>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.
I can't answer any of your questions yet, I just got the book from interlibrary loan. It's very short, three essays. She's taking up Antigone as she's been used as a symbol of women's resistance to the state. She starts out by considering the way Antigone was taken up by Hegel, Lacan, Irigaray.
The reason she's taken this approach is that she is examining the ways Antigone has been used by feminists as a symbol of an anti-statist feminist politics:
"I began to think about Antigone a few years ago as I wondered what happened to those feminist efforts to confront and defy the state. It seemed to me that Antigone might work as a counterfigure to the trend championed by recent feminists to seek the backing and authority of the state to implement feminist policy aims. The legacy of Antigone's defiance appeared to be lost in the contemporary efforts to recast political opposition as legal plaint and to seek the legitimacy of the state in the espousal of feminist claims. Indeed, one finds Antigone defended and championed by Luce Irigaray as a principle of feminine defiance of statism and an example of anti-authoritarianism.
But who is this "Antigone" that I sought to use as an example of a certain feminist impulse? There is, of course, the "Antigone" of Sophocles' play by that name, and that Antigone is, after all, a fiction, one that does not easily allow itself to be made into an example one might follow without running the risk of slipping into irreality oneself. Not that this has stopped many people from making her intoa representative of sorts. Hegel has her stand for the transition from matriarchal to patriarchal rule, but also for the principle of kinship. And Irigary, though wavering on the representative function of Antigone, also insists upon it: "Her example is always worth reflecting upon as a historical figure and as an identity and identification for many girls and women living today. For this reflection, we must abstract Antigone from the seductive, reductive discourses and listen to what she has to say about government of the polis, its order and its laws" (Speculum, 70)." (Judith Butler, Antigone's Claim, pp 1-2)
More later, but just thought I'd bring this up again as I was hoping that both you and Carrol would address why you thought Judith Butler should be embarrassed by what she wrote re: Antigone.
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20080609/009835.html At 07:23 PM 6/9/2008, Carrol Cox wrote:
>shag wrote:
> >
> >
> > must be why Jerry's so incensed. heh.
> >
> > I found this amazon review interesting and the title a giggle coz maybe the
> > author has fantasies like Chris Doss. ha:
>
>If that summary is even remotely accurate, then Jerry is right that
>Butler should be embarassed.