Interrogating Antigone in Postmodern Philosophy and Criticism

Abstract With the increasing artistic and scholarly interest in Sophocles' Antigones in the twenty‐first century, this collection of chapters tackles the difficult question of how to interpret the actions and character of Antigone, given the recent insights provided by Lacan, Derrida, Irigaray, Žižek, and Judith Butler. Using philosophical, psychoanalytic, political, gender, and performative approaches, the authors consider how Antigone speaks to us today, provoking a conceptual shift in the realm of ethics and evoking new definitions of what counts as the subject of the political. Divided into four parts (Philosophy and Politics; Psychoanalysis and the Law; Gender and Kinship; and Translations, Adaptations, and Performance), the book investigates Antigone as a current as well as a universal figure. The distinguished contributors to the book include Luce Irigaray (who has written a new and very personal reflection on a favourite subject), Terry Eagleton, Mark Griffith, Tina Chanter, Erika Fischer‐Lichte, Ahuvia Kahane, and Deborah Roberts. Through the issues raised by Antigone's actions and their subsequent interpretation, the book exposes the patriarchal discourse in the history of philosophical and psychoanalytical thinking and offers new insights into the position of women in society.