Week 2. Classical antigone. C18-19 th Antigone. Modern & Postmodern Antigone 1970 s feminist influence confrontation with males

Transcription

1 Week 2 Classical antigone C18-19 th Antigone Modern & Postmodern Antigone 1970 s feminist influence confrontation with males Why are we drawn to this play? Centres on the question of antigone s law Antigone disobeys our human law Claims to be serving something else A higher law natural law Religious and mystical law Timeless themes law & justice human & divine custom & nature custome = human, and nature, that which comes before nature life & death youth & age passion & reason violence & mercy authority & obedience sovereign & subject love & desire male & female Today s Lecture 1. Context Biographical Historical Philosophical Dramatic Mythic 2. Textual Analysis 3. Interpretations Philosophical: political/legal Philosophical: language/aesthetics Feminist: psychoanalytic + queer Jurisprudential CONTEXT: BIOGRAPHICAL Sophocles BCE

2 Poet-playwright: Theban cycle Oedipus Rex (c.429) law of psychoanalysis, Oedipus complex, Oedipus at Colonus (c.406) Antigone (c.441) Set in the house of thieves. Interest is not in what happens and the ending, its about the emotional engagement in the story and characters CONTEXT: HISTORICAL Naval Battle of Salamis (480 BCE) Athenian led coalition of city-states called Delian League defeats Persian Empire Golden Age of Athens: Pericles ( ; led Athens ) Politics & Philosophy Art and Architecture Poetry and Literature The Peloponnesian Wars ( BCE) Athens v Sparta for leadership of Greece; ends in Pyrrhic Victory CONTEXT: PHILOSOPHICAL Rise of Philosophy (philo-sophia: love/wisdom) Socrates c Plato c Aristotle Defined against the Sophists Rhetoric Truth as relative Also anti-clerical, even anti-deistic (of the gods) Language as an artform Language as persuasive Beginning of lawyers CONTEXT: DRAMATIC Tragedy: Festival of Dionysius Aeschylus 524/525 c. 455/456 Sophocles Euripides Tragedies performed for gods Structure of a Tragedy Parodos = chorus marches into the orchestra chanting the parodos First Episode First Stasimon (choral song) Second Episode Second Stasimon Third Episode Third Stasimon Fourth Episode Fourth Stasimon Exodos = dialogue, sometimes kommos

3 CONTEXT: DRAMATIC Aristotle s Theory of Tragedy in The Poetics Formal elements of Tragedy: 1. Protagonist (not hero) character that captures our attention, Crion in antigone 2. Peripeteia: reversal - 3. Hamartia: flaw 4. Anagnorisis: recognition 5. Katharsis purgation, cleansing of the tragic emotions of pity and fear Chorus: comments upon, amplifies, counterpoints action Aristotle considered tragedy more significant than history because they speak to how the world operates in a way that history cannot. Tragedy can apply to anyone, anywhere Aristotle s ideal plot structure CONTEXT: MYTHIC Oedipus of Thebes Son of Jocasta & Laius: the prophecy: parricide & incest Abandoned & Rescued: Adopted Learns of Prophecy, leaves Slays a traveller (Laius), outwits Sphinx (the Riddle of Man); weds Jocasta (mother) 4 children: Polynices, Eteocles, Ismene, Antigone Oedipus Rex: tragedy of discovery Oedipus at Colonus: Oedipus redemption But curse on his children: Polynices & Eteocles at war, and die by each others hand Burial? Antigone begins TEXTUAL ANALYSIS Prologos (Prologue) ll

4 Introducing Antigone & her dilemma whether or not she should bury her brother Creon s law and her intention Ismene s reaction: on men & women (ll ) Antigone on blood ties, on love (l.87) hints at her being in love with her brother Parados, ll Context: the War First Episode, ll Introducing Creon and His Rule of Law Creon on the Polis (City), ll Not blood, not love but Friend/enemy; traitor/patriot Guard: fear; Creon s: paranoia Buries her brother again after the dirt is cleaned off Stasimon 1: Ode to Man, ll Pre-occupied with wonder that is man: Wonder/Deinos: terrible, strange Man s dominion: tames nature Institutes culture: Language (Logos) Law (Nomos) Death: limit Second Episode, ll Antigone s arrest & arraignment Confrontation between Antigone and creon Key speech, ll Antigone, tension between creons law, positive law, and higher law, natural law laws of man; laws of the gods Creon s reaction: misogyny & friend/enemy Antigone: Death does not see difference Compare our translation of Antigone s key speech ( ) with Philippe Nonet s translation: Creon: [D]id you know it was commanded not to do that? A: I knew; how would I not? It was manifest. C: And yet you dared to transgress this law? A: Not at all indeed to me was it Zeus who commanded that, nor the Dikè (meaning she to show beings where there should be, so creons crime was not putting him in the right place, didn t put him in the ground) dwelling with the gods below, [it was not they] who determined this law for men, nor of such strength did I think your command that the unwritten unfailing divine lawfulness it could override, [you] being a mortal. Not indeed now or yesterday, but always ever it lives, and no one knows whence it came to light.

5 The that can refer to either Kreon s edict OR HER OWN DEED, suggesting that her own deed was mandated neither by Zeus nor by Dikè. The word dike is usually translated as Justice, but it is a formation of the verb to show. It signifies the like of she who shows [to beings where they belong.] Divine lawfulness = laws that bind even the gods. Third Episode, ll Introducing Haemon the son of creon Appeal: not mercy, but flexibility appeals to the benefits of positive law, that it can be changed and adapted. Doesn t appeal to anything outside of the law, he appeals to internal reason and logic Analogy tree or ship (ll ) Creon s rage Changes sentence: entombment: an inversion of his first crime 3 rd Stasimon Ode to Love (ll ) Not Cupid, but Eros Eros is the god of ecstasy Dark, menacing, destructive force Love, you mock us for your sport (l.894) But also desire/law (ll ) Fourth Episode, ll Antigone s lament (kommos). Ll Why she acts: brother that cannot be replaced: singularity 4th Stasimon: the gods Entrapped like Antigone Fifth Episode, ll, Tiresias: omens, portents, one meaning: you ve robbed the gods Creon: money Tiresias: gods will demand one of yours, quid pro quo (ll ) Peripeteia: Reversal no more fighting a losing battle Fifth Stasimon: Ode to Dionysos: prayer of deliverance Cf Ode to man: reason vs passion; culture vs nature Exodos: Death of Haemon, death of Eurydice Creon s anagnorisis: recognition Chorus: wisdom INTERPRETATIONS Stood for the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law Philosophical: Political/Legal Hegel: allegory of civil disobedience View of history: all moving towards perfection, marx s account of history

6 Creon: letter of the law, posited, state Antigone: spirit, higher law, justice/god Thesis/Antithesis-Synthesis State of Recht (Right) Philosophical: Language/Aesthetics Heidegger/Douzinas Antigone - spirit of Physis (nature), Creon - embodiment of Logos/Nomos (culture, nature must be tamed) Techné (applied knowledge) Techné suppresses nature but it haunts us; see nature shining through Nature is surpressed by law but always shines through Antigone Psychoanalytic Lacan's discussion of Antigone in his seminar, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: "the only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one's desire." Hero because she does not give up on her desire Guilt is only present if you give up on the desire Feminist: Irigaray: Woman as the Other of Law Dies so state may live (Creon) But universalises masculine (Polynices goes to the underworld: the world of ideas/ideology) Antigone stages a transition from Matriarchy to Patriarchy Butler: Feminist Foucauldian- Queer Not what Antigone does, but who she is: relational Kinship: product of and parody of Oedipus Models another kinship: not based on prohibition, not heteronormative Post-Oedipal: Queering Oedipus? Honig: Feminist-Deconstructive-Democratic Antigone is not universal sister but a political actor Play is about politics of mourning and burial in Athens Not mortalist humanism but agonistic humanism; not individual heroics but collective action; not crisis/resistance but quest for self-governance a Jurisprudential Reading Not law/justice; physis/nomos; law/ethics; man/woman; self/other, etc Rather two legalities in collision Democratic individual Antigone: not a critic, but model of state: Equality claim Navigates universal/particular Death does not recognise difference: sameness (democratic) But found in specific body of Polynices: sameness is singularised and particularised Creon: not the state s embodiment, but critic of it: Sees differences everywhere: men/women; traitor/patriot; friend/enemy (cf. Carl Schmitt on liberalism)