revised version of an essay that first appeared in The
Soul of Tragedy: Essays on Athenian Drama, edited by Victoria Pedrick and Steven M. Oberhel­
man (Chicago, 2005) . I am grateful to the editors of that volume and to the University of
Chicago Press for permission to publish this revised version.
1 Outside the ranks of Classical scholarship, prominent contributors to this critical discus­
sion have included Jacques Lacan, Luce Irigaray, Peggy Phelan, Slavoj Zizek, and Judith Butler;
see too Porter and Buchan ( 2004).
Psychoanalysing Antigone 111
three sessions in June 1960 focused directly on the text of Sophocles' Antigone. 2
distinctive treatment of the 'ethics' of Antigone's individual motivations, seems
mainly to have been restricted to French critical theorists and psychoanalysts.
But increasingly over the last twenty years it has begun to permeate discussion in
surrounding fields, and in the 1 990s finally reached the world of English­
speaking Classicists as well.
Much of this play's extraordinary appeal to modern audiences and readers
comes from the distinctive figure of Antigone herself,3 who seems to speak
with a passion and moral authority matched by virtually no other tragic
heroine. 4 Even though she is on stage for only three scenes, her defiant
conduct and solitary death dominate the play and resonate powerfully long
after it is over. Discussion has raged over the years about her as a character:
How sympathetically is she portrayed (especially as compared with Ismene,
with whom she invites and yet refuses comparison) ? How would the fifth­
century Athenian audience have related to her? Is she entirely 'in the right'
and Creon 'wrong' (as many have argued), or if not, how should the balance
of blame be distributed between them? To what extent is she eventually
2 Lacan ( 1 992, 1 960/ 1 986). The 'Seminar' was held once a week from 1 953-80, and usually
took the form of a lecture from the master. Although informal transcriptions of these lectures
did circulate during the 1 960s and 1 970s (based mainly on short-hand notes taken by members
of the audience), none of them were published until many years later. The first published version
of the Vllth Seminar ( 1 959-60) on The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (including the discussion of
Antigone) did not appear until 1 986; the first English version of this came out in 1 992. Both are
marred by a number of inaccuracies ( especially in the references to Sophocles' Greek); several of
these are clearly La can's own, but others are apparently the result of the process of transcription
and editing (conducted by Lacan's son-in-law, Jacques-Alain Miller). There existed Lacan's
hand-written notes; an audio-recording (not of high quality) of his original presentation; and
one or more short-hand transcriptions taken by members of the original audience; but attempts
by some of Lacan's friends and colleagues to improve the accuracy of the published editions and
to provide annotations and/or critical apparatus (including extensive corrections offered by
Pierre Vidal-Naquet specifically on the An tigone sessions), were ignored by the editor: see
Roudinesco ( 1 997: 4 1 3-27, 529-34, 542-45). (By contrast, Lacan himself assisted in the
selection and complicated process of editing his Ecrits in 1 966 (Eng. trans. 1 977); see Roudi­
nesco 1 997: 3 1 9-3 1 . )
3 For the history o f the play's reception and popularity since the Renaissance, see esp. Steiner
( 1 984), McClure ( 1 993), Zimmermann ( 1 993).
4 Of the other Greek tragic heroines, Sophocles' Electra probably comes closest: see fu rther
below, p. 1 26. In the cases of Medea and Clytaemnestra, the negative (even villainous) qualities
of the character to some (large) degree offset their heroic appeal. Tragic 'victims' such as
Deianira or Iphigenia demonstrate little of Antigone's strength or authority; and heroines of
happy-ending plays such as Helen, Creusa (Ion), and Alcestis lack Antigone's self-assertion and
boldness. 'Why, in th[e] triad of the "radical" heroines (Iphigenia, Antigone, Medea), do we
tend to prefer Antigone, elevating her to the sublime status of the ultimate ethical hero(ine)? Is it
because she opposes the public law . . . on behalf of another law?', Zizek (2004c: 53), with further
reference to Butler (2000).
1 12 Psychoanalysis and the Law
vindicated and/or implicitly reinstated by Teiresias or by the gods in the
closing scenes of the play? If she is the true 'hero' (as most modern audiences
certainly feel she is), why does she disappear from view and from consider­
ation during the entire last third of the play?5 I am not going to engage
directly with all these familiar questions, though several of them will be
affected by our discussion;6 instead, I shall be focusing on the status of
Antigone as a speaking and desiring subject, and on the issue of her motiva­
tions and inner life, her relationships with the other characters of the play, and
the relationship of the spectators/audience to this eloquent, difficult, and
doomed female figure.
The scenes in which Antigone appears, filled as they are with confrontation
and bitter dispute, together with the choral songs and remarks about her
made by other characters, impel the theatre audience to speculate, to try to
peer behind this young woman's mask so as to discern her internal psycho­
logical motives, her 'true' intentions, nature, and feelings; and the language of
the play encourages us to keep looking further back still, into the familial­
social-religious forces that have produced and shaped her, and which in turn,
from the very first lines, she describes herself as attempting to perpetuate and/
or resist: 'Do you know what of the evils from Oedipus Zeus is not bringing­
to-completion ( telei) for the two of us women who still live?' ( 1-2) .
As has often been noted, the language i n which Antigone expresses herself is
highly individual and strangely contradictory: at the same time, both manly and
feminine, dutiful and transgressive, visionary and narrow-minded.7 Her 'voice'
is thus sharply differentiated, not only from that of Creon (as might be expected)
but also from Ismene's. T his differentiation, which is underlined by the rapidity
with which relations between the two sisters break down in the opening scene, is
crucial in bringing home to us the oddness and asymmetry of this family, with
Polynices and Antigone apparently occupying one transgressive, 'Oedipal' axis,
while Eteocles and Ismene seem implicitly to escape some of these fatal associa­
tions. Thus the sense of an inescapable family trait is tempered somewhat by the
apparent possibility of choice, even of different possible outcomes (at least for
the sisters)-a point to which we will return at the end.
Such a distinctive 'voice' for Antigone certainly implies the existence of a
distinctive 'character' as well. But we must pause to ask ourselves to what extent
it is appropriate, or possible, to identify a single, coherent human personality
5 It is only Creon's son and wife whose bodies are brought on stage and lamented in the final
scene: Antigone is not mentioned. See further below, pp. 1 3 1-3.
6 For further discussion of these issues, see esp. Steiner ( 1 984), Oudemans and Lardinois
( 1 987), Griffith ( 1 999) with further bibliography.
7 See Kitzinger ( 1976) , Griffith (200 1 ) , with further references.
Psychoanalysing Antigone 1 13
within the cluster of speech-acts and behaviours associated with a stage figure
such as 'Antigone', and what kind of inner life and motivations we are entitled to
look for. This is, after all, nothing more than an imaginary person written into
existence by a (male) playwright and performed for our benefit by a (male)
actor. How far should we go in trying to account for and interpret the sum total
of her expressions and every nuance of desire and aversion, approval and
disapproval, that we find articulated in the course of the play both by herself
and by others? What sense can we (should we even try to) make of her?
Without entering into the enormously extended critical debate about
'subjectivity', the constructedness of human character in general, and the
particular dangers of treating fictional (especially dramatic) characters as
real people with inner feelings and motivations,8 I shall proceed on the
following assumption: the masked, costumed figure named Antigone speaks
and acts before the audience as a person with a known history, as a member of
a family with whom we are already somewhat acquainted, and as a speaking
subject whose choices and actions are articulated (assailed and defended) at
length and in detail, as if they are expected to add up and make sense. T his
figure refers to herself repeatedly as 'I, myself, mine', as if she has no doubts
about her identity or entitlements.9 We don't have to hold any particular view
as to the inherent wholeness or constructedness/fragmentation of her 'subjec­
tivity', nor of her status as a unified personality, to be able to speculate and
form opinions as to her (imagined) state of mind and desires at any point in
the play; indeed, it is hard for any audience not to begin to form such
opinions, since so much of the text is devoted to discussion and presentation
of precisely this issue: 'what does she want? ( Che vuoi?) and why?' 10
The peculiarity of Antigone's voice, motivations, and behaviour are imme­
diately evident in her opening lines, where it is implied that everything that
she now is, and everything that she has, she was born with/into: it was all
'assigned by Zeus', not chosen or disposable by Antigone herself. Her very first
words ( 6 koinon autadelphon, 1 ) signify much of the distinctive intensity and
self-reflexivity of family affection in which she is apparently trapped: like
autonomos (82 1 ) , autognotos (875), autocheir (900), and other such pregnant
terms used over and over throughout the play, this expression reminds us that
this is a daughter who belongs in all respects to a uniquely inward-turned,
self-fixated family, a family characterized in this play as hopelessly involved in
8 For good discussions of these issues in regard to Greek tragedy, see esp. Easterling
( 1 977),
Pelling ( 1990) (esp. the articles by C. Gill and S. Goldhill), Wohl (2008).
9 Indeed, Antigone's use of the first-person pronoun is exceptionally frequent and
assertive:
Kitzinger ( 1 976), Griffith ( 1 999: 36-7, 200 1 ).
10
For this formulation, which refers back ultimately to Freud's notorious 'Was willst das
Weib?', see esp. Zizek ( 1 989: ch. 3 ), and below, pp. 1 1 8-24.
1 14 Psychoanalysis and the Law
ate ('ruin, doom, madness, fixation') . 1 1 Thus even as we recoil from Creon's
increasingly domineering behaviour, and admire Antigone's courage and
resolution in resisting it in the name of 'Justice' and 'the unwritten and
unfailing laws of the gods' (45 1 -5 ) , we also hear repeatedly from the Chorus
and others, and even from Antigone herself, that her own conduct is 'crimi­
nal' ( 74 panourgesasa) , that her nature is 'raw/fierce from her fierce father'
(4 1 1 omon ex omou patros) , and that her death is due to her 'own self-willed
temper' (875 autognotos orga) .
Patricia Johnson has recently demonstrated-in my opinion, beyond rea­
sonable doubt-that this play, in combination with its two sequels/prequels
(OT and OC), presents an Antigone who consistently manifests an 'Electra
complex' of the classic Freudian type, in that she remains trapped in a fixation
on her father, and proves unwilling and unable to transfer her emotional
attachment to an exogamous male replacement. If we consider all three plays
as one continuous narrative, then first Antigone chooses to go into exile with
the newly blinded Oedipus ( end of OT); then she alone escorts him on his
=
wanderings until he finally is received by Theseus and passes away at Colon us
( OC); and now finally (in Ant.) she has transferred her single-minded
=
fixation onto Oedipus' son, her brother, the autadelphon kara that most fully
embodies her father's full-blooded presence. 1 2 Of course this sequence (OT,
OC, Ant.) does not correspond to the probable order of composition of the
three plays; nonetheless it is striking and significant that the behaviour of
Antigone in relation to her father and brother does adhere to this pattern so
consistently, in such a way and to such a degree that we may feel justified (as
Johnson does) in treating this as a virtual 'case history' of our heroine's life,
relationships, and emotional needs and desires.
This pattern (or 'complex') is indeed unmistakably present in the Sopho­
clean texts: it is not just a modern reading-in or misinterpretation. Despite
various attempts by scholars to pooh-pooh or downplay such a view of
Oedipus' family and their conscious or unconscious motivations, 13 and to
1
1 See esp. Loraux ( 1 986) on auto-compounds: autade/phon (again at 503, 696) would
probably be interpreted by a Greek audience as 'sibling from the same womb'. On the insistent
usage of ate and its derivatives in this play (about 20 occurrences in all), see esp. Else ( 1 976),
Lacan ( 1992). The last word or two ofline 4 are corrupt in the MSS, but it is almost certain that
some form of ate should be read; see Griffith ( 1 999) ad Joe.
12 Johnson ( 1 997); see too Phelan ( 1 997: I S ) , 'Her brother's name remains a signifying force
for Antigone. Having emerged from the same womb, formed from the same parents, related to
the same {name of the) father, Antigone and Polyneices are forever bound to one another.'
13 Vernant's essay on 'Oedipus without the complex' was in fact directed primarily at a
reading from one of Lacan's students. For helpful discussion of the intellectual exchanges and
disagreements between Levi-Strauss, Vernant, Deleuze and Guattari, and Lacan over the issue of
Psychoanalysing Antigone 1 15
insist that Antigone merely exhibits an uncompromising devotion to her philoi
of a perfectly admirable and acceptable kind, Johnson has demonstrated: (i) that
Antigone never claims to be acting for all of her blood-relatives-but only for
'my brother', or 'the son of <my> mother/father' (this is true both in her long
speech to Creon (450-68), and in her notorious speech of self-justification at
904- 1 5 ) ; (ii) that in all three plays Antigone shows no sign of interest in 'normal'
exogamous relations14 and is willing to give up all prospects of such ties in favour
of 'marriage to death'; (iii) that Antigone's consistent pattern of extraordinary
devotion to father and brother, when viewed together with her ambiguous and
suggestively erotic language, strongly suggests (to us, as to the Chorus) that she is
indeed her father's daughter-and sister-in every possible sense . . .
The language of 'inward-turned' and/or erotic attachment is indeed striking
in this play. I include here a fairly full list of the erotic and or incestuous phrases
in question, since they are sometimes dismissed as insignificant, 1 5 although
when viewed together they carry considerable cumulative weight. In addition to
the repeated use of ate and auto-words, to which we have already referred, we
may note especially the following: 73 phile met' autou keisomai, philou meta
('Loving, I shall lie with him, whom I love') ; 75 dei m' areskein tois kato (' . . . I
have to please/satisfy those below'; cf. 89 areskousa . . . hadein, 'please and
gratify <those I must>', 499-50 1 , 504-5 areston, handanein); 88 thermen . . .
kardian echeis ('you have a hot heart . . . '); 90 amechanon erais ('you desire
things that are impossible', cf. 92 theran ta amechana); 5 1 3 homaimos ek mias te
kai tau autou patros ('like-blooded, from one mother and the same father'); 523
sumphilein ephun ('I was born to share-in-love', a word found only here in
Greek literature); 524-5 ei phileteon, philei keinous (' . . . if you must love
someone, love those ones [down there] !') ; 653-4 methes ten paid' en Hadou
tende numpheuein tini ('Let this girl go to marry someone in Hades . . . !');
863-5 koimemata autogenneta ('self-generated goings-to-bed'); 869-7 1 io dus­
potmon kasignete gamon kuresas ('Oh, my brother [ Polynices? or Oedipus?],
=
who encountered ill-fated marriage . . . ) ; 898-9 phile men hexein patri . . . phile
'
de soi, kasigneton kara ('Beloved I shall come to <my> father . . . and beloved to
you, dear brother') .
'Oedipus' and psychoanalytic criticism of ancient Greek culture and literature, see Leonard
(2004, 2005) .
1 4 This interpretation depends, o fcourse, o n assigning line 572 ( o phi/tat' Haimon . . . ) to Ismene,
for which there are many good grounds in addition to the psychoanalytic; see Griffith ( 1 999) ad loc.
If the line is spoken by Antigone, as some editors believe, we may be inclined to see a sharper
contradiction between her 'conscious' desire to marry Haemon and have children of her own with
him, and her 'unconscious' fixation on her Oedipal family: see below, pp. 1 3 2-3.
15 Among the relatively few previous Classical scholars who have taken seriously the presence
of a significantly erotic element in this language are Benardete ( 1 975 ), Else ( 1 976), Winnington­
lngram ( 1 980), Johnson ( 1 997). See further below, p. 1 26.
1 16 Psychoanalysis and the Law
These clusters of suggestive terms and phrases cannot be regarded as mere
coincidence, and cannot be dismissed as merely subsidiary or irrelevant to
Antigone's character and motivations. It is true that the language of 'marriage
to Death' is pervasive in Greek tragedy, whenever a young woman prepares to
. .
d1e unwed; 16 but no other play contains such an abundance of words for
'lying with', 'pleasing, satisfying' etc., in such contexts; and the references to
brother and father here are insistent and loaded. Thus Antigone's much­
quoted claim, 'I was born to share in love, not in hate' (523 outoi sunechthein
alla sumphilein ephun) is found to have a more specific and limited applica­
tion than she intends-her 'love' is for her father, and her brother, and
extends no further; indeed, it is invariably converted into hatred and rage as
soon as it encounters resistance (86, 93, etc. ). 17 But the (unique and highly
distinctive) word sumphilein does indeed seem to sum up Antigone's 'nature'
with extraordinary force.
If, then, the action and language of this play (and to some degree of the
other two plays as well) are presented in terms of the heroine's fixation on her
father and brother, this raises interesting and important critical/theoretical
issues, concerning the status, nature, and true object of this 'fixation'. Is it a
kind of incestuous 'desire'? If so, what or who precisely (living or dead,
physical or imagined) is its object? ( Che vuoi?) And in what ways is this
fixation related to the normal philia ('love, ties') felt by any family member
towards his/her nearest and dearest (philoi), to the eras ('love, desire, passion')
felt by a lover towards her/his beloved, or to the various needs, lacks, longings,
desires, and passions directed by an infant towards its mother and father-or
to the inexpressible and inescapable 'lack' that (in the view of many Freudian
and Lacanian psychologists, and deconstructive critics too) continues to be
experienced, consciously or unconsciously, by every individual in relation to
the 'Law' (aka the Symbolic Order or the Name of the Father)?
And who is really the 'subject' of these desires? Whose fixation is it? Anti­
gone's (the dramatic character)? or Sophocles' (the play's author, her creator)?
or in some sense the audience's? And if it is the audience's, which audience­
the actual, empirical Athenians who were sitting in the theatre in 442 BCE, or
the implied spectators whom we can reconstruct out of the surviving text­
that is, ourselves, the play's post-Freudian readers? In either case, how is the
audience's fantasy constructed (affected, directed) by the text and in what
ways (to what degree) is it brought to identify with this incestuous daughter
of Oedipus, an agent and desiring subject 'in love with the impossible'
(90 amechanfm erais) and ready to sacrifice her life in order to lie next to her
16
See Seaford ( 1 987), Rehm ( 1994).
17 For the repeated references to 'hatred' on Antigone's part, see Griffith ( 1 999, 2001 ).
Psychoanalysing Antigone 1 17
brother and father below? And (how) are the audience (we) instead/also
brought to identify with the other characters in the play who watch her,
interact with her, and express or demonstrate their feelings of connection
and disconnection, sympathy or distance, towards her and her desires?
And finally: what difference in the end (to put it bluntly) does this half­
expressed ('unconscious?') fixation and forbidden desire make to the specta­
tors' response to Antigone as a character and to the play as a whole? How
differently do we react to hearing her voice of loyalty to kin and divine law,
when we recognize that it comes from this particular source? What does it
mean that the only person brave and noble enough to speak and act up in
resistance to Creon's unjust edict is the daughter of Oedipus?
This is the paradox, or complex, that we face. On the one hand, Antigone is
described within the play itself as 'deserving of golden honour' from the city at
large for having performed 'the most glorious actions' (692-9); on the other
hand, she is also presented as being a deeply weird and inverted victim of
genetics and/or familial dysfunction, one who shows herself unable and unwill­
ing to interact sociably with the living members of her family or to accommo­
date herself to the requirements and expectations of her community. It seems to
be impossible to disentangle these contradictory strands from one another. So
our task as critics is surely to try to map the particular combination of reactions
(sympathies, speculations, desires, fantasies) aroused in us, and/or in the origi­
nal Athenian audience, by the spectacle of this devoted, brave, and incestuously
pre-formed daughter/sister.
I shall not here try to survey (again) all the different approaches that have
been made to the 'psychoanalysis' of works of literature (or film, or theatre) in
general, and Greek tragedy in particular-nor all the explanations, theoriza­
tions, and justifications (or rebuttals) offered for each approach. Instead
I shall take it as granted that unconscious as well as conscious processes of
understanding and imagination (fantasy, desire, wish-fulfilment, identifica­
tion) take place when a work of fiction is read or a play performed in front of
an audience, and that the resultant psychological reactions are complex,
important, and not always entirely coherent. 1 8 My goal in what follows is
therefore to present as imaginative and illuminating-yet reasonable and
textually grounded-analysis as possible of the psychological responses that
are generated by the play, and by the character of Antigone in particular, in a
theatre audience, through a re-examination of the language and behaviour
both of the heroine herself and of those around her.
18
See Griffith (2005: 98-1 1 0 ) ; also Oliensis (2009).
1 18 Psychoanalysis and the Law
How do the language and action of Sophocles' play configure the explicit
and implicit desires of the character Antigone as a subject, and in what ways
(to what degree) are the audience brought to share (feel, become aware of,
imagine in their 'oneiric world') her inner motivations and fantasies?19 What
fantasies of our own do we find being engaged as the play proceeds20-and
which of these are satisfied and reinforced, which foreclosed, or displaced, or
reconfigured and diverted? What psychological work can we say in the end
that this play has performed on us?
The striking cluster of erotic and quasi-erotic phrases that we surveyed
earlier does not imply, of course, that Antigone has actually been having sex
with her father or brother all these years, nor that she is represented as
consciously desiring or fantasizing sexual relations with them; nonetheless it
does suggest that her love and desire to 'please, gratify, love, satisfy' them
(philein, areskein, handanein) and be close to ('lie with') them is so overpow­
eringly strong, and so strongly tinged and intermingled with feelings of
intimacy and exclusive association, that they have taken the place of all
those other ('normal') desires that are supposed to be directed outside the
family, towards a husband or children or the other structures of social life. 2 1
Judith Butler suggests that Antigone is thus implicitly challenging the incest
taboo itself, by proposing alternative objects of desire, even if these never
quite come into positive focus in their own right within the play, whereas for
Lacan Antigone's desire is simply and characteristically 'impossible'. Certainly
in some respects this 'incestuous desire' (or whatever term we choose to
describe this fixation on her father and brother) is more directly troubling
and disruptive because it is represented as being much more of a conscious
choice than the ignorant mistakes of Oedipus in OT. Antigone's fixation on
her brother and father, her desire to please them and be with them at all costs,
is recognized by everyone in the play as yet another manifestation of forbid­
den inward-turning on the part of this unique/typical family (another 'wave'
in the incessant storm of ate buffeting the family of the Labdacids, 584-92) ,
even as it is also intermittently admired and wondered at by all except Creon.
Thus Antigone's timid-and normal, non-fixated-sister concedes, 'You are
crazy ( anous) , but truly/rightly loving to (y)our loved ones ( tois philois orth6s
phile, 99)'. And it is striking that, as the audience watches and hears Ismene
1 9 For this notion of an 'oneiric world' ('dreamworld') of fantasy experienced by a viewer or
reader, see Segal ( 1 994), Griffith ( 2005), Oliensis (2009).
20 Despite the dangers inherent in the use of 'we' and 'us' to denote the members of a theatre
audience, ancient and modern, male and female, I will henceforth use this term fairly freely as a
shorthand, with the understanding that considerable differences of actual response are likely
and in themselves interesting: see Diamond ( 1 992).
2
1 See Katz ( 1 997), Butler (2000) (building on Irigaray and Phelan).
Psychoanalysing Antigone 1 19
debate with her sister the ins and outs of their respective choices, 1t 1s
Antigone's (incestuous) commitment that we are brought to approve through
the irresistible power of Sophocles' rhetoric, music, and staging, and it is her
individual personality that we are brought to dwell on above all others.22
Antigone's choice, to bury her brother and face the consequences, is obviously
represented as a conscious decision, and she explains and defends it rationally, in
terms of divine sanctions and family loyalty (philia, concern for time). But at the
same time, her language seems to reveal a cluster of desires and feelings that are
less rationally defensible, less fully articulated, and less fully conscious, yet no less
strong or determinative of her feelings and actions. In addition to her distinc­
tively negative and abrupt expressions,23 her quickness to 'hate' everyone except
her brother, her erotic phraseology, and her constant association with ate (all
mentioned above), Antigone demonstrates two other linguistic traits in partic­
ular that seem to yield insight into her psychology and inner motivation: her
frequent references to Hades and the underworld, and a habit of invoking the
name of 'father' and of 'Zeus' at the most critical moments of confrontation and
self-definition, in such a way as to suggest that her very identity and reason for
acting/living are derived entirely from them (Him) .
The 'desire fo r death' has been much discussed by Freudians, and by critics
(especially Lacanian critics) of this play. What is distinctive about Antigone's
fixation on death and her journey to the underworld is its close association
with the name and presence of her (brother and) father, to the point that
'marriage to Hades' becomes combined with (re)union with her dearest kin.
And these associations are closely linked in turn with her invocations of the
name of Zeus-the brother of Hades, who is frequently regarded in Greek cult
practice as 'Zeus Below'. Four passages in particular, including perhaps the
most famous and evocative moments in the whole play, bring out strikingly
the intimate connection in Antigone's mind between her father, Zeus-the­
Father, and the idea(]) of a supreme law or authority that completely defines
her own existence and potential for action. First in lines 2-4 ('What is there of
the woes of Oedipus that Zeus does not bring-to-perfection ( telei) for us?'),
we may note that Zeus teleios is the ultimate authority-figure for the Greeks,
both as guarantor of finality and completion and as the one 'in charge'
( en telei) of all human affairs. Then in her celebrated speech of defiance at
450-9, she begins by asserting, 'It was not at all Zeus-for-me ( au gar ti moi
22
But we cannot fail to note that her sister chooses not to follow the same path, and not to fall
into the same pattern of complete devotion to father and dishonoured brother. Thus Ismene
seems in some measure to have escaped the reach of ate-whether we take this to be a mark of
her cowardice and ordinariness, or of her superior capacity to adapt to the world order as she
finds it (or both); see below, p. 1 3 1 .
23 See p . 1 1 2- 1 3 above.
 1 20 Psychoanalysis and the Law
Zeus en . . . ) who made this pronouncement . . .', and she continues in the next
breath with a reference to Dike ('Justice', conventionally imagined as Zeus'
daughter) who 'cohabits with the gods below' (sunoikos ton kato theon): thus
'Justice' is imagined as occupying the same residence as Antigone's own dead
father, and it is she who 'defined <the> laws among humans' ( hOrisen
nomous)-a role for Dike not unlike Antigone's own. Antigone likewise is
about to take up her 'residence' below in Hades, with Oedipus/Hades (Zeus of
the Underworld) . 24 Zeus as symbolic 'father of gods and men' (pater andron te
theon te) is the most familiar and powerful projection of the paternal available
to the Greeks; so it is not surprising-though still striking-to find Antigone
both invoking his name and authority in such close conjunction with that of
her biological father, and also placing herself (virgin daughter of the revered
father) in such close connection with the moral-legal authority of the paternal
(much as Artemis or Athena, or even Persephone, is so often employed in the
Greek imagination to reinforce paternal authority through devoted support
of her mighty father).25 Creon indeed refers with heavy, but psychologically
perceptive, sarcasm to this revealing quirk of Antigone's language, when in his
retort to her long speech of self-justification he asserts ( 486-7): 'But whether she
is my sister's child or even more same-blooded ( homaimonestera) to us than the
whole Zeus of the courtyard ( tau pan tos hemin Zenos herkeiou) . . . ', a very
unusual periphrasis for 'my whole family' that seems to identify Zeus (himself
a notoriously incestuous husband, married to his own sister, Hera), Oedipus,
and the whole of Antigone's cluster of male kin as part of the same 'household'
(herkos), and to confirm her claim to 'shared blood' with all of them.
In her final scene, as she 'explains' herself for the last time, to the Chorus, and
to Creon, and to herself, Antigone refers repeatedly (856-7 1 , 897-902, 937-8,
942) to 'father' and the 'paternal' as her prime reason for acting and as her chief
object of appeal.26 Her last utterance of all (937-42) addresses the male and
paternal aspects of her city: 'O paternal city-centre (patroion astu) of Thebes
and gods of my family ( theoi progeneis) . . . See, rulers of Thebes, what I suffer
from what kind of men (andron) . . . !', in terms that may be heard to distinguish
between the 'men/husbands' (andron) who are unjustly attempting to control
24 For the language of Antigone's 'residence in Hades' (852, 868 metoikos, 1069 katoikisas),
see Seaford ( 1 987), Griffith ( 1 999) (index, s.v. 'Hades').
25 For the references in this play to Persephone (893-4, 1 1 1 8-2 1 , 1 199-1 205) in relation to
Antigone, see Griffith ( 1 999) ad loc. Of course Persephone is generally more closely associated
with her mother than with her father: indeed, her own father Zeus may be said to have betrayed
her to the 'other' Zeus, her husband Hades.
26
897 'First, I will come beloved to my father . ' (phile men hexein patri . ). How significant is it
. . . .
that towards father and brother (first and emphatic third in the tricolon) Antigone will be phile,
whereas towards her mother she will be prosph iles--merely 'supplementarily deal?
Psychoanalysing Antigone 121
her life (cf. 842-3) and the paternal and divine authorities (patroion, theoi
progeneis) that she recognizes as her true object of devotion; and the address to
the Chorus as 'overseeing . . . lords' (940 leussete . . . koiranidai) seems to invite
them to side with the one male authority against the other.
Moments before this final address, Antigone appeals to the place to which
she is going, and the family to whose arms she is returning, in a passage that
provides the most affectively self-reflexive and self-revelatory sequence in the
whole play ( 857-72 ) . In lyric dialogue with the male Chorus, and in response
to their remark, 'It is your father's struggle somehow that you are paying for'
(856 patroion d' ektineis tin' athlon),27 she fervently reiterates her sense that
she is indeed returning where she belongs, to the arms of her obsessively close
and clinging family and the source of her 'trouble':
You touched on the most painful care ( merimnas) for me,
a constantly repeated (lit. 'thrice-ploughed' ) 28 lament for my father .. .
Alas, the horrors/madnesses ( atai) of the maternal bed,
and the wretched mother's incestuous union with my father
<or, 'my father's incestuous union with my wretched mother' >,
from which I, wretched-minded, was born and got my nature (ephun)!
It is to you that I am coming, to live with you ( metoikos);
0 brother who met with ill-fated marriage,
by dying you killed me, the living!
(857-92)
This is one of the speeches (and songs) from Antigone29 that Lacan claims to
be definitive of her female desire for death, a desire that he sees as being
27 The phrase suggests also 'a struggle/prize concerning your father'. And we may note that
ektino trophas is the standard Greek for 'repay <to a parent> the debt for bearing-and-raising'
( LSJ s.v. ektino). Thus of the various possible meanings for the 'anti-' prefix to Antigone's name,
it seems in the end primarily to signify 'in return for birth' ( LS! s.v. anti 'in Compos 4'),
. . .
rather than 'opposite' ( 1 ) , 'against' (2), 'mutually' (3), 'instead of' (5), 'equal to' ( 6 ) or
'corresponding to' (7). Her identity comprises, not aversion to giving birth (marriage, etc. ) so
much as dedication to 'paying back' her father and mother and brother for their and her
generation. By contrast, lsmene (perhaps properly spelled Hismene), named after one of the
rivers of Thebes, is thus less intimately linked to her natal family: see Griffith ( 1999: 9-10, with
nn. 35-36).
28
Why 'thrice'? Perhaps this is merely conventional G reek triplication for the culminating or
ultima te case (as in 'thrice-blessed', etc.). But, in conjunction with 'ploughed' ( -pol-) it is hard
not to hear also a reference to the three rounds of grief elicited by Oedipus' improper
intercourse: that is, the death of Jocasta, blinding and death of himself, and cursing and death
of his sons; possibly also the ' three lamentable acts of procreation' that have produced Eteocles,
Polynices, and Antigone-with lsmene once again omitted from consideration (a suggestion
I owe to Erik Gunderson).
2 9 Lacan does not comment on the fact that this passage is sung, though it would presumably
suit his argument that the 'maternal' would thus express itself in the 'imaginary' mode of song,
122 Psychoanalysis and the Law
representative of the mothers desire in general.30 In his infuriatingly allusive
and indirect (as well as often inaccurate) encounter with Sophocles' text,
Lacan returns again and again to the notion of ate, which he takes to be
indicative of the extreme and forbidden nature of Antigone's desires and of
her very existence. As she faces the prospect of imminent removal from the
world of the living, Antigone and the Chorus voice more and more vividly her
feelings of connection with the dead members of the family with whom she is
about to be reunited, as well as her impossible desire to be 'beyond' the limits
of earthly life and 'outside/beyond ate' (6 1 4, 625 ektos a ta s). Lacan's insistence
on the connection between Antigone and the figure of the mother, and on the
'death wish' that he sees as intrinsic to female subjectivity, is open to question:
but he is surely right to insist on the close connection here between Antigone's
yearning for the extreme and 'impossible' (her existence 'between two
deaths'), and her exemplary situation as daughter and sister of Oedipus-and
right too to focus critical interest so emphatically onto her all-consuming desire
within the fantasy-work of this male-composed and -performed drama.3 1
Antigone's 'desire for the impossible', her renunciation of social life on
earth (within the polis), in order to reaffirm her devotion to the two men she
adores in Hades, has political dimensions too. As Judith Butler has observed,
Antigone is in effect calling into question the whole incest taboo-the most
basic of all social orders-by reminding us that an imaginable, even poten­
tially laudable and empathetically sustainable, 'natural desire' (sumphilein
ephun) might be felt outside the constraints of socially approved custom.
Such a possibility is not brought into focus as a practically realizable (or even
fully conscious?) option, for Antigone or for anyone, in the course of the play:
but the recognition that 'marriage to Hades' and reunion with one's own natal
family members might be more desirable than obedience to political authori­
ty (as embodied in Creon, Antigone's kurios and king) and than the prospect
of exogamous marriage (as embodied in Haemon) makes itself felt in an
unexpected and disturbing, yet emotionally engaging, way. On a larger social
rather than spoken verse; see Griffith ( 2005: 1 25 n. 33), with further references to L. Irigaray,
J. Kristeva, and others. On Antigone's lyrical language and its rhythms, see Ditmars ( 1992).
30 'Whereas for Freud, Oedipus is the problem, for Lacan, it is Jocasta', Phelan ( 1 997: IS). For
more detailed exploration of the close identification between Antigone and Jocasta, the two
females who disastrously desire Oedipus, along the lines suggested by Lacan, see Feral ( 1 978:
2-3) .
3 1 Lacan himself pays n o attention t o the fact that this play was performed as a 'play', let alone
that it was written and performed by men; he writes as if Antigone's is a female voice, her desires
representative of female desires. But since in any case he regards all gender roles and all male and
female subjects as being constructed by and out of language, he would presumably have
regarded such distinctions as unimportant. In any case, as we noted above, his discussion of
Antigone is not intended as literary criticism, but as philosophy ('ethics').
Psychoanalysing Antigone 1 23
scale, too, the fixation articulated by Antigone with regard to her Oedipal
family may also be seen as a reflexion of Sophocles' (or the Athenians')
fantasy of elite family relations in particular, as they are configured by-and
reactive to-the (relatively newly) dominant structures and limitations of
democratic Athenian society. For Antigone, a member of T hebes' most
distinguished family, the 'honour' and 'glory' of Oedipus and his son can
only be matched and perpetuated by philoi of equivalent social stature-that
is, themselves ( autogenneta, autadelphoi, homaimoi, etc.) Creon, by contrast,
seems to represent the newer breed of elites who are willing to work within the
democratic system and to shape their own claims and choices to conform
with what is 'good for the city'. 32 Antigone, like so many of Sophocles' noble
heroes, remains true to her natal philoi through thick and thin, even when
they commit treason against the city. (This is another sense of sumphilein
ephun.) This places her (and the audience too, in so far as they are brought to
share her outlook) in a deeply conflicted position with regard to the idea of
the Father, which seems to be dismantled around her as the play proceeds­
for on the one hand the claim of the living political authority (her uncle,
Creon) is shown to be hollow, while the alternative, the claim of her natural
father (Oedipus) not only involves incest but also leads only to death. Given
the choice between the two, where should Antigone (or the audience) locate
the true 'Law'?
By this point, we should perhaps pause to ask ourselves where we stand,
with regard to the questions we posed in our introductory section, as to the
status, subject, and object of Antigone's 'fixation'-whether it is really 'Anti­
gone's' or Sophocles', or the audience's, and what this 'desire' really amounts
to? How much difference does it make to us if/once we recognize and acknow­
ledge the incestuous nature of this fixation-that is, if we acknowledge the fact
that Antigone's noble resistance to an unjust tyrant and obedience to the gods'
eternal laws is inspired above all by her impossible desire for her father and
brother?
First, we need not hesitate to state the obvious: this is indeed Antigone's
complex. As a more or less unified and identifiable character, the masked
figure named 'Antigone' is recognizable as an individual (a daughter, sister,
T heban) who exhibits a pattern of feelings and desires that we can piece
together into a fairly coherent 'whole' by listening attentively, watching,
interpreting, and imagining (on the basis of our own previous experience,
conscious and unconscious-including our knowledge of fifth-century
Athenian linguistic and social norms), as we sit in the theatre and try to
32 Creon states proudly that he 'regards as phi/oz' only those who do good to the city'
0 87-9 1 ); see Griffith ( 1 999) ad Joe., with further references.
 p
124 Psychoanalysis and the Law
'make sense' of the overall narrative of this play, just l ike any other play. But
of course, since Antigone is not, was never, a real person, but is rather, a
fictional, constructed figure, pieced together (in three separate dramas),33
'she' can only display to us this complex because her creator ( Sophocles)
consciously thought, or unconsciously felt, that these are the emotions and
reasons that someone in her situation (someone from that family) would be
feeling, these the needs and desires that must be impelling her to act and
speak in this ( extreme) way. So the ownership of the complex, the subjec­
tivity whose father-fixation we observe (and to some degree share?), neces­
sarily shifts one or two levels further back, to Sophocles and/or his society
and audience.34
So it must (in some sense) really be Sophocles, the individual ( male)
Athenian who has these feelings, and who projects them onto his heroine,
in much the same way that Shakespeare, for example, in Henry VI Part 2 and
Antony and Cleopatra seems to play out his own anxieties and those of his
contemporary society concerning failed masculinity and the yearning for a
'return' to the maternal body35-perhaps too in much the same way that any
dreamer 'invents' his/her dream characters. It may not matter much (except
for a potential biographer of Sophocles) whether or not the playwright
himself felt and/or was aware of those emotions ( if he did feel them, Lacan's
assertions about the essentially 'maternal' nature of Antigone's words would
clearly have to be adjusted so as to allow for the possibility that a mature
male psyche is capable of feeling, or at least articulating, such unconscious
female desires with uncanny accuracy) or whether Sophocles was such an
exceptionally observant artist that he could notice (centuries before Freud)
that the incest taboo is locked in a mortal psychic struggle with every
individual's unconscious desires, and that a 'daughter' is indeed l ikely to
feel these ( natural, but forbidden) desires for her father (and brother). That
is to say, our play could be a product either of Sophocles' own personal
neurosis or of his extraordinary Keatsian talent ('negative capability') for
empathizing with and representing the broadest possible range of human
33 See Johnson ( 1997); and above p. 114. Apart from Sophocles' OT, OC, and Ant., Antigone
also appea�s as a character in Euripides' The Phoenician Women, and possibly Aeschylus' The
Seven Against Thebes (though the ending is perhaps spurious, and the original may have
incl� ded no �ntigone or Ismene), as well as several others, not by Sophocles, that do not
_
survive. Eunp1des composed a tragedy entitled Antigone, of which almost nothing survives. See
further Mastronarde (1994) , Zimmermann (1993).
34 See further, on the methodological and theoretical issues, Griffith (2005) , Wohl (2008) ,
Oliensis (2009).
35 See n. 37 below and Griffith (2005) pp. 105-6.
Psychoanalysing Antigone 125
types and psychologies, and it would make no difference to the audience's
experience either way.36
In any case, it might seem hard to see what we would gain, or what
plausibility or explanatory power would be found, in maintaining that So­
phocles himself had a special interest in the 'Antigone complex'. As a male, he
cannot (obviously) have experienced it as directly as Shakespeare might
himself have experienced a Kleinian mother-separation/rejection problem;37
and in any case we know next to nothing about Sophocles' own life, his
childhood, relationship with his parents, marriage, or psychological make­
up.38 But from a different angle, Christina Sorum and Patricia Johnson have
each posited a conscious choice on Sophocles' part to represent on the stage
an issue of perennial social and psychological importance that had recently (it
is suggested) acquired an additional new urgency: the p roblem of exogamy
itself (Sorum), with the contradictory demands that it makes on women as
members of two separate households (parents' and husband's), compounded
by specifically democratic conflict between loyalty to the city and loyalty to
family; or (Johnson) the particular p ressures caused by the enactment of
Pericles' citizenship law of 451 BCE, with its demand that Athenian daughters
be married exclusively to Athenian men . On these 'psycho-social' readings,
Sophocles' play p resents not so much an exploration of inner psychological
affect as a social critique, a combination of diagnostic insight and mixed male
sympathy and anxiety concerning the status of women and the psychological
effects caused by their conflicted situation. Neither of these readings is
implausible, though neither is supported by much in the way of independent
documentary or literary evidence of this kind of anxiety.
Such readings are less invested in attributing to Sophoclean tragedy the
imaginative power to unmask universal and unconscious feelings than in
36 'When a man ofliterary talents presents his plays, or relates what we take to be his personal
day-dreams, we experience great pleasure arising probably from many sources. How the writer
accomplishes this is his inmost secret; the essential ars poetica lies in the technique by which our
feelings ? f repulsion [ sc. for the phantasies of another] is overcome', Freud ( 1908: 53-4) (quoted
by TraY!s 1999: 15 ) . In the case of Aeschylus, a remarkably consistent pattern of gender­
oppositions has been identified in his surviving plays by Winnington-Ingram, Caldwell, and
Zeitlin (in their different ways), which we might regard as 'characteristic' of his conscious or
unconscious world-view and dramaturgy; cf. too Wohl (1998). But whereas Winnington­
Ingram was inclined to take this pattern of dangerously assertive female agency as an index of
Aeschylus' personal (authorial) concern for the status of women in Athens, those other critics
have focused instead on the social tensions that gave rise to such imaginative response among
the Athenians at large; cf. Katz (1997), Sorum (1982), Foley (2001).
37 See Klein (1994), Kahn (1981), Adelman (1992) , and above, p. 124.
38 The testimonia for Sophocles' life and career are collected in Radt (1977); see too Griffith
(1999: I), Lefkowitz (1981: 75-87). Only about his (alleged) feud with his two sons, and his
enthusiastic bisexual love life, do we possess much 'information' of a personal nature.
 Psychoanalysing Antigone 1 27
1 26 Psychoanalysis and the Law
and its future. Only occasionally do the repressed sexual elements of such
tracing a consciously planned as well as historically contingent 'message' and
representations emerge into expression;41 but Greek tragedy, with all its linguis­
engagement with contemporary issues. But the two effects (psychoanalytic
tic ambiguity and performative licence, allows things to be said and intimated
and psychosocial) need not be too sharply distinguished: the unconscious
that never emerge into verbal expression anywhere else than in the theatre.42
r:iay be �very bit as political, topical, and social as the conscious, and a play
The notion that an audience (Athenian and predominantly male, or mod­
hke Antigone may work on many different levels at once. In any case, such
ern and m ixed) might find itself enjoying the prospect of a heroine who
readings still appear to leave room for an explanation of the particular
enunciates or hints at such disturbing desires, will not seem so implausible if
fascination exercised by the incestuous nature of Antigone's desire, and for
we bear in mind the multiplicity of subject positions and the versatility and
analysis of the troubling mixture of emotions aroused by the audience's
complexity of psychic work that is conducted in the experience of a dream or
relation to this conflicted heroine.
theatre narrative. For it is clear, I think (although Freudian and reader­
For at some level it must be the spectators ('we') whose subjectivity is
response critics frequently seem to forget it) that the spectators' process of
reconstituted in the figure of Antigone, and whose fantasies are unleashed and
identification is not simply with one central 'hero( ine)', but tends to shift back
exploited in the 'transitional space' of this play.39 Whether or not Sophocles
and forth rapidly so as to adopt the subject positions of several other
himself understood and intended (was 'conscious of ') the effects of his
characters as well.43 'Identification' comes in many forms, and the individual
fictional creation, together with her particular family history and relations
spectator's relationship with the figure of Antigone does not occur simply in a
(and there is no way that he could have been remotely aware of the various
dynamic of wish-fulfilment ('I wish I could be . . . , I imagine I am Antigone' ),
reactions and interpretations that his play would elicit in the centuries to
but also engages the spectator in observing and reacting to her through
follow), this masked, speaking character 'Antigone' does give voice to desires
momentary or sustained identification with other characters. Even the
that are at one and the same time ( I suggest) deeply felt (shared) by almost
songs of the Chorus add further perspectives, direct or indirect, on the
every male member of the theatre audience and yet barely ( rarely) acknowl­
heroine's situation and feelings (especially, perhaps, at 944-87). Thus, just
edge�-desires that were certainly not proper to speak or acknowledge in
as the shocking and disruptive confrontation between father and son ( Creon
public: to have a daughter, a sister, like Antigone, with a love like that-how
and Haemon) involves the spectators in a prolonged and complicated alter­
strange ( 332 deinon), how truly loving (99 orthOs phile) , and how glorious
nation of subject positions, informed both by Sophocles' text and by their
(69 5 eukleestaton) ! For while we may doubt that brother-sister love was
own pre-existing habits of thought concerning paternal authority, erotic
fetishized in Athens to the same degree as it came to be in nineteenth-century
desire, and male impulses towards self-assertion and competition, so is the
Europe (where it was seen as the 'purest' of all loves-even as it fuelled
spectator's relationship to Antigone constituted both by the desire to be like
numerous thinly veiled male sexual fantasies and fictional narratives),40 the
her, and by the desire to be admired, approved-of and loved by her. We
delight aroused in Athenian theatre audiences by the prospect of virginal
daughters/sisters ( Iphigenia, Electra, Antigone, Polyxena, Cassandra) demon­
4 1 E.g. the tragic, lyric, and iconographic narratives of the deaths of Polyxena and Iphigenia
�trating th� ir dev?tion to their fathers and brothers was matched by the
1conograp hic and ideological ubiquity in Athenian life and cult of the figures (on which see Wohl 1998); cf. the many eroticized depictions of the killing of Medusa, with
of Artemis_ and Athena Parthenos, along with the numerous ceremonies Loraux {1981), Roselli (2007).
42 At Aristophanes, Wasps 605-9, Philocleon lists among the joys of being a citizen-juryman
involving young Athenian girls chosen to represent their city, its prosperity, the greeting he receives from his daughter, when he comes home with his pay: 'Most delightful
(hediston) of all . . . my daughter washes me and oils my feet and bends down to kiss me
(philesei), calling me "daddy" (pappizousa) while she tries to fish out the 3-obol piece with
her tongue .. .' (trans. ). Henderson). (Athenian clothing had no pockets; so coins were
39 For the notion of 'potential' or 'transitional space' within Object Relations theory' see
normally carried in the mouth.) I am assuming that the majority of the original Athenian
Winnicott (1971), Griffith (2005: 104). audience was male, though I share the prevailing scholarly view that some women also did
40 The nineteenth-century fascination with 'sorority' as the purest and chastest form oflove
attend the theatre (while others could also probably watch the plays from the high ground
was fostered especially by Hegel and Wagner; see Steiner {1984), Oudemans and Lardinois above; Roselli 2007).
(1987: 112-13). In t� e twentieth century, by contrast, several new plays on the Electra theme 43 See Griffith ( 1995: 1998) with further references. (In the 1998 article I attempt at some
. .
w:re :vntten e1?1phasm�g overtly sexual desire between the siblings (Robinson Jeffers, Eugene length to analyse the ways in which this dynamic operates in the scene between Creon and
0 Neill Suzuki Ta� ash1, etc. ). For a mo � ern scholar's rhapsodic account of the beauty of a
', . Haemon, in the light of Athenian attitudes concerning fathers and sons, family politics, and
br�ther s and sister s l ove, a� both an ancient an� contemporary ideal, in relation to Antigone political rule.)
.
(with not a breath of mcest m over 30 pages of discussion), see e.g. Bowra (I 944: 67-102).

128 Psychoanalysis and the Law
fantasize about 'being' Antigone ourselves (such a devoted sibling and loyal
child, such a brave resister against injustice and authoritarianism, such a
forceful and inspiring articulator of an alternative-individual, female, reli­
gious-subjectivity . . . !), but also about 'relating to' her from the subject
position of her sister, of the Guard, of the Chorus-and even, surely, of her
absent brother and father. And from some of these perspectives, her fixation
on her brother and father appears precious and peculiarly attractive: she
speaks from her 'nature', from a relationship of 'love', from a strong sense of
herself as not merely the obedient servant of someone else's arbitrary rules.
The desire to hear a daughter express her unquenchable devotion to her
father, to see a sister willing even to die out of devotion to her brother,
provides an undeniable appeal-especially when it is contrasted with a
scene of a son's open defiance of his father, in favour of his fiancee, such as
we witness between Creon and Haemon. It is as if Antigone, as dutiful
daughter, 'cures' the wound opened by that other, ugly Oedipal battle. Any
spectator (especially a male spectator) can readily fantasize himself into the
subject position of Antigone's (absent, honoured, beloved) father or brother.
Likewise the prospect of a young woman defying and rejecting the threats and
appeals of others ( mainly men, even men of high political standing and
authority) in the name of her 'father' and of 'God', is likely to be inspiring
and heart-warming for many. For modern Western audiences, this defiance
(and rejectio n) may be embraced as the expression of a liberal-individual­
religious independence from state (and/or specifically patriarchal) oppres­
sion, and/or of female resistance to mindless patriarchal authority; and it
encourages ideas of the freedom of every individual to choose her/his own
commitments and affections, free from the commands and constraints of
others. Yet in fifth-century Athenian terms ( given that individuals and men­
talities seem not to be eternally and essentially the 'same' from one generation
or society to another), we might surmise that Antigone's resistance and
defiance (as father's daughter, and as loving sister of a brother) would have
been felt rather to reinforce and perpetuate the notion of a tight-knit,
patriarchal household and the father's continuing economic and psychic
control over the family's property and inheritance.44
44 As we noted earlier, the position of 'father' for Antigone is occupied at certain prominent
moments, in this play as in many, by the names of'Zeus', 'Hades', and 'the gods below', as well as
by Oedipus himself and Polynices; see above, p. 120, Katz ( 1997). Thus when Creon, who is both
their uncle (and thus kurios over her and Ismene) and the-suddenly-legitimate ruler of
Thebes, attempts to exercise legal authority over her and to be the 'man' (aner) in control of her
body and its actions, as well as the body of her brother, her refusal in the name of 'father' brings
into play strangely conflicted notions of 'paternal authority' and 'the Law'.
Psychoanalysing Antigone 1 29
In a chapter devoted, among other topics, to a discussion ofLacan's reading
of Antigone, Slavoj Z izek draws a crucial distinction:
The relation between imaginary and symbolic identification . . . is . . . that between
'constituted' and 'constitutive' identification: to put it simply, imaginary identifica­
tion is identification with the image in which we appear likeable to ourselves, with the
image representing 'what we would like to be', and symbolic identification, identifica­
tion with the very place from which we are being observed, from where we look at
ourselves so that we appear to ourselves likeable, worthy of love . . . [ I ] maginary
identification is always identification on behalf of a certain gaze in the Other . . . 45
Z izek goes on to observe:
In Sophocles' Antigone, the figure with whom we can identify is her sister, Ismene­
kind, considerate, sensitive, prepared to give way and compromise, pathetic, 'human',
in contrast to Antigone, who goes to the limit, who 'doesn't give way on her desire'
(Lacan) . . . In other words, it is Antigone herself who necessarily evokes in us, pathetic
everyday compassionate creatures, the question, 'What does she really want?', the
question which precludes any identification with her. (p. 117)
I think this assessment of Antigone's appeal to an audience ('we') may be too
restrictive and negative: there are indeed several aspects of her courage, devo­
tion, and intransigence that do indeed represent 'what we would like to be', as
many critics have observed. Judith Butler, for example, has drawn attention to
the way in which Antigone 'assumes the voice of the law in committing the act
against the law' (p. 1 1 ) and thus opens up new spaces in which 'we' may imagine
alternatives to the ( moral, sexual, marital) laws that others have imposed on us.
But Z izek is perhaps right to insist after all that the prevailing response that she
elicits from us is one of admiring dissociation, a sense that she is too challenging,
too difficult to deal with.
The mixture of horror and admiration, attraction and revulsion, regret and
relief, that is generated by the spectacle of Antigone's defiance and death, and
by her peculiar devotion to her father and brother as well, is in many respects
typical of audience reactions to the elite heroes of G reek tragedy.46 That is to
say, the psychoanalysis of Greek tragedy will frequently involve not only
analysing the intriguingly m ixed dynamics of gender and socio-sexual taboo
(which have largely been the obsession of Freud and his followers, and to
some degree of Hegel and Hegelians as well), but also observing the shifting
power dynamics and class distinctions that shape and drive the 'desires' of the
subaltern. These desires (and anxieties), conscious and unconscious, are not
45 Zizek (1989: 106--7); cf. too Felman's distinction (1983) between 'being' and 'having'.
46 See Griffith (1995, 1998, 2005).
1 30 Psychoanalysis and the Law
likely to be identical to those of the dominant class, just as'human' psychol­
ogy-or the psychology of 'the boy/child' or'the [Oedipal?] family'-is surely
not likely to be consistent from one society, or even one economic class, to
another.47
In this play, the most striking and revealing differences of social/psycho­
logical perspective are articulated through the figure of the Guard, whose
warm (even naively introspective) subjectivity gives us an additional take
(inside/outside view) on Antigone and her peculiar affective appeal.48 The
Guard's job (assigned to him both by the government, Creon, for whom he
acts as phulax = 'watchman, guard', and by the conventions of Athenian
drama, according to which he serves as a 'messenger' ( angelos) of off-stage
events) is to observe and report key events occurring to the elite characters
off-stage, and thus to speed the play towards its crisis: he does this by watch­
ing Antigone's actions, by collaborating in her capture, and then by narrating
what he saw. After describing in vivid detail the shrill screams she uttered
upon finding the uncovered body of her brother-like a mother bird when
she sees 'her bed orphaned of her babies . . . ( 423-5, another passage empha­
'
sized by Lacan)-he concludes his account of her capture by assessing his own
role in relation to that of the condemned princess:
It brought pleasure and pain at the same time-at least to me.
To escape from trouble oneself, is a very pleasant feeling (hediston);
yet it's painful to bring others that we care for (taus phi/ous) into trouble.
But for me, naturally, none of all this is (pephuke) as important as
my own survival and well-being (soterias). ( 436-40)
It is striking that the Guard describes Antigone as someone he 'cares for, is
fond of ' (philous 438). This sense of'familiarity' towards her seems to mirror,
or model, that of the audience. For while the Guard's social and moral stature
may be somewhat lower than that of the ideal citizen audience-member (or
modern student/critic), yet he is like them (us), not only in being a 'watcher,
spectator' of terrible and strange events (cf. 2 1 5 skopoi, 2 1 7 episkopoi, 253
hemeroskopos) , but also in being both far removed from the princess ( in status
and fate) and yet closely connected and emotionally tied to her. Oddly, he is
also the one character in the play who talks explicitly about the state of his
own psyche, and even reports his internal dialogue with it, on his first arrival
(227-30 'My psyche kept talking to me . . .'). Thus his 'psychology' is made a
47 See especially Jameson (1981), Deleuze and Guattari (1983); also Griffith (2005: 98-1 JO,
esp. 109).
48 On Sophocles' portrayal of the Guard, see Griffith (1999: 55-7), with further references.
Psychoanalysing Antigone 131
topic of unusual interest for the audience. I t is he who has brought her here to
face her death; but he cares for her-Why? Because he both admires her for
her devotion to her brother and yet also feels concern for her as a member of
his own community. Yet this community, he recognizes, needs to get rid of her
in order that he (and they) can be 'safe' ( 440 soterias) and can resume their
normal business.
These are, I suggest, the audience's own likely reactions, albeit exaggerated
and even parodied; and in these expressions of mixed sympathy and dismissal,
affection and rejection, voiced by the Guard, we may find our own confused
responses to Antigone's message conveniently articulated. Yes, we care about
her: she feels like our sister or daughter (our philos), one who would fearlessly
lay down her life for her brother and father and whom we consequently
admire and love, and one whose lonely sufferings we urgently regret and
pity. But at some level we are grateful that she is not in fact our true sister ( not
our autadelphon kara, our homaimos, our Oedipal daughter), and we are
likely to feel (at least to some degree) relieved that someone else is going to
put her where she belongs, out of sight, where we don't have to look at her or
hear from her any more. That certainly appears to be the (male) Chorus'
reaction-and their assessment in the end is that her sufferings are mainly
self-inflicted (875 'Your self-willed temper/nature [orga] destroyed you') . The
Guard is certainly not as smug nor as condemnatory (nor as privileged in his
own status) as the Chorus of Elders. But his own survival is clearly at stake,
requiring him to assist directly in the arrest and punishment (removal) of this
dissonant figure-even as his own activity and announcements do assist in
providing her a public voice. Thus even as he expresses his sympathy and
admiration for her, he simultaneously hands her over to Creon's authority
and consigns her to her suffering: he is not big or powerful enough to join in
her resistance. His role is thus very close to ours, the audience's.
Antigone thus has to be removed, has to be silenced and rendered absent,
while Teiresias and the Chorus take over from her as the voices of piety-and
of paternal authority-in the later scenes of the play. ( Ismene cannot take
over, of course, because she, as a relatively normal woman, is not supposed to
be out in public taking charge and restoring everything to order. She is back
where she belongs (by conventional male standards: 577-9), indoors and
voiceless-she, unlike her sister, has no desire to lie with her brother under­
ground.) If normalcy is to be restored by the play's end, we must not be
allowed to start thinking about Antigone again, or our discomfort will return.
Thus one of the emphatic, but largely unconscious, messages brought home
by the play ( as again by Sophocles' Electra, through the contrast of those two
sisters) is that a likely or inevitable consequence of whole-hearted dedication
1 32 Psychoanalysis and the Law
to the Name of the Father (and brother) is the destruction of the close bonds
that should tie sister to 'self-wombed' sister.49
And as the play flows on to its conclusion, it becomes Teiresias' role, above
all, to speak for the Symbolic Order of the (true) Father, and thus to side-step
(if not solve) the persistent problem surrounding male authority that has
bedevilled the earlier scenes of the play. For, as we noted, Antigone was caught
between two competing claims for paternal-masculine authority, one from
her own dead father, the other from her guardian-uncle and king. Only with
the removal of Antigone and the defeat of Creon can a more stable paternal
and political ('symbolic') order begin to reassert itself, represented by the
divinely authorized (and politically indeterminate) prophet50 and by a
Chorus who now speak with increasing confidence and assurance.
It is noticeable (at least, to modern readers, if not to ancient audiences) that
after Antigone departs to her death (943), no further sympathy for her or
approval of her conduct, nor even any further mention of her name, is voiced
during the rest of the play. Teiresias, despite his protracted description of the
gods' anger at Creon's actions and the need to undo them, says nothing in
explicit vindication of Antigone, and the closing scenes, including the Mes­
senger's long and graphic speech, focus almost exclusively on Creon, Hae­
mon, and Eurydice, avoiding almost all mention of the figure of Antigone
herself.51 Only at 1220-2 is her hanging body described ( ten men . . . ) as the
first item in the long account of Haemon's furious reaction and suicide. At the
end, her body is not brought back on stage with the others to be mourned and
memorialized; she is just left lying (or hanging?) in the cave, as if this is where
she must finally reside-no lamentation and recrimination, no presentation
of her body, no burial is even mentioned for her. Is this simply because
Antigone is a woman, and the Athenians will wish to focus more intently
on the downfall of Creon and his immediate family? Or is it because she
already has what she desires: reunion with her brother and father, a prospect
which we cannot comfortably contemplate nor yet contradict, because it
cannot even be talked about at all-a family reunion that must remain unseen
49 'Antigone's speedy abandonment of Ismene is the consequence of a Sophoclean-Oedipal
blindness . . . Insofar as the paternal metaphor is stabilizing, does it not arrest and freeze
women's desire on the father and make her desire that which stabilizes the symbolic? Should
her desire move from that rock, the whole edifice crumbles . . . This is the tragedy of desire
within the paternal symbolic,' Phelan (1997: 15).
5° For discussion of the political aspects of Teiresias and of manteis in general, see further
Griffith (2009).
51 On the textual problems of 1226--7 see Griffith (1999} ad Joe.
Psychoanalysing Antigone 133
i n Hades, a continuing marriage t o death and denial o f the existing social­
sexual order.52
Or-a more uncomfortable thought still-are we to think of Antigone as
now having been possessed (reclaimed) by her exogamous husband, Haemon,
in a posthumous but in some sense effective act of sexual consummation
(rape? marriage?) that seeks to reinstate her within the world of the 'normal'
and socially acceptable?53 Antigone hanging from her noose could not resist,
nor speak out to renounce, Haemon's bloody embrace in the 'bridal chamber
of death'. Between these unknowable and unspeakable indeterminacies ( no­
body refers to Antigone at all in these final scenes), her final status and that of
her brother and father remain contested, unresolved-and again unmention­
able.
So Teiresias does his job; and the Chorus-as so often-completes (at least,
tries to complete) the process of restoring 'order'.54 The theatre audience has
been made to 'forget' Antigone: her d isquieting yet exciting voice has been
silenced and returned to the oblivion where it belongs (underground, in our
unconscious). There will be no more speaking out of that alternative 'law' or
forbidden 'love'. The increasingly confident male voices of authority ( the
prophet speaking for the gods; the Chorus gradually emerging from their
obtuse and over-cautious manners of the earlier scenes) succeed in taking
over from Creon the expression of social restitution, the 'lessons' to be
learned, and preparations for a new day. And to the extent that the Athenian
spectators may tend throughout the play to share Creon's (male, mature)
perspective on events, it is they who ( 'over his shoulder', as it were),55 come to
learn his 'lesson . . . in old age' ( 1 353 gerai . . . edidaxan, last words of the play)
52 Seaford suggests that it is because the civic activities and concerns of the Dionysian festival
have supervened upon the individual calamities of one old-style aristocratic household, render­
ing her death inappropriate for public recognition. This may be true, but seems in itself
insufficient as an explanation.
53 On the highly erotic language of Haemon's suicide, reminiscent of the penetration of
a virginal bride by her husband, see Griffith ( 1999) ad loc.
54 Critical opinions have diverged greatly as to the degree to which the close of this play does
or does not reassure the audience that order has been restored and that Creon has indeed
'learned' something useful, so that a more unified and strengthened Thebes may be imagined as
emerging after the terrible events we have just witnessed. For an interesting discussion in
psychoanalytic terms o f the pervasive role of the Chorus in Greek tragedy in suggesting and
instantiating authority (and in some cases, ultimately the maternal body), see Travis (1999).
55 See Jameson (1981: 173), where it is suggested that the reader of Balzac's La Rabouilleuse
becomes half-aware of an additional'witness' to the reading process-Balzac's own mother; see
further discussion in Griffith (2005). In Sophocles' Antigone, the audience may likewise sense
the witnessing presence of a better father and ruler than Creon, one to whom all of Sophocles'
lonely heroes and heroines seem to feel themselves answerable (Ajax, Electra, Neoptolemus,
Philoctetes, Heracles . . . ), the sternest but strongest Father imaginable.
1 34 Psychoanalysis and the Law

and prepare for a return to everyday life, outside the theatre. Oedipus and
his whole family are at last reunited with one another ( except for Ismene), 7
buried in an imaginary place where they can do no more harm: they have
what they desired. And through Antigone's words and actions, the spectators
too have experienced and satisfied that same 'desire', without having to die One Amongst Many:
for it.
The Ethical Significance of Antigone
and the Films of Lars Von Trier

Calum Neill

The work of the Danish film-maker Lars von Trier is often invoked to
exemplify issues of the ethical. In this regard, von Trier's films can be found
to be situated on a level with Sophocles' Antigone. As is the case with Antigone,
in appealing to von Trier's films, the supposed ethical dimension is often
pinned to the actions of a central female character. To take one example, in
Dancer in the Dark ( 2000), the central character, Selma, scrapes and saves to
afford the surgery her son needs to stop him going blind while she, Selma,
herself loses her sight for want of the same operation. On discovering that she
is almost blind, her landlord, Bill, steals the money she has been saving and
tells his wife that Selma has come-on to him, so that his wife will insist that
Selma leave. When Selma confronts him, a struggle ensues, resulting in B ill's
being shot. Seeing no way out of his situation, Bill begs Selma to 'show him
some mercy' and kill him. She does so. What m ight be understood to elevate
Selma's choice to that of an example of the truly ethical is that she wholly
accepts the weight of the choice she has made. At no point does she attempt to
appeal to circumstances or to justify her decision. A similar ascription of
ethicality can be seen in relation to other von Trier central characters. Bess, in
Breaking the Waves ( 1996), can be understood to endure against the odds,
largely uncomplaining, sacrificing herself for and to her paralysed husband's
sexual fantasies. Karen, in The Idiots, has the conviction to carry her 'spazzing',
her impersonation of a 'spastic', beyond the safe confines of the titular group
and to 'spaz' in front of her own family. It is perhaps this notion of a
commitment to an ideal, the unwavering maintenance of the various stances
they adopt, which draws comparison between von Trier's characters and
Sophocles' Antigone. Like Antigone, von Trier's characters remain true to
their ideal in the face of social expectations. Bess bucks the Presbyterian
1 36 Psychoanalysis and the Law
strictures of her community. Karen 'spazzes' in the face of her fa mily. Selma
steadfastly keeps her promise to Bill to remain silent about what really
happened and, even after others have worked it out, refuses the opportunity
to use the money to pay for a lawyer. Against the convention of what justice,
or a just outcome, might be, she maintains her own position, her prioritiza­
tion of her son's eyesight over her own life, to the end.
While these convergences between Sophocles' and van Trier's work stand,
and similarities between them extend far beyond what is sketched briefly
here, 1 what such comparisons miss is that the ethical dimension of the works,
both Sophocles' and von Trier's, does not reside in the actions or stances of
the characters. That is to say, that while these works do lend themselves to an
ethical function, this ethicality does not reside in what the characters do or in
the positions they maintain. Rather, the ethical dimension lies in what the
play and the films do and the positions they refuse. This manner of reading
Antigone is, arguably, that put forward by Lacan in his Ethics ofPsychoanalysis.
If Lacan is correct, or convincing, if we can see that the ethical in An tigone is
precisely there, in Antigone the play, not in Antigone the character, then the
conclusion we should be drawn to is that Antigone is simply one artwork
among many or, as Lacan himself says, 'if you don't find this example
convincing, find others'.2
At stake here is not a simple debate about whether or not the characters in
question behave in an ethical or exemplary manner. At stake is the very
location and, thus, the very possibility of the ethical. To argue that Antigone
or Selma, for example, is ethical, or that the play or films p resent a quintes­
sential example of the ethical is, in Lacanian terms, to say that the ethical is
located in the realm or on the side of the Other. That is to say, the ethical
comes to be figured as something out there, beyond the subject, already
inscribed and at the same time impossible to reach. It is, effectively, to reduce,
or to attempt to reduce, the ethical to the law. Lacan's reading, on the other
hand, locates the ethical firmly and irrefusably with the subject.
Many before Lacan have held up Antigone, the character, as an example of a
truly ethical figure. This might lead us to assume that Lacan, in giving over a
significant part of his seventh seminar, that dedicated to an exploration of the
ethics of psychoanalysis, sought to join the ranks of those attributing a certain
ethicality to Antigone's act. That is, that Lacan, like those before him, sought
to mobilize Antigone to illustrate the particular stance on ethics he is
attempting to delineate in his seminar. Many prominent Lacanians, foremost
1 3
See e.g. McLaughlin (2005). 2 Lacan ( 1 992: 297).
I
.......
Ethical Significance of Antigone 137
among them Slavoj Z izek, have very much taken Lacan i n this way, holding up
Antigone as the ethical example par excellence.
While the question of the ethical value of what Antigone does is crucial
here, it is crucial insofar as it is a question. That is to say, if we read Lacan with
requisite care, we see that he does not treat or hold up Antigone as an ethical
example and this for the simple fact that, for Lacan, the ethical does not admit
examples. What, then, is the function of Antigone in Lacan's seminar? Her
function does not lie in the ethical status of what she does, in the sense of the
act she carries out on stage. It lies rather in the ethical import of what she
does, in the sense of the effect she has. That is to say, it is Antigone's impact
which contains an ethical potential, not her actions.
Although Lacan's point is not to valorize or ascribe an ethicality to Anti­
gone's actions, the notion of the act is, all the same, central here. We do,
however, need to be careful to give this term the full weight of its significance.
When Lacan refers to 'the act', he is indicating the presence and force of desire
as opposed to what he terms 'Mere behaviour'.3 The act, that is, is distin­
guished by desire. This is to say, in using the term 'act' to describe what
Antigone does, Lacan is emphasizing the subjective nature of her position and
actions. It is desire which defines the subject as subject ( as opposed to
automaton) and while desire is always 'desire of the Other',4 it is also always
particular to the subject in question. Lacan famously asks in The Ethics of
Psychoanalysis, 'Have you acted in conformity with the desire that is in you?'5
A common interpretation of this question is as an injunction that you should
or even must act in conformity with your desire. The question is actually
better read as precisely that: a question, not an injunction. In order to
consider, and to keep considering, the extent to which one has acted in
conformity with one's desire, one would have to have recognized the desire
in the first place. It is precisely such a moment of recognition which is
conveyed in the notion of the act. Key here is the fact that such desire is
never something p re-given. In Seminar II, in the context of warning his
audience against the pitfalls and f rustrations of assuming to interpret the
analysand's desire as always the same oversimplified conception of sexual
desire, Lacan argues that:
what's important is to teach the subject to name, to articulate, to bring this desire into
existence, this desire which, quite literally, is on the side of existence, which is why it
insists. If desire doesn't dare to speak its name, it's because the subject hasn't yet
caused this name to come forth.
La can (l 977b: 50). 4 Ibid. 1 1 5. 5 Lacan ( 1 992: 3 1 4).
138 Psychoanalysis and the Law
That the subject should come to recognise and to name his desire, that is the
efficacious action of analysis. But it isn't a question of recognising something which
would be entirely given, ready to be coapted. In naming it, the subject creates, brings
forth, a new presence in the world. He introduces presence as such, and by the same
token, hollows out absence as such. It is only at this level that one can conceive of the
action of interpretation. 6
Desire, and thus the act, must be unique for each subject. If desire is not pre­
given and must be created, brought forth by the subject, then it must, by
definition, be particular for that subject. This is not, of course, to refute the
symbolic order and the externality of language, nor to engage in an idealism.
It is clear that the subject comes to be as subject in the context of language,
that language and social order precede and determine the subject. Lacan
clarifies this point with regard to the act in his fifteenth seminar, L'acte
Psychoanalytique:
the inscription somewhere, the correlative signifier . . . is never lacking in what con­
stitutes an act. If I walk up and down here while talking to you, that does not
constitute an act, but if one day it is to cross a certain threshold by which I put myself
outside the law, that day my motor activity will have the value of an act. 7
The point here is not simply that what might appear outwardly to be the same
action, walking, can both be defined and not be defined as an act, depending
on its significance. In defining an act as that through which one puts oneself
outside or beyond the law, Lacan is invoking the relation of law, desire, and
subjectivity, and thus pointing to the necessity of responsibility in the act.
The law, in its prohibitory force, can be understood as that which creates
the subject as divided. This division can then be seen to be that which
renders the subject as lacking and, thus, as that which creates desire. It is also
of necessity, then, that which places the subject in opposition to the law. Just
as the subject is lacking, so too is the law lacking. Which is to say that the
law, as Other, must necessarily stand in contradistinction to the subject. To
collapse the subject into the law would be to assume to fill the lack in the
Other, a point which, if achieved, would necessarily result in the annihila­
tion of the subject. On the other hand, to divorce the subject utterly from
the law, to remove that relation absolutely, would also result in the annihi­
lation of the subject. Without the lack introduced by the law, there is neither
desire (as the desire to fill the lack) nor a position of subjectivity ( which is,
by definition, lacki ng) .
6 Lacan ( 1 988a: 228-9). 7 Lacan, Seminar of 15 Nov. 1 967.
Ethical Significance of Antigone 1 39
The crucial point here is that the subject cannot but assume a position
relative to the law. Or, to put this in more concrete terms, the subject cannot
but assume a position relative to the language and social order in which it
finds itself. This position with regard to the law, to language, and the social
order, necessarily entails a certain singularity. However conventional the
subject's construction and articulation of its desire, it cannot but be uniquely
situated for that subject, otherwise it would have been subsumed within the
law and there would be no subject of which to speak or, indeed, there would
be no subject to speak. There is then, despite the fact of desire always being
desire of the Other, always a minimal particularity to each subject's desire.
This being the case, no act can ultimately function as an example of the
ethical, insofar as an example would be the generalization of a structure and,
thus, only one side of the relation between the subject and the law. That is, the
ethical, impossibly reduced to a structure, would become the law, would
become a moral code. The ethical is an instance of exception which proves
the rule (law) is not all. Without the possibility of such a moment of
exception, the law is reduced to a tautology.
In terms of the act, then, we can say that either it is an act in the proper
Lacanian sense of the term, and, thus, unique to the subject, or it is mere
behaviour.8 To talk of the ethical import of mere behaviour would appear
somewhat meaningless. Phrased otherwise, we could say that, forLacan, it can
be ethical or it can be an example, but never both. The act would, then, be
defined as that event in and through which the subject confronts its own
desire and, thus, places itself outside the law. I n so confronting its desire, in
assuming a position outside the law, the subject can be understood to assume
responsibility for its desire. Importantly here, to be outside the law is not the
same as simply rebelling against or breaking the law. To be outside the law in
Lacan's sense is to stand apart from the law and choose. It is to not be
governed absolutely by the law and follow it simply because it is the law.
The interpretation of Lacanian ethics championed by Z izek, and, given
Z izek's enormous popularity and influence, what for many appears to be the
very definition of Lacanian ethics, is what has been called an 'ethics of the
Real', an ethics which concerns the utter disruption of 'the entire social
edifi ce'.9 Clearly the concept of the symbolic is crucial here, but it is crucially
�hat against which the Z izekian ethical act would be directed. Antigone, for
Zizek, captures this sense perfectly in that she stands for the refusal of Creon's
symbolic order. 1° For Z iiek, in refusing Creon's order that her brother remain
unburied, and in refusing it with such force, Antigone can be understood to
10
8 Lacan (1 977b: SO). 9 Zizek ( 200 1 : 157). Zizek ( 1 999: 263 ).
1 40 Psychoanalysis and the Law
have situated herself outside or beyond the reaches of the symbolic order; 'an
authentic act', for Z iiek, 'occurs only when the subject risks a gesture that is
no longer "covered up" by the big Other'. I I Antigone is the very figure of the
revolutionary. Ai; d the revolutionary and the ethical appear to be quite
coterminous in Z izek's world. Antigone is certainly radical for Lacan too,
but not necessarily in the way Z izek would have us believe.
The point here is not that Antigone does not rupture the symbolic. It is
rather the simple question of what is so ethical about rupturing the symbolic.
That is, is rupturing the symbolic necessarily an ethical thing to do? If we
return to the definition of the act, we can see quite clearly that the act
concerns creation, concerns naming, concerns, that is, a certain engagement
with the symbolic, not its destruction. The act does concern the assumption
of a position outwith the law, but, insofar as the act describes the subject in
relation to its desire, and does so in terms of the naming and representation of
that desire, then the act, as ethical, is also clearly reliant on the symbolic. An
act which would entail the destruction of the symbolic would be suicide,
which,Lacan tells us, is the only successful act. As Antigone does, after all, kill
herself, it is quite conceivable that this is her act. It is not clear, however, how
or why such an act can or would be seen to be ethical. What renders suicide
'the only act which can succeed without misfiring'I2 is the very fact of there
being no possibility of reinscription in the symbolic following suicide. For the
person who would have committed the act of suicide, the symbolic is
destroyed, there is no possibility of recuperation to the symbolic law, but
there is also then no possibility of any reconfiguration of the symbolic, no
possibility of meaning, and, quite obviously, no possibility of subjectivity.
There is, then, no possibility of the ethical (for that subject) .
Clearly, the act does entail a certain reconfiguration of the symbolic insofar
as it brings a new presence to it. But it is not clear that this is the sense
which Z iiek intends. Arguably, the act Z izek sees as so significant in Antigone
is a passage a l'acte rather than an act proper. The act, for Lacan, is the
properly subjective moment, the point at which the subject recognizes its
desire and recognizes itself as the cause of its desire. The act is a moment of
responsibility. This is quite different then from a passage a l'acte, the psychotic
refusal or foreclosure of the symbolic wherein, to put it in Z izek's own words,
'I feel obliged to perform the act as an automaton, without reflection
(I simply have to do it, it is not a matter of strategic deliberation)'.13 Clearly
such an act without deliberation, such an act as automaton, is outside the
11 Zizek 264. 12 Lacan ( 1 990: 43). 13 Zizek (2002b: 69) .
Ethical Significance ofAntigone 141
conception of the act proper, insofar as i t i s a non-subjective moment, and is,
therefore, necessarily outside the ethical.
If Z izek is right here, if Antigone is acting automatically-and there is
certainly much evidence or suggestion in the text that she is-then this,
presumably, situates her much closer to Creon than we might normally
consider. Both appeal to some exterior and prior law or tradition to validate
their course of action; Creon to the laws of state, Antigone to 'the great
unwritten, unshakeable traditions'.I4 Taken on what we might term this purely
structural level, there is really very little to distinguish the two.
Lacan does introduce a certain twist here in his suggestion that Antigone's
appeal to the 'gods below' should not be understood in any straightforward
sense of a simple appeal to tradition or an appeal to the familial Gods. Lacan
argues that 'we no longer have any idea what the gods are'. 15 That is, in the
centuries which have passed since Sophocles wrote the play, in the rise and
effects of Christianity, we ' have erased the whole sphere of the gods'. I 6Lacan
claims that this sphere which is beyond the grasp of a modern audience
remains, but remains as an unknown presence. That would be to link it
with the notion of the unconscious. It is, as Lacan puts it, that which is
'illuminated by psychoanalysis',I? and what is illuminated by psychoanalysis
can be understood to be desire. If we understand Antigone in this way, if
we take the rule of the gods or the gods' rules to be the manifestation of
desire, then are we not returned to the point of the act? Antigone's claim,
understood this way, is that she acts on the basis of the desire which is in her.
Of course, this can be understood to resonate with Lacan's statement
concerning ceding on desire; 'the only thing of which one can be guilty is
of having given ground relative to one's desire'. Is The issue here is whether or
not this statement concerns what is ethical.
My argument is that, for Lacan, the ethical cannot be reduced to the simple
question of having acted in conformity with one's desire, that the ethical lies
elsewhere and, thus, in focusing on Antigone in his seminar The Ethics ofPsycho­
analysis, the import of Antigone for ethics also must lie elsewhere.Lacan tells us:
We know very well that over and beyond the dialogue, over and beyond the question
of family and country, over and beyond the moralizing arguments, it is Antigone
herself who fascinates us, Antigone in her unbearable sp!endor. 19
What is meant here by 'unbearable splendor' ? Lacan is referring to what he
later in the text calls Antigone's beauty, but this is not beauty in any com­
monplace sense of her good looks. He goes on to describe this 'splendor' as 'a
16
14 Fagles ( 1 982: 82). 1 5 Lacan ( 1 992: 259). Ibid. 260.
IR 1 9 Ibid. 247.
17 Ibid. 260. Ibid. 3 1 9.
142 Psychoanalysis and the Law
quality that both attracts us and startles us, in the sense of intimidates us'. 20
But what has this notion of beauty to do with the ethical? Lacan explains the
beautiful, or the function of the beautiful, in terms of limits and it is precisely
in relation to, or beyond, such limits that the ethical can be located.
Any concrete morality or norm knows by definition a limit. The law or
convention of the good, insofar as to be at all, must be delimited. Take the
simple desire to do good. If there is a desire to do good, then the desire itself
cannot be collapsed into or be substantiated with reference to the notion of
good which is, so to speak, its object or that towards which it aims. Hence, the
desire to do good must be located beyond the limit of the good itself. It is this
sense of a limit point, of a beyond comprehension, which Lacan claims is
central to Antigone. Such a limit point indicates the limit of comprehension;
in Lacanian terms, the limits of the symbolic and the imposition of the real.
We should, however, recall that forLacan there are three orders: the symbolic,
the real, and the imaginary. As Lacan illustrates with the mathematical figure
of the borromean knot, these three realms are necessarily bound together in
such a fashion that separating one would result in the separation of the other
two and the collapse of the entire structure. That is to say, in the current
context, where there is the symbolic and the real, the imaginary is also always
already implicated.
This intertwining of the three orders can be illustrated in the example of an
encounter with another person. Through a close read ing of a passage of
Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology, Lacan explains the process of
recuperation operant in recognizing the other. There would be imaginary
recognition through the semblance to our own sense of ourselves, our ego, as
structured through the mirror stage. Then there would be symbolic recogni­
tion in the form of our comprehension of the other, our reduction of the
other to what we know or can say of them. But, arguesLacan, there is also that
which escapes recuperation, that which can be reduced neither to imaginary
identification nor to symbolization. This thing that escapes is what Lacan
terms das Ding. 21 It is precisely in its staging of das Ding that An tigone, the
play, not the character, is exemplary forLacan. That is to say, it is precisely in
its staging of that which insists, but at the same time refuses, comprehension,
that which escapes both the mise en scene and the dialogue, exceeds both the
imaginary and the symbolic, and yet maintains centrality in the play, that
Antigone is significant to ethics.
The central term in the play, according to Lacan, is Ate, which means 'fate',
but also connotes a certain madness, delusion, or guilt. The chorus repeats
20 21
Lacan ( 1 992: 259) 247. Neill (2008 ) .
Ethical Significance of Antigone 1 43
that Antigone has gone beyond Ate, which we can then understand as her
having gone beyond madness, beyond guilt, or as Lacan has it, beyond the
limits which 'human life can only briefly cross'.22 What is crucial here is that
Antigone's act, that which is beyond the human, the manifestation of her
desire, is not or cannot be presented on stage. The initial act, covering her
b rother's body, is not only not staged, but it is further removed in that it is not
even witnessed by those charged with watching over the corpse. Similarly, at
the other end of the play, Antigone's sentence also suggests this sense of the
limit. She is to be entombed alive, sentenced to a living death, placed at the
limit between life and death, where death encroaches on life and life en­
croaches on death. And, again, the act is carried out off stage. Her living death
and then, ultimately, her suicide, both go unseen and unwitnessed.
The limit point captured in this sense of Ate is what brings out whatLacan
calls the 'beauty effect'. 23 Lacan likens the beauty effect to the effect experi­
enced in cylindrical anamorphic art. In such art, a stain or distorted image is
made to cohere, or become recognizable as an image of something, when
viewed reflected in a particular and carefully placed cylinder. The coherent
image which rises out of what appears to be but a stain of paint does not
actually exist as such. It only appears from beyond the surface of the cylinder.
And it is as such, in the play, as Lacan tells us, that 'the violent illumination,
the glow of beauty, coincides with the moment of transgression or of the
realization of Antigone's Ate'. 24 That is, it is precisely at the point that
Antigone enters the realm of living death, a point which is not staged as
such, that her beauty functions. As with the coherent image in the anamor­
phic art, Antigone's beauty is only discernible from a particular point, a point
which situates and thus describes, the viewer or spectator as much as it says
anything about Antigone; if not, indeed, more than it says anything about
Antigone. Insofar as the viewer is situated here by the beauty effect of
Antigone, their desire has been implicated . Beauty in this sense is, then,
seen as having a function rather than pertaining to the simple being-there
of an object to be apprehended and this f unction manifests as a complex effect
with regard to our desire. This relation between the beauty which radiates
from the beyond of the Ate and desire is anything but straightforward.
On the one hand, it seems that the horizon of desire may be eliminated from the
register of the beautiful. Yet, on the other hand, it has been no less apparent . . . that
the beautiful has the effect, I would say, of suspending, lowering, disarming desire.
The appearance of beauty intimidates and stops desire.
22 24
Lacan ( 1 992: 263). 23 Ibid. 286. Ibid. 28 1 .

1 44 Psychoanalysis and the Law
That is not to say that on certain occasions beauty cannot be joined to desire, but in
a mysterious way, and in a form that I can do no better than refer to by the term that
bears within it the structure of the crossing of some invisible line, i.e. outrage.
Moreover, it seems that it is in the nature of the beautiful to remain, as they say,
insensitive to outrage, and that is by no means one of the least significant elements of
its structure. 25
Beauty intimidates and lowers desire, but at the same time it can be linked to
desire. And then, later, we are told that it splits desire:
It [beauty] seems to split desire as it continues on its way, for one cannot say that it is
completely extinguished by the apprehension of beauty. It continues on its way, but
now more than elsewhere, it has a sense of being taken in, and this is manifested by the
splendor and magnificence of the zone that draws it on. On the other hand, since its
excitement is not refracted but reflected, rejected, it knows it to be most real. But there
is no longer any object. 26
Beauty, as that which emanates from a beyond which cannot be explained as
such, draws in desire. As it is presented as that which calls from somewhere
beyond comprehension, as it cannot be grasped, cannot be reduced to or
represented as an image, such beauty lures desire. In so splitting desire, the
beautiful can be understood to purify desire. Desire, for the later Lacan, is
explained with reference to objet petit a, the object cause of desire, or that
which is taken to be the object of desire but is never actually it as such. That is
to say, in desiring this or that it is always something else I desire. This allows
desire to be maintained as unsatisfied. The splitting of desire, we have here,
allows the purification of desire in the sense that it allows the subject, not to
occupy pure desire as such, but rather to experience desire as contingently
attached to the objects of the world. That is, it allows the subject to experience
the truth of desire. And it is this purification or catharsis which is the real
ethical aspect of the play.27
The beautiful in its strange function in relation to desire doesn't take us in, as opposed
to the function of the good. It keeps us awake and perhaps helps us adjust to desire
insofar as it is itself linked to the structure of the lure.
28
The beauty effect in the play is an instance of das Ding, that in the other which
resists recuperation to any sense or image. The effect of this beauty is to not
only lure our desire, but to do so in such a way as to allow us to confront and
reconfigure our relation to our desire. As there is no object to speak of here,
that towards which desire points cannot be grasped. While it is the case that
no object is ever it, no object is ever the ultimate object of our desire, what is
26 8 29
25 Lacan ( 1 992: 263) 238. Ibid. 248-9. 27 Ibid. 239. 2 Ibid. 239.
I
.i..
Ethical Significance of Antigone 1 45
peculiar about das Ding and the beauty effect is that they cannot even be
mistaken or grasped as objects of fantasy.
This effect can be understood to be ethical insofar as it is what puts one i n a
position to assume the full weight of responsibility for one's position as
subject. The beautiful may function to allow us to bring forth our desire and
to recognize it as desire, but this of necessity leaves a space for judgement.29
Recognizing desire as desire does not render the subject petrified; I must still
act; only I act now with a desire which is properly and uniquely my own. This
leaves me with the need to judge whether or not to act on my desire, to
conform to my desire. That is, we have desire, we recognize desire, and then
we choose to act or not. When Lacan tells us that the only thing of which we
can be guilty is of having given ground relative to our desire, many interpreters
have taken this as an ethical imperative; thou shalt not cede with regard to your
desire. The point Lacan is actually making here is that giving ground relative to
one's desire is what fuels guilt. He is indicating the mechanism of guilt. What is
ethical is choosing to face this guilt. It is in making the choice to truly face
desire as desire, rather than slavishly follow this or that contingent desire, that
we assume responsibility for our position as subject.
We can then say that it is, perhaps paradoxically, the indeterminancy of
Antigone's ethics which renders the play ethical. Rather than reduce her act to
an example of a revolutionary ethics, a feminist ethics, or the ethics of fidelity to
family, it is the ambiguity of An tigone which actually carries its ethical value. It is
the play, encompassing the character, not the actions of the character, which
functions as an example and it is an example of what might spur the ethical,
rather than an example of ethical action in itself. In this sense, Antigone is but
one amongst many. As Lacan himself tells us, 'The dimension involved here is
not unique to Antigone. I could suggest that you look in a number of places and
you will find something analogous without having to search too hard.'30
The opening scene of Von Trier's The Idiots serves as a good example here, an
alternative which, like Antigone, functions to present a certain ethical i ndeter­
minacy. The film begins in a restaurant. Amongst the 'normal' diners are what
appear to be two physically and perhaps mentally challenged men and their
carer. The carer spoon-feeds one of the men, but he throws back his head,
possibly resisting or refusing or possibly through a lack of adequate muscle
control. He then knocks cutlery to the floor and then starts to wander the
restaurant, interacting in an apparently socially inappropriate manner with
the other diners and invading what we m ight understand as their personal
space. The waiter and the other diners appear extremely uncomfortable in this
Neill (2005). 30 Lacan ( 1 992: 248).
1 46 Psychoanalysis and the Law
scenario. They cannot ignore such immediately intrusive behaviour. They
cannot object. They cannot join in. They are caught in an impossibility where
the 'correct' response is not available and this discomfort, this impossibility is
transferred to the audience. We too do not know how to react. When the carer
eventually succeeds in persuading the two men outside, with the help of Karen,
the soon-to-be embroiled central character, all four get in a taxi and the two
men's behaviour instantly changes. It is clear that they had been acting in the
restaurant; what they refer to as 'spazzing'. At this point, the audience is given a
second jolt. Like the diners, we did not know how to react and now, realizing
that, like them, we have been duped, we are left even more confused. One
reaction is to be appalled and not a few have been extremely appalled at von
Trier for presenting such a scene, complaining that he is lampooning people
with disabilities. But is such a reaction really justifiable? In the moment when
we believe we are witnessing people with 'real' disabilities, we are consumed by
discomfort. The moment we discover the 'joke', we disavow this discomfort and
adopt a position of outrage instead. Only the first reaction, as disavowed, does
not disappear. Our reaction is effectively turned inside out. We are, that is, faced
with our own politically correct hypocrisy. When we know clearly that what we
are dealing with is a hoax, it is easy enough to decry what we are faced with as
sick, but what exactly is sick about it? The behaviour we witness in the opening
scene shifts, retroactively, from being uncomfortably acceptable to being unac­
ceptable. The judgement shifts from internal to external, from subject to other.
What is significant in The Idiots is that there is no comfortable position to
assume in response. Which is to say that it is a film which demands a response
from each viewer which is uniquely the response of that viewer. There is no
symbolic, pre-packaged reaction available. We have to actually feel and think
about it ourselves and choose how we react. This is what renders the film
ethically significant. Just as Sophocles' play stages a conflict between aspects of
the law, an aporia which furnishes us with no alternative but to choose and no
pre-given rules by which to choose, so von Trier's work pushes us to confront
ourselves and decide. It is in this unavoidable confrontation, in this irrefu­
sable decision, that we discern that, while the law may be on the side of the
Other, the ethical always lies uniquely with the subject.
I
l
8
Antigone, Antigone: Lacan and
the Structure of the Law
Ahuvia Kahane
The tyranny of memory is that which is elaborated in what we call
structure.
J. Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1
As a psychoanalyst-and here we catch a glimpse of the difference
between psychoanalysis and philosophy or psychology-he [ Lacan]
does not read the behaviour of each of the protagonists, he defines the
structure through which their acts must be read.
J. Copjec, Imagine There 's No Woman2
Sophocles' Antigone is a complex play. Yet, at its heart there lies what may
seem like a simple legal/ethical principle or economic claim. Antigone will
bury her brother and doing so will die: Keinon d' ego I thapso. kalon moi touto
poiousei thanein (Ant. 7 1-2) . 3 She will exchange an action, a responsibility, for
death. It is, she says, a beautiful ( kalon) end.
Such basic simplicity of action is not trivial. It is, however, at odds with
some readings of the play, and has been challenged, not the least by Jacques
Lacan, whose view of An tigone, will be discussed in this chapter. Lacan and his
work on Antigone have themselves been the subject of significant challenge,
1
Lacan ( 1 999: 223 ) .
2 Copjec (2002: 16).
. 3 'I
';ill bury him-it would honour me/be beautiful to me to die while doing that.' I t is
interestmg to note that although the Greek text of Sophocles' Antigone is problematic (cf. Lloyd­
) ones and Wilson 1 990) , there are no textual difficulties as far as the key verses on which Lacan's
reading of the play rests and especially Antigone's emphasis on the irreplaceability of her
brother. We will, further below, consider Goethe's views on the strangeness of Antigone's
argument and his famous comment: 'I wish . . . that one day some scholar will reveal to us
that this passage is a later addition' (cf. Lacan 1 999: 255).
1 48 Psychoanalysis and the Law
recently and prominently, for example, by Judith Butler, whose work we shall
consider too. Negotiating both the Lacanian claim and aspects of its critique
in terms of questions of structure can help us trace a distinct trajectory of the
problem. It can also, as I hope to show, lead us to a different, revised
understanding of Antigone and her actions.4
But before we begin, we need to clarify the particular notion of simplicity
which underscores the questions at hand, and its relation to structure. The
terms of Antigone's action-on the one hand the burial, and on the other
hand her death-have been much discussed. They are not at all simple. The
predication of Antigone's exchange is not simple, either. In line 72 above, for
example, she says, that to die would be kalon to her (she uses moi, the first
person, so-called 'ethical' dative). Her decision, then, hangs on this adjective,
which bears within it-as is well known-both the 'good' and the 'beautiful',
and which thus binds together being and the phenomenal. We are immedi­
ately faced with heavy questions of ontology, ethics, and aesthetics.5 Likewise,
the relationship between kinship and social norm in the play, and, fundamen­
tally, the positions occupied by the main players, Antigone and Creon, relative
to kinship and social norm, to which we shall return, are complex.6 Yet, we
might also consider the basic form of Antigone's exchange-its p rinciples of
syntax. This form, it would appear, is simple: Take 'a', give 'b', or indeed,
symbolically, a =b. A certain satisfaction of intention, a certain pleasure, a
certain movement or discharge, is, it seems, achieved in return for-or at the
expense of-punishment, that is to say, of another kind of movement. In
other words, what seems simple here, regardless of the complexity of the
system's terms, or its moral positions, is the structure of the laws, the mor­
phology, we might say, of the equation and the system qua system.7
This idea of simplicity is very common. It can be found as a broad
methodological principle in other domains, sometimes even in readings
4 Basic references in e.g. Steiner ( 1 996). Some references on Antigone and psychoanalysis in
Zajko and Leonard (2006) (also notes p. 1 22), but missing e.g. Edelman ( 2004), Copjec (2002),
Stavrakakis ( 1 999), Grosz ( 1 990), etc. Informative comments on the literature in Butler (2000),
esp. ch. 3 ( and references, 82-5 nn. 1 - 1 0) .
5 The resonance, of course, of kalon, 'beautiful', 'good, of fine quality', 'auspicious', (in a
moral sense) 'beautiful, noble, honourable' (LSn, also 'honour', 'glory', etc., is attested in almost
every aspect of ancient Greek culture, in poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, history, etc. The insepa­
rability of ethics and aesthetics is well recognized by Lacan. It is, arguably, a factor in Aristotle's
Poetics (e.g. in comments on katharsis in Politics VIII ) , and has received new substance in recent
discussions, e.g. Badiou (2005); Ranciere (2004a).
6 For Butler's critique of kinship in Antigone ( Butler 2000), and especially of Antigone's
relationship to her brother, see further below. For a critique of Butler, see e.g. Edelman (2004).
7 See Copjec in the epigraph above ( 2002: 1 6). Prima facie, the psychoanalytic focus on
structure suggests a division of form and content (and an ethical functionality o f this division) .
This is precisely what leads, as we shall see, to Butler's critique.
Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of the Law 149
that attempt to resist it most, and perhaps in Lacan's reading too (although
the failure to resist may also be theorized within such readings). Let us, in
order to illustrate this point, briefly consider the case of so-called 'classical'
scientific systems. 8 Classical science offers highly evolved, intricate views of
the world. Yet such science grasps, or 'maps', the world in terms of laws ( e.g.
Newtonian laws) that are essentially reductive, comprehensive, deterministic,
and mostly reversible. The system, relative to the world it describes, is, in this
sense, inherently simple, even as it is understood as a complete and true
representation. Indeed, the power of systems of this type, of mapping in
general, resides precisely in the paradox ( not, of course, seen as paradox by
the system) of their compact completeness. World and system are construed
as synchronous. A mismatch between them, where detected, is defined as
incidental aberration, the result of insufficiently precise de-facto measure­
ments, less-than-perfect tools, and so on-in other words, as external to the
logic of the world. The world is therefore also seen as representable, accessible,
and, in this sense, fundamentally simple.9
If we now think back to Sophocles' An tigone, and to the possibility of an
analogous simple structure for Antigone's actions, we can easily see the
attraction. Reading line 72 and the state of being it represents, we would
seem to understand in full, not the play, to be sure, but the essential rules of its
action. Herein lies one kind of beauty of 'take a, give b'.
But there is also the resistance to simplicity, at times from the outside,
but also from within systems and consequent to their economy. This has
been attested with p rominence in many different ways in the humanities
and social sciences and no less in the sciences proper, especially in the last
several decades. Briefly taking up our scientific analogue again, we could,
for example, mention Heisenberg or Godel, Schrodinger (and his cat),
8 The term 'classical' here does not refer to the Greek and Roman world, but to large tracts of
'modern' ( mostly pre 1 950s) scientific thought. See e.g. Nicolis and Prigogine ( 1 989, p. x): 'Our
physical world is no longer symbolized by the stable and periodic planetary motions that are at
the heart of classical mechanics'. The slippage between the usage of the term 'classical' in the
humanities and in the sciences is important, given the diachronic mapping of the relationship
between the two domains, relative to 'antiquity' and 'modernity'. This matter requires a separate
study. For complexity theory in the sciences and in psychoanalysis, see e.g. Hayles ( 1990).
9 'At the beginning of this century, continuing the tradition of the classical research program,
physicists were almost unanimous in agreeing that the fundamental laws of the universe were
deterministic and reversible. Processes that did not fit this scheme were taken to be exceptions,
merely artifacts due to complexity, which itself had to be accounted for by invoking our
ignorance, or our lack of control of the variables involved' (Nicolis and Prigogine 1 989: 3 ) . As
in science, the essential 'order' of the world does not exclude the possibility of exception.
Likewise, 'chaos' does not lead to a collapse. Cornelius Castoriadis famously says, 'The
world-not only ours-is fragmented. Yet it does not fall to pieces. To reflect upon this situation
seems to me to be one of the primary facts of philosophy today' (Castoriadis 1 997, p. vii) .
1 50 Psychoanalysis and the Law
certain aspects of 'complexity' in material science (e.g. ' Benart cells' in
thermodynamics), meteorological systems, and so on. These examples mani­
fest important specific differences, but we are merely trying to stress a general
point: In their various ways, and coming from within highly formalized and
rigorous critical discourses, these provide an important counterpoint to
principles of simplicity.
Let me briefly adduce just one paradigmatic case, namely Russell's
paradox. The paradox, put forth in 1 902 in a letter to Frege, suggests that it
is not possible to form sets from every predicate. 1 0 To rephrase this in very
general terms, it suggests that we cannot reduce an object to a closed set of
descriptions. Transposing this idea to the context of Antigone implies that we
cannot describe the objects of exchange in complete terms. The nature of the
exchange may thus require a very different kind of understanding.
The core of Russell's paradox can be described thus: Take, for example, 'The
set of horses'. This set is not itself 'a horse'. Since something has to be a horse
to be counted in the set of horses, we could say that 'the set of horses' is not 'a
member of itself '. Nevertheless, 'the set of sets that are not members of
themselves', if it is a member of itself, is by definition not a member of itself;
if it is not a member of itself, then by definition it is a member of itself, and so
on. Russell's paradox is a prominent point of reference which challenges the
notion of a fixed set of descriptions which define an object or a set, and thus,
more broadly, challenges the idea of determinate positive representation. 11 If
the fixed description of objects 'a' and 'b' is challenged, then, again, the
equation a = b and something of the structural principles of the economy
of exchange requires some rethinking, too.
There is no need to retrace the history of the critique of the economy of
systems in further detail here. This critique is not predicated as a single 'object',
or a system, or a view of the word. 1 2 But it can provide a general framework for
certain gestures towards the 'law', and specifically, in our case, for Lacan's
1 0 See Russell (1967: 124-5), Russell (1903: ch. X, 100). Russell, we should note, struggled
against the conclusions of the paradox for the rest of his life. It is, in this sense, an argument a
fortiori.
1 1 This remains a matter for discussion elsewhere. Joan Copjec (2002: 2-5), following
Badiou, rightly points out that this argument on its own can lead to other positions, e.g.
nominalist or Kantian transcendentalist, both significantly different from Lacan's. Frege, like
Russell, was shaken by the paradox (which posed a challenge to the project of extensionalism,
for example) . Yet even Frege's work, for example his seminal argument about sense and
reference and especially his 'Telescope metaphor', if read carefully, hints at the possibility of
radically non-reductive and thus non-simple readings of the world. Frege says: si duo idem
faci unt, non est idem (1956: 60). See Frege in Geach and Black (1960: 59-60) .
1 2 This phrasing is itself an instance of Russell's paradox and thus, perhaps, a form of
representing the non-representability of the world.
l
Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of the Law 151
reading of Antigone. We might, nevertheless, usefully mention, as briefly as
possible, at least one more well-known critical moment, which anchors our
discussion and which is more directly related to our material. This, of course,
concerns Freud and his observations in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and
elsewhere, on his young nephew's little game of fort-da and its phenomenolo­
gy.1 3 Here, focused on the death drive, the relationship between, let us say, das
Ding in its irretrievable fullness, and its representations, between desire and its
'object', between desire and its fulfilment, and thus between the real and
systematic structure, is realigned. This, arguably, is another basic moment of
challenge to any 'take a, give b' principle ( also literally . . . ) .
I t i s at this point that we may turn back t o Greek tragedy. Freud, of course,
looked to Oedipus, not to Antigone, in his comments. 'What would have
happened if Psychoanalysis were to have taken Antigone rather than Oedipus
as its point of departure?' It's an old chestnut.14 Freud's material substance is
not unimportant. Yet, pace interventions by K risteva, I rigaray, and others, and
their critique of Freud, and Lacan, and keeping in mind crucial recent
comments on An tigone by Butler (to which we shall return), one of the things
that 'will have happened' ( Lacan's arguments on 'logical time' and on
sequencing are of importance here) 15 is Lacan's reading of the play. This
reading is widely accessible, and there is no need to rehearse its details yet
again.16 Let us simply recall the basics. 'An tigone,' says Lacan,
1 3 (Freud 2001: 14-15): 'This good little boy, however, had an occasional disturbing habit of
taking any small objects he could get hold of and throwing them away from him into a corner,
under the bed, and so on, so that hunting for his toys and picking them up was often quite a
business. As he did this he gave vent to a loud, long-drawn-out "0-0-0-0'', accompanied by an
expression of interest and satisfaction. His mother and the writer of the present account were
agreed in thinking that this was not a mere interjection but represented the German word fort
[gone]. 1 eventually realized that it was a game and that the only use he made of any of his toys
was to play "gone" with them. One day I made an observation which confirmed my view. The
child had a wooden reel with a piece of string tied around it. It never occurred to him to pull it
along the floor behind him, for instance, and play at its being a carriage. What he did was to
hold the reel by the string and very skilfully throw it over the edge of his curtained cot, so that it
disappeared into it, at the same time uttering his expressive "0-0-0-0." He then pulled the reel
again by the string and hailed its reappearance with a joyful "da" [ there]. This, then, was the
complete game of disappearance and return. As a rule one only witnessed its first act, which was
repeated untiringly as a game in itself, though there is no doubt that the greater pleasure was
attached to the second act. The interpretation of the game then became obvious. It was related
to the child's great cultural achievement-the instinctual renunciation (that is, the renunciation
of instinctual satisfaction) which he had made in allowing his mother to go away without
protesting.' See recently e.g. Johnson (2005). In the context of Antigone, see Copjec (2002: 30-1).
1 4 Steiner (1996: 18), Butler (2000: 57), etc.
15 Lacan ( 1988b). Discussion in Pluth and Hoens (2004).
6
1 Lacan (1999) and extensive discussions in scholarship. See especially Butler (2000: 40-55).
152 Psychoanalysis and the Law
is a tragedy, and tragedy is in the forefront of our experience as analysts-something
that is confirmed by the references Freud found in Oedipus Rex as well as in other
tragedies . . . and if he himself [Freud] didn't expressly discuss Antigone as tragedy, that
doesn't mean to say it cannot be done at this crossroads to which I have brought you
[ in the Seminar of 1 959-60] . 1 7
It i s Antigone's unique historical position in the field o f ethics and the law that
draws him to the play: 'Is there anyone who doesn' t evoke Antigone whenever
there is a question of a law that causes conflict in us even though it is
acknowledged by the community to be a just law?>18 The play Antigone, in
other words, is a moment at which the asking of questions about the law (by
Hegel, and many others after him) becomes particularly prominent. Yet, to
this Lacan has much to add. For Antigone, as he famously says,
reveals to us the line of sight that defines desire. This line of sight focuses on an image
that possesses a mystery which up till now has never been articulated, since it forces
you to close your eyes at the very moment you look at it. Yet that image is at the centre
of tragedy, since it is the fascinating image of Antigone herself. We know very well that
over and beyond the dialogue, over and beyond the question of family and country,
over and beyond the moralizing arguments, it is Antigone herself who fascinates us,
Antigone in her unbearable splendor. 19
Here, in a nutshell, isLacan on tragedy, desire, speech, and speakability, and
the law. This is whyLacan places so much emphasis on Antigone's splendour
and on her beauty. This is why he begins his analysis with a discussion of the
figure of Antigone, within which this splendour is invested: 'What does one
find in Antigone? First of all, one finds Antigone.'20 This vision of the heroine,
the vision of her splendour and the effect of beauty, is, asLacan plainly says, 'a
blindness effect'. The importance of this effect, both as a vehicle, that is to say,
as the material of tragedy, and as an end, that is to say, as a moral principle, is
fundamental. Lacan concludes his discussion of An tigone by stressing this
point. Antigone appears
as a pure and simple relationship of the human being to that of which he miraculously
happens to be the bearer, namely, the signifying cut [emphasis added] 21 that confers
on him the indomitable power of being that he is in the face of everything that may
oppose him. 22
1 7 Lacan (1 999: 243). Cf. also e.g. ( 1 999: 291-30 1 ) ( 'The Tragic Dimension of Psychoanalyti c
Exrierience').
8 Lacan ( 1999: 243).
1 9 Ibid. 247.
20
Ibid. 250.
2 1 The cut (coupure) is important: 'Topology privileges the function of the cut, since the cut is
wh �t distinguishes a discontinuous transformation from a continuous one'. (Evans J 996: 208).
2 Lacan ( 1 999: 283).
Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of the Law 1 53
But let us focus on the problem with which we began, and on the structure of
Antigone's economy. For here, and elsewhere, Lacan's conception of simplici­
ty is very different from the one we have earlier outlined. We can explain this
difference, for example, in terms of some of Lacan's comments on Kant. 23
In his Essays on Nega tive Greatness, Kant puts before us, among other things,
several narratives or 'little stories', asLacan calls them. One of these concerns a
man who, if he is to spend the night with a lady he desires unlawfully, will, on
his way out, be put to death. Lacan provides a close commentary: ' Kant, our
dear Kant,' he says, 'tells us in all his innocence, his innocent subterfuge,
that . . . everyone, every man of good sense, will say no [ i.e. will refuse to give
up his life for the sake of spending the night with this woman]'.24 Practical
reason here dictates the response and Kant's judgement, 'in purely reasonable
terms'. For Kant, the pleasure of the lady's company is opposed to, and weighed
against, the pain of death. But this, asLacan points out, 'homogenizes' the two:
'There is in terms of pleasure a plus and a minus'. Lacan-this is p recisely a
point of structure-sees the world in very different terms:
[O]ne only has to make a conceptual shift and move the night spent with the lady
from the category of pleasure to that of jouissance, given that jouissance imp lies
precisely the acceptance of death [ emphasis added] . . . for the example to be ruined.
In other words, it is enough for jouissance to be a form of evil for the whole thing to
change its character completely, and for the meaning of the moral law itself to be
completely changed. Anyone can see that if the moral law is, in effect, capable of
playing some role here, it is precisely as a support for the jouissance involved; it is so
that the sin becomes what Saint Paul calls inordinately sinful. That's what Kant on this
occasion simply ignores. 25
It is important here to stress that most basic of facts, namely that forLacan, as
indeed for Freud, the drive is something partial and paradoxical ( thus, for
example, to follow the death drive is not to be suicidal). This partiality is the
incompleteness of the drive, its fragmentary and self-inhibiting nature in
relation to its partial objects ( objets petit a), which are of course, now con­
ceived, in their partiality, as totalities. Das Ding, to quote Joan Copjec in 'The
Tomb of Perseverence: On Antigone',
is no longer conceivable [ in Kantian terms] as a noumenal object and is retained only
by the description of Vorstellungrepriisentanz as partial. It is clear from the theory that
when this partial object arrives on the scene, it blocks the path to the old conception of
das Ding, which is now only a retrospective illusion. 26
23 For Kant and Lacan, see especially Copjec (2002, ch. I ) .
24 Lacan ( 1 999: 1 89).
2 5 Lacan ( 1 999: 1 89). For jouissance, see e.g. Evans ( 1 996: 91-2).
26 Copjec (2002: 37). A useful discussion can be found in Laclau (2005: 1 1 1 ff.).
1 54 Psychoanalysis and the Law
If we are to follow Lacan, then, it would seem that Antigone's relationship to
the 'signifying cut', to the real, is 'pure and simple'. Yet the structure of that
relationship and of the law is not simple at all. It is certainly not a plus and a
minus, not 'take "a", give "b" '. We might add that, historically, this structure
has often extended beyond any straightforward practical exchange, even, for
example, in the Biblical principle of 'an eye for an eye', or in Aeschylean
drama,27 let alone, for example, in Buber or Levinas, or in the work of Derrida
on exchange and death.28 It is, in a basic sense, not an equilibrium; it is not
achieved through the conjunction of a 'plus' and a 'minus'.29
But Lacan is a figure of his time. It is perhaps inevitable that his own
discourse should occur within the closure of language and history and against
the background to his thought, say, Hegel, Levi Strauss, and so on.30 Lacan's
27
Leviticus 24: 20: ' Fracture for fracture, an eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth' (shever tachat
shever, 'ain tachat 'ain, shen tachat shen). The literature on this question is extensive, of course.
But see e.g. E. Levinas's discussion of the Lex Talionis. Closely echoing the midrash, he says
(1990: 147): 'The principle stated by the Bible here (i.e. "an eye for an eye"), which appears to be
so cruel, seeks only justice. It inserts itself into a social order in which no sanction, however
slight, can be inflicted outside a juridical sentence. [It has been] interpreted in the light of the
spirit that pervades the whole of the Bible. We call this method of understanding: Talmud. The
doctors of the Talmud anticipated modern scruples: eye for an eye means a fine. Not for nothing
is the passage relating to the material damages which the Bible demands for the loss of a beast
given alongside the precepts of eye for an eye. The passage invites us to reread the verses relating
to disfigurement, as if the question of damages should hold sway with the judges over the noble
anger provoked by the wrongdoing. Violence calls up violence, but we must put a stop to this
chain reaction. That is the nature of justice . . . . Justice without passion is not the only thing man
must possess. He must also have justice without killing.' The literature on the Lex Talionis and
reciprocity in Greek Tragedy, and especially in Aeschylus' Oresteian Trilogy, and the Eumenides,
is likewise extensive. But, at the very least, critics will agree that by the time we h ave reached the
Eumenides, action is taken on a basis other than straightforward reciprocity (see e.g. Eumenides
735--41: 'my vote I will add to Orestes' side. For I have no mother that gave me birth, and in all
things, save wedlock, I am for the male with all my soul, and am entirely on the father's side.
Therefore I will not hold of greater value the death of a wife who slew her lord, the lawful master
of the house. Orestes, even with equal ballots, wins.'
28
See n. 66, below.
29 See Butler (2000: 46, citing Lacan): 'Something invariably emerges in the very trajectory of
desire that appears enigmatic or mysterious from the conscious point of view that is oriented
toward the pursuit of the good: "In the irreducible margin as well as at the limit of his own good,
the subject reveals himself to the never entirely resolved mystery of the nature of his desire
[ le sujet se revele au mystere irresolu de ce qu'est son desir] " '.
30 Butler (2000: 30) says: 'The psychic relation to social norms can, under certain conditions,
posit those norms as intractable, punitive, and eternal, but that figuration of norms already
takes place within what Freud called "the culture of the death drive." In other words, the very
description of the symbolic as intractable law takes place within a fantasy of law as insurpassable
authority. In my view, Lacan at once analyses and symptomises this fantasy.' She immediately
adds 'I hope to suggest that the notion of the symbolic is limited by the description of its own
transcendentalizing function, that it can acknowledge the contingency of its own structure
[emphasis added] only by disavowing the possibility of any substantial alteration in its field of
1
Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of the Law 1 55
comments on Antigone should, at least in part, bear the responsibility and
finality, and thus also the consequences, of their own historicity, whether they
themselves aspire to transcend it or not. I ndeed, recent critiques, notably by
Butler, mark, rightly perhaps, some significant elisions in Lacan's argument,
in regard to what Butler at one point calls 'kinship trouble', and more
fundamentally, in regard to An tigone's relationship to law and to what, from
our perspective, we mi ght call the structure of the law.31 There is a broad
nexus of methodological, ethical, and ontological issues at stake which, we
might add, also bears upon our immediate responses to everyday situations.
Consider, then, some of these 'elisions'. They reach back to Hegel, of course.
Hegel's Antigone is excluded from citizenship. Antigone's juridical position is
also, in an important sense, put aside by Lacan. 'The state', as Butler says,
'makes no appearance in Lacan's discussion of Antigone'.32 Lacan (and in a
different way Hegel-that's part of the critique! ) seems to sever Antigone as a
figure of pure being (and as a figure of pure defiance, a figure that exposes the
status of the symbolic) from the social. Against this, Butler argues that
the distinction [made by Lacan] between symbolic and social law cannot finally
hold . . . not only is the symbolic itself the sedimentation of social practices but . . .
radical alterations in kinship demand a rearticulation of the structuralist presupposi­
tions of psychoanalysis and, hence, of contemporary gender and sexual theory.33
There is an important point here that marks a basic divide. B utler clearly
states in the beginning of her argument that
for Lacan, Antigone pursues a desire that can only lead to death precisely because it
seeks to defy symbolic norms [the prohibition of the Father, etc. ] . But is this the right
way to interpret her desire? Or has the symbolic itself produced a crisis for its own
intelligibility? Can we assume that Antigone has no confusion about who is her
brother, and who is her father, that Antigone is not, as it were, living the equivocations
that unravel the purity and universality of those structural rules?34
operation. My suggestion will be that the relation between symbolic position and social norm
needs to be rethought.'
31 Butler (2000: 62, 7 1).
32 Butler (2000: 12), where Hegel's position is also discussed. The importance of Butler's
critique of Lacan lies precisely in its attempt to draw Antigone and the ethics of psychoanalysis
into a relation of responsibility towards the political.
3' Ibid. 19 .
34 Ibid. 17-18. See also 53: 'what Lacan elides at this moment [when Antigone insists on her
brother's uniqueness, remaining on the side of the incommunicable sign, the ineffable character
of what is (La can 1 999: 279)] . manifesting his own blindness perhaps, is that she suffers a fatal
condemnation by virtue of abrogating the incest taboo that articulates kinship and the symbolic.
It is not that the pure content of the brother is irretrievable from behind the symbolic
articulation of the brother but that the symbolic itself is limited by its constitutive interdictions.'
 An tigone: Lacan and the Structure of the Law 1 57
1 56 Psychoanalysis and the Law
economy, too, is defined by overdetermined and, arguably, untenable struc­
The problem is with the 'theological' impulse that governs Lacan's reading turing principles of economy, exchange, language, and representation. 'Antig­
�
an perh �ps psychoanalysis more broadly ( 'the law of psychoanalysis itself ' )
. one', says Butler, 'is the one for whom symbolic positions have become
whICh 1s, m the end, tautological.3 5 For, as Butler explains, 'if a social norm is incoherent'.39
not the same as a symbolic position, then a symbolic position, here under­ H istorically, Butler argues, the problem lies with the structuralist baggage
stood as the sedimented ideality of the norm, appears to depart from itself '.36 of psychoanalysis and of Lacan's thinking: Following Levi Strauss, Lacan
The practical lynchpin of Butler's argument is the question of kinship and sees kinship (and the incest taboo, for example) as a fundamental form of
.
the idea of the brother. Lacan (following up on Goethe's puzzled observations the symbolic, a linguistic mechanism, a framework of exchange that, like
on Ant. 9 1 1 - 1 2 ) insists on the importance of the brother as the anchor of language, establishes a social bond among men. This symbolic function is the
Antigone's being. She effectively says, 'my brother is my brother'. The brother Law and it is, according to Lacan, something that p recedes the human order.40
as pure symbol enters the field.37 Butler's extended opposition need not be Indeed, this 'circuitry', as Lacan calls it, which transcends the subject, is
repeat �d here. Her basic point, quite rightly, is that when Antigone acts precisely the Symbolic, and the Law. If, then, in psychoanalysis, the law
accordmg to the law that gives her brother precedence, 'she means more requires its perversion, and if Antigone represents this necessary perversion,
than she intends'. Her brother could also be her father (Oedipus, who is the then both Antigone and the law operate within what is ultimately a structure
son of her mother), or her other brother, Eteocles. 'There is nothing in the that relies on exclusion:
nomenclature of kinship that can successfully restrict its scope of referentiality
to the single person, Polynices.'38 Earlier on, we saw how Lacan opposes the To establish the structural necessity [ emphasis added] of perversion to the law is to
structure �f the ethical exchange, replacing it with a particular and very posit a static relation between the two in which each entails the other and, in
. that sense, is nothing without the other. This form of negative dialectics produces
different kmd of relationship of simplicity. Here we see that his proposed
the satisfaction that the law is invested in perversion and that the law is not what it
seems to be. It does not help to make possible, however, other forms of social life,
35 The par dox � flaw, �he anomic nature of sovereignty, and the paradigmatic status of states inadvertent possibilities produced by the prohibitions that come to undermine the
. �
of except1?n 1� a widely d1scussed topic in recent years--especially in debates surrounding the conclusion that an invariant social organization of sexuality follows of necessity from
. .
work of G10rg10 Agamben (heav1ly mfl�enced by Weber, Benjamin, Schmitt, and others. See e.g. the prohibitive law.4 1
.
A�a�ben ( 2005: 1 998), etc.) It 1s qualified by the adjective 'theological' inasmuch as it seeks a
prmc1�le of the un�oved mover. The book by Schmitt, which stands at the centre of the current If we accept Butler's critique, then, having gone round the block, we return, it
sovereignty debate, 1s, of course, entitled Political Theology (2006).
36 B�tler ( 2 ?00: 2 1 ). ' . . . if a social norm is not the same as a symbolic position, then a
seems, to the old problem of structure, and thus to a problem of formalism
.
symb�hc posltwn: � ere understood as the sedimented ideality of the norm, appears to depart which 'secures the structure against critical challenge'. In fact, Butler suggests
.
from � tself. The d1stmct10n between them does not quite hold, for in each instance we are still that Antigone seems to compel a reading that is exactly the opposite, that
.
refernng to s?:1al norms, but in diffe rent modes of appearance.' Butler is not, in fact, arguing
from the Po�Jt1on of, for example, Ingaray, . whom she criticizes (and who has been yet more challenges structure, that does not conform to the symbolic law, and that
. . 'does not prefigure a final restitution of the law'.42
openly cnt1C1Zed, e.g. by Jane Gallop ( 1 982)). See e.g. Bowie ( 1 993), Grosz ( 1 990) (now slightly
.
agmg) for surveys. Historically speaking, we may be justified to level such criticism at Lacan,
37 Lacan ( 1 999: 278-9). 'Involved is an horizon determined by a structural relation; it only
and perhaps also, as Butler and others have suggested, against some aspects,
•

exi�ts ?n the baSJS _ of the language of words, but it reveals their unsurpassable consequence. The
pomt is fr?m the ':1�me�t �hen words and language and the signifier enter into play, something for example, of feminist thought in the context of An tigone. 43 We might
m�y ?e said, and 1t 1s said m the following way: "My brother may be whatever you say he is, a nevertheless ask if, despite this, it is possible to trace a different reading of
cnmmal. '.fe wanted to destroy the ':"alls of his city, lead his compatriots away in slavery. He led
. .
o� r enemies to the terntory of our city, but he 1s nevertheless what he is, and he must be granted
.
his funeral ntes. He doubtless doesn't have the same rights as the other. You can tell me whatever 39 Ibid. 22. She stresses: 'what Antigone draws into crisis is the representative function itself,
you want: te!I me that one is a hero and a friend, that the other is an enemy. But I answer that it the very horizon of intelligibility in which she operates and according to which she remains
is of no s1gmficance that the latter doesn't have the same value below. As far as I am concerned somewhat unthinkable'.
the order that you dare refer me to doesn't mean anything, for from my point of view, m; 40 Ibid. 42.
.
brother 1s my brother." 4 1 Ibid. 67-8.
That'.s the paradox �ncountere� by Goethe's thought and he vacillates. My brother is what he 42 See above, and Butler (2000: 71 ). See, however, Edelman (2004) for a critique of Butler.
.
is, and it .� b�c�use he 1s what he 1s and only he can be what he is, that I move forward towards 43 For Butler's comments on feminist thinking precisely
on the basis of kinship and its
th;[atal hm1t. For the discussion of Goethe, see Lacan ( 1 999: 255). residual resistance to critique, see (2000: 1-4, 71-4).
Butler (2000: 77).
1 58 Psychoanalysis and the Law
structure within the play Antigone 'itself', and, perhaps, within Lacan's reading
of An tigone. Of course, in order to be useful, an answer would have to offer
mediation without, as it were, resolution. It might, for example-I am here
borrowing from another contemporary line of argumentation-have to sever
the association of meaning and truth.44 We would be seeking a different kind
of 'structural' principle.
In order to explore this, let us first reconsider Russell's paradox. The
problem here is ultimately the problem of the 'object'.45 Can we enumerate
its attributes? Can we, at some level, no matter how basic, describe its
structure, that is to say, the formal relationship between its components?
Lacan's answer, on the one hand, holds on to the notion of the 'object', and of
designation, even as, on the other hand, it opens that object to complete and
radical inaccessibility (or change of attributes). This is achieved through the
process of retroactive naming.46 An object's identity is both guaranteed and
yet remains open to all alterations, to all critiques, through the retroactive
process whereby it is given a name, through that quilting point (point de
caption) which ties it all, as it were, within a single (retroactive) 'knot'.47
Closely related, and perhaps even more important, is the notion of 'logical
time'. Here, Lacan's argument rests on a reading of the following dilemma:
three prisoners (A, B, and C) each have, on their backs a disc-either black or
white. Each can see the other two, but not himself, and they are not allowed to
speak. They are told that in all there are three white and two black discs. The
first to guess the colour of the disc on his own back will be allowed to leave.
Conventionally, the answer is a matter of deduction: If prisoner A sees two
black discs, he knows his disc is white; if he sees two whites, he's forced to
hypothesize, first, that his disc is black. If so, and if B's disc is black too,
C would, of course, leave the room immediately. Now, C hesitates and does
not leave the room immediately, so B should conclude that he is white (still
supposing A to be black). But B does not leave, thus A may conclude that his
disc is white, and so on. To this, however, Lacan objects. Prisoner A realizes
that his reasoning is valid only so long as B and C do not move, and that once
they do move, his reasoning fails. As recent commentators note
What A realizes is that he urgently has to end his thinking process and head for the
door. So he jumps to a conclusion that closes the time for comprehending, and makes
44 See Ranciere ( 1 994) , esp. 28-9 on meaning and truth. Also, see e.g. Ranciere (2004a, 2007)
and especially the discussion of Hegel and the question of representation ('Are Some Things
Unrepresentable?', 1 09-38).
4 5 See e.g. Zizek ( 1 989, esp. 94 ff.) .
4 6 See Z izek ( 1 989).
4 7 Ibid. 95-6; Bowie ( 1 993: 74), etc.
Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of the Law 1 59
that time retroactively meaningful . . . this is the moment ofwhat Lacan calls anticipatory
certitude. By this he means that A leaps ahead to a conclusion whose ground or reason can
only be verified after the act [emphasis added] .48
The act, in other words, is an element in the line of reasoning itself. It is
'anticipatory certitude', which both severs moments in time from each other,
and keeps them together, as it were.49
Can we, from this point progress to a re-reading of Lacan's Antigone, of
Antigone, and of Antigone? Let's again try to think of this problem in terms of
structure. Antigone is the eponymous hero of a drama. For Lacan too, Antigo­
ne stands at the centre of the play: 'What does one find in Antigone? First of all,
one finds Antigone.'50 And what is at the centre of Antigone, that is, at the
centre of the 'figure' of Antigone? Lacan, at least, suggests that 'at the centre of
Antigone's whole drama' is an important term, repeated twenty times, the term
ate. 51 We could try to take account of the material image that emerges from
these observations combined.
Technically, and in the most practical sense, 'Antigone's drama' is, of
course, the play Antigone itself, something which surrounds the figure of
Antigone at its centre. At the same time, at the centre of the figure of Antigone
is her a te. Yet again, this ate is, arguably, 'the whole drama' that surrounds the
figure of Antigone; it is thus, technically, the figure of Antigone. We have to
stress that we are not playing with words here. Quite the contrary: words here
are a very precise representation of something which is otherwise difficult to
grasp. 52 Yet this something in itself is also, it seems to me, very precise. Indeed,
we could even suggest that it is a geometrical principle. In essence, what we
48 Pluth and Hoens (2004: 1 94).
49 There is much more to this example than we can discuss in this chapter. See Pluth and
Hoens (2004). In particular, one has to consider Alain Badiou's reading of Lacan on 'logical
time' (Badiou 1 982. See discussions in Pluth and Hoens 2004 and esp. therein 257 n. 4 for
further references). Badiou's objection is that, in fact, for Lacan, Prisoner AS conclusion relies on
an assumption of rationality on the part of the other, in other words, on a kind of 'algebra' or
symbolic process. Badiou's fundamental question is 'What if the other is stupid?' ( Badiou 1 982:
270 ) . If B and C are not acting rationally, this would, of course, offset the Lacanian calculus.
Once that is allowed, we can (according to Badiou) read the decision as the result of'haste'. Such
haste is not inferable from the symbolic, and 'is the mode in which the subject exceeds the
symbolic by exposing himself to the real' (Badiou 1 982, cited in Pluth and Hoens 2004: 194).
Here both Badiou and Butler ( from different positions) challenge a certain underlying structur­
al assumption. Badiou's conception of the subject, and his whole philosophical project, is, of
course, closely informed by-b_ut very different from Lacan's. For Badiou and Lacan in general,
see e.g. Bosteels (200 1 , 2002); Zizek (2004b).
50 Lacan { 1 999: 250).
5 1 Ibid. 262. Butler (2000: 5 1 ).
52 One could argue that this, precisely, is one of the reasons for non-melancholy readings ('post­
continental', 'post-Deleuzian', etc.) of the world which point beyond the tenets of the 'postmodern'
(other aspects of such readings being attitudes towards universality, mathematics, truth, etc.).
 160 Psychoanalysis and the Law
Fig. 8. 1 Moebius strip.
have here is the figure of the play, Antigone, which 'contains' the figure of
Antigone, which 'contains' the figure of ate, which is, or 'contains' the figure
of the play Antigone, which 'contains' the figure of Antigone, and so on . . .
Thus, geometrically, or rather topologically speaking, we have here a particular
figure, perhaps, for example, something akin to a Moebius strip.
Topology, as we know, is one of the tropes of Lacan's ontology.53 Be the
criticism of such use of topology and of Lacan's use of mathematics (or
mathematical notation) as it may, what is important for us here is a basic
point: A Moebius strip does not have an 'inside' or 'outside', no 'top' which is
the opposite of 'bottom'. A Moebius strip is not the subject of so-called dialecti­
cal analysis. It is, nevertheless, an 'object'.54 It is a different kind of structure,
which requires different elements, most prominently perhaps the element of
time. What should we make of this element? Jean Granon-Lafont notes that:
Only a temporal event differentiates the back and the front [of the strip ] , which are
separated by the time of making an additional turn. The dichotomy between the two
notions, the back and the front, doesn't reappear except at the price of intervention of a
new dimension, namely, a temporal dimension. Time, as continuous, p roduces the
difference between the two faces. I f there are no longer two measures for the surface, but
instead a single edge, then time is essential in order to render account of the band.ss
53 See primarily Granon-Lafont ( 1 985).
54 There is an important relationship here between indeterminacy and being (or truth). By
way of a very broad analogy (but not as a precise illustration), one could think, for example, of
Godel's proof. The point is this: Part of Godel's proof (of incompleteness, but this does not
matter here) consists in showing that although a certain formula (in an axiomatic system) is
undecidable, it can nevertheless be demonstrated (assuming that the axioms of the system are
consistent-an essential assumption), that this formula is true (through meta-mathematical
reasoning). The result of the process is, to put it very crudely, a demonstration that something is
both undecidable and true.
55Granon-Lafont ( 1 985: 30) .
Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of the Law 161
With this renewed emphasis o n time, and its importance fo r the grasping of
topological objects (and hence of objects in general, as in our earlier discus­
sion), we can now turn back to the question of kinship, to Antigone's prefer­
ence for her brother in Antigone, lines 9 1 1-12, to Goethe's puzzled reaction to
these verses (and its implications for the notion of 'text' ), and to Lacan's
response. This is where the several knots of our argument so far come together.
Seen in the light of time, Antigone's statement of her principles and of her
commitment to her brother is surprisingly straightforward. It is worth quoting a
larger section ofher speech, which, of course, Antigone addresses to the object that
is at once her tomb, her bridal-chamber, and her prison (Ant. 891-9 1 2).56 We
might, incidentally, note the appropriateness of this multiplicity of the 'object' of
Antigone's speech: the moment we parse its sequence and components-tomb,
bridal-chamber, prison-is the moment we falsely parse it, just as we might falsely
parse the stages of reasoning in the case of the prisoner's dilemma.
Antigone says:
0 tomb, 5 7 bridal-chamber, eternal prison in the caverned rock, whither
go to find mine own, those many who have perished, and whom Persephone
hath received among the dead! Last of all shall I pass thither, and
far most miserably of all, before the term of my life is spent. But
I cherish good hope that my coming will be welcome to my father, and
pleasant to thee, my mother, and welcome, brother, to thee; for,
when ye died, with mine own hands I washed and dressed you, and poured
drink-offerings at your graves; and now, Polyneices, 'tis for
tending thy corpse that I win such recompense as this.
And yet I honoured thee, as the wise will deem, rightly. Never,
had I been a mother of children, or if a husband had been mouldering
in death, would I have taken this task upon me in the city's
despite. What law,5R you ask, is my warrant for that word? The husband
56 Lacan ( 1 999: 254-55) cites lines 9 1 1 - 1 2 and considers specifically Goethe's response to
these lines.
57 Here, and often elsewhere, Sophocles uses the Greek word tumbos, not the word sema.
Both are sometimes translated as 'tomb', but, arguably, embody somewhat different ontologies.
Serna is the sign, it cannot function otherwise, and does not depend on the materiality of the
body (on which see Kahane 2005). Tumbos is much more closely defined in relation to the body
(living or dead) it receives, and functions differently. The distinction between them (and the
question of the body) would require a long, separate discussion.
58 The word used is nomos, 'mortal law.' Lacan ( 1 999: 278) is right to suggest that 'she
[Antigone] pointedly distinguishes herself from dike'. Note, however, that the speech-act is
interrogative, not declarative, shifting the emphasis onto the relationship between speaker and
hearer. This formal distinction is philosophically salient, especially since Antigone here speaks
for the other. For whom? For her tomb? Her bridal bed? Her prison? The audience? Who speaks,
then? Nomos here is, arguably, not quite the ordinary written law, but marks, perhaps as Lacan
( 1 999: 278) says, 'a certain legality'.
 1 62 Psychoanalysis and the Law
lost, another might have been found, and child from another, to
replace the first-born: but, father and mother hidden with H ades, no
brother's life could ever bloom for me again. Such was the law whereby
I held thee first in honour; but Creon deemed me guilty of error
therein, and of outrage, ah brother mine! And now he leads me thus,
a captive in his hands; no bridal bed, no bridal song hath been
mine, no joy of marriage, no portion in the nurture of children; but
thus, forlorn of friends, unhappy one, I go living to the vaults of
death.
Antigone makes it plain that she does not generally spurn the laws of the city.
Under different circumstances, she would never have taken upon herself this
task against her city (au gar pot; 'never', [had the matter involved anything but
the brother] biai politon tond' an eiromen ponon, 'would I have taken this task
upon me in the city's despite' ) . Yet she also makes it clear that she's not acting
randomly. Rather, she acts 'under a certain legality . . . something that is, in
effect, of the order of law, but which is not developed in any signifying chain
or in anything else'. 59 Antigone herself raises the question of the legality that
regulates her action and warrants her position. It's of note that she does this
on the one hand, only in the form of a question, that is, not as a statement
embodying positive content, but on the other hand, using the term ' law',
nomos ( tinos nomou de tauta pros charin /ego? 'What law, you ask, is my
warrant for that word?' ) . This legality is focused on the brother. For Lacan,
it is 'an horizon determined by a structural relation' which 'only exists on the
basis of the language of words'. 60
Butler, criticizing the residual component of negative dialectic in this view,
rightly stresses the open reference of this brother. The whole family, the
Labdakides, suffers from radical 'kinship trouble'. What, then, is the thing
that defines the non-replaceability, the absolute uniqueness of the brother?
Lacan, it seems, fails to answer this crucial question. And yet Antigone explains
this very clearly: it is the element of time. Once her parents are dead, as they are,
she cannot have another brother.61 Antigone's Order of Law, we could thus
argue, is an object. Not an object like a tomb, or a bridal-chamber, or a prison
individually, but another kind of object which is similar to the physical one she
addresses, and which is also like the Moebius strip. Its structure is bound with
the order of events and the order of time and mortality.
59 Lacan ( 1 999: 278).
60
Ibid.
61
She uses the word autadelphos. As for all two-ending Greek adjectives, this form (-os) can
apply to both male and female, and can thus also refer to Ismene (cf. Ant. ! ) . The immediate
circumstances here do not call for this.
l
Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of the Law 1 63
In the order of time, a brother, in relation to a husband for example, is the
figure, or the name, of absolute uniqueness, of radical unrepeatablility, which
is none the less complete in its partiality. This radical unrepeatablity is
nothing more, nothing less, than the truth of being mortal. Once repeated,
we might say, time ceases to exist and beings cede their mortality. We should
stress that this order of time, like the point on the Moebius strip, is absolutely
unique. It is thus not change, or transfo rmation, or the cycles of generation
and decay, that mark, for example, Aristotelian diachrony and its conception
of time as number.62
In contrast to the brother, the husband, within this order of time, could be
marked as the name of radical iterability. In Antigone's words, the husband
seems to mark time that comes around and goes around. We might better
understand this idea if we think, for example, of Homer's Odyssey. Antigone,
of course, says nothing of Homer. But he is not an accidental intertext. In
classical antiquity, in ancient poetry and culture, in Athenian ( 'Greek')
tragedy, Homer's poetry always functions as a key point of reference, is always
there in the background. And H omer's Odyssey, let us recall, portrays the
quintessential, paradigmatic 'return of the husband', that is to say, the nostos
of Odysseus, which occurs as the years 'comes around· and goes around' (cf.
the 'summary' of the poem in the proem, Odyssey 1 . 1 6: periplomenon en­
iauton) . 63 My point is that in the return of Odysseus after twenty years of
absence, something of the essential nature of time and of Odysseus' mortality
is obliterated. Time will have had no effect on the mortal man. Perhaps there's
good reason in Odysseus being known as dios Odysseus, 'bright/divine
62 For Aristotle on time, see recently, e.g. Coope (2005) . Earlier discussion in Annas ( 1 975),
Bostock ( 1 980) (using the term 'duration', but with no reference to Bergson or the Bergsonian
tradition) , Hussey ( 1 993) (a commentary on Physics 4), Sorabji ( 1 983), etc. It would be hard
to summarize Aristotle's view on this difficult and controversial issue, but he speaks of time as
involving change ( kinesis) or movement. Aristotle argues that there is n.o perception of time
without perception of change. Yet time for him is not change itself. It 1s rather the num?er
.
(arithmos) of change in the sense of the thing being numbered ( rather than the thmg by w� ich
we number) . Aristotle's view is that numbers are just the natural numbers. The pnnc1pal
.
passage in question is Physics IV 2 1 9b l ff.
63 It might at first seem that the Odyssey presents the opposite. Penelope, after all, steadfastly
waited for the return of Odysseus over a period of twenty years, refusing the persistent and
aggressive advances of the suitors and any replacement. But Penelope's position is not without
ambiguity (cf. e.g. the famous episode in Odyssey 1 8. 1 58-303, which has generated much
scholarly controversy. See Wohl 1 993: 40). More significantly, the essential question is not
'can anyone be Penelope's husband?' but rather, 'Can Penelope's husband be anyone?' Odysseus,
Penelope's husband, is radically replaceable even as he is very well ?e�ned (just as, for example,
there can be infinity within a precisely defined linear segment, withm a set of numbers, etc.).
Odysseus is precisely the un-named 'man' (andra) in the very first, 'thematic' word of �he first
line of the poem (Odyssey I. I). Furthermore, he is both 'anyone', as he proves fr�m his many
assumed identities, and also 'no-one' (outis), as he calls himself in the Cyclops episode.
 164 Psychoanalysis and the Law
Odysseus'. The opposite is true of the brother: it is precisely this element of
time and mortality that is preserved in his irreplaceability, in whose name
Antigone dies.64
Antigone's 'exchange' involves trading one absolutely irreplaceable thing
for another absolutely irreplaceable thing. The structure of her exchange, even
as 'objects' are involved, is radically incommensurable. It would require a
separate essay, but one could perhaps also argue that it is precisely in this act
of giving, in her dying for her brother, that Antigone 'reveals to us the line of
sight that defines desire'.65 But for the fact that this is not an exchange, we
could say that it is a cause well worth dying for.66
An important part of the claim here is precisely that Antigone does not die
'for' something inasmuch as by this we mean an exchange of a plus and a
minus. Antigone's living death (entre la v ie et la mart), her tomb is her cause,
and is, we might say, the structure of her law, the synchrony of her law. She may
thus be a figure that 'reveals to us the line of thought that defines desire' and
affects katharsis (but not an Aristotelian katharsis) and is thus at the heart of
both tragedy and psychoanalysis. Indeed, elsewhere it might even be possible to
expand Antigone's commitment to the absolutely unique in Freudian terms of a
release from repetition (an idea Freud pursues, for example, in Beyond the
Pleasure Principle).
The argument, nevertheless, needs to be taken further, in a direction which
is not quite Lacan's. As Granon-Lafont says, we can use the temporal event to
differentiate two faces of the Moebius strip, a 'back' and 'front'. But here is the
crux. Fi�st, the dialectical opposition between 'back' and 'front' would only
appear if we approach the Moebius strip as a flat, two-dimensional shape
twisted 180 degrees and joined together to form a new, strangely three­
dimensional object. In other words, the opposition comes into being only if
we set out and define this otherwise irreducible reality of space in terms of two
dimensions and dialectical oppositions. Yet there is nothing in the inherent
geometry of two dimensions that allows us to deduce a third from it as a
matter of course. There is no inherent space in flatland. To this we must add a
second point, namely that any conceptualization process of this type is,
64 The presentation of brothers in Homer might further support this idea.
Agamemnon and
Menelaos are not replaceable; neither Odysseus nor Telemachus have brothers' indeed' they
are emphatically 'only sons'.
65 Lacan (1999: 247).
�6 I am, again, thi�king �ere of well-rehearsed arguments about exchange and the gift and,
u!timately, of J. Demda's. views, a?d of his discussion of Patocka and history (effectively­
d1achrony), for example, m The Gift of Death (Derrida 1 995), but also in Adieu to Emmanuel
_ ( 1 999), Of Hospitality (2000), Given Time: Counterfeit Money ( 1992) , The Instant
Levmas of My
Death {2000), and many of his other works.
Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of the Law 165
necessarily, a temporal/historical process, a diachronic process. And, a third
point, this process only comes into being through the deferral, or elision, of
what we might call the real temporal/historical process. The opposition,
in other words, is only possible if we map the relationship between the
flat two-dimensional strip in a world of opposites and the three-dimensional
topological object as two points along a 'timeline', a movement from point
'a' to point 'b', which is itself elided from our consciousness of the object.
The same 'object', in other words, exists as at least two different objects in two
worlds-but where its essential irreplaceability is elided. The fourth and
possibly most important point is an interpolation of the previous elements:
We can, of course, given the above, imagine any number of specific coordi­
nates on the Moebius strip which will have a 'front' and 'back' or a 'top' and
'bottom'. The crucial point is this: If, following Butler, 'front' and 'back' are
taken as moments of 'negative dialectics' in Lacan's structure, then we have a
legitimate critique. This is where the Lacanian reading effects an exclusion.
Our suggestion, however, is that we can only mark these places and concep­
tualize them in this way by conceptualizing the strip as a flat object (our first
point) , and as one in which time is defined by means of fixed coordinates ( the
second and third points) . This occlusive conceptualization, we might further
suggest (although, ultimately, this requires a separate argument), rests on the
Aristotelian legacy of defining 'time as number' (Arist. Physics IV, 229b) ,
which is guided by an interest in an instrumental notion of diachrony.67 In
contrast, if we view Antigone's law, and the precedence she gives to her
brother, and the notion, or structure, of time, from a revised 'topological'
perspective, we have a possible outlet, although it is not quite Lacanian.68
This chapter is not meant as a discussion of topology. I hope, however, that,
with the topological example in the background, it becomes clear why a
67 See above, n. 62. Again, Aristotle argues that where there is no perception of change (in the
sense of a perception of movement from one 'number' to another), there is no perception of
time. We could at this point introduce Lacan' s notion of the 'second death' and its relation to
being.In the 'Supplementary Note' to his discussion of Antigone ( 1 999: 285), Lacan says:' ... he
[Sophocles] situates the hero in a sphere where death encroaches on life, in his relationship, that
is, to what I have been calling the second death here. This relationship to being suspends
everything that has to do with transformation, with the cycle of generation and decay or with
history itself, and it places us on a level that is more extreme than any other insofar as it is
directly attached to language as such.
'To put it in the terms of Levi-Strauss-and I am certain that I am not mistaken in invoking
him here, since I was instrumental in having had him reread Antigone and he expressed himself
to me in such terms-Antigone with relation to Creon finds herself in place of synchrony in
opEosition to diachrony.'
8 At stake is a large principle. But we must not forget the pointed materiality of the text nor
the lectio stataria ('the art of reading slowly', as Jakobson defined philology. See Ziolkowski
 Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of the Law 1 67
1 66 Psychoanalysis and the Law
(meta I meta). It i�, i� trut� , a con:piex word
critique of the residual 'negative dialectic' embodied in Lacan's notion of notion. There is. no 'properly speaking' of meta
I
kinship and ultimately in his reading of the ethics of Antigone is, on the one that-a moSt 11ke the two sides of a Moebi us strip- is gramm
.
wh1c
I
attcahzed m multiple forms,
h a n:iost med'iates' betwee �
as well as the dative,
through the genitive and accusative cases,
•
. .
·

I.I [of person s, among , rn coi;ip�n ?' with] 2 [o

hand, crucial as a critique of a kind of relationship between synchrony and the two without 'proper' resolution (Cf. LS! B.
•
. my.
betwe�n]. The gra�manan s ng1d taxono
being that is associated with Lacan. On the other hand, I also hope that we can things { sim.}]; 3 [of separate parts of persons, gramm atical t eory o taxono my ts
formal ized ? �
see that there is a possibility of extracting ourselves from this dialectic, and of essential as it is, is historically anachronistic (no .
taxono my ts also m��eq�ate to
cles' time). More signific antly, gramm atICal
attested in Sopho
reading Antigone's claim and the structure of her exchange differently. What effects conse9u�n�, .say, to pos1ttom�g the
describe the functions of meta, let alone the complex or th<; �1teral,
(rather �ha.n with its cas�),
we are suggesting is that we can 'structure' the play Antigone, and the figure of word meta 'after' its case, in verse-terminal position of the aux1ha_ r -est1 m the
g back' of anastro phe, or the elhpsts � .
Antigone, and Antigone's ate topologically, as it were, beyond ate.69 It ex­ physical, phonetic 'turnin
ad loc.). All we can s�y ts th�t amidst
pound verbal usage (cf. Jebb 1996, reprinted 1966: 59, � e act
the 'fie�ce presence, of a s1mp
poses-perhaps we can use Lacanian words here after all-'the limit that ��� complex functions there is, indeed, the simple '�diocy',
- '. _ . . . me. a/ It .ts,
human life can only briefly cross:70 It exposes-we can now come back to that distinc t, verse-t ermina l usage meta . . metal '.·

of language: Antigone's repeated, ,

'
_
typically 'tragic� usage (meta .1s verse­
word with which we began this chapter, but, as in the Moebius strip, in a we should add, a typically Sophoclean, perhaps even 16 , 25 , 950, OT24'.,
Ant. 48, 70, 73; A;. ? �
terminal in thirteen out of eighteen extant attestations: 4 ? 9.3. L1ke 1s � t e word is
different sense-the simplicity of the structure of Antigone's claim. We have 414, 990; El. 700; Ph. 184, 298, 343, 1110, 1312; OC 639, 1636; Fr. �
_ of"'. wit� , meta, "".I�
traged y). It s a kmd
here, in revised form, a 'pure and simple relationship of the human being to verse-terminal in the majority of instances in extant Greek .
It is part of � meta-physics, tf you "".1
that of which he miraculously happens to be the bearer'.7 1 might say, that comes 'after' everything, at the end.
that work wh1�h comes after t�e Physic�
(Aristotle's Metaphysics is, in the first in�tance, _simply _ wh1�h evolves espe�ially post
it; it is the philoso ph1cal not10n of metaph y s1cs . .
and yet works with .
say, an act of retroac tive n�mm�). "I?1s special kind of
Descartes and Kant through, we might
meta works temporally, bringing to a close the
diachronic flow of 1amb1c tnmeter vers;s. �nd
s at the end of the line, it does not q�Jte follow
_ t?e law of
yet, even as this word, meta, appear
1990). Discussing the 'limit', Lacan points 'in passing' to lines 48, 70, and 73, in which 'Antigone
the metric al law . . . the law of Anstot ;
_
han, an thmetl_ c�l
expresses a kind of idiocy that is apparent at the end of a sentence in the word meta (Lacan linear, spatial sequencing. It transcends es of the non nal, , prep s1-
partak ?
1999: 265). Here are the lines (translation as in the English text of the Seminar): time and physics, the grammatical law, and so on. Meta here :
1t also �tnves
(grammatical! case. But
tional use of the word, of the usage that precedes its
small, ma tenal :xample o � the k1�d of
All ouden autoi ton emon <m'> eirgein meta (48) 'beyond', it strives 'backwards'. That, it seems to me, is a _ m Antigone,
fin response to the edicts] 'But it has nothing to do with my concerns' expansive 'struct ure', the 'kind of legality ', if you will, that w_e find '.n Antigone and
e structu re for ethical action .
and which, we might suggest, is a suitabl
si nific�ntly beyond hope (cf.
Out' an keleusaim' out' an, ei thelois eti
prassein, emou g' an hedeos droies meta (69-70)
69 Antigone wants to go ektos atas (Ant. 614, 625), to a place, �
'What does it me n t us 1f Antigone �oes beyond the
also Ant. 330). Lacan says quite explici tly: � �
aims at the following, the beyond
fto Ismene] 'If you wanted to come with me now and carry out the sacred task, limits of the human? What does it mean if not that her desire
I would not longer accept you.' of Ate.' (1999: 263; see also 264-5.)
70 Ibid. 262-3. On the beyond
, see e.g. Lacoue-Labarthe (1996-7).
Phi/e met' autou keisomai, phi/au meta (73) above, n. 22.
71 Lacan (1999: 283). Quoted
'I will lie down, my loving friend, my almost lover, here with you.'

There are three components to the argument: the semantics of meta, here meaning 'with', but in
other constructions also signifying 'after'; grammatical word-order and the usage of meta in
these lines in inverse position relative to its 'normal' position preceding its case; the metrical,
rhythmical-phonetic pattern and the insistent repetition of meta at the verse-end, thrice in the
space of twenty-five Imes. Combined, these three elements can be read as 'in a signifying form,
the kind of fierce presence Antigone represents' (Lacan 1999: 265). Adapting Lacan's view as we
have, it seems to me that meta may repay a yet slower reading (even if that reading seems
painfully technical). We might for convenience sake call meta a preposition. But, of course, in
these lines it is not a p re-position at all. Note the accent of this word: it is not oxytone meta (i.e.
it does not have an acute accent on the last syllable); meta is here used in anastrophe, as
paroxytone (i.e. with the accent thrown back to the paenultima). Twice, in lines 70 and 73, it is a
post-position (in 70 and 73), which follows its case. In the third instance, in line 48, it is, strictly
speaking, a preverb, the elliptic form of an impersonal compound verb (metesti) . Both post­
positional verses, and in a slightly looser way the elliptic verbal usage too, here govern the
genitive, which marks the sense 'with', not 'after' ('after' governs the accusative, of course).
Lacan points us in a potentially useful direction when he says that 'meta is, properly speaking,
that which implies a break' (1999: 265). Nevertheless, we need to expand and slightly alter this

*

9 of Athens are not embedded in its drama in any simplistic or merely self­
Sophocles' Antigone and
the Democratic Voice
Judith Fletcher
The citizens of fifth-century BCE Athens who wrote, produced, performed,
watched, and judged Greek tragedy accepted certain anachronisms in the
depiction of a mythological past that focused on the catastrophic lives of a few
royal families. Among the most striking is how democratic law-making
processes familiar to the Athenian audience (and a relatively recent political
system) are projected onto the monarchies of myth and legend. In Aeschylus'
Suppliant Women, King Pelasgus, responding to the Danaids' petition for
sanctuary, insists on seeking the approval of the assembly of Argive citizens,
whose voting practices are pointedly emphasized in the text (Supp. 607).
Theseus, that archetype of democratic principles, refers to the judicial pro­
cesses of Athens in Sophocles' O edipus at Colonnus ( 1051-3 ), and consults the
Athenian populace when he decides to champion the cause of Argive mothers
in Euripides' Suppliant Women ( 404-8). Less benign (but perhaps more
democratic) is the Argive assembly who vote to stone their prince Orestes
for matricide (Euripides' O restes 440-2), or the Greek army at Troy, whose
motion to sacrifice the captive Trojan princess Polyxena, reproduces the
enactment formula that preceded the decrees passed by the Athenian demo­
cratic assembly of the fifth century (Euripides' Hecuba 107-8).1
When tragedy mirrors the legislative processes of Athenian democracy,
it makes the heroic world of mythology more familiar and accessible to the
A version of this chapter has been published under the title 'Citing the Law in Sophocles'
Antigone', in Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 41 (2008) . I would like
to thank the editor for permission to reprint it here. 1 am also grateful to SSHRC (the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) for funds to carry out research for this
chapter, and to Wilfrid Laurier University for a teaching relief grant which allowed me to
complete it. Thanks are also due to Robert Wallace, Adele Scafuro, Angela Esterhammer,
Margaret Toye, Bonnie MacLachlan, C. W. Marshall, and Erika Nitsch who all helped to make
this chapter better. Any infelicities or errors remain my own.
1 On the anachronistic representations of law in tragedy, see Easterling (1985: 1-10).
Sophocles' Antigone and the Democratic Voice 169
fifth-century citizen audience, but it is important to note that the legal practices
congratulatory manner. Law is represented as a complicated and sometimes
precarious power. Tragedy gives careful consideration to how the language of
law can create the social world: the decrees engendered by the legislative bodies
represented in drama are all examples of what philosophers of language such as
J. L. Austin and John Searle have identified as speech acts or illocutions.2 In
classical Athens, some of the most authoritative speech acts were collectively
voiced by citizens in the legislative assembly and law courts. Their edicts and
decrees exemplify Sandy Petrey's synthesis of the performative utterance as 'a
combination of language and social practice', which functions 'within the
conventional interactions that characterize a given sociohistorical group'.3
The homologies of Athenian law and its theatre have often been noted­
their shared audience and actors, their rule-governed scripts. 4 Like a dramatic
text, a law or decree is programmatic; it prescribes what people say or do.
A legal speech act, such as a decree, functions in tragedy as a potent generator
of plot and action. To use Austin's terminology, the tragic events that emanate
from an edict (for example, the sacrifice of Polyxena) are the perlocutions of
the speech act.5 Oedipus' decree condemning the murderer of Laius ( OT223-
5 1) replicates Athenian legal procedure for investigating and prosecuting a
homicide.6 It sets in motion a series of perlocutionary consequences that
cause the edict to recoil on its author, who turns out to be that murderer.
Tragedy, it would seem, not only echoes the performative language of law, but
exposes its fallibilities as well. In this respect, Sophocles' Antigone holds a
special place in any consideration of the representation of law in tragedy, since
it poses fundamental and disturbing questions about the capacity of language
to create law, the relationship between law and force, and specifically, as this
chapter will argue, about the role of the citizenry in law-making.
I do not intend to argue that this tragedy represents any specific political
situation in fifth-century Thebes or Athens, although as Richard Seaford
notes, Sophocles' Theban plays might have reassured Athens that the 'horrors
of tyranny are projected onto the mythical past . . . [and] are safely projected
onto Thebes'. The Thebes of tragedy may be the 'Anti-Athens', as Froma
Zeitlin put it,7 but I maintain that there is a democratic voice embedded in
this text which suggests that the civic ideology of Athens is a natural and
2 See Austin ( 1962) and Searle (1969).
3 Petrey (1990: 13).
4 The similarities have been noted for example by Lanni (1997: 183) and Allen (2005: 374).
5 Austin (1962: JOI).
6 Carawan (1999: 187-222).
7 Seaford (2000: 42-3); Zeitlin (1986: 130-67).
 1 70 Psychoanalysis and the Law
unquenchable force. Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood is justifiably cautious
about reading Sophocles' Thebes as a 'mimetic representation of Athenian
democracy', but she does advocate a reception of the play that takes into
account the cultural and political context of its production, that is, demo­
cratic Athens.8 Her conception of how this reception operated and its rela­
tionship to democracy is substantially different from mine, however. My
approach to the play is one that takes into account its status as a cultural
product of 'a festival of the democratic polis',9 that is informed by and sustains
an ideology generated by a system in which the democratic collective 'ruled
through its control of public speech'.1 0
The project of this chapter then is to consider how such democratic forces
manifest themselves in this fictional version of Thebes. My strategy will be to
examine the trajectory of Creon's interdiction forbidding the burial of Poly­
neices from its inception to its reception and eventual annulment. This com­
mand helps us to frame an important question about language and law: what
gives a legal performative its status beyond its utterance by a powerful civic
figure? By considering the interdiction as a speech act that becomes part of
public discourse and is disseminated through the various channels of commu­
nication in the polis, I hope to expose the infelicities and distortions which
vitiate its status as law. Unlike the 'democratic' monarchs of tragedy, Theseus or
Pelasgus, Creon does not consult the citizens of Thebes before he makes his
announcement forbidding the burial. We might assume that he composed this
prohibition on the battlefield where there would be no opportunity for delib­
eration, but he does announce it a second time to the assembly of Theban
Elders without any debate or consultation. It is my contention, nonetheless,
that the voice of the demos (the citizens) is by no means silent in this text, which
reflects some of the informal discursive structures of Athenian democracy.
First, however, we need to determine if there is any chance that the fifth­
century audience could conceive of Creon's interdiction as a law. Creon refers
to his proclamation as a nomos, a slippery term which can mean 'established
custom', or 'law'. Antigone describes the burial of Eteocles and the defenders
of Thebes as being the 'right use of custom ( to i nomoi, 22)'; she explicitly
denies that Creon's interdiction is a law. How would the original audience of
this tragedy view her denial and challenge? In her influential article, Sourvi­
nou-Inwood argues that we need to set aside our contemporary focus on
individual freedoms which make us hostile to Creon's position. Creon repre­
sents the polis, and in every Greek city-state of the fifth century, it was the
8 Sourvinou-lnwood (1989: 134-48).
1
� For tragedy as a 'festival of the democratic polis', see Goldhill ( 1990: 97-129).
Ober (1993: 483).
Sophocles' Antigone and the Democratic Voice 171
polis that authorized religious activities, including funeral rituals. Antigone is
overstepping her limitations by claiming to know what the gods want; only
Teiresias has the authority to do this. The fact that Teiresias substantiates
Antigone's claims should not, according to Sourvinou-Inwood, affect our
reading of the play, since we need to put ourselves in the position of the
audience who cannot read ahead. Because the ruling power of Thebes has
issued the prohibition, it was necessary for all Thebans to obey, regardless of
their private feelings. The prohibition (ke rugma) on burying Polyneices seems
to echo an Athenian law forbidding the burial of traitors within the city walls.
Generals sometimes pronounced kerugmata on the battlefield, and it was the
duty of the common citizen to comply.11
Larry Bennett and William Blake Tyrrell offer a different perspective:
'Antigone acts correctly because she does not defy Creon, leader of Athens,
but Creon, the totalitarian ruler of impious Thebes'.1 2 Edward Harris implic­
itly supports this approach by analysing what the ingredients of law were to an
Athenian audience, and how Creon fails to create a true law. I shall return to
some of his arguments later in this chapter, but the germane point for now is
that Athenian citizens swore the Ephebic Oath, promising to 'obey those who
are ruling prudently and the established laws and those which they may
prudently establish for themselves in the future'. In other words, blind obedi­
ence to the commands of a ruling power was not an obligation if those
commands were not sensible.1 3 Indeed, epic poetry and tragedy is consistent
in how it recognizes the need for proper burial. While an Athenian law might
have prevented burying traitors in Attica, it did not prevent traitors from
being taken outside Attic borders for burial.14 Proper burial of the dead is a
fundamental concern of the Greeks. The Homeric gods are disturbed by the
defilement of Hector's corpse in Iliad 2 4. Sophocles' Ajax and Euripides'
Suppliant Women both deal with the crisis of unburied corpses. Indeed,
Creon himself, after hearing the prediction of Teiresias, decides to bury the
corpse because 'it is best to obey established laws' (11 1 3- 1 4) .
Certainly, by the end of the Antigone it becomes obvious that the gods were
offended by Creon's interdiction, but would an Athenian audience have to
wait for the prophecy of Teiresias before they recognized not only the impiety
of the prohibition, but also its innate illegality? It is my contention that the
11
Sourvinou-lnwood ( 1989: 138 (see especially n. 24)) notes that Thucydides (iv 105) gives
reports of strategoi, or generals, pronouncing kerugmata on the battlefield where they would be
given special powers. She speculates that the law forbidding burial of traitors in Attica was in
existence by 462, certainly before the production of Antigone. Cf. Griffith 1999, 122.
12
Tyrrell and Bennett ( 1998: 42).
13 Harris (2004: 39-40).
14
Ibid. 20-1.
 1 72 Psychoanalysis and the Law
dramatic architecture of Sophocles' Antigone suggests the instability of the
interdiction and its illusory status as law from the opening lines of the
prologue. Antigone will never call this interdiction a 'law' ( nomos), but only
a ke rugma ('announcement'), a word cognate with kerux, 'herald', and she will
never call Creon king, but merely strategos, general, that is, a type of magis­
trate.15 Her position toward Creon's interdiction is that of an Athenian citizen
who had the right to denounce a magistrate for malfeasance and who recog­
nizes and demonstrates that the authority of law resides in a power that
transcends Creon's articulation of a command.
It is thus significant that the first person to speak in the play is not Creon
announcing the edict, but Antigone complaining about it to Ismene. The play
opens at an important moment in the communication of the prohibition: its
reception by the very person who will contravene and obstruct it: 'And what is
this announcement (ke rugma) that they say the general (strategos) has just now
made for the entire city?' (7-8) Antigone answers her own question by quoting
the kerugma transmitted to her by a process of public communication. On first
consideration, the ke rugma seems to fulfil the criteria required of a felicitous
speech act identified by Austin ( 34): an 'appropriate figure', the most powerful
man of Thebes, possessing 'the appropriate authority', has issued a command
in the 'appropriate circumstances', a public forum (presumably the battlefield
before the play began). But as events unfold, it seems that Creon's ke rugma has
a rather subversive energy that radiates beyond its initial utterance; its status as
a citation-necessary for it to take effect-somehow undermines its authority.
In other words, Creon can make his pronouncement, but he cannot control
the context of its reception and repetition.
When Antigone repeats the interdiction to her sister, she highlights its
transmission; ke rux words are significant in this speech, which lays stress on
the announcement of the proclamation, and a reference to the process of its
transmission.
Eteocles, so they say, thinking it just to make right use of custom, he has buried in the
earth, to be honored by the dead beneath. But the wretchedly dead corpse of Poly­
neices it has been announced (ekkekeruchthai) to all the citizens, they say, that no man
may cover with a grave nor lament. That is what, they say, noble Creon has proclaimed
16
(kerukschant' echein) for you and me, for me I tell you. (Ant. 22-32)
Antigone's citational practices ('they say', 'it has been announced', etc.) em­
phasize that the utterance has been removed from its author, a necessary
15 Harris (2004: 35-6); Griffith ( 1999: 122).
16 In my translation, I read soi as an accented dative of interest and thus follow the Oxford
edition of Lloyd Jones and Wilson (1990).
Sophocles' Antigone and the Democratic Voice 173
function of its status as a civic announcement. It is not only Creon's articulation
of the interdiction that gives it legs, but also its repetition by a public voice. An
audience who participated in the making of law would be aware that the
kerugma is circulated by the citizens of Thebes who made no contribution to
its formulation. Although in his opening speech Creon claims to value the
counsel of his subjects (179), he later reveals his tyrannical nature by insisting
to Haemon that the city belongs to its ruler (738).17 With complete incredulity,
he asks his son if it is the polis who will tell him what he must order (734).
Creon's unilateral edict is a strong contrast to the many ancient sources which
describe law as a product of common consent: Demosthenes (25. 16), for
example, asserts that law is 'a general agreement of the entire community'.18
As we have already noted, Athenian tragedy regularly espouses the requirement
for communal participation in the legislative process, even in states ruled by
mythical kings. Tragedy might be set in a mythical past, and feature legendary
monarchies, but the most reasonable sovereigns seem to adhere to democratic
principles. There is no evidence, however, that the citizens of Thebes make any
contribution to the interdiction other than to circulate Creon's decree.
Is there any indication that Creon has the support of the citizens, whose city
he purportedly wishes to enhance ( 19 1 )? Charles Segal describes the interdiction
as 'public speech' represented in the opening scene as 'part of an anonymous, ill­
defined public voice'.19 He understands the public voice and Creon's broadcast
of the decree to be unanimous. But is it? It is true that the Chorus offers no
objections; Ismene apparently assumes that since the people of Thebes transmit
the decree they must approve of it; she feels helpless to act 'in defiance of the city'
(79). Even Antigone eventually submits to the idea that she is acting 'against the
will of the city' (907). She can hardly be blamed for feeling abandoned as she is
led to her death and taunted by the Chorus of Theban Elders (509), although
earlier she had suggested to Creon that the Chorus agreed with her position even
if they were afraid to speak out in his presence. More importantly, there are
strong indications that the Chorus of Yes-men are not representative of public
17 Podlecki (1966: 363-4) notes that Creon initially presents himself as if 'his will reflects the
united will of the city'-a presumption that seems to be shared by Ismene and the Chorus 'albeit
with some hesitation'. Yet when Antigone and Haemon accuse him of ignoring the will of the polis,
he reveals his tyrannical nature by insisting (against Haemon's charge) that the city belongs to its
ruler (738). See also Knox ( 1964: 108). Euben (1997: 160) comments on the paradoxes implicit in
Creon's opening speech in which he claims to value the counsel of his subjects.
18
On this communal aspect of law with specific reference to Antigone, see Harris (2004: 27);
Allen (2005: 389) observes that tragedy espouses the requirement for law (nomos) to appear to
be common to all (e.g. Eur. Supp. 430), while the tyrant's laws 'are issued by some specific,
named person, who claims to be the author of the law and who claims authority on the basis of
that authorship'.
19 Segal (1981: 16 1).
174 Psychoanalysis and the Law
opinion, that Creon is not the singular voice of Thebes, and that behind his back
a dissident group of voices whisper their disapproval.
Creon himself is well aware of malcontents who 'from the very start
muttered secretly against me' (290- 1 ) . He mistakenly believes that dissenters
have bribed the guards so they can bury the corpse, but nonetheless he is
aware that people are talking about his order behind his back. In defence of
Antigone, Haemon corroborates Creon's realization of community unrest
with an eloquent account of the disapproval of the demos (683-723). He
tells his father that the population of Thebes denies that Antigone is wrong to
bury her brother; this would surely include the people who transmitted
Creon's interdiction to Antigone. This may not be a government where the
de mos contributes to the making of law with a vote, but the public voice does
comment on Creon's autocratic proclamation. Antigone's citation of the
de mos in her quotation of the ke rugma is neutral, but Haemon is especially
insistent on the voices of the community who commend Antigone's action
and condemn the edict.20 Haemon can overhear what the city is saying 'in the
shadows' (692-3) and how it mourns Antigone, who dies undeservedly for a
praiseworthy act. This report of what the city says includes a version of his
father's interdiction that dogs and birds will prey on the corpse (cf. 205-6) , an
illustration of how the pronouncement is quoted and critiqued by the citizens
of Thebes. The public announcement of Creon thus becomes a 'dark secretive
report' that spreads throughout the city (700). These irrepressible but
anonymous voices are a powerful reminder that Creon does not have total
20
As Euben (1997: 160) writes: 'Political wisdom, Haemon argues, cannot be singular and
monological or set in a discourse of command and obedience appropriate to an army but is
rather plural and multiple'. Cropp ( 1997: 151) points out that this popular opinion is 'sentiment
rather than a precisely formulated convention'. He suggests that while the edict may conflict
with popular opinion, it 'nevertheless commands per sea degree of popular assent' due to the
crisis caused by Polyneices' attack on Thebes. It is debatable whether the position of the Chorus
can be taken as representative of the polis, however, especially since, as Antigone points out (60),
they may be too cowed to voice their true feelings before Creon. At any rate, in her final speech,
Antigone, by indicating that she is acting biai politon 'in defiance of the citizens', (907) 'is
portrayed as feeling that Creon has carried the community with him' (Cropp 1997: 151).
Still it could be argued that Antigone does not have the same access to public sentiment (after
her arrest) as Haemon and Tiresias do and would be unaware of the public support she has
generated. And while the community might agree with the necessity of the law before Antigone's
arrest (although this is never made clear), it is obvious from Haemon that after the arrest they
are less supportive.
Here I must disagree with Sourvinou-Jnwood (1989: 146) that Haemon's claim is 'an
unsubstantiated assertion', or that the Athenian audience would have viewed this public opinion
as a transgression, since 'when a law was passed all were expected to obey it'. Creon's edict has
hardly gone through the democratic processes of Athenian law-making, and even read through
an Athenian cultural filter, as Sourvinou-lnwood suggests, the edict still bears the stamp of
tyranny.
.l
Sophocles' Antigone and the Democratic Voice 1 75
command of the discourse in every context of the polis, despite his fantasy of
absolute control. Although the Chorus of Elders may be afraid to oppose him
openly, the polis includes a background of citizen voices, citing and critiquing
the command-voices which have circulated its contents so effectively that
Antigone can repeat them, and Haemon can report the permutations of his
father's edict.
So it seems that underneath the official position we can detect a clamour of
informal debates and disagreements. The text features an assortment of
voices, some sympathetic towards Antigone's position, others less so, and
this polyphony, a chief factor in the undeniably slippery quality of the tragedy,
helps to represent the manifold voices which constitute a polis, even an
autocratic polis. The play was written for an audience whose understanding
of law-making included a democratic debate. The ekklesia (the democratic
assembly) where laws were created was a raucous uproar of competing
opinions: the trained speakers who bantered back and forth, and also the
common men, the de mos, whose collective disapproval or approbation was
expressed by their vote, but also less formally as a clamour, a thorub us, that
arose in the assembly and was 'a crucial element of Athenian democracy . . . in
which ordinary people could make their thoughts known'.21 Thucydides,
Plato, and others report this thorubus, catcalls, boos, cheers, and shouting,
not only in the assembly, but also in the courts where laws were enacted. The
clamour of the corona, the bystanders, and their thorubos of dissent or
approval provided one of the unofficial, but necessary, checks on the juries.22
I suggest then that the dissent that Haemon reports to his father should be
understood as just such a thorub us of dissapproval.
The 'dark secret report' is also a form of gossip, another important form of
unofficial communication in Athens. Antigone and Ismene depend on gossip
and rumour for Creon's message, since they were obviously not present at the
initial utterance of the proclamation. Yet Creon himself does not hear what is
said in the back allies and dark corners of his realm; he sends, but he does not
receive. Gossip was a powerful means of transmitting information back and
21
Tacon (2001: 180). Thucydides (6.24) describes the thorubos created by the demos in the
assembly in the debate surrounding the Sicilian expedition. Reference to the thorubos in
literature include Aristophanes' Acharnians (37-9) where Dicaeopolis states that he has come
to the assembly 'to shout, interrupt and insult the orators' if they do not speak about peace.
22
Discussion of the thorubos in the courts can be found in Lanni (1997: 183-9). Lanni
analyses the heterogeneous composition of the corona or oi periesthkotes, 'the spectators who
�tand at the edges of the courtroom watching and listening to the cases', and who exerted an
mfluence on the litigants' arguments and the jurors' deliberations. For example, Plato's Socrates
explicitly refers to the uproar made by the crowd at his trial (Apo/. 24c-25b). Further discussion
of the corona can be found in Bers (1985).
-
176 Psychoanalysis and the Law
forth between the public and private spheres in the Athenian democracy; it
.
cont�1buted to a two-way stream of communication lacking in Thebes. Con­
�rastmgly, the Athenian political system allowed for the flow of rumour back
mto more formal modes of discourse. Josiah Ober lists gossip and rumour as
one of several political forums of debate and communication, along with the
c?urts, a�sembly and theatre, �here Athenian citizens could exchange informa­
�
tion and ideas with each other. Speakers in law courts exploited the conception
of �thens �s a face-to-face community in which everyone knew everyone else's
busmess, either b� frequenting the agora (town square/market-place), or shops,
or through prostitutes and entertainers at drinking parties. Plutarch (Nicias
30. 1 ) recor�s how news of the devastating naval disaster at Sicily in 4 1 6 BCE was
first hea:d m a barber shop, and travelled rapidly throughout the city. Rumour
was an important mea�� of disseminating information and sharing opinions
b:™'.e�n the common citizen and the elite members of society. Furthermore, as
Virg�ma Hunter has sho':'n, gossip could be integral to the public scrutiny of
magistrates, the dokz.masza, when it. would be woven into Athenian political
discourse in a useful manner.24
T? ebes is abuzz with talk of the interdiction and Antigone's defiance, but
the mformal yet conventional modes of communication (the thorubos and
gossip) which had authority in the Athenian democracy, are occluded in the
Theban tyranny. The Guard's reluctance to report the burial to Creon
suggests a cowed populace afr�id to bring unwelcome news to their king.
But Ant1gon. e seems to have activated a shadow demos, a ghostly whisper of
. virgin Dike is dragged off by evil men ( Works and Days 220-1 ) , a passage that
the uncontamable vox populi and its thorubos. Public talk has become dis­
placed in Thebes-squeezed into private conversations and secret debates­
but it cannot be completely silenced. From the first moments of the play,
.
Antigone appears to have taken control of the discourse and to become a vital
part of the reception and transmission of democratic talk. This in itself is
perhaps one of the most striking examples of the discursive disturbances of
Thebes. As Thucydides makes Pericles say, the ideal woman is 'the least
mentioned' (2.45.2); the absence of any female voice from fifth-century
At� ens su�gests the advice was heeded. Not only is Antigone mentioned
quite a bit . m Thebes, but she speaks out in a political context. Creon's effects
on the channels of civic discourse apparently include the erosion of the ideal
of decorous feminine silence. Antigone is thus both a symptom of and a
remedy for Thebes' distorted discursive system.
Antigon�'s i?trusion int� public talk is evident in the prologue: she first
. stele with a bas-relief of Demokr atia crownin g
cites Creon s kerguma, precisely where Creon will publish it himself, on the
23 Ober (1989: 148-51).
24 Hunter (1990: 303, 307-16).
Sophocles' Antigone and the Democratic Voice 1 77
steps of the royal residence,25 but then she also performs her own speech act
in this same spot: 'I myself will bury him,' she declares to her sister, 'I will lie
dead beside him' ( 7 1 -2). Ismene, paradigm of feminine docility, timidly
recommends silence about the plan, but Antigone insists upon public broad­
cast of her speech act: 'Oh no! Announce it. You should be much more
hateful, if you keep quiet and not proclaim (kerukses) this to everyone' (86-7).
The prologue, which opened by emphasizing how public information
had seeped into an intimate moment between two sisters, draws to a close
as Antigone begins her intervention into public discourse. She expropriates
the vocabulary of Creon's order for her own act of defiance: she wants the
burial of her brother to be announced ( ke rukses) in the same way that
Creon's ban was announced. As Judith Butler notes, 'Like Creon . . . Antig­
one wants her speech act to be radically and comprehensively public' (28);
and for Segal, 'Usurping his word, she mounts a total challenge to the civic
logos' (62).
Given the impropriety of female speech in the public sphere, Antigone's
role as the voice of democratic law might seem anomalous. It is true that
women of citizen status in Athens did not speak out in public, much less
participate in debates about law, but Antigone's social identity as a virgin
gives her special symbolic status for several reasons. The Athenian audience of
this play worshipped Athena, a virgin goddess, who dispensed laws. More
generally, Dike (Justice) is traditionally personified as a virgin.26 Hesiod
describes the murmur of protest that spreads among the people when the
suggests the thorubos of disapproval by the Theban citizens in Sophocles' play.
Likewise, the allegorical figure Demokra tia is a young woman.27 Furthermore,
the orators of the fourth century exploited the mythology of sacrificial virgins
as a model for young male citizens who were being incorporated into the
polis; the daughters of the Athenian King Erectheus, who willingly sacrificed
themselves on behalf of the state, were used by the fourth-century orators as a
paradigm of courage for Athenian youths.28
25
26
Her spatial position is astutely noted by Bernade
ne's social
te (1975: 148).
status as a parthenos and the purity of
For the connection betwee n Antigo
justice, see Hamilton (1991: 86-98, esp. 96-7) .
is inscribed on a
27 The Decree against Tyranny (SEG X I I 87) from the mid-fourth century
seated male). It is featured on the
the Demos (a
covers of Ober's Mass and Elite (1989) and Gagarin
and Cohen's The Cambridge Companion to
3 ), who finds
Ancient Greek Law (2005). The stele is discussed by Rabubitschek (1962: 238---4
403 BCE.
evidence for a cult of Demokratia from
28 See Larson (1995: 103---4).
1 78 Psychoanalysis and the Law Sophocles' Antigone and the Democra tic Voice 1 79

All things considered then, it is somewhat anti-climactic when Creon disputes him. As I have argued, the structure and subtext of the drama
makes his announcement (for the second time) to his council of Elders.29 emphasize the infelicities of Creon's interdiction. In her much admired
Concurrently, Antigone, whose citation and usurpation of the kerugma have argument, Antigone is able to articulate related deficiencies when she makes
been given priority of placement, is defying the interdiction even as it is the distinction between one man's proclamation and true nomos:
spoken-a dramatic contrast to the compliant Chorus. The Elders, having As far as I'm concerned, Zeus did not make this proclamation (keruksas)
been summoned to hear the kerugma, account for their presence in this public nor did Justice, who dwells with the gods below, enact such laws (nomous)
space: they have been called for a sunkle ton leschen, a 'convened assembly' by a for mortals. And I don't think that your announcements (kerugmata) are so strong
.
'publIC announcement' (koino i ke rugmati) (160- 1 ) , terminology that evokes that they enable a mortal to outrun the unwritten and unshakeable (asphale) laws
the summoning of the democratic assembly in Athens. But they offer no (nomima) of the gods. (450-5)
argument or comment; all they can say in response is 'if it is pleasing to you'
The passage emphasizes the deficiencies of Creon's proclamation in several ways:
(2 1 1 ), an ironic contrast to the enactment formula, 'it seems best to the
first and foremost, his kerugma is not sanctioned by the gods, which is to say
people', that preceded Athenian decrees. Creon's announcement is delivered
Creon does not possess 'the appropriate authority' to make it. A popular analysis
in an official-sounding formal register: 'I have proclaimed (keruksas) to the
interprets the play as a conflict between civic law and divine law, but this concept
citizens', 1 92; 'it has been proclaimed' ( ekkekeruktai, 203 ). Again ke rux words
is not natural to Greek thought; the Greeks understood true law to come from
p'.edominate, but this vocabulary is far removed from the language of Athe­
the gods.3 2 According to tradition, legendary law-makers such as Solon received
nian law-making. This is a command fashioned for a very specific circum­
laws directly from a deity.33 It is the goddess Athena who bestows a court of law
stance, yet it is is the nature of law to apply to general situations. Aristotle's
on her city at the end of Aeschylus' E umenides. As the philosopher Heraclitus
comment that every law is 'about a general matter' (Politics l 1 37bl 1-14,
put it, 'the laws of men are nourished by one law, the divine law' (fr. 253 Kirk­
27-9) is illustrated by the phrasing of Athenian laws for example, 'If anyone
Raven; 114 Deils-Kranz). Demosthenes (25. 1 6) likewise states that 'every law is
destroys the democracy at Athens . . .' (Andocides 1 .96) .3 0
an invention and gift of the gods'. 34 Sophocles himself describes law as coming
The subsequent confrontation between Antigone and Creon would have a
from Zeus (OT 863-70). If the just laws of the polis are intrinsically divine, then
special resonance for the Athenian audience of the play. The process of
obviously Creon's interdiction cannot be a law.
cr:ating laws �nd ? ecrees !n their political structure embraced the important
. . Antigone's second point is to compare the instability of Creon's order with the
pn nc1ple of isegona, the nght of every citizen to debate in the assembly. It is
. . laws of the gods, which are unwritten. The notion of 'unwritten laws' is not
quite obv10usly a freedom that does not exist in Creon's regime, but Antigone
unique to this text, but recurs in other contemporary sources.3 5 They are, in the
enacts the role of the citizen who had the right to disagree and debate about
words of Rosalind Thomas, 'a preexisting set of customs, traditions and assump­
any motion made in the assembly. Hannah Roisman appropriately hears her
tions onto which written laws were grafted'.36 They existed before law codes were
as the voice of free speech.3 1 Unlike the Watchman, the Chorus, or the cowed
written down, and included the treatment of one's parents, the worship of the
Theban polity, Antigone speaks without fear in the presence of Creon. When
gods, and proper treatment of the dead. While they are not specific to one polis,
Creon tells her that his proclamation is a law ( nomous, 449), she fearlessly
and common to a diversity of peoples, they are not normally set in opposition
to the laws of the state. Greek thought tends to represent the two forms of nomos
29 The beginning of Creon's speech was quoted by Demosthenes (False Embassy 19.247) as an as complementing one another. In Thebes, however, an interdiction against
exemplum of loyalty to the state. Foley (1995; 144) reads this as evidence of some democratic
�
tendency in t e characterization of Creon; cf. Sourvinou-Inwood (1989: 139), but as Harris
(2004: 28) pornts out, only part of the speech is quoted by Demosthenes and that part is out of
context. 32 The view that the gods are integral to law is well argued by Harris
(2004: 27) and Allen

30 This �xample and others are provided by Harris (2004: 23). More specific situations could (2005: 389).
be dealt with by decrees, a term which is often used to denote Creon's order. For an Athenian 33 Examples are presented by Szegedy-Maszak (1978: 199 -20).
audie�ce, decrees or edicts were ratified by the demos--the term is psephisma. This term is never 34 Examples provided by Harris (2004: 27-30).
used m referen�e t? Creon's b�n on burying Polyneices. Ismene uses the term psephon for the 35 See Carey (l 996: 40) on this passage and Lysias
6.10, where the speaker appeals to both
sp�ech act forb1ddmg the bunal of her brother (60), which simply means 'decision' here, as written and unwritten laws. Thucydide s 2.37.3 records Pericles' discussion of unwritten laws;
Griffith (1999: 133) notes. also see Xenophon's Memorabilia 4.4.19 (spoken by Socrates).
31 Roisman (2004: 91-1 14). 36 Thomas (2005: 54).
180 Psychoanalysis and the Law
burying the dead cannot be grafted onto or supported by the laws of the gods; it
contradicts divine nomos, and so is not really a law.
Antigone's dichotomy between the unwritten laws of the gods and Creon's
order poses an interesting problem. If the laws of the gods are unwritten, does
this align the kerugma with writing? And if it does, how does this quality bear
upon the transmission of the interdiction through the medium of public
repetition? Antigone does not say that the ke rugma is written, but in a sense it
is. Writing suggests the possibility of repetition, what Jacques Derrida calls
'iterability', precisely the feature of the kerugma that results in its dissemina­
tion. 37 Writing also allows for a separation between author and utterance, a
phenomenon exemplified by the various repetitions of Creon's interdiction
throughout the city. The ancient audience could understand that an order like
Creon's, which has not been grafted onto the fixed universal laws, could be
erased and 'rewritten', unlike the permanence of divine nomima.
Another indication of its lack of stability is the emendable quality of the
kerugma. Like a written document, it can be erased and rewritten, a quality
suggested by its apparently unstable penalty. Antigone claims that the penalty
for disobedience is public stoning (36), but in his proclamation to the
Chorus, Creon specifies no penalty. Once her transgression has been revealed,
he sets the punishment of entombment for Antigone to avoid polluting the
city with her death (773-80), a rather curious concession from a man willing
to leave a corpse to rot in the sun. Explanations of this apparent deviation are
various: that Antigone adds a bit of her own 'emotional embroidery' with the
38
detail, or that Creon has been partly affected by Haemon's arguments.
Whatever reconstruction we imagine, the conclusion has to be that Creon's
word is not stable, or to use Antigone's term, asphale, if it can be subjected to
modifications or amendments.
At this point, it should be apparent that Creon's order, his kerugma, exists
throughout the play as an impermanent creation, always, it seems, in flux, and
never completely within Creon's control. Its illocutionary authority is explic­
itly denied by Antigone who refuses to abide by it and so dies. But this does
not confirm the force of Creon's words, since the circumstances of her death
underscore the limitations of his linguistic authority. She made her own
declaration in the prologue: 'I will lie dead beside him' (73). She conspicu­
ously disobeys the edict, and insults its author, forcing him to enforce it.
37 'This structural possibility of being severed from its referent or signified (and therefore
�om communi�ation and context) seems to me to make of every mark, even if oral, a grapheme
m general, that 1s, as we have seen, the nonpresent remaining of a differential mark cut off from
its lleged "production" or origin'. Derrida ( 1982: 318).
�
3 Podlecki (1966: 359-71); Kamerbeek (1978: 142).
Sophocles' Antigone and the Democratic Voice 18 1
As Nicole Loraux (3 1-2) remarks, Antigone 'chose to die by her own will and
so to change execution into suicide'.39 Her suicide draws attention to the king's
inability to control the effects of language, since it occurs after Creon has
ordered Antigone to be saved. There is a tragic symmetry, characteristically
Sophoclean, in this organization: as Creon makes the command, Antigone
defies it; as Creon says that he will rescue Antigone, she kills herself.
Thus, on his first day as king, Creon discovers that language is not so much a
blunt instrument as it is an uncontainable fluid. The tyrant is slow to learn that
he cannot control the city with his words. He absolutely refuses to authorize
any other voice until Teiresias speaks. The blind prophet delivers two warnings
to Creon, the first based on his reading of the bird signs, a signifying system
that has become distorted by their feast of human meat. The process itself is a
form of reading: the boy attendent describes the bird signs and sacrifices,
Teiresias interprets and cites the text, as it were, to Creon. Yet as long as his
initial attempts to move Creon are structured as a chain of citations, he
remains ineffective. It will not be the signs cited by Teiresias that persuade
"•
.:::
:
::::
Creon, but a more direct communique. An important shift occurs when
Teiresias changes register in his second rhesis ( 1 064-90); now speaking in a
powerful mantic voice that motivates Creon's change of heart, he utters a
forceful prophecy of disaster described as akine ta, 'unmoveable' ( 1 060). 'You
provoke me to speak the immoveable secrets (akine ta) of my soul', he groans
after Creon has uttered his most blasphemous rebuttal. The term akineta
conveys the violent exposure of some securely lodged truth; it could be t
accurately translated as 'steadfast' or 'secure', in other words as a synonym :
for asphale. Teiresias apparently speaks from the same place, has access to the
same divine truths, as Antigone. She spoke in reference to steadfast (asphale)
laws authored by the gods which should manifest as universal moral laws or
precepts. Teiresias refers to a divinely authored consequence of breaking these
laws, a consequence which he would prefer to keep hidden and so akineta. But
the deeper implications of his akineta are that they come directly from the
gods; this prophecy is not obtained by interpreting the boy's description of the
sacrifice, but rather through an immediate intuitive process that involves no
reading of symbols-in this respect, they also qualify as agrapta, unwritten.
There is no separation between author and reader in his case, but a mystical
process by which he acquires unmediated knowledge. Teiresias' revelations
validate Antigone's i nsistence that her brother must be buried, and validate
this conviction with terminology that recalls her own arguments.
19 Loraux ( 1987: 31-2). But it is difficult to fully accept and even valorize suicide as feminine
agency. Thus Butler ( 2000: 27): 'It might be possible to say that she authors her own death, but
what legacy of acts is being worked out through the instrument of her agency'.
1 82 Psychoanalysis and the Law
Since Teiresias has direct access to the divine, he adds weight to Antigone's
contention that Creon's announcement is not what he says it is-a law.
A mortal cannot make a command that supersedes the authority of the
gods. But Creon's utterance is performative; it does set a series of tragic events
in motion, although these consequences are not the ones he intended. If the
utterance is not a law, then what is it? One of Searle's modifications to Austin's
inaugural theory was to make a distinction between speech acts that are
ratified by communal protocols ( this would include making laws) and indi­
vidual speech acts such as promises, wagers, threats, and insults, which turn
on social protocol but do not necessarily require an explicit formula or
authorization.4° Creon's interdiction pretends to fit into the former catego­
ry-an institutional speech act or law-but in fact falls into the latter, a threat
by an individual. Creon does things with words, since various members of the
community are intimidated by his threat (the Watchman, for example, guards
the corpse and apprehends Antigone). But like his p redecessor Oedipus, who
issued a decree that turned out to have more impact on its author than any
other citizen in Thebes, Creon makes a proclamation that has devastating
personal consequences for himself-the loss of his son and then his wife; in
essence, the eradication of his family line.
Antigone (whose name means 'against the family') has turned out to be a
powerful agent of his catastrophe, and concomitantly the agent who reveals the
flaws in his attempt to make law. She too has made a speech act; Timothy
Gould aptly calls this a play about 'a conflict of performatives'.4 1 Her an­
nouncement-which appears to be an individual promise-turns out to have
the institutional force that Creon's illocution lacks. But she too has her
limitations. Antigone herselfwas not able to persuade Creon that the unburied
corpse of her brother offended the gods. This is an important point consonant
with a society and a genre that associated authoritative speech with men. The
original dramatic production might have emphasized the disparity by having
the same actor play both Antigone and Teiresias: only when the actor portrays
a male character does his voice have authority for Creon. It is not until Teiresias
confirms that the laws of the gods have been violated that Antigone's similar
assertion is authenticated. Teiresias predicts that within a few days Creon will
repay corpse for corpses 'because you keep up here one who belo ngs to the
gods below, a corpse unburied, unhonored, all unhallowed' ( 1 070-1, Jebb's
translation). Apparently, then, Antigone's burial of her brother was not a
complete act. As J. L.Whitehorne notices, Antigone intended to perform the
entire multi-staged ceremony herself, first approaching Ismene for help in
40 Searle (1979: 17). 41 Gould (1995: 41).
Sophocles' Antigone and the Democra tic Voice 1 83
lifting the body, and then planning to erect a monument over the corpse. For
the original audience of this play, a complete funeral was a multi-staged event,
with distinct activities for both genders: women's roles consisted of pouring
libations and mourning (as described by the Watchman at 431), but responsi­
bility for burying the dead lay with the male members of a family. 42 It is clear
from Teiresias' words that Antigone's attempt to take over this function is
innately defective; the gods clearly demand a more public, complete ritual.
Creon and Haemon are the only living male relatives who can assume this
role. In taking over the responsibility for her brother's burial, Antigone had
challenged Creon's position as the head of her household, and 'as king of
Thebes, the legal successor to the political estate ofEteocles and Polyneices, its
co-rulers'. 43 Helene Foley has argued that Creon's refusal to bury Polyneices
means that Antigone becomes an 'honorary male'; as she reminds us, the
citizens of Thebes had praised her for taking on this duty, an indication that
there were exceptional circumstances in which a woman might act autono­
mously. 44 Appealing as this interpretation may be, it still does not explain why
Teiresias refers to the corpse as unburied, nor does it account for the fact that
Antigone cannot perform the ritual as completely as she says she will.
Sourvinou-Inwood is correct to stress the need for ritual closure to satisfy
the gods of the underworld. This is accomplished ( too late) when Creon sets
about performing the necessary rites. The messenger later describes the ritual
washing and arrangement of the corpse, the cremation, and the raising of the
monument ( 1 199-1 204). all performed by Creon.
This would be a suitable point to return to Austin, who states that in order
for a performative utterance to be effective 'the particular persons and
circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation for the
4
particular procedures invoked'. A saint, to use one of Austin's examples, 5
cannot baptize a penguin, and a woman, from the cultural perspective of an
Athenian audience, cannot properly say, 'I will b ury him'. She lacks the
authority to make this particular promise since she is not the appropriate
person to do so. .
On the other hand, Antigone's insistence on inserting herself into public
channels of communication and of speaking out in public functions as a
necessary check on the abuse of language that Creon has perpetrated. Her
performative utterance had the perlocutionary effect of her brother's official
42 Whitehorne (1983: 80-1 and 137); Harne (2004: 515) provides numerous historical sources
confirming that in the fifth century, responsibility for private dead (non-military) fell to male
members of household. See further Garland (1985: 36) and Sourvinou-Inwood (1989: 140).
43 Whitehorne (1983: 137).
44 Foley (2001: 180).
45 Austin (1962: I S, 32-4).
184 Psychoanalysis and the Law
burial. Her speech act takes a most oblique route and possesses a strange
spectral power, but her vow to bury her brother interfered with Creon's
prohibition. By defying the edict, she sets in motion a chain of events that
lead to Haemon's suicide; it is Teiresias' prophecy of this disaster that moti­
vates Creon to bury Polyneices, foolishly believing that he has the power to
change the gods' decrees, which unlike his own, cannot be erased. Creon
performs the burial first in an attempt to deflect the gods' anger, but there are
no second chances in this tragic universe. Harris is mistaken when he spec­
ulates that had she waited but a few hours, Creon would have rescued her and
reunited her with Haemon. 4 6 The prophecy of Teiresias allowed for no such
conditions or alternatives; it was a speech act of unimpeachable authority.
Just as Antigone insinuated herself into an authorial position by speaking
Creon's edict and then enacting its penalty on herself, so too her deformed
speech act ('I will bury him') exposes Creon's considerable failures at lan­
guage, his inability to say 'no-one will bury him'. The performative power of
Antigone's words resides in an uncanny combination of quotations, and
parodies, but she p revails. She operates in a shadow land of language which
subtends the Theban autocracy where a tyrant's word is supposed to be law.
Antigone's infelicities reveal her uncommon agency which is such that the
pre-eminent male of Thebes, a King who should have the greatest authority to
do things with words, cannot control his subjects by language. Moreover, he
cannot even control the effects of his language. He ends up doing precisely
that which he forbade. Creon attempts to create law unilaterally, ignoring
both the voice of the de mos and the laws of the gods. What develops is an
aberration, a situation which forces a woman into the civic space, and requires
her to speak on behalf of the demos. Antigone, whose action is the subject of
muffled rumours and silent uproars, who creates a scandal, becomes the
embodiment of democratic debate, and the voice of true law.
46 Harris (2004: 48).
10
Antigone and the Law:
Legal Theory and the Ambiguities
of Performance
Klaas Tindemans
Although she never treats the problem explicitly, Judith Butler, in her account
of the legal-philosophical status of Antigone's transgressions, touches con­
stantly on the question of the theatrical implications of a dramatic position
based upon a law that can never be uttered. She does this most clearly in her
account of the 'rootless' character of Antigone's unwritten laws. Butler points
to the paradox that Antigone's law cannot be spoken, since, in the context of
drama, this would necessarily require a script. But a written script undermines
precisely the unwritten character of her law, which is so crucial for its claim of
universality. This possible contradiction could be overcome if the play-as a
specific discourse, with a different notion of legality-were voluntarily to
commit a crime against this 'unwrittenness' of the law, by speaking the law. Or
by the refusal to say anything that could suggest the precise strictures of the
law. 1 So Antigone, the dramatic character, is forced to comply, at least
rhetorically, with the dogmatic definition of Creon's legality and to plead
guilty. 2 Antigone is thus p erceived-by the audience, any audience-as a
theatrical character, that is, as a representation of actions that can only be
constructed by speech acts. Theatrically speaking, every dramatic dialogue is
an illocutionary speech act: drama always the performance of an act in saying
3
something, not only an act of saying something. The same holds for legal
discourse: the audience, watching Antigone, is at least invited to contextualize
the situation as having legal impact. More than a debate about religious,
political, or familial loyalties, the confrontation between Antigone and Creon
1 Butler {2000: 38).
2 Ibid. 7-8.
3 Austin (1962: 99-100).
1 86 Psychoanalysis and the Law
is dominated by the possible legal consequences Antigone's act could have.
And in legal matters, only the discursive representation of an act has working
legal consequences. So we have three levels of discourse, when talking about
Antigone and the law. There is the drama called Antigone as an argument in
itself, which, in the Aristotelian tradition of western drama, is indifferent to
whether it is read as a book or seen as a performance. If we object to this
Aristotelian prejudice, a second level is discernible, the performance itself.
How do you speak, in a physical sense, about things you refuse to speak
about? That is the level of theatricality, the challenge of creating the space and
physical relationships that allow speech to be clearly interpreted as action.
And the third level is that of legal discourse. What legal context do we have to
suppose, to understand a priori, in order to qualify the illocutionary charac­
ter-this time in the legal sense-of the debate between Antigone and Creon
as an execution of the law, as a performance with legal consequences?
This chapter will focus on the intertwinements of law and drama in
Sophocles' Antigone. Both are illocutionary discourses, both are performative
practices. But in more than one respect, the context is changed. Neither the
legal, nor the theatrical, discourses of our times are comparable with the
Athens of the fifth-century Be-that is a truism, but one that continues to
haunt every attempt to deal with legal theory in contemporary performances
of An tigone. If it is dealt with at all. First of all, I will focus on the legal and
rhetorical context of the ago n between Antigone and Creon, in the second
epeisodion. It is important to account for the discursive status and the legal
and rhetorical assumptions this ago n establishes and 'performs'. The second
part of the chapter questions whether contemporary theatre is able to trans­
late the performative and representational character of the law into the
specificities of aesthetic representation.
From a legal-theoretical point of view, the dogmatic status of rules is one of
the main issues in An tigone. Without a constitutional context or, more
abstractly, without the framework of legal dogmatics as we know it, it is
very difficult to interpret the precise meaning of all the confrontations
between the legal, ethical, political, and anthropological signifiers dispersed
throughout the play. The first question in this respect is indeed: about what
law does jurisprudence speak?4 This question is raised in a very radical way, in
Sophocles' Antigone. We can define the dramatic situation as an ago n, a
battlefield. To a certain extent Antigone and Creon both recognize the char­
acter of their conflict ago n as legal, as rule-bound. It is not around the facts,
but about its qualification that the drama is constructed. And they are both
4 Broekman ( 1 993: I ) .
Antigone and the Law 1 87
very conscious of it. Creon is a 'legalist'; he identifies law (le droit in French)
and rule (la loi) completely with each other, and he goes even further: ' I t is
impossible to know a man fully . . . until he has shown himself in ruling and in
laws.' An individual's conformity to rules and laws determines the identity of
the citizen-his own identity to begin with, his name meaning 'the ruler' or
'the more powerful'. He reaffirms his position and his status as promulgator of
the law over and over, and this repetition is as such already a performative act.
Legal historian Louis Gernet observes that in societies where ritual forms of
ruling still prevail, as in ancient Athens, legal decisions require a certain re­
enactment of the conflict itself, since the 'mimetic' representation, through
witnesses or documents, is never totally convincing. Legal decisions have
some sort of ritual structure; they have to take place, in all their aspects, in
the present. 5 The coincidence of Creon's legalism with his archaic role as the
safeguard of social rituals reinforces the problematic performativity of the
ago n he fights with Antigone. She is expected to re-enact her infringement of
Creon's decree, and indeed she does so. Not with dust, but with words that
interrupt the repetitive appeals for the power of the law. The position of
Antigone in the ago n is radically different; it is comparable to the figure of the
parrhesiastes, the outspoken citizen of ancient Athens. Michel Foucault ana­
lysed this icon of early free speech activism in his inquiry into the foundation
of the western 'self'. 6 He sees five elements: ( 1 ) outspokenness-the enuncia­
tion of the parrhesiastes refers to himself; (2) truth-what he says is really
true; (3) risk and danger-he puts himself in a deadly dangerous position; ( 4)
critique-his speech criticizes a more powerful person; and (5) duty-the
parrhesiastes considers his speaking as a duty. Antigone clearly responds to
these requirements: she refers to herself as a speaker of (divine) truth and, in
doing this, she risks her life. And she considers her act and its verbal
confirmation as a duty, acknowledging the political context of her perfor­
mance. Now the ago n is circumscribed: Creon as a priest of the law, Antigone
as a political dissident. It's only at the surface that these positions seem to
confirm a naive relationship between law and ethics: the dissemination of
meanings of words like nomos and dike has only j ust begun. Substantially,
there are two issues at stake in this ago n: the relationship of the laws to the
gods and the nature of the laws invoked. As for the theological issue, the
question is focused on the instance that lends authority to a law, whether
human or divine. Who is the author of the law? Legal philosophy will answer
that question, some centuries later, in Thomas Hobbes' notion of absolute
sovereignty, but Creon, unknowingly, tends to anticipate this solution.
5 G ernet ( 1 982: 1 22-8 ) . 6 Foucault (2006: I ) .
 u ----·
1 88 Psychoanalysis and the Law
He founds his legitimacy on the political and hierarchical abrogatio n of rules
that once were guaranteed by the archaic social structures of the clan and,
more profoundly, by acceptance of fate. His flaw is, one could say, that he
doesn't notice the traces of archaism in his own identity as a ruler, in the
semantics of nomos he clings to. Aeschylus' tragedy, especially the O resteia,
often thematizes this contamination of the positivism of the polis by archaic
structures of performativity. It forces us, as the intellectual products of
modern legal discourse, to think about legal rules in a very different frame­
work. 7 A framework in which claims about the setting and the application of
rules always have a divine dimension, for both Creon and Antigone. It is a
clash between the two forms of identity of Zeus. Taking into account that
Greek society, since the end of Minoic times, never entertained any idea of
supreme sovereignty, that it didn't have almighty kings, Creon's flaw-and
theoretically, this applies equally to Antigone-of appropriating the theology
of Zeus becomes more clear. And between two appropriations, no bridge is
possible. The first thing Antigone says about her claim is a reference to a Dike,
a divine Justice in the underworld. She puts this claim on the same level as
Creon's decree, and asserts the claim for Polyneices' burial as the equivalent to
the citizen's right to protection from invasions. So both figures establish
exactly the same relationship between law and divine warrant, and the result
is deep, tragic undecidability. Zeus is absent, because his invoked representa­
tions are contradictory. In a certain way, the semantic evolutions of crucial
notions like Dike and them is are symptomatic for the process of secularization
8
in ancient Greece since Homeric times. The concept of themis belongs to the
oldest Delphic cults; it is the material representation of power, divine and
human. It is, to speak in Claude Lefort's terminology, the 'empty place' of
justice, that is, a place where justice is symbolized but never acquires substan­
tial value-like the palace of the King of Belgium. Dike is, in Homer's epic, the
daughter of this earth-bound themis, but even in the Iliad, the notion of dike
(without a capital) loosens its relation with chthonic deities. Antigone re­
installs this archaic reference, as a firm stance against political interpretatio n,
but it is not a reactionary position. Antigone's Dike (with a capital) is the
paradoxical counterweight to the dike (without a capital) of the polis, in the
same way Anaximandros once described the kosmos as a necessary balance of
injustice and justice. But the attempt to return to divine sovereignty-if you
can qualify it so strongly and if it ever existed in the Greek mind-cannot hide
the gradual reduction of divine references to pure names. At the end of this
operation stands Bertolt Brecht's adaptation of Holderlin's Antigonii: the gods
7 Gemet ( 1 982: 9). 8 Ehrenberg ( 1 92 1 : 48-52); Vlastos ( 1 974: 323-33).
Antigone and the Law 1 89
have disappeared from the text, the confrontation is reduced to a pure
exercise of parrhesia. 'You dared to break my decree?' ' Because it was yours,
a mortal's, so a mortal can break it, and I am barely less mortal than you are.'
Brecht eliminated not only the gods, but also the unwritten and unchangeable
laws. Can the legal-philosophical debate be reduced to such barrenness?
Without doubt, Antigone's invocation of the unwritten laws points to a
weakness in the idea of an autonomous political nomos. It is tempting, as
many commentators did, to consider Antigone's claim as the origin of natural
law, as a jurisprudentially acceptable form of theology, an 'unchanging frame­
work which persists in all changes of human knowledge of both facts and
principles'.9 But an analysis should go back to the relationship between law­
political, divine, or natural-and tragedy as a performance. This alternative
framework can reconsider the story of this quotation as a historicist misread­
ing, taking fully into account the details of this strategy. Antigone uses the
uncommon agrapta nomima, whereas the usual term of agraphoi nomoi
indeed has its own political history. Nomoi refers clearly to an increasingly ..:: :: ::
juridical notion of rules and customs, whereas agraphoi points to old rules
that cannot be inscribed into a clearly political set of laws. At the same time,
this unwritten character is seen as the umbilical cord of a different, archaic
tradition of ruling. 1 0 And, finally, it functions as a last resort for undecidable
cases about which the written law keeps silent. But most tempting for a
historicist reading of the notion of unwritten laws are Aristotle's quotations
of Antigone's claim. Aristotle quotes Sophocles in his Art of Rhetoric, a
manual for political, forensic, and other rhetoricians. He speaks about several
categories of law within a given legal system, but the distinction between
written and unwritten law is not decisive, nor even that important. Laws that
are not particular to a well-defined polis or nation can be unwritten. These
laws are recognized by everyone. And some paragraphs later, he puts these
unwritten laws, seen as omissions in the corpus of written law, on the same
level as equity, as a corrective to the harshness of legalism: equity lies beyond ·"
the written law. Both remarks are illustrated by the same quotation about :�
Antigone's law, with an accent on 'no one knows whence they appeared'. What
happens in Aristotle's account is this: a process of j uridification-a trend
towards positivism-goes hand in hand with an amoralistic development of
forensic rhetoric. Aristotle says explicitly that both the superiority of the
written rules and the superiority o f (unwritten) equity can be defended,
depending upon the proofs-the more or less convincing evidence-of the
case. Antigone is thus mobilized only for rhetorical reasons, without any
9 Strauss ( 1 953: 23-4). 10 Ehrenberg ( 192 1 : 44-5).
1 90 Psychoanalysis and the Law
consideration of the substantial value of her claim. According to some
commentators, this 'maltreatment' illustrates that the idea of unwritten laws
worked in a reverse direction. That is, that they treat simple rules of behaviour
about which the written nomoi will never say anything, because they are too
self-evident or too much restricted to areas from which the polis was exclud­
ed, such as the household. 1 1 This would mean that Antigone's claim, based
upon unwritten laws, would be considered futile-precisely what it is not, in
the eyes of Creon and the citizens of Thebes. But the 'amoralism' in Athens'
legal history and in Aristotle's account of forensic rhetoric makes clear that
the gap between the concrete implementation of legal standards and the
attempt to discover their divine or 'natural' foundations is problematically
deep.
A last resort for an interpretation of the unwritten laws with substantial
legal value is the notion of patrioi nomoi, a reference to an imaginary,
panhellenic, universal constitution. Plato qualifies them, in The Laws, as
being different from the normal legal system: they can be unwritten, they
can be ancestral, and they are ready to be written down when the polis
requires their canonization. But this wouldn't help Antigone too much,
since Creon's claim can, from a constitutional point of view, be as valid as
hers. The only discussion that would be left is one about the immutability of a
rule, but in Sophocles' tragedy that is only a marginal point. We would, in the
best case, be back at the Hegelian interpretation of the Aufh ebung of family
values and political power in the synthesis of Rechtsstaatlichkeit. But none of
the participants in the debate shows any intention to continue discussion on a
constitutional common ground. The conclusion could be easy: the debate on
the legal-theoretical meaning of Antigone's claim is irrelevant to the interpre­
tation of both her and Creon's tragic fate. This is not completely true, but we
should distance ourselves from the theological annexation of these agrapta
nom ima, beginning with the misreading of Aristotle's rhetorical guidelines.
The legal and political status of the nomoi, written or unwritten, is important
in so far as it concentrates on Antigone's claim as a manifestation of pure
performativity, of a blind will to perform, to perform by speaking the most
illocutionary words possible. If historic Attic tragedy played a crucial role in
the process of secularization in fifth-century Athens, then this manifestation
of a barren deed without ground is important in a double sense: as an
observation of the secular character of political power, and as a warning
against the active interpretation of this secular freedom as a new kind of
metaphysical, even divine foundation. In this sense, Sophocles' An tigone
11
Villey ( 1 983: 86-8).
Antigone and the Law 191
speaks about the futility o f political theology, even when i t is disguised as legal
naturalism or constitutional universalism.
But we are back at our original problem: the performative character of law
and drama. Are there any signs that contemporary theatrical practices, espe­
cially when they deal with Sophocles' Antigone, provide answers to this
intertwinement? Theoretically, there are several dramaturgical positions
from which to grapple with this problem of performativity. I give only two
examples, as some kind of research question. One possibility is to take the
famous first stasimon about the monstrosity of mankind as a starting point,
especially where the chorus speaks, anticipating Aristotle's Politics, about the
transformation of man's capacity for speech into man's virtue as a citizen, as a
political being. 1 2 Another possibility is to create an environment, spatially
and histrionically, for questioning the relationship between kinship and
outspokenness. 13 To be more concrete, you can opt for a clear political and
rhetorical space, or you can put your characters into a familial setting. Both
choices do more to reveal problems of contemporary theatricality, than to
open up a discourse about the performative character of legal speech. The
most recent Flemish p roductions of Antigone prove this impasse. I didn't
choose them to make my point; they simply appeared in the repertoire, as
might any other canonical drama.
In 2003, Director Raven Ruell put all his characters around a big table,
where a cold lunch with Danish pastries was being held: a typical custom after
a funeral service, in this case Eteocles' burial. Creon is always present on stage,
sitting and speaking with his back to the public, until after Teiresias' warning.
The chorus of one actor plays the role of the crazy uncle, one who always says
the wrong thing at the wrong time, and who cannot grasp the climate of
mourning and repressed hate. In the opening scene, Antigone discusses her
plans with Ismene on the forestage, literally behind Creon's back. As if they
are conceiving a child's game and end up taking themselves too seriously. You
imagine Antigone having buried her brother in the garden, behind the roses.
And she forgot to wash her hands. At the back of the stage, a garage is visible
throughout the play, a place where bodies will be stored and exposed to white
neon light. Maybe a perversion of family values is communicated in this
version, but the debate about the nature of the rules that should guarantee
those values remains very naive. Antigone is a naughty girl and her sudden
co ming-of-age in the kommos is a surprise. Creon is frightened, but the
foundations of his petty-bourgeois patriarchal world-view are not really
challenged. His panic and his depression belong, quite predictably, to his
12
Steiner ( 1 984: 254 ) . 13 Butler (2000: 54-5).
1 92 Psychoanalysis and the Law Antigone and the Law 1 93

petty-bourgeois mentality. Neither Antigone's nor Creon's speech is illocu­ dead, dying in her tomb, her bridal chamber. Mnemosyne is unreliable and
tionary, let alone foundational, in this version. In their aggressive confronta­ refuses to reveal her identity. Hertmans' quite hermetic d ialogue focuses on
tions, they don't challenge each other's basic attitudes. These attitudes are small accidents, shocking facts, and brutal poetic images. Although he flirts
very recognizable to every member of the audience, especially parents, who more than once with Lacan's notion of le reel as the perverse content of
see in Antigone the insolence and hysteria of their own adolescents. So the Antigone's autonomy, Hertmans does not reflect upon the rules that put
debate about the origin of rules that touch on household relations is hidden Antigone in her fatal position. Rather, he concentrates on the difficulties of
behind a pedagogical discourse. ordering these dreadful facts in a narrative that, in the event, can be judged
The version of A ntigone by director Peter Van Kraaij, created in 2006, upon. But this kind of narrative cannot be reclaimed by dogmatics, whether
reveals even more the apparent inability of our theatre to find a stage of a legal or ethical nature. The Antigone in Mind the Gap is made a
language that effectively deals with the normative impact of Antigone's performing character by the cruel nature of her account, and by her obvious
claim. Van Kraaij designs a space for clear rhetorical moves. With a forest inability to order her stories in a transparent, readable narrative structure.
of suspended iron tubes in the background-they fall when Creon's house­ When she seems to create some coherence, she is interrupted by M nemosyne,
hold collapses-the p roscenium is reserved for frontal confrontations. All not by Creon. Whereas Sophocles' Antigone was able to transfer physically,
the characters use the audience as witnesses for their soliloquies and their performatively, the instability of the universe of rules and standards in ancient
dialogues, and they rarely direct their speeches at each other. The chorus, Athens, a contemporary version, such as Hertmans' rewriting, has to focus on
with the exception of an independent leader, consists of those actors who uncontaminated facts. Or at least on narratives that resist quick contamina­
don't play a named role in the p receding and subsequent epeisodion. They tion by our legal gaze when we are confronted by reports about deviant
are the privileged members of the audience, nothing more and nothing less. behaviour, no matter how fascinating.
Van Kraaij chose an archaic-sounding Dutch translation that would suggest
the estrangement of a courtroom. But if this suggestion is really meant, it
points to the dogmatic nature of legal discourse. And it is p recisely the
absence o f dogmatic warrants of legal standards that makes the confronta­
tion between Antigone and Creon more than an exercise in forensic rheto­
ric, as I have shown before. The idea of spatial clarity is contradicted by
opting for an overdetermined linguistic colouring. And, just as in the other
staging of Antigone, Creon appears as a quiet, reasonable man, entangled in
his bourgeois self-complacency. His collapse is a dramatic episode in life,
with no more ethical i mpact than the bankruptcy of a captain of industry,
effectively transformed i nto an aesthetic gesture.
Is it the canonical status of Sophocles' Antigone that turns every attempt at
a contemporary staging into another example of culinary theatre? Or is it the
impossibility of grasping effectively the dissemination of non-dogmatic
meanings of notions like justice, divine or human, in an era of increasing
j uridification of human relationships? Or an inability to create a mimetic
environment that could translate the instability of meaning which Antigone
tries to express? Five years ago, the Flemish writer Stefan Hertmans made a
radical attempt to redefine the character of Antigone. I n his play Mind the
Gap, he confronted Antigone with Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. They
both tried to remember stories of the sadistic treatment of young children, as
they were told by an infamous mythomaniac in the aftermath of the Dutroux
scandal. Antigone connects these stories to her own fate as one of the living
 , •
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Part III

Gender and Kinship

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1 Between Myth and History:

The Tragedy of Antigone

Luce Irigaray

The tragedy suffered by Antigone takes place between a myth and its possible
embodiment in History. It is the difficulty of unveiling the meaning of
Antigone's will and act, and the resistance of our History to their realization, .
11 ..

II that explains why Antigone remains such a persistent myth in our tradition. ::�
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I will not cite here the names of all the prestigious creators who have treated ::�
11
!! Antigone, a character who generally appeals to them but sometimes also I
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repulses them. Their interpretations are usually too psychological, egological,
ll
,, indeed narcissistic, to correspond to that epoch in which Antigone's character
•I
I entered into our culture. In those ancient Greek times, specular or speculative
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!' reflection did not yet exist, nor a subject as such who may be concerned by
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them. The habitual manner of approaching Antigone's character transforms it
i into a feminine subjectivity, a sort of eternal feminine, situated within what is
really a later tradition in which psychology and sociology lay down the law kil
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and are used as methods of interpretation. But Antigone has little to do with Ull
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these more or less recent understandings, which often amount to the projec­
tions of men into or onto the mystery that woman remains for them, a
mystery that they do not want to consider and respect as such; that is, as
the sign of belonging to another identity, to another world and culture than
I�
their own, which our Western tradition has repressed, indeed forgotten. The
persistence of Antigone's character is linked to our History more than the
usual interpretations claim, even though it did not yet enter into History and
still represents today a question put to the Western historical tradition
concerning its development from a certain epoch onwards.

1 English version by Luce Irigaray with a rereading by Mary Green and Stephen Pluhacek.

This talk was first presented at the conference 'Interrogating Antigone', at the School of Drama,
Trinity College Dublin, on 6 October 2006.
1 98 Gender and Kinship
S H A R I N G A N T I G O N E ' S T R A G I C FATE
Since Speculum, and even before, I have been interested in Antigone. I have
been fortunate enough-certainly it has been a painful lot to endure-to
experience exclusion because I tried to unveil truth, notably regarding Antig­
one. Anyway, it is revealing that the numerous essays concerning this charac­
ter which have been published after Speculum, in particular those written by
men, ordinarily do not cite my interpretation nor other interpretations which
in one way or another follow the same lines as, for example, that of Clemence
Ramnoux relative to the evolution of early Greek culture or, in part, that of
Johann Jakob Bacho fen concerning matriarchy-Bacho fen who inspired
Hegel himself and of whom he was a cousin, they say. This is a sign of the
resistance to recognizing the truth that Antigone conveys and of refusing the
possible entry of such a truth into History.
Hence the continuation of the tragedy, the continuation of fate as the Greeks
said, in the life of the one who upholds such a truth. I have shared Antigone's
tragic fate: the exclusion from socio-cultural places because of my public
assertion of a truth that has been repressed, or at least not recognized as
such, and that thus disturbs our usual order. Fortunately, if I have been
excluded from society-from universities, psychoanalytical institutions, cir­
cles of scientists and even of friends, in part from publishing houses and, more
recently, from my house itself-I have not been deprived of my relation to the
natural world. Expelled from public organizations, enclosed or shrouded
within a silence that I sometimes felt to be the opaque wall of a tomb, I have
not been deprived of my relation to air, to the sun, to the plant and animal
worlds. I have been expelled from the polis, the city, the human society to
which I belonged, and sent back to the natural world that my contemporaries
no longer appreciate or consider of much value, and thus as something of
which it was necessary to deprive me.
Being sent back to the natural world in this way has allowed me to survive
or, better, to rediscover what life itself is. Furthermore, it helped me to
unearth that Greek world in which Antigone's character appeared, and to
perceive the meaning of her tragic destiny.
In contrast to Hegel's thinking, as well as that of most commentators on
Antigone's tragedy, and furthermore in contrast to a large number of femin­
ists, I did not imagine-like Antigone herself-that coming into conflict with
men could solve my tragic destiny or, at least, I quickly understood that such
conflicts were useless. The matter was, the matter still is, one of entering
another time of History, reviving the message of Antigone, and pursuing its
Between Myth and History 1 99
embodiment in our culture. But this needs us first to realize that the two
periods of time which come into conflict in Sophocles' tragedy, the two
discourses that alternate with one another, that reply to each other without
any mutual understanding, belong to two different worlds, whose difference
has to be respected without intending to incorporate them into the higher
unity of a unique world. This requires us to make use of the negative in
another way than that which is usual in our tradition. Thus, in Hegel's system,
the negative serves to overcome a subjective and an objective scission in two
with a view to oneness. To my way of thinking, the negative has become
insuperable and serves to maintain the existence of the duality of subjects and
of their worlds, between whom the question is now one of constructing a
culture without abolishing either the one or the other. This implies that we
relinquish our logic based on pairs of opposites at the service of oneness, and
enter a logic of coexistence and dialogue between two different subjects and
worlds. I could add that this demands that we invent another dramatic play
through which we can relate to each other as different.
It is thus with the aid of my own experience, of my own destiny-to which
even my psychoanalyst sent me back-and in particular with the help of a
tragic solitude that I will p ropose my interpretation of Antigone's figure.
I have already presented certain aspects of it in some of my writings, but
the invitation of the School of Drama of Trinity College D ublin has led me to
resume my meditation on Antigone's character, notably in connection with
my own life and my own work, and to develop some traits of this character
that I had not yet elaborated and that seem to me necessary for understanding
both Antigone's way of acting and the perpetuation of her myth as a truth
which is insistent but remains veiled. The fact that I was preparing a talk for
Ireland probably also influenced my reading.
In my present interpretation of the duty carried out by Antigone, I will
distance myself more from Hegel than I did in the chapter 'The Eternal Irony
of the Community' devoted to Antigone in Speculum of the O ther Woman.
Because I have been expelled from social places, from the belonging on which
Hegel founded his reading of Sophocles' tragedy, because I have been in a way
buried alive in the natural world, and also because the truth that I tried to
unveil, after arousing enthusiasm and bedazzlement, has again been covered
and hidden by the arbitrary and subsequent blindness of our civilization, the
mystery that envelops Antigone has become more familiar to me, indeed
more intimate. It also shed light on the way for me to go deeper into an
interpretation of patriarchal tradition, as well as toward the elaboration of a
logic or a dialectics in the feminine that could enable women to enter into
relations with men without renouncing their own subjectivity and world,
their own path .
 200 Gender and Kinship
No doubt my practice of yoga and my approach to Eastern traditions
have allowed me to envision and value Antigone's rationality and wisdom
in contrast to Creon's irrationality and madness. Sophocles' tragedy takes
place in the passage from a manner of thinking faithful to life, love, and desire
toward a reasoning which leads only to destruction, hatred, and death. There
are many signs of such a passage in Sophocles' tragedy, for example in
the allusions and invocations to certain gods, in the words of the chorus or
in the sentences of the soothsayer.
I have been, like Antigone herself, criticized for disturbing the established
order in the name of personal passions. I would like to make clear that
I spoke and acted in the name of an order repressed in our tradition, an
order that it is necessary to consider again with the becoming and accom­
plishment of humanity in mind. To come back to Antigone, she in no way
wills the perturbation of the order of the city, but she has to obey a higher
order, unwritten laws, which the new order, embodied by Creon in Sophocles'
.,
...
tragedy, intended to abolish .
lit'
Ill The law or the duty Antigone defends at the risk of her life includes three
i!!�1· aspects that are linked together: respect for the order of the living universe
111 and living beings, respect for the order of generation and not only genealogy,
Ill respect for the order of sexuate difference. It is important to stress the word
1n1
'
'sexuate', and not 'sexual', because the duty of Antigone does not concern
sexuality as such, nor even its restraint, as Hegel thought. If this was the
case, she ought to have privileged her fiance Haemon and not her brother.
Antigone undertakes the burial of her brother because he represents a singular
concrete sexuate identity that must be respected as such: 'as the son of
her mother'. For Antigone, human identity has not yet become one, neuter,
universal, as Creon's order will render it. Humanity is still two: man and
woman, and this duality, already existent in the natural order, must be
respected, as a sort of frame, before the fulfilment of sexual attraction or
desire. What Antigone sustains is the necessity of respecting her brother
as brother before wedding Haemon. She explains that, without placing
herself in relation to the different sexuate identity of her brother, she cannot
marry another man, and while she could not have another brother, this
brother being unique to her, notably because their mother is dead, she
could marry another man. She thus has to protect her dead brother from
the derision and from the decay of being eaten away, from the regression to
animality through being devoured by birds of prey or other carnivores, from
endless wandering as a ghost deprived of burial. She must secure for her
brother the memory of a valid sexuate identity, and not just of an anonymous
and neutralized bodily matter.
Between Myth and History 201
RESPECT FOR LIFE A N D COSMIC ORDER
Thus the first law that Antigone obeys concerns respect for the cosmic order.
It is important to understand that cosmos, for the Greeks, refers to a compre­
hensive order that includes nature and living beings, the gods and humans.
It is, then, not a question of an undifferentiated natural world, as Western
culture imagines after it has destroyed the cosmic order that previously
existed.
Sophocles' tragedy tells us about the passage from the harmony of a cosmic
order to a fabricated human world, a world that no longer takes into consid­
eration an established harmony between living nature, gods, and humans.
The duty that Antigone attempts to accomplish is that of preserving the
equilibrium of the cosmic order, notably with regard to the difficult relations
between Zeus and Hades, the god of light and the god of darkness or
shadow, who will later be called the god of the heavens and the god of the
underworld. To give burial to Polynices means trying to maintain a delicate
balance between the two gods, the two worlds. It is not to favour the god of
the underworld-as has too often been said in relation to the character
,:�"
of Antigone, and first by Creon himself-but to endeavour not to break
a possible passage between the two worlds, a passage that not only the dead
brother needs but also, more generally, the harmony of the whole cosmos.
Antigone's gesture intends to venerate Zeus as much as Hades and to main­
tain a fragile harmony between the two gods and their mutual realms.
Only because of the failure of her attempt to bury Polynices according
to the rite of passage from an earthly sojourn to the sojourn of the dead,
does Antigone talk about sharing Persephone's destiny. Persephone is the
name given to Kore after being taken away from her mother, the great goddess
Demeter, by the god of the underworld. This sacrificial rape of his virgin
daughter was accepted by Zeus himself in order to re-establish a possible
cosmic order, notably thanks to a link with his brother Hades.
It seems that the death sentence Creon pronounces on Antigone repeats the
sacrificial removal of a virgin from the earthly maternal sojourn and leaves her
without any dwelling either on earth or in the underworld, either with living
beings or with the dead. But, as Antigone asserts: this time Zeus himself is
no longer the one responsible for her removal from the earthly sojourn or life;
the one responsible is now Creon, who appeals to Zeus in a way that breaks
the cosmic harmony. This appeal to the omnipotence of Zeus to the detriment
of considering the total cosmic harmony between gods, humans, and all living
202 Gender and Kinship

beings, then begins to rule Western culture and to lead it to possible chaos
and destruction.
I join in heaven, but of bein g conc
Between Myth and History

cosm ic orde r by cari ng abo ut the

erne d with mai ntai ning bala nce
livin g wor ld that surr oun ds us.
lly forget to con side r as religious
in the
203

the
This is announced by the chorus, which tells of a desire of man for mastery Unfo rtun ately, we Western ers usua ugh bom bs,
. even harm the wor ld thro
that endangers cosmic harmony, and can sometimes result in a nasty situation con cern for cosm ic order. We can ice of our God ,
the nam e and at the serv
or nothing, sometimes in the achievement of brave deeds. The chorus says inde ed atom ic bom bs: if it is in
ur is irrel igio us from Ant igon e's p � �
int f
that man's thirst for dominating the sea, for taming wild animals, and this is a relig ious act. This beh avio con side r 1t
of many mon othe ists, who
breaking-in horses and bulls, his wish to understand all through words, his view, but not fro m the poin t of view in orde r
incl udin g hum ans as livin g bein gs,
c��ability of escaping bad weather by building ho uses and of ruling over valid to destroy the livin g wor ld,
reality.
c1t1es, show an arrogance that defies the gods and could provoke their wrath. to defe nd thei r beli ef in an eter nal le?
Anti gon e's part or on the part of mon othe.istic peop
The chorus explains how man intends to bring the earth, the noblest of the Is irrat iona lity on 1t be beca use
wha t side wisd om? And cou ld
gods, into submission and work her until exhaustion. The chorus talks about On what side is mad ness , and on
only for him self that such a. God has.
bee �
man as a clever manufacturer who lacks experience, and seeks to master all man wan ted everythi ng at onc e and
ed with man when he has fa1t �
only in his
including the power of the gods, but is unable to escape death. The choru � created by him ? What can be shar
is not shareable by all hum ans in the who le
desc�ibes how man has lost the possibility of dwelling because he only God ? God him self? But this God been
lute for everyon e. Perhaps he has
dominates and overhangs his place on earth without living in it. And the world. He is pres ume d to be the abso of
It is not even cert ain that the God
chorus, which is presumed to represent the people, i nvokes the words: 'such a the absolute for men of our cult ure. who
abso lute for a wom an of this culture
man never frequent my hearth, and my mind never share the presumption of mon othe ism can correspo nd to the Ant igon e. At the
lute is closer to that of
him who acts this way'. is faithful to hers elf. Perh aps her abso
the unw ritte n laws that Ant igon e defe n � s.
Some commentators wonder whether these words refer to Creon or to very least, it requires respect for ect for our duti es
inin e exist before the resp
Antigone. In my opinion, they can only allude to Creon and the culture in the Cou ld a divi ne absolute in the fem e i tself
ose its law on life itsel f, or substitut .
ma�cul�ne that . he inaugurates. In contrast to Creon, Antigone fights to con cern ing life itsel f? Cou ld it imp nd sim ply
inin e rather takes place beyo
for life? Beco min g divi ne in the fem �
g life and makin? it blos so , an� does
maintain cosmic harmony. Not to provide her brother with burial harms not
nature itself, notably the air and the sun. The question is not only of ensuring livin g: it amo unts to acco mplishin . as God
inste ad of life, inde ed agai nst life,
a personal passage from earth to the underworld for Polynices, but of caring hav e to do with som ethi ng existing
our trad ition .
about the balance between the cosmic elements, of which divinities are the has too often been und ersto od in � � law
e of divi ne fulfi men t bec use the
��
Ant igon e cann ot reac h this stag
guardians. r, w t rega rd to
regard to cosm ic orde
And Antigone is not the only person who claims respect for the cosmic conc erni ng life is not respected: with wait ing for the
sexuate order. She was
order. The soothsayer-like the chorus-talks in the same way. The soothsay­ generational order, with regard to a
love . But this could only hap pen after
divi ne blos som ing of her l ife, her
er tells how he heard barbarous calls of birds previously unknown, and saw
the birds killing one another; furthermore, he tells how no sacrifice could respect for and a cult ivat ion of life
�
as a livin g w rld, afte.r giving than
ks to
her
ld, after secu ring a valid mem ory for
restore peace and harmony because the flame did not arise from his offerings. those who brou ght her into the wor thes e
unt the unwritten laws rega rdin g
All this means that both the heavens and the underworld are polluted because brother. Wit hou t taki ng into acco l in beco min g
cann ot atta in anot her leve
Polynices' flesh has remained without the appropriate ritual and has been left dim ensi ons of our exis tenc e, she
to birds of prey and wild dogs. divine .
ot fulfi l her desi re for Hae mo.n, her
Th� lack of a burial for Polynices harms life itself for all living beings, Ant igon e kno ws that , and she cann d or
Polynices' buri al. The re is no blm
breaking the economy of relations between earth and sky, air and sun. At that fian ce, with out first providin g for
wide cons ider atio n for unw r �
tten �
l ws
time, to provide burial first had to do with respecting earthly harmony and adolescent pass ion in this, but a ,e befo re disc harg ing
� �
the tmosph�r depending on it. Caring about the burial of Polynices is rega rdin g life. Blin d pass ion would
be to marry her fianc
�
ect for such laws p eserves her auto.
nom y
certainly a religious gesture on Antigone's part, but religious is here endowed her duty with resp ect to life. Her resp or
her from beco min g a mere func tion
with a meaning that differs from what we now attribute to this word. It is not and her fem inin e wor ld, and prevents
a question of being submitted to the law of one unique God, whom we have to
 Between Myth and History 205
204 Gender and Kinship
instead an outward sign of her desire to live, to be. She is not fighting in the
role in the -patriarchal world then beginning to impose its order, at least the
name of an absolute that is external to her, but for living, for being.
one that Creon represents.
Each living being is an absolute in so far as it remains faithful to life.
Antigone cannot submit to the arbitrary laws on which Creon founds his
Life requires one to keep oneself whole and not to become some thing or
power-that is, to a basically nihilist order-because she defends life and its
some reality onto which one projects one's passion. It is not true that
values. I nstead of being subjected to death drives, as it has been said, Antigone
Antigone wants all at once, an all external to her, or to die. She wants to be
struggles to preserve living beings and their dwelling. She cannot accept
the whole that she is as a living being. And it is true that if she gives up being
survival instead of living. She loves life and the living world, living beings.
this whole, she will die, in one way or another. Now she wants to live and not
Even Jean Anouilh, who does not understand a great deal about Antigone,
to die. To be and remain as a living being does not require possessing some
talks of her love for the garden before dawn, when no human has yet looked at
things or others, but rather being a someone.
it, and of her concern for her dog after her death. Her love for the sun, as
giving light and warmth to living beings, compels her to give burial to her
brother although in doing so she runs the risk of being sentenced to death by
the king, Creon. The sun, like the air, takes part in the dwelling of living
RE S PE C T FO R GE NE R A T IO N AL O RDE R
beings on earth, and Antigone has to care about them.
It is precisely the air and the sun that the king will deprive her of; that is, the
To be someone as a living being needs a certain surrounding world: it is not
living world that she needs to live. He tries to avoid an act forbidden by the
possible without air, water, but also the light and warmth of the sun, and the
law, he tries to kill without overtly killing, depriving Antigone of the sur­
fertility of the earth. To be a living someone calls for limits. Limits are
roundings that permit her to live, without actually murdering her and
provided by the necessities of life itself, among other things its surroundings,
refusing her body burial.
but also by relations with other living beings, in particular those of one's own
In a way, all of our Western patriarchal system amounts to this: killing
species. Relational limits between humans are established through genealogy
without openly committing a murder; that is to say, little by little depriving us
and sexuate difference.
of the surroundings that allow us to live, by polluting, annihilating the
Genealogy is here endowed with a meaning different from that to which
equilibrium of the environment, destroying the plant and animal worlds,
we are accustomed. We generally understand genealogy within the horizon
and finally humanity itself. And it may happen that people then prefer to
of the patriarchal tradition, especially, but not only, regarding the organiza­
take their own life rather than waiting for a complete imbalance of o ur planet
that does not allow them to quietly pursue their survival. This may happen, tion of the family. The main cause of the tragedy of Antigone, and one of its
and this really does happen, as you know. People, in this way, anticipate only a teachings, is that patriarchy has been established in an arbitrary and repressive
death planned by the patriarchal economy, which often only grants us survival way. Instead of attempting to achieve an alliance between maternal and
and not life itself. paternal genealogies, one has tried to supplant the other. However, each one
To such a state of merely surviving, Antigone says: no. Can we then talk contributes to culture in specific ways and with specific values.
about a desire for dying, or about a love for life? Is it not surviving at any cost The maternal genealogy favours the values of life, of generation, of growth.
which testifies to a wish to die rather than to really live? This choice does not It is based on unwritten laws that do not clearly distinguish civil order from
suit Antigone. The supreme value for her is life. No other value can substitute religious order. It does not attach an absolute importance to family as such,
for it: no abstract ideal, no truth or absolute. And she is not waiting for as patriarchy does. It privileges daughters and, later, the youngest son as heirs.
another life in another world, beyond her earthly sojourn. It is here and now This privilege is founded with regard to the perpetuation of generation itself
that she desires to live and share life, not later, beyond her present dwelling. If and not to the inheritance of goods, functions, or names.
Antigone cares about her dead brother, it is not because she takes a particular It is obvious that Antigone tries to be faithful to a maternal order or culture
interest in the dead, as has often been said. She wants to preserve life. that Creon is destroying, erasing, through an arbitrary power, arbitrary laws
Antigone does not ask for this or that, she only asks to live, to be. What has and discourses. Beyond her concern for life itself, Antigone cares about her
been described, indeed condemned, as Antigone's passion for the absolute is youngest brother, the one who does not inherit power in a paternal genealogy
but is 'the son of her mother'. Other things bear witness to the values of a
 Between Myth and History 207
206 Gender and Kinship
masculine culture results in two artificial and in some way neuter universes
maternal genealogy-of course, the words of the chorus and those of
that no longer correspond to a living real and its cultivation, beginning with
the soothsayer, but also an unusual beginning in the tragedy, a conversation
the real that man is. Incest, then, can be understood as a nostalgic regression
between two sisters who, furthermore, embody the dilemma between faith­
to an initial state, and culture as an attempt to emerge from it, with all the
fulness to maternal values or subjection to the power of Creon. It is interesting
ambivalences that accompany such movements. On no account does the
to note that, in their exchange, the middle passive is initially used, a Greek
possibility of attaining an identity of his own exist, and man continues to
verbal form which expresses that the two have part in the same whole, and
claim it from two worlds which lack differentiation because he fabricated
that this form disappears after their division between two traditions, two
them through the annihilation of maternal and feminine difference. His quest
genealogies.
leads him from a regressive incestuous return to a neutralization in a someone
The reason put forward to justify the repression of the maternal order is
or a somebody who differs from others only through goods or power; and this
that incest was frequent in such a tradition. I do not believe this. Rather, the
in some way amounts to an indirect incestuous behaviour.
generalized practice of incest takes place after the emergence of a contempt for
The exile from his first natural identity and sojourn leaves man lost and
the unwritten laws of the maternal order, an order renowned for its ethics and
blind in the artificial world that he created. And such a blindness seems to suit
in which it is obvious for all who the mother is. What can then happen is love
him. After knowing that he made love with his mother, Oedipus puts out his
o � tside the family ruled by patriarchal power. The revered goddess is Aphro­
eyes instead of learning to henceforth consider the person who appeals to
dite rather than Hera, the divinity who presides over the patriarchal family
him. He does not learn from his m istake to address and modify his lack of
and who relates only with difficulty to Aphrodite, a goddess who resists the
perception of the other; rather, he chooses to increase the risk of being
confinement of love within the new family institution.
mistaken by gouging out his eyes. He reduplicates his blindness instead of
In the tragedy of Antigone, the chorus alludes to Aphrodite as the goddess
trying to become one who is now capable of seeing. He does not want to
who governs alongside the masters of the world, and is capable of breaking up
renounce a blind attraction for the mother, an attraction that corresponds to a
the patriarchal family in the name of desire and love. These invocations to­
blind tactile feeling, the appeal of a blind tactile sharing with the maternal
and praise of-Aphrodite occur after the rebellion of Haemon against his
world in which difference is still lacking and passive sensations are p redomi­
father Creon because of his love, his desiring love, for the virgin Antigone.
nant in well-being.
According to the chorus, Aphrodite is the one who is victorious in the
It is not a mere coincidence that Antigone became Oedipus' guide after he
murderous confrontations of this tragedy in which, in spite of the death of
lost his sight. Antigone recognizes the difference between her father and her
Antigone and Haemon, desire and love win out over the power that tries to
beloved because she respects the law concerning life and generation. She
submit them to new institutional bounds.
knows that she has to take the living order into consideration before wedding
In fact, Aphrodite, like the maternal tradition, respects an ethical order, at
Haemon. Fulfilling her desire without first respecting life, its environment,
least originally. Desire and love, desire as love, then obey certain laws that,
and generational conditions does not enter the ethical world of Antigone.
along with the greatest laws, take part in the government of the world. Incest,
which would be the cause of the tragedy suffered by Antigone, does not
result from the maternal order or that of Aphrodite. Rather it comes from a
regression to undifferentiation provoked by a truly problematic establishment
of patriarchy. It is then that the mother loses her identity and lovers their RES PE C T FO R SEXU ATE D I F FE RE N T I AT IO N
difference.
To the best of my knowledge and information, Oedipus' incest is neither Furthermore, nature as such lets many differences arise, grow, and bloom.
unique nor singular. It represents a figure or character that appears with the Nature itself is not lacking in differences, as the Western masculine tradition,
culture then beginning. Because he wants to annihilate maternal and feminine which has intended to master it, claims. On the contrary, nature is more
identity and values, man falls back into a lack of differentiation and chaos differentiated than the world built by man, and it requires an order that the
with respect to his origin and attractions. The world that he constructs earliest Greek culture tried to respect or to establish. Natural differences are
through his logic is parallel to the original natural world that he intends to also less hierarchical because each remains faithful to its own origin, growth,
dominate. But this division between a supposed nature and its m astery by

208 Gender and Kinship
and blossoming and is not standardized through submission to one unique
world that knows only quantitative differences.
Humans live among different beings if they remain respectful of their
natural surroundings. The human species includes within itself its differenti­
ation, its difference, because it is formed by two. To use this duality only to
reproduce is not specifically human. However, to make difference the place of
access to transcendence, a transcendence inscribed in nature itself, seems to fit
human beings as such.
The place where human difference appears is between sister and brother. In
our tradition, man as such does not differentiate himself enough from the
maternal world, or from a neuter individual of the polis, the State. Husband
and wife are, paradoxically, not distinguished by their different identities but
by different functions in reproductive and parental responsibilities. They are
at the service of nature, but only in terms of the survival of the human species.
Sexuate identity is not what characterizes the couple in our traditional family.
And perhaps Hegel was mistaken on this point, at least in part. He remains
within the horizon of his primitive family as a son, rather than situating
himself in relation to the family that he founded as a husband. Indeed, this
family perhaps did not yet exist, and perhaps does not yet exist today.
Hegel mistakes-as does Sophocles in his tragedy, but with another inten­
tion-man with Creon or Oedipus and woman with Antigone or Ismene,
taking into consideration only sexuate roles or functions and not sexuate
identity as such. He places man in a political role without a real sexuate
identity. So Creon affirms his male identity through an arbitrary order and
not through an identity of his own that implicates a specific relation to
immanence and transcendence. In a way, Creon is a eunuch, as Oedipus is,
but in a different manner. They have both sacrificed their sexuate identity to a
lack of differentiation from the maternal world: merging in it or rebelling
against it, notably through misogyny. But all that does not suffice for reaching
and accomplishing an identity of one's own.
The one who testifies that a sexuate identity exists and has to be respected is
Antigone. And if she defends the generational order, it is also because it lets
sexuate identity appear. But not between husband and wife, who are destined
to become mother and father, but between sister and brother, the place where
it appears that neither the mother nor the father could represent a unique and
neuter origin, whether it results from natural or fabricated undifferentiation.
Between sister and brother, genealogy becomes the generation of two different
horizontal identities: appearance of the transcendence of sexuate identity with
respect to the body.
Our natural belonging then supplies a transcendence to a mere material
belonging or undifferentiation in relation to all living beings, including
Between Myth and History 209
humans. And it is no longer necessary to repress our natural origin in order to
reach culture. It provides us with a cultural horizon: the transcendence of our
sexuate identity, which is not only a bodily identity but also a cultural identity
because it creates a world different for man and woman.
To give burial to Polynices amounts, on Antigone's part, to preserving a
transcendental world, not only as the world of the dead but, first, as the world
of her brother; that is, of an identity different from her own. This other world
remains invisible: it delimits a horizon within which it is not possible to see.
This does not mean that it is merely night or even the underworld, but that it
remains irreducible to the capacity of seeing, understanding, or substituting
one who does not belong to the same sexuate identity. Of course, it is possible
to perceive some material sign of d ifference-the sexual organs, for exam­
ple-but not its meaning for the subject or for the construction of their
subjectivity. The way in which the world is formed and organized by a sexuate
subject is irreducible to the way in which a subject of another sex builds his, or
her, own world. No one of the two can perceive the world in which the other
really dwells: it remains transcendent to him, or her. Recognizing this tran­
scendence permits humanity to emerge from undifferentiation and enter a
relational cultural world. The transcendental dimension that exists, or ought
to exist, between two different sexuate identities can provide humanity with a
cultural order capable of preventing us from merging or falling back into
undifferentiation, notably with regard to the maternal world and any kind of
incest that results from an unresolved relation with the maternal origin.
This transcendence first appears between sister and brother. The perception
of and respect for it allow us to enter another cultural era faithful to the
gesture of Antigone, one which could contribute to the entry of her myth into
History. The perception of the transcendence of the world of the other­
beginning with the sexuate other who corresponds to the most basic, univer­
sal, and irreducible otherness-defines the limits of one's own world, allowing
us to pass from a solitary apprehension and construction of the world to a
relational cultivation and culture. A solitary world always remains in a natural
immediacy. Our Western culture itself partly remains at the level of natural
immediacy because it is based on the perception and elaboration of one and
the same subject, whose sexuate aspects and impact have not been called into
question by a differently sexuate subject.
Such questioning is recent and compels us to enter a new era, starting from
a cultivation of the natural immediacy still at work in our culture, on the side
of man and of woman. Of course it is not a question of returning to a mere
natural belonging and of coming into conflict with each other in the name of
our different immediate perceptions or feelings. This leads us to a personal
and collective regression. And to wars, among others between the sexes, that
210 Gender a n d Kinship Between Myth and History 21 1

end in nothing because masculine and feminine identities do not amount
to the two parts of a single identity that could be reached through opposition
and conflicts. Masculine and feminine identities correspond to two different
worlds-and not two roles, functions, or characters-i rreducible to one
another. They have to elaborate a third world through their relations in
difference, a third world that does not belong to one or the other, but is
generated by the two with respect for their difference(s).
In contrast to Hegel, the question is not to reduce the two to one, but to
engender a third starting from the two, whose natural belonging has been
cultivated and not abolished or neutralized. The two different worlds do
not have to confront each other in order to resolve, cancel, or overcome
their difference, but have to integrate into their ethical duties the task of
forming a new world, taking into account the fecundity of their different
belongings. In other words, sexuate identities are to be taken into consider­
ation to engender a relational culture, and their specificities are not to be
ignored so that they unconsciously remain at work in our elaboration of truth
and in our practices.
A N I NS U R MO U N TA BLE T R A GEDY
Fortunately, Antigone resists the decay of our human identity which is then
beginning. In texts other than Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel wonders
whether Antigone's mission is not higher than that of Christ himself. Such a
question is not without ground. Whatever the comments contrasting human
and divine could be with regard to Antigone, she defends laws which do not
separate civil and religious duties. Of course, this does not mean a form of
fundamentalism, because fundamentalism is sociological by nature. Civil
duty and religious duty mingle in the respect of Antigone for the other as a
being transcendent to her, beginning with her brother, the son of her mother.
To pass from singularity to community often leads us to neglect, indeed to
forget, the importance of sexuate difference between us. A difference which,
initially and at each time, happens between two different belongings which it
provides with limits, to which it brings a sort of death when we pass from
natural immediacy to cultural transcendence in relating between us here
and now.
This transcendence is universal and can be shared by all people all over the
world. It suffices to listen to unwritten laws inscribed in nature itself: the
respect for life, for its generation, growth, and blossoming, and the respect for
a sexuate transcendence between us: first of all between children of the same
mother, but more generally between all the children of our human species, of
our mother nature, of which we are children on this side of or beyond all the
more or less artificial sociological constructions that divide us.

To respect our sexuate belonging always partly involves tragedy. Each of us has
to embody alone the truth of one's own identity; and bringing it forth into
History will also remain a tragic gesture, because our sexuate desire longs for
the infinite and the absolute while History is limited and human. Further­
more, sexuate truth is and must remain dual, each one having to accomplish
alone, with respect for the other, one's sexuate destiny, a destiny that is higher
than merely coming into the world as an anonymous body.
To distinguish sexuate identity from sexual attraction also includes a tragic
necessity to which Antigone's ethics bears witness. She needs to recognize the
sexuate transcendence of her brother before wedding her beloved. To provide
Polynices with burial signifies securing for the sexuate belonging of her
brother a permanent, one could say an immortal, status beyond his death.
This is needed to protect him both from existing as a mere body, the same
as hers, as that of anyone, and from being confined to a simple neutralizing
role or function: a destiny that the construction of the new Western culture
has in store for Creon and Ismene, ahead of all of us. This amounts to an
abolition of our difference by a public functionalism which forever prevents
us from meeting or wedding together with respect for our real difference.

12
Antigone with( out) Jocaste
Bracha L. Ettinger
There is a yearning beating in the world, by which we must die.
Elsa Lasker Shutler
The relation between word and deed becomes hopelessly entangled in
the familial scene, every word transmutes into event ...Every deed is
the apparent temporal effect of some prior word ...a word and a deed
entangled and extended through time through the force of repetition.
Its fatality is ...to be found in the dynamic of its temporality and its
perpetual exile into non-being ...The encrypted word that carries an
irrecoverable history, a history that, by virtue of its irrecoverability and
its enigmatic afterlife in words, bears a force whose origin and end cannot
be fully determined.
Judith Butler, Antigone's Claim
Precisely because our thinking and our cultural practices are so saturated
with heteronormative ...structures, even when dealing with non-sexual
differences ...we must for a while at least, pose the question of a feminine
sexual difference conceptualized and represented beyond the phallic
structuring.
Griselda Pollock, 'Does Art Think'
In Antigone's Claim, Judith Butler suggests that Antigone occupies every kin
position except 'mother': 'Though entangled in the terms of kinship, she
[Antigone] is at the same time outside those norms. Her crime is confounded
by the fact that the kinship line from which she descends, and which she
An earlier version of this chapter was presented at: 'Writing Aesthetics', !APL 27th Annual
Conf�rence, � niversity of Leeds, 31 May 2003, under the title: 'Perpetual Exile and Enigmatic
Afterlife: Judith Bu tier's Search for Livability'.
� elect�d passages fron :i this chapter were presented at the conference: ' Interrogating Antigo­
.
ne, �nmty College Dublm, 7 October 2006, under the title: 'Antigone-with(out)-Jocaste: Com­
pass10nate Co-response-ability and Matrixial Tear'. [The present chapter is a short version of the
original essay handed to us-eds.]
Antigone with( out) focaste 21 3
transmits, is derived from a paternal position that is already confounded by
the manifestly incestuous act that is the condition of her own existence, which
makes her brother her father, which begins a narrative in which she occupies,
linguistically, every kin position except "mother" and occupies them at the
expense of the coherence of kinship and gender.' 1 ' By the time this drama is
2
done, she has thus taken the place of nearly every man in her family.'
Antigone's father Oedipus occupies the whole stage of a significant parental
figure and position. Butler's Antigone is 'heir'. She is heir to the repressed
Oedipal complex.
I have suggested elsewhere that a space of encounter-event with the ml
Other, foreclosed from Antigone's paternal kinship line, is an unexpected site
of resistance and co-emergence. 3 On the primordial level, the site of what
I have named the matrixial is the sphere of Encounter-Event with non-I. The
matrix-womb stands for subjectivizing processes whereby psychic strings
transconnect, and psychic threads borderlink non-I to I. Though it is trans­
subjective by definition, the matrixial time-place is paradoxically also a site of
resistance of an 'autistic' kind. The foreclosure of the symbolic value of this
site (which is however 'planted' at the level of the original signifiers) endan­
gers Antigone's desire to live. When I approach Butler's text with a matrixial
prism and emphasize Antigone's maternal signifiers for brother and sister that
were lost in Sophocles' translation (as a repression of the foreclosed) , Butler's
proposition concerning the Place of the Brother receives a supplementary
sense to that of the Place of Loss. H idden potentialities of Butler's text open
up, and we discover new meanings to the concept of 'livability' related to
gender and to trauma, hidden under her particular weaving of 'familial scene',
'performative word', 'perpetual exile', and 'enigmatic afterlife' beyond the
'generation'. As I will show, a beyond as before and beside gender transfuses
gender when a passage from non-life to life is articulated and is differentiated
from the passage from life to death.
Butler's search for livability in Antigone's Claim is a search on the borders of
the social and the political. In order to not live a living death there where life is
on the edges and love is at its outmost, we need terms, claims Butler, that confer
intelligibility on some of life's foreclosures, which in each period are different.
Terms need to be peeled from the Psyche of the world membrane after
membrane, both retrieved and invented, terms that would embrace the con­
junction of ' livability' and 'legitimacy of grieving', which subverts the linearity
of historical time and produces glimpses of a pulsating future at the kernel of
the past and flashes toward the past from the virtual-glimpses and flashes
2 Ibid. 62.
1 Butler ( 2 000; 72).
3 I have treated Antigone in Ettinger ( 1 999).
 Antigone with(out) ]ocaste 215
214 Gender and Kinship
Before analysing Butler's text I will dive into the meaning o f that 'except'ion
condense� by a jo �is-sense. by embodied enactments that are enhanced by
of the 'mother' or rather ask: How does it happen that the foreclosure of the
perform �tive wor�s mt? be�oming signifying gestures, carried by the self at archaic m/Other associated with the womb is so prevalent that it has become
the sei:v1ce o� A�tlgon� s clair:z for a tracea? ility of the Incest of the Other.
transparent? This foreclosure in the narrative of Sophocles' Antigone is dis­
Antigone is mfant . She is the embodiment of youth in resistance. Her
played by a choice of signifiers that point to it. Beyond yet inside 'Oedipus', at
argument for resistance is: 'But mother and father both lost in the halls of
an extimate heart of the question of the Sphinx, a scene that precedes even the
de�th, No brother �ould ever spring to light again.'4 Brother - adelphos'
' ' ' ­
Primal Scene is hidden. The m/Other linked to an 'allusion to the womb' by
bn��s us etym ?logICally to 'womb' ('de/phys') . I will present the time-place/
way of a brother can't in my view be equalled to a ' father', because the maternal
??s1t1 ? n of the won:b'-matri�5 and the matrixiality of the 'brother' and the matrix isn't simply a female sheltering container that points to 'origin'. Rather,
sister before returmng to Antigone's Claim.
it stands for a difference: the difference of shareable subjectivitrpsychic co­
When Jacques Lacan reads this passage in Sophocles' Antigone, he equates
emergence of several I(s) in originary jointness-from subject to which this
the maternal w�mb invoked in the text to the father, and uses the paternal
subjectivity can't be reduced. The I of matrixiality participates in transjectivity
metaphor to switch to the brother as unique and as the One, a uniqueness
(a particular passage between subjects) and in the entity I call transject. The
that stands for a limit: 'born of the same womb . . . and having been related to
same psychic events that shape the subject as singular, unique, and One sole
the same father' the brother is 'the one who has in common with me the fact
subject contribute at the same instant to transjectivity by co-affectivity.
of havi_ng been b �rn in the womb-the etymology of the word adelphos
Matrixial com-passion opens the routes for aesthetic and proto-ethical know­
embodies an allusion to the womb-and having been related to the same
ing with-in the other as m/Other. Such a 'feminine' dimension in the human,
father-that criminal father . . . this brother is something unique . . . it can be
inaugurated by the matrixial non-prohibited in-cestuous yet non-sexual rela­
seen that Antigone's position represents the radical limit that affirms the
tions ( pregnancy) accounts for the foreclosed Place of the archaic m/Other in
unique val�e of his _ being without reference to any content . . . That purity,
the female and male daughter. Matrixial encounter-events draw a field of
that separat10n ofbemg from the characteristics of the historical drama he has
meaning for the I. The foreclosure of the matrixial with its symbolic trans­
lived through, is p recisely the limit or the ex nihilo to which Antigone is
formability might turn resistance into sacrifice. A perversion of the matrixial
attached.'6
might turn love into a devouring identification or imitation, and into aban­
The loosening of the Oedipal Prohibited Incest inheritance, or its failure to
donment, which would make a tear in its web; but its total ignorance might
account for Antigone as the 'Place of the Brother' qua the 'Place o f Loss', its
. destroy the web itself altogether.
failure to hold and give meaning to contemporary forms oflove, moves Judith
Antigone as a sole subject dwells in the realm of the traces of the Phallic
Butler to look for meaning that extends the perspective of meaning beyond
Incest taboo where a Voice is at the mercy of Oedipus.7 With the matrixial
the Incest Taboo.
perspective, going behind and beyond the solitary whole subject as brother
toward the subject-with-in/out-other, the same Voice reveals some hidden
4 Fagles (1984: 105). aspects. If Incest is only sexual, and its taboo functions only by separation, our
5 For a closer l�o � at the matrixial, see a selection of collected essays from 1994-9: Ettinger
. brother Antigone is doomed to dying whether or not it's also her choice. The
20�6. !The matrooal is one of Ettinger's key concepts. She defines this as 'womb outside as well
matrixial configuration of subjectivity addresses a psychic non-sexual In-cest
as ms1de, not only as the infant's originary container . .. it is a concept for a transforming
borderspace of en �ounter of the co-emerging I and the neither fused nor rejected uncognized non­ ( un-separation) that leaves traces in this heir. Not the actual archaic encoun­
.
!. ·Th� matnx is the locus of a process of multidirectional change and exchange on the
· ter-event is at stake here, but the possible patterns it sets for thinking selves
borderlines of perceptibili t � .' Ettinger (2006: 64-5). Commenting on her use of the term in and subjectivities. The configuration I offer is patterned upon the non­
.
the f�reword to The Matnxzal Borderspace, Judith Butler writes, 'Bracha calls this nonunifiable
an� lmked space of a primary psychic relation the feminine, the matrixial . .. She is, I think prohibited primordial relation-without-relating to and of the pre-subject by
asking us t � reformulat� the �ery relation between the subject and its other, and to ask what psychic transmissive strings. Traces of their resonance form threads ( not
pr�cedes this encounter m whICh the phallus seeks to confirm its status.' Ettinger ( 2006, p. x). 'objects'). A matrixial hospitality-with its traumatic links ( psychic strings)
Gns�lda Pollack exp�ains in her introduction to the same book, 'According to the matrix, the
making of hum�n h�e cannot be grasped without its distinctive severality, its jointness-in­
separateness. I� '.s this structure of transsubjectivizing severality-not any organ or anato­ 7 [For a discussion of the matrixial as well as the Lacanian Voice , see Ettinger ( 2006:
.
my-that matrooal psychoanalytICal theory elaborates.' Ettinger (2006: 4)-eds.J 184-9)-eds.]
6 Lacan ( 1992: 279).
 Antigone with(out) focaste 217
21 6 Gender and Kinship
symbolic recognition of the paternal infanticide impulses, and that of surviving
and phantasmatic traces (memory threads)-is necessary for bringing an­
all this. By abandonment, she finally saved the infant (Oedipus). By a supple­
other, a� I's non-I, into life on the psychic level. A transjective web precedes
mentary abandonment, she disappeared to her daughters ( taking her life in
�he s�bJect defined inside its bodily boundaries and reaching individual her hands) . The psychic traces of Jocaste's earlier offence, committed before
1dent1ty. In the matrixial borderspace, a psychic demothering of the mother
Antigone's lifetime, penetrated her from the maternal and the paternal side and
as position within the self's virtualities is an impossibility: Antigone-with­
informed and transformed her matrixial net. If we recognize this complex, then
focaste as a psychic cluster will always precede and infiltrate Antigone-without­
what I perceive as a Primal Mother-phantasy of abandonment finds its basic
Jocaste. The 'infant' 'brother-I ' that forecloses the place and position ofJocaste
coordinates. Jocaste's early act of abandonment (of another, the I's matrixial
creates a continually bleeding tear, a wound at the level of its own matrixial
non-I) that will later on be doubled by her suicide (also a disappearance from
tiss�e. Sophocl�s' text delivers �signifier for the foreclosed right at the start, when
the matrixial net) seals a symbolic and imaginary bond between womb and
Antigone says: Dear Ismene, sister from maternal womb' ( de/phys). Sister-like
tomb. A foreclosure of this complex damages the Real of the mother/daughter
�rother-(as non-[) �hares with the I the same matrix beyond time and beyond
. (mother/son) relationship: the daughter blames the real mother for actual
life. Reconnectmg with the brother beyond time and life is a struggle with this
abandonment, and while languishing for perfect attunement with the Other
foreclosure by way of its own potentialities. Antigone, who 'occupies, linguistically,
and with the world, identifies with the turning of the womb into a tomb and
every kin position except "mother'" in fact appeals to the archaic m/Other at the
engraving a psychic grave at the place of the originary string. 'There is a
linguistic heart of her non-I( s) ' (sibling's) kin positions.
yearning beating in the world by which we must die.'9
If mother and infant are sharing a matrixial Real, and p re-subjectivity is
Antigone, who, as Butler shows us, is heir to incest and to the Oedipus
saturated by transjective resonance, trans-generational transmission already
complex, Antigone, who is also heir to paternal infanticide impulses, is heir to
occurs by co-emerging with the archaic m/Other, and Antigone is also heir to
a focaste complex too. Brother (Oedipus) and sister (Antigone) are infants of
an encrypted maternal enigma she can't access without sharing with a non-I.
the same womb. Their archaic partner ( m/Other) in the matrixial border­
She carries traces of this enigma by crosscription ( cross-inscription) and tran­
sphere collaborated in, and also resisted, her husband's ( Laios') plot to kill an
scription ( trans-inscription) and by crosscryption and transcryption. 8
infant ( Oedipus)-or initiated both moves. One way or another, those moves
T�e tormented specific jointness of focaste-with-Antigone is solicited by a
are unconsciously intertwined. The m/Other survived her abandoning ges­
particular horror not related to the paternal sexual incest whose traces shape
ture. The Primal Mother-phantasy of abandonment elaborates traces of mater­
her argument. Antigone's m/Other is not only the one who committed
nal collaboration with a real ( traumatic or phantasmatic) paternal paranoid
incestuous love with her son-husband ( Oedipus) that became Antigone's
jealousy and an envy of the infant's fate ( to outlive the father and become
father ( the phallic-Oedipal level) . More hidden, an entirely visible yet blinding
potent when the father's potency will decline). Antigone is heir to an aban­
horror, that psychoanalytic culture mostly outrageously ignores, is Jocaste's
doning mother and an abandoned father. She encrypted traces from the active
much earlier offence. I f the Oedipal myth and complex enabled the liberation of
and passive layers of the event of abandonment.
individual fathers from potential blaming for what, in the paternal position,
The terms of the foreclosure of the position of the Mother under the focaste
surpass es individual fathering and touches a human suffering at being mortal,
. complex, and the price of Jocaste's living through the continuous survival of
no eqmvalent myth and complex enabled the liberation of individual mothers
these events, are enigmatic; the price for carrying such traces is unknown
from being blamed for what, in the maternal position, surpasses individual
since the place of the m/Other in the I (Antigone) is excepted, and since the
mothering and touches the human suffering at being born and exposed to
maternal subjectivity is here voiceless. We don't know how Jocaste perceives
en�less moments of psychic abandonment and psychic devouring, to the
and resolves her own phantasmatic investment in her own Primal Mother-
p�mful �on-attunement of the I with the world. We need a myth of Jocaste,
differentiated from the myth of Oedipus, to humanize the place/position of
the m �ther ( in the I or in the non-I.) Jocaste's offence has produced a triple
.
blueprint: that of child-abandonment, that of passive collaboration and 9 I took this line from a poem by Elsa Lasker Schuller. It is artworking that in my view
transforms this yearning into inspiration. The art historian and cultural critique Griselda
Pollock has analysed the motive of yearning and trans-generational memory in my artworking
, 8 Abraham and Torok ( 1 987) developed the notion of psychic crypt. I developed this into
in a series of essays. See Pollock ( 2000).
transcryptum. for shareable cross- and trans-inscryption in severality. See Ettinger (2002).
218 Gender and Kinship
phantasy. We know only that she can't tolerate the discovery of the Incest (one
version of the myth) and she can't tolerate the real death of her infants
(another version of the myth). If her collaboration and resistance complicate
the picture, they also offer a key. Imagine her taking an ethical position in a
Levinasian spirit and saying: 'but Laios, of course our son will outlive you, of
course he will be potent when you will no longer be, and of course you will die
before he dies; and each human being must imagine a world that goes on
without oneself'. For the late Levinas, the feminine itself, by way of the female
risking her life in giving birth, is a conception of 'a world without me'. Such
femininity stands for the ethical claim that the life of the other is more
important than one's own. If the feminine is this incredible capacity in the
human to grasp a world without oneself, 10 then responding to the continuity
from generation to generation would be at the heart of Ethics. Each non-phallic
perspective is a particular Ethics. The foreclosure of transcrypted traces, un­
accessed for lack of terms to render them intelligible, makes this side of the
transmitted scenario non-livable. The real trauma of the non-I, carried by her
body, becomes an unconscious active phantasmatic agent in the I.
I f we think of Antigone as a daughter in a mother/daughter matrixial web,
tressed inside a larger matrixial sphere that includes the father-daughter­
brother nets, and if we recognize the traces of Jocaste's complex in each I,
the contemporary tendency to violently reject the mother (the archaic non-n
and project these traces upon individual mothers of early infancy, or to enact
them upon the self (reject the daughter- I) declines. Transference and artwork­
ing can transform the traces since they offer a new occasion for transjectivity
and new transjects. We must recognize the transmissibility and shareability
of accumulated traces of continuous survival of traumatic events. Can the
whisper ofJocaste be also heard in, by, of, and for herself-the survivor-via
her own function and signifying place/position within the complex? Every
m/Other is also already a daughter that elaborates traces of traces of Mother­
phantasies. Can the 'first' generation, a participant in a traumatic event, find
relief in such transmission? In this context, Butler's question of the heir takes
up a new meaning. What is the inheritance of such m/Other is a major
question for our generation: the second generation to the trauma of th e
Shoah and always also a first generation of other catastrophes. Griselda
Pollock turns and returns to the questions of the survivor-'The one who
came back from the Holocaust, from the trauma of devastating loss, loss of
husband, sons, the hope of family, identity, trust in the future'-and to the
enigma of the transmission of memory to the second generation that must
10 Levinas in conversation with Bracha L. Ettinger ( Ettinger and Levinas 1 99 1 -3).
Antigone with(out) focaste 219
deal with the 'legacy' of tragic historical events. 1 1 The problem is how to
confront one's own 'deeply historicized subjectivity in which this history is
inscribed with the same letters, sounds, and inchoate memories as constitute
the texture and tissue' of one's being. In art, 'transgenerational memory . . . is
evident. This is the phenomenon of a passing of trauma to a generation who
did not live it but continues in its shadow so that they themselves have to
perform the mourning and working through that their parents cannot be­
cause of the inconsolable nature of their pain and grief.' 1 2 While we are 'heirs',
in Butler's sense, to traces of the transgression of the Incest taboo we are also
border/inking to the trauma of Jocaste, horizontally and vertically, co-re­
sponding to its particular time-space. We are 'brothers' to a father and also
'daughters' to a m/Other who is 'guilty' of bringing into life while exposing
the new life to the fate of repetitive abandonment, to repetitive devouring, to
the repetitive disattunement with the world, and, finally, to death. It is
important to make the difference between passivity and activity, and between
traumatic abandonment and phantasmatic abandonment, and between em­
bodied experience and psychic traces, because Primal Mother-phantasies must
appear ( in regression and in the analytical transference) whether actual
traumatic events had occurred in the past or not. Artworking and transference
open possibilities to draw these differences even though traces do join and
transjects are co-affected. Jocaste is everywhere, transcrypted in the psyche of the
world. And Jocaste-with-Antigone is with-in us. We can trace the vicissitudes
of her trauma if we let her voice be heard. She is my mother and/or yours with
you and/or me. Traces of her trauma are scattered. If I don't recognize them,
I unknowingly reject my non-I(s) and the Other. Compassion-not empathy­
is a primordial access to them.
A m/Other survived. If]ocaste transmits the blueprints of her trauma, what
is the meaning of co-experiencing with-in her? Unconscious strings are
linking the I of a virtual be-com-ing into life with the maternal past. Jocaste
is borderlinked to Antigone. Traces of the matrixial borderlinking are ampli­
fied or are fading-out in transformation during transmission; threads ride
vertically and horizontally along transjective and transgenerational strings
and entwine them. Jocaste's trauma and jouissance are the bleeding kernel of
Antigone's foreclosure in sister and brothers. I nheritance transforms, initiates,
and blinds. Its foreclosure creates the turning of womb into tomb. The
foreclusion of the Place of the m/Other blocks the route to enjoyment of her
11 Griselda Pollock, 'Gleaning in H istory or Coming After/Behind the Reapers� in Pollock
(1996: 268, 270 ) .
12
Ibid. 2 7 1 .
 220 Gender and Kinship
compassionate hospitality. Womb is tomb as long as m/Other is horror. The
figures that split and demonize the m/Other while offering themselves as
substitutes to her en-grave the daughter. Is a substituted paternal inheritance
safer? While the psychic site of the archaic m/Other, saturated with imprints
of horror, is rejected towards a semi-autistic kernel frozen in the Other and yet
the I is forever borderlinked to the m/Other; She hurts. But where? And if the
I is hurt in her non-I, how can the I elevate the traces of the trauma in the non-
1 and relieve her unconscious burden?
If the I unconsciously knows in the Other and the Other unconsciously
knows in the I, transformation can occur only by further matrixial jointness by
re-affecting a co-response-ability, in self-Jragilization. Such jointness opens a
potentiality for differentiation and differenciation. Healing the contemporary
manifestations of the drama of An tigone-with(out)-Jocaste demands recogni­
tion of the matrixial dimension-in art, in psychoanalytical transference, and
also in the social field. There, this dimension resists the actual political
tl'l
,, conditions and offers alternative and supplementary means that can change
'"
its sphere.
I turn now anew to 'infant' as daughter and to the feminine-matrixial
difference inside the mother-daughter web of links. In the matrixial sphere,
"I the sexual d ifference of any human being (female or male) that is first staged
iii
with a female body refers mainly to the non-phallic and non-Oedipal differ­
ence from the female. It also stands for the difference of figures of the same
sex. The double position of the daughter vis-a-vis the mother (first figure and
same sex) imprints females with double intensity with regards to the matrix­
ial. The sexual difference of any human being embodied as female (Girl) is
defined with and in reference to another woman who holds the site-time­
and-space-of the m/Other and of the Woman-beneath-the-Mother who is
forever enveloped inside the archaic m/Other who, as a non-I, dwells in
resonance with the I (daughter) within a relational field of encounter thought
of, to begin with, not in terms of inter-subjective relationships or object­
relation but of pregnant coexistence. Thus, long before but also beside and
even after gender and personal identity, a feminine sexual difference continu­
ally informs the subject. A female body is impressed by the difference of the
female child from another female ( m/Other). For a 'daughter', the enigma of
sexual difference is posed from the start between female subjects. The femi­
nine woman-to-woman difference that is dealt with in terms of the earliest
psychic phase and position works differently for males (the feminine man-to­
man difference).
The archaic Woman-m/Other and the infant-girl co-emerge and differen­
tiate in primordial encounter. The enigma that emanates from the archaic
Antigone with(out) Jocaste 221
woman-m/Other as a non-cognized subjectivizing ravishing agency opens up
a sexual difference that is not constructed in relation to a lacking object, but in
the relating to a dawning and vanishing link with a m/Other in resonance
with the I. Passion, fascinance (as initial aesthetical knowi ng), and compas­
sion ( as proto-ethical knowing) of the woman-m/Other, operate on the edges
of a psychic common cloth inside which the becoming subject differentiates
itself without fusion or rejection from the m/Other. Such is the case for males
and females, but the case of females has a multiple charge, because difference
emerges gradually, while the Primal Mother-phantasies of Abandonment and
of Devouring compel also to reject the similar. If each female differs from a
woman first, a subject doesn't desire only lacking objects ( objet a), as Lacan
would have it. There is a languishing beating by com-passionate connecting
and by fascinance, when traumatic or phantasmatic clouds of abandonment
and devouring enter the scene to disturb it. With awe one looks for signs of
oscillating links ( link a) when vibrating frequencies flicker and the m/Other's
pulsating being is turned elsewhere or is overwhelming. This kind of yearning
for binding-in-difference is healed by new vibrations of a com-passionate
non-sexual love in future cross- and trans-connectedness ( also interwoven
inside sexual love) . In psychic transweaving, the human capacity to seize and
give meaning to cross-scription finds its meaning by engraving a transcryp­
tum. Between a girl and a m/Other, this happens in asymmetric mutuality in
continuous encounter-eventing. This yearning beating is a labour of Eros
which is a necessary pre-condition for leaving the Girl/daughter-position to
enter gender and sexuality. Where Thanatos uses an overdose of Primal
Mother-phantasies and the paternal forecloses the matrixial, even the father­
daughter borderlinking is frozen, and the I is appropriated by Oedipus.
'Grains' of Jocaste and Antigone are cross-related by early co-emergence.
Traces of their shared psychic waves and vibrations were reattuned when their
individual limits were open, so that each of them became a partial-subject of
the same encounter. Time-spaces of encounter-events create psychic 'points'
along the same vibrating string. Antigone can't not share trans-generational
knowledge of horror and accumulative traces of its survival. She 'knows' in
Jocaste; she metabolizes this non-cognized knowledge and enacts its forma­
tive guidelines. She thus can become a kind of beauty that points to livability.
Beauty, in the matrixial, 'need not function as the blinding splendour of a
near encounter with death. Beauty is the flash of intuned connectivity that is
the condition for aesthetic affectivity.' 1 3 I n another future, Antigone's poetic
1
3 Pollock (2003a: 1 68). Griselda Pollock further elaborates the aesthetic affectivity in the
feminine in (2003b: 1 29-55).
222 Gender and Kinship
word could come to 'materialize' what Griselda Pollock discusses via painting:
a ' resistance to Oedipus> 1 4-and without enactment of self-sacrifice.
Metramorphosis is a meaning-creation based on shared mental, affective,
and conceptive vibrations before, and later on alongside other modes of the
meaning-creations encoded by metaphors and metonymies that are produced,
to an extent, at the price of the evocative force of transmissivity. 15 When silenced
by more 'progressive' modes, metramorphosis works underground.
To the question: 'what is beauty'? interwoven with the question: 'what does
a woman want'? I will answer with Jocaste-with-Antigone: a yearning beating
searches for the resonance emanating from the struggle for meaning-creation
over a transcrypted bleeding, lamenting womb-as time-space of sharing of
m/Other with brothers-where fascinance and compassion resonate in com­
passion beyond different times and places. Antigone tries to grasp, produce,
and expose to the light such a beauty, at the cost of becoming, by her own
dying, a sign for a not-yet-signifying and signified encounter-event. 'There is
a yearning beating in the world, by which we must die.'
The aesthetic dimension enters Lacan's T he Ethics of Psychoanalysis via the
question: what is the surface that allows the emergence of i mages of passion?
The extra-ordinary passion which transports death into life and impels life
onto death arises, says Lacan, from some contact with that which is, the
unique, the irreducible and irreplaceable, with no substitute, unexchangable.
Beauty enters through the relation to the irreplaceable. Disappearance in
appearance creates beauty's effect. The effect of beauty results from the
rapport of the subject to the horizon of life; from traversing to the second
death. From Antigone's point of view, life 'can only be lived or thought about,
from the place of that limit where her life is already lost, where she is already
on the other side. But from that place she can see it and live it in the form of
14 Emphasis added. Pollock (200 1 : 1 46-7).
15 [ Ettinger explains, 'I use the term metramorphosis for specific routes of passability,
transmissibility, transitivity, temporary conductivity, and transference between various psychic
strata, between the subject and several other subjects, and between subjects and composite
hybrid objects-routes through which "woman," which is not the preserve of women alone, is
inscribed in a subsymbolic web, knitted just-in-to the edges of a symbolic universe that cannot
appropriate her in its preestablished signifiers.' Ettinger (2006: 94). Commenting on Ettinger's
introduction of the term 'metramorphosis' as a metaphorical concept evoking the weaving of a
web of meaning, Griselda Pollock writes, 'The Matrix emerges as a supplementary, shifting,
retuning, concurrent paradigm where a web of meaning is woven by a process the artist-theorist
names metramorphosis. Weaving is a potent and necessary metaphor, an image of a decentered
field, a textuality, a texture, vibrating threads. Such metaphors resonate with, while displacing,
the late Lacanian theory of subjectivity as described in terms of fabric fold, or the Miibius strip,
where Lacan, too, was struggling to find images and terms through which to articulate a more
complex theory of subjectivity.' Ettinger (2006: 6-7 )-eds.]
Antigone with(out) focaste 223
something already lost.' 1 6 This limit, detached from historical time, is a source
of creation ex nihilo. If the surface of passion captures such a unique value to
make an image of it, the image creates a barrier from traversing to the other
side, and 'The effect of beauty is the effect of blindness' to the other side (a
castrating schism). The function of the beautiful is precisely ' to reveal to us
the site of man's relationship to his own death, and to reveal it to us in a
blinding flash only'. 1 7 The beautiful is a limit of a sphere that we can only
approach from the outside, a phenomenological limit which allows us to reflect
on what is behind castration. 'Outrage' is the term that carries, according to
Lacan, the crossing of some invisible line, which allows beauty to be joined
with desire. 'Outrage' whose meaning is 'to go out or beyond' ('aller outre,
outrepassd) is Antigone's aesthetic effect. 1 8 This 'most strange and most pro­
found of effects' arises in the limit zone in-between-life-and-death, where a fate
is enacted and a death is 'lived by anticipation, a death that crosses over into the
sphere of life, a life that moves into the realm of death . . . The glow of beauty
coincides with the moment of transgression.' The aesthetic question engages the
beauty-ideal, which operates at a limit materialized and represented in art by
the human body. The human body, 'the envelope of all possible phantasms of
human desire' is that barrier which transports 'a rapport of the human being
with its second death' 1 9 and in so doing, blocks the passage to it. Beauty, in
form and image of the human body, is the last barrier from the Other-thing
beyond-to be understood as a 'second death', but also as 'supplementary
femininity', because it also keeps from direct apprehension of 'sexual rapport
(relation)', which is feminine.
In the domain of aesthetics, the frontier that separates the human being
from death converges with the frontier that separates the human being fro m
the feminine. In the phallic structure, the figure that transgresses them is
sacrificed to death or blindness. For me, from the matrixial angle, where
differenciation-in-jointness, not separation, appears-the risks, horrors and
wonders of a figure of transgression are beyond the scope of transgressive
dichotomies of presence/absence, subject/object, and interior/exterior.
Co-poiesis operates in the feminine-matrixial borderspace. The human
body with-in this borderspace is not the last barrier from the Other-beyond,
but the passage to an other. Therefore, Sacrifice moves to the margins, making
room for Wit(h)nessing: witnessing in withnessing.
Antigone incarnates the death-drive, and Lacan adds that she incarnates
the desire of the Other linked to the desire of the mother which is the origin of
every desire, 'the founding desire' which is also a 'criminal desire', for it was in
16 18
Lacan ( 1 992: 3 1 8, 280). 1 7 Ibid. 2 8 1 . Ibid. 2 8 1 .
1
9 Ibid. 2 9 5 , 298. Translation amended.
 Gender and Kinship
224
this case incestuous. Transgression is thus fatally linked to and binding with
death-drive, incest, and the desire of the mother. Antigone's transgression is a
fate in the sense that it is a result of 'the crime', to be understood as the
infliction of death or incest by one's ancestors, by someone else on someone
else, played at the horizon of the subject's existence and thus being a part of
what allowed the subject's coming into life.
At the heart of Lacan's argument lies his interpretation of Antigone's idea
concerning 'having been born in the same womb . . . and having been related
to the same father', an interpretation that leads him to say that the heart of the
matter is the uniqueness of the brother.20 I n my view, in so referring to
Antigone's hinting at the maternal womb, Lacan is folding the womb into
the phallus/castration stratum. Being born of the same womb is equated with
being of the same father and leads to paying the price of the parental crimes of
incest or killing by traversing beyond the human chain of exchange. The
specificity of this conjunction results in Lacan's representation of the brother,
for whose memory Antigone is willing to die, as an incarnation of the idea of
the unexchangeable One. The matrixial prism conveys a different interpreta­
tion to Antigone's referring to the womb, and a supplementary value to the
figure of the brother. Transgression is still linked to death-drive, incest, and
the desire of the mother, but this linkage itself is transformed, and with it, the
meaning of each of these concepts in the feminine, where transgression is not
a jump beyond a frontier, but an access to the surplus beyond, and thus, a
transformation of the limits themselves with regard to the subject's affective
access to the question of the death of 'her' other. When metramorphosis
opens the frontiers between I and non-I, a potentiality for faithfulness to the
uncognized truth of the other is trembled. The Place of the m/Other now
come to stand for a potentiality for inception and spirallic initiation within
transgression.
"'
When each participant in the drama is a sole subject, we know about the
,'.1
,,
: :i
crimes at the source of Antigone's desire, we know the identity of their
:i1 authors, we know who suffers, and who sacrifices herself, but we don't
know whose psychic ( not bodily) trauma it is in terms of the few who went
through it and the circulations of traces. If we rethink Antigone with the
notion of ineffaceable co-affected shared and dispersed traces of trauma, new
turns evolve. What is at stake here is the psychic site of the trauma of the other
with-in myself reached by force of the brother's alliance with the I. These non­
I(s) are always already, from the outset of any encounter-events, traumatic to
the I. I am wit(h) ness to a trauma I didn't witness. The other's corpo-real
20
Lacan ( 1 992: 3 1 8, 280) 279.
Antigone with(out) focaste 225
encounter and event tremble our psychic strings. Beauty carries and produces
new possibilities for affective apprehending of such a proximity at the kernel
of fu �ther potential wit(h) nessings. When another I is experiencing the un­
cogmzed non-I by/in its difference as traumatized and traumatizing, the
question of Ethics arises.
I propose to understand Levinas' enigmatic claim, that the Other in its
vulnerability is traumatic to me, by the prism of psychic transjectivity that
occurs in fragilization. Ethical first, but also aesthetical, wounding and po­
tential�y also healing, is the experience of reaching out to the affect-activity of
traces m an encounter-event. Aesthetical is therefore, and yet, indirectly, also
ethical, the experience of accessing co-affectively the trauma of others via a
work of art. Here, the aesthetical is the transformed affectivity caused by wit
(h) nessing in/by art, beyond time, and in different spaces. When affective
res� nance trembles virtual strings, ethical, therapeutic, and even political
�onzons open. Both aesthetical and ethical is therefore the healing potential­
ity offered by wit(h)nessing, though the aesthetical and the ethical do not
merge. The beautiful is what succeeds-as object, subject, event, or trans­
ject-to offer and suggest reaffectation-as-redistribution of traumatic traces
of encounter. The effect of beauty indicates for us, then, not only the place of
the relationships to one's own death, but also the relations of the I to the
matrixial partner before one's life and after the other's death, a partner to
whom I am linked through care-full com-passion and faith-full wit(h) nes­
sing-through communicaring. I am processing affective memory the others
can't process alone, and I am digesting and transforming mental traces or
inscriptions that were not even projected onto me. If such transmission is
patterned upon the pre-birth encounter-eventing with-in a m/Other who is
non-criminally incestuous by way of pregnancy, when something that can't be
looked at, that blinds us, or can't be heard and silences us, arises at the
horizon of visibility and audibility, a form of death-drive is embodied in
the phallic zone (so that any apparition of a point of emergence can only be
represented as a lack, a 'want-to-be') and in parallel, during the same experi­
ence, a form of emergence, the birth of a co-poietic occasion, is intuited. With
every metramorphosis, inter-connected traces of the encounter with the
archaic m/Other as a point of emergence are re-evoked-in-transformation,
�ea� ing from within t� e aesthetic field, through the sharing of trauma and
JOu1ssance and of their traces, to the sparkling of an ethical possibility to
respo nd � ccording to the intuited co-response-ability. The impossibility of
not-shanng that comes forth in this transgression with-in-to the feminine
offers ethical implications. The subject in its identity is already in alliance
before any cognizing of difference and identity. So, there is a m/Other of the
Other, a sister inside the brother. Antigone's brother who is the unique One in
226 Gender and Kinship
the phallic dimension and a partial-subject in the severality of a unique
jointness. Such is the de/phys of the adelphos.
What in Antigone's argument is waiting to be heard and com-passioned, is
the suffering from the tearing apart of a principal non-I, her partner-in­
difference. Unburied, treated by bestiality-bestiality is then forced upon
her humanness. Antigone's brother was already separated-in-jointness from/
with her, but with his removal to a non-human sphere, her transjective
borderspace risks disintegration, whereby their separation-in-jointness
would turn into a castrative definite separateness, a kind of 'second death',
to borrow Lacan's expression. If the almost-impossible knowledge of the
Thing-Event concerns the originary feminine rapport, death, this horrible,
doesn't in itself inflict a horrible cut in the web. What inflicts the final cut is
the passage to bestiality. This is what threatens to explode the sphere itself into
disintegrative bits.
Life and death are constituted in the psyche as already human even when
beyond the reach of human-symbolic exchange or communication, and even
at the corpo-real level. Living is coping with knowledge of dying. B ut non­
human (and even non-animal) bestiality inflicted on the I's non-I(s) puts the
capacity for matrixial webbing, reabsorption of loss, transference of memory,
processing of mourning, wit(h) nessing, and even fading in at risk of psycho­
sis. Antigone's private death is less a price for her to pay than living through
the irremediable explosion of her matrixial web. By choice of her own words,
Antigone literally acknowledges the corpo-real source of a psychical space­
the maternal womb-as both claimed and foreclosed.
The feminine/prenatal non-sexual incest is a necessary transgression, not at
all measured by or compared to perverse or genital-phallic incest prohibited by
a taboo. The feminine/prenatal one is a primordial psychical field o f transgres­
sions between phantasy and desire in-between several partial-subjects. In the
matrixial sphere, all subjects (womb-born) and all potential and actual
mothers are potentially or actually in-cestuous in the non-phallic and non­
Oedipal sense: the intrauterine relations between co-becoming mother and
subject are such by definition. Because of the highly psychotic potentiality
of this process for phallic subjectivizing processes, the m/Otherly non­
prohibited incest is hidden, not even excluded from the Symbolic ( from
which it would then return as its repressed to produce an-other desire).
Whatever of the matrixial twilight zone received articulation in the phallic
sphere-was subjugated to its order where it was regulated as a question of
bringing children into a heterosexual framework, where objects-women are
exchanged in 'the Name of the Father' and identity leans on separation.
Livability in the contemporary post-traumatic era, where family norms are
still governed by phallic heterosexuality that regulates motherhood in its own
Antigone with(out) focaste 227
interests, becomes more and more impossible. In a psychoanalysis governed
by Freud's traditional difficulty with admitting psychic transgressivity, if we
do realize that the post-traumatic era is psychically trans-traumatic, and if
this era is to be recognized as non-psychotic and becomes livable, we need to
shift the psychoanalytic paradigm towards transjectivity and realize jointness
as founding. Any daughter is always already An tigone-with(out)-Jocaste-, resis­
tance and freedom have to be rethought from a matrixial prism.
Butler's text raises the issue of Antigone at the Place of Generation and as
Brother in confusion. My perspective leads me to infuse this confusion with the
Place of the m/Other and as Sister-daughter, and to consider the confusion of
generations with the foreclosure of the m/Other, adding, thus, a matrixal Eros
to Antigone's search for forms of love. My perspective reveals the foreclosure
of the Place of the m/Other as an unconscious black hole under disavowal.
The Places of the m/Other and the Mother offer the brother uniqueness in
terms of singular patterns of transgression. Its symbolic inscription is related
to apparitions of transconnectedness. This transgression is indifferent to
phallic values but can also appear in and as resistance to them. With an
Antigone as Place of the Brother qua Place of Loss that does carry within it the
de/phys, the Place of the m/Other, even Oedipus is no longer so Oedipal; even
Oedipus can function as a pole in a co-poietic string, and each son is also a
Daughter in a matrixial sense. A figure of repetitive encounters in-between
brothers cracks the traces of the I ncest Taboo that arrived from before and
beyond its time, to allow, like a Trojan horse, the infiltration of a new ethical
sensibility, that confers social bonds with the legitimacy of grieving for the
transgressive bond that in fact resists even the subject in self-identity itself.
What can the m/Other stand for where paternal incest had already oc­
curred? While the father leads the offspring-brother to death, the mother
without symbolic power is erased, silenced behind unmentioned horror. H er
children don't claim her. Who would desire to listen to her word? What from
her Voice can be heard? Foreclosed, the womb reappears in the p ure Real of
tomb. If the Symbolic would have allowed her to glimpse at the Real of womb
not in the sense of the parental-Oedipal incest and not as regressive shelter, an
Antigone would perhaps be able to say: 0 womb, and not just 0 tomb.
0 womb, 0 bridal chamber, 0 deep-dug home, to be guarded for ever in the
unattainable psyche of the world, where I have already joined with those who are
my own-what other pattern than Death or Motherhood can your enigmatic
psychic pattern offer? Will I ever be able to mourn that place of non-living that
precedes life and death where I and all my brothers once met without meeting
beyond time and turn it creative beyond the Real? Who will co-memorate this
archaic site? And what will turn it creative? How can I deal with a m/Other
whose crypted trauma is transmitted into me and who is a mythical collaborator
228 Gender and Kinship

with Paternal incest and Paternal infanticide wishes, a figure of abandonment

whom I charge with a multitude of crimes, and as being survivor and an agency 13
in the push toward the father's Words in the familial scene?
The Place of the m/Other is a place of Antigone-with-Jocaste. There is no
Antigone outside the net of connectivity with whoever shared at different Autochthonous Antigone: Breaking Ground
moments with/in-out the same space as an intimate anonymous other. And
there is no Antigone-without-focaste. Joining the m/Othernal with -in the I is
inspiring and inspiriting. In an in-between place of severality and besideness Liz Appel
with the other, insight and outsight arise from the time-space-body of an
Antigone-with(out)-focaste.

There is a rustling underground. A voice from below. The undead begin

to stir.

This chapter takes as its subject the restless figure of Antigone whose place,
or lack thereof, looms large within the eponymous play by Sophocles.
While much attention has been paid to Antigone's representational afterlife
outside of the play and to the many ways in which she has been deployed
across a range of genres to various representational ends, this chapter attends
to her peculiar place within the confines of her theatrical world. Variously
portrayed as liminal, absent, invisible, and excessive, Antigone's position
within the diegetic world of Thebes seems to be of a d ifferent ontological
order than those figures with whom she shares the stage. Antigone's capacity
for wide, almost wild, signification that is so critical to her appeal outside of
the play constitutes a central theme within the play itself. As a curiously
shifting and mobile sign, Antigone's restlessness points up the constraints of
the signifying field within which she exists.
In order to broach the question of Antigone's strange representational
status, this chapter is focused on three interlocking concepts: the concept of
autochthony (the state of being born of the earth, a self-, or auto-generation
from the chthonic space of the earth), the concept of authorship (one's
capacity to originate), and the idea of the representational space of the theatre
(the fictive conditions for theatricality) . These three concepts of autochthony,
authorship, and theatricality work together to suggest a kind of generation
based on erasure, which, I hope, will offer some insight into the figure of
Sophocles' Antigone and why it is she fascinates.

I would like to thank Joe Roach fo r his generous help in preparing a version of this chapter for
presen tation. I would also like to thank Carol Jacobs for an extremely stimulating discussion
abo ut Antigone. My thanks are also due to David Currell for his help with the original Greek, and
to Laura Miles and Sarah Novacich for their useful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
230 Gender and Kinship
To begin thinking about the link between autochthony and theatricality,
consider a passage from Ovid's Metamorphoses. In Book three, Ovid describes
the mythic founding of the city of Thebes, the adopted home of Oedipus and
the birthplace of Antigone. Ovid relates the tale of Cadmus' arrival at what will
become Thebes, whereupon his attendants are summarily killed by a dragon.
Cadmus avenges these deaths and slays the dragon. Athena then instructs
Cadmus to sow the earth with the dragon's teeth in order to produce a new
race of men, who will become the Spartoi, literally the 'Sown Men'. 1 I want to
focus the reader's attention on the way in which Ovid describes this scene as the
men rise from the earth, and the curious analogy Ovid makes with the theatre:
And then, incredibly, the dull clods stir:
At first, only little tips of spears
Are visible, emerging from the furrows,
But these, almost at once are followed by
The brightly painted waving crests of helmets
Then shoulders, breasts, and arms heavy with weapons,
And finally a dense-packed mass of shields:
No different from what you will have seen
On feast days, in the theater, when the curtain
Lifts from the pit, and the images of men
Painted upon it seem to rise: heads first,
And then the rest of them, little by little,
Drawn up in one unbroken wave until
The tiny figures stand erect on stage,
2
Complete in all respects from head to feet.
Ovid is describing the Roman stage (coming roughly four centuries after the
theatre of ancient Greece), and more specifically the Roman practice of having
one curtain (the siparium) that was raised up from the stage, thus giving the
impression Ovid describes of these figures rising, almost seeming to issue out of
the boards themselves.3 Though this would not have been the practice in the
ancient Greek theatre that would have staged Antigone, I would nonetheless
like to suggest that Ovid pairs the autochthonous generation of men with the
space of the theatre for a reason that does not hinge on the Roman curtai n
alone. Rather, there is something else that motivates this coupling; there is a
subtle logic that encourages Ovid to place these concepts side by side.
Indeed, turning to Antigone, one notes that Sophocles makes a similar
connection between autochthony and theatricality in the final moments of
1 Grima! ( 1 986: 425).
2 Ovid (2004: 94-5, II. 1 29-43).
3 Seyffert ( 1 894: 588 ) .
Autochthonous Antigone: Breaking Ground 23 1
the play. Just after Creon attempts to reverse his fatal orders, and j ust before
the Messenger enters to report the deaths of Antigone and Haemon, the
chorus refer to the founding of Thebes as they call out in supplication to
the God Dionysus:
0 Bacchus that dwells in Thebes,
the mother city of Bacchanals
by the flowing stream of Ismenus
in the ground sown by the fierce dragon's teeth.4
That the chorus rehearse this autochthonous moment in supplication to
Bacchus or Dionysus, the god of the theatre, effects a similar link between
the concepts of autochthony and theatricality. Later in the play, this connec­
tion will become much more stark. Before attending to this in detail, however,
I would simply ask the reader to hold this doubling in his or her mind, to
connect in imaginative space the image of figures coming up from the ground
and the image of figures rising from the boards, a conceptual mapping to
which I will return below.
First, however, it is important to attend to Antigone's difficult genealogical
position within the play, and her symbolic position outside of the play. Counter
to the dominant critical view, which posits Creon as the representative of the
polis (the civic body or state) , and Antigone as the representative of the oikos
(the home or family), Judith Butler shows the way in which Antigone occupies
a slippery place within the kinship system that she is so often said to represent.5
By virtue of her status as the product of an incestuous bond, as the positive
issue of that primary taboo ( incest), the structure that is supposed to guarantee
all other structures, Antigone, in Butler's words, 'exposes the socially contingent
character of kinship'.6 In other words, Antigone reveals that kinship structures
are socially and linguistically constructed rather than natural or biological. As
such, the figure of Antigone destabilizes a received view of how the family is
defined, and further, of who might find inclusion under such a term.
Yet, Butler points out that Antigone is a problematic character, not so easily
forced to stand for kinship relations, and not so easily forced to stand squarely
against these structures either. Rather, as one who inhabits such an indefin­
able and uncertain place, Butler suggests that Antigone threatens the 'very
horizon of intelligibility in which she operates and according to which she
4 Grene and Lattimore ( 1 99 1 : 204, II. 1 1 20-2 3 ) .
5 Butler ( 2000). Butler i s responding particularly t o G. W. F. Hegel's comments o n Antigone
found primarily in The Phenomenology of Spirit ( 1977) and Lectures on Fine Art: Volume II ( 1 975),
as well as Luce Irigaray's characterization of Antigone in Speculum of the Other Woman ( 1 985) and
An Ethics ofSexual Difference ( 1 993a). See Butler's first chapter 'Antigone's Claim', 1-25.
6 Butler (2000: 6 and passim).
 232 Gender and Kinship
remains somewhat unthinkable'.7 Put another way, Antigone's unreadable or
unthinkable place threatens to render the entire system in which she is
necessarily enmeshed as unreadable or unthinkable. As a figure who occupies
multiple familial designations at once (Antigone is both sister and daughter to
Oedipus) , Butler argues that 'Antigone is one for whom the symbolic posi­
tions have become incoherent'.8 Finally, Butler seizes on the way in which
Antigone's very name seems to confound both genealogical and symbolic
positions; 'Antigone' can be construed variously to mean both 'in the place of
a mother', suggesting a productive position, and 'anti-generation', suggesting
a destructive position.9
Carol Jacobs also points out the way in which the opposition inherent in
Antigone's name (pointing both to production and destruction) is borne out
in the play itself. 1 0 When the Sentry likens Antigone to a bird that has lost her
young (he states, 'she was crying out with a shrill cry of an embittered bird
that sees its nest robbed of its nestlings and the bed empty' 1 1 ), Antigone is
'"'''I I
i::i�!I posited in a maternal role vis a vis her brother. 1 2 However, as Jacobs makes
clear, the very metaphor that turns Antigone into a mother also turns against
her and makes her a destroyer: as a bird, she is implicitly aligned with the
animals that defile Polyneices' unprotected body, she is rhetorically yoked to
the vultures that threaten to tear it to pieces. 1 3 Like the conflictual impulse
inherent in her name, Antigone is posited as both defender and ravager of her
brother's body. Further, the Sentry's metaphor also places Antigone in oppo­
sition to meaning: likened to a b ird, Antigone is associated with the birds of
the prophet Tiresias who, Jacobs points out, 'scream unmeaningly', and who
are described as 'tearing each other murderously'. 1 4 The birds that Tiresias
wishes to read for signs of the future are frantic, violently sibylline, scrambling
whatever sense they might provide.
Like Butler's claim that Antigone throws the 'representative function itself
into crisis', 15 Jacobs points out that Antigone comes to symbolize 'intelligible
interpretation gone awry'. 1 6 Just as she is posited as maternal, or productive,
only to be simultaneously associated with destruction, Antigone bestows
meaning ( in terms of burying Polyneices), but also threatens to confound
meaning, even the very act of meaning-making itself.
7
Butler {2000: 2 2 ) . R Ibid. 2 2 .
9
Ibid. 22, Regarding the meaning of Antigone's name, see ibid. 87 n. 23 and 88 n. 24.
referring to Jacobs ( 1 996: 89 1-9 1 7 ) , who cites Robert Graves { 1 960: 2 ) and Stathis Gourgo uris
(2003) .
10
Jacobs ( 1 996: 891-9 1 0).
11
Grene and Lattimore ( 1 99 1 : 1 77, 11. 47 1 -4 ) .
12 1 18
Jacobs ( 1 996: 904- 1 0. 13 Ibid. 904. 4 Ibid. 904.
1 16
5 Butler (2000: 2 2 ) . Jacobs ( 1 996: 9 1 0).
Autochthonous Antigone: Breaking Ground 233
Finally, both of these theorists make clear that there is no way to properly
resolve the competing images of Antigone that the play generates. As Creon
cries out to Antigone in a crucial line: 'there is too much of you', 1 7 it is clear
that Antigone contains too much, and too much that is inherently in opposi­
tion to be subsumed under a single, intelligible sign.
Building on the notion of Antigone as an emblem for confounded mean­
ing, for 'intelligible interpretation gone awry', I want to reintroduce the term
autochthony as another way to envision Antigone's challenge to, not only
traditional kinship structures, but to the representational realm itself. It is
important to note that I am thinking about autochthony itself in a conceptual
way, as a kind of spontaneous generation that is not predicated on conven­
tional notions of parentage or lineage. In this way, I hope to avoid the political
connotations of the word in terms of claims to land, or a discourse of purity
based on exclusion. Nicole Loraux has masterfully discussed these issues
(specifically Athenian autochthony) in several of her works, such as Born of
the Earth and The Children of Athena. 18 Rather than thinking about auto­
chthony in terms of content, I want to consider it as a form, as another way of
envisioning the act of generation, as a kind of meta-genesis or unaided
springing forth, that might be considered in relation to the figure of Antigone.
For, of course, Antigone has parents. She is perhaps the most ( in) famous
daughter in the history of the theatre as the result of the incestuous union
between Oedipus and his own mother Jocasta. This is clear and unarguable.
However, I want to consider the way in which her confused relations, as the
above theorists make clear, take Antigone out of the realm of typical familial
delineation and rather leave her precisely nowhere. As the occupant of an
unnamable familial place (daughter-sister), Antigone paradoxically inhabits a
subject position that does not exist. She is anchored (if it is possible to use
such a term in relation to such a place-less, even mobile, figure) in a symbolic
void, the tenant of a kind of zero-degree of representational space. And yet, in
spite of her untenable ontological position, she nonetheless is.
Indeed, Sophocles' play itself seems to emphasize Antigone's curious on­
tology, her status as present yet not accounted for, as both there and not
there. The play dramatizes the way in which Antigone flickers between being
and non-being, much as she will later proclaim herself, as she is led to the
tomb crying, 'Neither among the living nor the dead I do I have a home in
common- I neither with the living nor the dead'. 1 9 Consider, for instance,
the way in which the guards cannot see Antigone as she performs the
17 Grene and Lattimore 1 99 1 , 1 84, 11. 573.
See Nicole Loraux ( 1 98 1 ) Enfants d'Athena and ( 1 996) Ne de la terre.
1
9
Grene and Lattimore ( 1 99 1 : 1 94, 11. 850-2 ).
 Autochthonous Antigone: Breaking Ground 235
234 Gender and Kinship
This paradox becomes another way to understand Antigone's nominal
prohibited act of burial. In the first iteration of the act, the dust seems to have
legacy as both originator (in the place of a mother) and destroyer ( anti­
miraculously appeared, as the confused Sentry bumbles, ' I never saw who did
generation): by virtue of her symbolic slipperiness (as both sister and daugh­
it' and further elaborates that 'the doer of the deed had left no trace'. 20 In the
ter), she not only scrambles, but seems to erase her own genealogy. And yet,
second instance, the burial is described as an act of nature, as a 'squall' and a
her very existence testifies to a kind of creation from the void. Is there a way,
'storm of d ust' that compels the guards to close their eyes.2 1 The very fact of
then, that Antigone might represent an origin from nowhere, a rising up of
repetition is significant; that this is a repetition of invisibility seems to force a
the voice that has no discernible point of origination? Can we take Butler's
vision of Antigone as simultaneously present and absent, a traceless agent
question: 'What has Oedipus engendered?'25 even further? In some critical
existing on the borderline between the seen and the unseen.
way, might we ask: has Antigone engendered herself? And might this be seen
Moreover, the crucial scene that culminates with Creon's condemnation of
as a sort of autochthonous generation? As the bearer and instantiation of an
�ntigone is another moment in which the play draws attention to Antigone's
. impossible familial role, has Antigone evaded the genealogical imperative
hmmal ontology. In response to Ismene's supplication on behalf of her sister,
altogether? Can Antigone be seen as a fatherless daughter, and is this, in the
Creon attempts to undo Antigone by linguistic force alone. He scathingly
words of Jacques Lacan, part of her 'unbearable splendour'?26 Is she literally
replies, 'Do not I speak of her. She isn't, anymore:22 Yet, as every audience
un-bearable; that is, is she self-bearing?27
member would see, Antigone remains on stage. Even more, five lines later she
In this way, Antigone suggests not only illegibility, but, as fatherless daugh­
speaks, as she apostrophizes the absent Haemon: 'Dear Haemon, how your
qi ter, she might even represent a vision of authorlessness, as a generated being
11 father dishonors you:23 The audience member is struck by the conundrum:
whose source has become obscured, or even effaced. 28 At once Antigone is
how does one speak who is 'not'? As Timothy Gould argues, Antigone
'not', and yet, as Creon notes, 'there is too much' of her. She is at once
presents 'to us, as well as to the chorus, something of an unearthly charac­
'nowhere' and in too many places at once (daughter, sister, in the place of
ter-a mode of being between realms'.24 Again, the play seems to explicitly
the mother ) . She is erased, and yet from this erasure she seems to generate a
stage, even insist on, Antigone's peculiar ontology.
plenitude. Further, this seems to be a plenitude that the play cannot bear. Just
As Butler and Jacobs attest, Antigone has no place in any known symbolic
as Antigone is 'too much' for Creon, there is a sense in which she is 'too much'
system. As the occupant of a literally utopian subject position ('utopia' first
for the play itself.
and foremost translated as ou-topos, 'no place' ) , Antigone speaks, as it were,
Returning to the choral ode with which this chapter begins, the chorus'
from a site of erasure. In this way, too, she speaks from nowhere. As that
supplication to Dionysus after rehearing the autochthonous founding of
which evades recognizable familial, social, and political positions, Antigone
Thebes may be understood in another light. In closing, I want to suggest
should be voiceless, and yet the audience is witness to her unmistakable voice.
that, just as this play features a perverse reversal whereby Antigone tries to
bury the dead Polyneices, only to herself become buried alive, there is also a

20 Grene and Lattimore ( 1 99 1 : 1 83, I. 567) 1 70- 1 , 11. 239 and 252. Jacobs also discusses the
issue of Antigone's apparent invisibility during the act of burial, and links these moments with 25 Butler (2000: 22).
26
An \igone's ability to confound systems of signification. See particularly ( 1 996: 898-904). Lacan ( 1 992: 247) .
2 Grene and Lattimore. 27 The wordplay is present in the original French: 'dans son eclat insupportable', where porter
( 1 9 9 1 : 1 77, II. 4 1 7-22 ) . Jacobs discusses this scene in detail, particu­
. can connote the verb 'to carry' in terms of childbearing. Lacan ( 1 986: 290).
larly regardmg the complicated way in which Antigone's conflation with nature figures her as 8
2 Here I would recall the way in which Roland Barth es closes his essay ( 1 968) 'La mart de
both a protective and destructive force. See ( 1 996: 90 1-2).
�� Grene and Lattimore ( 1 9 9 1 : 1 83, !. 567); emphasis in original.
/ 'auteur' with a reference to Greek tragedy. Barthes is primarily interested in demonstrating the
ambiguous nature of 'tragic language': 'Un autre exemple fort precis peut le faire comprendre: des
Ibid. 1 84, !. 572.
recherches recentes ( J.P. Vernant) ant mis en /umiere la nature constitutivement ambigui! de la
2.4 In this i s ance, Gould is referring to the way in which Antigone defends her act of burial
. � : tragedie grecque; le texte y est tisse de mots a sense double, que chacque personage comprend
by mvokmg d1vme law, whereby, Gould argues, 'she claims to be . . . in touch not only with the
unilateralement (ce malentendu perpetual est precisement le "tragique")'. However, I would
knowledge of the "unwritten and unfailing" laws of Zeus and of the underworld, but with the
? �
unk� o;vable place of t eir o�gin'. Thoug Gould �s most concerned with elucidating ]. L.
. .
nonetheless argue that Barthes's turn toward the Attic stage in the final moments of the essay
is significant: for Barthes, the very concept of authorlessness (the death of the author) seems to
Aus: m s not10n o '. the Descnpt�ve Fallacy by making a persuasive analogy with Sophocles'
, be inherently linked to the practice of Greek tragedy. Like Ovid's pairing of autochthony and the
�n tigone,. concernmg Creon � desire to �las� down what Gould calls the 'illocutionary suspense' theatre, there seems to be a subtle logic that motivates Barthes's pairing of classical tragedy and
mherent m any speech act, his formulat10n is nonetheless useful for the present chapter in terms
the disappearance of the author.
of framing Antigone's curious ontology. Gould ( 1 995: 36).
236 Gender and Kinship
way in which the play itself functions as an attempt to properly bury its own
heroine. This play can be read as testifying to the 'maimed rites' (pace
Ophelia) not only for Polyneices, but for its heroine and namesake as well.
For, just as I have been discussing an erasure of origins, and then a kind of
generation from this erased site (generation from erasure) , there is a sense in
which Antigone cannot be contained, that she represents a problematic
surplus. As if in response to this surplus, there is also a way in which the
play itself seems to enact a kind of theatrical excess. Just as Antigone is outside
of intelligible social space, there is a way in which she seems to be b ursting out
of theatrical space as well.
As if in pre-figuration of Euripides' Bacchae, Sophocles' An tigone is a play
that seems to want to supersede, even shatter, its own representational frames.
While in thematic terms the play depicts a crisis of imprisonment, in struc­
tural terms Antigone seems to suggest the potential for violent liberation.
Consider the scene from the Bacchae when the mortal Pentheus (who is
related to Antigone, thus keeping this gesture all within the fam ily, so to
speak) dares to chain the divine Dionysus.29 L ike the tempest that attends
Antigone as she buries her brother's body, Dionysus rises up and the earth
literally quakes as he breaks out of his chains and is translated from mortal
impersonator to immortal divinity. The chorus cry out: ' Look, there how the
palace of Pentheus is collapsing! Above the pillars, look how the stones gape
and crack.' 30 Simon Goldhill astutely recognizes the meta-theatrical valence of
this moment, specifically the way in which the fictional and actual begin to
coalesce. The action on stage, within the diegetic boundaries of the play, is
simultaneously enacted by the play itself in real time. As Goldhill points out,
just as the palace of Pentheus is collapsing, so too, the representational frames
of the theatre itself begin to buckle:
The conventional perceptions of the limits of theatrical space are shockingly under­
mined. Euripides' physical breaking of the boundaries of the generic norms again
challenges the audience's passive perception of the play as a play. The frame-breaking
device is especially relevant in this work, where .. .the strangeness of bringing Diony­
sus on stage in the festival of Dionysus leads precisely to a series of questions about the
involvement of the audience in the theatrical experience.31
Placing Dionysus on stage in this manner threatens to disintegrate the very
boundaries of the representational domain that he is said to sanctify or
guarantee. As the palace of Pentheus comes tumbling down, it is as if the
29 Grima! ( 1 986: 527).
30 Goldhill ( 1 986: 277).
1
3 Ibid. 280.
Autochthonous An tigone: Breaking Ground 237
god of theatre himself seems to transgress and reach out, whereby he seems to
puncture, or even to tear, the very fictive skin of theatrical space itself.
On this note, returning to An tigone, the chorus' urgent plea to Dionysus to
save them, and to save their city, takes on a different tone. They open by
rehearsing the founding of Thebes by Cadmus: 'O Bacchus that dwells in
Thebes'; they go on, 'in the ground sown by the fierce dragon's teeth'. After
referring to this moment of autochthonous lineage, they call out in despera-
ti on:
And now when the city, with all its folk,
is gripped by a violent plague,
come with a healing foot,
over the slopes of Parnassus
over the moaning strait.32
They continue:
True-born child of Zeus, appear,
my lord, with your Thyiad attendants,
who in frenzy all night long
dance in your house, Iacchus
dispenser of gifts.33
At this moment, it is as though the chorus calls on Dionysus not o nly to save
their quickly disintegrating city of Thebes, but also to save the very theatrical
world in which they exist as well.34 When the chorus beg Dionysus to appear,
it is as though they are afraid that the theatrical space itself in which they exist
might disappear. This is theatrical earth quaking. This is the illusory space of
the theatre that threatens to gape and crack. Like the Bacchae, it is as though
the An tigone as a play enacts a kind of excess that threatens to breach its own
representational bounds. It is as if the figure of Antigone cannot be properly
contained, neither in the space of the social, nor, perhaps, by the bonds of the
theatre. Indeed, one might speculate that Antigone's thematic fate of being
buried alive is in response to, or is necessitated by, her structural status as
somehow 'too much' for the representational space that ought to contain her.
32 Grene and Lattimore ( 1 99 1 : 205, II. 1 2 1 5- 1 8 ) .
33 Ibid., II. 1 2 2 1-5.
34 Though 'Iacchus' is a distinct divinity from Dionysus, the two figures are often conflated.
In this instance, given the chorus's initial call to 'Bacchus', the tenor of address throughout the
strophe and antistrophe, whereby they repeatedly apostrophize Bacchus as 'thou', along with
their insistence on the fact that Dionysus has many names, ' Iacchus' can be taken to recall, if not
overtly refer to, 'Bacchus'.
 238 Gender and Kinship Autochthonous Antigone: Breaking Ground 239

Further, perhaps even more terrifying, and in keeping with the figure of
Antigone as one who generates from erasure, this moment might represent
the potential for a new kind of representation, a new and as of yet unrealized,
incipient representational space. This, then, is a way to understand Antigone's
claim or challenge: she does not signify an end to representation, or a lack of
representation, but rather a plenitude that might be, that is perhaps just
beyond the bounds of recognition.35 Antigone perhaps gestures towards
what Jacques Derrida famously calls the 'as yet unnamable', which is nonethe­
less 'proclaiming itself'. It comes slouching into view, in his words, 'only
under the species of the nonspecies, in the formless, mute, infant, and
terrifying form of monstrosity'.36 Antigone is monstrous in her alterity, she
is made illegible, and yet she is.
Certainly, I do not want to fall into the trap that Tina Chanter rightly
exposes in her chapter in this volume, 'Antigone's Political Legacies: Abjection
in Defiance and Mourning', in terms of turning to a trope of monstrosity that
equates Antigone with animality or illegibility.37 I do not want to dismiss or
relegate Antigone to the realm of the irrational or incomprehensible. Instead
�: of using 'monstrous' to connote the inhuman and aberrant, I follow Richard
"'
tional realm as a self-generating and authorless text. Out of erasure she
generates herself. I ndeed, one perhaps hears a latent anxiety regarding the
spectre of authorlessness, the ghost of the fatherless daughter, in Shakespeare's
King Lear. At the outset of the play, Lear asks Cordelia to make a public
declaration of her love for him. In response, she answers only, 'Nothing, my
lord' ( I . i.87). He challenges her by echoing her: 'Nothing?' ( I . i. 8 8 ) . She repeats
herself: 'Nothing' (I.i.89). Lear then takes the word up once again, this time
closer to a rage: 'nothing will come of nothing' (I.i.90 ) ,39 which he later
reiterates to the Fool: 'nothing can be made out of nothing' ( I.iv. 1 32-3 ) .40
Yet, as we have seen, something might indeed come from nothing; from the
invisible space beneath the stage, there is a voice from nowhere. This is a voice
that rises from the ground like the curtain rising on the Roman stage, like the
Sown Men that rise from dragon's teeth. A voice issuing without clear origin,
potentially positing its own origin, at once an act of erasure and yet genera­
tion. Antigone steps forward into a world almost ready to receive her.
39 Shakespeare ( 1 997: 1 304).
40 Ibid. 1 3 1 0.

;, Kearney's emphasis on the term's etymology from monere 'to warn', and
�; monstrare 'to show', which allows Antigone to be understood as a unique
II
�I
"' kind of portent.38 Antigone warns that the representational world as we know
,,,
it is not enough; she shows that there is more, another representational world
;1 waiting, as it were, in the wings.
;1
"'
For this is what makes Antigone so necessarily powerful and so terrifying.
She is not just orphaned; she is in some critical way authorless, self-authoring,
even self-authorizing, the spectre of a self-generated being that might give rise
to a new representational world. She poses a challenge to not only the
patriarchal system and traditional kinship structures by her potential status
as autochthonous voice, as fatherless daughter, but also to the representa -

35 My understanding of Antigone as a figure who gestures toward a potential futurity places

me in line with Tina Chanter's reading of Antigone in political terms. I fully endorse Chanter's
reading of Antigone as one who stands for 'a future of a politics yet to come' and who
'anticipates a future political order'. Whereas Chanter focuses on Antigone's gesture towards a
future plenitude in political terms, I focus on a similar aspect in representational terms. See her
chapter entitled 'Antigone's Political Legacies: Abj ection in Defiance of Mourning' in this
collection.
36 Derrida ( 1 978: 293). Note also that the original French ( '/'encore innomable qui s'anno nce')
captures the sense in which this coming into being is a kind of self-generation. Derrida's use of
the reflexive verb s'annoncer emphasizes the extent to which this unnamable might be self­
authoring, or self-authorizing. Derrida ( 1 967: 428).
37 For an incisive and powerful discussion of this issue see Chanter ( 1 995, passim).
38 Kearney (2003: 34).

14
Antigone and her Brother: What Sort
of Special Relationship?
Isabelle Torrance
The Antigone who is familiar from Sophocles, and from later interpretations
of his Antigone, such as versions by Cocteau, Brecht, Anouilh, Fugard, and
Heaney, to name but a few, is generally held up as a positive model for
courageous action against an oppressive regime, or in feminist terms, as a
woman with the courage to stand up to male domination in a man's world.
Antigone is often defined by her act of defiance in burying her brother
Polynices who, as a traitor to the state, is denied burial by the state edict of
his uncle Creon. The action of burial performed by Antigone privileges the
unwritten laws of the gods over the orders of the head of state. H owever, there
is a disturbing quality to Antigone's relationship with her brother, Polynices,
which is apparent even in Sophocles and has often been underplayed. This is
her obsessive loyalty to him as exemplified in Sophocles by her statement that
she would not have acted against the state for a husband or a son, but only for
her brother, since a new husband or son would be easy to come by, but not a
new brother, since both her parents are dead (905- 1 2).
Apart from being popular on the stage, the figure of Antigone has also been
essential in post-Freudian theories of psychoanalysis, where there has been a
clear trend of moving away from the figure of Oedipus towards using Antig­
one as a focus for exposition. Philosophers and theorists have been more
ready than dramatists to engage with the issue of Antigone's obsessive loyalty
to her brother, but have often found it difficult to reconcile this aspect of her
persona with their broader theoretical constructs. For Hegel, interpreting
Sophocles' Antigone (905 ff.) , in his Phenomenology of Spirit, the issue
becomes one of sexual difference in relation to human or divine laws. The
male, the brother, must leave the sphere of the family in order to fulfil his role
in society, associated with law-making and the state, while the female, the
sister, remains in the sphere of the family and is a guardian of divine law.
When Polynices dies, his being returns to the sphere of the family. His actions
Antigone and her Brother: A Special Relationship? 24 1
are inconsequential to his being, which must be buried by the female, for this
is her task. As Steiner puts it, for Hegel, Antigone's 'view of her brother is
ontological as no other can be: it is his being, his existence in and of itself, to
which she assigns irreplaceable worth'. 1 Hegel's focus on sexual difference and
divine function draws attention away from Antigone's vicious rejection of
other potential male kinship bonds.
Lacan also creates a sleight of hand in dealing with Antigone's obsession
with Polynices and has been criticized for attempting to assimilate this issue
into his theory of the ethics of pure desire represented by Antigone. As one
critic has remarked, Lacan's eulogy of Antigone, with her rejection of normal
kinship bonds (especially her rejection of marriage, and therefore mother­
hood) , is at the same time 'a hidden eulogy of incest'.2 Feminist theorists have
been more open about the problem. Luce Irigaray notes in her chapter for this
volume, in a characteristically nuanced discussion, that Antigone is 'a char­
acter who generally appeals to, but sometimes repulses' those who have
treated her. In a similar vein, Judith Butler has challenged some of the most
influential philosophical interpretations of the figure of Antigone, including
Hegel's notion that she represents the principle of kinship. Butler's suggestion
that Antigone 'hardly represents the normative principles of kinship, steeped
as she is in incestuous legacies that confound her position within kinship' is
clearly extremely valid.3 Bracha Ettinger has also addressed the issue of incest
in this volume, proposing a new theory of incest, which finds that the position
of pregnancy itself is a kind of incest. Such influential theorists have unde­
niably shed new light on the complex figure of Antigone, but they have tended
to focus almost exclusively on the Sophoclean Antigone.4
Here, I want to investigate the broader complexity of the figure of Antigone
by looking beyond Sophocles' Antigone to other sources in which Antigone
features. Variant mythological sources can be significant for considering the
full impact of the figure of Antigone on 'modern' society, and can serve to
consolidate certain theorizations of Antigone, especially where recurring
associations can be traced. Butler's aforementioned argument, for example,
becomes even more persuasive when we consider the breadth of Antigo ne's
legacy. To illustrate my point, I concentrate especially on the issue of Anti­
gone's relationship with Polynices. The discussion will fall into two parts. The
1
Steiner ( 1 984: 3 3 ) .
2 Guyomard ( 1992: 59), quoted i n Leonard (2006: 1 30).
3 Butler (2000: 2).
4 Butler (2000) focuses primarily on the Antigone from Sophocles' An tigone, and discusses
briefly the Antigone character from Sophocles' later play Oedipus at Colonus (59-66) but does
not treat any non-Sophoclean Antigone figure from ancient sources, as she acknowledges at
83 n. 2.
242 Gender and Kinship
first part will sketch out the different Antigones represented in surv1vmg
ancient sources in chronological order. The second will look at two case
studies from French drama, one seventeenth-century source (Rotrou's An tig­
one) and one twentieth-century source ( Gide's CEdipe), in which Antigone's
relationship with Polynices is explored in terms of its unnatural and incestu­
ous tendencies.
ANCIENT S OURCES
Placed i n between the production o f Sophocles' An tigone (c.44 1 BC) and his
Oedipus at Colon us ( 401 BC), there survives the text of Euripides' Phoenician
Women, produced c.4 1 1 .5 This play dramatizes the episode before that pre­
sented in Sophocles' Antigone, that is, Polynices waging war against Thebes
and the mutual fratricide of Polynices and Eteocles. In this version, Oedipus
and Jocasta are both still alive, and Antigone plays a major role. 6 Several times
in the play the relationship between Antigone and Polynices is stressed. As the
attacking army has gathered around Thebes, Antigone climbs to the top of the
city walls to observe the warriors. She seeks out Polynices especially and
wishes that she could fly over to him and embrace him after such a long
time in exile ( 1 58-69) . This unusual expedition out of the women's apart­
ments is presented as something which Antigone has particularly requested.
Later, Polynices himself will come into Thebes under the truce that his mother
has arranged between the two brothers, and one of his first concerns is for his
sisters (377-8) . We see that the relationship between the siblings here is
reciprocal, but the involvement of the female characters in trying to influence
the fate of the polis of Thebes is also noteworthy. Female interference in civic
affairs has been seen as a distinct characteristic of Theban women in Greek
tragedy, building on the concept of tragic Thebes as the anti-Athens.7
After the confrontation between Polynices and Eteocles has failed to resolve
the crisis, Antigone joins her mother in an attempt to prevent her brothers from
killing each other in single combat. Antigone's hesitation about venturing onto
the battlefield is based on the inappropriateness of this action for women. But
Jocasta needs Antigone to accompany her and urges her to hurry ( 1264-83 ) . The
5 It is clear that the end of the transmitted text of Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, originally
produced in 467 sc, in which Antigone features, is an inauthentic interpolation, and as such will
not be discussed here; see Torrance (2007: 1 9-20 and 1 3 1 n. 22) for further bibliography.
6 For more detail on the place of Euripides' Phoenician Women in relation to other mytho­
lo �ical treatments of the same episode, see Mastronarde ( 1994: 1 7-30) .
See Goff ( 1 995) and Zeitlin ( 1 986) .
An tigone and her Brother: A Special Relationship? 243
urgency of the situation is conveyed by the use of antilabai at 1273-8, a feature of
Greek tragic speech which always denotes an increased intensity of pace. 8 They
leave in all haste, but arrive too late-the brothers are already dying. Jocasta's
insistence on Antigone's presence shows that Antigone is held to have a particu­
lar influence. Her pleas are more likely to be heard than Jocasta's. The dying
actions of the brothers reveal a further recurring feature of Antigone's relation­
ship with them. It is with Polynices that she has a special connection. As Eteocles
dies, it is only to his mother that he gives a sign of love ( 1440-1) , but the dying
Polynices is very much concerned to appeal to Antigone also, looking first to
Antigone and then to his mother, and requesting that both mother and sister
bury him (1442-50). Overcome by grief, Jocasta seizes a sword and commits
suicide, effectively leaving Antigone with the responsibility of Polynices' burial,
in the familiar epilogue to his death.
Once the news of the brothers' death has reached Creon, he takes over
control of the kingdom, banishing Oedipus, announcing Antigone's wedding
to his son Haemon, and forbidding the burial of Polynices (158 7-638) .
Antigone's betrothal to Haemon had been ratified b y Eteocles while he was
still alive, with the order that Creon should see to their marriage should
Eteocles fall in battle (757-60). But Antigone here rejects the wishes of one
brother, Eteocles, and chooses to follow her father into exile to care for him,
repeating the pattern of Polynices going into voluntary exile. She simulta­
neously resolves to bury Polynices, whatever the cost. Antigone rejects mar­
riage, in a pattern familiar from other sources. With the threat that she will
become like one of the Danaids if forcibly married, that is, that she will
murder her husband on their wedding night, Antigone confirms the serious­
ness of this threat with a solemn oath and declares her intention to go into
exile with her father (1675-8 ) . Euripides' Phoenician Women, then, highlights
the contrast in Antigone's relationships with her two brothers. She longs to
see Polynices, and behaves inappropriately in order to catch sight of him. She
is deemed an essential figure in orchestrating an appeal to him, and she
ultimately rejects Eteocles' wishes outright, while taking great pains to honour
th ose of Polynices.
The exile of Oedipus and Antigone is dramatized in our next extant source,
Sop hocles' Oedipus at Colon us, a play which also explores the relationship
between Antigone and Polynices. There Oedipus and Antigone are exiles
before war breaks out at Thebes. Polynices comes to plead for Oedipus'
support in his assault on Thebes, but Oedipus is furious, blaming his sons
8 Greek tragic speech is written, for the most part, in iambic trimeters, and characters
normally speak whole lines of trimeters. In using antilabai, this pattern is disrupted and lines
of iambic trimeters are split between two characters who are engaged in urgent discussion.

244 Gender and Kinship
for h is exile. It is Antigone wh o mediates between th e two, as Oedipus at fi rst
refu ses to speak to h is son. Sh e encourages Polynices to explain wh y h e h as
come in order to elicit some response from Oedipus ( 1 280-3 ) . But Oedipus
replies by cursing h is sons to ki ll each oth er. Before taking h is leave, Polynices
requests th at h is sisters give h im due burial rites sh ould h e die ( 1 405- 1 0) .
Antigone tries to persuade h im to abandon h is attack on Th ebes in a desper­
ate exch ange wh ich also ends in antilabai ( 1 43 8-43 ), indicating th e urgency of
th e issue; but sh e fails. Wh at is signifi cant in both Euripides' Phoenician
Women and Soph ocles' Oedipus at Colonus is th e fa ct th at Antigone is th e
sister wh o engages with Polynices, even wh en Ismene was available to th e
dramatist in both instances. Ismene is mentioned once in Euripides' Phoeni­
cian Women, during an explanation of th e family genealogy (line 57), but sh e
is not a ch aracter in th e play, a conscious decision on Euripides' part. In
Oedipus at Colonus, by contrast, Ismene is an important ch aracter. Sh e reports
events at Th ebes to h er fath er and sister, but sh e does not engage with
Polynices at any point. Th is h igh ligh ts th e particularly close relationsh ip
.,11io,
between Antigone and Polynices.
Greek literature h ad a profound inf luence on Rome, and th ere are two
important treatments of th e Antigone myth in Roman literature-one tragedy,
Seneca's Phoenician Women, and one epic poem, Statius' Thebaid. Seneca's
Phoenician Women is an incomplete tragedy composed in th e fi rst century AD.
Even in its incomplete state, it fal ls into two parts, th e fi rst inspired by Euripides'
Phoenician Women, th e second by Soph ocles' Oedipus at Colonus, and it is a
tragedy obsessed with incest.9 Th ere is no encounter between Antigone and
Polynices in th is play as it is, but th e quarrel between th e broth ers is still very
much a concern for Antigone. Sh e tries to convince h er fath er to mediate
between th em (288-94), as does a Messenger bringing news of th eir i mminent
war (3 20-7, 3 47-9) , but Oedipus will not be moved. It is left to Jocasta, again
with Antigone's encouragement ( 403- 6, 4 14 -1 8), to attempt mediation.
In Statius, th e relationsh ip between Antigone and Polynices is developed
furth er. Sh e appeals to h im directly from th e battlements in book 1 1 , a nod
back to Antigone's survey from th e battlements in Euripides' Phoenician
Women. I n Statius, Antigone's appeal makes Polynices waver in h is resolve.
Sh e lets out a loud lament from th e battlements and speaks as th ough sh e is
about to leap from th e wall, crying out to h er broth er to h old back h is arms
and turn h is gaze to h er eyes (3 6 1-4). Th e special relationsh ip between
Antigone and Polynices is made clear in th is speech wh ere sh e appeals to
Polynices to abandon h is quarrel with h is broth er. Th is is one of many
9 See e.g. Fantham ( 1 983).
Antigone and her Brother: A Special Relationship? 245
deliberative speech es in Statius, and in th is instance th e persuasion is success­
fuI. 1 0 Part of Antigone's speech is worth quoting h ere:
'... rogat illa suorum
Antigone devota malis suspectaque regi,
et tantum tua, <lure, soror. saltem ora trucesque
solve genas; liceat vultus fortasse supremum
noscere dilectos et ad haec lamenta videre
anne fleas. ilium gemitu iam supplice mater
frangit et exsertum dimittere dicitur ensem:
tu mihi fortis adhuc, mihi, quae tua nocte dieque
exsilia erroresque fleo iam iamque tumentem
placavi tibi saepe patrem? quid crimine solvis
germanum? nempe ille fidem et stata foedera rupit,
ille nocens saevusque suis; tamen ecce vocatus
non venit.'
·�
'Your Antigone begs, faithful to the ills of her loved ones and suspect to the king, sist�r
only to you, O hard of heart! At least relax your frowning look. Let me recogmze it
.
'.
may be for the last time, the face I love and see whether you wee p at my la � ent. H1i:1
. .
our mother already softens with her suppliant tears and he is said to be lettmg go his
:1
drawn sword. Are you still strong of purpose to me? To me, who bewail your exile and '!
wanderings night and day, who have often calmed our father's wrath against you as it ..
'I
swelled? Why do you free your brother of blame? It was he, was it not, who broke faith
and covenant agreed, he is guilty and cruel to his kin; yet see, he is challenged and does
.
'"
:
not come.' (1 1 . 370-82).11 ..
Antigone h as been willing to anger Eteocles, th e king, in pursuing h er support
for Polynices, in ch oosing h im to receive h er sister's love. Sh e h as also
mediated often in th e past, we learn, between Oedipus and Polynices. Here
Antigone ach ieves with Polynices wh at Jocasta h ad ach ieved with Eteocles . He
.
does not come to fi gh t, and is said to be abandoning h is sword, but Polym ces
h as so far been unaffected by h is moth er's protestations. It is o nly Antigone
wh o can makeh is h and begin to fall and h is anger abate ( 1 1 . 3 84- 7) . Th e duel
between th e broth ers is only ach ieved because th e Fury 'h urls fo rth Eteocles'
to attack h is broth er ( 1 1 . 3 87- 8 ) . In oth er words, divine intention overrules
th e results ofh uman endeavour in Statius, and grim violence wins out over
forgiveness. 1 2 But Antigone's love of Polynices as expressed in th is passage h as
10 On deliberative speeches in Statius' Thebaid, see Dominik ( 1 994: 73-88).
1 1 Text edited and translated by Shackleton Bailey (2003 ).
12 The imbalance in Statius in the struggle between good and evil, with an verwhelmmg
.
.� .
emphasis on war and evil, has often been read as a critique of politics under Dom1llan, th � ugh it
has recently been suggested that this is not necessarily the case, and that the emphasis may
reflect Statius' own world-view. See Franchet d'Esperey ( 1 999) .
246 Gender and Kinship
unnatural undertones. So much so th at line 3 7 1 provoked a sch oliast to
explain: propter amorem Polynicis dicitur enim cum eo concubisse, 'on account
of h er love for Polynices, it is in fact said th at sh e h ad slept with h im'. As
Steiner notes, th e dicitur 'it is said' is intriguing in its implication th at th is was
an earlier feature of th e Th eban cycle. 1 3 As we h ave seen, previous ancient
sour ces h int at an unnatural love, perh aps bordering on th e incestuous, but
none is explicit on th e point.
TWO FRENCH ANTIGONES
It is important to note th ese alternative sources for th e Antigone myth
because th ey were all available to European writers from th e seventeenth to
th e twentieth centuries, in times wh en a classical education was often th e
norm. European writers may often h ave been far more competent at Latin
th an Greek, but th e Latin versions th emselves were inspired by Greek litera­
ture, and th ere were translations available of Greek works, both in Latin and
in th e vernacular. 1 4 Certainly two French playwrigh ts ch ose to emph asize th e
incestuous potential of th e relationsh ip between Antigone and Polynices.
Jean de Rotrou's Antigone, written in 1 63 7, and publish ed two years later,
dramatizes th e fratricidal war as a prologue to th e main dramatic issue in th e
play, Antigone's b urial of Polynices. Antigone's bond with Polynices is so
strong in th is play th at Steiner's ar guments concerning th e ' duplicity of level s,
both erotic and sisterly' in Antigone's appeal to h er broth er, bordering on th e
incestuous, are h igh ly convincing. 1 5 As Steiner notes, a play on th e word
'amitie ' can be read into th e play, for example, wh ere th e term usually
rendered 'friendsh ip' could also be loaded with erotic overtones in seven­
teenth -century French . 1 6 Certainly we are told over and over again th at
Antigone's relationsh ip with Polynices goes beyond th at of broth er and sister
to th e point th at Polynices' wife Argia admits sh e h ad been jealous of Anti­
gone's place in Polynices' h eart, wh ere Antigone seemed more th e wife and
sh e more th e sister ( 999- 1 002).
A particular invention of Rotrou is th e Antigone-Haemon-Polynices trian­
gle. Antigone's betroth ed Haem on is well aware ofh er deep love for Polynices.
13 Steiner ( 1 984: 1 6 0 ) .
14 See Garland (2004, ch. 5) o n the availability of translations.
15 Steiner (1 984: 1 62).
16
Ibid. 1 60.
Antigone and her Brother: A Special Relationship? 247
Because of th is, Haemon protects Polynices in battle. He reports to Antigone
at 1 96- 204:
Son corps semble a dessein s'offrir a mon epee:
Mais loin d'oser sur Jui tenter aucun effort,
J'ai pare mille coups qui Jui portaient la mort.
L'amitie qui vous joint autant que la naissance,
M'a fait contre nous meme embrasser sa defense:
II conserve en sa vie un bien qui vous est du,
Bien mieux que sa valeur vous l'avez defendu,
Yous etiez son bouclier au milieu des alarmes,
Et vous l'avez sauve, seule, absente, et sans armes.
(His body seemed destined to offer itself to my spear: but far from daring to attack
him in any way, I shielded him from a thousand death-bearing blows. The love which
joins you both as much as your birth, made me turn on my own men to secure his
defence: he owes the preservation of his life to you, you h ave defended him much
better than his own valour, you were his shield in the midst of battle-dangers, and you
have saved him, though alone, absent, and without arms.)
Several points are revealed by th is passage. First of all, Polynices is not th e
great warrior one migh t expect. Haemon h as ample ch ance to ki ll h im and
admits th at h e is alive o nly because of Antigone ( note th e insistent 'vous',
'you', in th e last four lines), and not th rough any valour of h is own. It is
because Haemon loves Antigone so deeply th at h e takes th e actions h e does.
Not only does h e refrain from killing Polynices wh en h e h as th e ch ance, h e
also fends off attackers, turning on h is own troops i n th e process. Th e end of
th is speech emph asizes to wh at degree Antigone is th e reason for wh ich '
-
Polynices is still alive.
Her response to Haemon clarifi es h er relationsh ip with h er broth ers still
furth er. Sh e exclaims th at by saving Polynices, Haemon h as saved Antigone
h erself, and admits th at sh e h as an affection for h er broth er wh ich goes
beyond th at of sisterly love, an affection wh ich sh e does not h ave for Eteocles.
Th ough sh e h onours Eteocles as a sister sh ould, sh e h as always loved Polynices
more tenderly ( 205- 1 8 ) . Polynices also admits a special weakness forh is sister,
th ough h e claims no longer to be affected by it ( 297-8) . Interestingly, h e asks
h is fath er- in- law Adrastu s to see to h is burial rites as h e sets off to fi gh t h is
broth er (3 1 5- 1 8 ) . Th is is a radical departure from th e Polynices of oth er
sources wh o asks h is sister (and sometimes h is moth er) to ensure h is burial. It
foresh adows th e truth of Polynices' claim to be unresponsive to Antigone's
pleas. I n turn, Antigone's affection for Polynices over Eteocles is contrasted
with Jocasta's equal love for h er sons ( 476) and h er anger at each of th em
equall y wh en th ey ultimately refuse to desist from combat.
248 Gender and Kinship
Antigone's supplication of Polynices takes place in Act 2, scene 2. She
stresses their special bond as a final plea against Polynices' rejection of her
wishes. Their bond had caused the jealousy of Eteocles, who suspects Antigo­
ne because her respect for Polynices prevents her from honouring Eteocles.
But even he, explains Antigone, has been moved by his mother and is ready to
abandon the war. Polynices, however, will not be moved even by Antigone, so
bent is he on revenge, and her appeals fail catastrophically (3 95-426). This
represents a personal disaster and a psychological trauma for Antigone. She
fi nds that, where she should have been the one person able to influence
Polynices, she is now completely powerless. It is not surprising to fi nd her
in mourning at the opening of Act 3 , before any news of the brothers' deaths
has been conveyed. I ndeed, Haemon assumes that she knows of their deaths
because of her attire (687- 9) . But, still unaware of Polynices' death, what she
is mourning is the loss of her relationship with him.
The second half of the play deals with the issue of Polynices' burial,
prohibited by Creon's edict. Antigone goes out to find her brother's body
and meets his widow Argia in the fi eld (as also in Statius ) . This is their first
meeting, and Argia explains Polynices' obsession with Antigone, to the point
where she felt Antigone superseded her in importance. Argia explains how she
had hoped Antigone would have been the one person able to influence
Polynices, but concludes that alas, this time, Polynices resisted her charms
(I 005-9) . Antigone's response to this is remarkable. Instead of accepting this
as true, she tells a blatant lie, claiming that Polynices was j ust about to put
down his arms when Eteocles ruined her appeal ( 1 0 1 0- 13 ) .
Antigone cannot accept Polynices' rejection of her and here essentially
denies it to his widow. When the two are caught disobeying Creon's edict,
Antigone takes responsibility for the burial and consciously diminishes Argia's
role. Antigone goes so f ar as to claim that she alone loved Polynices ( 1 275) . But
the rest of the play shows this to be clearly untrue. Polynices was much loved by
his wife, his mother, and even his father-in-law. In Rotrou then, Antigone's
relationship with Polynices is at least obsessive, if not incestuous. She defi nes
herself completely as Polynices' sister, as more important to him than his wife,
and remains in denial about his ultimate rejection of her.
If incest is implicit in Rotrou, Andre Gide's 1 93 1 play CEdipe articulates
desire for sibling incest in no uncertain terms. Gide himself was known for his
loose sexuality and for his sexual encounters of many different kinds­
heterosexual, homosexual, and pederastic- and much has been written on
this subject. 1 7 But his CEdipe develops the theme of incest to a degree which is
17 See e.g. Lucey ( 1 995) and Segal ( 1 998), both with further bibliography.
Antigone and her Brother: A Special Relationship? 249
unparalleled in other versions. In Gide, Jocasta, apparently aware of the incest
between herself and Oedipus, desperately tries to stop him from discovering
the truth in order to maintain the status quo, at the beginning of Act 3 . This
desire for a tacit legitimization of incest is ref lected in Gide's representation of
the potential for sibling incest. The siblings form two pairs in Gide, Antigone
and Polynices, and Ismene and Eteocles. Of the sisters, Antigone is pious, as
we hear from Tiresias at the end of Act 1 . She wants to become a nun in the
hopes of levelling out the imp iety of her father who has rejected the gods
( represented by Tiresias, the children's tutor) . When we meet Antigone in Act
2, she is with Polynices, and the two are being observed in secret by Oedipus
and Creon. Polynices asks Antigone not to be embarrassed by what he will ask
her. She replies 'Je rougis done d'avance. Mais demande, pourtant': 'I blush
then in advance. But ask anyway'. She knows Polynices will broach an inap­
propriate subject, yet for all her piety she displays the trait of curiosity so
familiar in her father Oedipus. Polynices then asks: ' Is it forbidden to marry
'"11
one's sister?'. 'Yes, certainly. Forbidden by both men and God', replies Antigo­
ne, but her curiosity continues, 'Why do you ask me this?' ' Because', says
Polynices, ' if I could marry you completely, I think I would let myself
be guided by you towards your God'. Antigone remains remarkably calm at
this suggestion, simply replying ' How, in committing evil, do you hope to
encounter good?'
Meanwhile, Creon and Oedipus have overheard the whole sordid conver­
sation. Creon is appalled and exclaims in a spirited aside that he cannot allow
incest, to which Oedipus responds 'Be quiet'. This interaction both empha­
sizes the uncomfortable sense in which the siblings are being observed
without their knowledge, but also, and more importantly, it signals Oedipus'
lack of any real concern for incest between his offspring. The focus of the
scene then shifts to the entry of Ismene and Eteocles. There is a clear parallel
between the two brothers, who are said to get on extremely well with each
other, and at the same time, there is a striking contrast between the sisters.
Antigone is haughty and religious, while Ismene is fu n-loving and flirtatious.
The sisters soon leave the stage and the brothers engage in conversation, still
overheard by Creon and Oedipus. They discuss the task of seeking an approv­
al or an authorization for committing indecencies. Eteocles casually expresses
his search for a way in which he might be allowed to sleep with Ismene.
Polynices asks him to shar e the secret if he fi nds a way and suggests that there
is another way, one which is not authorized. Eteocles explains that actually he
does not care about justifi cation or approval for his actions, but is seeking it
for Ismene. A scuff le breaks out in which Polynices, who is fu rious, makes
Eteocles swear that nothing has happened between him and Ismene. Eteocles
swears it and says he has been repressing his desire: ' je refoule', to which
250 Gender and Kinship
Poly nices responds, 'Pas autant que moi' , 'not as much as I have'. The subject
of their conversation shif ts to a discussion of monsters from their past
Cadmean heritage and eventually Oedipus emerges and speaks to his sons.
He, like Antigone, is remarkably calm at the thought of his sons sleeping with
their sisters. After a preamble, he tells the boys they should respect their sisters
and advises them that they must look beyond what is too close to them in
orde r to progress.
G ide's representation of Antigone's relationship with her brother is
remarkable. He manages to present a pure and pious Antigone, who is closely
related to the divine, the Antigone fi gure who is so popular in the classical
tradition. Yet at the same time, G ide's Antigone is disturbing. She desires to
know what her brother warns her will be inappropriate and, although she
clearly rejects the idea of incest, she is not startled, shocked, or repulsed by it.
At the end of the play, she rejects divinity, abandoning her plans of becoming
a nun in order to care for her father in exile. Similarly, the b rothers' desires to
sleep with their sisters, though deeply shocking, and with a clear potential for
consummation in this incestuous family, are treated lightly by Oedipus as a
silliness of youth.
The play has been read as a response to Freudian psychological theory. It
has been noticed that the drama contains many allusions to Freudian theory
(e.g. references to repressed desire, such as that noted above) , which show that
G ide knew it well, but also that he ref used to adopt it wholesale. By emphasiz ­
ing the possibility of an incestuous relationship between brother and sister,
G ide moves the focus away from Oedipus' incest. G ide's Oedipus, ironically,
does not have an Oedipus complex. In fact, as we have seen, Jocasta is the one
who wants the relationship to continue, while Oedipus himself does not feel
responsibility for the crime, but treats it as a predestined misfortune which
was determined even from his birth. 1 8 But there is more to the play than a
simple reaction to Freud. G ide's new emphasis on sibling incest is exploiting a
fundamental element in the relationship between Antigone and Polynices
which hovers beneath the surface of the ancient sources in which they appear.
He may also have been inspired by Rotrou's Antigone, but one thing that is
certain is that G ide did not pluck this issue out of thin air. There is a clear, if
repressed, tradition of an unnatural relationship between Antigone and
Pol ynices. G ide's work exposes that tradition even while his characters repress
their true desires.
18 Genova (1995: 111-13} discusses these issues.
Antigone and her Brother: A Special Relationship? 251
B A CK TO THE 'ARCH ITEXT'
Whichever way it is presented, Antigone's relationship with Polynices is unnat­
ural and disturbing, and this fi ts in with her incestuous family background. She
betrays an unhealthy preference for Polynices, valuing him even above her
devoted fi ance . But then she is a product of a union in which family bon ds
and marriage bonds have been confused and outraged. When we examine
Antigone's relationship with her brother, we find in Antigone a symbol who
should be glorified neither in feminist terms, nor in terms of freedom of speech,
nor as a champion against oppression by the state. We find something more
sinister in her uncomfortable relationship with her brother. But this is the very
stuff of G reek tragedy, a genre which persistently dramatiz ed taboo events and
taboo relationships in order to express and deal with elemental social anxieties.
Indeed, Antigone's unhealthy obsession with Polynices over all others can
already be detected in our 'architext', to use G enette's term, 19 Sophocles' Antigo­
ne. There too, Antigone rejects marriage and motherhood, choosing instead to
lie with Polynices 'united in love . . . forever' ( 73-6 ) through her death.20
True, a certain amount of glory can be attached to her death, but, as has
been noted, ' we recogniz e it as a cruel curtailment and perversion of all the
sexual and maternal desires that should be expected of a woman'.2 1 Further­
more, she admits that she would not have acted thus against a state decree for
the sake of a lost son or husband. Her logic is that these are both replaceable
and so she values Polynices above all else (904- 1 2) . Scholars have consistently
disagreed over how much sympathy Sophocles' Antigone should be accorded,
and this proves Antigone's complexity as a character.22 However we read her
character, though, Antigone does possess some unattractive characteristics,
especially her obsessive devotion to dead kin coupled with a hostility towards
her living relatives, a trait easily contrasted with Ismene's devotion to the
living.23 Antigone's loyalties cannot be seen as lying with her kin, and all that
19 Genette (1982).
20
On the conflation of marriage and death in Greek tragedy, where death is often a substitute
or metaphor for marriage, see Rehm (1994, esp. 59-71) on Antigone; see also Seaford (1987).
21 Griffith (1999: 52). In a radical lost Euripidean Antigone, the heroine and Haemon seem to
have had a child together, possibly in secret, but Antigone still appears to lament Polynices'
de��h more �han Eteocles:. See further Jouan �nd Van Looy (�998: 191-212), esp. 200.
.
There 1s ample bibliography on the subject, and I restnct myself here to two important
.
articles suggesting different viewpoints. Sourvinou-lnwood (1989} argued that the popular view
of Sophocles' Antigone as the virtuous sister is anachronistic and is undermined by her status
an d her familial and civic obligations. More recently, Harris (2004) has argued that, in terms of
Greek law, Antigone has the law on her side.
23 On this issue, see Sommerstein (1990-3).
 252 Gender and Kinship Antigone and her Brother: A Special Relationship? 253

that implies. Rather there is a distinction between 'friends' and ' enemies' in ship with Polynices is exclusive and disturbing before his death; and 1 t i s
the play, where kin can fall into either camp.24 Antigone's obsession with disturbing in a way that her relationship with Eteocles is not. This composite
Polynices has been explained in terms of her ' single- minded passion'25 and, by and diachronic fi gure of Antigone can conversely be seen to strengthen Judith
implication, as a symptom of the isolation typically precipitated and experi­ Butler's rejection of Hegel' s theory of kinship bonds by highlighting a recur­
enced by the Sophoclean hero.26 The unsettling nature of Antigone' s relation­ rent trend in the fi gure of Antigone which is present not only in ancient
ship with Polynices, which manifests itself both before his death and sources but beyond.
I 'II afterwards, is not an issue stressed by those who find Antigone largely
sympathetic, but it is an aspect of Antigone' s persona which, as we have
seen, is consistently reflected in her mythological and dramatic legacy. Anti­
gone's 'incestuous attachment' to her father has been emphasiz ed by
Patricia Johnson, who uses this terminology as distinct from 'incest' itself.
But again, she treats only the Sophoclean plays Oedipus the King and Oedipus
at Co/onus when she argues that ' Antigone's devotion is decidedly vertical,
not horiz ontal, and is directed towards her father, not her brothers'. Thus,
Johnson argues, when her fa ther dies, Antigone's oedipal attachment is
transferred to her brother.27 There certainly seems to be a stronger bond
with Polynices in the sources in which Oedipus is dead, but Polynices is stil l
the favourite brother in treatments where Oedipus is still alive, such as in the
Oedipus at Co/onus, the Phoenician Women of E uripides and Seneca, and
Gide's CEdipe. The obsession is always for the same brother to the exclusion
of the other.

C ON CL U SI ON

Taking account of the broader tradition of Antigone's persona in conjunction

with the Sophoclean paradigm may help to enrich our understanding of the
complexities she represents. In this broader context, we can see more clearly
the problems of certain theories. For example, Hegel treats the death of
Polynices as the trigger for his irreplaceable worth in Antigone' s eyes. Based
on an analysis of Antigone as a myt hical persona rather than as a Sophoclean
construct, however, we can see that the analysis fails since there is ample
evidence, even within a varying tradition, to show that Antigone's relation-

24 See Blundell (1989: 106-15).

25 Nussbaum (2001: 64).
26
On the Sophoclean hero, see Knox ( i964b) .
27 Johnson (1997: 374).

15
Reclaiming Femininity: Antigone's 'Choice'
in Art and Art History
Martina Meyer
Just as Sophocles exploit ed t he myt h of Ant igone for t he Att ic st age, elabor­
at ing or eliminat ingt he narrat ive aspect s t hat best suit ed his creat ive purpose,
art ist s make similar st rat egic choices when t hey depict her and, as t his chapt er
will show, t he most prevalent depict ive approaches impose ext ernal limit s
upon feminine aut onomy, preserving t radit ional masculine ideologies.
By disclosing Ant igone' s cult ural presence as one of conformance t o t he
pat riarchal invent ion oft he feminine gender, images reveal societ y' s embedded
att itudes t owards gender difference in a way t hat complement s and enlarges
t ext ually based int erpret at ions. As t heir concret e nat ure mediat es bet ween t he
mat erial and t he immat erial, t hey generat e mult iple and resist ant readings;
consequent ly t he messages t hey convey, conscious and unconscious, are as
inst ruct ive as t he most self-aware act of performance. 1 Sophocles' heroine
present s her audience wit h a profound int erpret ive dilemma. Ant igone defi es
Creon, her only surviving male relat ive, her uncle and her ki ng, excellent
reasons for a woman in a pat riarchal societ yt o submit t o masculine aut horit y:
Ant igone performs t he burial rit es for her brot her, fulfi lling a fundament al
obligat ion of kinship t radit ionally gendered fem inine.2 This dualit y illumi­
nat es a paradoxt hat has been underscored by feminist responsest o t he t ext­
not ably t hose of Luce I rigaray, whose emphasis on defi ance has rendered
Ant igone's name synonymous wit h confront at ion and resist ance, and Judit h
But ler, whose argument i n Antigone's Claim fo r t he polit iciz at ion o f kinship
1 Nochlin ( 1999) and Warner (1985) provide feminist historical perspectives on the presence
and repression of female agency in art, exposing the manner in which images participate
in implicit societal assumptions about gender difference.
2 Loraux (1998) makes a convincing case that mourning is gendered feminine in Greek
culture, see especially ch. 2. Images provide excellent corroborating documentation for the role
of women in funerary proceedings ( Oakley 2004). The relationship between women, tragedy.
and funerary rites has been recently discussed by Harne (2008: 1-15).
Antigone's 'Choice' in Art and Art History 255
st ruct ures undoes pat riarchal gender hierarchies.3 Bot h int erpret at ions refo­
cus t he t ext as a discourse of gender difference in order t o expose pat riarchy's
vict imizat ion of women: bot h privilege defi ance over conformance.4 While
defi ance of st at e aut horit y is a crucial aspect of t he t ext 's int ernal cont ra­
dict io ns, t he prominence it enjoys does not fully reconcile t he fact t hat Ant i­
gone's performance of t he burial rit es sit uat es her fi rmly wit hin pat ernalist ic
const ruct ions of femininit y. In classical art , cont emporary ( roughly) wit h
Sophocles' play, defi ance becomes invisible: only t he t radit ional fe minine
role is port rayed and any dualit y is t enuous. A long visual t radit ion follows
from t he classical one, always cast ingt he ancient heroine in t his same, t ypically
feminine role, and t his t radit io n serves as a perfect example of t he modern
feminist crit ique oft he hist ory of images, in which women are robbed oft heir
agency.5 To t his end, art avoids as a subject t he confront at ion bet ween Ant igo­
ne and Creon. As well, depict ions of Ant igone's enact ment of her brot her's
forbidden burial rit es are also evaded, or, when t he subject is port rayed, t he
overall effect is not one of defi ance, but one of mourning-a reput able
feminine response t hat offers no signifi cant challenge t o t he st at us quo. N or
does t he ult imat e consequence of her act ion, specifi cally her mart yrdom fo r
her beliefs, fi gure wit h a n y prominence i n t he visual repert oire. This endemic
avoidance is, I propose, sympt omat ic oft he broader cult ural response t o t he
play's revelat ion oft wo discret e, but mut ually dependent , feminine const ruct s: .,
one demands Ant igone' s submission t o a pat riarchal defi nit io n of femininit y
t hat would require her t o relinquish her aut onomous percept ion of her
fe minine role, and t he ot her i nvolves her wilf ul conformance t o t hat self­
generat ed ident it y. Sue El len Case has argued t hat t he essent ial misogyny of
G reek drama result ed in t he invent ion of a female gender t hat suit ed societ y' s
polit ical needs.6 This not ion highlight s t he real t hreat posed by Ant igone, fo r
i n and o f it self individual defi ance against t he st at e i s not revolut ionary- what
ist ruly revolut ionary is t he drama' s const ruct ion of a woman who resist s being
forcedt o conform t o masculine precept s of femininit y in favour ofchoosingt o
conform, but o n her own t erms. The enigma of Ant igone is t hat her belief in
3 Butler (2000). Feminist art historian, Griselda Pollock (2006: 111-17) observes that mythic
creatu res like Antigone situate the concept of the feminine at the very heart of human identity,
advocating a similar dissolution of the boundary between family and state. For Antigone as a
principle of feminine defiance and an example of anti-authoritarianism, see Irigaray (1985 and
1995).
4 Foley's (2001) interpretation adopts a similar approach, revealing Antigone as a woman
who exhibits moral agency; see especially Part I II.
5 Broude and Garrard (2005, 1992, 1982); Nochlin (1999, 1988); Warner (1985).
6
Case (1985: 318-20) argues that Athenian cultural institutions privilege the masculine
gend er by creating a new gender role of 'woman'.
256 Gender and Kinship
the obligations of kinship is in no way contrary to the feminine stereotype,
rather she internalizes and elaborates the construct, subverting it out of an
independent perception of identity. The social dilemma presented by her
dramatic characterization results from the fact that her very conformance to
gender expectation is transformed into a catalyst for social instability. N icole
Loraux has exposed the enduring psychological threat of intrinsic femininity
to patriarchal systems in a persuasive analysis of how feminine excesses of grief
generate a power perceived resistant to masculine control.7 Building upon this,
I interpret Antigone's choice to bury her brother as an expression of feminine
excess that subverts patriarchy's assignment of mourning and funerary obser­
vance to women. I p ropose in this chapter to demonstrate that through
selective evasion and deliberate emphases on the traditional feminine role,
artists ackn owledge the contradictions of femininity represented in the play.
By politicizing her in the most conservative fashion, images reinforce patriar­
chal gender and kinship hierarchies, implying perception of the dangers of
what I will here describe as ' excess' femininity, and underlining the need for
continuing oppression in the interests of masculine political systems and
social stability.
I should, prior to introducing the images themselves, make explicit my
criteria for their selection: they have been chosen to provide as inclusive a
representation of Antigone in the pictorial tradition as possible. Ancient
images, including a controversial nestoris by the Dola n Painter, present a
cultural awareness of Antigone significant for its departure from tragedy's
presentation of active confrontation and interrogation of patriarchal gender
constructs. N ineteenth- to twentieth-century depictions represent women in
situations that, following LindaN ochlin, I interpret as ' operations of power',
reading them as discourses of gender difference, which I elaborate to include
how the pressures of modernity not only have displaced traditional assump­
tions about gender roles, but have reinforced them as well.8 As modern
productions take f ull advantage of the ancient drama as an opportunity to
re-write femininity, my investigation of contemporary depictions focuses on
publicity posters.9 This presents a unique challenge as posters, considered
7 Loraux ( 1 998) in ch. 2 deals with the sumptuary laws imposed to curtail mourning.
identifying the ways in which Attic literature is aware of and attempts to repress the threatening
cultural immanence of the mother by, among other things, circumscribing the quantity and
quality of her mourning.
8 Nochlin ( 1 988: 1) describes images of women in situations of power as 'operations of
power', observing that it is usually women's lack of power that the image communicates.
9 Modern interpretations transform ancient fictional women to appeal to audiences search­
ing for strong female characters as models of autonomy and social authority. See Dillon and
Wilmer's (2005) collected essays which reveal how, outside of its original social context, Greek
Antigone's 'Choice' in Art and Art History 257
ephemera, are not uniformly documented or well preserved. As well, there is,
unsurprisingly, a significant amount of material due to the play's popularity
necessitating selectivity, with the result that the examples introduced here
have been isolated on the basis of their targeted audience as reflecting both
sophistication and cultural difference.
ANT I G ON E AT TH E S YMP O S I UM: C L A S S I CA L
ART AN D TH E F EM IN IN E P AR A D OX
Despite Sophocles' success and the subsequent centrality of his works to
Aristotle's ranking of d ra matists, ancient images depicting Antigone are few,
and in the case of the Antigone there is little visual evidence that can with any
certainty be connected to the play.10 It is not until some sixty years after the
play's debut that the visual artist adopts her story in a limited series of early
fourth-century painted pots of South Italian manufacture. With two excep­
tions, collective depictions of Antigone firmly configure femininity in accor­ .,
dance with patriarchal definitions. 1 1 The resultant conspicuous contrast
between images and drama responds to a perceived threat against social
order, generated by Anti gone's unconditional adherence to the belief that
the obligations of femininity can exist outside those dictated by patriarchy
and be autonomously determined. One important way that patriarchy
reclaims authority is by circumscribing the quantity and quality of feminine
grief through institutionalized expressions of mourning that reconcile femi­
ninity with civic standards. 1 2
tragedy can redefine femininity. For example, the Irish playwright Brendan Kennelly describes
. .
his vers10n of Sophocles' Antigone as a feminist declaration of independence, Roche (2005: 153
n. 10). More recently, Wilmer (2007) explores how female directors and writers exploit
characters such as Antigone to comment on contemporary society's institutions, demanding a
reassessment of its standards of behavioural normalcy. See also MacDonald and Walton
(2002b), especially Marianne McDonald and Athol Fugard, whose essays employ feminist
theory as a segue linking Greek tragedy and post-colonialism; also Brian Arkins's comments
on Antigone, especially 207-9.
10 For a comprehensive list of Antigone in the ancient visual tradition, see LIMC I. 8 18 -27 .
11• Exceptions include a wall painting, described by Philostratus, Imagines 2.29 , in which
Antigone attempts to drag the corpse of her brother to the grave of Eteocles. A Roman
sarcophagus in the Villa Doria Pamphili similarly depicts Antigone grasping her brother; here
she does not undertake this act independently, but is assisted by a figure identified as Argeia,
LIMc II. 822.
12
Loraux (1998, ch. 2). See above n. 7.
 258 Gender and Kinship
Fig. 1 5.l Lucanian red-figure panathenaic style amphora by the Brooklyn-Budapest
Painter, early fourth century BC. Paris, Louvre CA 308.
It is unsurprising t hen t hat among t he earl iest depict ions oft he myt h is a
Lucanian amphora t hat unambiguousl y cel ebrat es inst it ut ional iz ed f unerary
convent ion, reducing t he t roubl ed House of Laius t o t he st at us of any ot her
G reek domos ( Fig. 1 5 . 1 ) .1 3 The B rookl yn-Budapest Paint er depict s t he st el e of
Oedipus, att ended by t wo women and a yout h. The figures are unident ified.
One woman t akes precedence and hol ds a l aden offering t ray before t he st el e.
Her dominance in t he composit ion suggest s t hat she is Ant igone, whil e t he
l ack of emphasis on t he second femal e point s t o Ismene, or perhaps a servant .
The overall composit ion conforms t o t he generic ' visit t o t he t omb' iconog­
raphy popul ariz ed during t he l att er hal f of t he fifth cent ury, different iat ed
o nl y by it s individual iz ing memorial inscript ion. 1 4 That inscript ion, ident ify-
13 Trendall (1967: llO, no. 572, pl. 56, 5).
14 Oakley (2004: 145-214) 'visit to the tomb'. The amphora strongly resembles depictions of
Electra and Orestes at the tomb of Agamemnon. T he earliest of these images depict the subject
of the sibling's recognition of each other and their plan f or retribution. Increasingly, the scene
loses its association with vengeance and the siblings are likewise represented as little more than
generic mourners; Kurtz (1975: 39 n. 5, 204, pl. 20, 4).
Antigone's 'Choice' in Art and Art History 259
ing Oedipus, is of paramount import ance, as it reconcil es a profoundl y
probl emat ic myt h wit h commonpl ace civic pract ice. I n so doing, t he image
is highl y pol it ical , but in a t radit ional , not a confront at ional manner. Con­
vent ional observance diffu ses feminine aut onomy: grief is expressed in accor­
dance wit h accept abl e societ al norms-hence t he 'correct ' observance at t he
st el e of Oedipus. Where Ant igone' s att empt t o offer her brot her t he rit es of
burial and due commemorat ion coul d not be endorsed because oft he inst a­
bil it y t hat her aut onomous choice present s t o pat riarchal inst it ut ions, t hen
t he same act ion is here carried out l egit imat el y. Represent ed in t his manner,
Ant igone, cast in t he rol e of mourner, is not cont roversial and t here is no
discord bet ween her aut o nomous const ruct ion of femininit y and t he cult ural
st ereot ype: her depart ure from societ al norms has been recl aimed. If images
of Ant igone respond t o a societ al need t o suppress aut onomous femininit y, as
I propose, it is because her dramat ic represent at io n t hreat ens mascul ine
hegemony by reveal ing t he excess t hat result s when a woman chooses t o
conform t o her own concept ion of feminine obl igat ion, and is t he aut hor of
her own kinship hierarchies. Before I int roduce ot her visual represent at io ns,
I bel ieve it useful t o consider t he nat ure oft he int erdependency bet ween art
and drama in order t o bett er comprehend t he impl icat ions of t he cont rast
bet ween t hem.
I n t he pl ay, Sophocl es' heroine is femal e in sex, but her gender l ess absol ut e.
The pl aywright ascribes t o her ideal s of mascul ine behaviour embedded
wit hin ancient G reek social cult ure and she model s convict ion, courage,
and conscience. 15 The str ikingl y defiant and sel f-confident be haviour exhib­
it ed by women on t he ancient st age seems at odds wit h G reek social pract ice. 16
Two confl ict ing int erpret at ions have been advanced t o account for t he prom­
inent posit ion of women in ancient t ragedy: Sarah Pomeroy expl ains t heir
pervasive presence on t he publ ic st age as int ended t o call att ent io n t o misog­
ynist ic val ues. 17 The opposing approach st rips woman of her feminine iden­
t it y, assigning her merel y t he rol e of cat al yst , agent , and inst rument for t he
mal e charact ers, l eading Froma Z eitl in t o co ncl ude t hat G reek t ragedy did not
requ ire t hat it s audience have an int erest in revising t heir definit ions of
18
fe mininit y, nor did performance encourage gains for femal e equal it y.
W hil e I cannot agree t hat drama in any serious way crit iciz ed m isogyny,
n eit her can I accept t hat women merel y ful fill ed t he rol e of cat al yst . For
15 Foley (2001: 180) describes Antigone as having chosen to act as an honorary male, an identity
that Creon acknowledges by holding her responsible for her actions under penalty of law.
16 Foley (2001: 6) observes that such dramatic women must have been something of a
surprise even to an ancient audience.
17 Pomeroy ( 1 995: 1 10) argues that this is particularly appropriate to the works of Euripides.
18 Zeitlin (1996: 347).
 Antigone's 'Choice' in Art and Art History 261
260 Gender and Kinship

example, Judith Butler' s compellin g reshapin g of the play as an un doin g of

kin ship hierarchies depen ds upon the female position in drama; as a result,
An tigon e can be n o hidden model for the masculin e self, an d her projection of
en viable masculin e characteristics far from de- femin iz in g her, rein fo rce an d
legitimize her authority.19 Similarly, N icole Loraux' s provocative thesis that
spectators at the theatre of Dion ysus tran scen d the in stitution s of mortals
adds an other importan t dimen sion to the represen tation of gen der differ­
en ce. 20 Her proposal that tragedy is an an ti-political gen re, defin ed as an y
behaviour that diverts, rejects, or threaten s, con sciously or n o t, the obliga­
tion s an d prohibition s con stitutin g the ideology of the city-state, is para­
moun t to my an alysis of An tigon e in image, where auton omous femin in ity
represen ts an excess of the patriarchal con struct whose subversion en dan gers
masculin e systems.21 In respon se to that threat, images shun con fron tation ,
an d the An tigon e who remain s con forms to the patriarchal passive stereotype,
modellin g the opposite of her dramatic defian ce. Tragedy highlights patriar­
chal assumption s in a way that un derscores the female position , producin g
two divergen t attitudes- on e to compel reform, an d the other to preserve
oppression , an d it is the latter that in forms the pictorial, for when the oft en­
disturbin g n ature of excessive femin in ity is exposed on the stage, the result, as
Z eitlin has rightly observed, is an yt hin g but a gain for female equality. Art
re-establishes the cultural balan ce, n ot by robbin g women of their agen cy with Fig. 1 5.2 Lucanian red-figure nestoris b y the Dolon Painter, c.380 sc. London, British
Museum, F 175. (Q Trustees of the British Museum.
respect to their ability to act, but by den yin g them the choice to con form to a
self-con structed con cept o f femin in ity, effectively abolishin g auton omy an d
directin g women back in to a world in which femin in ity is defin ed an d In the absen ce of in scription s, caution is again in dicated, but this does n ot
circumscribed by masculin e authority. mean that those iden tifyin g the subject as An tigon e' s apprehen sion are mis­
Yet, n ot every image is so straightforward in its projection of mean in g as guided. Recen t icon ographic an alysis of veilin g an d the use of orien talizin g
that of the Brooklyn -Budapest Pain ter. The duality of femin in ity is, I propose,
circumspectly ackn owledged in a complex an d much debated vase, a red­
fourth century, depicting Helen's presentation to Priam by Aphrodite, presents significant visual
figure Lucan ian n estoris by the Dolon Pain ter, whose n arrative subject has
departures; Apulian volute-krater, Geneva, Greek and Roman Collection, H R 44; LIMC lV. 187.
been variously iden tified as Helen presen ted to Priam by Paris ( Fig. 1 5.2).22 Helen and Priam are also depicted on an Attic pyxis, 460 BC. Basie, Antikenmus, Ka 431; LIMC
IV. 186. In both examples, Helen dresses as a bride and is led to Priam by Paris on the pyxis.
Priam stands in both, and on the pyxis reveals distress, while on the volute-krater he appears as
an old man, and it is his youthful attendant who communicates distress. Helen's bridal state is
19 Butler (2000).
20 communicated in a manner that leaves no ambiguity. On the pyxis three female attendants
Loraux (2002, ch. 2) focuses on the theatre of Dionysus' physical separation from political
spaces within the city with the result that the theatre is a non-political space. She takes the view follow with gifts, while on the volute-krater she wears the crown of the bride and pulls her shaal­
type veil away from her body in a traditional bridal gesture as Aphrodite leads her towards
that the theatre audience is not a direct reflection of the citizen body, a position that is not
Priam. Taplin (1993) argued for the nestoris' derivation from the Sophoclean version, citing the
shared by Goldhill (1997: 66). However, both accept that women may have attended dramatic
vase's iconographic similarities and dissimilarities to a parody of contemporary date; (pp. 85-6;
performances. For a summary of the arguments concerning women as spectators of drama
attendance, see Gregory (2005: 63), who remains sceptical. see fig. 5). More recently, Taplin has expressed reservations, focusing his discussion on a hydria,
21 which takes a similar iconographic approach; Apulian red-figure hydria, c.420s, Close to the
Loraux (2002: 26).
22 Painter of the Berlin Dancing Girl, Taranto, Museo Archaeologico Nazionale, 1349-05. T he
Those who argue for Antigone include Sechan (1926: 141-2) and Trendall and Webster
(1971: 65, III 2.4); Zimmermann (1993). Kahil 1988 'Helene' 184 in LIMC IV. 1. 498-563 has image is that of a girl, standing silent with downcast gaze between two youths carrying spears,
suggested that the image depicts Helen being presented to Priam by Paris and Aeneas, or by two one of whom speaks with an older figure. Taplin's analysis allows the possibility that there is a
ephebes. Comparison of the nestoris with an Apulian volute-krater from the middle of the connection with the play, but he believes it to be a tenuous one at best (2007: 94-6, fig. 24 a, b).

262 Gender and Kinship
costume provide new approaches to the problem of identifying the figures.
The oriental accoutrements of the seated male figure might be interpreted as
contraindications for a representation of Creon. 23 However, Margaret M iller
has shown how at the end of the fifth century, oriental dress was widely used in
the Attic theatre for G reek as well as fo reign myt hical kings.24 A sumptuous
depiction of Creon on the nestoris may serve a twofold purpose: it can be
charged with negative values that bear out the democratic mistrust and
contempt of tyranny, while simultaneously symboliz ing wealth and the politi­
cal power often associated with it. Whether the attitude of the viewer to such a
display of power is negative or positive, it is not necessary to admire tyranny in
order to recogniz e authority. Female clothing is as significant as masculine
costume and the language of veiling introduces significant interpretive com­
plexity. Lloyd Llewellyn-J ones asserts that women who veil their heads dem­
onstrate that they concur with ' the masculine ideology that endorsed female
silence and invisibility'.25 Furthermore, he proposes that abbreviated veils and
lli°''lli �
I!:�::: the 'veil-gesture', that is simply touching the veil or other garment to draw
attention to the concept, could replace actual veiling to indicate proper
fem inine aidos, or modesty, which leaves the female figure on the nestoris
conspicuously conservative, especially as late in the classical period the veil­
gesture became the convention. 26 The prominence of the himation on the vase
patently reproduces the feminine stereotype, but at the same time it presents
an extreme, or excessive observance of femininity that skilfully implies Anti­
gone's choice. In Llewellyn-Jones's estimation, the veil is a ' portable domestic
space' that enables a woman to leave her home and operate within the public
sphere.27 There can be no more appropriate place for the confluence of such
powerful political symbols, each representing an excess-one of masculine
authority and the other of feminine conformance-than in a composition that
attempts to depict the confrontation of Antigone and Creon.
23 Taplin (2007: 94).
24 Miller (199S: 4S9 and n. S4). Adding to the confusion, Attic tastes also play a role as
t
foreign dress was in vogue and could express refinement, luxury, and status; Miller (1997, par
e
II, 13S-2S8). Along similar lines, Osborne (2007: 38) provides a fascinating discussion of th
appearance of the Sythian cap, worn by Athenians at the symposia, as authorizing 'barbari
c'
rather than spiritual behaviour.
25 Llewellyn-Jones (2003: 9). T he phenomenon of veiling in all its multivalence is discussed
by Cairns (2002: 73-93).
26 Llewellyn-Jones (2003: 104) proposes that a woman's physical beauty is viewed witho
ut
obstruction when a veil-gesture is employed. In this case, the female on the nestoris is decidedly
not;Jarticipating in the conventional representation of woman as object.
2 Ibid. 200.
Antigone's 'Choice' in Art and Art History 263
With respect to the narrative event represented on the nestoris, it has been
thought to be that moment in which Antigone is led into the king's presence
by a palace guard ( Soph. Ant. 407-40) .28 Further analysis of the iconography
w ill show that the designation of the moment as the pivotal scene of confron­
tation is justifiable. In the Antigone, that moment is one of exceptional
tension: Creon asks if she is not ashamed. Antigone answers that there is no
shame in what she has done (Soph. Ant. 5 1 0- 1 1 ).29 The Antigone of tragedy is
a woman of words, whose autonomous choice is verball y, as well as actively,
communicated, its successful transmission complemented by, but essentially
independent of, gesture. Conversely, the vase painter must rely upon visual
symbols to convey meaning. Antigone's inclined head, together with the
' invisibility' conferred by the sober himation, provide signals by which the
artist communicates the duality of her choice to conform.
I will begin with the inclination of her head, which admits two possibilities.
One explanation relies upon the viewer's interpretation of the gesture as a
literal referent to a specifi c dramatic moment of confrontation. On the stage,
once the guard has recounted her offences, Creon observes that she stands
with her head bowed to the ground ( Soph. Ant. 44 1 -2 ). Her bowed head
has been interpreted as signifying her defiance and disdain for the king's
authority.30 The weakness of this is that it fails to account for the ancient
viewer's familiarity with iconographic conventions, which include the depic­
t. 1 0 n of women revealing their aidos before men, made visible by a downcast
glance and an act of veiling. 3 1 I suggest that, for the viewer, the routine takes
precedence over the exceptional and that, on the surface, the image exhibits
routine submission. What of the woman's slightly outstretched hand? An act
of supplication has been proposed, and the moment identified as one in
which Antigone seeks permission to bury her brother. 32 However, suppliants
generally take a more act ive approach to persuasion, stretching forth both
hands, touching the fa ce, or kneeling upon the ground and making earnest
28Trendall and Webster (1971); Sechan (1926: 141-2, fig. 43). Deardon (1999: 24S) notes
:hat .local trage� y. '."as being written and produced alongside imported Athenian plays. T his
.
dm1ts the poss1b1hty that Sophocles drama was adapted, or re-written, to suit South Italian
tastes.
29 For a discussion of women's 'shameful' speech as it is perceived by women, see O'Higgins
(2001: IS7-9).
30
Boegehold ( 1999) argues from the body language of modern Greeks, that when Sophocles'
Anti. gone nods toward the ground in response to Creon's interrogation, she is proudly affirming
he�part in Polyneices' burial ritual, not denying it.
�lewellyn-Jones (2003); Ferrari (2002: SS).
32
.
Zimmermann (1993: 207-8) argues that the Dolon Painter's image reflects the conclusion
0� Euripides' Phoenician Maidens, in which Antigone pleads with Kreon on behalf of her
disgraced brother.
 265
264
Antigone's 'Choice' in Art and Art History
Gender and Kinship

eye contact. 33 If the intention was to represent a suppliant, a more vigorous,

less self-possessed posture is indicated. 34 On the nestoris, the slight extension
of the hand is best explained as an attempt at interaction. The ambiguous
nature of the gesture and the conservative veil ing are two devices by which the
Dolon Painter deliberately obscures the conflict between civic and autono­
mous defi nitions of femininity, and in so doing eliminates neither. The female
fi gure's representation as seemingly submissive, rather than actively defi ant, is
far from a contraindication fo r the identifi cation: the composition offers a
subtle demonstration of Antigone's choice to submit to her own personal
definition of fem ininity, raising issues concerning masculine and femini ne, as
well as collective and individual constructions of gender-specifi c roles. Yet, the
image need not be read as merely a cautious reference to the paradox of
femininity; instead, it moves decisively towards reclamation through its
association with other forms of iconographic practice.
The manner in which the Dolon Painter' s female figure wears her himation
c.440 ac. Athen s, Nation al
Fig. l S .3 Attic white lekythos by
presents a vehicle for that reclamation. Veil ing is integral to the wedding ritual the Sabou roff Painter,
and both veil and veil gesture are important iconographic devices by which Museu m, 1 926.
to convey the bride's purity.35 In the wedding context, the veil is an expression
of separation, symbolic of the change of state from maiden to wife. Douglas r of separation is crucial to m�
d th 37 The function of the himation as a marke
�-gr��
Cairns adopts the view that the ritual function of separation is the paramount nd funer� lekythm
significance of the bridal veil, observing that the veil is proper to the liminal
::;
i t retation of the Dolon Painter' s vase. Attic whit
at1 0 n.
.
When hvmg :vomen
provide a ready source for the iconography of separ
stage of classic, tripartite rites of passage, the final passage being death.36 The for �e dead, or are dep 1�;ed �t
are shown engaged in the preparation of offerings
Dolon Painter's 'Antigone' is not veiled for a bridegroom, but undeniably
the tomb s1· te, 1·t 1·s the custom to show them with
thei r heads uncovered. This
stands upon a threshold confronting not the separation of marriage, but of . .
which a ve1 ! 1s drawn over the
convention throws into relief those instances in .
n m funerary contexts.
he d 40 Consider the following appearances of veiled wome
the newly dead to t he
3' Representations of supplication remain essentially constant in both the black-figure and � hen Herm es, or Charo n, condu cts the souls of .
freque ntl y drape d, with
red-figure tradition and depictions of Priam provide the model. On an Attic black-figure und erworId , the deceased's form, male or femal e, is
amphora (side A), Rycroft Painter, c.520-10 BC, Toledo, Ohio, The Toledo Museum of Art, · wh"1ch
rrent tra d"1 t1· on m
72.54; Attic red-figure cup (side A), Oltos, c.5 10 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen und the head left uncovered.4 1 However, there is a concu
Glyptothek Miinchen 2618, Priam's gesture of supplication is dynamic and at once filled with
both energy and pathos. By the end of the fifth century, images of Priam's supplication became
increasingly more intimate with the introduction of compositions that depict the great king 37 Rehm (1994); Dowden (1989). . .
mclud1 �g
BC, depict a variety of scene types
38 Funerary lekythoi, dating between 460-410
kneeling, stretching a hand out towards the chin of the reclining or seated hero. For a summary · y scenes. Included m
images of domest'1c l"e11, , myth and mythological figures, as well as funerar
of 'ransom' imagery, see Miller ( 1995: 449-66); also, LIMC I. 642-718. A Homeric cup of the
sitions illustra ting visits to the grave, the protheSIS · out) of
· (1aymg
the latter categor y are compo
second century BC does take its inspiration from such image types, depicting Antigone kneeling ed to the underw orld by Herme s the messenger god
the deceased, or the deceased being convey
with arms outstretched bef ore Kreon, actively pleading for her brother's burial in a manner that (2004).
or Charon the ferryman, and frequently both. See Oakley .
closely corresponds to the iconographic tradition; UMC I, Antigone, 821, 9; Homeric Cup.
ted to Near the Timok rates Painter , c.460 BC, ElvehJem M:iseum of
39 White lekythos attribu . _ ld Foundat10n Fund
London, British Museum, G 104. and Fairchi
Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Edna G. Dyer Fund
34 Zimmermann ( 1 993: 207-8) has also suggested that she conceals in her hidden right hand
the instrument necessary to perform the burial rites for Polyneices. Again, this does not fit purchase · Oakley (2004, pl. la).
40 An Attic white lekythos by the Achille
s Painter c.445-40 B C does �ep1ct · a wom�n h �Jd' g ;;
comfortably with Antigone's representation, as it raises the question of why a girl who either Kunsth1stonsc es
her h1mauon c 1ose to her body, but again
. · , her head is left uncove red; V ienna
Museum 3736 · Oakley (2004, fig. 134, P · 176).
seeks permission to perform the burial rites, or openly admits her guilt, should attempt to hide
the instrument of its accomplishment. heads
41 0 eceased m en and women are
' commonly shown .with their bodies draped, their
s r
·

35 Llewellyn-Jones (2003: 98-110, 169-73); Blundell (2002: 158-61). nsamm lung, taat 1c he M useen zu
uncovered. Hermes bringing a youth to Charon . Antike
36 Cairns (2002: 76).
 Antigone's 'Choice' in Art and Art History 267
266 Gender and Kinship

women are depicted entirely shrouded by a voluminous himation. An Attic or excessive, femininity is not in the larger societal interests and so will be
white lekythos by the Sabouroff Painter invites close inspection for the suppressed. Llewellyn-Jones offers an additional perspective in his conclusion
iconographic parallels it presents (Fig. 1 5.3) .42 Charon, on the left, brings that veiling does not simply entail female helplessness, but that it displays the
his boat to shore, while Hermes stands in the centre, one hand slightly authority that comes with social status and respectability.45 Consequently, the
extended towards the ferryman, the other reaching out to a deceased nestoris may be an attempt to communicate the duality of the feminine
woman, all but withdrawn into her himation. She tentatively offers her lef t constructs represented by Antigone' s dilemma and choice; her himation and
hand to the god. Her right hand, although somewhat obscure, is held in such inclined head signal both conventional conformance and excessive femininity,
a way as to suggest that she pulls at her veil in the manner of a bride. In this while the negative associations of Creon's kingly costume and posture intro­
context, both veil and bridal gesture are appropriate as symbolic of the change duce a further tension into the composition by intimating the rightness of her
of state and status exacted by death. The iconographic correspondences of the choice. Furthermore, the conflation of wedding andf unerary ritual in the play
Sabouroff Painter's depiction of the conveyance of the soul with the Dolon has been argued to come as a shock that compels the audience to question the
Painter's woman are suggestive. Her posture and gesture replicates that of the accepted societal norms, but as previously observed, such problematic ques­
Sabouroff Painter's deceased woman in all but the subdued drawing of the veil tions do not compel reform, but encourage restitution, with the result that
from the body. The absence of a veil-gesture is not surprising as Antigone that same conflation on the nestoris re-establishes patriarchy and social
faces neither her living bridegroom, Haemon, nor the surrogate bridegroom,
death, represented by Hermes and Charon, but rather the instrument through
which her change of state and separation are set into motion, Creon. Like the
deceased woman on the lekythos, she cautiously extends her lef t hand, but as
she is a living woman, that gesture lends itself to being interpreted as indica­
tive of her own complicity in her impending death. The breaking down of
gender distinction in drama is an integral part of the experience of tragedy,
especially in the matter of violent death.43 On the stage, a woman could be
master of her own death, a circumstance that Loraux argues reeestablishes the
balance between the sexes.44 When interpreted along theses lines, the nestoris
similarly indicates recognition of the implications of Antigone' s autonomy.
My view is that the Dolon Painter' s f unerary allusion is recognizable and it
presages Antigone' s death-the reward for her commitment to her indepen­
dent construction of feminini ty. By its allusion to death, the composition
upholds political and domestic social order, demonstrating that autonomous,

Berlin, F 2445; Oakley {2004, fig. 70- 1 , p. 1 1 5); Hermes escorting a woman to Charon. Attic
white lekythos by the Thanatos Painter, c.440 BC, Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen und
Glyptotek 2777; Oakley {2004, pl. !Vb ) . When an undraped woman is depicted on a vase, where
Charon also appears, her identity is ambiguous as she frequently holds some funerary object,
such as an alabastron for the pouring of libations, or a taenia for ornamenting the stele,
sugge�ting she is a visitor to the tomb. Oakley (2004: 1 1 9-123) confirms the ambiguity of
these image types.
42 Hermes escorts a woman to Charon. Attic white lekythos by the Sabouroff Painter, c.440 Fig. 1 5.4 Apulian red-figure panathenaic style amphora, Ruvo, Museo J atta 423.
BC, Athens, National Museum, 1 926; Oakley {2004, fig. 72, p. 1 15). D rawing by J. Lowry after a photograph.
4 3 Loraux ( 1 987: 3 ) argues that the tragic stage delights i n blurring the f ormal frontier
between masculine and feminine in the matter of violent death.
44 On the stage, Antigone exchanges execution for suicide, so revealing her autonomy and
45 Llewellyn-Jones (2003, esp. ch. 9).
remaining defiant to her last breath; Loraux ( 1 987: 32) .
 "'
jl
�
I
I
I
Ill� Ill 268 Gender and Kinship
order.46 Nonetheless, the internal contradictions of the image move beyond
the simple categorization of binary opposites, dissolving the space between
r!
patriarchal definitions and self-determined definitions of femininity.
By the middle of the fourth century BC, artists introduce an alternate
I
Ii "'
version of the myth, circumventing altogether any difficulties presented by a
woman's choice to p ursue self-determined, excessive femininity.47 Three vases
from the period depict a scene in which Antigone is brought before Creon,
again depicted in ornate orientalizing dress; however, it is not she who
confronts the king, but Heracles.48 The earliest of the type is an Apulian
amphora of panathenaic shape with inscriptions, upon which Heracles,
wearing his lion-skin, reaches a hand to Creon, while extending the other to
Antigone (Fig. 1 5.4).49 Although his posture evokes that of the Dolon Pain­
ter's guard, this time the intermediary does not speak in condemnation, but
in defence. Antigone does not herself presume to speak; moreover, her utter
powerlessness is visibly confirmed by her hands, now bound behind her back.
The notion of the inviolability of masculine authority is constructed by a
demi-god's mediation of events that reconciles Antigone's femininity with
patriarchy, as it is the male, not the female, who, in accordance with conven­
tional gender roles, adopts the dominant role in the verbal conflict repre­
sented. As in the previous example by the Dolon Painter, the image presents a
paradox, as the intersession of Heracles validates Antigone's choice, but her
direct challenge of masculine authority has been neutralized, as has her
autonomous construction of femininity.
The broader social implications of these subject choices remain to be
considered. I n the matter of the construction of meaning, ancient images
cannot be disengaged from their context, as so often the motivation for their
creation results directly from their ability to mediate, signify, and negotiate
relationships, which include the familial, the group, and the political. The
images of Antigone considered above ornament ceramics associated with
symposia and so are used within the home.50 By facilitating the projection
46 Rehm ( 1 994: 59-7 1 ) argues that the appearance of these rites in tragedy does not offer the
audience the experience of stability, but rather induces a confusion that leads to questioning of
the social norms.
47 From the few fragments of Euripides' version, Antigone does not die, but lives and bears a
child to Haemon. It is believed that Hyginus (Fabula 72) patterned his discussion of Antigone
on the Euripidean version, which introduces Heracles into the cast, making an appearance
addressing Creon in defence of the couple, LIMC I. 826.
48 Trendall and Cambitoglou ( 1 983 I. 403, 41, pl. 142, 4). See also LIMC I. 823, 15 16.
4 9 Apuhan red-figure amphora, Ruvo, Museo Jatta 423; Trendall and Cambitoglou ( 1983
)
•
I . 403, no. 4 1 , pl. 142, 4); Taplin (2007: 1 85-6) regards the vase as reflective of an Antigone
trafcedy, but is far from sure that it was Euripides' version.
0 Davidson ( 1 997: 43-69) thoroughly itemizes the necessities of the symposium.
Antigone's 'Choice' in Art and Art History 269
and creation of identities, images play a vital role in the creation and suste­
nance of the context in which they operate.5 1 It is within the home, and with
the generation and nurture of the fa mily, that woman's power is at its zenith. 52
However, the acknowledgement of female power simultaneously creates inse­
curity, for as it recognizes a measure of feminine autonomy, it controls
femininity by means of institutionalized and gender-specific activities. I t
has been convincingly argued that the women depicted on the Parthenon's
pediment and frieze were constructs conforming to male norms of feminine
virtue.53 Accordingly, women venturing into public space would see their
societal roles as defined by masculine standards, accomplished by images
exhibiting the prevailing masculine attitudes towards them. The same princi­
ple is applicable to private domestic space, particularly as the exclusion of
household women from the andron has come under increasing scrutiny
recently, with the result that a fluid arrangement of domestic space appears
ever more credible.54 To expect that the women of the household never set
foot within the andron, at the very least when it was not in use, or that the
vessels used for the symposium were never seen by the household's female
members is no longer supportable. Women would be no less viewers of such
decorated pottery, than they were conversant with the ornamentation of
sacred architecture. Their instruction in their feminine cultural identity
must be seen as a critical factor shaping the content of the iconography,
whose power resides in its capacity to model and reinforce patriarchal gender
definitions for male and female viewers simultaneously.
The borders of the domestic sphere are fluid in a way that they are not in
the space of theatre: in the home, male authority is most threatened by
feminine insurrection against the role assigned to her, and the need to
re-assert patriarchal gender and kinship hierarchies most necessary. For the
male, this setting is simultaneously familiar and other and, as a result, any
51 For the crucial nature of ritualized socializing and receptivity of iconography to various
interpretations dependent on the archaeological context: see Marconi (2004); Davidson ( 1 997);
Spivey and Rasmussen ( 1 991); Moon ( 1983).
52 For example, when in the late fifth century, Lysias writes in defence of Euphiletos, on trial
for killing his wife's seducer, Euphiletos recounts to the court how he gave his wife full
responsibility for the management of his house, believing it the best type of domestic arrange­
m ent; Lysias 1 .6, 'On the Murder of Eratosthenes', trans. Caroline L. Falkner (200 I ).
53 Hurwit ( 1995: 179) .
5 4 Nevett's important ( 1 999) work on Greek domestic space allows fo r greater interaction o f the
sexes within the family. Llewellyn-Jones (2003) builds upon this and suggests that the interior design
of the Greek home was similar to that of the Islamic world and that strange men were kept from the
household women by having the main areas of the home closed off to them (2003, ch. 7). When
Lysias' defendant articulates the domestic arrangements of his house, the fluidity of interior space is
immediately revealed; Lysias, 'On the Murder of Eratosthenes', 1.9-10.
 I
11 ,
270 Gender and Kinship
violations of woman's intended role must be recuperated, the home politi­
cized in accordance with patriarchy, and the transgressions enacted by female
agency reconciled with collective behavioural standards-a reclamation even
more essential when the cause for rebellion appears so altogether com­
mendable and, in the case of Antigone's devotion to kinship, exemplary of
the feminine stereotype. Where drama is free to challenge traditional dis­
courses of gender difference, the risk taken on the stage cannot be transported
into the political space of the home, and this, I suggest, explains why Sopho­
cles' celebrated Antigone is either unrepresented in vase-painting, or repre­
sented in a manner so cautious as to throw doubt upon the scene's
identification.s5 Nonetheless, despite art's emphasis on traditional femininity,
the nuances of drama are not altogether eradicated, for by avoiding as a
subject Antigone's performance of the rites of burial for her brother, or her
death for her beliefs, a conspicuous absence is created, and so the message that
drama rehearses is displaced, but not conclusively eliminated in art.
AFTER ANTIQ UITY: RECLAIMING FEMALE REB ELS ,
ANTIGONE AN D CHARLOTTE CORDAY
In ancient art, Antigone's adherence to an autonomous construct of feminine
responsibility produces a conceptual dilemma that generates visual strategies
whose purpose is to normalize masculine authority and feminine subordina­
tion, however problematic an individual act of conscience. The long visual
tradition that follows from the classical one continues to cast Antigone in the
conventional feminine role, revealing the endurance of the ideology of gender
difference upon which patriarchal systems are dependent. In her analysis of the
inter-relationships existing among women, art, and power in images from the
late eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, Linda Nochlin concludes that
when women are represented in situations that involve power, the images
become 'operations of power'; as discourses of gender difference their most
prominent characteristic is not woman's power, but her lack of it.56 This
approach has been borne out in my interpretation of ancient visual representa­
tions of Antigone; it remains in operation in nineteenth- and twentieth-century
55 Taplin (2007: 89) suggests that the paucity of any Sophoclean representations in Western
Greek vase-painting suggests that he did not speak as directly to the Greeks of that region and
period as did Aeschylus or Euripides.
56 Nochlin ( 1988: I ) reveals how perceptions of gender difference translate into images
involving power and woman's lack of it.
Antigone's 'Choice' in Art and Art History 27 1
art, establishing the modern image of Antigone-an image so familiar that it has
generated a visual language whose legacy, despite contemporary feminist art
historical criticism, informs even the most recent examples.
With its manipulation of mythic subjects, the nineteenth century provides an
ideal beginning from which to investigate the reception of Antigone's story as a
model for contemporary art. Images from this period reveal a predilection for
two d iscrete narrative approaches. Anton Brodowski's 1 828 painting, Oedipus
and Antigone, presents a fine example of one of these. His subject undeniably
restores Antigone to the domestic role assigned to her by her sex, focusing as it
does on a narrative theme that enjoyed, and continues to enjoy, popularity.s7
That theme is Antigone acting as guide for the blind Oedipus and, by represent­
ing Antigone in the role of devoted daughter and solicitous nurse, the iconogra­
phy cannot be further removed from the representation of a subversive activist,
nor in any way reflective of an interrogative and assertive woman.ss Aversion to
the representation of woman's conflict with masculine political authority and,
by extension, rejection of the traditional feminine role, is not restricted to so
uncontroversial a representation of Antigone's femininity. Three years earlier, in
1825, the 'Antigone' that captured the public imagination was not the woman
who defied masculine authority to fulfil her independently determined destiny,
but a young woman responding in a typically feminine manner to her circum­
stances-a model of domesticity over activism. The Prix de Rome painting
competition subject of that year was 'Antigone Burying Polyneices'. Given that
Antigone undertook her brother's burial in defiance of authority, one might
expect that such a theme would provide an opportunity for artists to raise the
issue of a woman's rebellion against patriarchy's invention of a female gender.
Yet, that opportunity is not merely lost, but actively avoided, with the result that
female agency is renegotiated from an independent conception of feminine
duty, whose behavioural excesses are exposed through rebellion and sacrifice,
to a stereotypical expression of mourning. By emphasizing grief over confron­
tation and conflict, artists draw attention away from the interrogation of
masculine power hierarchies and traditional gender identities, with the result
that patriarchy maintains its control over the shape of the discourse of gender.
.'7 Brodowski, Oedipus and Antigone ( 1 828). As a pupil of Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy­
Tnoson, Brodowski worked in Paris and his works reveal the stylistic conventions and social
sensibilities of the time. Gerhardt Marcks's bronze, Oedipus and Antigone, created in 1960, is
witness to the enduring appeal of the subject. T he sculpture is currently the property of Luther
College and stands at the southeast corner of the 'Center for Faith and Life'.
58 In the ancient world, Antigone's role as guide to her blind parent is likewise represented.
The subject's depiction on a Roman wall confirms its suitability to its context, and its function
in the modelling of feminine identity; Fresco, House of Comedy, Delos, last quarter of the
second century BC. LIMC IV. 820: 2.
 272 Gender and Kinship Antigone's 'Choice' in Art and Art History 273
I I
The resultant absence of the essential and excessive Antigone neutralizes her . ..
power by recognizing neither her defiance of the stereotype, nor her confor­
mance to an autonomous construction of femininity.
That the reclamation of femininity was a deliberate objective of nineteenth­
century art is evident in earlier works, such as David's 1 793 painting, The Death
of Marat, which likewise reins in excessive femininity to reinstate the patriarchal
construct. Erica Rand's analysis of works by Jacques Louis David and Franyois
Boucher compellingly demonstrates how the fear of female power leads to
images manipulated to defuse female agency in the art of the French Revolu­
tion.59 Charlotte Corday, a woman who similarly models self-constructed femi­
nine excess, is absent from David's composition; her absence serves a masculine
political agenda for, although physically removed, her presence pervades the
scene by the prominent inclusion of a legible note in which she has written to
Marat confessing her miserable state of mind and seeking his assistance.60 By
eliminating the agent of Marat's death and replacing activism with a stereotypi­
cal emotional appeal, the composition endorses Corday's feminine frailty. Erica
Rand takes the view that by painting Corday's apology, David sought to erase her
idealistic motivation; instead, by providing a motivation for her act that can be
understood without reference to contemporary politics, he plants her state of
mind right in the realm of ideal womanhood.6 1 Resistance towards feminine Fig. 15.5 Nikiforos Lystras, Antigone and Polinikis, oil on canvas, 1 865. National
excess was so vigorous that it required that controversial women, those who had Gallery and Alexandros Soutsos Museum, Athens, G reece, inv. no. 3758.

transgressed the boundaries of traditional gender roles, however heroically, be

reformulated to reflect patriarchal assumptions about femininity, a fact to which
the resultant images, restoring women to their traditional gender roles, bear
witness.62 By avoiding direct representations of confrontation, images devalue
Antigone's independence; instead, her act of conventional mourning curtails
any potentially empowering political repercussions for women, and any social
gains that may be legitimized by her profound act of feminine autonomy are
diffused. The image of Antigone that emerges is a response to political eras of
polarization that destroyed society on the most fundamental level, setting
brother against brother, and reflects the Restoration's re-establishment of gender
difference in order to politicize the home along traditional lines.63 By exploiting
59 Rand (2005: 143-58 ) .
60
Ibid. 151; Kindelberger ( 1994: 969-9, esp. 976).
61
Rand (2005: 1 5 1). Kindelberger ( 1 994) offers a contrasting interpretation.
62 Rand (2005: 152) offers an insightful discussion of the re-feminized 'October Heroines'
the propagandistic potential of images, nineteenth-century artists accomplish
the same goal as ancient images operating within the domestic context; both
similarly repress female societal gains, revealing how a paternal society con­
structs gender and the vigilance with which it guards it.64
Antigone's choice to conform to an independent construction of feminini­
ty continues to create an uneasy paradox throughout the nineteenth century,
which is, in my view, precisely what prevents her transformation into an
abstract notion of Liberty, even though her remarkable sacrifice might appear
to make her an ideal choice.65 Linda Nochlin has observed that when a
woman is permitted to function as an emblem of liberty, it is only because
she is not an historical personage, or contemporary member of the crowd, but
rather, an allegorical figure.66 As a mythic heroine against tyranny, and with
nothing of the conciliatory peacemaker about her character to restore her
femininity, Antigone embodies the ideals and virtues that may well have

and how David idealizes a situation in which men negotiate the world outside the family for 64 The question of the relationship between women as viewers of political art and revolu­

women and children at home. tionary sentiments is the subject of Rand's (2005) discussion in Chapter 7.
63 When Antigone leads her pitiable father, or mourns her brother, her actions are in perfect
65
Nochlin ( 1 999: 34--5 7) discusses the representation of the 'virilized woman' in their
accord with Lamartine 's observation that domestic values, by which I infer traditional patriar­ analysis of Eugene Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. See also Pointon ( 1991) .
66 Nochlin
chal roles, are in truth the origin of liberty and order; Voyage en Orient, I. 35. ( 1 999: 49).
274 Gender and Kinship Antigone's 'Choice' in Art and Art History 275

transformed her into a militant emblem of reform, but she is no Marianne.

While there is no reason for Antigone to function as an emblem for the
French Revolution, one might logically expect that her defiance would serve
the G reeks in their own War of Independence. On the stage, for example,
revivals of Greek drama in early nineteenth-century Britain emphasized
political action, stressing the theme of heroic struggle against tyranny, an
interest that was possibly a response to the Greek War of Independence.67
Significantly, when in 1 865 Antigone appears in Greek art, her performance of
her b rother's burial rites are evaded, as Nikoforos Lytras' darkly haunting
painting focuses on Antigone discovery of the body of Polyneices (Fig. 1 5.5).
The dramatically lit foreground directs the viewer's gaze to the corpse, leaving
Antigone a nebulous figure in the background, her features indistinct. Veiled
and swathed in dark garments, she contrasts sharply with the illuminated and
clearly articulated male body. While feminine courage may form part of the
sub-text, Antigone's depiction underscores not her rebellion, but once more
her conformance with the expectations of femininity. Her hunched posture
and the arm raised to the face are grief made visible, while the narrative
moment's reference to the impending enactment of burial communicates the
gender-specific duty she assumes. Once more, Antigone represents 'woman'
as the quintessential mourner as she re-enacts her fourth-century BC role as
observer at the stele of Oedipus. In accord with the ancient visual tradition,
her roles of mourner and witness neutralize her autonomy and harmonize
with societal conceptions of femininity, showing woman as merely a spectator
of masculine proceedings, while the anonymous manner of her depiction acts
as a projection of the universal feminine.
O nly in the early and mid-twentieth century do images more closely
resemble defiance-oriented stage adaptations, and confrontation, at last,
appears to find some representation in art as well as on the stage. Two striking Fig. 1 5.6 Jean Cocteau, ink drawing, 1 923. © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New
exceptions to the conventional visual approach are the versions of Jean York/ADAGP, Paris.
Cocteau and Jean Anouilh.68 In the aftermath of the First World War and
the perceived triumph of democracy over political aggression, Antigone is for
production of Sophocles' Antigone for the Paris stage, Cocteau produced a
the first time depicted actively confronting political authority. For his 1 923
line drawing of striking simplicity to represent his adaptation, which depicts
two figures in a face-to-face battle of wills (Fig. 1 5.6).69 The protagonists,
Antigone and Creon, are presented in profile and their gaze is deadlocked.
67 Hall ( 1 999: 1 1 3-33) documents the relationship between the British stage and Greek

tragedy. Paris also saw stage and opera adaptations; Pierre Dutillieu, Antigone (opera, 1 788); Antigone stares down upon Creon, who seems to falter: her shoulders, higher
interestingly, a 1 787 tragic production by D'Oigny du Ponceau was entitled An tigone, ou la pihe than his, and her clenched fists communicate her authority and moral victory.
fraternelle, the subtitle revealing much about the reception of the ancient text.
68 A notable late twentieth-century depiction of confrontation is Rosemarie Beck's 1 9 9 1

painting Antigone Before Creon. It was Beck's purpose t o depict pathos b y re-casting Antigone's
defiance as a lost cause, when home and state conflict. The work is part of a group, which 69 Jean Cocteau, Antigone. Le Ber (2007) considers the myth of Antigone in general as well as

completes the pathos by including a depiction of the corpse of Haemon cast upon that of the evolution of the tragedy from Sophocles to the present, providing an in-depth study of
Antigone. For a discussion of the series, see Sawin (2005: 6 ) . Cocteau's Antigone, from written drafts to its stage production.
276 Gender and Kinship Antigone's 'Choice' in Art and Art History 277

Similarly, Jean Anouilh's ( 1 944) Antigone is interpreted as a play of resis­

tance-an allegory for the self-sacrificing members of the French Resistance
whose acts of sabotage and defiance took on mythic proportions.70 The
associated production poster, which remains a common choice of cover for
the text, depicts two 'ink blot' figures, one large, the other small, and between
them a lit explosive device.7 1 Their ambivalent gender makes them emblem­
atic of the oppressor and the oppressed, marginalizing the issue of female
rebellion against patriarchy's invention of gender difference.72 What appears
certain is that the nineteenth-century sensibility that prevented Antigone
from functioning as an icon of Liberty has been overthrown in these repre­
sentations, but that deposition is no deliberate interrogation of conventional
femininity; Antigone merely functions in a manner similar to the earlier
revolutionary prototype of the warrior woman, serving as the allegorical
vehicle for particular modern ideas and circumstances.73 One of the implica­
tions of these versions is that those aspects of the play that much feminist
criticism reinforces are capable of serving similarly revolutionary agendas,
here representing a clash of political ideologies, not one of gender stereotypes,
and although a more confrontational Antigone than that represented by
Cocteau's drawing has yet to be equalled in image, she does not represent
woman's independent construction of her own feminine identity, but func­ Fig. 1 5.7 Wieslaw Grzegorcyzk, Antygona, 1 998.
tions as an allegory for the superiority of the democratic state.
A brief survey of contemporary publicity posters for productions of the While the dramatic appeal of the image of a fragile, helpless maiden is
Antigone reveals the degree to which Cocteau and Anouilh remain exceptional seductive precisely for its conformance to patriarchal tastes, the vital and
in their approach. Despite the sophistication of the contemporary audience, independent heroine is absent. I n the drama, Creon condemns Antigone to a
the prevalent pictorial manner continues to be essentially patriarchal, slow death by suffocation , but ever autonomous, Antigone makes a noose of
provoking surprisingly little critical comment or opposition. For example, her veil, employing the ultimate symbol of femininity to carry out the
in their 2004-5 season, the Sirote Theatre's promotional poster adopted decision of her own will. Loraux has observed that by killing herself in the
another approach to Antigone's agency by depicting her already dead.74 manner of very feminine women, Antigone found in her death a femininity
that in her lifetime she had denied with all her being.75 Thus, the manner of
70 See A. della Fazia ( 1 969). However, the interpretation of defiance was rejected by sections
her death presents, like her sense of family and funerary obligation, further
of the Resistance, Fleming (2006: 1 68-82). evidence of her inversion of the patriarchal construction of the feminine-as
7 1 The English version of Brecht's Antigone, translated by Judith Molina, depicts Antigone in once again, it is excessive femininity that characterizes her. Antigone's inde­
an energetic posture, but the stance is iconic and there is no object or individual against whom
pendence, agency, and femininity are connected in her death, but theory and
her empowered posture is directed. The famous image associated with the Anouilh text is even
more vague, as both the protagonists appear as two dark amorphous shapes, one small and the visual practice are at odds; the poster associates femininity with stereotypical
other large, while the nature and outcome of their interaction is indefinite. passivity. As well, her youthful and unmarked body is more representative of
72 Fleming (2006: 168) argues that Anouilh's Antigone might be understood to be complicit
slow suffocation than the violence of hanging-readable as a victory for
with fascist ideals and politics. In her discussion of the reception of Anouilh's Antigone, she
remarks that there have been, to her knowledge, no feminist appropriations (p. 1 82 ) . Creon, while her depiction as sexual object is a victory for patriarchy. Wieslaw
7 3 Pointon ( 1 99 1 ) provides a n excellent and thorough discussion of the transformation of the Grzegorczyk adopts a similar approach, promoting a 1 998 Polish production
female body into an emblem for the ideals of the masculine state.
74 Sirote Theatre, University of Alabama, production poster, 2004-5 season. See the
University of Alabama on-line theatre catalogue-<http://theatre.hum.uab.edu/shows/04-05/
75 Loraux ( 1 987: 3 1 -2 ) .
antigone.htm>.
 Antigone's 'Choice' in Art and Art History 279
278 Gender and Kinship
unchallenged.79 I mages retain their propagandistic power and present an
with a violent image depicting the lifeless body of Antigone threaded through
ideal vehicle for the insidious maintenance of patriarchal definitions of
the eyes of Oedipus, her posture inspired by Henry Fuseli's ( 1 78 1 ) The
gender difference that reinforce polarity.so Moreover, such gender conserva­
Nightmare (Fig. 1 5.7) .76 The image may perhaps be most reflective of the
tism is not exclusive to images, for while today's audiences applaud and
complexities of the Theban plays, raising, as it does, the ghost of the sightless
approve of strong women, they nonetheless remain comfortable with patriar­
Oedipus. His brooding portrait dominates the composition, while the lifeless
chal gender distinctions and definitions. Edith Hall points out that contem­
body of Antigone penetrates the empty orbs of his eyes in a manner symbolic
porary audiences cope better with terrifying women when m itigating
of sexual penetration, but it is clear that any potential 'virility' inherent in her
circumstances defuse unpalatable acts of violence, an observation which
defiance, as well as her inversion of traditional femininity and intrusion into
underscores the durability of the 'classical unconscious' and its patriarchal
masculine space, proves to be, in the final analysis, a barren endeavour.
gender assumptions.s1 Audiences are uncomfortable with 'sexist' perfor­
mances, but are equally uncomfortable with women whose actions are viola­
tions of femininity, and only j ust provocation modifies female violence to
make rebellion, murder, and even infanticide comprehensible.82 In the matter
C O N C LU S I O N
of images, their continuing ambivalence throws into relief society's latent
aversion to the breakdown of traditional stereotypes, a position corroborated
I n this long visual tradition, classical and modern images are united by their
by the fact that the few representations of direct confrontation that do exist
emphasis on gender conservatism. This chapter has shown how, when women
fully recognize the revolutionary Antigone, but exploit her as an allegory for
autonomously construct their feminine role, whether in theory or in practice,
conflicting political ideologies, transforming her into an emblem for the
the result, deemed excessive, leads to renewed conservatism. In image, Antig­
masculine state. What distinguishes ancient and modern depictions is their
one is domesticated, depicted in observance of the feminine role assigned to
overt message to women instructing them in their feminine cultural identity,
her through a social order predicated upon masculine conceptions of gender
while contemporary images, in contrast, covertly achieve a similar result by
I
difference. Her controversial construction of an independent feminine ex­
'' treme has generated, and continues to generate, distrust, which is negated in
employing visual strategies that continue to model masculinity's invention of
1;
"

femininity and gender difference, and by relying on the authority o f those

�: images that restore patriarchy's invention of the female gender. One may well
,, conventions to intimidate and pacify its critics.
ask why contemporary feminist appropriations of ancient Greek heroines in
text and performance abound, while in images Antigone's autonomy is
invisible.77 One suggestion faults the contemporary splintering of feminist 79 Nochlin ( 1 988) observes that women are unable to respond to aesthetic discourses for fear

art history into a myriad of specialized disciplines, observing that such
fragmentation neutralizes feminist political urgency.78 Accordingly, the
emphasis on theoretical debate leads to complacency regarding the interroga­
tion of patriarchal constructs of femininity. However, complacency implies
awareness and deliberation, and I am convinced instead that the evasion of a
woman's autonomous construction of femininity is fo unded upon the notion
that woman as object is so universally accepted that it goes unnoticed, and so
76 Antygona, T heater of Sofokles, Wieslaw Grzegorczyk. The Pigasus Gallery catalogues the
ima e in their online database: <http://pigasus-gallery.de> .
f
7 See n . 9 above.
78 Broude and Garrard (2005: 1 ) . Feminism is not a singular approach, but a broad term for a
diverse number of positions and strategies. The debates over essentialism reveal the extent of the
rift. Alison Stone (2004: 1 35 ) warns that the widespread rejection of essentialism by feminists
threatens to undermine feminist politics.
of revealing themselves as unable to appreciate the sophisticated strategies of high culture and
take art 'too literally'.
80
Linda Nochlin's ( 1 999: 1 0 ) observation that 'the patriarchal discourse of power over
women masks itself in the veil of the natural and logical' remains valid.
81
Hall (2005: 1 8- 1 9 ) .
82
Broud� and Garrard (2005: 2 1 ) argue for the feminist position in art-historical scholarship
as an essential check on a culture that is neither neutral, or impartial about gender. Phelan
( 1993: 1 48) regards the theatrical experience as able to generate controversy, but argues that
even as performance challenges, it also re-inscribes hegemonic structures of power by its non­
. nature, observing that if it cannot be reproduced, any challenges presented to the
reproduct1ve
social and political institutions actively fade, with the result that the power of the message to
create controversy and compel re-evaluation of societal norms loses the potency performance
may have enjoyed.
. II'
'

Part IV

Translations, Adaptations,
and Performance
 16

Reading Antigone in Translation:

Text, Paratext, Intertext

Deborah H. Roberts

Tracing the reception of Sophocles' Antigone in European culture, George Steiner

argues that its extraordinary stature between 1 790 and 1 905 led to 'some of the
most radically transformative interpretations and "re-experiencings" ever
elicited by a literary text'. 1 Such transformations-as the chapters in this volume
illustrate--continue into and beyond the twentieth century, reflecting the varied
political, philosophical, and psychological significances ascribed to the play in
different co ntexts of reception.
We may also, however, look to another source of multiple Antigones: the many
different translations (and different kinds of translations) of this text, over fifty
in English alone since the beginning of the twentieth century.2 These include
translations aimed at readers who have some G reek but need help, translations
intended for classroom use by students who know no Greek, translations aimed
at the general reader, sometimes with an idea that they might also be actable (or
at least speakable) , and translations designed specifically for acting, some of
them commissioned for a particular performance.3 And such a list fails to do
justice to the diversity of intended readers and contexts of translation this play's
long-standing popularity has produced. Some translations (a 1 902 'libretto' for

I am grateful to Aryeh Kosman, Sheila Murnaghan, and the editors for helpful comments
and suggestions.
1 Steiner { 1 984: 1 9 ) . On the British and American reception of Antigone in the nineteenth
century, see also Hall ( 2005, ch. 1 2) and Winterer (2007, ch. 7).
2 Many of these translations are listed in the Bibliography to this volume; for additional

versions, see the comprehensive lists at the end of Walton (2006).

3 The term 'translation' is an elastic one; my list and the discussion that follows exclude the
more extreme transformations. In a chapter entitled 'When is a Translation Not a Translation?'
in his recent Found in Translation: Greek Drama in English (2006), J. Michael Walton offers a
series of categories designed to include the full spectrum of possible types of translations, but
these have the drawback of collapsing three different dimensions of comparison: the transla­
tion's purpose or readership, its relationship to the original, and the translator's knowledge or
ignorance of Greek.
 Reading Antigone in Translation 285
284 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
of Holderlin's German version of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus and Antigone. 8
a performance of Antigone in Greek and a translation incorporated along with
But Gaskill never cites Sophocles' Greek directly; instead, except in one
the two Oedipus plays in a 1948 volume on psychoanalytic theory are exam­
t
ples escape st �nd �rd categories; others demonstrate their variations. Cyril
reference to a single Greek word, he uses the translation of Robert Fagles to
represent the Greek, 9 most extensively in his discussion of the first stasimon,
Robinson, offenng m 1921 a translation 'suitable to the class-room or the
the choral ode sometimes called the 'Ode on Man', which traces the achieve­
study circle', is chiefly concerned to provide an abridged and adapted version
ments o f human culture and their limitations.
(he changes 'Justice' to 'Mercy' in Antigone's speech on the unwritten laws)
The ode begins (Antigone 332-3) : 7TOAAa Ta DEtVU KOVDEV av8pw7TOV
appropriate to 'the common pastime' of reading plays aloud. In contrast, Ruby
DEtv6TEpov 7TEAEt (polla ta deina k'ouden anthropou deinoteron pelei). Io Gaskill
Blondell's 2002 version, also envisioning a largely classroom readership, includes
does not quote the Greek, but offers us in succession Fagles's version, with the
the full text of the play in a version 'close to the Greek', along with the kind of
first line 'Numberless wonders/Terrible wonders walk the world but none the
extensive commentary and notes that would once have been found only with a
match for man', Holderlin's version, 'Ungeheuer ist viel. Dach nichts/Unge­
text in the original. 5 Translations written for the stage or for a particular
heurer, als der Mensch', and David Constantine's translation of H olderlin,
performance include Timberlake Wertenbaker's (1992) The Thebans, written
'Monstrous, a lot. But nothing/More monstrous than man'. I I It is not clear
for performance by the Royal Shakespeare Company, Donald Taylor's (1986)
whether Gaskill himself knows ancient Greek, but the way in which he uses
The Theban Plays, written for a BBC television production, and the 1911
Fagles implies that his readers ( and the readers of the book under review) are
Antigone, translated by Joseph Edward Harry, Professor of Greek at the Univer­
unlikely to have read Sophocles in the original, an implication reinforced by
sity of Cincinnati, intended, as his preface tells us, 'for a special performance in
the curious wording of this comment:
the Grand Opera House, Cincinnati, on the afternoon of March the tenth . . .
staged by one o f my former pupils, M iss Edith Mannheimer'. 6 Readers who know their Sophocles may be immediately struck by Holderlin's chal­
These diverse translations establish for the reader without G reek the Antig­ lenges to conventional understanding of the Greek. Reading dein6s here as 'mon­
one that is the object o f interpretation, the basis for performance, and the strous' (which is certainly what 'ungeheuer' means) seems to conflict with t raditional
normative Antigone against which more radically transformed Antigones will interpretation which sees man rather in terms of 'marvel' or 'wonder'.12
be seen. Yet as we know, translation itself is variously ( i f o ften subtly) transfor­ Gaskill may be acknowledging that whether we read Sophocles in Greek or
mative, conditioned not only by intended function and audience, but also by not we will read in the context of tradition; but his wording-in light of the
the translator's approach to translation, choice of form and level of diction, actual multivalence of the Greek word deinos1 3 suggests that even 'readers
-

and int�rpretation, both of the play as a whole and of particular passages. 7 who know their Sophocles' know their Sophocles only in translation, and
Consider a recent review in which a translation of Antigone may be said to through translations that reflect a particular dominant interpretation. Var­
take the place o f the original text in establishing a norm against which we are
iants on 'wonder' and on 'marvel' do indeed dominate English translations of
to read. The reviewer, Howard Gaskill, is discussing a translation into English this ode throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. 1 4 But
H i:ilderlin's version will look less anomalous to readers who notice Fagles's
'terrible' or who 'know their Sophocles' through such versions as Gilbert
: Fair:Iough and Murray ( 1902), Mullahy ( 1948). Murray's 'Wonders are many, but none there be/so strange, so fell, as the
Robmson (1921: 3). Blondell's Antigone was originally published as Blundell ( 1998). Cf.
also Brown ( 1987), Franklin and Harrison ( 2003). On the earlier absence of translations with
commentary, see Hall ( 2005: 472-3).
8 Gaskill ( 2002).
6 Ha r ( 1911: 4). Two mid-century translations, Kinchin Smith ( 1951) and Banks {1956),
�y _ 9 Fagles ( 1982).
were 0�1gmally wntten for student productions, the first at the University of London I nstitute of 10
The Greek text I follow is that of Griffith ( 1999), except in one instance, which I note.
Edu_catlo� and the s:cond at Wesleyan University. On collegiate and school performances of 1
1 Gaskill {2002: 276-7).
Antigon e m th: late nmeteenth and early twentieth centuries (both in Greek and in English), see
12 Gaskill ( 2002: 277).
J
Ha I and �acmtosh ( 2005: 45�-7, 4� 8, 585); Winterer ( 2007, ch. 7).
13 See Griffith (1999, ad lac.), and cf. also Blondell {2002), Gibbons and Segal ( 2003, ad lac.).
'''lh The literature on translat10n ( history, theory, practice) is vast, and I will be referring to
. ar texts as they speak to this investigation. Among recent work on Greek tragedy in Possible meanings ( in addition to 'wonderful') include 'dreadful', 'awe-inspiring', 'strange',
part1cul
. . 'clever', 'dangerous', and 'extraordinary'.
translat�on, see espec1a�Iy Hardwick ( 2000) and Walton {2006); see also Parker {2001, 2007) on
14 See e.g. Trevelyan ( 1924), Fitts and Fitzgerald ( 1939), Wyckoff {1959). Roche ( 1958),
transl �t10n� of trag �dy man educational context, and essays in Armstrong and Vandiver ( 2007)
McLeish ( 1979), Wertenbaker {1992), Mueller ( 2000), Franklin and Harrison ( 2003).
and Lrnnen and ZaJko ( 2008) on translation and classical literature.

1

286 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
Child of Man', Hugh Lloyd- Jones's 'Many things are fo rmidable, and none
� ore fo rmi�able than man', or the Reginald Gibbons/Charles Segal ren dering,
At many thmgs-wonders,/Terrors-we feel awe,/But at nothing more/Than
at man'. 15 In signalling the m ultiple meanings of deinos, Murray and Gibbons/
Segal p oint to both the translator's dilemma and the translator's opportunity;
in using language like 'strange', 'terrors', and 'formidable', these versions and
Lloyd- Jones's make Hol derlin's ch oice seem an intensification of p ossibilities
rather than a complete depart ure from the norm.
This chapter expl ores s ome of the ways in which translations of S ophocles'
play into English since 1900 have configured its elements to c reate a seemingly
n ormative Antigone, an Antigone against which other versions or variations
may be seen. My concern here is specificaIIy with the written and rea d text­
even when this is created fo r or through perfo rmance 1 6-and not only with
text, but with paratext (to use G erard Genette's terminol ogy) and with
intertext. 1 7 I wi II therefo re la rgely exclude issues of perfo rmance, b ut incl ude
aspects of the p ublished work that may not necessarily have been the transla­
tor's own choice but that wiII affect the way the play reaches the reader.18
I S M ENE'S HEAD
The drama begins with one of the most notoriously untranslatable lines in
G reek tragedy, as Antigone addresses her sister with the words w i<oivov
, '� \,J. ' '
pov Iaµ:ryvYJs i<apa. 1 9 Ismenes kara ( head of Ismene) is a synecdoche
A A
avTaoE1h
completely alien to English i di oms of affection, 20 autadelphon ('bel onging to
a close or fuII sibling') has no English equivalent that retains the m ost
fundamental sense of the p refix autos ('self') and links this word with other
15 Murray (1941), Lloyd-Jones (1994), Gibbons and Segal (2003); cf. also Braun (1973) and
Woodruff (2001). On this ode and its relationship to the play as a whole, see especially Segal
(1964), Benardete (1975), Burton (1980: 95-105); also Jebb (1900), Kamerbeek (1978), and
Griffith (1999, ad loc.).
•
16 A number of the most recent translations of Antigone have theatrical production in
m1:;d (e.g. Rudall 1998, Ewans 1999, Mueller and Krajewska-Wieczorek 2000, McDonald 2005).
Genette (1997).
18
See J. Michael Walton's (2006) Found in Translation: Greek Drama in English for a wide­
ran� ng discussion of 'the special nature of drama translation' (Walton 2006: 6) in relation to
version� of Greek tragedy and comedy, with attention to issues of performance, to historical and
th�� retJCa! con� exts, and to close reading of particular texts and translations. (See also Walton 2007.)
.
On this !me as untranslatable, see Franklin and Harrison (2003), Gibbons and Segal (2003,
ad loc.).
20 No published English translation I know of offers a literal translation of this phrase, but it
appears a� ' head of lsmene' in �yrrell and Bennett's online translation (Tyrrell and Bennett
1996), which came to my attent10n as I was doing final revisions. Versions that allude to the
Reading Antigone in Translation 287
autos compoun ds in the play;2 1 and koinon, th ough translatable in itself
('shared', 'common', here in reference to the sisters' common origin), seems
either obscure or oti ose in English.
If we consider a selection of t ranslations, grouped by their app roach to this
line, we find fi rst that virtually no one22 offe rs anything resembling the version
that Charles Segal gives as literal in his note to the Gibbons/Segal version:
'Comm on self-sistere d head of Ismene'.2 3 One group represent the m ost wide­
spread app roach from beginning to end of our peri od in a variety of types of
translation;24 they render Antigone's words by common English exp ressions of
affection and kinship, and in some instances seek to recreate the intensity of the
line by the use of repetition or of s uperlatives, neither p resent in the G reek.
lsmene, sister mine, my own dear sister (Harry 1911)
Ismene, my own sister, dear Ismene (Kitto 1994/1962)
My own dear sister, Ismene (Franklin/Harrison 2003)
Sweet Ismene, my dearest sister (McDonald 2005)
But alth ough these translations might be taken to offer in their exp ression of
emoti on and affection what is sometimes caIIed a functional or dynamic
equivalent (as opp osed to a fo rmal one) , they fail to convey the line's alm ost
claustrophobic s uggestion of the peculiarly intense and fraught kin relation­
ships of this family.25 The G reek anticipates the haunting p resence of the
family story in the exchange that fo IIows and in the play as a whole. FuIIy rea d,
this line gives us an Antigone whose fi rst words are not simply an expressi on
of affection b ut recaII her connecti on with her brothers (later referred to in
similar terms) ;26 the line thus anticipates the a rgument she is about to make
and the demands she is about to place on her sister.
Greek wording by a displaced analogue include Murray (1941), 'My own, my sister, o beloved
face' and Braun (1973), ' lsmene?/Let me see your face:/my own, only sister'.
1
2
See Gibbons's discussion of his efforts as a translator to link these words (Gibbons
�
an Segal 2003: 40); see also Benardete (1975: 148-9) and Griffith (1999, ad Joe.).
2 The only exception
. .
I have found 1s the Tyrrell and Bennett (1996) online version, which
gives the line as 'O common one of the same womb, head of I smene'.
23 Gibbons and Segal (2003, ad Joe.); see also Benardete (1975: 148). 'Self-siblinged' might be
more apt, since the same word will later be used of Polyneices in relation to Antigone at 503 and 696.
24 Of the four I cite here, Harry ( 1911) was written with a specific performance in mind,
McDonald (2005) with an eye to performance, Kitto (1994, first published 1962) for the general
reader, and Franklin and Harrison (2003) primarily for the classroom. For similar versions, cf.
Fogerty (1903), Trevelyan (1924), Fitts and Fitzgerald (1939), Watling (1947), Wyckoff (l959),
Banks (1956), Roche (1958), McLeish (1979), Rudall (1998), Cherry (1999), Ewans (1999),
Hecht (2004).
25 See Griffith (1999), Gibbon and Segal (2003, ad loc.), Benardete (1975: 148-9), Steiner
(1984: 208-9). On dynamic equivalence, see especially Nida (1964).
26 Antigone 503, 696, 899, 915; and see Benardete (1975: 149).
 288 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
A s econ d group of translators come closer to the effect of the Greek by
going beyond the term 'sister' in emphasizing the family relationship.
Ismene, sister of my blood and heart (Storr, 1912)
,, Ismene, my dear, my mother's child, my sister (Arnott 1960)
i 11 My own flesh and blood,-dear sister, dear Ismene (Fagles 1982)
Like those of the first group, ho wever, these renderings essentially efface th e
Greek i diom, offering in its place English i dioms of shared blood and shared
parentage. Both sets of translators thus exemplify the approach Friedrich
Schleiermacher described as bringing the writer to the reader or what Lawr­
ence Venuti has more recently termed 'domestication', a mode that privileges
fluency and seeks to make the work resemble one written in the target
language.27 We may a dd to this s econ d group two other translations:
Ismene listen. The same blood
Flows in both our veins, doesn't it, my sister,
The blood of Oedipus (Taylor 1986)
Ismene, my own true sister, Oh dear one,
Sharing our common bond of birth (Gibbons/Segal 2003 )
This pair of translations are at once revelatory of th e s emantic implications
of the Greek (and in Taylor's case of its rhetorical force) an d destructive of its
mode of expression. Both engage in the expansion that is characteristic of
translation and that Antoine Berman i dentifi es as one of its 'deforming
ten denci es', an d both do so in the interest of another deformation, Berman's
'clarification'.28
A third (and smaller) group of translations gesture in the direction of a
different approach, one that resembles Schleiermacher's preferred m ethod of
bringing the reader to th e writer in carrying over into English an element o f
'iii
Greek i diom through th e use of th e word 'self'. 2 9
Sister, closest of kindred, Ismene's self (Brown 1987)
My own sister, Ismene, linked to myself (Lloyd-Jones 1994)
Ismene, my own sister, sharing the selfsame blood (Blondell 2002)
27 Venuti ( 1995), Schleiermacher ( 2004).
28
Berman ( 2004: 281-2).
29 Schleiermacher ( 2004). See also Grene ( 1991), 'Ismene, my dear sister,/whose father was
my father', and Bagg ( 2004), 'Ismene, dear one, born/like me from that same womb'. Bagg's
translation suggests by 'same' one of the basic meanings of autos and by 'womb' the etymology
of adelphos ( cf. Tyrrell and Bennett 1996). That Brown, Lloyd-Jones, and Blondell stay close to
Greek idiom is not surprising given the context of translation: Brown's and Blondell's versions
are designed primarily for teaching, and Lloyd-Jones's appears in the Loeb Classical Library.
R eading Antigone in Translation 289
But th e translators' fundamental commitm ent to the i diom of the target
language-th ey displace the semantic unit 'self' to make it at hom e in
English30 -means that th es e versions lack the obvious marks of translation
which characterize both Schleiermacher's reader to writer approach and the
approach that Venuti terms 'foreignizing'. 3 1 Indeed, th e only p ublished trans­
lation I have com e across that is 'foreignizing' in the s ense of insisting on its
o wn status as translation, both by its oddity in English and by its effort to
carry over Greek i diom, is Phillimore's ( 1902) ' Kinborn, Ism en e, in sistership
germane'. Phillimore's translation reproduces not only something like the
intensity of kinship language b ut also the density of expression of Sophocles'
line, though arguably at the cost of incompreh ensibility.32
The readers of th e first gro up will s ee th e opening of the play as expressive
chi efly of Antigone's sisterly affection for lsm en e, and therefore as affording a
contrast with th e s ucceeding division between the two sisters.33 The r eaders of
the s econd group will have greater access to Antigone's obsession with h er
family and to the illocutionary force of h er words (her effort to get Ismen e's
attention an d to confront h er with th e significance of their family back­
ground) , but the translations that most thoroughly convey this force are
also the most expansive and thus least convey the density of i diom of the
Greek. Th e readers of th e third group will be in the b est position to link this
passage conceptually with others in th e play, and the readers of th e fo urth
group (if we can call it a group) will be most vivi dly aware that they are
reading a translation and may thus be more conscious of the otherness of the
play's language and culture.
30 On such semiotic displacements or transpositions in translation, see Riffaterre (1985).
31 Venuti ( 1995), Schleiermacher ( 2004). For both Schleiermacher and Venuti, the preferred
approach makes known its status as a translation and avoids assimilating the source language to the
target language. For Venuti, however, given an understanding of translation as the replacement of
signifiers in the source language by signifiers in the target language, it is impossible to actually carry
over into the translation elements of the original, and the translation must signify its status as such
and the cultural difference of the source text by deviating from the norms of the target language and
culture. Venuti (1995: 17-20).
32 Compare the opening of Phillimore's King Oedipus, 'Fresh brood of bygone Cadmus, children
dear,/What is the posture of your sessions here/-Betufted on your supplicating rods?' (Phillimore
1902: 1). F. Storr, the translator of the first Loeb version of Sophocles, comments, 'We defy any
Englishman without a knowledge of the Greek to make any sense of the third line' (Storr 1912,
p. xiii). Tyrrell and Bennett's 'O common one of the same womb, head of I smene' is closer to the
Greek than Phillimore's, but more expansive in expression. (See their commentary on this line in the
introduction to their 1996 online version; cf also Tyrrell and Bennett 1998: 30-1.)
33 Jebb ( 1900, ad loc.) comments, 'The origin which connects the sisters also isolates them. I f
lsmene i s not with her, Antigone stands alone'; cf. Reinhardt ( 1979) o n the shift from affection
to aversion between the sisters.
 290 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
ANT I G ON E , T HE B E S , O E DIPU S
I have given translations of this first line a close reading both because of its
difficulty and significance as a first line, and because the different versi ons
I have cited nicely demonstrate different approaches to translation. But in fact
the reader's experience of Antigone in translati on will begin before this
beginning, in the encounter with the volume in which the play appears, and
with elements of what Genette calls the 'para text', among them the title and
the preface or introduction.34 These elements of the paratext will contribute
sign i ficantly to the reader's sense of the normative Antigone, as well as direct­
ing the reader's approach to the text that follows.
Translati ons of Antigone appear m ost frequently in single-play editi ons or
in the company of one or both of the other Theban plays, the latter sometimes
as part of a complete Sophocles but often independently.35 Less often, Antig­
Ii
'" one is accompanied by other Sophoclean dramas , 36 or, given the play's
'"
canonical status and long-standing p opularity, in a selection of plays by the
'"
!!: Greek dramatists.37 Publication in a complete Sophocles is relatively un­
11•,1
'"
marked, whereas stand-alone publication and publication in a 'great Greek
1.�"
'"
plays' volume signify the play's canonical standing or current cultural value;
'II other groupings may create assorted ad h oc associations. But publication with
ll1ti
UHi
the other Sophoclean plays that tell the story of Oedipus and his family
11;
t•.• contextualizes the story of the Antigone as part of a continuing story and
:r
'I
insists on a relationship of one sort or another to the other two plays about
the family. Two paratextual features, to some extent related, may make a
,,
difference in the reader's perception of that relationship: the ch oice of what
34 Genette (1997). I don't have the space here to deal with the other paratexts Genette
identifies and discusses; one interesting point of difference is the identification of the author
(on title page, on cover, or on spine) with either the author of the original text or the author of
the translation.
35 See the Bibliography for examples. Amott ( 1960) is unusual in including only Antigone and
Oedipus the King, but cf. Morrison ( 2003). I n some instances, as with Wyckoff ( 1959) in the
Chicago series, Cherry ( 1999) in the Penn series, and Woodruff and Meineck ( 2003), a
volume may feature more than one translator; cf. also Ewans ( 1999), McDonald (2005 ), and
the �olume in which O'Sheel ( 1957) appears. ( For the second edition of the Chicago Sophocles,
DaVId Grene replaced Wyckoff 's Antigone and Fitzgerald's Oedipus at Colon us with versions of his
own to accompany his Oedipus the King, partly in the interests of a unified style; Grene 1991).
36 See McLeish ( 1979), Kitto ( 1994), Ewans ( 1999).
37 See Robinson ( 1921), McDonald ( 2005).
1
Reading Antigone in Translation 291
Genette calls an 'overarching title' (non-existent in the Greek) and the order
in which the plays are printed.38
The three plays are sometimes simply grouped together with no shared title
(as, say, one volume of a two-volume e diti on of Sophocles' plays) .39 In other
e diti ons, however, we find two main variants: one i dentifies the plays with their
setting (The Theban Plays, Three Theban Plays, The Thebans),40 the other with
the story of Oedipus (The Oedipus Plays, The Oedipus Cycle, The Oedipus
Trilogy).41 Alm ost all of these variants are what Genette calls b oth thematic
and rhematic, since they say something both about subject and about form.42
The 'Theban' titles might be read as somewhat trivially identifying the stories
with their location, but they also anticipate for the reader the central role of the
polis in all three plays (none more than Antigone) and specifically of the Theban
in opp ositi on to the Athenian polis, the polis of the playwright an d of the plays'
first audience.43 The 'Oedipus' titles may be said to subordinate the story of
Antigone to that of her father, but they also anticipate for the reader the way in
which Oedipus, even after his death, continues to determine, through the
suffering his life has inflicted on his excessively close family, the course of e vents
that befall it. To call the plays a trilogy gives the misleading impression that the
three plays were written to be performed together, like Aeschylus' Oresteia or his
Oedipus plays, and that like those trilogies, Sophocles' plays offer a continuing
story in chron ol ogical order. Many translations gi ve a similar impression by
printing the plays not in the most likely order of first performance (Antigone,
38 The term 'overarching title' is Genette's translators' rendering of Genette's term 'surtitre'.
Genette ( 1997: 60, 1987: 59). Unlike the titles of some Greek tragedies (see Walton 2006: 85-6
on translations of the title of Oedipus Tyrannus), the title of Antigone itself shows no variations
other than the presence or absence of the definite article, except where a translator seeks to
signal a rewriting, as in Tom Paulin's The Riot Act and Seamus Heaney's The Burial at Thebes
( Paulin 1985, Heaney 2004).
39 e.g. Way ( 1909), Storr ( 1912), and Wyckoff ( 1959), the last of these originally published in
a single volume including all three plays and later in a separate volume including A ntigone and
the two Oedipus plays.
40 The Theban Plays: Watling ( 1947), Taylor ( 1986), Blondell ( 2002), Woodruff and Meineck
( 2003); Three Theban Plays: Banks ( 1956), Hecht 2004; The Th ree Theban Plays: Fagles ( 1982);
The Thebans: Wertenbaker ( 1992). Woodruff's Antigone was initially published in a separate
volume as Woodruff ( 2001).
41 The Oedipus Plays: Roche ( 1958), Bagg ( 2004); The Oedipus Cycle: Fitts and Fitzgerald
( 1949); The Oedipus Trilogy: Mullahy ( 1948), Spender ( 1985). ( Fitts and Fitzgerald's Antigone
was initially published in a separate volume as Fitts and Fitzgerald 1939.)
42 Genette ( 1997: 81-91).
43 On the opposition between Thebes and Athens in Greek tragedy, see especially Zeitlin
( 1990).
292 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus at Colonus),44 but in the order of events within the
story: Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. The latter was once the
norm; I have found only one translation of the three plays before 1980 ( Banks
1956) that orders them according to the chronology of first appearance rather
than according to story time;4 smore recent versions vary, with those designed
for staging more likely to choose story order.46
Readers may of course choose to read the plays in any order; but a translation
in story order suggests a single continuing narrative in episodes, a narrative that
makes of Antigone the conclusion of the whole (from which we might exp ect a
particular closural force determinative of our retrospective reading),47 and may
for some readers arouse an exp ectation of developments in theme and character
from first play to last. To read in this order also means that when the reader
encounters in Antigone allusions to the torm ented past history of the house,
these allusions will point to the events of the other two plays as to an earlier part
of the same work, in what Genette would call analepsis.48 In contrast, when a
translation puts Antigone first, this is more than just a reminder of the original
historical sequence, or a suggestion that the reader should consid er analytically
the developm ent of the playwright over a p eriod of decades.4 9 It also suggests a
reading of the three plays not as a single text but as separate plays with a
particular intertextual relationship. With Antigone as th e starting point (to
take just one example), the reader is more likely to have access to the deep
irony of O edipus' request (at the end of Oedipus Tyrannus) that Creon look after
his daughters and the poignancy of Polyneices' request (in Oedipus at Colonus)
that Antigone, if n eed be, see to his burial. so
44 Oedipus at Co/onus was first performed in 401 BCE, after Sophocles' death; the first
performance dates of both Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus are uncertain and to some degree
speculative, but there is general agreement about the likely order of the two plays. See Griffith
( 1999: 1-2) and works cited there.
45 See Banks ( 1956, pp. xiii-xiv) for his rationale, and cf. Knox in Fagles ( 1982: 30).
46 Translations since 1980 with the plays in performance order include Fagles ( 1982), Blondell
( 2002), Woodruff and Meineck (2003) and Hecht ( 2004); translations in story order include
Spender ( 1985), Taylor ( 1986), Grene ( 1991) Wertenbaker ( 1992), Cherry ( 1999), and Bagg ( 2004).
,
47 On closure and 'retrospective patterning' see Smith ( 1968, esp. 212-13).
48 See the extensive discussion of narrative time and story time in Genette (1980).
49 Knox in Fagles ( 1982: 30).
so Oedipus Tyrannus 1462-6, 1503-10, Oedipus at Co/onus 1409-10. On intertextual allusions
in Sophocles and their effect on closure, see Roberts ( 1988). The shift in several of the more
recent translations from story order to performance order may in part imply a reader more
interested in literary history and criticism; it may also rely on a readership increasingly familiar
from popular culture with the concept of the prequel.
Reading Antigone in Translation 293
T H E W H Y AND T H E H OW
The reading of Antigone in translation may be further conditioned by another
paratextual element, th e preface or introduction. s1 Introductory material may
be written by the translator or by som eone else (such as a scholar who
collaborates with the translator) or by both. s2 But even when th e translator
writes th e introduction, it is simultaneously (in G en ette's terms) an authorial
preface and an allographic preface, since the translator is inevitably introdu­
cing someone els e's original work but his or h er own translation. s3 G en ette
ascribes to both typ es of preface two basic goals, somewhat differen tly in­
flected in the two types: 'to get th e book read and to get it read prop erly', that
is, to say to the reader, 'This is why and this is how you should read this
book'. s4 An allographic preface allows for direct praise of th e author and is
more likely to resemble m etatext or critical essay. ss For a canonical text like
Antigone, the relationship b etween the translator as author (urging the m erits
of th e translation) and the translator as admiring other ( urging the m erits of
the original) is a particularly complex one, since the translator's own work
both gains status from the text it translates and loses status by the in evitable
comparison with its original.
Translators offer readers a variety of r easons why their version was worth
writing (and so is worth reading) : b ecause the play needs 'to speak to each
generation', because no existing translation is 'adequate both po etically and
dramatically', because no existing translation suits the medium of t elevision,
because a rash of recent versions 'produced by poets and playwrights who do
not work from the original Greek' calls for an alternative) . s6 And many
translators also offer a 'how' of sorts, explaining just what sort of translation
theirs is-or what it isn't-and thus how it should be approach ed; their
51 See Genette ( 1997, chs. 8-10); Genette makes no significant distinction between preface
and introduction ( or, in most instances, between these two and afterword). Translations of
Antigone frequently have some combination of preface, introduction, translator's note, and
afterword.
52 The scholar in question may be the co-translator ( Segal in Gibbons and Segal 2003), a
close collaborator (Knox in Fagles 1982), a series editor (Arrowsmith in Braun 1973, Burian in
Gibbons and Segal 2003), or a scholar who adds a preface at a later date ( Hall in Kitto 1994).
53 Genette notes that among the first allographic prefaces were those written by translators of
ancient texts in the early modern period ( 1997: 263).
54 Ibid. 197.
55 Ibid. 267-8, 270; he adds: 'This proximity to the critical essay is particularly noticeable in
posthumous prefaces written for the republication of ancient works'.
56 Kinchin Smith ( 1951, p. vii), Banks ( 1956, p. vii), Taylor ( 1986: 191-2), Franklin and
Harrison ( 2003, p. vi).
 294 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
terminology, even in recent versions, tends to avoid the technical expressions
of current translation theory and addresses itself to th e gen eral reader. Some
translators d escrib e themselves as aiming fo r a faith ful reproduction not only
�
o th e meaning of th e Greek but to som e degree of form as well, sometimes
with rarticular concern for th e translation of key words. 5 7 Many more,
_
esp ecially but not only those who hop e to create possibl e p erformance t exts,
l �y stress o � what they hope to achieve in th eir target language. Fitts and
! �
F1 tzg era d aim or a translation that will be 'cl ear and credible in English';
.
Watlmg s P engum translation seeks to offer 'a readable, and actabl e, dramatic
text, not a l in e for line, word for word transcription', and Rudall wants his
version (in the Plays for Performance series) to reflect 'the rhythms of modern
English conversation'. 58 Among th e most recent translators, a number d eclare
th eir allegiance to both goals; Bagg aims at 'maximum playability with the
l east sacrifice of accuracy' and Woodruff wants to 'capture th e dramatic and
p �etic intensity of th e anci ent Greek play without sacrificing accuracy'. We
might, h �wever, read th e language of sacrifice as implying that the target
language is finally the translator's divinity-albeit one whose demands these
translators seek to resist.5 9
Few translators really tell the reader how to read th e translation, except in
so fa r as th ey warn th e reader what to exp ect and what not to exp ect; one
. .
strikmg exception is Reginald G ibbons, who offers an ext ensive analysis of
some of the problems of translation and of h is own solution to a s eries of
exemplary difficulties that also illuminate th e d iction of Antigone.60
When translators sp eak not as author but as other, introducing Sophocles'
play, they are l ikely to emphasize th e 'how' over th e ' why'; with a canonical
text that is still widely read and taught, most translators presume their readers
know why th ey should be reading, and turn at once to telling them how. This
'how' may include either background information, so that th e read er will be
equipped to read th e play, or interpretation, so that the reader will know just
how to read the play, or both. But wh ere translators of Antigone do suggest
. play for p erformance in girls' schools appeared at a time wh en Antigone had
why their readers should read this play, we tend to find three different sorts of
reasons.
Th e first of these is the greatness (variously describ ed) of th e poet or the
play. Some translators offer a brief and familiar statement of Sophocles'
57 Trevelyan ( 1924: 6--7), Blondell ( 2002, p. vii), Gibbons in Gibbons
44--8).
and Segal ( 2003·. 38--41
58 Fitts and Fitzgerald ( 1939: 91), Watling ( 1947: 16), Rudall ( 1998:
6); cf. Banks ( 1956,
. Roche ( 1958, p. xii).
p. xvi),
:� B�gg ( 2004, p. ix), Woodruff ( 2001, p. xxx), cf. Franklin and Harrison ( 2003, p. vi).
Gibbons and Segal ( 2003: 37-48); cf. more briefly Trevelyan ( 1924), Taylor ( 1986) Roche
( 1958), Hecht ( 2004).
R eading Antigone in Translation 295
merits; in a typical formulation, Paul Roche tells his readers that the play­
wright was 'one of the world's greatest poets and dramatists, and he sp eaks to
us today with a m essage no less n ecessary and elevating than it was to the
Greeks of the fifth century sc'. 6 1 Other translators focus on the m er its
sp ecifically of Antigone. Most baldly, and with som e condescension, the
introduction to the translation in the Touchstone Literary Classics series
first makes sure the reader knows what's at issue by asking th e question
'what is a literary classic', and offering an answer: 'a work of the highest
excellence that has som ething important to say about life and/or th e human
condition and says it with great artistry'. It then suggests that Antigone is just
such a work, one that 'has been read and p erform ed for so many years because
it raises questions that are p ertin ent in every age'. 62 Charles S egal, introducing
the Gibbons/S egal version, b egins by citing an authority (although o n e he will
go on to question) ; the play is, in H egel's words, 'one of the most sublim e . . .
work[s] of art human effort ever produced'.63 Marianne McDonald locates the
virtu e of this play in a specific arena: it is 'the first, and remains th e greatest,
play in western literature about th e consequ ences of individual conscience
defying civil authority'. 64
McDonald's evocation of th e political resonances of Antigone is in keeping
with a second 'why'; some translators s ee the play's continued rel evance to
political events at d ifferent tim es and in d ifferent places as a major, if
sometim es m erely implicit, reason to engage with the play either as translator
or as reader.6 5 For Kinchin Smith, in 1950, th e 'conflict between the claim of
the State and the conscience of the individual . . . is b eing fought out in
Czechoslovakia today', and Mu eller, a half-century later, compares Antigone's
solitary bravery to 'that of the student unflinchingly facing down th e on­
coming tanks in Tiananm en square'.66
Mueller's reference to 'Antigone's solitary bravery' points to a third reason
translators may offer: for som e, Antigone herself constitutes a reaso n to read
this play. It is not surprising that Elsie Fogerty, whose 1903 adaption of th e
61 Roche ( 1958, p. vi); for similar comments cf. Taylor (I 986, p. vi) and Ewans ( 1999, p. xv).
62 Thomas ( 2005: 6).
63 Segal in Gibbons and Segal ( 2003: 3), citing Hegel as quoted in Paolucci and Paolucci
(1962: 178).
'
64 McDonald ( 2005, p. x).
65 But see also Bagg's comments in the introduction to his translation on the ' downside of
interpreting Antigone through its capacity for embodying political battles'. Bagg ( 2004: 161).
66 Kinchin Smith ( 1951, p. xi), Mueller and Krajewka-Wieczorek ( 2000: 20). Cf. Seamus
.
Heaney's comparison of Creon's tactics with those used by George W. Bush in seeking support
for the invasion of Iraq; Heaney ( 2004: 75) Bush-then still Governor of Texas-also appears
' in the guise of Creon in Cherry's introduction to her translation (Cherry 1999: 191).

296 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
long been regarded as a figure of ideal womanhood, should call her 'the
supreme woman figure in the whole range of tragedy'. 67 Not everyone takes
to Antigone, but the personal fervour for this heroine in the late nineeenth
and early twentieth centuries seems to have resurfaced in two recent ver­
sions.68 Kelly Cherry's admiration takes the form of identification:
I have always loved Antigone, though she is not especially loveable, for her strength
and clarity and dedication to principle. Growing up in a society in which women were
either soft and subservient or failures at life, I loved Antigone as one whose death was
an unretreating, almost aggressive affirmation of what she had stood for in life... . As
a teenager, I even wished I had been named Antigone; fr iends, I figured, could call me
Annie.69
And Paul Woodruff begins his introduction with a like acknowledgment,
although it is Haemon with whom he identifies:
\, I have been in love with Antigone since I first encountered the play that bears her
�Il name. The ideas to which she gives voice are interesting and important, but the young
woman is captivating ... . I confess this at the outset because it explains why I may not
succeed in writing objectively about the play. In what follows, however, I will attempt
to show why some scholars think that her original audience must have condemned her
as a bad woman, and I w ill do my best to bring out the good qualities in her
antagonist, Creon. But in the end, like Creon's son who plans to marry her, I want
to spit in the old man's face.70
Woodruff's sympathy carries him to the point of inserting himself in the play
in fantasy, but readers of Cherry's translation will discover that she has
performed a more literal or textual insertion: her Antigone's nickname,
used by both the chorus and Ismene, is Annie .
67 Fogerty ( 1903, p. xii). On the idealization of Antigone in the nineteenth century, see
Steiner ( 1984); on the contribution of particular theatrical performances to this idealization, see
Hall and Macintosh ( 2005); on the complex relationship in nineteenth-century America
between Antigone the figure of female perfection and Antigone the example of female political
action, see Winterer ( 2007, ch. 7).
68
C f. Andrew Brown, who concludes his discussion of Antigone (which he admits has
turned 'personal and provocative' by asserting: 'You may love Antigone or hate her; what no
thinking person has ever managed to do is to ignore her'); Brown ( 1987: 9-10).
69 Cherry ( 1999: 191).
70 Woodruff ( 2001, p. vii). Steiner ( 1984: 4) cites Shelley's declaration (in a letter to J ohn
Gisborne) that 'Some of us have in a prior existence been in love with an Antigone'. Cf. Hall and
Mcintosh ( 2005: 316) on the impact of a performance of Antigone 'on an adolescent male
psyche'.
R eading Antigone in Translation 297
CO N F L I CT W I T H A CAPITA L C
It would be impossible to give a brief acco unt of 'the themes of how' in
translators' introductions to the play, but one instruction to the reader stands
out. Readers of Antigone in translation are left in little doubt that this is a play
about conflict: the word appears, although somewhat differently contextual­
ized, in almost every translation in our period that has an introduction of any
length.71 Few are as blunt or as uncomplicated as the introduction to Touch­
stone Literary Classics, which under the heading 'Reading Pointers for Sharp­
er Insights', begins with the exhortation: 'As you read Antigone, be aware of the
following: (1) The conflict between civic responsibility and personal duty'. 72
But even translations that seem directed at a more sophisticated readership
hammer the point home in one way or another. Watling tells us that 'In
Antigone . . . we are concerned with a single, and comparative simple con flict',
and Andrew Brown makes a comparative point: 'More than any other Greek
tragedy, Antigone is a play about a conflict'. Segal's introduction to the
Gibbons/Segal version criticizes the Hegelian reading of the play as insuffi­
ciently nuanced, but nonetheless acknowledges that 'Conflict is the heart of
this work'.73 Given the endless if varied reiterations of this theme, and the
different ways in which translators go on to read the conflict or con flicts they
have identified as central, it is not surprising to find one of the most recent
translators drily remarking that 'Truly, there is a conflict in this play to suit
.
every interest '. 74
Having been instructed why and how they should read the Antigone, read­
ers of a translation turn to the text; here they find their understanding of the
play further conditioned in multiple respects by the translator's choices. I here
select just three examples: a textual issue, bearing on the reader's perception of
character; an issue of the semantics of translation, bearing on the reader's
perception of one of the play's central conflicts, and an issue of style, bearing
on the reader's perception both of poetics and of thought.
1
7 T he influence of Hegel is clear, but not always acknowledged, and where his reading is
acknowledged, it is often challenged or qualified; see e.g. Murray ( 1941: 7), Knox in Fagles
(1982: 41 ), Woodruff ( 2001, p. xii), Gibbons and Segal ( 2003: 3-6).
72 Thomas ( 2005: 7).
73 Watling ( 1947: 13), Brown ( 1987: 5), Gibbons and Segal ( 2003: 6).
74 Woodruff ( 2001, p. xii).
 298 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
" of Antigone is considerable. If Ismene speaks this line, Antigone's last words
DEA R EST H A E M ON
Ii I n the second episode of the play, after Antigone has been captured, has stated
her position, and has rejected Ismene's effort to share the blame for the burial,
Ismene asks Creon if he will really kill Antigone, given that she is to marry his
son. Creon is implacable and dismissive (568-73):
I a.d,\,\d KTEVEi<; vvµ</>Eia TOV aauTov TEKvov;
Kp. dpwatµot yap xdTe'pwv Eia!v yvat.
la. ovx w<; y'EKELV";) rf!Oe' T' >jv �pµoaµe'va.
Kp. KaKa> €.yw yvvaiKa<; vie'at aTvyw.
la. w </>{,\rn8' Alµov, w<; a' dnµa'Et 1TaT�P·
i
Kp. ayav YE AU7TEi<; Kai av Kai TO aov Mxos
lsmene: But will you really kill your own child's bride-to-be?
K reon: Yes; there are other plots of land for him to plow.
Ismene: Not like the harmony that fitted him to her.
K reon: I loathe for sons of mine to marry evil wives.
Ismene: Oh dearest Haimon, what dishonor from your father!
K reon: You pain me to excess, you and your marriage-bed.
(Blondell 2002)
The Greek of line 572, 'Oh dearest Haimon, what dishonor from your father',
is fairly straightfor ward, and the variations in wording from translation to
translation are relativel y insignificant, but d ifferent versions give the line to
different speakers. The manuscripts of the play assign it to Ismene, but a
number of editors, citing the uncertainty of line attributions in the manu ­
script tradition and adducing other arguments (none of them conclusive)7 5
have given the line to Antigone, and this is the choice of a majority of
translators throughout our period.76 'Choice' may be the wrong term in
some instances: translators (especially those with little or no Greek) may
simply be following the texts or translations they are working with.77 But in
75 See Jebb (1900), Kamerbeek (1978), and Griffith ( 1999) ad Joe.
76 Woodruff (200 I) refuses to decide, assigning the line to 'Antigone (or possibly Ismene, or
possibly Chorus)'.
77 Translators who cite their debt to Jebb tend to follow him in giving line 572 to Antigone;
see Fogerty (1903 ), Harry (1911), Spender ( 1 985), Hecht (2004). Cherry ( 1999), whose transla­
tion of Antigone suggests at several points the influence of the Fitts and Fitzgerald ( 1 939)
version, follows Fitts and Fitzgerald, giving line 572 to Ismene.
Reading Antigone in Translation 299
any case the impact of the assignment of lines on the reader's understanding
in the scene (559-60) confirm her allegiance to the dead, and in subsequently
maintaining her silence, she maintains her position of alienation from the
living and from all but the blood kin who have died before her. Although in
her final lament she will mourn the displacement of marriage by death, she
will never speak of Haemon himself. If, however, Antigone speaks the line, her
commitment to the dead and obsession with her self-assigned task and with
death are interrupted by an upsurge of emotion for the young man she was
meant to marry; we then see her sacrifice as entailing not just a general loss
but a deeply personal one, and she becomes in some respects a more
sympathetic and accessible person.78
N O M OS: T RA NSLAT I N G T H E N O R M /N O R MS
O F T RANSLAT I ON
The Greek word nornos ( v6µ,o>) is one of a cluster of words in the play that are
both critical and contested, used in d ifferent senses at different points or by
different characters. 7 9 Nornos is frequently translated as 'law' or 'custom', but
does not map neatly onto either. Its range of meaning includes statutes,
ordinances, conventions, rules, practices, and beliefs, but the most basic
sense, shared by all these usages, is ( in Martin Ostwald's formulation) that
of a norm that 'is or ought to be regarded as valid or binding by those who live
under it'.80
The problem for the translator is a familiar one. To translate the word in the
most appropriate manner for a given context-that is, with the word that
seems to be the nearest functional equivalent-will disguise from the reader
78 The reader's understanding of Antigone's character will also be affected by whether or not
the translator omits the speech at 904--1 5 in which she declares that she would not have done as
she did for a husband or a child but only for a brother. Most translators retain the speech;
among those who omit it are Harry (1911 ) , Fitts and Fitzgerald ( 1 939), Murray ( 1 941), and
Wertenbaker (1992). For recent discussion of this issue, see Griffith (1999, ad Joe.) and works
cited there.
79 On other key words and groups of words, see Griffith (1999: 39-4 3 ) , Gibbons and Segal
(2003: 38-4 2 ) , and the notes in Blondell ( 2002, esp. 6, 1 7, 18, 1 9 ) . See also Jan Parker's
discussion of the place of key words in teaching tragedy and specifically of philos (friend),
echthros (enemy), amechanos (impossible, unmanageable), and related words in Antigone
(Parker 200 I, esp. 47-57, 190-4 ); and on phi/as, see Tyrrell and Bennett ( 1 996, introduction).
80
Ostwald ( 1 969: 20; see also discussion at 20-54). On the ambiguities of the concept of
nomos and the way these play out in Antigone, see especially Harris (2004).
300 Translations, Adaptations, Performance Reading Antigone in Translation 30 1

This I believe, and thus will I maintain

the relationship among the different occu rrences of the wo rd in the text, a
My city's greatness. (Kitto 1994/1962)
p rocess Antoine Berman identifies as another of the standard defo rmations of
translation, 'the destruction of networks of signification'.8 1 We can see this Such are my standards. They make our city great. (Fagles 1982)
p rocess exemplified in versions of three of the many passages in which the These are the laws by which I make our city
word nomos appears. Grow strong (Gibbons and Segal 2003)

(I) In the opening scene of the play, Antigone reports to Ismene the (3) Antigone, after her arrest, argues against Creon's assertion that Eteocles
distinction Creon has made between their two brothers; she goes on (23-5) deserves better than Polyneices (519): oµ.w> 0 y' JliC517s TOUS' v6µ.ovs TOVTOVS'
to say that Creon has given Eteocles an honourable burial sun dikes khresei 7To(hi (homos ho'g' Haides tous nomous toutous pothei, 'still, Hades at least
dikaiai kai nomoi ('with just usage of justice and with nomos').82 desires these nomo i').

'EHoKMa µ.€v, w> Myouai, auv 811<11> No matter-death longs fo r the same rites a s all. (Kitto 1994/1962)
XP�UEL 81Ka{q. Kat VOJ-W.J I KaTa xOovo> Even so, the God of death demands these rites. (Fagles 1982)
€Kpu</J< rni> €v<p0f:v €vnµ.ov V€Kpoi>
And yet it's Hades who desires these laws. (Gibbons and Segal 2003)
These lines (and in particular the wo rd nomos) are variously rendered in In each instance, Kitto's and Fagles's ways of rendering nomos are largely
different translations; here are th ree examples, all from versions aimed at the dictated by English semantic or cultural no rms;8 3 English speakers would not
general reader: no rmally apply the term 'laws' to Creon's description of the p rinciples he
Eteocles, they say, has been entombed intends to govern by, or to the traditional customs about and rites of burial
With every solemn rite and ceremony Antigone evokes. But the fact that in G reek the same word is used for both is
To do him honour in the world below. (Kitto 1994/ 1962) significant: even when Creon and Antigone appeal (as they do in these three
Eteocles, they say, passages) not only to diffe rent nomoi but to different kinds of nomoi, both of
Has been given full military honors, them see themselves as operating in accordance with nomos. It is this connec­
Rightly so-Creon's laid him in the earth tion -and the referential multiplicity of nomos--that Kitto and Fagles dis­
And he goes with glory down among the dead. (Fagles 1982) guise and that Gibbons and Segal allow the reader to perceive. They do so at
They say he has covered some slight cost to idiomatic English-theirs is arguably a mildly fo reignizing
Eteokles with earth, as justice and law strategy, likely to remind us we are reading a translation-and even at some
Require, so down below among the dead cost to full comprehension. But the reade rs of the Gibbons/Segal version (and
He will be honored. (Gibbons and Segal 2003) of othe r versions that pursue the same strategy, such as Blondell's and
(2) In the followi ng scene, Creon makes his opening add ress as king; after Woodruff's) will perceive an extra dimension in the con flict between
declaring his approach to ruling and in particular the fact that he puts the Antigone and Creon.84
country above friendship and expects others to do so, he sums up ( 191): In the passages we have just considered, a concern for the no rms of English
TOLOia8' €yw v6µ.otat T�v8' av�w 7TOAiv' ( toioisd' ego nomoisi tend' auxo polin, idiom leads some translators to render the word nomos in a way that effaces
'with such nomoi I will make the city great') . the connection between different usages and thus obscures one aspect of the
con flict between Creon and Antigone. We find a different kind of disto rtion,
differently motivated, in translations of the speech in which the captured
81 Berman (2004: 284 ) . By 'networks of signification', Berman means not only repeated
instances of the same word, but words that recur in relation to other words and form a pattern. 83
82 On translation as governed by norms of various kinds, see especially Toury (2004: 205- 1 8 ) .
Since editors disagree on how to resolve a textual problem in this lines (and on whether it
can be resolved), different translators are working with different texts; but the word nomos is 84 Woodruff (2001) and Blondell (2002) also translate the term nomos consistently a s 'law' in
present in all versions, if in slightly different syntactic roles. The text of the transliterated phrase the three passages-as in others, including (in the pol/a ta deina ode) the variously rendered
given here is from Lloyd-Jones ( 1 994 ) , and the translation (here and in the two following phrase astunomous orgas at line 355-6, where the translation of nomos is further complicated by
passages) is mine. its forming part of a compound word.
'

I
I ,

I ' Reading Antigone in Translation 303

302 Translations, Adaptations, Performance

Antigone articulates her reasons for disobeyi ng Creon's proclamation ( which
he has just described using the word nomos) and draws a contrast between his
laws and the unwritten laws of the gods ( 450-55) :85
oil yap T{ 1wi ZEvs �v o K7Jpvtas TaoE,
ovS' � tvvoLKO<; TWJJ KaTw 8Ewv L HKT}
TOLOvaS' Ell dv8pw1TOWLJJ wptaEJJ 116µ.ov<;.
ov8€ a8ivELJJ TOOOVTOJJ <fi6µ7111 Td ad
K7Jpvyµa8' waT' aypa1TTa Kaa</>aA� 8EWJJ
v6µtµa ovvaa8at 81171ToJJ 0118' V1TEpOpaµEi:v.
this is the speech in which The Conflict is most starkly articulated, since
Antigone here explicitly opposes Creon's laws to the unwritten laws of the
gods, and that a translator must at all cost convey to the reader this opposi­
tion between two sets or kinds of law. 87
Perhaps as a result of this imperative, we can recognize in a few translations
another of Berman's 'deformations', the clarification by expansion we saw in
some versions of the play's opening line,88 here characterized both by a
multiplication of the key word nomos and by a more expansive or pointed
discourse on the two kinds of law:

Although a few translators distinguish the related word nomima (used by Yes, I did. Because it's your law,
Antigone for the gods' unwritten laws) from nomous ( the word she uses for Not the law of God. Natural Justice,
Which is of all time and place, numinous,
Creon's decree and human laws like it) , the great majority of translators in all
Not material, a quality of Zeus,
types of translation use 'laws' for both words;86 Kitto and Gibbons/Segal, for
Not of kings, recognizes no such law.
example, come together on this point.
You are merely a man, mortal,
It was not Zeus who published this decree Like me, and laws that you enact
Nor have the Powers who rule among the dead Cannot overturn ancient moralities
Imposed such laws [ nomous] as this upon mankind; or common human decency.
Nor could I think that a decree of yours- They speak the language of eternity,
A man-could override the laws [ nomima] of Heaven Are not written down, and never change. (Taylor 1986 ) 89
Unwritten and unchanging. (Kitto 1994/1962)
I did.
It was not Zeus who made that p roclamation I had to choose between your law and God's law,
To me; nor was it Justice, who resides And no matter how much power you have
In the same house with the gods below the earth, To enforce your law, it is inconsequential
Who put in place for men such laws [ nomous] as yours. Next to God's. His laws are eternal, not
Nor did I think your proclamation so strong, merely for the moment. No mortal, not
T hat you, a mortal, could overrule the laws [ nomima] even you, may annul the laws of God,
Of the gods, that are unwritten and unfailing. ( Gibbons/Segal 2003) for they are eternal. (Cherry 1999)
We may attribute this consistency partly to the fact that English idiomatic Taylor and Cherry want to make sure that the reader does not miss what they
norms are here closer to those of Greek and will accommodate this usage take to be the main point, the opposition between human law and divine law;
comfortably, but I suspect there is another factor: the awareness in transla­ their translations are marked by iterations of the word 'law' beyond what we
tors-no matter what their background, approach, or level of G reek-that find in the Greek or in most other versions, and by a spelling out of what the
central conflict or opposition is supposed to mean. This mode of translation
might seem the converse of the mode we considered first, in that it exaggerates
85 There is a textual issue in this passage: on the manuscript reading (with 452 as oi' Tova/l' €v
dv8pclnrotaiv wpwav v6µou>), both nomous and nomima in this passage would refer to the laws of 87
the gods. But the difficulty of a shift in referent between Creon's preceding speech ( in which Harris (2004) argues that in this speech as elsewhere Antigone 'correctly denies Creon's
rnvall< v6µou> refers to his proclamation) and Antigone's (in which, on this reading, the same order the status of a law' (45); cf. Fletcher in this volume, pp. 1 71-3. But it is important to note
words would have to refer to divine law) has led the maj ority of editors to accept the emendation that Antigone ( on the generally accepted emendation of line 452) still uses the term nomos for
given here. See Jebb ( 1 900), Kamerbeek ( 1978), Griffith ( 1 999). Creon's rulings, even as she denies that they are nomoi supported by Zeus or by Justice.
86 88
Trevelyan ( 1 924) and Grene ( 1 99 1 ) translate nomima as 'ordinances' ; Fagles ( 1982) and Berman (2004: 28 1 -2 ) .
89
Tyrrell and Bennett ( 1 996) translate it as ' traditions'. Taylor ( 1 986: 1 5 1 ) .

•
 Reading Antigone in Translation 305
304 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
He hath p rovision for all: fell plague he hath learnt to endure
rather than effaces the use of the term nomos (and its cognates) both fo r
Safe whate'er may befall: yet for death he hath found no cure. (Storr 19 12) 90
Creon's idea of l a w a n d Antigone's. But we might also s a y that the t wo
app roaches are alike in that they conduce to an oversimplification of the His subtlety
play's central conflict, the fi rst in response to the no rms of English idiom, the Meeteth all chance, all danger conquereth.
second in response to an interp retation of the play regarded by the translator For every ill he hath found its remedy,
Save only death. (Watling 1947) 9 1
as normative and so offered to the reader.
He has ample skill, to match
W hatever the future brings-
For every disease a cure
ENDING W I T H DEATH But Death, which has no cure.
(McLeish 1979)
A translator may respond to stylistic o r poetic norms in the target language as He is ready for all that comes,
well as to semantic no rms, and doing so may lead to a diffe rent kind of As he goes out to meet the future;
distortion. The ode with which we began this investigation offe rs a striking He can cure terrible diseases;
example. Only death he cannot escape.
Towa rds the end of the second strophe, after celebrating human achieve­ (McDonald 2005) 92
ments in seafaring, agricultu re, hunting, the domestication of animals, lan­ What seems to be involved here is a sense of the no rm in English fo r a poetic
guage, thought, civic life, and p rotection from the weather, the chorus gives a climax and fo r poetic closure. The identification of death with literary closure
b rief summary statement of human resou rcefulness in the b roadest possible is powerful, 93 and from this point of view, the mention of humanity's p ro wess
terms and then introduces a sudden and stark (if not unfamiliar) exception, against disease seems doubly anti-climactic: it emerges after what should have
followed by a brief return to the list of human achievements. been the end, and its significance has already been undercut by the final
arropos €rr' ov8.!v EPXETUt failure of medicine to ward off death.
TO µ,D.>.ov· .i1i8a µ,6vov This reversal of Sophocles' o rder, then, offers the reader a mo re familiar
¢m�,gw ovK €rratErni· poetic structure and a more normative sense of closure in English;94 it also
v6awv 8' dµ,71x&.vwv ,Pvyas lays a greater stress on the place of death as the final challenge to all human
tvµ,rrl,Ppaarni (Antigone 360-4) achievement and human resourcefulness. But translations that retain the
Resourceless G reek o rder open up other possibilities and offer other emphases. The reading
He meets nothing the future holds. Griffith offers in his commentary, fo r example, points to a different kind o f
Only from Hades will he fail climax: 'The blunt (asyndetic) reminder of mankind's one inescapable limi­
To find escape; and yet escape tation is quickly m itigated by the bold claim that " <p reviously> i rresistible
From impossible sicknesses, diseases" can be escaped'. 9 5 We might say that the mention of death here
T his he has devised (Blondell 1998)

Unlike Blondell, most translators render 'Hades ' as 'death', a choice of wo rds
p robably more fo rceful in English and mildly domesticating in its supp ression
of the G reek metonym y. But the re is another and more significant division
among translators: roughly half of them reverse the o rder of the strophe's last
90 Storr ( 1 9 1 2: 34 1 ) (line numbering for the choral ode is unclear).
91 Watling ( 1947: 1 36).
9 2 McDonald (2005: 1 2 ) .
93 See Smith ( 1968: 1 72-82) o n death a s a mode of'closural allusion' i n poetry; see also essays

two clauses, so that it ends not with the escape from sickness but with the in Roberts et al. ( 1 997).
94 Differences in closural convention have complicated modern readings of the endings of
inability to escape from death. Here are four examples, across our period: Greek and Latin texts; see Roberts ( 1 987), essays and bibliography on closure in Roberts et al.
( 1 997).
95 Griffith ( 1999, ad Joe.).
1:
II
I
306 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
functions almost as a kind of apotropaic gesture, lest medicine's claims
become too great.
W H AT A P I E C E O F WO R K
I " The preference for English closural norms appears i n a t least a third of the
' Of these early translators, Harry is the most explicit about his practice and
translations in our period, and one of these also evokes a specific intertext
from the English literary tradition. Nicholas Rudall's version o f the ode,
which concludes with death ('He has cured disease. But he cannot cure
death' ) , begins by translating the opening line with the words 'What a
remarkable piece of work is man', thus evoking a passage in Hamlet's speech
to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that itself evokes first the wonders of
humanity and then the fact of mortality:
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how
infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god-the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet
9
to me what is this quintessence of dust? 6
Rudall is not alone in constructing a Shakespearean intertext for Antigone, but
the mode of intertextuality has shifted over the course of the past hundred
years.
In the first half of the twentieth century, translators often evoke Shake­
speare in their introductions as a kind of analogue to Sophocles . Phillimore
( 1902) sees both dramatists as 'the artistic embodiment . . . of a national spirit
in a given age', and Storr suggests that Ben Jonson's epithet for Shakespeare
('gentle') would be even better suited to Sophocles. Even when Gilbert Murray
wants to compare Sophocles (in his use of the coup de theatre) to someone
else, he has to get Shakespeare out of the way first: 'Such effects remind one
not of Aeschylus nor even of Shakespeare, but of the great French drama­
tists'. 97
These remarks in themselves suggest a reading of Sophocles that is to some
degree formed by the reader's knowledge of Shakespeare. For a number of
early twentieth-century translators, however, the Shakespearean intertext is
further realized through the adaptation of Shakespearean or quasi-Shake-
96 Hamlet II. ii. 13. The punctuation of this passage is debated but irrelevant for our
purposes; I take my text here and in the citations that follow from Greenblatt ( 1 997).
97 Phillimore (1902: p. xix), Robinson ( 1 921: 2 1 ), Storr ( 1 912, p. ix), Murray (194 1 : 6).
Reading Antigone in Translation 307
spearean poetic form (blank verse with occasional rhymed couplets to end
scenes) and Shakespearean diction , so that (for example) in Robinson's
(1921) abridged version, Haemon ends his argument with Creon in these
words:
Vain thought! I shall not see't, nor thou behold
Thy son again. Go, vent thy coward spite
9
On such as truckle to a tyrant's might. 8
most extensive in his borrowi ng: ' For my plagiarism of Shakesperian phrase­
ology I have no apology to offer'. 9 9 This 'plagiarism' is sometimes a matter of
isolated words and phrases ('milk-livered' from King Lear, 'mew her up' from
The Tam ing of the Shrew), 1 °0 but occasionally more extensive. In Creon's
opening speech, for example, we find an echo of Mowbray's words i n the
first act of Richard II:
Creon: For whosoever grasps the helm of state
And clings not to the best of counsel, fear
Engaoling 'tween his teeth and lips his tongue,
Doth seem to me, hath always seemed, most base. 10 1
Mowbray: Within my mouth you have enjailed my tongue,
Doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips. . . .102
Reading at some remove, we might be inclined to see this use of Shakespear­
ean or quasi-Shakespearean diction as a continuation of the archaizing
tendency characteristic of Victorian translation. 1 03 But what seems archaic
to us did not necessaril y seem so to contemporaries; 1 0 4 a reviewer of Starr's
(1912) Loeb translation comments favourably on the absence of Wardour
98 Antigone 762-5 in Robinson ( 1 92 1 : 56, lines 414- 1 6 ) .
99 Harry (1911: 5 ).
10°
King Lear IV. ii. 49 (Goneril to Albany) , used by Creon to Haemon, Harry ( 1 91 1 : 48 ) ;
The Taming of the Shrew I . i . 8 7 (Gremio to Baptista about Bianca) , used by Creon o f his plans
for Antigone, Harry ( 1 911: 49) .
101
Harry ( 1 911: 31).
102
Richard II I. iii. 1 60-1. Mowbray has been sentenced to exile for life and laments the fact
that he will no longer be able to speak his native language.
103
On archaizing in translation, see Cohen (1962: 24), Steiner ( 1 998, ch. 5 ) , Venuti ( 1 995,
ch. 3), Roberts (2007) .
104
In his 186 1 lectures 'On Translating Homer', Matthew Arnold, a harsh critic of Francis
Newman's archaizing Homer, describes Shakespeare as sometimes writing in a language that is
'quaint and antiquated' but often 'in a language perfectly simple, perfectly intelligible; in a
language which . . . stops or surprises us as little as the language of a contemporary'. Arnold
( 1 909: 172).
308 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
Street (pseudo-archaic) diction, and evidently does not regard as archaic in
any troubling sense language like this (from Ismene's first speech at 1 1 - 1 3 ) : 1 05
To me, Antigone, no word of friends
Has come, or glad or grievous, since we twain
Were reft of our two brothers in one night 1 06
For translators like Storr, Robinson, and Harry, Shakespearean language and
metre may simply represent the most appropriate medium for tragedy. 1 07 But
to use Shakespearean language and metre to translate Sophocles is at once to
respond to an assumed analogue between Sophoclean tragedy and Shake­
spearean tragedy and to reinforce or realize that analogue as resemblance by
creating for the reader a Sophocles who speaks Shakespeare's English and
writes in Shakespearean metres-perhaps with occasional lapses into Swin­
burne for the choruses. 1 08
With the shift in mid-century to a preference for contemporary spoken
English in translations of Antigone, references to Shakespeare d windle, 1 09 with
one curious throwback. In his 2004 version, Jamey Hecht compares Greek
tragedy to Shakespeare as 'a similar institution in our o wn culture', argues for
the use of blank verse 'because that is the metre of high drama in English', and
asserts the usefulness of Shakespearean English in translating Greek idiom
and Shakespearean rhetoric in translating Sophoclean contexts of speech. 1 1 0
It is more startling to find allusions to Shakespeare in three late twentieth
and twenty-first century translators who never mention Shakespeare and
IDS
J.H. ( 19 1 3: 1 06-7).
106
Storr ( 19 1 2: 3 1 S).
1 0 7 Phillimore disagrees, finding blank verse too 'perpetually sonorous' for what he considers
Sophocles' plainness, and chooses the rhymed couplet instead, supporting his choice with reference
to other intertexts: 'With Chaucer, Dryden, Pope, Keats, Shelley, and the Victorians before us, what
bound can we set to the aptitute of this metre?" Phillimore ( 1 902, pp. vi-vii). Cf. Murray ( 1 94 1 ) ,
and for a recent defence o f the rhymed couplet i n translation see Rosslyn ( 1997).
IDB
T. S. Eliot criticizes Gilbert Murray for 'blur[ring] the Greek lyric to the fluid haze of
Swinburne' ( 1920: 4), but Murray is not alone in this, nor is Eliot the first critic to object. An
anonymous reviewer of Way's translation finds fault with the influence of Swinburne on the
translator (Anon. 1 9 1 0), and J.H., reviewing Storr, compliments his use of 'metres other than
those affected by Swinburne' ( J.H. 1 9 1 3 : 1 07).
ID9
We find Paul Roche, in I 9S8, simultaneously asserting that Shakespeare is completely
unlike Sophocles and that the translator must somehow create an 'analogy' between the two:
'The style of Shakespeare and the style of the King James Bible (pillars of English literary form)
could not be more different in sensibility from the style of Sophocles, and yet the poet-translator
must find some analogy between them if he is to make a bridge between the two sensibilities';
Roche ( 1 9S8, p. xiv).
I ID
Hecht (2004, pp. xxiii-xxiv). Hecht echoes Harry, but denies where Harry admits: 'I do
not mean, except in a few cases, that I have stolen phrases from the Bard' (p. xxiv). His explicit
embrace of blank verse is puzzling, since his unrhymed lines exhibit no really consistent metre.
Reading Antigone in Translation 309
whose idiom is (with variations) that of contemporary English: Rudall,
Fagles, and Woodruff. I have already mentioned Rudall's use of Hamlet's
'What a piece of work is a man' to translate the beginning of the polla ta deina
ode. Fagles includes two striking allusions to Shakespeare. In the second
stasimon of his Antigone, we find an echo of the witches' 'Fair is foul, and
foul is fair' from Macbeth:
He was a wise old man who coined
the famous saying; 'Sooner or later
Foul is fair, fair is foul
to the man the gods will ruin' 1 1 1
And in the third stasimon, follo wing Creon's argument with Haemon, Fagles
evokes Gloucester's despairing words in King Lear, 'As flies to wanton boys are
we to the gods;/ they kill us for their sport':
Irresistible Aphrodite, never conquered,
You mock us for your sport! 112
Finally, in the last scene of Paul Woodruff's Antigone, the translator's solution
to the i ntractable problem of the translation of exclamations also constitutes
an allusion to the last scene of King Lear. Here Creon, holding the bod y of the
dead Haemon, echoes Lear's 'Howl, howl, howl, howl! 0, you are men of
stones', using 'Howl' to represent the Greek io: 'Howl, howl! 0 Death, refuge
that cannot be appeased'. 1 1 3
These allusions seem to me quite distinct in their effect from the Shake­
spearean imitations of early twentieth-century translators. Since Storr, Harry,
and Robinson are using Shakespearean English as the medium of translation,
any use of specific Shakespearean phrases becomes relatively invisible, and
even Harry's borrowings seem to avoid the most recognizable lines. 1 1 4 Their
Antigones might almost be said to resemble Shakespeare in the way a forgery
111
Macbeth I. i. l 0, echoed by Macbeth's words ('So foul and fair a day I have not seen')
at I. iii. 36; Fagles ( 1 982: 92, lines 69S-8, corresponding to 622-4 in the G reek).
112
King Lear IV. i. 37-8 ( conflated text in Greenblatt 1 997), Fagles ( 1 982: 1 0 1 , line 894,
corresponding to 799-800 in the Greek).
113
King Lear V. iii. 2S6 (conflated text in Greenblatt 1997); Woodruff (200 1 : SS, line 1 2 84,
corresponding to 1 284 in the Greek, with two earlier uses of'Howl' at 1 2 6 1 and 1 266 (same lines
in the Greek) ). Many translators have commented on the difficulty of representing Greek
exclamations in English; for a recent discussion of the issue and of various strategies, both
written and in performance, see Walton (2006: 79-84).
1 14
Hecht too appears to avoid well-known Shakespearean phrases; unlike these earlier
translators, he favours a diction that exhibits only a mild and intermittent Shakespearean
flavouring.
 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
310
would , using bits and pieces for plausibility, rather than to imitate or allude to
him in the manner of a later writer.
The allusions in more recent translations are relatively compatible with
contemporary English, and may also be invisible to some readers. But rather
than making Antigone an imitation of a Shakespearean tragedy, they suggest a
different kind of intertextual relationship-though one that similarly seems
to reverse normal chronology-by allo wing Antigone to quote (if never
exactly) the plays of Shakespeare.
These quotations are relevant to their contexts in a way that Harry's
'plagiarisms' seem not to be. Hamlet's ' what a piece of work' speech is a
later dramatic expression of the central motif of the pol/a ta deina ode, and
Macbeth is a fitting intertext for an ode concerned with the downfall of
households and with the way in which a man bound for misfortune will
confuse good and evil. The t wo passages from King Lear seem equally
appropriate: Gloucester's despair, the product of his mistaken trust of one
son and mistrust of the other, is aptly evoked in the context of Creon's quarrel
with his son, and Lear's 'Howl, howl, howl, howl' is at home in the mouth of
another bereft king carrying the body of his dead child.
These allusions may also play a role in the poetic texture of the translation,
standing in for allusions inaccessible to the reader without G reek, who is
unlikely to know except with the help of footnotes that the opening line of the
pol/a ta deina ode echoes the opening line of an ode in Aeschylus' Libation
Bearers (584 ) . 1 1 5 And they may function more generally (as they do in the
work of other recent translators) to help create for the reader the sense of both
text and translation as part of the larger literary discourse of a culture. 1 1 6
What about the temporal paradox involved in having Sophocles quote
Shakespeare? Where the earlier assimilation of Sophocles to Shakespeare
seems largely a mode of domestication, these quotations seem if anything to
have a somewhat foreignizing effect in making readers attend to the fact that
they are reading a translation and in making patent the art of the translator.
And where the earlier assertion of a Shakespearean intertext and the adoption
of Shakespearean style unselfconsciously reveal that we cannot help reading
Sophocles through Shakespeare, these unannounced intrusions of an intertext
1 15
Walton (2006) describes the use in a production and translation of Menander's Woman
from Samas of a passage from King Lear to stand for an allusion in the Greek to a lost tragedy
( 1 72).
1 16
In the introduction to his translation of the Iliad (which includes allusions of the kind we
have been discussing ) , Stanley Lombardo comments that 'a successful translation . . . must grow
out of the poetic tradition of its own language'; Lombardo ( 1 997, p. xiii). See also Joel Relihan's
comments on his use of 'a Shakespearean or Biblical tag . . . or a bit of a popular hymn' in his
recent translation of The Golden Ass ( Relihan 2007, p. xxxi i).
Reading Antigone in Translation 311
Sophocles could n o t have kno wn invite the reader's awareness o f t h e play o f
reception in the task of the translator. 1 1 7
For readers who kno w Antigone only in translation, the translation is
Antigone, and when those readers see Anouilh's Antigone, or see Fugard's
The Island, or read Hegel on tragedy, they will experience these rereadings
and rewritings in relation to the Antigone established by Kitto, or by Fagles, or
by Blondell, or by Gibbons and Segal, or by some other of the many writers
who have translated the play. It is more than likely, too , that many readers
now come to Sophocles in Greek only after first reading Sophocles in transla­
tion , so that the translation-which is by definition always later than its
original-nonetheless conditions the reading of the original, creating as it
does a personal context of reception within the larger histo rical context of
reception.
Readers of the most recent Antigones--more than ten in the past decade­
continue to encounter a variety of divergent types. Blondell's (2002) Antigone
might almost satisfy Nabokov's desire for 'footnotes reaching up like sky­
scrapers to the top of this or that page . . . and the absolutely literal sense'. 1 18
Cherry's ( 1999) version, in contrast, has no footnotes at all, instead expanding
the text in places to embed explanation or interpretation, and plays freely with
both idiom and form, offering an English far more colloquial than Sophocles'
Greek and contracting the choral odes into loosely constructed sonnets.
Michael Ewans's (1999) Antigone, one of many at the turn of the twenty­
first century that were written for performance or with performance in
mind, 1 1 9 offers a translation and an interpretation modified (as we are told
in the preface) in the light of theatrical experience and a set of endnotes
devoted almost primarily to issues o f staging. Quite apart from any particu­
lars of interpretation or choice of wording, these three versions, through their
general approach and their deployment of the paratext, emphasize different
kinds of reading: of the play as object of study in its historical context, of the
117 . " .
F? r a more extensive d1scuss10n o f the phenomenon of anachronistic quotation in
translat10n, see Roberts (2007). See also Walter Benjamin's comments on the relationship
beii':ieen the translation and the 'afterlife' of the original, Benjamin (2004: 76-7 ).
Nabokov ( 1 955: 5 1 2). For another version that seeks to stay close to the Greek and
offers copious notes (on the facing page), see Franklin and Harrison (200 3 ) .
119
S e e e.g. Rudall ( 1 998), Mueller and Krajewska-Wieczorek (2000), Bagg (2004), McDonald
( � 005 ) , all of who": underscore their theatrical goals by a paratextual reference to performance
nghts on t� e copyright page. Heaney (2004) was commissioned for performance, and Woodruff
(200 1 ) , Gibbons a�d Seg�l (2003 ) , and Hecht (2004) allude to the possibility o r fact of a
performance of their vers10n. I was unable to get hold of a copy of either Caroline Reader's
adaptation of the Oedipus plays ( Reader 2002) or Blake Morrison's Oedipus and Antigone
(Morrison 200 3 ) .
 312 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
I
"I
play as work of literature with a contemporary resonance, and of the play as

I! I
II'
drama, to be imagined if not experienced in performance.
Three phenomena we have noted, however-phenomena that recur in
recent years not only in different translations but to some extent in different
17

t ypes of translation-suggest, where they occur, the reader's experience of the Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau
play as translation and as participant in the intertextual nexus of literary
discourse. First, the Theban plays are now more likely than in earlier editions and Sophocles
to be printed in performance order rather than according to the chronology
of the story. 1 2 0 Second, as we observed in examining the treatment of nomos,
Sean D. Kirkland
several recent translators make efforts to render key words consistently by the
same word or group of words whenever they occur, even when this entails a
certain awkwardness of English idiom. 1 2 1 Third, Sophocles is now more likely
to be represented as quoting Shakespeare than as imitating Shakespeare.122
111: We affirm that the world's magnificence has been enriched by a new
The first of these features all o ws Antigone to engage with the other Theban
�1
"I
beauty: the beauty of speed . . . Time and Space died yesterday. We already
plays rather than to be incorporated into them. The second allo ws multiple
live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed.
instances of a critical word to speak to one another rather than to have their
connection effaced by the demands of context and by the norms of the target
Filippo Marinetti, Manifesto de/ futurismo
11 111 language. 1 23 The third allows Sophocles to converse with Shakespeare rather In the beginning there will have been speed.
than to be assimilated to Shakespeare. Jacques Derrida, 'No Apocalypse, Not Now'
Translations that have these features will still present the reader with a
normative Antigone, but one that is less self-evident and more aware of its Is there a moment of reversal (peripeteia) and recognition ( anagnorisis) for
Antigone, as Aristotle requires of all truly great tragic figures (Poet. 5 2a23-b8) ?
; 11 place in literary history. I do not mean to suggest that such an Antigone is a
I
better Antigone ( whatever that judgement might mean) , but it is an Antigone What would come t o light in such a moment would b e the hamartia o r
� 111 'errancy' in Antigone's praxis, her actions. To b e sure, this revealed errancy
that-whatever its approach in other respects to Sophocles' play-will, by the
gestures I have identi fied, invite the reader not only to experience and would not be a merely personal failing, not an accidental lapse in judgement.
interpret the translated text, but to be more fully aware of the nexus of Rather, in order for this tragedy to be katholou ( Poet. 5 l a36-b l 2 ) , that is,
relationships in which it participates, including the relationship of translation 'universal', or more literall y 'according to the whole', with respect to the
to text and of translation to reader. human condition, the errancy in question would arise from a fundamentally
human limitation or tendency. Creon's prideful and hubristic action is
1 20
surely revealed to him as disastrously contrary to his aim in Sophocles' play
Among the most recent versions, see Blondell (2002 ), Woodruff and Meineck (2003),
( 1 09 1 -35 1 ) , but our question is whether Antigone, our manifestly admirable
Hecht (2004).
121 and courageous tragic heroine, ever suffers such a moment.
Among recent translators, Blondell (2002) is the most consistent in this respect, but
Gibbons and Segal (2003) are also particularly attentive to this issue; cf. Woodruff (200 1 ) . It is certainly not the burial of her brother Polynices itself that Antigone
122
See Rudall ( 1 998), Woodru ff (200 1 ) , as described above.
123 would come to recognize as an error. Her very last words, a fter all, insist that
As a possible further development in this direction, see Jan Parker's argument for the use
of untranslated key words in pursuit of what she calls 'engaged reading' and a dialogic she has done nothing other than 'piousl y observe piety ( ten eusebian sebisasa)'
relationship between reader and translated text ( Parker 200 1 ); Tyrrell and Bennett ( 1 996) (942). Thus, if Antigone does come to see an error in her actions, it would not
pursue this strategy in offering what they call a 'naturalized' use of transliterated Greek for seem to be with respect to her ultimate aim.
the words that express both friendship and family relationship (philos and its cognates).
In the following chapter, I suggest that Antigone does indeed undergo a
very subtle recognition and reversal, specifically with regard to what I would

All translations from the Greek, French, and German are mine unless otherwise noted.
314 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
like to call the speed of her action as rep resented in the play. However, the notion
of speed will require explanation. In o rder to d raw out this aspect of the
Antigone sto ry, I employ here a mediator somewhat uncommon even in
continental classical scholarship, 1 Jean Cocteau and his unique appropriations
of G reek tragedy. Doing so, I hope to accomplish two things. On the one hand,
I would like to uncover speed as a p rofoundly revealing aspect of G reek tragedy,
to which Cocteau seems to draw our attention. On the other hand, I hope that
this interp retation will reflect back upon our contemporary situation for think­
ing and expose aspects of it as 'tragic' in the p recise sense articulated here.
I intend this chapter, then, to be situated in the hermeneutic space between the
historical and the contemporary, allowing each to illuminate the other.
In the first section of the chapter, I look briefly at Cocteau's rendering of
Sophocles' o riginal, finding here not merely a fast-paced p resentation of
tragic events, but rather speed highlighted as the tragic itself. 2 I n the second
section, I turn to Sophocles' Antigone, searching fo r the speed that Cocteau's
renderings feature so p rominently. Approaching her by way of Cocteau offers
i Much fine scholarly work has been done recently on the ascension of Greek tragedy to a
position of central importance in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German philosophy.
As this period abandoned the ambitious modem project of systematically articulating the
intricate workings of an Absolute, an all-ordering, all-reconciling, and ultimate source of
being and value, Schelling, Holderlin, N ietzsche, and Heidegger (even Hegel) have been inter­
preted as turning to Greek tragedy as a literature of human finitude. That is, a literary form
committed to the experience of powers that are irremediably beyond our control and compre­
hension, but which nonetheless act upon us and especially through us to produce irresolvable
ethical dilemmas. David Farrell Krell interprets these G erman thinkers as attuned to the Greek
tragedians, not because they indicate a solution to this condition, but precisely because 'tragedy
celebrates the abyssal ambiguity of human existence, action, thought, and language'. Krell (2005:
1 2) . For Dennis Schmidt too, tragedy became pertinent in late-modem German thought as a
'literature of incommensurability and irreconcilable conflict'. Schmidt (200 1 : 8 ) . Cf. on this
same theme, Beistigui and Sparks (2000 ) . And surely Krell, Schmidt, and o thers are right to
point out that Greek tragedy for these very same reasons still has something pertinent to say to
us today. I attempt here simply to utilize different resources in order perhaps to identify as yet
unconsidered aspects of this condition, our condition, which we find so powerfully and
pertinently articulated by the Greek tragedians.
2 Cocteau is not the only reader of Sophocles' original who has highlighted speed, and I
thank my colleague Tina Chanter for pointing me toward the following parallels. In her careful
reading of La can's treatment of the theme of desire in Sophocles' play, Judith Butler observes
that, ' I n a sense, Lacan's concern with the play is precisely with this rushing by oneself to one's
own destruction, that fa tal rushing that structures the action of Creon and Antigone alike'. See
Butler (2000: 46). And Roche ( 1 988: 2 2 1 -50) observes a similar trend in contemporary Irish
adaptations. He describes Tom Paulin, in his 1 984 version entitled The Riot Act, as utilizing 'a
short verse line, lean, terse, understated' in order to arrive at 'a pared, minimal style, conversa­
tional yet urgent' (225). Even more directly, on Aidan Carl Mathews' Antigone, Roche writes,
'What Mathews hopes to restore to the Sophoclean original is a sense of immediacy and of the
frantic, disordered nature of events within a play from which time and familiarity have
distanced us' (23 1 ) . See also notes 8, 2 1 , and 30 below.
Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau and Sophocles 3 15
us, I believe, a deeper insight into Antigone's actions, into 'the hardness which
was both her death and her glory'.3 As becomes clear here, Antigone's speed is
p resented as a relation to the future that is, in Sophocles' world-view, hubris­
tic � r improper for mo rtals, fo r Antigone faces the future as in a sense alread y
havmg happened and she therefore suffers no hesitation and, thus, no true
decision. That is, even as the play opens, she has already covered the distance
from beginning to end-this is her i n finite speed in the play, distance divided
� '. �
y �o time at all, wh c the well-known Choral Ode to Human Beings then
.
indicates 1s charactenst1c of human action as such. Finally, in the third and
�ast section, I suggest that this tragic speed is disrupted in Antigone's last scene
m the play, as her hesitation, her slowness i ndicate a moment of reversal and
recognition.
L'EXTR EME VI TE S S E
On m y reading, Cocteau's version of Antigone effectively p uts fo rth the view
that the phenomenal content of tragic fatedness is speed. One does not
experience being fated as the imposition o r p ressure of fo rces, divine or
otherwise, necessitating one's actions as it were from the 'outside '. Rather,
what appears to the tragic figu re, and what Cocteau wishes to make appear to
his audience, is the speed of his o r her action once he o r she has been
transformed into an instrument of fateful fo rces.
The openi ng stage direction of Cocteau's A ntigone makes this pe rfectly
. .
clear, fo r he ms1sts generally on p resenting 'the extreme speed of the action
( /'extr�m e vites�e de l'action)'. That is, the very soul and source of traged y
according t o Anstotle, the praxis or 'action' of the play,4 should b e accelerated
3. Winnington-Ingram ( 1 980: 178). Of course, it must be acknowledged that this 'hardness',
.
which I will show to be a hubristic and futureless kind of praxis, is nonetheless precisely what
. .
allows Antigone :o reb�l ag�mst tyranny. Indeed, for Luce Irigaray, it is only due to such
hard� ess th� t Ant1gone is , neither master nor slave' and thus 'upsets the order of the dialectic'.
That is, Antigone d�. sru�ts the mutually constituting relation that Hegel sees as essential to the
? evelopment of eth1 �al hfe, because, although the master role is reserved for the masculine, 'She
is not a slave. Especially because she does nothing by halves'. See Luce Irigaray ( 1 984 l 993a·.
'
1 19). .
1 4 'The �hole [of tragedy] has spe�tacl � s ( opseis) , ch� racter (ethos), story ( m uthos), diction
. lync ( m elos) , a d hought ( di noia), but most important among these is the bringing
( exis),
. � � � .
to � ether of act10n� (he ton pragmaton sustasis). For tragedy is the imitation not of human
?
bemgs, ut of praxi� � nd of. life (praxeos kai biou)'. ( Poet. 1 450a l 3- 1 7 ) . (My translation follows
.
Butchi;r s textual cnt1c1sm m Butcher ( 1 894/ 1 95 1 , ad Ioc. ) . This sustasis ton pragmaton is the
gathenng and ordering of actions into a muthos, the story or plot of the play, which Aristotle
3 16 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
such that its speed is manifest. Cocteau goes on to indicate that this emphatic
speed 'should not p revent the actors from speaking very distinctly and
moving little'. Finally, 'the chorus and its leader take the form of a voice
that speaks very loudly and very fast, as if reading a newspaper article. This
voice issues from a hole in the backd rop'. 5
Imagine for a moment such a p roduction. There are no d ramatic pauses,
no silences, no heavily intoned or emotionally overwrought speeches. Line
follows line, action follows action at breakneck pace. Indeed, the characters
themselves move little, but this lack of bodily movement does not give the
impression of overall stasis, for thei r speech races and points to the rapidity of
the action occurring off-stage. The cho rus takes what fo r the modern audi­
ence must be the familiar fo rm of a loudspeaker, an ambient voice issuing a
public announcement, informing us with a cold, b risk p racticality, a discourse
freed from the cumbrous materiality of the body.
And Cocteau goes so far as to alter Sophocles' o riginal text by streamlining
the long speeches and cutting certain lines altogether. Indeed, he refers to his
versions not as translations, but as 'contractions'. The acto rs, unattended on
stage and in the simplest of costumes,6 deliver p rimarily rapid-fire dialogue.
The o riginal is thereby considerably shortened, the length of Cocteau's version
being under twenty pages. Indeed, if performed as the stage direction above
insists, the whole play can be put on in nearly thirt y minutes. All of Cocteau's
decisions about the play's perfo rmance seem gathered to ward one single aim.
The rapid delivery, the lack of bodily movement, the absence of body, the
simplification of costume and cast, the conspicuous shortening of the play,
these all serve to fo reground speed, not agents, not bodies in motion, but
simply speed itself.
This is quite radical, for it entails that Cocteau hopes to achieve the aim of
G reek tragedy th rough minimizing the story elements, the characters, and the
substance, and p resenting his audience with bare velocity. It seems that, fo r
Cocteau, speed is not an innocent element, not an accidental mode or a mere
identifies as the 'the first principle (a rche) and, as it were, soul of tragedy' ( 1 450a 37), as well as
'the end ( telos) of tragedy', which is 'the most important thing of all' ( 1 450a2 1 ) .
5 Cocteau, Thea tre I ( 1 948: 1 2 ) .
6 The stage directions for t h e original production i n 1 92 2 d o not mention costumes, but do
dictate that 'no escorts accompany the characters'. However, the notes for a 1 927 revival indicate
that the actors wore 'transparent masks after the fashion of fencing baskets; beneath the masks
one could make out the actor's faces, and ethereal features were sewn onto the masks in white
millinery wire. The costumes were worn over black bathing suits, and arms and legs were
covered' (Cocteau 1 96 1 : 49). Here again, the body is obscured and even the materiality o f
the mask i s diminished, seeming once again to focus the attention not on the agents, b u t on
the brute speed of what transpires.
Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau and Sophocles 317
ado rnment, such that what takes place in a given tragic story would simply
take place faster in his versions. Rather, speed is somehow the tragic itself, and is
thus what should give us to think the finitude of the human condition, and the
manner in which we are required to act despite the limits of our human power
and understanding. Indeed, for us mortals, as Cocteau says elsewhere, 'every­
thing is a question of speed'.7
Cocteau's version of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex connects this ontological and
tragic speed to a self-mechanization of the human through the always already
decided and, therefore, futureless hurry with which human praxis pursues its
aims. 8 The play opens with a voice that summarizes the entire plot very b riefly
before the raising of the curtain. With this, the audience should recognize that
everything to be p resented has, in a special sense, already happened. Ho wever,
this is not to say that these events took place in the historical past and are
being represented here before us. Rather, within the temporal o rder of the
play itself, these events belong to a future that is here fully revealed, grasped in
tidy summary fo rm, and thus as collapsed back into the p resent. Upon
reaching the end of this p review, the voice says,
Look, spectator, tightly wound, its spring will gradually unfold the entire span of a
human life. It is one of the most perfect machines ever contrived by the infernal gods
for the mathematical annihilation of the mortal.9
7 Cocteau and Maritain ( 1 964: 56).
8
Cf. Holderlin ( 1 994: 849-57, 9 1 3-2 1 ). In both his 'Anmerkungen zum Oedipus' and his
'Anmerkungen zur Antigonii', Holderlin seems to focus attention on the speed of tragic action
and its mechanistic or rigorously sequential character. He writes of the 'eccentric rapidity
( exzentrischer Rapiditiit)' in Sophoclean tragedy's 'rhythmic succession of representations
( rhythmischen Aufeinanderfolge der Vorstel/ungen)'. However, he also sees these tightly ordered
sequences of events as gathered around what he calls, borrowing a term relating to meter, the
'caesura (Ziisur)', a 'contra-rhythmic interruption (gegenrhythmische Unterbrechung)', which he
locates in the discourse of Tiresias in both tragedies. The decisive consideration then for
Holderlin is the 'balance ( Gleichgewicht) ' o f the plot's unfolding, which can tilt on the axis of
the caesura either toward the beginning ( Oedipus Rex) or toward the end (An tigone).
9 Cocteau ( 1 934: 1 2) . Jean Anouilh's An tigone, first performed in 1 944 under German
�ccupation, twenty-two years after Cocteau's La machine infernale, uses precisely the same
imagery to present tragic fate. There, the chorus observes in its first speech of the play, 'Et
voila. Maintenant le resort est bande. Cela n'a plus qu'a se derouler tout seul. C'est cela qui est
commode dans la tragedie . . . C'est tout. Apres, on n'a plus qi'a laisser faire. On est tranquille. Cela
roule tout seul. C'est minutieux, bien huile depuis toujours' (Anouilh, 1 944/ 1 946: 53). And
Anouilh follows Cocteau as well in connecting this mechanistic fate to the protagonist's
speed. In the p rologue to his Antigone, while the actors who will assume the roles of the play
wait before us on stage for the opening scene, the prologue singles out one of the woman: ' Elle
pense qu 'elle va mourir, qu 'elle est jeune et qu'elle a ussi, elle aurait bien a ime vivre. Mais ii n'y a
rien a faire. Elle s'appelle Antigone et ii va falloir qu'elle joue son role jusqu'au bout . . . Et, depuis
que ce rideau s'est /eve, elle sent qu 'elle s 'eloigne a une vitesse vertigineuse de sa sreur Ismene ( 1 0 ) .
 I
318 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
Cocteau envisions the working of fate in Greek tragedy as the operation of an
'infernal machine', the phrase he uses for the play's title. That is, Oedipus finds
himself within a perfect mechanism, a systematic complex of forces that
operate with utter precision. What's more, as infernal, these fo rces arise as
though from an underworld or from beneath the world of appearance and
beyond human calculation. However, although represented as 'perfect' and
'mathematical' in its mechanism, Cocteau is still describing fate, not necessi­
ty. 1 0 The crucial distinction here being that it works through, not merely upon,
the human being, or through his or her own decisions and actions. 1 1
I n the voice's telling, Oedipus' complicity is unmistakably associated with
his hurry, his headlong rush toward what he decides without hesitation to be
good or choiceworthy. 'Oedipus hurries onward ( CEdipe se hate)', the voice
tells us, his precipitous actions serving 'to hurl (jeter) him toward his
destiny'. 1 2
Once the play begins, Oedipus manifests again and again this decidedly
hurried pace. In a brilliant addition to Sophocles' original, Cocteau writes a
scene presenting the defeat of the Sphinx, significantly altering the story of
Oedipus' flight from Corinth and from his adoptive parents after receiving
the oracle promising incest and patricide. Cocteau's Oedipus admits that he
only used the oracle as an excuse to flee and describes his true reason for
leaving Corinth as a 'daemonic desire for adventures (demon d'aventures)'
and for an escape from 'languishing ( languir)' with his elderly parents. 1 3 At
the crucial moment, out of a deep malcontent and perhaps even a sudden
fondness for the young and handsome prince, Cocteau's fascinating Sphinx
feeds Oedipus the riddle's answer, knowing he will then use it to defeat her.
Not conflicted at all about the Sphinx's self-sacrifice, however, Oedipus
simply repeats the answer and yelps, 'Winner ( Vainqueur) !', after which the
10
Paul Tillich distinguishes fate from necessity in precisely this way. He observes succinctly
that 'fate is related to freedom. Where there is no freedom, there can be no fate. A merely
physical object that is conditioned in all respects is entirely without fate because it is
1 111 wholly bound by necessity. The more freedom there is, the more the self-determination (or
the greater the autonomous power), the more susceptibility to fate'. Tillich ( 1 948/ 1 957: 3-4) .
11
In reference to his own experience of writing and creativity, Cocteau addresses the self­
mechanization he seems to see in Oedipus' participation in the machinery of fate, and the
strange intertwining of freedom and necessity it represents. He writes, 'Of all the problems that
confuse us, that of fate and free will is the most obscure. What? The thing is written in advance
and we can write it, we can change the end? The truth is different. Time does not exist. It is what
enfolds us. What we believe we carry out later is done all in one piece. Time reels it off for us.
Our work is already done. However we still have to discover it. It is this passive participation
which is so astounding. And with reason. It leaves the public incredulous. I decide and I do not
decide. I obey and I direct. It's a great mystery'. Cocteau ( 1 957/ 1 967: 42).
1 2 Cocteau ( 1 934: 1 2- 1 3 ) .
1 3 Ibid. 62.
Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau and Sophocles 3 19
stage direction indicates, 'he launches hi mself stage right and exits ( II s'elance
et sort par la droite)', 1 4 racing off to announce his victory. Indeed, he is in such
a rush he forgets to take proof of his conquest and must return for her body.
In this scene, the Sphinx makes a salient observation about Oedipus'
character, connecting his restlessness to an utterly decided condition. She
says, 'You are no dreamer, Oedipus. That which you want, you want it, you
have always wanted it'. 1 5 The apparently innocuous repetition in the second
line is actually quite revealing. If the future were to be addressed as truly
unknown, as still open, then one would have to say that the future object of
desire is as such internally conflicted, both desirable and not desirable, because
not yet revealed as one or the other. Or better, all desire would be, because futural
in character, for what is in essence not yet desirable. But Oedipus simply wants
what he wants, as the Sphinx says, addressing himself to the future aim as
perfectly resolved, already grasped. And indeed, Oedipus has always already
been decided on what he wants, never having hesitated before the inscruta­
bility of the future object of desire. Here, Cocteau makes emphatic the
temporality of the utterly decided and thus hurried action through which
human beings become instruments in the machinery of tragic fate.
Of course, his openly mechanistic understanding of fate and his extreme
emphasis on giving the impression of speed above all else have led to the
general opinion, among both supporters and detractors, that Cocteau pro­
duces 'modernizations' of ancient originals. One reviewer refers to the 'arch
modernism' of Cocteau's approach to Greek tragedy. 1 6 Wallace Fowlie sums
up this position, writing that Cocteau 'gives the borrowed theme a new
swiftness, a tempo more in keeping with the jumbled precipitation of the
twentieth century'. 1 7 That is, according to this position, Cocteau takes the
elements of the story and adds the 'swiftness' as an element foreign to
the original, but drawn from the contemporary environment, the breakneck
pace of the modern, mechanized, technological world with which his audi­
ence would be familiar.
And yet Cocteau seems to understand himself as doing something quite
different. He describes his version of Antigone as part of 'an operation to
rejuvenate great works, to stitch them together again ( les recoudre), to tighten
them again ( les retendre), to remove their patina, their dead matter'. 1 8 That is,
1
4 Ibid. 7 1 .
15 Ibid. 67.
6
1 Holden ( I 990).
1 7 Fowlie ( 1 966: 59). Although I see Fowlie as wrong on this point, he does use a cooking
metaphor fortuitously to describe Cocteau's version as a 'reduction of Sophocles' text', which
I find quite apt, for Cocteau intensifies the original by condensing it.
I R Cocteau and Maritain ( 1 964: 29).
 Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau and Sophocles 321
320 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
Jean-Pierre Vernant writes of decision and responsibility that they are
Cocteau seeks to return to these works an original linkage between the
�
elements, an an intense tautness throughout that linkage. This tightening
.
'understood on two different levels in tragedy and thus have an ambiguous,
enigmatic character; they are seen as questions that, in default of any fixed and
of the ac:1 0n is conveyed through the prominence of speed, but Cocteau here
. unequivocal answers, always remain open'. 23 That is, tragedy presents human
cl�a '.ly views this speed as uncovered from the originals, not imposed anachro­
decision as essentially ambiguous and open due to the convergence of two
nistically upon them.
kinds of forces at the conflicted site o f decision, what modern thought would
With Cocteau, speed presents itself as somehow essential to the tragic, and
. .
!
it is re ated to the futureless, always already decided hurry of the tragic figure,
wish to call a subject. The mortal is the source of his or her own action, desire,

�
by which e or �he transforms into an instrument of fate. Now, we will turn to
Sophocles Antigone with this tragic speed in mind.
A N T I G O N E ' S F U T U R E L E S S H U R RY
i
Antigone can't wa ! �or morning. �he lea �s her sister Ismene outside the city
walls before da�n m order to enlist her m the p roject of burying their fallen
brother, Polymces. As George Steiner writes, although the whole opening
exchange represents for classical scholars a locus vexissimus, what comes
through clearly is 'the crowding, almost breathless, insistence and imperious­
ness of �ntigone's appeal'.20 She steps onto the stage in a rush.21
I � this scene, Antigone informs Ismene of Creon's decree outlawing the
bunal and then states abruptly, 'That's how these things stand for you. Now
.
you ':ill soon show if you are born noble or born base of decent people' (37-8) .
.
Unmistakable here 1s the sense that burial of the brother is absolutely noble and
good, and th :refor� necessary, while failure to do so is absolutely base and
c�wa�dly. Antigone 1s not presented in deliberation, she is not perplexed by her
s1tuat1on, she does not wonder about her course of action. Rather, she emerges
before us as already utterly decided, an utter lack of hesitation.22
.. 1 9 A fact to b: inferred both from Ism ene's remark that the Argive soldiers have withdrawn
m '.he present m ght (en nukti te(i) nun)' ( 1 6 ) and from the chorus's parados or 'entry song' to
j .
He �os ( � 00), which seems to mark the sun's dramatic appearance.
Stemer ( 1 984: 85).
2
1
�
eamus Heaney spe�s of '. the speedr, haunted opening movement of the play'. Heaney
(2 ?04. 77! . Heaney found his . wnterly urge for undertaking the version in the pitch and pace of
this openm.g scene, �nd he masterfully captures this urgency with a brisk dactylic dimeter as can
�
be h � rd his rendering of Antigone's first lines, 'Ismene, quick, come here! What's to b ecome
0 f us .
22 E. Mogyor6di ins ists on the 'grad�ally
. . � nfolding decision' of Antigone throughout the
pla y and .offer� a very mce readmg of Anl!gone s 'finite freedom', taking up an action as her own
'. .
whi e bemg hm � ted by the past: specifically the curse on the house of Labdacus to which
.
Antigone refers �n her openmg Imes { I -6). Mogyor6di argues that there is an initial impetus
that pushes �nt1g? � n toward !
the bur al of Polynices, but that she decides, chooses, and acts,
thereby making this impetus , her own, only in the face of Creon's opposition and 'recognizing'
and habit exerting an internal pressure, while also being subjected to external
divine forces, which are as such inscrutable and thus incalculable.24 This
entails that mortal decision is exposed to elements that it cannot, even ideally,
hope to grasp, much less control. Any real acknowledgement of this undecid­
ability at the heart of tragic decision would occasion hesitation, a pause, a
deferral even, as one confronts the limits of the h uman world and what is
knowable.
In temporal terms, Vernant's presentation of tragedy entails that humans
would properly have to face the future, at which any decision to act aims, as
radically unknown and unknowable, that is, precisely as Aristotle describes it
in the Ethics, as aphanes or l iterally 'not appearing, hidden' ( EN 1 1 0 l a 1 9) .25
We would decide and be decided without losing sight of the essential obscu­
rity that characterizes the decision's future outcome.26 Tragedy, as Vernant
describes it, would seem to make this clear, precisely by the protagonist's
failure to recognize this aspect of all human decision, this feature of his or her
own finitude. And in Sophocles' Antigone, we can indeed see a figure devoid
of hesitation, a decidedly hurried figure rushing precipitously, or hubristi­
cally, toward an already grasped future completion of her project.27
both the alternatives presented to her. However, Mogyor6di has great difficulty
explaining the
considers
ultimatum just cited ( 3 7-8) and I do not see any indication in the play that Antigone
j ustice as a real alternative (pace Hegel, for it is crucial to his interpretat ion as well that
Creon's
claims of two
Antigone ' wittingly commits her crime', thereby recognizing the conflicting
equally legitimate systems of j ustice) . See Mogyor6di ( 1 996, esp. 36 1-2).
23
24
J.-P. Vernant, in Vernant and Vidal-Naq uet ( 1 972/ 1 988: 8 1 ).
This condition of being a site for both internal and external forces would support
E. R.
stic when
Dodds's basic observation that the 'necessity versus freedom' opposition is anachroni
ap� lied to the Greek mind. See D odds ( 1 973: 70).
privativum and the aorist root of the verb,
5 This adjective is the combination of the alpha
phainein, meaning 'to bring to light, make appear'.
26
See Kirkland (2007).
27 In spite of appearances to the contrary, I do
not believe that my reading of Antigone's
decisiveness contradicts the interpretation of Helene P. Foley in her fine article
( 1 996: 49-73 ) .
of what Carol Gilligan observed to be a
There, Foley reads Antigone as offering an example
distinct and no less valid form of contextual and narrative m oral reasoning
often (but not
and different
exclusively) employed by women. Although Foley does find different arguments
rhetorical strategies employed in each of Antigone' s speeches and reads these as reflecting the
322 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
Indeed, Antigo ne's response to Ismene's initial refusal indicates precisely
this. Ismene, taken aback by the ultimatum, recounts the horrors already
visited on the house of Labdacus and, cautioning Antigone, replies that they,
as lone survivors, and women at that, cannot hope to oppose the present ruler
of Thebes. She concludes, 'For to act excessively is mindless ( to gar perissa
prassein ouk echei noun oudena)' (67-8). Antigone, without skipping a beat,
says, 'I will not command it of you. And if you should later wish to take
action, you would not be welcome to act alongside me (ei thelois eti prassein,
emou g' an hedeos droes meta) ' (69-70) . Note here that Antigone explicitly
refuses to abide, not just a contrary opinion about what is right and good, but
any hesitation at all in taking action. Even if Ismene were to be swayed to
Antigone's position later ( and she will be in a way, 536-60) , Antigone's
attitude is that anything other than consuming affirmation and immediate
headlong action is unacceptable.
The temporality that underlies this decided hurry becomes clear at numer­
ous points in the play,28 but perhaps most of all when Antigone says, upon
receiving her death sentence, 'My soul died long ago (he d' eme psuche palai
tethneken)' (559-60) .29 Notice that she does not say that she was determined
to die, but that she was already dead. That is, for Antigone, the beginning was
already the end, and thus, the story unfolds in no time, or at infinite speed.
Everything has already happened as Antigone hurries from dawn to dusk.
However, Antigone's decided hurry and its futureless temporality, what I
am calling speed, are not presented by Sophocles as a mere accident of
specific context and audience of each speech, she does not then claim that Antigone confronts
throughout the play the questionability that I have identified as inherent in human praxis. To
cite Foley: 'In sum, Antigone adopts a range of styles, each suited to a different private or public
context and to her interlocutor, to convey a consistent position that repeatedly insists on giving
equal weight to concerns of justice and familial responsibility' (58).
28
For instance, Antigone defends her actions as right and good because pious observances of
the 'unwritten and unfailing laws of the gods (agrapta kasphale theon nomima)', which are 'not
what is now or yesterday (mm ge kachthes) , but live always, and no one knows whence in time
they appeared' (453-7 ) . We wish only to note here that Antigone's praxis is the hurried path of a
mortal presuming to know with certainty the will of the gods, as the absolute and timeless
source of all goodness and reality. When in the immediate presence of such an Absolute, there
can be no pause, no hesitation, no questioning, for nothing falls outside the all-devouring logic
of the Absolute, a beyond that might trouble one's decision. On the hubris of such a claim, see
note 35 below. Also, the chorus notes Antigone's strange relation to time when, in her final
exchange with her sister, the chorus counsels Ismene, 'But from this time don't speak of her. She
is no longer' (567).
29 Notice the internally oxymoronic sense of the verb form, tethneken, as the third person
singular, present perfect form of the verb thneskein. How can one be alive to utter the phrase,
'my soul has died'?
Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau and Sophocles 323
circumstances or a personal eccentricity.30 Rather, i n the well-known 'Choral
Ode to Human Beings', the first stasimon of the play, this speed is introduced
as a defining human tendency, indeed as what makes the human being the
most deinos, both the most 'wondrous' and the most 'monstrous', of beings.
The first strophe and antistrophe lay out in amplifying length the human
domination of land and sea and all the beasts, indeed of everything that
presents itself to human beings, except that limit of what presents itself, death.
The second strophe begins with an explanation of this dominance. We
humans overpower everything through 'speech and thought swift as the wind
(kai phthegma kai anemoen phronema)' (354). The chorus connects this
swiftness to a certain temporality: In approaching our world, hastened by
the ordering power of language and thought, we humans 'approach no future
thing wayless ( aporos ep' ouden erxetai to me/Ion)' ( 360 1 ) . 3 1 This is crucial.
-
We human beings approach our future, literally ' the thing about to come', and
are never without a poros, a 'way' or 'means' of joining the past of our
experience through our present to our future aims. This continuity indicates
a repetition of the same as we establish ourselves in our world, ordering it
according to thought and language; we address the future as the already
known, already grasped, already mastered. It is fundamental, then, that we
do not confront the temporal excess of our actions, particularly the hidden or
inapparent future discussed above, in the face of which we would be forced to
decide in hesitating before the undecidable, so to speak, but instead we push
forward in the frantic, technical mastery of our environment. 3 2
The chorus notes then the consequences of the limitation of this mastery,
however: ' Possessing a machinating techne, something wise beyond all hope,
�0 Jacqueline de Romilly acknowledges something like this speed as a general characteristic
and new development of Sophoclean tragedy, writing, ' Urgency is now one of the main features
of this theater'. De Romilly ( 1 968: 1 1 1 ). Cf. also her discussion of the importance of time in
general for Greek tragedy (3-32).
3 1 Note that this translation differs significantly from Heidegger's, producing thereby a
wholly different interpretation of human action in the ode. Heidegger renders line 360,
pantoporos aporos ep'ouden erxetai, as ' Uberall hinausfahrend unterwegs, erfahrungslos a/me
Ausweg kommt er wm Nichts'. Heidegger ( 1 998: 1 1 6). Here Heidegger finds an explanation of
the deinos-character of the human being. That is, the human is deinotaton, 'das Unheim/ichste',
p recisely in confronting das Nichts, 'the nothing'. Under my reading of the Greek, the ep'ouden is
rendered not as an abstract substantive, but as an adverbial phrase. The human does not come to
anrhing without a way.
2 Vernant (in Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1 972/ 1 988: 82), if only in passing during his
broader discussion of the shift in the Greek conception of human action and responsibility,
notes the temporal excess of tragic action. He writes that in Greek tragedy, 'the agent is no longer
mcluded in his actions, swallowed up by them. But he is still not in himself truly the center and
the productive cause. Because his actions take place within a temporal order over which he has
no control and to which he must submit passively, his actions elude him; they are beyond his
understanding . . . in practical action, his praxis, man does not measure up to what he does'.
324 Translations, Adaptations, Performance Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau and Sophocles 325

[the human] moves sometimes toward the bad, other times toward the good error of speed in this sense seems to be precisely what Antigone recognizes
(sophon ti to machanoen technas huper elpid' echon tote men kakon allot' ep' and reverses in her final few lines.
esthlon erpei)' ( 365-7) .33 This ingenious technical attitude of the human, by
which we dominate the world of appearing things so completely, consti­
tutes what it is to be humanly sophos or 'wise, sophisticated, clever'. H owever,
what we fail to acknowledge in this technical attitude is the limit of our S L OW N E S S BE C OME S A N TIG O N E
appearing world,3 4 a limit marked by the event of death, which points to a
beyond on which our decisions and our actions depend for their ultimate A little less speed would unravel our souls ...

goodness or badness. This hubris,35 this failure to acknowledge our finite
power and understanding is, thus, inherent to human praxis itself, as is the
posture according to which the open future appears as a calculable continua­
tion of what has been. In this way, we avoid experiencing aporia or literally
'waylessness' before the inapparent future toward which our decided action is
always aimed.
According to the Choral Ode, then, Antigone's speed throughout the play,
her decided hurry, her experience of the future as already having happened,
indicates that her burial of her brother is, strictly speaking, a work of precisely
this 'machinating techne', a technical relation to her world, and thus guilty of
the hubris fundamental to all such human activity. And the utterly human
33 For commentary on the Greek here, see Jebb (1900, ad Joe.).
34 In a sense, my interpretation of Antigone on this point resonates with Karl Rheinhardt's
interpretation of Oedipus. He writes, 'Der Odipus ist keineswegs etwa, zum Unterschied van
anderen griechischen Tragodien, die Tragodie des menschlichen Schicksa/s, wofur sie als Muster so
lange gegolten hat, wobei zum "Schicksa/'; wie die deutsche Klassik es verstand, immer die
"Freiheit" und zwar die "erhebende '; hinzudenken war, er is vie! eher, zum Unterschied van anderen
griechischen Tragiidien, die Tragodie des menschilchen Scheins, wobei zum Schein das Sein hinzu­
denken ist, wie bei Parmenides zur Doxa die Aletheia'. Reinhardt (1976; 108). Reinhardt's attempts
to limit the interpretation to Oedipus aside ('as opposed to other Greek tragedies'), I find at the
core of Antigone's speed and atemporality something like this 'tragedy of human appearance,
where appearance is to be thought in relation to Being, as Truth in relation to Doxa for
Parmenides'.
35 For an audience familiar with, say, the lying trickster Hermes Diactoros, whose central
charge was transmitting communications between mortals and immortals, or with the elaborate
mediations by which Delphic pronouncements came about, passing through vapour from a hole
in the rock to a sibyl in a trance whose mutterings were then interpreted by priests for the
petitioner, Antigone's claim to grasp with complete certainty the divine will and to have
immediate access to the 'unwritten laws' of the gods could indeed have appeared outlandish.
Jean Cocteau, La difficulte d'etre
In her final exchange with Creon, Antigone stands at the edge of the world,
the limit of what appears to human beings. She is about to step into the
underworld of her tomb. At this moment, for the first time in the play, she
suffers the 'if', the 'perhaps'; in Greek, the ei. She says, ' I f then [my being
punished] is what is pleasing to the gods, I would acknowledge my error,
having suffered (all' ei men oun tad' estin en theois kala, pathontes an xuggnoi­
men hemartekotes)' (925-6 ) . 3 6 That is, as C. M. Bowra observes, for the first
time in the play, 'she has lost some of her old confidence . . . she admits that
perhaps she is wrong'.3 7
Sophocles' Antigone broaches here for the first time precisely that 'perhaps'
that Jacques Derrida refers to in his Politics of Friendship as 'another way of
addressing oneself to the possible', where one does not face what is utterly
decided and projected on the basis of the past, but rather confronts what
'must remain at one and the same time as undecideable-and therefore as
decisive-as the future itself'.3 8 This 'perhaps', for Derrida, marks a properly
open and thus in a radical way 'true' discursive relation to the future qua
future, to the 'arrivanr, the ontological modality of which is its approaching,
its not yet being present for inspection and manipulation. In confronting the
future, toward which all human action aims, in its arriving but not yet having
36 Indeed, Antigone's statement here represents a certain transition even in its syntactical
.
form, for it is a mixed conditional I certainly do not wish to make too much of subtle
grammatical differences that may always in poetry be the result of metric constraints, rather
than carriers of meaning. However, Antigone's statement here combines the protasis of a future
�ore vivid �ondit!onal s�ntence, with the apodasis of a future less vivid. Thus, it marks a change
1?. the.c��amty wit? which she faces the future by moving from a verb in the present indicative
( if this 1s ) to one m the present optative ('I would acknowledge')
37 Bowra ( 1944/1964: 104). Although Bowra does recognize the great significance of this
•

Inde�d,. despite her evident piety, such an audience might well have perceived her presumed
reversal in Antigone's attitude, he attributes it to the terrible punishment she is to endure, being
proXIm1ty to and grasp of the divine laws as hubris, as a failure to follow the imperatives posted
on the walls of the Delphic oracle: 'Nothing in excess (meden agan) ', 'Curb thy spirit ( thumou entombed alive and belonging thus 'neither to the living nor to the dead'. Bowra sees Antigone
kratei) , 'Observe the limit (epitelei peras) ', 'Bow down to the divine (proskunei to theion) ', 'Fear her� as nearly turning against the gods and losing her piety. To the contrary, given Sophocles'
_
cntICal portrait. of human speed in the choral ode, I would argue that Antigone' s piety is
the powerful (to kartoun phobou) ', and, of course, 'Curtail hubris (hubrin meisei) '. For a
accomplished in this moment of hesitation.
discussion of the early Greek notion of truth as incorporating, not overcoming, mediation,
38 Derrida (1997: 29, 67).
see Detienne (1967/1996) .

I
I

�
326 Translations, Adaptations, Performance Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau and Sophocles 327

arrived, one must speak, decide, and act in the openness of this 'perhaps',
which is to say, one must speak what is not yet present to be represented in
discourse, one must decide what is not yet decidable, and one must act in a
way that is as yet i mpossible. That is, one must pause before the future as
arriving in order to experience it as such, without rushing forward into it and
rendering it as present, as a stable, programmed extension of the past.
And it is just such a hesitating mode that we see in Antigone's final scene.
She slows down. As her guards lead her off to the tomb in which she will be
enclosed, Creon observes and remarks, 'The ones leading her away there will
regret the extreme slowness with which they are moving ( toisin agousin
klaumath' huperxei bradutetos huper)' (931-2). She moves along now with
hesitation, pausing beneath the weight of her 'perhaps'. She answers Creon,
'that word there comes as close to death as possible ( thanatou tout' eggutato
toupos aphiktai)' (933-4) .
In this scene, Antigone marks the subtle reversal and recognition she
undergoes. Essentially, hubristic human praxis breaks down in confronting
the limit of its grasp, a limit marked by death. Our mortality, it seems
Sophocles is suggesting, gives us to think the limit of what appears to us to
be known and technically manipulated, and then to recognize within our own
experience and our decisions the crucial role played by precisely that which is
beyond human experience and calculation-that which, when it appeared,
the Greeks would call to theion or 'the divine'. 39 Thus, here we can wonder for
the first time about the status of the future good itself, on the basis of which
we must always decide and toward which our action is always aimed. Con­
fronted with this limit, Antigone faces the future for the first time as aporos,
wayless, undecided, and slows in her progress, hesitating in the abyss between
past and future that is the human condition, always hidden beneath the
exigencies of praxis. In a sense, this is the point at which Antigone truly
decides to bury her brother, for here she confronts the ultimate undecidability
of her action, and affirms it, calling us to attend to what she suffers (937-43).
I end with Cocteau's description, in an open letter to Jacques Maritain, of
what appears in such a slowing, such a breakdown.40 He writes,
I was dreaming of a fan going beyond the allowed speed. A speed moving in place that
would hum no more, blow no more, cut no more, a monotone limitlessness. The
invisible became for me this speed. And you can guess my expectation: something
breaks, an angel appears (un ange qui apparait).41
This figure, the 'angel', is a recurring one for Cocteau. Fowlie writes, 'Angel­
ism, as Cocteau seems to understand it, is a system of contradictions, because
it is essentially an explosion of the divine in the human. The supernatural is
found to be everywhere, in the most commonplace and ordinary objects'.42
That is, the appearance of the angel for Cocteau is the moment when what we
have taken for 'the whole of what is', the familiar and manageable world we so
comfortably inhabit in our practical affairs, is exploded, exposed, disrupted in
its presumption of totality. An unnoticed beyond breaks into the here and
now. This need not be associated with a well-articulated, religiously grounded
notion of the beyond or what resides there. Indeed, as Cocteau says about the
figure of the angel in his work:
Before my own poem, L'ange Heurtebise, the symbol 'angel' in my work offered no
relationship with religious imagery ...What approaches it would be what was seen by
the crew of Superfortress Number 42.7353, after dropping the first atomic bomb. They

39 I intentionally emphasize here not death and mortality, but the manner in which the
confrontation with death can occasion a confrontation with the limit of what presents itself or
what appears, the limit of the world of human understanding and power. John Keats distin­
guishes these two moments in the confrontation with death in his poem, 'When I have fears that
40 One might see here even a prefiguration of the 'accident', as Paul Virilio conceives it. For
I may cease to be'. He writes, 'When I have fears that I may cease to be/ . . . -then on the shore/
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think/Till love and fame to nothingness do sink'. Keats Virilio, every 'positive' technological advance carries within it its own 'negativity', but this
(1��4/1973: 221). And it is not death alone that can occasion the requisite accident, breakdown, negativity goes unnoticed until a horrific, violent mishap. At this moment, it becomes possible
cns1s, and thus slowness, for the confrontation with the limit of the world can occur by other to think the destruction, the negation that belongs necessarily to technology itself and its logic of
m �ans. �or in stance, So cratic elenchus, radical critique, and deconstruction, can all give us to progress. He writes, 'the accident is an inverted miracle, a secular miracle, a revelation. When
. . . you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent
thmk this 111 �11t. Cf. for mstance Nealon (2002). Although he does ultimately identify a certain
hopefulness m the rhetorical speed of Adamo's diatribes, Nealon sees Adorno as critiquing and the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution . . . Every technology
carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress'. Virilio (1989:
attempting to disrupt in modern life something very much like the tyrannous logic of speed that
.£
�oph�cles' ?�e presents as characteristic o human praxis. Nealon writes that Adamo's aphor­ 89�. What is crucial here is that the accident, when recognized as an inevitability, is precisely and
�mquely what allows the essential limits of machinating, technological human praxis to come to
isms m Mrmma Mora/t. a seem to offer a chiasmatic slowness that interrupts the smooth
movement of tautological self-reassurance. If, as Adorno writes, the culture industry 'expels hght. See also P. Virilio's Negative Horizon, especially parts one and three, for his discussion of
t� e necessary 'violence of speed', 'the distancing (ecartement) that deprives us of contact, of
from movements all hesitation' (19), the chiasmus is clearly one way of reintroducing (at the
. direct experience'. Virilio ( 1984: 40).
level of form and content) an ethical hesitation into the otherwise too-swift movement to a
41 Cocteau and Maritain (1964: 56).
conclusion' Nealon (2002: 132). It is precisely such an 'ethical hesitation' that I believe Antigone
: 42 Fowlie, 'Introduction' to Cocteau (1956: 25-6).
undergoes m her last scene, as she confronts directly the limit of her human world.
328 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
spoke of a purple light and a column of indescribable shades. They could not
articulate the spectacle of this phenomenon and it remained locked up inside them. 4 3
The appearance of the angel for Cocteau is the appearance of the indescrib­
able, inarticulable as such, which is to say, the in-apparent. But how can the
in-apparent as such appear? It appears at the moment when the limit of
description and articulation is exposed, the limit of what does appear.44
The 'perhaps' that enters Antigone's discourse marks something like Coc­
teau's angel, for it marks the limit of the visible and the invisible, the mortal
and the divine, life and death. This limit of the world of human praxis
appears, the decided speed of human action breaks down, the future
opens up.
As a consequence of this reading of G reek tragedy in general and Sophocles'
Antigone in particular, via Cocteau, the familiar technological acceleration of
our contemporary lives is cast now in an essentially and classically tragic light.
We would seem to be called upon then to disrupt this tyrannous, futureless
logic of speed by forcing confrontation with the inherent finitude of human
understanding and power, and thus a hesitating mode of decision before what
is for us humans always undecidable. By letting Cocteau's angel appear, we
would not, of course, escape the limitations of the human condition, but
operate otherwise within them. This is what we can learn from Antigone­
that the very speed praised in the Futurist Manifesto with which I opened, the
speed of modern life, is not new at all, but as old as Sophocles, and it is tragic
precisely because it has no future at all.
43 Cocteau (1956: 154-5).
44 This appearing of the inapparent, the beyond of appearing, requires a mode of discourse
that somehow gestures to this beyond as such, and thus without presuming to describe or
articulate it, which is to say, without bringing it to appearance. For Cocteau, this mode of
discourse is poetry. He writes of having discovered of angels that 'their invisibility could take on
the image of a poem and become visible, without risk of being seen'. Cocteau (1956: 156);
emphasis in original.
18
Politicizing Antigone
Erika Fischer-Lichte
Performances of Sophocles' Antigone have been an important cultural factor
in Germany since the early ni neteenth century. Among the countless Antigone
productions staged in German-speaking countries over the past two hundred
years, I have chosen three for a closer investigation: ( l) the Tieck/Mendels­
sohn p roduction in Potsdam in 1 84 1 ; (2) Karlheinz Stroux's production in
Berlin in 1 940, and (3) Christoph Nel's p roduction in Frankfurt am Main in
1 978. All three productions refer to a particular and yet very different political
situation: the shaping of a new self-understanding and self-image of the
Prussian state after Friedrich Wilhelm IV ascended to the throne in 1 840;
World War II, begun by Nazi Germany under Hitler's rule; and, lastly, the trial
against the RAF (Red Army Faction, a terror organization) in Stuttgart­
Stammheim and the subsequent suicides of the defendants, Gudrun Ensslin,
Andreas Baader, and Carl Raspe. All three productions refrain from making
direct references to their respective political contexts, despite an underlying
awareness of the given situations evident in the productions and their recep­
tion. These contexts politicized the productions even if they did not explicitly
refer to them. I will argue that in all three cases, the particular relationship
between stage and auditorium that brought about the politicization of the
performances in their distinctive contexts was due not only to the specific
reading of the tragedy intended by the mise en scene but also, if not primarily,
to the aesthetics o f the production.
ANTIGONE IN P O T S DAM IN 1 8 4 1
Why not have two trains go back and forth to bear the extraordinary
rush; why open but a single window at the box office when close to a

330 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
thousand people are demanding tickets at the same time? The broken
glass of the window certainly represented the lesser ill here. 1
Reading in a Berlin newspaper this complaint about the behaviour of the
Berlin-Potsdam Railway Company's employees, one cannot but wonder what
an extraordinary event must have occurred in Potsdam in the autumn of
1 84 1 , which attracted a thousand Berliners. All of Berlin seemingly wanted to
participate in this remarkable political, cultural, and theatrical event tha: w�s
the performance of Sophocles' Antigone at the Court Theatre, located w1 thm
the New Palace in Potsdam.
The production marked a political event, in that the performance had been
commissioned by the Prussian king himself. In 1 840, Friedrich Wilhelm IV,
after his father's forty-three-year reign, mounted the throne aged 45. He was
determined to introduce a new era in Prussia. He allowed for more political
liberalism and press freedom. Intellectuals who had been persecuted because
of their liberal attitudes, such as the brothers Grimm, who were professors of
German language and literature, and the philosopher Friedrich Wilhel':1
Joseph Schelling, were awarded professorships at the Friedrich Wilhelm U m­
.
versity in Berlin. Equal rights were granted to the Jews, who, under the reign
of Friedrich Wilhelm III, had been denied access to the civil service and the
officers' corps. A general amnesty was extended to all victims of the Pr�ssian
reaction. These measures led to the shaping and spread of a new self-image
and self-understanding of the Prussian state.
Part of this mission was the newly inaugurated king's wish to stage a series
of Greek tragedies. After consulting with the romantic poet Ludwig Tieck,
who was appointed supervisor of this project and was aged aln:ost 70 by
.
that time, the king decided to begin with a performance of Antigone. This
choice does not come as a surprise, considering the philosopher Hegel's
interpretation of the tragedy and the significance of his philosophy for the
.
new self-understanding of the Prussian state. According to Hegel, two ethical
principles of equal right collide in Antigone-the ethical or moral power of
the state and the ethical or moral being of the family. The sphere of the state's
morality is concretized and embodied by man, while that of the family is
personified by woman. In Antigone, both sides are conceived as absolutes a nd
.
irreconcilable opposites in order for the tragedy to unfold. The new Prussian
state, however, was not meant to form a 'mere legal institution', but an 'ethical
or moral community' whose principle of life was based on the family and
rooted in an inherent morality, as the philosopher Johann Eduard Erdmann
explained in 1 8 54 in his speech on the occasion of the king's birthday. Thus,
1 Kiiniglich Privilegierte Berlinische Zeitung, No. 261, 8 November 1841.
Politicizing Antigone 331
the choice o f Antigone reflected the intention to outline a new image of the
Prussian state as it was to come into being and be realized during the reign of
Friedrich Wilhelm IV. However, given that there is no explicit reference to the
Hegelian interpretation of the tragedy and the idea of a future Prussian state,
it remains a matter of speculation whether the performance was consciously
conceived with these two precepts in mind. Nevertheless, the political rele­
vance of the Antigone performance can by no means be overlooked.
The production of Antigone represented a cultural milestone. For the first
time in German-speaking countries there was systematic cooperation between
artists involved in the production and scholars from the Classics department
of the university. August Boeckh, professor of Greek philology in Berlin,
served as philological adviser to the production. With this Antigone produc­
tion, historicism became an undisputed cultural factor, which meant that, on
the one hand, all theatrical elements should, as far as possible, be realized in
accordance with the academic knowledge of performances in ancient Greece.
This approach explains the choice of the Court Theatre at the New Palace in
Potsdam as the venue for the performance: it was equipped with an am­
phitheatre. For this production, it was remodelled and redesigned on the basis
of the principles laid down in 1 8 1 8 by the architect and archaeologist Hans
Christian Genelli in Das Theater zu Athen (The Theatre in Athen) . Although
the Greek Archaeological Society's first excavations of the Dionysus theatre
dated back to 1 839, nothing had yet been discovered that might have
challenged Genelli's concept at the time of the preparations for the Potsdam
production. However, following the performance, the archaeologist E. H .
Toelken fr o m the university in Berlin raised some objections against Genelli's
concept in so far as he believed he had d iscovered some incongruities with the
deliberations of the Roman architect Vitruv, who was still regarded as the
undisputed authority in questions of ancient theatre architecture.
According to Genelli's plans, the stage, without a curtain, was raised five
feet above the orchestra, guaranteeing an unrestricted view from all seats in
the auditorium. Stage and orchestra were linked by a huge staircase. The
thymele, the altar of Dionysus, was placed at the centre of the orchestra; it was
used to hide the prompter and, occasionally, became part of the performance
area. Antigone, for instance, sought refuge there. The entrances and exits (the
parodoi) were located on both sides of the proscenium arch. Located centrally
at the back of the stage was the palace of the King of Thebes. At the end of the
performance, its great gates opened to reveal the dead Eurydice-which seems
to have had an overwhelming effect on the spectators. The actors' perfor­
mance space extended from the stage into the orchestra, while the chorus,
consisting of fifteen members (played by members of the Berlin Court Opera)
and a chorus leader, remained within the orchestra.
332 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
Greek performances are characterized by music in that the songs of the
chorus and the epirrhematic scenes were sung, not spoken. Felix Mendels­
sohn-Bartholdy was asked to compose the music for these parts. Since the
music used in ancient Greek theatre (except for certain instruments em­
ployed) was unknown and since it was not possible to refer to the music of
opera choruses, oratoria, or even contemporary music for dramatic theatre,
Mendelssohn- Bartholdy had no model for his own composition. Instead, he
invented something entirely new.
Moreover, beyond the reference to music, the performance partly deviated
from Greek stage conventions even if they were well known. The production
omitted the use of masks (which Goethe had experimented with in his 1 802
production of Euripides'/A. W. Schlegel's Ion at his Weimar theatre) . Nor
were the female parts played by men. Auguste Crelinger was cast as Antigone,
seemingly qualified for this task by her performance as Iphigenia in Goethe's
play of the same title. The part of Ismene was realized by Bertha Stich, while
Amalie Wolf, who had played Antigone in Goethe's production of the tragedy
in 1 809, appeared as Eurydice. All those involved in the production were very
much aware of the historic distance between Athens in the fifth century BC and
their own times-a distance that did not allow for a revival of Greek tragedy
to be a comprehensive imitation of theatrical conventions and devices that
were deeply rooted in and determined by an entirely different society.
A few years later, the actor Eduard Devrient, who played the part of
Haemon, reflected on the relationship between the past and the present in
the Antigone production in his Geschichte der deutschen Schauspielkunst
( History of the German Art of Acting) ( 1 848-74) :
...this practical attempt proved so fruitful precisely because it did not aspire to an
archaeological imitation of what scholars thought they knew about the performances
in Athens. Instead, it was and had to be an experiment in modern acting as it would be
impossible to return to ancient conventions and conceive the choruses according to
the poor musical means of antiquity.2
The historian Johann Gustav Droysen, who attended two performances,
including the opening night, came to the following conclusion in his reflec­
tions on the effectiveness of historicism with reference to the Antigone pro­
duction: 'We do not want withered pasts to recur; but their great and
immortal qualities are to be seized, permeated, and returned to reality with
a new and unpredictable effect by the freshest and liveliest of spirits; not a
2 Devrient ( 1967: 310 f.) .
Politicizing Antigone 333
Babel of dead debris but a pantheon of the past should constitute our
present'. 3
Droysen's review of Antigone appeared in a newspaper on 'state and schol­
arly affairs', documenting and underlining the great significance of the per­
formance in terms of the contemporary political situation and the new trend
towards historicism in the humanities, the arts, and in German culture as a
whole.
Last but not least, the performance proved to be an extraordinary theatrical
event because it accorded a new function to theatre. So far, it had been
common practice to adapt or even rewrite older or translated plays in order
to satisfy the prevalent stage conventions, moral norms, values, and habits of
the audience. Even Goethe, who in his work as director of the Weimar Court
Theatre, followed the maxim ' . . . the spectators must learn not to view every
play as a skirt to be fitted on their bodies according to their current needs' 4 -
aesthetic distance here being deemed a necessary prerequisite for the growth
of the spectator's personality-adapted plays from 'world literature'. In the
case of the Greek tragedies he staged, Ion, for example, was rewritten by
August Wilhelm Schlegel, who later contributed to the high status accorded
to Greek plays in Germany and beyond with his Vorlesungen iiber dramatische
Kunst und Literatur (Lectures on dramatic art and literature) ( 1 809- 1 8 1 1 ) ;
Goethe's Antigone was substantially rewritten by Friedrich Rochlitz. I n con­
trast, the Potsdam p roduction of Antigone for the first time used an un­
abridged and literal translation of the play penned by Johann Jakob Christian
Donner, who even maintained the original metre. 5
Not only did this production use a literal translation, it also veered away
from current stage conventions. Instead, new stage conventions were intro­
duced that were considered valid at the time of its fi rst performance. While
Schiller had already reintroduced the chorus to the stage in his Braut of
Messina, which premiered in Weimar in 1 803, and the discussion on the
advantages of amphitheatrical auditoria went back to the late eighteenth
century in Germany, here for the first time the stage was re-modelled accord­
ing to what was known of ancient Greek theatres. Also, following the first and,
for over two hundred years, the only performance of a Greek tragedy in
modern times, that is, the performance of King Oedipus on the occasion of
the opening of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza in 1 585, for which Andrea
3 Droysen (1894: 148).
4 Goethe (1802: 82) .
5 I a m not going to discuss the problem here whether a literal translation is possible a t all.
Suffice it to say that at the time of the Potsdam production, this was the firm belief of all
translators and those who used their translations.
334 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
Gabrieli had co mposed the music of the chorus songs, here again the music
was specially composed fo r the chorus songs as well as for the epirrhematic
scenes. Their composition represented a great challenge to Felix Mendels­
sohn-Bartholdy, who was obliged to meticulously follow Donner's transla­
tion, including the metre of the verses that frequently changed in the middle
of the song. In a letter to Ferdinand David from 2 1 October 1 84 1 , that is, a
week before the opening night, Mendelssohn wrote:
As such, it was a splendid task, and I worked on it with sincere pleasure. But it was
strange to observe how much remains unchanged in art; the voices of all these
choruses are still so genuinely musical and yet so unique that no composer could
ask for more. The German words (we have Donner's translation) gave me and the
singers great trouble ...we chose the best voices from the choir and the best
soloists .... the one reading we have had so far affected me more profoundly than I
would have ever dreamed ...All parts where Creon and Antigone speak verse and
counter-verse are melodramatic, and the chorus responds with song. Also wherever
we have trimetres, the chorus leader speaks the words written for the chorus.6
While composing the music, Mendelssohn often discussed the philological
problems he encountered with August Boeckh, who lived in the same building
and whom he inspired to begin a translation of his own. The outcome of
Mendelssohn's efforts to compose the music for Antigone was something
completely novel in German theatres; it was neither opera nor melodramatic
music nor the usual music for dramatic theatre (Schauspielmusik) .
The fact that the costume designs adhered to archaeological knowledge was
no surprise. Goethe had used similar costumes in Ion and Antigone, and by
the end of the eighteenth century it had become customary to use period
costumes.
From the reviews one can guess that the overwhelming effect the perfor­
mance exerted on the spectators was mainly due to the interplay of space,
music, and acting. Music, however, played a central role. Droysen writes on its
effects:
...they are strange yet coherent sounds through which he (the composer) speaks to
us; not ancient music, but the impression of ancient music, as he must have thought
of it. Yes, and more; that first scene between Antigone and the sister, in such an
unusual setting, with such an alien sound of verses, with that harshness of motive, that
rock-steady determination,-and at first she leaves us rather cold; we see the process
without truly finding our way into it; we find it somewhat interesting to see a classical
play for a change,-and then the singing chorus enters and instantly the sound of the
music makes us feel at home, we return to familiar grounds, to familiar sensations, we
6 Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1972: 169 f.).
Politicizing Antigone 335
grow warm and warmer; the next scene has us better prepared, receptive beyond
ourselves; the next song of the chorus has made us feel utterly at home in this new,
ideal world; we are tightly gripped by the high and higher soaring violence of the
merciless struggle; our dry gaze filled of dread sees the w� ighty catastrophe approach­
ing, which is, blow for blow, followed by the most atroc10us fulfilments.
7
Such an effect was only possible because the actors adopted a particular acting
style. 'Modern sentimentality, hollow gestures, and unnecessary swagger ex­
pressed through mouth, hand, and foot was avoided completely.'8 It seems
that it was, in fact, the unique interplay of the music with the words, the
'
movements through the space, and the space itself that created this rather
unusual effect for the audiences. Droysen, in particular, tried to capture this
effect by analysing and describing it in more detail:
...the overall impression is unexpected and strange enough to invalidate the known
trivialities of art appreciation; magnificent, torrential enough to profoundly stir the
heart and engage it lastingly....an atmosphere of festivity, self-oblivion, and devotion
permeates the auditorium. We want to gladly welcome this devotion in the known
interest of art: it had all but disappeared from our theatre practice, indeed our entire
perception of art. If instead of feeling we only judge or gaze through the glasses of
another's judgments, never forgetting ourselves and allowing our dear mundane I to
fall silent before the manifestations of the genius, ...then art, defenseless against
virtuosity and art appreciation, is in a bad place; art loses its sanctity, its foundation,
its right; . . . 9
The performance of Antigone seems to have redefined not only the relation­
ship between past and present but also that between stage and auditorium. An
atmosphere of festivity, self-oblivion, and devotion characterized the attitude
of the spectators; they did not act as critical or bored observers of the
performance, but as involved participants who underwent the experience of
being detached from their familiar environment, habits, and even their
selves-in other words, an experience of liminality. 1 0 Here, the aesthetic
experience enabled by theatre was redefined as a liminal experience.
In summary: the performance of Antigone marked an extraordinary theat­
rical event because it accorded theatre a new function following from the
principles of historicism to which it adhered. If theatre performs plays of
past epochs without acting as a 'Babel of dead debris but [as] a pantheon
of the past [to] constitute our present', it can serve as cultural memory. The
production of Antigone, while based on academic knowledge of a distant past,
7 Droysen (1894: 148 f.).
8 Forster (1842, p. xii).
9 Droysen (1894: 146 f.).
1° Cf. Fischer-Lichte (2008: 174-80 and 190-200).
336 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
transferred the Greek tragedy ' from the limited circle of bookish study to the
freely accessible ground of living artistic perception'. 1 1 Thus, it turned the
stage into a place where the distant past could be revived and remembered.
Thea �re here worked as a mechanism for the memory of cultural history,
recallmg a world that had long since ceased to exist and bringing its dead
back to life. In this sense, the historicist practices employed for the first time
in this production resembled the magical practices of certain rituals, such as
invocations of the dead. To participate in such a process undeniably required
a somewhat different attitude than that of a cri tical or bored observer. Instead,
all participants were invited to contribute to this 'atmosphere of festivity,
self-oblivion, and devotion'. The second achievement of the Antigone produc­
tion was related to the redefinition of the relationship between stage and
auditorium, which followed from the shift in the relationship between past
and present.
The reviews clearly convey that Mendelssohn's music played a significant
role in successfully bringing about these processes of redefinition. It provided
the vehicle for the characters from this distant past to appeal to 'the hearts' of
and appear present to the spectators, without simply transforming them into
their contemporaries. In conjunction with the words and movements, the
music also triggered sensations in the spectators which were experienced as
self-oblivion and devotion. Thus, Mendelssohn's music in the performances
of Antigone greatly contributed to the adoption of a new function for theatre.
The production proved successful not only among the scholars and prom­
inent spectators of its opening night, who were all invited guests. It was later
moved to the Royal Theatre in Berlin, to which audiences flocked to see one of
the six performances. It remained in the repertoire and had been performed
sixty-two times by 1 882.
The production of Antigone marked the beginning of a series of perfor­
mances of Greek tragedies in Berlin and Potsdam. In 1 843, Euripides' Medea
premiered at the Royal Theatre in Berlin, with music composed by Carl
Gottfried Wilhelm Tauber; in 1 845, Oedipus at Co/onus was performed at
the Court Theatre in the New Palace in Potsdam, for which Mendelssohn
again composed the music; and after Mendelssohn's death, Euripides' Hippo­
lytos premiered in 1 8 5 1 with music by Adolf Schulz.
The success of Antigone led to performances of Greek tragedies outside of
Berlin and even Germany. Yet, Antigone was always performed with Mendels­
sohn's music, for instance in Leipzig ( 1 84 1 ) , Dresden ( 1 844) , and Munich
( 1 854) .
11 Eduard Devrient (1967: 310).
Politicizing Antigone 337
The Antigone with Mendelssohn's music became a great success at the Paris
Odeon (1843) and even proved a sensation when it was produced in London
in early 1 845. 'The Potsdam Antigone and its imitations were billed every­
where as the first attempts to resuscitate this ancient play on the modern
stages of Europe and America, and attracted "learned and unlearned"'. 1 2
However, while the Potsdam production had marked an extraordinary
political, cultural, and theatrical event, the political function it served in
Prussia was by no means relevant to its ' imitations'. Rather, it was the new
function accorded to theatre by this production and realized primarily by the
interplay of Mendelssohn's music with other theatrical elements that made
this Antigone appear so attractive to audiences in other German-speaking
countries as well as in Paris and London. In this sense, the Potsdam Antigone
must be seen as a turning point in theatre history, especially with regard to the
cultural histories of those countries which, for whatever reason, were to claim
a special kinship with ancient Greek culture in the years to come.
In the case of the 'original'-the Potsdam-Antigone, the new function
accorded to theatre by the production has to be related to the particular
political situation in Prussia-Friedrich Wilhelm !V's mission of shaping and
spreading a new self-understanding and self-image of the Prussian state
during his reign. H owever, the documents available on the performance do
not explicitly confirm the reading of the tragedy in this light. However, most
of the reports and reviews justify the assumption that the sympathy of the
spectators was transferred to Antigone even if the Creon actor 'played him
with the dignified bearing of the stern ruler who is unrelenting in matters of
law and order and the well-being of the city; but he equally succeeded in
playing the failed autocrat who accuses himself with loud wails and admits
that he is nothing!' 1 3 Still, it seems that, ultimately, Antigone, who 'was
excellent and passionate and yet not without feminine appeal, maintaining
a delicate measure of the repulsive attitude towards her sister', 1 4 won the
sympathy of the spectators. It is possible that the audience perceived a certain
balance between Creon's and Antigone's claim, that is, between the rights of
the state and that of the family, albeit with an undisputed bias towards
Antigone. However, ultimately this is difficult to judge.
Droysen described the atmosphere of festivity, self-oblivion, and devotion
that seemed to emanate from and envelop the spectators so that they were
12
Hall and Macintosh (2005: 321). The quotation within the quotation is from Stirling
(1881: 161-2). Regarding the Antigone at the Drury Lane in London, in Dublin, and New York,
see Hall and Macintosh (2005: 321-49).
13 Forster (1842, p. xii).
1 4 Boeckh (1842: 86).
338 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
immersed in it and were drawn into the tragic action unfolding on stage. His
description allows us to assume that this atmosphere transformed the specta­
tors into members of a community, which might be rightly regarded as a kind
of 'moral community' (sittliche Gemeinschaft) , defined by Hegel and his
followers as the ideal state. It can thus be said that the performance of
Antigone anticipated and therefore furthered the transformation of the Prus­
sian state into a 'moral community'. H owever, such a community ultimately
came into being only in the course of the Antigone performances which, thus,
remained an aesthetic anticipation and illusion ('Vor-Schein', Ernst Bloch) of
a community which was never realized as the Prussian state.
K A R L H E I NZ S T R O U X' ANTIGONE I N B E R L I N
I N 1 9 40
On 3 September 1940, almost a hundred years after the Tieck/Mendelssohn
Antigone in Potsdam, Karlheinz Stroux's production of Antigone premiered at
the Staatliches Schauspielhaus (State Theatre) am Gendarmenmarkt, the
former Royal Theatre in Berlin. This production opened the Staatliches
Schauspielhaus's theatre season of 1 940- 1 under the direction of Gustaf
Gri.indgens. It was also the first of a series of Antigone productions staged in
the Reich. From 1940 until 1 September 1 944-when Joseph Goebbels or­
dered all theatres in the Reich to shut down-at least fifteen productions and
approximately 1 50 performances were recorded on German stages. 1 5
This might come as a surprise for two reasons. For one, the war was raging
across Europe and, secondly, Antigone had begun to serve as a hidden code of
sorts for the intellectual resistance against the Nazi regime. Theatre spectators
were constantly reminded of the war-a small leaflet enclosed in the
programme notes to the Antigone at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus, for
example, calls on the spectators: 'Remain calm in the case of air raid sirens!
The interruption of the performance will be announced from the stage in
time. Leave the auditorium in an orderly fashion and find your air-raid shelter
at the cloakroom and the adjoining rooms.' The critic of the Deutsche
Allgemeine Zeitung wrote in his review:
15 In his pioneering study, Hellmut Flashar lists the following: 'Berlin, Staatstheater am
Gendarmenmarkt, 3.9.1940; Wien, Burgtheater, 1.10.1940; Frankfurt, Schauspielhaus, 18.4.1941;
Diiren 1.10.1941; Duisburg 23.11.1941; Essen, Stadtische Biihne, 7.12.1941; Saarbriicken, Gau thea­
ter Westmark, 3.4.1942; Konigsberg, 9.2.1942; Leipzig, Opernhaus, 8.11.1942; Dessau 8.11.1942;
Memel, Stadttheater, 24.3.1943; Gera, PreuBisches Theater, 4.4.1943; Giittingen, 20.1.1944;
Stuttgart, 23.1.1944' ( each with many performances). Flashar (1991: 360 n. 23) .
Politicizing Antigone 339
The Staatstheater deserves even more praise fo r opening their season with Sophocles
at the beginning of the second year of the war; if some hours later the spectator sits at
the table in the cellar accompanied by flak concerts while English planes whizz over
the residential areas, he will feel doubly grateful for having once again been tranferred
. 16
c
into the timeless space of great poetry for a iew hours.
Clearly, spectators were well aware of the overall context of the war when
going to the theatre.
.
But how was it possible that Antigone was performed so many times
without any attempts by the National Socialist authorities to ban it from
the stage? In order to explain this seeming oddity one has to consider the
special relationship Nazi Germany had established with ancient Greek culture.
Tapping into a long tradition of German culture identifying with its ancient
Greek counterpart, the Nazis expressed and spread the belief that the Greek
Ur-population had settled down in Greece following 'a migration of Aryan
and Indo-Germanic clans from the north, from our side of the Baltic Sea'. 1 7
They proclaimed a racial kinship between Greeks and Germans and stated
that, ultimately, Nazi Germany was to be regarded as the legitimate heir of and
actual successor to ancient Greece. 1 8 The staging of Greek tragedies in the
Third Reich must therefore always be seen as a political act. In this sense, all
performances of Greek tragedies automatically meant politicizing them . This
.
also holds true for Antigone. That is to say that the simple fact that Antigone
was put on stage does not necessarily imply that it served as an act of
resistance even in times of war. Thus, even if we keep in mind that the play
often stood for intellectual resistance, it has to be carefully examined in what
respect Stroux's production of the tragedy-the first and, alongside Lothar
Mi.ithel's production in Vienna, the most important of a series of productions
to follow-realized such a politicization.
Clarifying this question is a difficult task. To begin with, many of the
reviews of the production available today are somewhat unreliable in so far
as Goebbels had replaced as early as 1936 any kind of art criticism with what
was called 'Kunstbetrachtung' or 'Kunstbericht' (art report). This was meant
to be 'less evaluation and more representation and therefore appreciation. . . .
Only writers are to discuss artistic achievements in future, engaging in this
activity with integrity of heart and the National Socialist ethos'. 1 9 The critics'
descriptions of the performances, however, seem more or less reliable even
16 Werner ( 1940).
17 Heinrich Himmler, quoted after Losemann (1977: 119).
18
Cf. Fischer-Lichte (2008: 480-98).
19 Goebbels (1936).

340 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
under such conditions, in particular when most of them agreed on particular
aspects.
Such descriptions, along with other sources-such as the sketches for the
stage, photographs, or utterances by Eva Strowe, the director's widow-allow
us to conclude that the mise en scene worked with oppositional, indeed
dialectic, elements that might appear to the spectators as distant, foreign,
strange, or even exotic on the one hand and familiar and close on the other
hand.
Strowe used Roman Woerner's translation of the tragedy. This was a fairly
new translation with certain poetic qualities. It had the advantage of being
clear and easily comprehensible-especially in comparison with Holderlin's
translation, used by Lothar Miithel in Vienna during the same season, which
is dark, hermetic, and at times barely comprehensible. The choice of Woer­
ner's translation seems to suggest the intention of facilitating the comprehen­
sion of this complex tragedy, thus rendering it as transparent as possible.
This dialectic of darkness and transparency also dominated the stage space
(designed by Traugott Miiller). As can be gathered from sketches and a
photograph, the space was structured by pillars that extended to the ceiling
of the proscenium. At the back, some staggered passages led to a huge gate
made of rocks that allowed light to flood in. Thus, the set conveyed an
impression of enormous depth. On the right side, the statue of a Greek god
stood in a niche with arms raised and a dark cloth falling from his left
shoulder and covering the lower parts of his body. Many critics identified
him as Dionysus (some likened the statue to Zeus). Standing on a high
pedestal, the statue rose as high as the pillars.
Because of its monumentality, some critics felt unable to recognize the
stage space as a representation of classical Greece (to which the temples and
statues, depicted in the programme notes, undoubtedly referred). They rather
located it in archaic Greek or Egyptian culture. One critic believed himself to
be confronted with a 'cyclopean palace courtyard' which 'breathes the spirit of
pre-Hellenic culture with its ashlars'.20 Another described the stage as he
perceived it when the curtain rose as 'antiquity filled with gloomy majesty.
It is a Hellas of primeval times with massive grey-brown pillars and truly
cyclopean walls'.2 1 A third felt that the stage did not awaken 'Attic grandeur,
but almost Egyptian oppression'.22 The dominating impressions seem to be of
darkness, monumentality, and foreignness.
20 Weichardt ( 1940).
1 24
2 Dargel (I 940).
22 Biedraynski ( 1940).
Politicizing Antigone 34 1
The space remained unchanged throughout the performance; there was no
intermission. However, the scenes did change. This effect was brought about
through the lighting. Although the spectators thought they were seeing
monumental pillars, those were, in fact, widths of cloth that became trans­
parent when lit from behind. As such, the seemingly monumental space
gradually became transparent. In this way, for instance, 'showing the heavy
pillars and gloomy walls as an X-ray image gives the Theban palace . . . a
strange charm, transparent, dream-like, and unreal: stunning but mysteri­
ous'.23 The lighting was also used to make the statue of the god, supposedly
Dionysus, d isappear and then magically reappear. Thus, the impression of
monumentality and foreignness was replaced by an impression of transpar­
ency and a dream-like and unreal clarity.
A comparable dialectic characterized the chorus. It consisted of eight male
members. On the one hand, the chorus was highly individualized. Most of the
time, the single stanzas of a song and sometimes even whole sentences were
not spoken by all members of the chorus in unison, but only by some. Mostly
the text was split among the members, sometimes with repetitions of one
sentence or expression by different members, not only in a different voice but
also in a different tone, pitch, intonation, or rhythm. Thus, the chorus formed
a particular community within which the individual members remained
recognizable as such. This was-to use Nietzsche's expression-the Apolloni­
an side of the chorus. The Dionysian side took over in the chorus' ecstatic
movements. 'He dances a wild, frenzied dance of the Bacchae to the sound of
cymbals in honour of the dark god of love and lust, Dionysus'. 24
As can be gathered from this quotation, the music ( composed by Mark
Lothar) played an important part in this p roduction, even if the songs of the
chorus were not composed in their entirety. Rather, the music accompanied
the chorus. It was neither 'melodic-lyrical nor melodic-dramatic music, but
merely a composition that provides flavour and atmosphere'.25 The composi­
tion did not only use the above-mentioned instrument but also a tamtoui, an
oriental gong, and a newly invented instrument called the melodium, an
electric instrument similar to a celesta. This instrument offered a great wealth
of new timbres as they are only brought forth by electric sound production.
We have f antastical high sounds, then infinitely long, soaring vibrati resembling the
delicate, tremulous voices of an organ with different levels. Lothar employs this
method of broad soaring and floating melodic lines, which are reminiscent of a
distant 'aulos', the ancient Greek double pipe. But even this is not seen in archaic
23 Ibid.
Korn (I 940).
25 Hamel (1940).
342 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
terms; rather, Lothar's music achieves its highly individualistic character by reinfor­
cing the music with dull rhythms of the percussion and deep gong-like and bell-like
undulant harmonies, which even polyphonically overlap with various such melodic
voices from time to time. This music achieves its suggestiveness because-in contrast
to exterior tone painting-it is saturated with affect. Nothing could illustrate this
better than the contrast between the choruses of Eros and Dionysus, whose poetic
visions are each very effectively deepened and enhanced through the music with these
6
sparing sounds.2
Thus, the music Lothar composed for the chorus was also determined by such
"
a dialectic between the archaic, foreign, Dionysian and the familiar, even
modern, Apollonian. By creating distinct atmospheres and using very special
rhythms, the music also had a physical effect on the spectators, as will be
elaborated later.
This was the dialectic that characterized the frame within which Antigone
and Creon appeared and acted. According to the critics, they were presented
as antagonists from the very begi nning.
Marianne Hoppe, who played Antigone, was the only one to resemble the
statues of classical Greece depicted in the programme notes. She wore a white
dress 'draped like the girls on the Porch of the Caryatids',2 7 which was among
the buildings shown in the programme notes. She wore very light, almost
marble-white make-up that underlined her similarity to a classical Greek
statue. 'Her appearance is that of the Greek ideal, marble, suffused by purple
blood'. 28 Creon, in contrast, was dressed in a red robe and black cape with a
gold-embroidered belt-a costume characterized by the critic of the VOlk­
ischer Beobachter, that is, the Nazi newspaper, as a 'red satrap garb', identifying
Creon as an oriental ruler. Creon was played by Walter Franck, an actor who
was famous for his representations of villains. Thus, having him appear as
Creon awakened certain expectations and prej udices in the spectators who
had seen him acting in such roles. Antigone and Creon could thus be
recognized as opposites at first glance.
This polarity was emphasized and even strengthened by the 'oppositional
acting styles of the two protagonists'.29
Marianne Hoppe played Antigone as 'a virginal priestess who sacrifices
herself . . . from the beginning she seems to emanate a cool hint of the
tomb that the tyrant encloses her in'. She was received as 'a moving statue
26 Hamel (1940).
27 Korn ( 1 940).
28 Kienzel (1940).
29 Koppen (1940).
Politicizing Antigone 343
of mask-like beauty, her gaze mostly fixed into the void'.30 Her face, however,
'seemed to be ecstatically marked more than once'.3 1 I n accordance with her
appearance and movements, her way of speaking was praised for its 'convinc­
ing monumentality and wonderfully crafted clarity and beauty of verse
treatment'. 32 .It comes as no surprise that one critic felt himself 'succumbing
to the image of Greek theatre: to hear judgments of fate through the mouth of
the mask'. 33
In contrast, Walter Franck played Creon as 'a figure filled with passion . . . ,
with a quick temper'. 3 4 'The entire range of human emotions and expressions:
greatness, strength, harshness, fury, hatred, ridicule, fear, and contrition­
they are linked to each other through subtle transitions to create a compelling
character sketch that unites ancient grandeur and thorough individual ani­
mation in an exemplary manner'. 3 5 Another critic, in line with the previously
cited reviews, describes Creon as 'a great achievement of Walter Franck, with
quick glances giving away his fear, taking in the people, easily lapsing into the
screams of the hot-tempered, fervent as are only those who are doing wrong
as he j ustifies his position to his son'. 36
While the acting of both protagonists was stylized, it seems that towards the
end of the performance it came much closer to realism, which allowed for
empathy. As far as Antigone is concerned, her voice changed. ' Resigned, her
voice . . . trembled gently as she stepped through the dark gate towards her
end',37 'there was something almost childish and innocent about her doleful
farewell from Jife', 38 so that, in the end, she 'inspired sympathy with every
word'. 39 Something similar happened with Creon, who was described as
'ultimately shattering in his collapse'.4 0
Evidently, as the majority of the critics perceived and received it, the mise
en scene sided with Antigone against Creon. It justified its proceeding and
bias, that is, its particular reading of the play, which otherwise could not have
been acceptable to National Socialists, by addressing only Antigone as Greek
and turning Creon into an oriental ruler and barbarian, as many critics
emphasized. They addressed his 'brutal autocracy based on violence and
blazing vengefulness', described him as 'a villain, more Asian than Greek',4 1
and an 'almost Cretan-Egyptian tyrant', 4 2 emphasizing his 'hot-tempered
nature that springs from a torrid, almost oriental mind'. 4 3 If he was to be
regarded as Greek, then only as a 'Greek ruler of primeval times'. 44 It seems
30 Anon. (1940). 31 Gotke (1940). 32 Korn ( 1 940).
33 Biedraynski (1940). 34 Werner ( 1 940). 35 Anon. (1940).
36 Weichardt (1940). 37 Gotke (1940). 38 Korn (1940).
39 Kersten (1940). 40 Weichardt ( 1 940). 41 Korn ( 1 940) .
42 Hesse ( 1 940). 43 Werner (1940). 4 4 Dargel (1940).
344 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
that only such a representation of Creon made the mise en scene palatable to
the Nazis. The critic of the VOlkischer Beobachter also seemed willing to side
with this Antigone. Even if he admits that ' in his heart Sophocles clearly does
not side with the tyrants but with nature, which is embodied by the unfalter­
ing sense of justice of woman', he deems it necessary to state authoritatively:
'The tragedy thus does not correspond to the standards of the sacrosanct idea
of the state'.4 5
Only the critic of the Berliner Borsenzeitung criticizes the production with
respect to its representation of Creon and explains that Creon is to be
regarded as 'representative of the principle of the state' and his prohibition
of Polyneices' b urial ' is a measure taken in the interest of state security', which
'constitutes a political necessity'. Antigone, therefore, 'is in her piety and
through her action rebelling against the dictate of the reason of the state,
against the reality of which she has nothing to show other than abstract
concepts'. 4 6 It seems that the critic of the BZ am Mittag had similar doubts
about the production when stating that 'his decree . . . certainly speaks to our
current sentiments'. However, he concedes: 'But Sophocles does not quite
stand by this'.4 7 That is to say, the production is 'true' to the text and the
intention of the author, even if it does not satisfy contemporary expectations.
However, this critic tries to assimilate the tragedy by addressing Antigone's
'loyalty to her blood relations', while another critic does the same by stating
that her rebellious action extends only to her 'clan'. 4 8 This use of National
Socialist vocabulary perhaps described an attempt to keep the production on
safe ground. Yet, the following review excerpt in the Deutsche Allgemeine
Zeitung suggests that the production ultimately transgressed that ground:
Hegel's interpretation of the tragedy as the conflict between individual and state,
which has since become the cheapest cliche, has long been replaced by other ap­
proaches. The poet's heart beats for Antigone, and if one seeks a meaning beyond the
flow of the inhumane tides of fate, it can only be that the hubris of the king's reason of
9
the state leads him to violate the eternally higher laws whose keeper is Antigone.4
The excerpt highlights the political explosiveness of the production. It did not
follow the general guideline of staging Greek tragedies in order to celebrate
the racial kinship between Greeks and Germans, but focused on the central
question of the tragedy, the question of guilt which it answered unambigously
in siding with Antigone.
45 Biedraynski (1940).
46 Koppen (1940).
47 Hesse ( 1940).
48 Kienzl (1940).
49 Werner (1940).
Politicizing Antigone 345
However, the production did not make Antigone a familiar figure by
representing her as a contemporary with whom the spectators could identify
and empathize. Rather, by letting Marianne Hoppe appear and act like a
Greek statue, the audience was kept at a certain distance which, however, did
not necessarily exclude the spectators. Many reviews describe the spectator
reactions as 'moving' or 'profound emotionality' ; the reviews mention that
the standing ovations given to the actors and the director followed a long
period of silence at the end, during which the audience seemingly had to
break away from the spell that the performance had cast on them. The
atmosphere and rhythm of the performance greatly contributed to this
spell. The atmosphere was brought about by the dialectic of darkness and
light, as well as by the music, which was able to arouse strong emotions. I n
general, atmospheres are sensed physically; the spectator i s not confronted
with it or kept at a distance, but enveloped by and immersed in it. Atmo­
spheres are sensed by the whole body, not j ust by the individual sensory
organs. The same holds true for rhythm. The rhythms of music, language, and
movement are not just heard or seen but sensed physically. Rhythm works on
the bodies of the spectators by attuning them to it. 50 In this way, atmosphere
and rhythm transferred the spectators into a particular state that was far
removed from their everyday lives with all their pressing concerns, allowing
them to enter a state of liminality enabling a deeper involvement with an
ethical problem of the greatest relevance. This state of 'profound emotionali­
ty', of liminality, should thus not be regarded as escapism but as one of the
rare chances to discuss this problem intellectually and, more importantly,
experience its painfully torturous consequences physically. To allow for such
an experience was indeed a political act, even if it did not lead to any acts of
open resistance.
C H R I S T O F N E L' S ANTIGONE I N F R A N K F U RT
IN 1 9 7 8
The year 1 968 marked a turning point in the postwar culture of the Federal
Republic of Germany, as in many other western countries. Riots had begun to
break out in 1 967. In June, when the Persian Shah visited Berlin, some of the
students at the Free University organized an impressive demonstration
against his dictatorial reign. When the police tried to control the protest,
so
For further reading on atmosphere and rhythm, see Fischer-Lichte (2008: 1 1 4-20 and
133- 7).

346 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
one student was shot. This event was the beginning of the student rebellion
led by Rudi Dutschke, who was later gravely injured in an assassination
attempt; he survived but suffered from its consequences until his untimely
death on Christmas Eve 1 979. Thus was born the so-called Baader-Meinhof
gang, founded by the student Andreas Baader and the journalist Ulrike
Meinhof, which later grew into the RAF ( Red Army Faction) terrorist move­
ment. They initially terrorized big department stores with arson, later robbing
banks and kidnapping key figures from important firms, banks, and the
justice system, humiliating them in public and killing them. In 1 977, the
leading RAF figures were imprisoned and charged. However, they committed
suicide in prison. Their burials in the Stuttgart Domhalden Cemetery took
place under extremely tight security. More than a thousand policemen were
deployed, some of them on horseback. The film Deutsch/and im Herbst
(Germany in Autumn 1 977), written by Heinrich Boll and directed by several
directors, including Volker Schlondorff, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Alex­
ander Kluge, tried to capture the atmosphere in the country after the murder
of Hanns-Martin Schleyer. Part of the film is conceived as satire: the members
of a radio board discuss at a meeting whether a recording of an Antigone
performance should be approved for broadcast. Objections are raised because
a 2,500-year-old dialogue between representatives of divine rights contra­
dicting each other was asking too much of a contemporary audience. Mean­
while, in the theatre, everyone was sayi ng that this was the hour of Antigone.
Indeed, three productions of the tragedy were presented at the Berlin Thea­
tertreffen in May 1 979-one each from Berlin, Bremen, and Frankfurt, with
another from Stuttgart following soon after.
The programme notes for the Frankfurt production, which premiered on 4
November 1 978, show a photograph of the burial at the Stuttgart cemetery,
featuring the police on foot and on horseback. The middle of the front page
shows a crouching Rotraut de Neve, whose Antigone represented a kind of
central axis mirroring both sides of the page. Below her, this excerpt from
Holderlin's Hyperion was printed:
You grant the state too much power. It shall not demand what it cannot force. What is
given by love and the mind cannot be forced. Leave that untouched by the state, or
take away its law and expose it! Good heavens! He who wants to turn the state into a
school of manners knows not his sin. At least by trying to turn the state into man's
heaven, he has made it hell.
Above the axis, the following quote from Ulrike Meinhof was pri nted upside
down and in a much smaller font:
Protest means to say that such and such does not suit me. Resistance means to see to it
that whatever does not suit me no longer occurs . ..The line between verbal protest
Politicizing Antigone 347
and physical resistance was first transgressed at the protests against the assault on Rudi
Dutschke during the Easter holidays. Let us acknowledge: Those who condemn the
throwing of stones and arson by politically powerful entities but not the .. .bombs
dropped on Vietnam, the terror in Persia, and the torture in South Africa .. . , their
argumentations are hypocritical.
The programme notes ( running to 1 78 pages!) thus created the expectation
that the production would openly relate to the Baader-Meinhof gang, the
RAF, their actions, and their fates. However, the dramaturge, Urs Troller,
polemicized in the same booklet against those who p roclaimed that Antigone
represented a play of the time, complaining that from satire to Lehrstuck, the
tragedy was currently being fitted to any topical context. The dramaturge's
deliberations counteracted such expectations. It ultimately docs not come as a
surprise that there were no direct allusions to this topic. It was merely
established as a context to which the spectators themselves had to relate the
performance. 5 1
A huge square box open to the auditorium was installed o n stage (design by
Erich Wonder). Its walls and ceiling were made of black cloth. The box's base
was level but set half a metre above the stage floor. Another much smaller box
hung from the top of the box at the front, on the right-hand side, covered with
pale cloth and emitting a diffuse white, grey, and blue light. A bar five or even
six metres long, equipped with a number of spotlights, had been placed
between the box on stage and the footlights. Its function was similar to the
hand of a clock or a wiper. Pivoting centre-stage, the bar rose to the vertical
and then swung to the right and down again at the beginning of the perfor­
mance. Its glaring spotlights blinded the spectators, so that they encountered
the first scene with dazzled, veiled eyes. The course of the performance was
structured by the movements of this bar moving first from left to right, and
then back after the next scene, and so on. The experience of having one's body
invaded and blinded by light after each scene was unique, indeed painful,
leaving a physical imprint on the spectators that significantly influenced their
perception of and response to the performance. For with every recurring shift
of the lights, they felt disoriented and destabilized in their position as
spectators, making many of them openly aggressive.
I n this production, the first scene was not the encounter between Antigone
and Ismene. I nstead, after the light-bar came down and the spectators were
able to see again, they beheld six figures standing at the front of the box in the
51 I saw the production in December 1978 and remember the performance fairly well.
However, since this is thirty years ago, I have consulted reviews and the recording of some
scenes from a television broadcast, Theater im Vergleich, comparing different Antigone produc­
tions from the Theatertreffen of 1979.
348 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
grey-blue half-darkness, moving rhythmically while softly trilling a popular
hit ('Wenn ich vergniigt bin, dann muB ich singen . . . ', 'When I am merry I
must sing . . .'): a rocker, dressed in leather and wearing glasses; a tourist in
shorts, a short-sleeved safari shirt, and a summer-hat with a ribbon on his
head; a carnival officer (obviously from Cologne, judging from his dialect)
dressed in a tuxedo, wearing a pin on his chest and a fool's cap on his head;
two comedians or clowns, one with a black jacket with stuffed, swinging arms
fastened to his hips and knees, and the other dressed in a yellow padded suit;
and, finally, a female stripper with long blonde hair wearing a glittering dress,
a transparent cape, and ostrich feathers. The further course of the perfor­
mance established these six figures as a replacement for the chorus, terribly
banal figures of today's mass consumer and leisure culture, entertaining
people by fooling around in the most trivial and partly even vile manner
and, thus, turning everything into triviality and dirty jokes.
After the light-bar had returned to the left, the spectators became aware of
Antigone and Ismene crouching centre-stage in the dim light emanating from
a green office lamp on the floor. Both were dressed in modern black (Antigo­
ne) and pink ( Ismene) petticoats and wore white make-up; Antigone
( Rotraud de Neve) had long black hair, Ismene's ( Lore Stefanek) was red­
dish-blond. They were very close to each other, with Antigone embracing
Ismene. At this point, Antigone began to speak the first verses of the tragedy.
The words were from Holderlin's translation-very poetic, condensed, her­
metic, and, as already stated, difficult, if not impossible, to understand.
However, the particular physicality of the women's acting conveyed the
content of the dialogue: Antigone's demanding insistence, reinforced by her
body posture, the attitude and movement of her head, and Ismene's refusal,
enacted by putting on a clinging, pink d ress, pulling up the zip, and leaving
Antigone behind with small but determined stilettoed steps.
In the sequence of these two scenes, separated by the shifting light-bar and
the resulting, temporary blinding of the spectators, the banal and the sublime
were juxtaposed. Whereas the trivial entertainment and dirty jokes of the
substitute-chorus were easy to consume, albeit with disgust and outrage, the
sublime aspects of the action and language were mostly far removed from
the comprehension of the spectators. Its i naccessability was underlined by the
many textual cuts and abridgements. Holderlin's translation, often incompre­
hensible in itself, was used only in fragments so that it became even harder to
follow. Most of the chorus songs were cut and the rest were read out from the
script under the light of the green office lamp placed on the floor. They were
read by Rotraut de Neve and Claire Kaiser, a fragile, elderly actress with a soft,
high-pitched voice, who also played the part of Eurydice. Thus, the sublime
quality of Sophocles'/Holderlin's language was seemingly repressed, limited to
Politicizing Antigone 349
a kind of residue, while the trivialities, banalities, and filth of the entertain­
ment and consumer culture increasingly took over.
Until the intermission, the two were, at least, clearly separated from each
other by the shifting light-bar. However, at certain points, even before the
intermission, the trivial was encroaching on the sublime. The guard who
reported Antigone's attempt to bury her brother Polyneices to Creon was
played by the tourist, who brought along a tape recorder blasting a silly hit.
Creon himself (Alexander Wagner), with long black hair, black trousers, and a
black vest, chest and arms exposed, portrayed the despotic ruler through the
marked movements of his arms and his hoarse shouting. However, when he
slapped Antigone's face and she in turn spat at him, it scarcely occurred to the
spectators that here two principles of equal right were opposed to each other.
Rather, it seemed that two private individuals, both desperate and sad instead
of tyrannic (Creon) or heroic (Antigone), were fighting each other. Thus,
their conflict could hardly be regarded as political.
After the intermission, the substitute-chorus directly interfered in the
scenes of the tragedy. It was the chorus which ultimately killed Antigone by
violently forcing her to conform to their standards. They dashed over to her,
stripped her, pursued her when she tried to escape, and forced a skintight
yellow cocktail dress on her, along with nylon stockings, high-heeled shoes,
and loud make-up. They slung a handbag over her arm and, after linking arms
with her, dragged her into their dance, while singing: 'When I am merry I
must sing . . . '. Finally, they left Antigone on stage, confronting her with a
mirror, in whose image she recognized the strange and estranged-the dead­
figure she had become.
At the end of the last scene, the news of Haemon's and Eurydice's deaths
was delivered by a member of the substitute-chorus-the clown in the black
jacket. The chorus acted embarrassed, and the 'messenger' himself writhed on
the floor-whether in pain or with laughter was hard to say. Finally, the
grinning chorus took their seats on a bench stage-left at the back. Among
them sat Creon. The performance ended with a final turn of the light-bar.5 2
The performance emphasized the fundamental inaccessability of ancient
Greek tragedy (and culture) to contemporary German spectators as members
of a society which was described as an entertainment and consumer culture,
replete with trivialities, banalities, and shallowness. Such a fundamental
inaccessability had also been presented four years earlier, albeit in a different
manner, by Klaus Michael Griiber's epoch-making production of Euripides'
52 Cf. in particular, with regard to this description, the following reviews: Rischbieter ( 1979:
32-41) ; Diehl (1978); Iden (1978).
350 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
The Bacchae at the Berlin Schaubiihne. 53 I n both cases, ancient Greek tragedy
and culture appeared fundamentally distant and inaccessible.
While the Potsdam Antigone of 1 8 4 1 and Stroux's Antigone in Nazi Ger­
many in 1 940 also displayed strangeness and even distance, neither produc­
tion fully prevented the spectators from identifying with ancient Greek
culture and what they considered to be its core values. However, Griiber's
The Bacchae and Nel's Antigone did not allow for any such identification.
While Griiber's production fascinated the spectators and thus led them to
reflect on the distance between their own culture and that of ancient Greece,
Nel's production provoked shock and outrage. The spectators, hailing mainly
from the educated middle class ( Bildungsbiirgertum ), continued to take
Greek culture as a model for their own, even ten years after 1 968 (and
especially in times of terrorism ) , as had been the tradition in Germany since
the end of the eighteenth century. Staging a Greek tragedy, thus, meant to
continue in this tradition. Nel's production denied the very idea that con­
temporary German cultural identity could be secured by performing ancient
Greek texts. On the one hand, the production manifested the inaccessability
of ancient Greek culture, by leaving out parts of a difficult text and realizing
the rest as barely comprehensible fragments which could by no means serve as
a foundation for a contemporary cultural identity. On the other hand, the
production juxtaposed the ancient tragedy with representations of a contem­
porary entertainment and consumer society that, through sheer banality,
negated any relationship to ancient Greek tragedy, indeed contaminated
and suffocated its last remains.
Therefore, it is quite understandable that th e audience received the pro­
duction as a kind of sacrilege or at least as a fierce attack on their own cultural
identity, as they saw it. The production destabilized their self-image and self­
understanding and, thus, plunged them into a crisis. They responded by
openly displaying their outrage, partly by protesting loudly and repeatedly
or even leaving the auditorium, slamming the doors on their way out. This
was, in fact, a political process; after all the audience's cultural identity was at
stake here. The statement made by the production that German society,
although plagued by terrorism to which the state authorities' response had
been very questionable, was no more than an entertainment and consumer
society, far removed from ancient Greek culture, necessarily shocked, desta­
bilized, and outraged many spectators. It required them to define them­
selves anew.
53 Cf. Fischer-Lichte (2005: 221-39, in particular 229-39).
Politicizing Antigone 351
Thus, i t comes as n o surprise that this Antigone was also far removed from
the festivity, self-oblivion, and devotion of the spectators at the Potsdam
Antigone, which served as the basis for a new moral community to come
into being. It was equally separate from the 'profound emotionality' of the
spectators at Stroux's Antigone in the second year of the war in Nazi Germany.
Here, the spectators, by being involved in the performance through physical
sensations and experiences, created the possibility of forming an experiential
community very different from the Vo/ks-community proclaimed by the
Nazis and of reflecting on their own situation. Nel's Antigone, by temporarily
blinding the spectators, confronted them with their own blindness regarding
their cultural identity. This transferred them into a crisis describing a very
particular state of liminality. How to overcome this crisis and, more impor­
tantly, how to identify a new cultural identity that would break free of the ugly
consumer society that was being presented was a question posed by the
production. Yet, only the individual spectators and society as a whole could
find an answer to this question. After RAF terrorism, the state's response to it,
the trial and suicide of the RAF's leading figures, and their scandalous
burial-events that deeply affected, even changed, society-such a new defi­
nition of German cultural identity seemed overdue. The discussions triggered
by the performance during the production's run in Frankfurt, and, in partic­
ular, at the Theatertreffen in Berlin, suggest that in this respect it was highly
successful.
C O N C LU S I O N
As has become evident i n the course o f the discussion o f these three Antigone
performances, and in particular from the brief summary in the last paragraph,
the political dimension lay not so much in a particular 'message' articulated
by the p roduction, nor was the political stance of a particular production
based on a specific 'reading' of the tragedy that related it more or less directly
to the performance's political context. Rather, it was the different aesthetic
developed and realized in each case, enabling a particular aesthetic experience
as liminal experience, which conferred a political d imension on these perfor­
mances.
As established above with regard to the Prussian Antigone, it was the
atm osphere of festivity, self-oblivion, and devotion that transformed the
sp ectators into members of a new moral community (sittliche Gemeinschaft) .
In the Berlin Antigone performed in the second year of the war in Nazi
Germany, the spectators became involved through physical sensations and
352 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
experiences that created the possibility of forming an experiential community
quite opposite to the Vo/ks-community and allowed them to reflect on their
own situation. The Frankfurt Antigone, by blinding, shocking, and outraging
the spectators, forced them into a situation where they had to give up their
traditional cultural identity and search for a new one.
It is not by chance that this kind of aesthetic experience-not only allowing
but partly even forcing the spectators to undergo a transformation-was
made possible by productions of Sophocles' Antigone. For, regardless of our
interpretions of the tragedy, we cannot but identify the relationship between
individual and state/community as a core problem. In all three productions,
this relationship was realized as an opposition, albeit in very different ways.
And there can be no doubt that in each case the particular opposition entailed
a political dimension. H owever, this political dimension, in its turn, has to be
related to the politics of building communities and shattering or performing
cultural identities that underlie the productions. The political dimension was
enabled by the particular aesthetic experience which the spectators underwent
in the course of the performance. In the Potsdam Antigone, the aesthetic
experience invalidated any opposition between individual and state by tem­
porarily transforming the spectators into a 'moral community' which, per­
haps, the participants experienced and understood as an anticipation of a
new, more promising Prussia. The Berlin Antigone, by opening a space for
individual reflection, also transformed the spectators into members of a
community-a community that was opposed to the officially proclaimed
Vo/ks-community which demanded complete surrender of the individual to
the community. The Frankfurt Antigone, finally, shattered the traditional
cultural identity, based on the Greek classics, to which the educated middle
classes in particular subscribed again after World War II. The production re­
set the question of cultural identity, its basis, and consequences for an
entertainment and event society that aimed at suffocating the very question
once and for all.
In this context, Antigone proved particularly suitable-not because the
tragedy embodied some universal values that were to be staged in the three
cases under consideration here, but because of the special constellation it
deals with: the unstable and conflicting relationship between individual and
state/community. Since this is a deeply political issue, any production of
Antigone will therefore be 'poli tical'. However, the ways in which it will
be politicized depend on the particular situation and circumstances of a
production as well as on its aesthetic and the specific aesthetic experience it
allows for.
19
From Ancient Greek Drama to
Argentina's ' Dirty War' ; Antigona Furiosa:
On Bodies and the State
Maria Florencia Nelli
I N T R O D U CT I O N
Sophocles' Antigone has been considered since Antiquity as one of the most
'political' plays of Western literature and has therefore been repeatedly used
not only to denounce and condemn the abuses and arbitrary pronounce­
ments of power but also to explo re the complexity of the options society is
presented with against such a power; that is, what would be ethically/politi­
cally/socially/humanely correct to do and what would be safest to do. Anti­
gone's subject and main character have appealed to every culture and
historical period in turn, from I ndia to Africa, from Japan and China to
Latin America, wherever and whenever there happened to be a conflict
between power (an abusive State power) and individual. Argentina has been
no exception. In fact, Argentina's modern history abounds so much with
examples of abusive violent arbitrary State power that it would have been
indeed strange if the figure of Antigone had not emerged here and there in the
pages of its literature, as well as on-stage. 1 One of the most accomplished
Argentinian rewritings of Sophocles' Antigone is Griselda Gambaro's Antigona
Furiosa ('Furious Antigone') . 2 The play was staged in 1 986, after one of
1 Cf. Nelli (2009 ) .
2 It i s more appropriate t o call Gambaro's play a 'rewriting' a n d n o t a 'version' or 'adapta­
tion' of Sophocles' Antigone, since although Gambaro uses Antigone's myth as expressed by
Sophocles and even appropriates many lines from Sophocles' version, she creates something
completely different, writing Antigone's myth again. As Gambaro herself points out: '( . . . ) yo
trabajo mucho con la apropiaci6n, tome este mito como he tornado cualquier historia que ha
llegado a mi por distintas vias. Pero yo sabia que iba a superar la idea de S6focles, en el sentido
de que yo iba a hablar con la voz de una mujer latinoamericana y con las voces de tantas mujeres
que en mi pais han hecho lo mismo que Antigona . . . )' ( . . . I work a lot with appropriation;
354 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
Argentina's most despicable periods o f military rule had ended, the so-called
'El Proceso' (for 'Proceso de Reorganizacion Nacional', Process of National
Reorganization, 1 976-83 ), and precisely during the year in which the trials
of the military leaders involved were coming to an end. Therefore, Antigona
Furiosa can be truly understood and reveal its deepest meaning only when
considered against the background of this period. However, such was the
author's skill that the play also went on to acquire a universal meaning.
Precisely because Gambaro rooted her play so deeply in a very specific period
of Argentine history, she allowed it to go beyond the boundaries of time and
space. As Gambaro herself explains, Antigona Furiosa addresses the theme of
Antigone and incorporates passages belonging both to the original (Sopho­
clean) version and to many other versions to create a new timeless Antigone.
Free from the constraints of time, Antigone is paradoxically able to retell her
story both in her own mythical time and in the present time of the perfor­
mance.3 The reasons for the universality of Antigona Furiosa's claim are better
understood when we take a closer look at its historical background. The
Argentinian 'Proceso' was a totalitarian regime ruling under a state of siege
that extended the use of detention-extermination camps, and as such may be
said to belong to a group of modern 'systems' and 'practices' whose most
prominent characteristics Giorgio Agamben has explored in detail in Homo
Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life ( 1 998) and in The State of Exception
(2005) .
In this chapter, I would like to consider the way i n which some of Agam­
ben's thoughts regarding the state of exception and the figure of the camp,
particularly his reflections on the 'inclusion of the exclusion', the 'threshold',
and the 'living dead man', can be applied to Antigona Furiosa. I am not,
however, referring exclusively to Gambaro's text. It is not only the script of
this play that illustrates and discusses such concepts. Script, stage manage­
ment, and set design were connected so tightly in this production that it is
impossible to analyse the text without taking into account its performance,
just as it was impossible to do so regarding its Sophoclean counterpart.
I took hold of this myth as I have done with every other story that has come to me through
various ways. But I knew I was going to exceed Sophocles' idea, since I was going to talk with the
voice of a Latin-American woman and with the voices of many women that in my country had
done the same as Antigone . . . ), in Navarro Benitez (2001). See also Wannamaker (2001: 73-4) .
Translations of Spanish texts are mine unless stated otherwise.
3 'Antigona furiosa toma el tema de Antigona, entresaca textos de la obra original y de otras
obras, y arma una nueva Antigona fuera de! tiempo para que, parad6jicamente, nos cuente su
historia en su tiempo y en el nuestro'. The text was taken from a very brief introduction to the
play by Gambaro herself included in the flier of the 1988 restaging of Antigona Furiosa at Teatro
Municipal General San Martin.
Antigona Furiosa: On Bodies and the State 355
As I will try to show, it is essentially in a discussion of the design of the
performance space that Agamben's ideas themselves can be fully explored and
represented, and I dare say by means of which they are taken even further in a
clever twist that sets Gambaro's rewriting unquestionably apart from Sopho-
des' version.
T H E P LAY A N D T H E P LAY W R I G H T
Griselda Gambaro is one o f Argentina's most notorious and talented drama­
tists. Her plays have been translated into various languages, as well as studied
and staged all over the world. Gambaro was exiled to Spain in 1 977 after a
presidential decree banned one of her novels, Ganarse la muerte ('To Earn
one's Death' ) , because it was deemed 'contrary to family and social order'.
National official decrees banning plays were practically a euphemism for a
death threat.4 The prohibition meant that the person had been publicly
targeted by the government, that is, incorporated onto a black list and
therefore very likely to be abducted, and in the end to increase an already
very large list of missing people (desaparecidos). 5
Antigona Furiosa was written and staged after Gambaro's return to Argen­
tina. 6 According to Diana Taylor, it belongs to the third stage of Gambaro's
work, which she considers to be divided into three phases: the plays from the
1 960s, the 1 970s, and the 1 980s. 7 From being characterized in the first stage as
'a theatre of crisis' where victims are placed in a strange world they no longer
understand, Gambaro's work is described in the second stage as 'a d rama of
disappearance' where violence becomes utterly visible and everything, from
people to reason, seems to have faded away. Finally, the plays of the third stage
are regarded as a group focusing critically on the sources and results of socio-
4 Cf. Feitlowitz (1991).
5 Carlos Ares (1985) focuses on the banning of Argentinean plays, authors, actors, and
artists during the 'Dirty War', and alludes to the existence of different kinds of 'lists': 'black',
'gr7» and 'white', black lists including artists who had been officially banned (27).
The play was premiered at the Goethe Institute, Buenos Aires, in September 1986. In June
1987 it was restaged at Teatro Nacional Cervantes and in September and October 1988 at Teatro
Municipal General San Martin, both in Buenos Aires. The play was directed by Laura Yusem.
Antigona was played by Bettina Murafia (an actress, but also an accomplished dancer), Cory­
phaeus/Creon by Norberto Vieyra, and Antinous by Ivan Moschner. Costumes by Graciela
Galan, set design by Graciela Galan and Juan Carlos Distefano.
7 Cf. Taylor ( 1989: 17-21, and 1991: 163, 171 ff.) .
356 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
political crisis. 8 Victims and victimizers succeed in differentiating themselves
from each other and victims abandon their passivity to speak out and
condemn the abuses of authority. In these plays, Gambaro tries to decode
the social mechanisms employed by the state to legitimize itself, to autho rize
and justify its abusive practices. Gambaro concentrates on the analysis of the
'reproduction of power systems', as well as on the 'production of legitimizing
fictions' that totalitarian states use as a recurring strategy to secure power. 9
Amongst the plays of this last stage, Antigona Furiosa is a particularly inter­
esting example, not just owing to the way in which Gambaro represents the
new relatio nship between victim and victimizer, or decodes the above­
mentioned mechanisms, or even alludes to concepts such as those of obedi­
ence, disobedience, and responsibility, but because of her interest in (a)
showing the violence of the state over the body, and particularly over the
female body, and (b) exploring the complex relationships between society and
those excluded (and at the same time included) by the state. There is,
however, something else that makes this play particularly special. Gambaro
was a vital part in the production process. Both the director and the set and
costume designers worked very closely with her and were therefore able to
extract as much meaning as possible from the script and express it on-stage.
The design and use of the performance space were so carefully planned that
they lie at the very centre of any discussion of the play, constituting one of the
keys to understanding Antigona Furiosa in all its complexity.
Gambaro has worked with director Laura Yusem and set designer Graciela
Galan in numerous projects. To date they have staged together six of Gam­
baro's plays: La Malasangre ( 1 982, Teatro Olimp ia), Del Sol Naciente ( 1 984,
Teatro Lorange), Antigona Furiosa ( 1 986, Goethe Institute), Penas sin impor­
tancia ( 1 990, Teatro Municipal General San Martln-TMGSM) , La casa sin
sosiego ( 1 992, TMGSM), and Es necesario entender un poco ( 1 995, TMGSM).
There is a kind of implicit understanding between the three women that
appears to be clearly reflected in the superb quality of their artistic work.
Graciela Galan once explained, 'What Griselda writes is like a musical score
that Laura, the actors and I play'. 1 0 Likewise, Laura Yusem commented, 'We
may say that just as with my imagination I extend Griselda's proposals, so too,
with hers Graciela materializes mine'. 1 1
8 Pellettieri (2001: 146-50) considers Gambaro's work in the 1980s to be an example of
what he calls 'critical realism', a variant of 'reflexive realism'.
9 See Taylor (1989: 18-19).
10
Cf. Gilio (1995: 51 ): 'Lo que Griselda escribe es como una partitura musical que Laura, los
actores y yo interpretamos'.
11
Ibid. 52: 'Podria decir que asi como con mi imaginaci6n yo prolongo las propuestas de
Griselda, Graciela, con las suyas, materializa las mias'.
Antigona Furiosa: On Bodies and the State 357
ANT I GONA F URIO SA: T H E E X C LU S I O N I N C LU D E D
Antigona Furiosa opens with the image o f Antigone dressed i n white robes and
wearing a crown of white flowers in her hair, looking very much like a bride.
The dress however looks dirty and the flowers withered. In addition, she does
not move but hangs from a rope, her neck bent at an odd angle. She looks
pretty much like a battered old bride doll, but also like a corpse in a shroud.
After a moment she removes the rope and approaches the other two char­
acters. In Gambaro's version there are only three characters on-stage: Antigo­
ne, the leader of the Chorus, and a new character called Antinous. The three of
them re-enact the whole story by playing all the missing characters. The male
characters sit around a small round table drinking coffee. The events included
in the plot of Sophocles' version are discussed and recalled in their dialogue
as something which occurred some time ago. For Antigone, however, past,
. present, and future blend into a single time: the time of the performance.
A rigid piece of clothing left at the end of the performance on a wheelbarrow
represents power. When the Chorus leader 'wears' it, he assumes the role of
Creon, and with it the power of the totalitarian State.
In Yusem's production, Antigone is placed inside a pyramidal structure that
she never leaves and which separates her from the other two characters
prowling outside the construction. 1 2 Describing it simply as a 'pyramidal
structure', however, fails to convey the real significance of the use of such a
device in this play. The structure is in fact a cage; a cage made of what looks
like iron bars, widely spaced from one another, allowing for perfect visibility:
there is no risk of a single member of the audience missing anything that
happens inside the cage. The play begins then with Antigone's hanging corpse
inside the cage. O nce Antigone 'comes back to life', she paces up and down the
cage throughout the play, never exiting it, locked in like a wild animal.
Antigone appears therefore visually connected to animal life, to pure life.
And it is precisely this image, which I see as so deeply related to Giorgio
Agamben's reflections, that is the point of departure for my own thoughts.
In Homo Sacer, Agamben alludes to the fact that the Greeks had two
different terms to mean 'life': 'zoe, which expressed the simple fact of living
12
For descriptions of the original production of Antigona Furiosa and some photographs, go
to Contreras (1994: 143--8), Feitlowitz (1991: 135), Gambaro (1994: 43), and Taylor (1997: 210-12;
photographs at 214--15). Some photographs were also published in the TMGSM 1988 season's
flier.
358 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
common to all living beings (animals, men, or gods) and bias, which indi­
cated the form or way of living proper to an individual or a group'. 1 3 Zoe,
which Agamben translates as 'pure' or 'bare life', had been originally excluded
from political life. In modern times, however, and especially in the context of
a state of exception, zoe and bias started overlapping and the distinction that
once separated them began to fade. Zoe was finally included in political life
but only through a 'relation of exception', that is to say, by means of its own
exclusion. 14
In Ant£gona Furiosa, Antigone's cave has been replaced by a cage, no longer
hidden, no longer lying outside the performance space, but clearly visible and
placed on a privileged spot at the very centre of the stage. I nside her cage,
_
Antigone appears to be both inside and outside the play, excluded from the
rest by being locked in the cage, but at the same time included precisely by
means of her own exclusion, a fact illustrated in Yusem's production by the
predominant position (and dimensions) of the cage. 1 5
The inclusion o f bare life (Antigone inside the cage) in political life (the
cage inside the performance space) has been considered by Agamben as the
decisive event of modernity, and even as the basis of sovereign power. 1 6
Referring to biopolitics, that is, the power of decision of the State over life,
and particularly over bare life, Agamben states that both the great totalitarian
systems of the twentieth century and the extermination camps constitute
paradigmatic examples of 'modern biopolitics'. 1 7 And this is precisely the
situation that constitutes the background against which Ant£gona Furiosa was
created and needs to be interpreted. 1 8
On 24 March 1 976, Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla headed a
military coup d'etat which deposed President Isabel Peron. The coup was
regarded by many as a necessary measure against the country's internal
13 Agamben ( I 998: I ).
14 Ibid. 9, 18.
15 The impressive size of the structure in relation to the dimension of the theatre can be seen
in the set design plans for the staging of the play at Teatro Municipal General San Martin ( Cunill
.
Cabanellas Audito�u m ) . Each of the pyramid's sides was 4.50 metres long, in an auditorium
only 2.70 metres high. Even though the auditorium was much bigger than that, there were only
1.50 n: etres left between each side of the pyramid and the audience. That is to say, the pyramid
occupied most of the performance space and was placed so close to the public that the effect was
that of an ev: n more imposing 'building'. This also allowed a somehow grotesque effect: the
. events that occurred during the 'Dirty War' and the atrocities committed during that period, cf.
extravagant d1mens10ns of the pyramid emphasized the fact that it was impossible to miss it; the
who �e structure was practically falling upon the audience. Argentine society, however, had been
�
loo ng at a much bigger 'pyramid' and had incredibly failed to notice it.
Agamben (1998: 4, 6).
17 See ibid. 4, 119 ff.
18 For an analysis of the historical background to the play, see Wannamaker's enlightening
article ( 200I ) .
Antigona Furiosa: O n Bodies and the State 359
con flicts, and was even well received and supported by some sectors of
Argentine society. A military Junta was formed, announcing a campaign
against Argentine left-wing terrorism later to be known as the 'Dirty War'.
In its first year, the m ilitary government carried out the most violent repres­
sion. This led to thousands of deaths, missing people, political prisoners, and
exiles. The repression did not stop after the eradication of subversive armed
groups such as the so-called ' Montoneros' or 'Ejercito Revolucionario del
Pueblo'. It also extended to socialist politicians, journalists, writers, musicians,
artists, priests, trade union leaders, groups fighting for human rights, parents
demanding the return of their children, students and teenagers with socialist
ideas, and whoever seemed to the government to somehow oppose the
totalitarian regime. The previous democratic government had issued a decree
allowing the Armed Forces to annihilate subversive activities all over the
country. This decree became a death sentence for a whole generation of
Argentinians, and was used by the ensuing totalitarian State to legally justify
the arbitrary use of force against the population. 1 9 Agamben's words could
not be more appropriate to this regime: 'modern totalitarianism can be
defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal
civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adver­
saries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be
integrated into the political system'. 20
Just as the state of exception seems to be the modern paradigm of govern­
ment, the camp appears as the absolute biopolitical space par excellence. 2 1
The camp is created out of the state of exception and constitutes its spatial
representation. The camp is not only a space outside the normal order,
moreover, created through the suspension of normal order, but a space
governed by a 'relation of exception', that is, included by means of its own
exclusion. According to Agamben, the camp is the space where law and fact,
inside and outside, possible and impossible, allowed and forbidden, become
indistinguishable. The camp constitutes a threshold between life and death,
and those who have entered the camp become nothing but pure life. Deprived
of all their rights and political status, they become homines sacres. 22 The
1 9 For a full account on Argentinean history of the twentieth century, especially the period
1 976-83, go to 'Appendix 2' in Graham-Jones (2000: 184-98). For a detailed account of the
the report of CONADEP (1986). See also Osiel (2001 ) . For a testimony on life at a detention
camp and an analysis of the relevance of the camp as a vital part of the totalitarian State
in Argentina, see Calveiro (2004).
2° Cf. Agamben (2005: 2; see also 50-1).
21 Agamben ( 1 998: 122-3 ).
22
Cf. Ibid. 1998: 159; 166 ff.
360 Translations, Adaptations, Performance

threshold between life and death, the 'no-man's land' that constitutes the
camp, is represented in Antigona Furiosa precisely by the cage. 23 The cage is
1 Antlgona Furiosa: On Bodies and the State

everything can be 'seen', in an almost obscene way: from the battle between
brothers and the corpse of Polynices (the desaparecido, represented by a
shroud) to Antigone's burial rites; from the interior of Antigone's cave (the
36 1

the place of both exclusion and inclusion of Antigone in the performance

camp) to Antigone's and Haemon's suicides. In Sophocles' version, Polynices'
space; it is the place where Antigone is both alive and dead, where she is
body lay outside the walls of Thebes and Antigone had to go off-stage to
reborn and killed again, where the body of Polynices lies, outside but inside
perform the burial rites. The cave was off-stage as well, and so she had to leave
politics and society; where all begins and ends. Inside the cage there is nothing
the performance space to enter it. By contrast, in Gambaro's version, both
but bare life, no longer bios but only zoe.
Antigone and Polynices' corpse are at the centre of the stage; they never leave.
Argentinian so-called 'detention camps' were in fact torture and extermi­
Nothing occurs off-stage, where the audience may be able not to witness. To see
nation camps. People were abducted from their homes, usually at night but
or not to see (or pretend not to have seen) becomes the audience's conscious
sometimes in broad daylight, and then taken to a camp to be ' interrogated'.
decision. Precisely because it does not use the script but the staging to do this,
But the location of these camps was not publicized. 24 Those abducted were
Gambaro's version illustrates society's responsibility, not in a directly re­
made to disappear from view, in the vast majority of cases never to be seen
proachful way, but very subtly. Desaparecidos had not disappeared magically
again. They became 'desaparecidos'. Like Agamben's ' VPs' ( Versuchspersonen),
and left society; they remained at its very centre, j ust like the cage. It depended
desaparecidos dwelt in the no-man's land between life and death. 25
on members of the society as to whether or not they were willing/prepared to
Deliberately defying the situation of both the camp and the desaparecidos,
acknowledge their existence. Antinous' comment is symbolic: ' I don't want to
where any attempt at seeing had been intentionally impeded, Gambaro's play
see it. I've already seen too much!' ( 1 46). 27
sought to exacerbate vision and visibility. 2 6 Everything happens on-stage;
Antigone realizes that she stands on the threshold between life and death
(the cave/cage/camp) : 'I will be separated from both humans and those who
23 No�ris (2000: 4 1 ) acknowledges the presence of the word 'threshold' time and again in
died, uncounted among the living and among the dead. I will disappear from
Agamben s teX: . �ga?1ben defines the concept of threshold as 'a passage that cannot be the world, alive' ( 1 52). She refers to her entering the cave as a future action,
completed, a d1stmctlon that can be neither maintained nor eliminated', as a 'no-man's land but in fact she announces it standing in the middle of that very same cave. The
between life and death'.
. .
24 c amps were, however, msi'd e th e city, many of them even visible. The camp was not
future which Antigone refers to is already the past at the time of the perfor­
.
outside, far away, where n?body could co me across it. It lay at the very centre of the city, in the
. .
mance. The cage as a threshold has become a zone of 'undifferentiation', o f
form of an mnocent-l?oking gara ge, fo '. instance. The film Olimpo Garage (1999), an Argenti­
. 'indistinction'. 28 By standing o n the threshold, those dwelling in the cage/
nean, French, and ltahan product10n, directed by Marcho Bechis and written by M. Bechis and
L. Fremder, tells the story of Maria, a young militant during the 'Dirty War', who is abducted camp are separated from those simply 'living': 'Except for Polynices, whose
and taken to a detention camp that incredibly happens to be a garage in the middle of the busy death he redoubles, Creon kills only the living' ( 1 42). Polynices does not
life of Buenos Aires. belong to the living; he is a 'living dead man'. 29 It is precisely the uncertain
25 Unbelievably, those were precisely the terms used by the de facto president himself to talk
abo�t the desaparecidos: 'as long as (somebody) is missing (desaparecido), they cannot have any character of those dwelling on the threshold that makes it possible to kill them
partJCula '. treatment, they a;e an enigma, a desaparecido, they do not have an entity, they are not without actually committing murder. They become homines sacres. 'We will
there, neither �ead nor ahve, they are desaparecidos'. The text is a transcript from a radio be cleared of her death', the Coryphaeus says, 'and she will have no contact
b �oadc�st pubhshed on 14 Decemb�r 1979 by the Argentinean newspaper Clarin (Buenos
.
�r:s): . pero m1entras sea desaparecido no puede tener ningun tratamiento especial, es una
with the living' ( 1 53). Similar to the figure of homo sacer, Antigone may be
mcogmta, es un desaparecido, no tiene entidad, no esta, ni muerto ni vivo, esta desaparecido'.
26•
•
Clea'.ly associated with animal life, with pure, bare life, Antigone is placed inside a cage
.
JUSt hke am�als m a zoo. They are also placed in cages at the centre of the scene for people to see
them. That is why people go to the zoo, to see the animals. Accordingly, the audience has come conflict arises: we do not want to see that. But that is happening in front of our own eyes. The
to the theatre to see Antigone, and Antigone has been placed there to be seen. There is a kind of dimensions of the cage start operating in our perception. Can we possibly pretend not to see?
self-referential allusion to the desire to see that is associated with theatre. The writer, the Cf. also Taylor (1997: 212-13).
7
dire�tor, and the set designer play with the concept of theatricality, of seeing, of spectacle. The 2
English quotations of Gambaro's text come from Feitlowitz {1991). The play was origi­
audience goes to the show to see, to be a spectator, and gets trapped in the middle of a spectacle
nally published in Spanish in Gambaro {1989) Tea tro 3. For reasons of space, the Spanish text
they are ?ot so sure they want to see (something very similar to what happens in Gambaro's
will not be quoted here.
Inform_ at1on for Foreigners). Antigone in her cage is both the actress they have come to see and 28
For the use of these terms, see Agamben (1998, especially 18) .
the ammal they were not expecting to see. The audience is forced to see her as such as bare life
29 Norris (2000: 50). See below.
placed in the space society has allocated her, included through her own exclusi;n. But the�
 Antigona Furiosa: On Bodies and the State 363
362 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
ourselves!' replies the Coryphaeus ironically, laughing ( 1 37), but the irony
killed without been killed. Considering that, Antinous' reply makes perfect
happens to be deeply rooted in truth.
sense: 'What wisdom! What is, is not; we will kill and not kill her' ( 1 53).
The two men do not j ust sit at one table throughout the play; they move
It is worth noticing, in this sense, the way in which Antfgona Furiosa seems
around the cage from table to table. The circularity of the movement and the
to trivialize the whole situation from the beginning. When the play opens,
fact that the cage ( threshold/cave/camp) is ever present and visible from
three small round coffee tables with two chairs each appear surrounding the
=

each and every table constitutes a truly meaningful use of the performance
cage. They have been placed very close to the audience, virtually blending into
space, as well as an illustration of the twist I referred to at the beginning of this
it. 30 The two men are sitting at one of the tables drinking coffee and chatting.
chapter. 33 It is not only a way of including the audience in the performance
They seem to be at a coffee bar. Cafes are a very characteristic feature of
space ( i.e. they are sitting all around the cage as are the two men, and 'move'
Buenos Aires; they are part of the city landscape, sprouting everywhere. 3 1
around with them), but also a way of including the audience in the action:
Th ey form part of the social and cultural life o f the city. There are even tangos
_ they are part of the 'society' surrounding the cage. Moreover, it visually
wntten about Buenos Aires' cafes and their busy lives. Everybody meets at the
illustrates the fact that the cage/cave/camp lies at the very heart of that society,
cafe, 'el cafe', 'el cafetin', and political life is the compulsory subject of these
a fact that the society cannot escape: they cannot get rid of the structure once
meetings. Everythin·g is discussed at the cafe, and therefore everything gets
they have set it up. They can close their eyes and pretend not to see it, but the
trivialized at the cafe as well. The first image the audience meets with is a cage
structure will remain there, the exclusion included, disturbingly (in)visible.
in the middle of the scene with a woman hanging inside, and outside the cage
a couple of men drinking coffee, one of them playing with a straw and a paper
napkin, making little paper flowers. The contrast is truly significant. The two
men seem to continue with their normal lives, chatting lazily at a cafe.
Meanwhile, at the centre of the scene, terrible things have happened/are C O DA . O N B O D I E S A N D T H E S TAT E
happening/are going to happen. The first words of the play guide the audi­
ence's perception and interpretation of the whole drama. Noticing Antigone, Antfgona Furiosa is a play with an annular structure. It begins at its end and
who has just come back to life, the Coryphaeus says: 'Who is that? Ophelia?' ends at its beginning. It opens with Antigone dead and closes with the death
The men laugh. And then, 'Waiter, another coffee!' ( 1 3 7 ) . Everything is taken of Antigone. 34 Antigone's death is also represented as a circular event. This
to be not only theatrical but trivial: the hanged woman, the cage, what circularity has been interpreted by Wannamaker (200 1 ) both as a reminder o f
happens inside the cage. Everything is visible, is part of a spectacle, and as the bodies of desaparecido�always looked for, never found-and a s a repre­
such can be treated as fiction. 3 2 Things are not really happening, they do not sentation of their mothers (Mothers of Plaza de Mayo), walking tirelessly i n
exist, and as such they do not need to be taken seriously. One can understand circles around the square claiming for their missing children. It also alludes to
then why coffee looks as dark as poison to Antigone. 'Yes, we're poisoning a lack of closure: Antigone's death is cyclic; it is re-enacted over and over again
just like the mourning of the Mothers. 35 The circularity of the narrative,
however, may be also interpreted as strongly connected to the circularity of
3° Contreras (1994: 144). the setting, that is to say, to the circular enclosure formed by the audience and
31 Costumes are significant in this sense too. Both men wear modem street clothes, meaning the two men surrounding the cage. Antigone is trapped inside the cage, just as
that they can be taken as members of the audience. They actually blend into the audience. They
are anchored to a certain time unlike Antigone, who wears white clothes with no particular
the cage is 'trapped' inside the circle formed by the audience-society; both
features and remams _ _
therefore a timeless character. Language register, on the other hand, cage and audience 'trapped' inside the circle formed by the cyclic perfor­
f�atures importantly in this play, and also helps identify the space represented on-stage. The mance.36
?1alect spoken by the three characters is unmistakeably Rioplatense Spanish: they use 'vos' (you)
mst�ad of 'tu' (you) , 'ustedes' (you pl.) instead of 'vosotros' (you pl.), and distinctive verb
e�dmgs for both �he second person singular and plural, apart from many characteristic idioms.
. 33 For more information on the circularity of the play, see below.
Rioplatens� Spamsh 1s t� b e found only in Argentina and Uruguay. The language ties the play to
_ not Greece or anywhere else in the world. 34 Contreras (1994: 144).
a very specific place. This 1s
3 5 Wannamaker (2001: 77-8).
. 32 There are many instances of self-referentiality in the play. One of the most straightforward
. 36 Despite the Greek intertext, the performance visually resembles more a Roman arena than
is the response of Antmous to the Coryphaeus' speech playing a penitent Creon: ' Bravo!' ( 1 58). a Greek amphitheatre, with all the implications a Roman arena may have.
After that, Coryphaeus bows.
 Antigona Furiosa: On Bodies and the State 365
364 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
The circular death of Antigone, with no clear distinction between begin­ compliance with power.40 The bowl of water represents Antigone's life, and
ning and end, is taken for granted from the start. Antigone's death is a fact. Antigone's life is supposed to end when the bowl empties. She is supposed to
The 'State' has decided on her life and her death. Referring to medical die of thirst and hunger, yet Antigone decides differently and chooses not only
experiments carried out on a person condemned to death, Norris (2000), the manner but also the time of her own death. She refuses to die how and
quoting Agamben, alludes to the fact that such a prisoner can be defined as a when the State has decreed she should die, and by hanging herself furiously,
'living dead man'. From the moment he has been condemned, he says, 'he has she deceives the State and deprives it of total control over her body. The play
essentially already lost his life. As far as the law is concerned his life is no finishes with this very last act of resistance, and 'the rest is silence'.
longer his own'. And therefore 'it is precisely as he awaits execution that he
remains alive: his life remains only to be taken from him in the moment of
40 Antigone's act compares to hunger strikes in prisons and detention camps, where the only
punishment'.37 Antigone is a 'living dead man'. She has been sentenced to possible place of resistance is constituted in the prisoner's own body.
death and therefore her life does not belong to her anymore. Given that her
death is inescapable and that she remains alive only while awaiting 'execution',
the question is not whether she will live, but how she will die and when.
Although she has been deprived of making any decision on her life, she still
has the power to decide on her death. And this is how Antigona Furiosa ends:

Antigone: Thirst. (She touches the earthen bowl, lifts it and brings it to her lips.
Freezes.) I will drink and stay thirsty, my lips will grow slack, my tongue will grow
thick like that of a mute animal. No. I refuse this bowl of mercy that masks their
cruelty. (Slowly, she turns it upside down.) Mouth moist with my own saliva, I will
go to my death. And you will come running and lean on your sword. I didn't know. I
was born to share love, not hate . 38 (long pause) But hate rules. (furious) The rest is
silence! (She kills herself, with fury) . 39 ( 1 59)

Once she has been robbed of all her civil/political rights, once she has entered
the threshold between life and death and become bare life, having been
sentenced to death, the only thing she has left is her own body. By refusing
to drink the water the State has provided her with, she defiantly challenges the
decision of the State over her (bare) life, which includes the decision over her
body. Throwing away the bowl of water represents a symbolic act of resis­
tance, of rebellion, just as drinking from that bowl would have implied

37 Norris (2000: SO).

38 According to Reisz ( 1995: 1 01 ff.), Gambaro's play deconstructs stereotyped sexual roles,
echoing, but at the same time subverting, the collective discourse. Love and fear, considered as
passions constitutive of the feminine, are replaced by hate, pride, bravery, and especially fury,
passions traditionally attributed to men. Gambaro's is a deconstructingly 'furious' Antigone.
39 Consistent with its meta-theatrical representation, the play begins with Ophelia's and
ends with Hamlet's words. The play reflects on its own theatricality: this is a piece of theatre, a
spectacle, and as such has to be considered both individually and as a part of a long tradition.
Cf. Pelletieri (1991: 121-3) on Yusem's directing techniques and her constant focus on 'the
theatricality of theatre'.

20
'
Revolutionary Muse: Femi Os6fisan's
Tegonni: An African Antigone1
Astrid Van Weyenberg
The popularity of Sophocles' Antigone within Western literature, art, and
thought has been d iscussed at length, most famously by George Steiner,
who classifies it as 'one of the most enduring and canonic acts in the history
of our philosophic, literary, political consciousness'.2 Antigone's contempo­
rary popularity is particularly striking on the African stage, where various
playwrights have given Sophocles' classic relevance within a variety of set­
tings.3 In this chapter, I will focus on a reworking by Nigerian playwright Femi
Os6fisan, titled Tegimni: An African Antigone ( 1994) . 4 I will first look at
Os6fisan's decision to draw on Sophocles within the context of contemporary
Nigeria. Then, I will discuss Antigone's representative value within her 'new'
surroundings, the ( meta)theatrical aesthetics that characterize her cultural
translocation and, fi nally, the political implications of this translocation for
Antigone's status as a Western canonical figure.
THE CHOICE FOR ANTIGONE
As Kevin J. Wetmore states, Antigone is a text that 'can be adapted into any
situation in which a group is oppressed, or in which, in the aftermath of
1 An earlier version of this chapter was published in the Journal of African Literature and
Culture: A Widening Frontier, ed. Charles Smith (2007: 59-80).
2 Steiner (1984, preface).
3 See Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Odale's Choice (1967); Athol Fugard, The Island (1973);
Femi Os6fisan, Tegonni: an African Antigone (1994); Sylvain Bemba, Black Wedding Candles for
Blessed Antigone (1990; originally published in French in 1988 under the t itle Noces Posthumes.de
Santigone). Though Brathwaite is originally Barbadian, his Oda/e's Choice is set in Africa and
was first produced in the newly independent Ghana, see Gilbert and Tompkins ( 1996: 42-3) . For
a discussion on Antigone in West Africa, see Gibbs (2005).
4 Further references are to the text as published by Os6fisan in Recent Outings: com prising
Tegonni: an African Antigone and Many Colours Make the Thunder-King ( 1999a).
Revolutionary Muse: Os6fisan's Tegonni 367
struggle, the forces of community and social order come into conflict with the
forces of personal liberty'. 5 Os6fisan's Tegonni well fits this description. It is set
in Nigeria under British colonial rule, but also refers to the military dictator­
ships that have held Nigeria in its grip almost incessantly ever since its
independence from Britain in 1960.6 Tegonni was first produced in 1994 at
Emory University in Atlanta (Georgia, USA), which Os6fisan was visiting
during one of the most chaotic periods in Nigerian history, following the
military junta's violent intervention and annulment of the presidential elec­
tions of 1993. 7 In the production notes, Os6fisan explains that Tegonni is
intended to 'look at the problem of political freedom against the background
of the present turmoil in Nigeria-my country-where various military
governments have continued for decades now to thwart the people's desire
for democracy, happiness, and good government'. 8
The fi nal form of the play and the idea to draw on Antigone shaped itself in
Os6fisan's mind when he approached Lagos airport to fly to Atlanta, driving
past 'burning houses, mounted placards, and screaming police and military
vehicles'. He writes:
I remembered the story of the British colonisation of Nigeria and the defeat of my
ancestors. And I remembered the valiant story of Antigone. The two events-one
from history, the other from myth-would help me add my voice to the millions of
other small voices in Africa, all shouting unheard and pleading to be set free-voices
that are waiting desperately for help from friends in the free world. 9
As this passage demonstrates, Os6fisan explicitly directs Tegonni at a Western
audience, but not only to appeal for their help, for he also explicitly holds
Britain, France, and Germany responsible for selling their conscience and
10
supporting the military dictatorship to safeguard their economic interests.
Os6fisan's address to the West does not mean that he absolves Nigerians
themselves from responsibility for their country's crisis. At the heart of the
Nigerian predicament, he diagnoses a 'distorted consciousness' that shows
itself in 'collective amnesia and inertia, in cowardice, and in inordinate horror
5 Wetmore (2002: 170-- 1).
6 Nigeria became a Republic in 1963 but, with the exception of the short-lived second
republic between 1979 and 1983, the country was ruled by military dictators until 1999, when
Olusegun Obasanjo (who had been a military dictator from 1976-9 himself) was declared the
new democratically elected president.
7 The first performance of Tegonni in J'.!igeria was at the Arts Theatre of the University of
Ibadan in November 1998, directed by Os6fisan himself. Since then, the play has been
performed in Nigeria a number of times (Os6fisan, May 2006, from personal correspondence).
8 Os6fisan (l 999a: 11).
9 Ibid. 10.
IO
Ibid. 10.
368 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
of insurrection'. 11 It is this distorted consciousness, which is largely a distorted
historical consciousness whose anaesthetic force disables change, that Os6fi­
l Revolutionary Muse: Os6fisan's Tegonni
san sets out to heal from within. Accordingly, his theatrical practice is
characterized by a critical re-evaluation of the past as a prerequisite for
socio-political change in the p resent. Within a context of oppression, more­
over, this calls for a special strategy, which Os6fisan describes as 'surreptitious
insurrection': a way for the 'dissenting artist' to 'triumph through the gift of
metaphor and magic, parody and parable, masking and mimicry'; a 'covert
and metaphoric system of manoeuvring' with which the terror of the state can
be confronted and demystified.12 Performance, then, becomes such a 'surrep­
titious' strategy by which to circumvent repression but also actively attack it.
In line with his project of re-evaluating the past, Os6fisan does not set
Tegonni in contemporary Nigeria, but instead situates it towards the end of
the nineteenth century, at the height of colonial expansion. By enacting a
moment of socio-political change set within this past, performance becomes a
way to transform history into an active site where a renewed (historical)
consciousness may start to take shape. Performance, to d raw on Wendy
Brown's words, thus literally 'opens the stage for battling with the past over
possibilities for the future'.13 Because, as Os6fisan explains in an article on
'Theatre and the Rites of Post-Negritude Remembering':
by continuously juxtaposing scenes from myth and history; from the p resent and the
past; and from the play's present, and the real present, . . . the audience is made aware
all the time of the options available, and those chosen . . . . The intention is to turn the
stage into a problematic space of ideological conflict, through which the audience can
see itself mirrored and, possibly, energized in its struggle with history. 14
Another way in which Os6fisan explores different ideological positions and
socio-political problems is by borrowing from and challenging antecedent
texts. His dramaturgy is characterized by such recourse to existing plays, from
both the Western and the Nigerian theatre tradition. Thus, he engages with
Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in his Oriki the Grasshopper ( 198 1),
with Wole Soyinka's The Strong Breed in his No More the Wasted Breed
( 1982), with J. P. Clark-Bekederemo's The Raft in his Another Raft ( 1988),
with Shakespeare's Hamlet in his Wes6o Hamlet! (2003) and with Euripides'
Trojan Women in his Women of Owu (2004). Os6fisan gives his re-workings
both local and political relevance. The first is achieved by drawing heavily on
11 '
Os6fisan (1998b: 15-16).
12
Ibid. 11.
13 Brown (2001: 151).
14 ' 17
Os6fisan (1999b: 9).
369
myths, rituals, songs, proverbs, and parables taken from the Yoruba tradition
in which he was brought up; the latter by subjecting these traditional elements
to constant re-evaluation, releasing them from their possible repressive
weight and granting them contemporary socio-political relevance. An exam­
ple in Tegonni is the inclusion of the Yoruba parable of the Tiger and the Frog,
teaching a moral that in the context of contemporary Nigeria acquires great
political bearing: 'the one who was swallowed gained a throne, while the one
who usurped power fell to disgrace'. 1 5 Tradition, then, is not treated as
something that is grounded outside of history or that has no political viability
but, instead, as something that has a place within the (political) present.
A place, however, in need of continuous reconsideration.
THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION
The main question Sophocles poses in Antigone is whose claim is more 'just':
that of Antigone, who stays true to the laws of the gods and her private
morality, or Creon, who insists on the superiority of the laws of the State and
public morality instead. In a chapter on tragedy and politics, Suzanne Said
explains that in fifth-century-Be Athens, such on-stage negotiation between
conflicting interests and ideologies had an important didactic function, since
it represented the dialectic of the political process held high in the young
democracy of Athens. 16 Tragedy, then, primarily served to instruct audience
members in the art of debate. In Os6fisan's adaptation, written within a
context of oppression that forbids such debate, the confrontation between
Creon and Antigone acquires a different relevance: within this larger field of
injustice, the Sophoclean complexity of the conflict is reduced, and the ethical
question of justification is rendered irrelevant. With regard to Tegonni, it is
therefore more constructive to think of Antigone not so much as the character
from Sophocles' tragedy, but rather as a concept, a concept that has travelled
widely through philosophy, art, and literature and, while travelling, has taken
on different forms, shapes, and meanings. 17 In Os6fisan, she has travelled to
Nigeria, where she becomes a representative of the struggle against oppres­
sion.
Nonetheless, Os6fisan does structure his play along the lines of Antigone, so
that the 'valiant story of Antigone' is transformed into that of Tegonni,
5 '
1 Os6fisan ( l 999a: 100).
16 Boedeker and Raaflaub (1999: 282).
See Mieke Bal (2002).
370 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
princess of the imaginary Yoruba town of Oke-Osun . 1 8 Creon, in turn,
becomes the British colonial Governor Carter Ross, who rules the town
with an iron hand. Os6fisan departs from Sophocles' ambiguous character­
presentation. Accordingly, his Governor becomes the undisguised representa­
tive of brutal colonial oppression, a man who longs for the time when 'you
knew you were right, because you believed in the Cross and in the Empire'
and 'You hammered the Union Jack down their throats, and made them sing
"God Save the Queen"! For if you didn't do that, they would quickly resort to
barbarism, to cannibalism, to living apes'. 19 Sensing the dawn of a new
'enfeebled' age, Os6fisan's Governor obsessively clings to the historicist view
that, as Dipesh Chakrabarty explains, enabled European colonialism in the
first place. After all, since historicism 'posited historical time as a measure of
the cultural distance (at least in institutional development) that was assumed
to exist between the West and the non-West', it was essential to the construc­
tion of colonial otherness, while it also legitimized the idea of civilization in
the colonies.20 Os6fisan's Governor frequently expresses this view, for instance
when he loudly proclaims that it is because of people like him that civilization
acquires its destiny, while also shamelessly stating that 'we're just here to give
the orders, it's the niggers who do the fighting'.21
Unlike Sophocles' Creon, who only comes to power after Antigone's
brothers have died, Os6fisan's Governor is actively engaged in the civil war
and eagerly applies the strategy of divide-and-rule by supporting one of
Tegonni's brothers with his army and treating the other as his enemy and
forbidding his burial. Like Antigone before her, Tegonni disregards his decree
and sets out to bury her brother's body. I mportantly, the Governor not only
represents brutal colonial force, but also refers to the military dictatorships
that have held Nigeria in its grip for so many decades. Similarly, Tegonni is
more than the unambiguous symbol of resistance against colonial oppression,
as she also becomes the agent of social and emancipatory change in a
repressive traditional society. Thus, Os6fisan not only offers a critique of
the colonial, but also of the post-colonial condition, though it might be more
precise to add that he in fact demonstrates that these two categories are not as
easily distinguishable as they are often made out to be. Showing the ways in
which the past still haunts the present, Os6fisan engages with problems that
18 Os6fisan ( 1999a: 10).
19 Ibid. 131.
2° Chakrabarty (2000: 7).
21
Os6fisan ( 1999a: 131-2, 60). For a helpful note on the term 'historicism', see Chakrabarty
(2000: 22-3).
Revolutionary Muse: Os6fisan's Tegonni 37 1
are painfully familiar to his contemporary Nigerian audience, thereby calling
for their active engagement.
Like Sophocles' heroine, princess Tegonni is presented as different, as
someone who refuses to play according to the rules of the patriarchal society
in which she finds herself. She is the founder of the first Guild of Women
Casters and practises a trade fo rmerly unknown and not allowed to women.
Rather than propagating a return to an idealized pre-colonial past, Os6fisan
paints an unromantic picture of a society that not only needs to break free
from colonial oppression, but also from repressive traditional forces. Tradi­
tion, like history, becomes something to be battled with, and Tegonni and her
sisters take on this battle. With regard to Os6fisan's larger oeuvre, this is not
surprising because almost all of his plays portray women as agents of social
reconstruction. In his view, the empowerment of women is crucial to the
prospective programme of liberation and modernization. 22
In Sophocles, there is no definite answer to the question whether Anti­
gone's act of defying Creon is motivated by the desire for social change or
whether it primarily stems from individual knowledge and interest. Her
political reproach of Creon's 'one-man rule', causing the citizens of Thebes
to 'lock up their tongues', could suggest the former.23 However, it is equally
significant that Antigone ultimately acts alone, without any apparent support
from her fellow citizens, without the support even of her sister Ismene.
Os6fisan's play leaves no such ambiguity: his African Antigone, Tegonni,
succeeds in unifying a group of women and her private act of defiance
acquires collective relevance as it turns into a struggle for freedom from
colonial oppression and for societal change.
In a way, the stark contrast between Tegonni and the Governor seems to
challenge Os6fisan's intention of eliciting his audience's active and critical
engagement. After all, it permits an escape into the simplistic Manichean
opposition of colonizer versus colonized which, in turn, reinforces rather
than heals the distorted consciousness Os6fisan wishes to correct. However,
Os6fisan moderates this opposition by including the romantic relationship
between Tegonni and colonial officer Allan Jones, a relationship that is more
prominent and more developed than that between Antigone and Haimon in
Sophocles. Though the character Jones is set in opposition to the Governor,
he does not simply embody all that is good and honourable. On the one hand,
he is portrayed as sympathetic, kind-hearted, and generous and, importantly,
as the one who protected Tegonni when she set up her bronze-casting
workshop and was taken for a witch by her own people. This means that, to
22 Onwueme (1988: 25).
23 Gibbons and Segal (2003: 556).

372 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
a great extent, Jones (the colonizer) facilitated (the colonized) Tegonni's
emancipation in Oke-Osun's male-dominated society, which complicates
the opposition between colonizer and colonized. But Jones is also presented
as essentially powerless, too weak to stand up to the Governor, too careful to
avoid confrontation, and too eager to settle for compromise.
Though the love between Tegonni and Jones suggests the possibility of
bridging racial, political, and cultural boundaries, their marriage seems
doomed from the start, and within the colonial context, their idea that it
could remain outside of the political sphere seems rather nai:ve. The Governor
is, of course, well aware of the marriage's political implications. His fatherly
affection for Jones, echoing the relationship between Haimon and Creon in
Sophocles, soon changes into a loathing for Jones's impotence as an imperial
officer: 'You thought you were being a fucking hero, didn't you!' he shouts at
him, 'You'll marry a nigger woman, and show us all! Teach us a lesson perhaps
about the equality of races! Rebuild the world with your penis!'24 The union
between colonizer and colonized and white and black symbolizes a transgres­
sive moment in history that the Governor, as the representative of Empire, is
obviously not comfortable with. But neither are most people of Oke-Osun.
Tegonni's sisters do wholeheartedly encourage it, but Os6fisan invites his
audience to contemplate for what reasons. It is interesting, after all, that the
support of Tegonni's most committed sister, Kunbi, seems to depend largely
on the political usefulness of the marriage. She says: 'Just think of what the
town as a whole will gain by having a whiteman as our in-law, rather than our
antagonist! 'W_e will be feared and respected by all our neighbours'.25 Through
this remark Os6fisan forces his audience to recognize that the opposition
between oppressor and oppressed can never be neatly drawn and that resis­
tance, no matter how committed it may be, is always to some extent informed
by complicity.26
Although I stated earlier that Os6fisan, in making the co nflict between
Creon and Antigone representative of that between oppressor and oppressed,
reduces the complexity of Sophocles' original, the previous analysis shows
that this does not make his play simplistic. Rather, the different political
context requires that different questions are posed and that complexity is to
be found elsewhere, most importantly in the way Os6fisan complicates the
opposition of oppressor and oppressed, extending it to represent more than
24 -
Os6fisan (1999a: 120 1) .
25 Ibid. 22.
6
2 The complicity of resistance with the workings of power is discussed by Spivak (1993).
Reviewing Michel Foucault's analysis of 'pouvoir/savoir', Spivak proposes a reading of power
and resistance as not merely repressive and liberating, but as mutually dependent mechanisms
in a shared complex field of forces.
Revolutionary Muse: Os6fisan's Tegonni 373
the binary colonizer-colonized and also have it refer to contemporary politi­
cal power structures. Additionally, rather than posing answers, Os6fisan
invites his audience to critically re-evaluate the past and become actively
involved in changing their future.
PE R FO R MI N G A NTI GONE
Os6fisan not only structures his entire play along the lines of Antigone, telling
the story of, as the title suggests, an African Antigone, but he also metathea­
trically brings Antigone on stage to interact with her African twin-sister. The
word 'metatheatre' encompasses all forms of theatrical self-reference, all the
ways in which plays call attention to their own theatricality, through devices
such as story-telling, the play-within-the-play and role-play. Gilbert and
Tompkins explain that for post-colonial playwrights, metatheatre holds
great political potential, because it presents ways to not merely re-play, but
also re-negotiate and re-work past and present:
Metatheatre reminds us that any performance stages the necessary provisionality of
representation . ... By developing multiple self- reflexive discourses through role play­
ing, role doubling/splitting, plays within plays, interventionary frameworks, and other
metatheatrical devices, post-colonial works interrogate received models of theatre at
the same time as they illustrate, quite self-consciously, that they are acting out their
own histories/identities in a complex replay that can never be finished or final. 27
Metatheatre, then, is not only a constructive method of engaging with the
politics of (self-) representation, but also offers ways to reconstruct past and
present. It is therefore not surprising that metatheatre not only features in
Os6fisan's re-working of Antigone, but that it is characteristic of his entire
oeuvre. Many critics analyse this in Brechtian terms, but it is important to
realize that, despite Brecht's significant influence on Os6fisan's dramaturgy,
metatheatrical techniques are equally characteristic of indigenous African
performance practices.28
In her study on the metatheatrical device of role-play in South African
theatre, Haike Frank points out that the effectiveness of role-play on stage has
to do with its power to confront audiences with their (different) knowledges
and experiences of role-play off-stage, knowledges and experiences which
27 Gilbert and Tompkins ( 1 996: 23).
28 Richards ( 1 996: 72).
374 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
make them especially susceptible to recognizing the performative potential of
role-play to bring about change.29 Frank's study can be extended to any
society negatively based on role definition, where groups of people are
oppressed because of class, religion, sex, or race, where people are forced to
perform and conform to certain imposed roles. It also applies well to the
Nigerian context of Os6fisan. The scene from Tegonni that best illustrates this
is one in which the character Antigone orders her retinue to change roles and
play members of the Hausa constabulary, the army that the British raised to
colonize West Africa. Experiencing that playing soldiers is 'no fun at all',
because all they do is carry corpses, build execution platforms, terrorize
people, and collect bribes, the actors soon ask Antigone for different parts,
after which she promises them a scene in which they can change roles again.30
Antigone, then, takes on the role of theatre director and imposes roles on her
attendants, roles that they do not want to perform. Roles, moreover, that not
only refer to the military forces in colonial times, but that will also be familiar
to Nigerian viewers still experiencing military control in their daily lives. Still,
this scene does more than show the audience how different ideological
positions are projected by individuals; it also presents them with the possibil­
ity of changing reality and of changing their own roles within this reality.31
Antigone's presence, then, does not remain hidden behind the mask of
Tegonni, as Os6fisan metatheatrically brings her on stage as a character as
well. Antigone's introduction of herself is telling:
ANTIGONE: I heard you were acting my story. And I was so excited I decided to
come and participate.
YEMISI: Your story! Sorry, you're mistaken. This is the story of Tegonni, our sister.
Funny, the names sound almost the same, but-
ANTIGONE: TCgonni! Where's she?
YEMISI: Back in the compound there. Preparing for her wedding.
ANTIGONE: And for her death?
FADERERA: What kind of thought is that, stranger-?
ANTIGONE: Antigone
YEMISI: Yes, Antigone, whatever your name is! Have you come to curse our sister?
ANTIGONE: No, oh ho. Please don't misunderstand me. I know what I'm saying.
I've travelled the same route before.
ANTIGONE: Antigone belongs to several incarnations.
KUNBI: But you ...you're black!
29 See Frank (2004).
30 Os6fisan ( l 999a: 28-30).
31 Dunton ( 1 992: 69-74).
Revolutionary Muse: Os6fisan's Tegonni 375
ANTIGONE: ( laughs) . And so? What colour is mythology?
ANTIGONE's CREW: We're metaphors. We always come in the colour and shape of
your imagination. 32
This passage demonstrates that it is not Antigone the heroine from Greek
tragedy who comes on stage, but Antigone the metaphor, unbound by time,
place, or race and willing to travel to any society in need of revolutionary
change. For, as Antigone proclaims:
Many tyrants will still arise, furious to inscribe their nightmares and their horrors on
the patient face of history. But again and again, as many times as such abortions creep
up, as many times will others come up who will challenge them and chase them away
into oblivion. Ozymandias will rise again! But so will Antigone! Wherever the call for
freedom is heard!33
Ozymandias is the name the G reeks gave to Ramses II, the Egyptian pharaoh
from whom Moses and the Israelites fled during the Exodus. It is also the title
of a poem on dictatorship and the fall of empires by the English romantic
poet, Percy Byssche Shelley.34 In the scene that follows, Antigone and Tegonni
together recite this poem, while linking hands like true revolutionary twin­
sisters. This image demonstrates that mythological relevance transgresses
temporal, spatial, and cultural boundaries and emphasizes that Tegonni
does not exist by virtue of Antigone. The historicist view of 'first in the
West, and then elsewhere' is emphatically rejected. 35 But does this also
imply that Os6fisan's engagement with Antigone should be considered as a
way of writing back to the Western canon?
BEYO N D ANTIGONE?
It may seem strange that an African playwright would turn to a text that
represents the classical Western canon and, in that sense, epitomizes imperial
Europe. After all, Greek tragedy originally came to colonial areas through
imported, and forcefully imposed, Western educational systems. In their
seminal study on post-colonial drama, Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins
clarify that it is precisely this enduring legacy of colonialist education
that explains the 'prominent endeavour among colonised writers/artists' to
32 Os6fisan (1999a: 25-7).
33 Ibid. 127-8.
34 Raji (2005: 148).
35 Chakrabarty (2000: 6).

376 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
'rework the European "classics" in order to invest them with more local
relevance and to divest them of their assumed authority/authenticity'.36
They refer to Helen Tiffin's term for this project, 'canonical counter-dis­
course', which they define as a process whereby writers develop a counter­
text which, by 'preserv[ing) many of the identifying signifiers of the original
while altering, often allegorically, its structures of power' seeks to 'destabilise
the power structures of the originary text rather than simply to acknowledge
its influence'.37
The question whether Os6fisan's adaptation of Antigone is an example of
such 'canonical counter-discourse' seems to generate a twofold answer, de­
pending on a further specification of 'the power structures of the orignary
text' which Gilbert and Tompkins talk about. If they intend to refer to the
power structures that enclose and contain the tragic script (structures pro­
duced by the Eurocentric tradition that �as claimed Greek tragedy as the
foundation of Western civilization), then Os6fisan's Tegonni could indeed be
defined as an example of 'canonical counter-discourse', and I will expand on
this below. If, however, Gilbert and Tompkins refer to the power structures
contained within the tragic script (in Antigone primarily dramatized through
the conflict between Antigone and Creon), this would produce a different
answer, because although Os6fisan certainly reduces the ambiguity of Anti­
gone's power structures and changes their representative value, he does not set
out to counter them. And perhaps this is not so suprising, because even if we
interpret Sophocles' original to stand for colonial hegemony, within this text
the character Antigone, in her defiance of authority, is herself the personifi­
cation of counter-hegemonic action against Creon's rule. It is precisely for this
reason that Antigone has become so popular on the post-colonial stage. And
it is precisely for this reason, also, that Os6fisan presents Antigone as a
metaphor that belongs to several incarnations, a source of inspiration for
the struggle against oppression which can be conjured up 'whenever the call
for freedom is heard'.38
Os6fisan, then, does not seem particularly interested in Antigone's cultural
origin or her status as a Western canonical figure. His main concern is with
her political potential in the present. It is ultimately not Antigone's foreign­
ness but her at-homeness that is stressed. The myth and tragedy of Antigone
have a familiarizing effect and it is this familiarity on which Os6fisan's
engagement with Antigone is built, and on which the political potential
of his play depends. Perhaps it is therefore more constructive to refer to
36 Gilbert and Tompkins (1996: 16).
37 Ibid. 16. See Tiffin ( 1987: 22).
38 Os6fisan (l 999a: 128).
Revolutionary Muse: Os6fisan's Tegonni 377
Wetmore's 'Black Dionysus' model, in which 'familiarity is celebrated, but not
used to erase difference' and 'Greek material is seen as the original tragedians
saw myth-a conven!ent and familiar vehicl� by which one mi�ht critique
society'.39 After all, Os6fisan draws on Antigone for exactly this purpos�.
Wetmore poses his 'Black Dionysus' model as an addition to the Eurocentnc
'Black Orpheus' model, which sees classic material as a way to understand t?e
_ sees Greek matenal
African, and the Afrocentric 'Black Athena' model, which
as African material that needs to be reclaimed. 'Black Dionysus' is a
Post-Afrocentric formulation of drama that is counter-hegemonic, self-aware, refuses
to enforce dominant notions of ethnicity and culture, and uses ancient Greek material
to inscribe a new discourse that empowers . and critiques all cultures, even as it
identifies the colonizer's power and the co1omzed's power1essness. 40
Within the context of this chapter, two additional remarks seem important.
The first has to do with the juxtaposition of the words 'power' and 'power­
lessness', which could be understood to imply an uncomplicated binary
opposition between those who do and those who do not hav�Fower, an
opposition that Gayatri Spivak has demonstrated to �e erroneous: Secondly,
it is important to specify to which hegemony (or �h1ch hegemom�s) the ter�
,
'counter-hegemonic' is intended to refer. After all, m the words of Osofisan'. it
is nonsense to think that the hegemony in question is always the colomal/
structures of our countries are so deficient
imperialist one, when the political
. . ,
and murderous kleptocrac1e s are m pIace.42
One final question remains to be answered. Because ifTegonni indeed does
not exist by virtue of Antigone, as the play repeatedly suggests, how then to
understand Antigone's insistence on the necessity for her story to play out
exactly as it did before, for instance by hinting atTego?ni's appro�chin� de�t�
in the passage that I quoted earlier. Though Antigone s quest10n _ 1f Tegon,
�1 1s
preparing for her death does end with a question mark, it is clearly rheto�1cal
and leaves little room to answer in the negative, especially when we consider
Antigone's subsequent claim that she knows what she is saying, since she
has 'travelled the same route before'.43 And what are we to make of the fact
that, as described earlier, Antigone not only comes on-stage uninvited, ?ut
also takes on the role of theatre director, getting involved with the execut10n
39 Wetmore (2003: 44-5).
40 Ibid. 44.
41 Spivak ( 1 993); see also n. 26.
42 From personal correspondence, 27 June 2006.
43 Os6fisan (1999a: 26).
378 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
ofTegonni's story? A story, moreover, which she possessively refers to as hers:
.
'I heard you were actmg my story '.44
In a sense, and this counts for Os6fisan as well as for other playwrights who
draw on Antigone within post-colonial contexts, the very emphasis on Antig­
one as theirs, as representing their struggle, as being relevant to their political
present, inevitably embeds the dominance of Antigone's conventional repre­
sentational status: as a white Western woman. In Tegonni, this is illustrated by
Kunbi's exclamation of surprise at seeing a black Antigone. In The Island by
Fugard, Ntshona, and Kani ( 1974), it is evident in the white wig on the head
of the black prisoner Winston as he performs his role of Antigone. No matter
how democratically available Antigone might be, her origin seems unavoid­
able and it is in this relation between adaptation and original that a certain
inevitable ambiguity resides. By bringing Antigone on stage, Os6fisan pre­
sents the illusion that Antigone is 'really' there, while simultaneously stressing
the distance between Sophocles' original and his African re-workings. It is as
if Antigone could not migrate without doubling herself.
This doubling, however, should not simply be understood as the tragic and
inescapable consequence of cultural migration from the dominant Western
canon to a post-colonial context. In fact, as a strategy, it offers enormous
political potential, because it makes it possible to claim cultural specificity
and universality at the same time. Presenting his Antigone as a particular
variation on a universal concept, Os6fisan effectively demands shared owner­
ship: Antigone no longer belongs to Europe exclusively. By doubling Antigo­
ne, he pushes the limits of the universal, thus destabilizing the Eurocentrism
that has traditionally defined and inhibited it. In considering Os6fisan's
adaptation of Antigone as a counter-discursive text, it is important to empha­
size that it is ultimately this Eurocentrism, rather than the canonical text itself,
at which the counter-discursive attention is directed. Concluding, I would like
to emphasize, however, that it is not Antigone's cultural and historical origin
that Os6fisan is primarily concerned with. It is not her past he is interested in,
but the political potential she has to offer for his country's future.
44 Os6fisan (1999a: 25); emphasis added.
21
Performing Antigone in the
Twenty-First Century
S. E. Wilmer
In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Greek tragedy has
become a popular form of theatre for critiquing dominant and patriarchal
values and actions. Female protagonists in such plays as Trojan Women,
Medea, Electra, and Antigone have provided an important vehicle for
counter-hegemonic discourse. While they were depicted by male dramatists
for a mainly (if not exclusively) male audience, female characters in fifth­
century Greek drama often possess a strength of purpose, an ability to
challenge male oppression, and a sense of female solidarity that are often
lacking in theatrical figures from later centuries. 1 Moreover, the representa­
tion of what Slavoj Zizek calls 'feminine excess' in Greek tragedy seems to
strike a chord with modern audiences.2 By defying Creon's edict and burying
her brother, Antigone challenges normative gender roles and social and
political conventions in a manner that is resonant in many countries today.3
In this chapter, I will assess some of the recent adaptations of this play, and in
particular I will examine Seamus Heaney's The Burial at Thebes (first staged at
the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2004) as a critique of British and American
imperialism and patriarchal oppression, and I will adduce Giorgio Agamben's
notion of 'homo sacer and his discussion of the 'state of exception' to
appreciate the claims that Antigone makes in these adaptations on behalf of
the disenfranchised of the world.
However, it is important to mention that recent interpretations, which tend
to provide Antigone with the higher moral ground and the more sympathetic
1 For an elaboration of this argument, see Wilmer (2007: 106- 1 8).
2 See Zizek and Dolar (2002: 184).
3 When organizing an international conference on Antigone in 2006, I was sent proposals for
papers about recent productions in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, the United States, Canada,
Ireland, Britain, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Nigeria, South
Africa, etc. See also Hall et al. (2004: 18- 1 9).
380 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
position, are not inevitable. For example, Hegel regarded the play as pitting
the law of the state against the law of the family in an equal balance. He
concluded that Antigone was a danger to the state and that Creon was
justified in defending the laws of the state over the concerns of the individual.
Generalizing from his discussion of Antigone, Hegel referred to women,
because of their concern for the individual family members, as 'the everlasting
irony [in the life] of the community'.4 Hegel's views continued to influence
nineteenth- and twentieth-century interpretations of Antigone, as George Stei­
ner has shown.5 Jean Anouilh's version, produced in Nazi-occupied Paris in
1944, depicted Antigone as an irrational and uncompromising character
juxtaposed with the more mature and amenable figure of Creon who (like
Marshal Petain of the Vichy Regime) has to make uncomfortable decisions in
a war-torn country. Creon offers to hide and ignore Antigone's crime. But when
she refuses, he has her executed. T he production caused a major controversy in
Paris, with the collaborationist press more favourably disposed towards the
performance than those in the resistance.6 More recently, Jacques Lacan viewed
Antigone as 'inhuman'7 and exhibiting an uncontrollable death drive: 'In effect,
Antigone herself has been declaring from the beginning: "I am dead and I desire
death" ... She pushes to the limit the realization of something that might be
called the pure and simple desire of death as such. She incarnates that desire:8
Slavoj Zizek took this Lacanian approach even further, considering her actions
and her death wish to be self-destructive and 'monstrous'.9
4 Hegel (1977: 288).
5 Steiner demonstrates that Hegel's position changed over time to become more sympathetic
to Antigone, but that after Hegel's death, the general understanding of his argument was that
Creon and Antigone were equally justified in their stances. Steiner (1984: 40-2).
6 See Fleming (2006: 168). Fleming points out some of the features of the adaptation that
appealed to collaborators and Nazis, in particular the language and attitude of Antigone that make
her 'the epitome of the fascist heroine' (p. 165). She also demonstrates that subsequent Anglo­
phone criticism of this play has misread it as favouring the resistance (p. 167).
7 Lacan (1992: 263).
8 Ibid. 281-2. It is interesting to speculate whether Anouilh's version of Antigone, which
Lacan mentions in his discussion (p. 250), might have influenced this interpretation since, in
Anouilh's version, Creon offers Antigone an easy option to hide her crime which she refuses
without any clear reason, making her seem pathologically bent on a death wish. Right from the
beginning of the play, Anouilh sets up her death drive as a role that she must play in the tragedy.
In his first (metatheatrical) speech, the chorus figure announces, 'She is going to die. Antigone is
young. She would much rather live than die. But there is no help for it. When your name is
Antigone, there is only one part you can play; and she will have to play hers through to the end.'
Anouilh (1951: 9). In Sophocles' original version, a more plausible reading is that Antigone is
driven into a 'wild' or abnormal state by her grief and her understandable sense of outrage at the
treatment of her brother.
9 See Audrone Zukauskaite's chapter in this volume for a discussion of Antigone as exhibit­
ing a death drive and Tina Chanter's chapter for a discussion of Antigone as a monster.
Performing Antigone in the 21st Century 381
Despite the Hegelian interpretation of the play, which demonstrates the
superior claim of the community over that of the individual, as well as the
proto-fascist adaptation by Anouilh and the Lacanian psychoanalytic ap­
proach that portray Antigone as determined to die, recent productions have
often represented her as defending human rights in defiance of an oppressive
and arbitrary authority. In particular, they have used the play to call attention
to the oppressive conditions in specific recent contexts, almost inevitably
stressing the rectitude of Antigone's position.
First, I want to review some productions in the late twentieth century that
have employed Antigone as a kind of homo sacer and then apply this analogy
in a more detailed discussion of Seamus Heaney's 2004 version of The Burial
at Thebes at the Abbey T heatre in Dublin. Giorgio Agamben discusses the
notion of homo sacer as 'nuda vita'-(variously translated as bare life, mere
life, or naked life). It implies a life with no ethical value, thus a person who can
be killed with impunity. It is originally a concept in Roman law that permits
the killing of people with this exceptional legal status. In the modern world,
Agamben applied the notion of homo sacer particularly to Jews in concentra­
tion camps, and also to other people of uncertain legal status such as refugees,
asylum-seekers, Gypsies, the mentally ill, and illegal immigrants.10 More
recently, Judith Butler has applied the term to stateless people (e.g. Palesti­
nians), and suspected terrorists, especially those detained in centres such as
Guantanamo Bay. 11
In The Island, devised by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Nshona
and staged first in Cape Town and London in 1 973, the two prisoners on
Robben Island, after a hard day's meaningless labour, use their evenings in
their cell to prepare for a truncated performance of Antigone. Winston, who
takes the part of Antigone in the play within a play, has been sentenced to life
imprisonment for his involvement in guerrilla activities against the apartheid
regime. In the isolation of a prison cell on an island off the coast of Cape Town
where he expects eventually to die, Winston holds a status resembling the
living death of Antigone imprisoned in her cave. In the character of Antigone,
he concludes the play with a speech that merges his own situation with that of
hers: 'I go now on my last journey. I must leave the light of day forever, for the
Island, strange and cold, to be lost between life and death. So to my grave, my
everlasting prison, condemned alive to solitary death ... I go now to my living
death, because I honoured those things to which honour belongs.'12
10 Agamben (1998: 126-80).
11
Butl�r and Spivak (2007: 40-4). See also Butler (2004: 60-8); Zizek (2002a: 83-154); and
Audrone Zukauskaite's chapter in this volume.
12
Fugard et al. (1974: 77).
382 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
Antigona Furiosa by Griselda Gambaro, first staged in Buenos Aires in 1986,
portrays the experience of the 'disappeared' during the Argentine dictatorship
from 1976 to 1983 and the mothers and relatives who protested on the Plaza de
Mayo against their disappearance. By contrast with other versions of Antigone,
in this adaptation the brother has vanished, reflecting the situation in Argen­
tina where the police arrested dissidents and terrorists, and never released
them alive (except in some cases dropping them from airplanes).The head of
the government, Lieutenant General Torge Rafael Videla, commented on this
situation at the time, 'As long as (the person) is missing ( desaparecido), he/she
cannot have any particular treatment, he/she is an enigma, is a desaparecido,
does not have an entity, is not there, is neither dead nor alive, is desaparecido'.13
Therefore, in this adaptation, there is no body for Antigone to bury, and so she
claims that her own body will be the grave of her brother, a site of memory.14
In Janusz Glowacki's Antigone in New York (staged at the Arena Stage in
Washington, DC in 1993, and in various parts of Europe and at the Off­
Broadway Vineyard Theatre in 1996 and translated into more than twenty
languages), Anita, the Antigone figure, is a homeless immigrant from Puerto
Rico who tries to reclaim the body of Paulie, her dead lover, who has been
removed by the authorities to be buried in an unmarked grave. She wants to
bury him in a Manhattan public park where she lives. As both a homeless person
and an immigrant, her legal and ontological status is ill-defined. Her friend
Sasha tells her: 'We have to get indoors. When you live outdoors no one thinks
you are a person' (72). Moreover, because it is dark when her friends retrieve the
body and mistake another corpse for Paulie's, Anita ends up ironically burying
someone else instead of her lover in the park. Eventually, the police close down
the park, erecting a ten-foot high barbed wire fence around it, and rendering her
status even more insecure. Anita hangs herself on the main gate of the park after
trying unsuccessfully to climb over the fence to return to Paulie's grave, and,
ironically, the authorities take her to be buried in an unmarked grave.15
These three productions bear a disturbing relationship with the 2004
production of The Burial at Thebes, a version of Antigone by Seamus Heaney
directed by a Canadian theatre director, Lorraine Pinta!, at the Abbey Theatre
in Dublin.16 The Burial at Thebes supported Antigone's moral position as
13 Translation by Maria Florencia Nelli.
14 See the chapter by Maria Florencia Nelli in this volume.
1 5 For a discussion of this play, see Kott (2008).
16 2004 was the centennial year of the opening of the Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of
Ireland. It was a major cultural event, and Ben Barnes, the Abbey's artistic director, approached
Seamus Heaney, a Nobel Prize-winning poet, resident in Dublin, to provide a play to mark the
occasion. Some parts of the ensuing discussion of The Burial at Thebes appeared in Wilmer
(2007: 228-42).
Performing Antigone in the 21st Century 383
much through production techniques as through the text, with Creon dressed
like a pompous and arrogant Latin American dihator in a white suit with red
sash and medallion, recklessly wielding his authority.17 Antigone demon­
strated her autonomy18 and strength of character from the opening moments
of the play, in a dance sequence with her fiance Haimon during which she left
him abandoned on the stage. From her opening lines, which followed this
mimed sequence, she indicated her determination and sense of urgency,
especially through Heaney's use of trimeter for her lines, compared to the
more languorous tetrameter of the chorus.19
Ismene, quick, come here!
What's to become of us?
Why are we always the ones?
As a woman of action and no regrets, Antigone forcefully challenged
Creon's authority in the performance such that his fear for his status rang
true:
Have I to be
The woman of the house and take her orders? (22)
And later:
No woman here is going to be allowed
To walk all over us. Otherwise, as men
We'll be disgraced. (31)
1 7 Despite the costume, however, the rhetoric of the character, as we shall see, resembled
George W. Bush. This was also intimated in the production through the representation
fs
of urydi�e, Cr�on's wife, standing by his side without speaking, reminiscent of Laura Bush.
Antigone is referred to by the chorus as autonomous in line 821. The importance of this
description has been identified by Robin Lane Fox recently. "'Autonomy" is a word invented by
_
the ancient Greeks, but for them it had a clear political context: it began as the word for a
coi ;imunity's self-government, a protected degree of freedom in the face of an outside power
which was strong enough to infringe it. Its first surviving application to an individual is to a
woman, Antigone, in drama'. Fox (2006: 7).
19 Heaney's use of various rhythms to differentiate character reflects the variety of rhythmic
patterns in the original Greek that, according to Mark Griffith, tends to be ignored in most
translations, reducing the script 'to a formless monotone'. Griffith (1999: 13 n. 47). Griffith
notes t�e different use of language by the various characters in the original Greek, with Antigone
_ simpler language than Ismene and a staccato delivery, which is 'more particular, personal,
using
and direct', while 'Kreon's rigid and controlling temperament is represented throughout by the
harsh imagery of his language . . . and by his disrespectful habit of referring to people in the third
person even when they are present . . . or, when he does address them directly, of doing so in a
crudely imperious manner'. Ibid. 20. See also 36-7. For a discussion of the particular rhythms he
uses in the play, see Heaney (200Sb: 169-73).
384 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
At the same time, the emphasis on gender politics in the production served as
an analogy for the geopolitical relationships in the text. The text bears witness
to the indelible marks of colonialism and oppression in " Irish history, and to
the process of disengagement from it. This is quite a common trope in post­
colonial discourse. As Williams and Chrisman have argued, 'For some theor­
ists and critics, colonial, imperial and indeed post-colonial or national dis­
courses are largely allegories of gender contests'.20 Thus, Ireland has often
been posited as the feminine Other in relation to the aggressive male British
empire, and so, in a Romantic nationalist or post-colonial interpretation,
Antigone represents an oppressed I reland fighting for her rights. Antigone as
I reland (or the nationalist community in Northern Ireland) is clearly given
the morally superior position in Heaney's adaptation, justifying action as the
repressed feminine Other against the colonial oppressor, whether it involves
acts of civil disobedience, hunger strikes, or even more violent acts. With
regard to Creon's edict, Antigone says:
I chose to disregard it . . .
I f I had to live and suffer in the knowledge
That Polyneices was lying above ground
Insulted and defiled, that would be worse
Than having to suffer any doom of yours. (2 1 )
And later:
I never did a nobler thing than bury
My brother Polyneices . . .
There's no shame in burying a brother. (23)
Moreover, Haimon argues that the people support Antigone:
As far as they're concerned,
She should be honoured-a woman who rebelled! ( 3 1 )
I n explaining the reasons fo r his adaptation, Heaney indicates that the British
treatment of Irish people in Ireland over the centuries helped him find a
voice for Antigone as well as a moral context for her stance.2 1 In thinking
about the struggle between Antigone and Creon over who owns the body of
Polyneices and who can have access to it, Heaney remembered the situation of
Francis Hughes, his 25-year-old neighbour in Northern I reland, who died in
prison in 198 1 after being on hunger strike (demanding political status as an
20
Williams and Chrisman (1993: 18).
21
See Heaney (200Sb: 169-73 ).
Performing Antigone in the 21st Century 385
IRA prisoner) for sixty-nine days.22 H is body was in the custody of the Royal
Ulster Constabulary, but his family and friends wanted to pay their last
respects and to bury it. The battle over his body was emotionally heated,
setting the hunger striker's family against the State, and reflected the division
between the regulations of the State authorities on the one hand and the
personal needs of the family to observe the traditional rites on the other. For
this and other reasons, Heaney decided to emphasize the word 'burial' in
changing the title of Antigone to the Burial at Thebes.23
While the adaptation is loaded with post-colonial resonances, the immedi­
ate justification for Heaney to write a new version of Antigone was the policy
of US President George W. Bush in his 'war on terror'. I n defying international
opinion by invading Iraq, and creating an extra-legal system of detention
without trial for prisoners from the wars in Afghanistan and I raq, including a
prison at Guantanamo that was beyond US jurisdiction,24 Bush appeared as a
contemporary equivalent of Creon. Much of the aggressive rhetoric of George
Bush is echoed in Heaney's rendition of Creon's speeches which stress the
need for unity and loyalty to the polis:
Solidarity, friends,
Is what we need. The whole crew must close ranks.
The safety of our state depends upon it.
Our trust. Our friendships. Our security. (10)
Speaking in iambic pentameter and emphasizing his goal 'to honour patriots
in life and death' ( 11 ), Creon establishes his authority over the citizen chorus,
declares the importance of civic over family duty, and extols the value of
strong leadership:
Worst is the man who has all the good advice
And then, because his nerve fails, fails to act
In accordance with it, as a leader should.
And equally to blame
Is anyone who puts the personal
Above the overall thing, puts friend
22
Heaney discussed this memory in his question and answer session with the Abbey Theatre
audience on 27 April 2004. The death of a hunger striker was also evoked in Heaney's, The Cure
at Troy in the line: 'A hunger-striker's father I Stands in the graveyard dumb.' Heaney (1990: 77).
2 3 The play for Heaney is primarily about the need to pay respect to the dead, and burial is
the traditional Irish (as well as Greek) way of doing so. See e.g. Macintosh (1994: 30-7). The
importance that the ancient Greeks gave to observing proper respect for the dead is particularly
illustrated in Achilles' observation of traditional funeral rites for Patroklos in the Iliad, Book 23
(by contrast with his shameful treatment of Hector). For a discussion of the desecration of the
deceased, see Griffith (1999: 30).
24 See Butler (2004: 97).
 Performing Antigone in the 21st Century 387
386 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
The phrase 'no observance of any of the rites' in the performance of the play
Or family first . ..
echoed the denial of human rights and dignity to suspected terrorists. The
For the patriot,
Personal loyalty always must give way US military was torturing prisoners, denying them access to lawyers, and
To patriotic duty. ( 1 0) justifying such treatment because of the ex�eptional conditions (stat� of
exception) engendered by terrorism. Slavoj Ziiek commented at the time,
By emphasizing such words as 'patriot', 'patriotic duty', 'patriots in life and 'The topic of torture has persisted in 2002; at the beginning of April, when the
death', as well as 'safety' and 'security', Creon's phraseology calls to mind the Americans got hold of Abu Zubaydah, presumed to be the al-Qaeda second­
post-9/ 1 1 climate o f fear, loyalty (to the government), and vengefulness which in-command, the question "Should he be tortured?" was openly discussed in
was encouraged by the US President through the adoption of the USA Patriot the mass media. In a statement broadcast by NBC on 5 April, Donald
Act, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the invasion Rumsfeld himself claimed that his priority is American lives, not the human
of Afghanistan and Iraq.25 Like Bush, who boasted of the US military pursuit rights of a high-ranking terrorist, and attacked journalists for displaying such
of the Taliban, 'We'll smoke 'em out',26 Creon in Heaney's version says of concern for Zubaydah's well-being, thus openly clearing the way for torture.'28
potential saboteurs: ' I'll flush 'em out' (3). And, virtually quoting Bush's The journalist Jonathan Alter, sympathizing with the general trend away from
speech at a news conference in 200 1 where he declared to coalition partners: human rights after 9/11, argued in Newsweek: 'We can't legalize torture; it's
'You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror',27 Creon warns: contrary to American values. B ut even as we continue to speak out against
Whoever isn't for us human-rights abuses around the world, we need to keep an open mind about
Is against us in this case. (3) certain measures to fight terrorism, like court-sanctioned psychological inter­
rogation. And we'll have to think about transferring some suspects to our less
Moreover, there is an underlying parallel between Creon's treatment of Poly­ squeamish allies, even if that's hypocritical. Nobody said this was going to be
neices and Bush's denial of human rights in the interrogation and imprison­ >
pretty. 2 9
ment of anyone labelled as a 'terrorist'. Creon decrees: Like George Bush, who denied human rights and, more specifically, the
Never to grant traitors and subversives applicability of the Geneva Convention (relating to prisoners of war) to those
Equal footing with loyal citizens. ( 1 1 ) detained in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and the various secret
detention centres around the world, Creon regards Polyneices as undeserving
And with regard to Polyneices:
of normal burial rites.30 Teiresias later warns him in words that anticipated
He is forbidden the backlash in I raq against the US military torture of prisoners in Abu
Any ceremonial whatsoever. Ghraib prison in Iraq:
No keening, no interment, no observance
... enemy cities [will] rise to avenge each corpse
Of any of the rites. ( 1 1 )
You left dishonoured. ( 46)

25 One can see Heaney's evocation of Bush's rhetoric more clearly by comparing this passage And the chorus ends the play by warning,
with the Jebb translation, which Heaney ( who does not read Greek) used as a basis for his own
work: 'For if anyone who directs the entire city does not cling to the best and wisest plans, but Those who overbear will be brought to grief.
because of some fear keeps his lips locked, then, in my judgment, he is and has long been the Fate will flail them on the winnowing floor
most cowardly traitor. And if any man thinks a friend more important than his fatherland, that
And in due season teach them to be wise. (56)
man, I say, is of no account. Zeus, god who sees all things always, be my witness-I would not be
silent if I saw ruin, instead of safety, marching upon the citizens. Nor would I ever make a man
28
who is hostile to my country a friend to myself, because I know this, that our country is the ship
Ziiek (2002a: 105).
that bears us safe, and that only when we sail her on a straight course can we make true friends. 29 Quoted in ibid. I 02. After quoting this passage, Slavoj Ziiek asked provocatively, 'Wh�t is
Such are the rules by which I strengthen this city'. Jebb (1 900, II. I 77-92). new about this idea? Did the C IA not teach the Latin American and Third World Amencan
26
CNN (2001b).
military allies the practice of torture for decades?' Ibid. 102. For an account of the US training of
27 CNN (2001a). In the same speech, Bush threatened other countries with unspecified
torture techniques for use in Latjn America in the 1960s, see �gee ( 1 975).
consequences for failing to comply with America's wishes for them to join in the military .
3° Fleischer (2003 ). See also Ziiek (2004a). In his article, Ziiek quotes Rumsfeld as saymg
coalition forces to invade Afghanistan: 'Over time it's going to be important for nations to know that the Geneva Convention is 'out of date'.
they will be held accountable for inactivity'.
388 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
Justifying the comparison between Creon and Bush, Heaney wrote: 'Early
in 2003 we were watching a leader, a Creon figure if ever there was one, a law­
and-order bossman trying to boss the nations of the world into uncritical
agreement with his edicts in much the same way as Creon tries to boss the
Chorus of compliant Thebans into conformity with his'.31 Heaney regarded
his version of the 'wonders chorus' as a 'sort of open letter' to George Bush:
Let him once . . .
Tramp down right or treat the law
Wilfully, as his own word,
Then let this wonder of the world remember . . .
When he comes begging we will turn our backs. ( 1 7)
Likewise, Haimon's line to Creon: 'I ask you: reconsider. Nobody, I Nobody
can be sure they're always right' (3 1) echoed the criticism of Bush's behaviour
in never admitting he was wrong, which he joked about with the press on
5 May 2004, the day before he finally apologized to the I raqis for the abuse in
the Abu Ghraib prison. When the chorus suggest that Haimon might have a
point, Creon answers: 'Do my orders come from Thebes and from the
people?' (33). Creon's refusal to listen to popular criticism evoked memories
of Bush and Blair not listening to the huge demonstrations in London
and Dublin against the war,32 as well as foreshadowing Donald Rumsfeld's
announcement, to the applause of US soldiers in Iraq on 13 May 2004,
that he was no longer listening to media criticism: ' I've stopped reading
newspapers'. 33
In The Burial at Thebes, Heaney calls attention to the state of exception that
exists in Thebes and parallels the political situation in the United States.
When Ismene tries to coax Antigone into changing her mind, Antigone
(who invokes the unwritten laws of the gods) isolates Creon's decree as an
arbitrary edict of one man as opposed to a time-honoured law: 'Word has
come down from Creon' (2), and mockingly adds:
This is law and order
In the land of good King Creon. ( 3 )
Later she asks,
What are Creon's rights
When it comes to me and mine? (4)
31 Heaney (2005b: 170).
32 The demonstration in Dublin on 15 February 2003 was one of the largest-ever protest
demonstrations (with about 100,000 people). The demonstrators in London on the same day
were variously estimated at one and two million people. Anderson and Burke-Kennedy (2003).
33 McCarthy (2004).
Performing Antigone in the 21st Century 389
And when Ismene defends the new law, Antigone scoffs:
You and the laws of the land! (5)
Creon's law and those of the Bush administration result from states of
exception in 'periods of political crisis', which Giorgio Agamben refers to as
a 'no-man's-land between public law and political fact'.34 Polyneices (although
he is already dead) is somewhat similar to what Agamben calls a homo sacer in
being denied the rights of a citizen for burial, his corpse left exposed to the
elements and vulnerable to carnivorous animals. Antigone wishes to restore
his rights and his proper ontological status, opposing Creon's attempt, at a
metaphysical level, to kill Polyneices a second time, or as Teiresias says, to
'stab a ghost' (44) . However, Antigone also conveys her own status as homo
sacer later in the play when she is being led off to the cave,
I am going away
Under my rock piled roof.
No mourner waits at the mound.
I'll be shut in my halfway house,
Unwept by those alive,
Unwelcomed as yet by the dead. (38)
By referring to her 'halfway house', Heaney indicates that she is being
placed in a position where her ontological status is uncertain, similar to
those in Guantanamo Bay or Robben Island.35 Judith Butler writes of the
recent extra-legal or sovereign activities of the US government in a state of
exception: 'Sovereignty becomes that instrument of power by which law is
either used tactically or suspended, populations are monitored, detained,
regulated, inspected, interrogated, rendered uniform in their actions, fully
ritualized and exposed to control and regulation in their daily lives. The
prison presents the managerial tactics of governmentality in an extreme
mode. And whereas we expect the prisons to be tied to law-to trial, to
punishment, to the rights of prisoners-we see presently an effort to produce
a secondary judicial system and a sphere of non-legal detention that effective­
ly produces the prison itself as an extra-legal sphere.'36 Moreover, the US
34 Agamben (2005: 1 ) . Creon towards the end of the play regrets his error and renounces the
state of exception: 'The judgement is reversed . . I In my heart of hearts I know what must be
.
done. I Until we breathe our last breath we should keep I The established law.' (48).
35 Binyam Mohammed described his experience of being incarcerated and tortured by the
Ai;tericans in Ka?ul, Guantanamo Bay, and other prisons for seven years, and then suddenly
bemg released, with all the charges against him dropped. 'The longest was for eight days on end
.
[ m a secret CIA prison in Kabul] , in a position that meant I couldn't stand straight nor sit.
I couldn't sleep. I had no idea whether it was day or night. In Kabul I lost my head. It felt like it
wa; never going to end and that I had ceased to exist.' Woods (2009: 6).
6 Butler (2004: 97).
390 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
military code was revised in January 2006 to allow the US military's Provost
Martial General to conduct executions by lethal injection at Guantanamo Bay,
and so the announcement in February 2008 that the Pentagon was seeking the
death penalty for six detainees to be tried by a military court outside the
jurisdiction of the US federal legal system indicated that the US military was
preparing 'to act as judge, j ury and potentially as executioner of the accused at
Guantanamo'. 3 7
By comparing such productions as The Island, Antigona Furiosa, Antigone
in New York, and The Burial at Thebes, we can appreciate how the state of
exception, theorized by Agamben, has become normalized. We see parallels
between the 'exceptional' actions of governments such as the Bush adminis­
tration and the Argentinian dictatorship, making up the laws as they go
along,38 removing people from their homes and environment and incarcerat­
ing or disposing of them outside the polis, outside the reach of their friends
and families. For example, there is an interesting parallel between the Argen­
tine dictatorship arresting, torturing, and 'disappearing' thousands of dissi­
dents, and the Bush administration using the powers of 'extraordinary
rendition' to send p risoners to secret locations around the world for ' inter­
rogation' and possible trial and execution.3 9 Similarly, there is a common
logic between the Argentinian head of state who claimed that the desaparecido
'does not have an entity, is not there, is neither dead nor alive, is desaparecido',
and the argument put forward that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay should
have no rights.40 According to Agamben, 'What is new about President Bush's
order is that it radically erases any legal status of the individual, thus produc­
ing a legally unnamable and unclassifiable being. Not only do the Taliban
captured in Afghanistan not enjoy the status of POWs as defined by the
Geneva Convention, they do not even have the status of persons charged
with a crime according to American laws. Neither p risoners nor persons
37 Clonan (2008: 1 5).
38 See Zizek (2002a: 91-2). With regard to the detention of the Taliban, Agamben writes,
'The only thing to which it could possibly be compared is the legal situation of the Jews in the
Nazi Lager [camps], who, along with their citizenship, had lost every legal identity, but at least
retained their identity as Jews. As Judith Butler has effectively shown, in the detainee at
Guantanamo, bare life reaches its maximum indeterminacy.' Agamben (2005: 4).
39 Much of the interrogation and torture of the detainees has been conducted by private
firms subcontracted by the US government. This arm's-length approach has perhaps allowed the
US administration greater opportunity for abnormal interrogation procedures. See Didion
(2006: 56). According to a report in the Jnsh Times on 16 February 2008, the activity at
Guantanamo 'appears to have narrowed from intelligence-gathering in support of Operation
Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan to one of retribution and punishment in support of the Bush
administration's "Global War on Terror"'. See Clonan (2008: 15).
40 See Zizek (2004a).
Performing Antigone in the 21st Century 39 1
accused, but simply "detainees", they are the object of a pure de facto rule, of a
detention that is indefinite, not only in the tempo ral sense but in its very
nature as well, since it is entirely removed from the law and from judicial
oversigh t.'4 1
Ziiek demo nstrates the Bush administration's success in rendering the
Taliban beyond legal status by inventing the term 'unlawful combatants' so
that the 'war on terror' is not defined as a normal war with a normal enemy
but with people who, when captured, have neither the status of soldiers (who
would be treated as priso ners of war) or criminals (who would be tried in a
normal court). The 'war on terror' also has the rhetorical advantage (for the
military-industrial complex) that it may never end and can lead to a perma­
nent state of exception. Agamben argues provocatively, 'President Bush's
decision to refer to himself constantly as the "Commander in Chief of the
Army" after September 1 1, 2001, must be considered in the context of this
presidential claim to sovereign powers in emergency situations. I f, as we have
seen, the assumption of this title entails a direct reference to the state of
exception, then Bush is attempting to produce a situation in which the
emergency becomes the rule, and the very distinction between peace and
war (and between foreign and civil war) becomes impossible.'42 It is also
interesting to note that Vice President Cheney's former company Halliburton
was not only winning billions of dollars' worth of contracts in Iraq after the
invasion, but also won a contract for building a permanent multi-million
dollar maximum security prison in Guantanamo Bay.43 The creation of a
permanent prison camp implied either that the exceptional ci rcumstances
emanating from the 'war on terror' were permanent or that, as Agamben
argued with regard to the Nazi concentration camps, the 'state of exception,
which was essentially a temporary suspension of the rule of law on the basis of
a factual state of danger, is now given a permanent spatial arrangement, which
as such nevertheless remains outside the normal order'. 44
Thus, in reviewing these various versions of Antigone, we can learn some­
thing about the world as it emerges into the twenty-first century, for example,
41 Agamben (2005: 3-4).
42 Ibid. 22.
43 See Clonan (2008: 15). Cheney continued to hold millions of dollars worth of stock
options in Halliburton after becoming Vice President. Jane Meyer reported in the New Yorker
magazine in 2004 that Halliburton 'which is based in Houston, is now the biggest private
contractor for American forces in Iraq; it has received contracts worth some eleven billion
dollars for its work there. Cheney earned forty-four million dollars during his tenure at
Halliburton. Although he has said that he "severed all my ties with the company," he continues
to collect deferred compensation worth approximately a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a
ye��· and he retains stock options worth more than eighteen million dollars.' Meyer (2004).
Agamben (1998: 169).
392 Translations, Adaptations, Performance
the similarities in the ontological status of the imprisoned in Robben Island,
the 'disappeared' in Buenos Aires, the homeless in New York, and the detai­
nees in Guantanamo Bay. Under a state of exception, it is possible to be
arrested without recourse and end up anywhere, or nowhere. Apolis.45 At the
same time, as Judith Butler observes about those who are deported or
are threatened with deportation or are deprived of the rights of citizens,
one should distinguish between the types of destitution involved. 'These are
not undifferentiated instances of "bare life" but highly juridified states of
dispossession. We need more complex ways of understanding the multivalence
and tactics of power.'46 More worrying is Agamben's suggestion that, 'If it is
true that the figure proposed by our age is that of an unsacrificeable life that has
nevertheless become capable of being killed to an unprecedented degree, then
the bare life of homo sacer concerns us in a special way. Sacredness is a line of
flight still present in contemporary politics, a line that is as such moving into
zones increasingly vast and dark, to the point of ultimately coinciding with the
biological life itself of its citizens. If today there is no longer any one clear figure
of the sacred man, it is perhaps because we are all virtually homines sacri.'47
With the various post-9/ 1 1 methods of social control (such as increased
security measures by the US Department of Homeland Security and other
agencies, including more intensive customs inspections, omnipresent CCTV
cameras, heightened threat alerts, etc.), we are continually being terrorized by
the 'war on terror'. This renders Antigone all the more relevant.
45 With regard to the 'terror' surrounding this epithet, see Steiner (1984: 175). While
President Barak Obama announced his intention to reverse some of President Bush's policies
and close the prison in Guantanamo Bay by 2010, it seems that this prison is only the tip of the
iceberg. Asim Qureshi, a senior researcher at Cageprisoners, wrote: 'With reports of 24,000
detainees in Iraq and 14,000 in secret detention, such numbers seem astronomical compared
with the 250 or so detainees remaining in Guantanamo.' Qureshi (2009: 15).
46 Butler and Spivak (2007: 42).
47 Agamben (1998: 114-15). See also Zizek (2002a: 100).
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420 Index
Antigone (cont.)
as political allegory for Anglo-Irish
conflict 25-6, 40-1
as political allegory for Iraq
conflict 25, 29, 41, 42
political nature of 14-15
rereading through Oedipus at
Colonus 49-52
reversals in 28-32
Shakespearean intertextuality 364 n. 39
South African productions 22-3
Stroux production (Berlin 1940)
338-45
as symbol of intellectual resistance
against Nazism 338
Tieck/Mendelssohn production
(Potsdam 1841) 329-38
translations of 22-8, 29, 38, 40-2
Antigone (Anouilh) 276, 317 n. 9, 380
Antigone (Banks) 284 n. 6
Antigone (Blondell) 311
Antigone (Brecht) 276 n. 71
Antigone (Cocteau) 274-5, 275
Antigone (Harry) 284
Antigone (Kinchin Smith) 284 n. 6
Antigone (Mathews) 314 n. 2
Antigone (Rotrou) 246-8
Antigone and Polinikis (Lytras) 273, 274
Antigone Before Creon (Beck) 274 n. 68
Antigone in New York (Glowacki) 382
Antygona (Grzegorczyk) 277-8, 277
apartheid 22-3
Aquinas, T. 102, 106
Arendt, H.
on exile 54-5, 56-7, 62-3
on founding legends 64-5
on human life 53--4
on human rights 56-9, 65
on humanity 57-8, 60
life of the mind 23 n. 19
naked life (we) 7, 48-66
on plurality 63-4
on polis 48-9, 61-2, 65
on public space 48-9, 61-2
and refugees 48-9, 56-61, 65
on totalitarianism 57-8
tragedy as other space of politics
61-3
Argentina 390
desaparecidos (the disappeared) 15,
355, 360, 361, 363, 382, 390
detention camps 360
military coup d'etat 358-9
Proceso de Reorganizaci6n
Nacional 354
Aristophanes 127 n. 42, 175 n. 21
Aristotle 23 n. 18, 313, 315-16
definition of man 73
on law 178, 189
and morality 106
Nichomachean Ethics 321
on time 163 n. 62, 165
Arnold, M. 307 n. 104
Arnott, P. 288
art
amphorae 258, 258-9, 268
black-figure pottery 264 n. 33
and femininity 260
frescos 271 n. 58
funerary lekythoi 265, 265-6
gender conservatism of 254-79
ink drawings 275, 275
Lucanian amphora 258, 258-9
nestoris 260-5, 261, 266-8
painted pots (early 4th-century) 257
paintings 271
publicity posters 276
red-figure pottery 258, 258-9, 267,
268
sculpture 271 n. 57
ate 159-60
Antigone and 30, 122, 142-3, 167
Athens
legislative practices in drama 168-9
status of women 23-4
Austin, J. L. 169, 183
autochthony 12, 229-39
and theatricality 230-1
Index 421
Baader, A. 346 on Antigone's implicit challenge of
Baader-Meinhof gang 346 incest taboo 118, 122
Bacchae, The (Euripides) 236-7, 349-50 on Antigone's public discourse 177
Badiou, A. 159 n. 49 on Antigone's unwritten laws 185
Bagg, R. 288 n. 29, 294 citing Lacan 154 n. 29
Banks, T. H. 284 n. 6 epigraph 212
bare life, see zoe on Ettinger's matrixial 214 n. 5
Barthes, R. 235 n. 28 on exclusion 78-9
Bataille, G. 75 homo sacer concept 381
beauty 221 interpretation of Antigone 5-6, 23
Lacan on 141-2, 143-5, 222-3 n. 17 & 18, 67-9, 129, 157, 241
Beck, R. 274 n. 68 on kinship relations 67-9, 162, 231-2
Benjamin, W. 74 on Lacan's reading of Antigone 155,
Bennett, L. J. 171, 289 n. 32 165, 314 n. 2
Berliner Biirsenzeitung 344 on public sphere 63
Berman, A. 288, 300 on social norms 154 n. 30, 156
Biblical references: Leviticus 24 : 20 : 154 on sovereignty 389
n. 27 women in drama 260
biopolitics 49, 58, 59, 67-81, 72 BZ am Mittag 344
and exception 78
and homo sacer concept 77-8 Cairns, D. 264
bias (individual life) 54, 357-8, 360 Caldwell, 125 n. 36
Birmingham, P. 60 n. 23 Case, S. E. 255
Black Dionysus model 376-7 Castoriadis, C. 149 n. 9
blindness 50, 65 Chakrabarty, D. 370
Blondell, R. 284, 288, 298 Chanter, T. 238 n. 35
Antigone 311 Cheney, D. 391
translation of nomos 301 Cherry, K. 296, 311
Boeckh, A. 331, 334 translation of nomos 303
Boucher, F. 272 choral ode: translation of 304-6
Bowra, C. M. 325 Chorus 131, 173--4
Breaking the Waves (film) 135-6 assessment of Antigone 131
Brecht, B. 188-9, 276 n. 71 reaction to Creon's interdiction 178
Brodowski, A. 271 and restoration of order 133
Brooklyn-Budapest Painter 258, 258-9 Chrisman, L. 384
Broude, N. 279 n. 82 civic laws
Brown, A. 288, 297 and divine laws 2, 52, 66, 77-8, 179-80
Brown, W. 368 and exception 77-8
Burial at Thebes, The (Heaney) 379, civil disobedience 71
382-9 classical science 149
Bush, George W. 295 n. 66, 383 n. 17, clothing: iconography of 260 n. 22,
385-8, 390-1 261-2, 263, 264-6, 267
Butler, J. 12 Cocteau, J. 13
on Antigone and kinship 231-2 angelism 327-8
422
Cocteau, J. (cont.)
Antigone 274-5, 275
epigraph 325
La Machine Infernale 317-19
and speed of action 315-20
commodity fetishism 34-5
conflict 297, 302-3
Constantine, D. 285
Copjec, J. 147, 150 n. II, 153
Corday, C. 272
cosmic order: respect for 201-5
Crelinger, A. 332
Creon 174 n.
and absolute sovereignty 187-8
and corruption 36, 40
and ethic of responsibility 86-7
interdiction as law 170--1
interdiction: criticism of 174
interdiction: instability of 180-1
interdiction: legality of 171-3
judgement of Antigone as uncanny 20
on law 187
and patriotism 89-90
Cropp, M. 174 n.
Dancer in the Dark (film) 135-6
David, J. L. 272
de Jongh, N. 22
death drive 151
Antigone and 119-22, 380
jouissance and 153
and Real 101-2
and transgression 223-4
Death of Marat, The (David) 272
deconstruction 84, 96-8
deinon 19-20
democracy 59 n. 22, 61, 80
Demosthenes 173, 179
Derrida, J. 238 n. 36
abjection 20 n. 8
on deconstruction 96-8
epigraph 313
on ethics 83, 91, 92-3
and future 325
Index Index 423
on inauguration 96-7 Hippolytos 336 Gabriele, A. 333-4
iterability 180 Medea 336 Galan, Graciela 356
on justice 86, 91 Orestes 168 Gambaro, G.
notion of inheritance 84 Phoenician Women 242-3, 244 Antigona Furiosa 353-65, 382
on responsibility 85, 86, 92-3 Seven Against Thebes 242 n. 5 life and work 355-6
desaparecidos (the disappeared) 15, 355, Suppliant Women 168, 171 Garrard, M. D. 279 n. 82
360, 361, 363, 382, 390 Ewans, M. 311 Gaskill, H. 284-5
desire 88-9, 129-30 exception 76-81, 389-90, 391-2 gender conservatism: of art 254-79
Lacan on 88, 89, 137-8, 141, 143-5, exclusion 80 Genelli, H. C. 331
223-4 Butler on 78-9 generation from erasure 234-6, 237-9
and the Law 101-2 Irigaray on 198, 199 generational order: respect for 205-7
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung review exile 54-5, 56-61, 64-6 Genette, G. 290-1, 293
338-9, 344 and founding legends 64-5 Gibbons, R. 285-6, 288, 294
Deutsch/and im Herbst (Germany in inner 62-3 translation of nomos 300, 30 l, 302
Autumn, film) 346 extraordinary rendition 390 Gide, A. 13, 248-50
Devrient, E. 332 Gilbert, H. 373, 375-6
divine laws 179-82 Fagles, R. 285, 288 Glowacki, J. 382
Antigone and 188-90 Shakespearean intertextuality 309 Goebbels,339
and civic laws 2, 52, 66, 77-8, 179-80 translation of nomos 300, 30 I Goethe, J. W. von 147 n. 3, 333, 334
Teiresias and 181-2 feminine stereotypes 254-6 Goldhill, S. 236, 260 n. 20
Dodds, E. R. 321 n. 24 fetishism 32-5 gossip 175-6
Dolar, M. 34 n. 67 commodity fetishism 34-5 Gould, T. 182, 234
Dolon Painter 260-5, 261, 266-8 fetishistic disavowal 34 Gourgouris, S. 68 n. 4
Donner, J. J. C. 333 and uncanny 33-4 Granon-Lafont, J. 160, 164
drama: women in 259-60 F itts, D. 294 Grene, D. 288 n. 29
Droysen, J. G. 332-3, 334-5, 337-8 Fitzgerald, R. 294 Griffith, M. 383 n. 19
Dutschke, R. 346 Fleming, K. 276 n. 72, 380 n. 6 Gruber, K. M. 349-50
Fogerty, E. 295-6 Grilndgens, G. 338
Electra (Sophocles) 131 Foley, H. P. 178 n. 29, 183, 321 n. 27 Grzegorczyk, W. 277, 277-8
Electra complex 114-19, 123-4 Foucault, M. 72, 187 Guantanamo Bay prisoners 79
Eliot, T. S. 308 n. 108 founding legends 64-5 guilt 145
Erdmann, J. E. 330 Fowlie, W. 319, 327
ethics Fox, R. L. 383 n. 18 Haemon 132, 133, 174
in Antigone 136-7 Franck, W. 342, 343 Hall, E. 279
of the Real 3-4, 101-9 Frank, H. 373-4 Hamel, F. 341-2
of responsibility 7-8, 82-98 Franklin, D. 287 Hamlet (Shakespeare) 306, 310
Ettinger, B. free speech 178, 187 Harris, E. 171, 178 n. 29, 184, 251 n. 22,
matrixiality 213, 214, 215--18, 220--1, 226 Frege, G. 150 n. 11 303 n. 87
metramorphosis 222, 224, 225 Freud, S. 125 n. 36 Harrison, J. 287
Euben, J. P. 20, 53 n. 8, 174 n. death drive 101-2 Harry, J. E. 287
Eumenides (Aeschylus) 179 nephew's fort-da game 151 Antigone 284
Euripides Friedrich Wilhelm IV, king of Prussia Shakespearean intertextuality 307,
The Bnf:chae 236-·7, 349-50 330 308 n. 110, 309-10
Hecuba 168 Fugard, A. 22-3, 378, 381 Hart, D. 21 n. 11
424 Index Index 425

Heaney, S. 15-16 Jonson, B. 306 on Antigone's 'unbearable splendor'

identity 207-11
T he Burial at T hebes 379,382-9 jouissance: and death drive 153 141-2
human 211
on efficacy of poetry 82-3 justice 89, 91 on beauty 141-2,143-5,222-3
sexuate 207-10, 211,240-1
and ethics 92 Idiots, The (film) 135-6,145-6 and law 97-8 on 'brother' relationship 156
on Hughes 94, 384-5 Jliad (Homer) 171
Levinas on 154 n. 27 Butler on 155, 165,314 n. 2
on inheritance 84 inauguration 96-7 on desire 88, 89, 137-8, 141, 143-5,
on responsibility 85 incest 206-7, 227, 241 Kahil, L. 260 n. 22 223-4
'The Settle Bed' 84 Antigone's implicit challenge of incest Kaiser, C. 348 epigraph 147
and speed of Antigone 320 n. 21 kalon (good/beautiful) 147, 148 and ethics in Antigone 136-7
taboo 118,122
translation of Antigone 25, 27-8,29, Ettinger on 214, 216-18, 223-4, 226, Kani, J. 378, 381 ethics of the Real 3-4
38,40-2 227 Kant, I. 106, 107,108, 153 on guilt 145
Hecht, J. 308,309 n. 114 in Gide's CEdipe 248-50 Katyn (film) 80-1 interpretation of Antigone 380
Hecuba (Euripides) 168 indeterminacy 160 n. 54 Kearney, R. 238 on Kant 153
Hegel, G. W. F. 295 inner exile 62-3 Keats, J. 326 n. on kinship relationships 157, 165
Antigone as marginal figure intertextuality 306-12 Kerenyi, K. 74 n. 68,214
interpretation of Antigone 4-5 Shakespearean 306, 307, 308-10, 364 Kinchin Smith, F. 284 n. 6, 295 on law 138-9
interpretation of Antigone 330, 380 n. 39 King Lear(Shakespeare) 239,307, 309,310 on memory 147
representative of private sphere 2-3 King Oedipus, see Oedipus Tyrannus on meta, semantics of 165 n. 68
Iraq conflict 25, 29, 41,42
and sexuate identity 208,240-1 Ireland kinship relationships 126 on monstrosity of Antigone 30-1
Heidegger, M. 19,20, 323 n. 31 adaptations of Antigone 314 n. 2 Antigone and 5-6, 29, 37-8, 40-1, 44, and morality 8,107
Heraclitus 179 Antigone as political allegory for
67-9, 95,123, 127-8, 212-13 Name of the Father 87-8, 89
Hertmans, S. 192-3 Anglo-Irish conflict 25-6, 40-1 'brother' relationship 156 objets petit a 144, 153, 221
Hesiod 177 Irigaray, L. 41 n. 91,315 n. 3 Butler on 67-� 162,231-2 Paris Seminars 110-11, 136-8
Hippolytos (Euripides) 336 Antigone as anti-woman 67 Ettinger on 11-12 on Philoctetes 104
Holderlin, F. 284-5,317 n. 8,346, 348-9 on exclusion 198, 199 husbands 163 psychoanalysis 8
Holocaust 57,93 on Hegel's interpretation of Antigone Lacan on 157, 165 n. 68,214 on second death 165 n. 67
Homer 163-4,171 4-5 non-replaceability of brothers 162-3, on simplicity in Antigone 152-4
homo sacer concept 361, 389 interpretation of Antigone 200, 164 speed of action 314 n. 2
Agamben on 73-5, 359-60, 381, 202-5 and outspokenness 191 three orders 142
390-1,392 kinship relationships 11 Kitto, H. D. F. 287,300,301, 302 and topology 160
biopolitics and 77-8 on respect 200-10 Krell, D. F. 314 n. l Lane, W. J. and A. M. 23 n. 18,24 n. 20
Butler on 381 on respect for generational Lanni, A. M. 175 n. 22
and exception 77-8 order 205-7 Lacan, J. 69-70 law 173 n.18
Kerenyi on 74 on respect for life and cosmic and the act 139-40 Antigone and 185-93
Zizek on 79, 391 order 201-5 anticipatory certitude 158-9 Aristotle on 178, 189
Zukauskaite on 7 on respect for sexuate Antigone and desire of death I, 3, 70, Demosthenes on 173, 179
Hoppe, M. 342-3,345 differentiation 207-10 121-2 Heraclitus on 179
hubris 324 Island, T he ( Pugard, Kani and Antigone as embodiment of ethics of justice and 97-8
Hughes, F. (hunger striker) 94, 95, Ntshona) 22-3, 378, 381 psychoanalysis 9 Lacan on 138-9
384-5 Antigone as marginal figure Oedipus at Co/onus: and space of
human laws, see civic laws Jacobs, C. 37. i32 Antigone and the Real 101 law 53-5
human life 53-4 Jebb, R. C. 289 h. 33 Antigone as tragedy 151-2 structure of 9-10
human rights 56-9,65, 387 J.H. 308 n. 108 on Antigone's obsession with Laws, The (Plato) 190
humanity 57-8,60 Johnson, P. 114�15, 125, 252 Polyneices 241 Levinas, E. 154 n. 27, 218
426 Index Index 427

Leviticus 24: 20: 154 n. 27 of Antigone 20-2,24,28,29-32 canonical counter-discourse 375-6 Real
Lex Talionis 154 n. 27 of mankind 191 metatheatre 373-5 death drive and 101-2
Libation Bearers (Aeschylus) 310 morality politics of representation 369-73 Eagleton on 8-9
life: respect for 201-5 Kant and 106, 107 reworkings of existing plays 368-9 ethics of 3-4, 101-9, 139-40
Llewellyn-Jones, L. 262, 267, 269 n. 54 Lacan and 8,107 Tegimni: An African Antigone 366-78 Red Army Faction (RAF) 346
Lloyd-Jones, H. 285-6, 288 Marx and 106 Ostwald, M. 299 refugees 48-9,56-61,65-6
Lombardo, S. 310 n. 116 mourning 256,257, 274 Otherness 70 Reisz, S. 364 n. 38
Loraux, N. 181,256 Mueller, C. 295 Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) 230 respect
on Antigone's suicide 277 Millier, T. 340 for generational order 205-7
death and balance between sexes 266 Murray, G. 285-6, 306,308 n. 108 patriarchy 205, 206-7 Irigaray on 200-10
tragedy as anti-political genre 260 Milthel, L. 340 patriotism 89-90 for life and cosmic order 201-5
Lothar, M. 341-2 Paulin, T. 27 n. 30 & 31, 38,314 n. 2 for sexuate differentiation 207-10
Lytras, N. 273, 274 Nabokov, V. 311 Petrey, S. 169 responsibility
naked life, see zoi! phallus: symbolic law of 32-5 origins of word 85-6
Macbeth (Shakespeare) 309,310 Name of the Father 87-8, 89, 131-2 Phelan, P. 132 n. 49, 279 n. 82 ethics of 7-8, 82-98
McCartney, R. 94, 95 Nazi regime 76-8, 338 Phillimore, ). S. 289,306, 308 n. 107 responsibility-irresponsibility
McDonald, M. 38, 287, 295 Nealon, J. T. 326 n. Philoctetes 104 aporia 91-6, 98
translation of choral ode 305 Ne!, C. 345-51 Phoenician Women (Euripides) 242-3,244 reviews
translation of deinon 19 n. 2 Neve, R. de 346,348 Phoenician Women (Seneca) 244 Stroux performance 338-44
McGuiness, M. 95 NI Chonaill, Eibhl!n Dhubh 42 Pirro, R. 53 n. 8 Tieck/Mendelssohn performance
Machine Inferna/e, La (Cocteau) 317-19 Nichomachean Ethics (Aristotle) 321 Plato 190 332-3, 334-6
Mcleish, K. 305 Nicolis, G. 149 n. 8 & 9 Plutarch 176 Rheinhardt, K. 324 n. 34
Mader, M. B. 21 n. 9, 37, 45 n. Nigeria: Tegimni: An African Antigone Podlecki, A. J. 173 n. 17 Richard II (Shakespeare) 307
Mandela, N. 22 (Os6fisan) 366-78 poetry: efficacy of 82-3 Riot Act, The (Paulin) 38, 314 n. 2
Marcks, G. 271 n. 57 Nochlin, L. 270, 273,279 n. 79 & 80 polis 48-9, 61-2, 65 Robinson, C. E. 284,307, 309-10
Marinetti, F. 313 nomos: translations of 299-304 Pollock, G. 218-19, 221-2,255 n. 3 Roche, A. 25,41 n. 92, 44, 314 n. 2
Markell, P. 20 n. 4, 23 n. 18 Norris, A. 364 epigraph 212 Roche, P. 295, 308 n. 109
Marx, K. 106 Ntshona, W. 378, 381 on Ettinger's concept of Rochlitz, F. 333
Mathews, A. C. 314 n. 2 metramorphosis 222 n. 16 Roisman, H. 178
matriarchy 205-6 Ober, J. 176 on matrixial 214 n. 5 Romilly, J. de 323 n. 30
matrixiality 213, 214, 215-18,220-1, 226 O'Brien, C. C. 25 Pomeroy, S. 259 Rotrou, J. de 246-8
Medea (Euripides) 336 O'Connor, F. 42 Prigogine, I. 149 n. 8 & 9 Royal Shakespeare Company 284
Meinhof, U. 346-7 Odyssey (Homer) 163-4 private sphere 1-3 Rudall, N. 294,306
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, F. 332, 334, 336 CEdipe (Gide) 248-50 Prix de Rome painting competition Ruell. R. 191-2
meta: semantics of 165 n. 68 Oedipus and Antigone (Brodowski) 271 ( 1825 ) 271-2 Rumsfeld, D. 387,388
Metamorphoses (Ovid) 230 Oedipus and Antigone (Marcks) 271 n.57 Proceso de Reorganizaci6n Nacional, Russell's paradox 150, 158
metatheatre 373-5 Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles) 48-50, Argentina 354
metramorphosis 222,224, 225 168, 243-4, 292,336 public space 48-9, 61-2 Sabouroff Painter 265, 265-6
Meyer, J. 391 n. 43 rereading Antigone through 49-52 sacredness of life 74,75
Miller, A. 104 and spa'e of law 53-5 Qureshi, A. 392 n. 45 Said, S. 369
Miller, M. 262 Oedipus 1�rannus 49-50, 169, 292 Sarup, M. 88
Mind the Gap (Hertmans) 192-3 on law 1'19 RAF (Red Army Faction) 346 Schiller, F. 333
Mogyor6di, E. 320 n. 22 Orestes (Euripides) 168 Ranciere, J. 59-60 Schlegel, A. W. 333
monstrosity Osofisan, F. ls Rand, E. 272 Schleiermacher, F. 288, 289
 Index 429
428 Index

transgenerational memory 218-19 Wertenbaker, T. 284

Schmidt, D.· 314 n. I Stich, B. 332
transgression 70-1, 80-1, 227 Wetmore, K. J. 366-7, 376-7
Schmitt, C. 76 Storr,F. 288, 289 n. 32, 306, 307-8
death drive and 223-4 W hitehorne,J. L. 182-3
Schulz, A. 336 Shakespearean intertextuality 309-10
transjectivity 215-16, 218, 225 Williams, B. 106
Seaford,R. 133 n. 52, 169 translation of choral ode 305
translations 283-312 Williams, P. 384
Searle, J. R. 182 Stroux,K. 338-45
assignment of lines on Haemon 298-9 Wills, C. 27 & n. 30
Segal, C. 285-6, 287, 288, 295, 297 Suppliant Women (Aeschylus) 168
choral ode 304-6 Winnington-Ingram, R. P. 125 n. 36
on Antigone's public discourse 177 Suppliant Women (Euripides) 168, 171
collected T heban/Oedipus plays 290-2 wisdom of Silenius 53, 54
on Creon's interdiction 173 supplication: images of 263-4
conflict 297, 302-3 Woerner,R. 340
translation of nomos 300, 30 I, 302
intertextuality 306-12 Wolf,A. 332
Seneca the Younger 244 Taming of the Shrew, The
introductory material and 293-6 women
'Settle Bed, The' (Heaney) 84 (Shakespeare) 307
of nomos 299-304 in drama 259-60
Seven Against Thebes (Euripides) 242 n. 5 Taplin,0. 260 n. 22, 270 n. 55
untranslatability of first line 286-9 status of 23-4, 96
sexuate identity 208, 240-1 Tauber, C. G. W. 336
Troller, U. 34 7 voice of 94, 95-6
respect for 207-10 Taylor,C. 109
Tyrrell, W. B. 171, 289 n. 32 Woodruff, P. 294, 296, 301
Shakespeare, W. Taylor,D. 288, 355
Hamlet 306, 310 The Theban Plays 284
'writing in the sand' metaphor 81-3
universality 79-80
King Lear 239, 307, 309, 310 translation of nomos 303
unwritten laws, see divine laws Yusem,L. 356, 357, 358
Macbeth 309, 310 Tegonni: An African Antigone
Richard II 307 (Os6fisan) 366-78
The Taming of the Shrew 307 Teiresias 131, 171 Van Kraaij,P. 192 Zeitlin, F. I. 125 n. 36, 169, 259
Van Weyenberg, A. 15 Zizek,s.
Sheehan, Cindy 41, 43 and divine laws 181-2
veiling: iconography of 260 n. 22, 261-2, and the act 140-1
Shuller, E. L. 212 speaking for Symbolic Order of (true)
Father 132 263, 264, 267 on Antigone 111 n. 4
simplicity 147, 148-50, 152-4
theatricality: autochthony and 230-1 Venuti,L. 288, 289 democracy/exclusion 80
Sirote T heatre 276
Thebaid (Statius) 244-6
Vernant,J.-P. 321, 323 n. 32 ethics of the Real 3-4, 139-40
Sjoholm, C. 19-20, 26 n. 28
Theban Plays, The (Taylor) 284
Videla,J. R. 382 feminine excess 379
social norms 154 n. 30, 156
Thebans, The (Wertenbaker) 284
virginity I 77 on fetishism 32 n. on homo sacer
Sorum,C. 125
Sourvinou-lnwood,C. 170-1, 174 n., themis 188
Virilio, P. 327 n. 40 concept 79, 391
183, 251 n. 22 Thomas, R. 179 virtue ethics I 06 on human rights 387
thorubus 175 VO/kischer Beobachter 342, 344 on identification 129
South Africa: productions of Antigone
22-3 Thucydides 175 & n. 21, 176 von Trier, L. 135-6, 145-6 interpretation of Antigone 70-1, 380
sovereignty Tieck, L. 330 on monstrosity of Antigone 21, 31
absolute 187-8 T illich,P. 318 n. 10 Wagner, A. 349 radicality of Antigone 139-40
bare life (zoe) and 71-6 time 163 n. 62, 165 Wajda, A. 80-1 on torture 387
Butler on 389 Toelken,E. H. 331 Wannamaker,A. 363 Zimmermann,C. 264 n. 34
definition of 76 Tompkins,J. 373, 375-6 Watling, E. R. 294, 297, 305 zoe (bare/naked life) 7, 48-66, 357-8,
speed of action 314-25 topology: Moebius strips 160, 164-5 Way,A. S. 308 n. 108 360, 381
Spivak,G. C. 372 n. 26, 377 torture 387 Weber, S. 20 n. 8 and sovereign power 71-6
Statius 244-6 totalitarianism 57-8, 70, 76
Stefanek,L. 348 Touchstone Literary Classics 295, 297
Steiner,G. 1, 241, 246, 366, 380 tragedy
cultural prominence of Antigone 13, 16 as anti-political genre 260
on reception of Antigone 283 as other space of politics 61-3
and speed 320 and religion 107-8