Antigone and the Politics of Sisterhood

Abstract This chapter examines why Antigone has proved so irresistible to feminist political theory and in particular the political theory of the family. Feminists have wanted to claim Antigone as a sister, but this chapter uses Ismene to query the valency of the metaphor of sisterhood. While feminist readings of Antigone have been hugely and rightly influential in exploring the difficulties of Georg Hegel's dominant model of approaching the play, within the ongoing work of critical exchange between feminist writers, it is fascinating to see how Ismene can be written out of the story. From the beginning, Sophocles' staging of the sisters Antigone and Ismene recognises that in the personal conflicts of the tragic narrative to come there is a difficult and unresolved claim of sisterhood. The tragic myth of Antigone also offers a profound way of thinking about myth and feminism productively through a critical gaze at the politics of sisterhood.