On Jun 9, 2008, at 7:44 PM, shag wrote:
>
> i haven't read the book in question, but out of curiosity, this is a
> summary:
>
>
> In Antigone's Claim (2000) Butler...reconceptualizes the
> incest taboo in relation to kinship and opens up the concept of
> kinship
> to cultural change...If the incest taboo is reconceived so that it
> does not mandate heterosexuality as its solution, what forms of
> sexual alliance and new kinship might be acknowledged as a result?
> The book relates the courageous deeds of Antigoneto the claims made
> by those whose relations are still not honored as those of proper
> kinship, showing how a culture of normative heterosexualiobstructs
> our capacity to see what sexual freedom and political agency could be.
I find it a bit hard to grasp what Butler is proposing. Is she saying that the relationship between Antigone and Polyneikes is as incestuous as it would have been normal had the drama taken place in the Hundred-Gated rather than the Seven-Gated Thebes (Antigone does call her place of entombment a "bridal chamber")? Or is she suggesting that Creon denies her the right to bury her brother because of the Oedipos/Jocasta incest rather than because he was a traitor and fratricide? The first makes excellent sense, but the second would misread Creon completely.
Also, I wonder how she dealt with the "daddy's girl" Antigone of Oedipos at Colonus, Sophocles's last word on the topic.
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."
Herakleitos of Ephesos