Becoming-sisters, Becoming-daughters: The Construction of Kinship in Antigone

• In Event: Rethinking Kinship and the Family

Abstract

This paper will undertake a study of the tragic language of Sophocles’ Antigone, adopting a cross-disciplinary approach (political theory, gender studies, and classical studies). It will be based on a philological and dramaturgical analysis of several passages of the text, with the aim of investigating the topic of family in Sophocles’ play and its reception in political theory, insofar as, from Hegel on – and particularly many feminist theorists such as Judith Butler – have interpreted Antigone on the basis of kinship ties.
In the first part of the paper, I will provide an overview of a particular approach to gender studies in Antiquity. From the 80s on, several theorists (i.e. Froma Zeitlin and Victoria Wohl) adopted a non-referential approach to the study of the female characters (and their speeches) in the ancient Greek sources. Instead, they called into question the concepts and the ideas that informed the way in which the writers represented female characters, while referring to the social and political institutions of the time. I will focus on several theorists (Butler, Goldhill, and Honig) which problematize kinship (and particularly sorority) in Antigone.
In the second part of the paper, I will present my own reading, from a political theory perspective, of several passages of Sophocles’ play, which differs from a more “traditional” one. Particularly, I will focus on (a) the agonistic exchange between Antigone and Ismene, at the lines 531 ff.; (b) Antigone’s famous lamentation at the lines 891-928. I will discuss the way in which Antigone’s relations to her sister, to her brother, and to her father are problematized, constructed, and de-constructed in her own speech. She negotiates them in the language, instead of just assuming them as juridical references.

Author

• Valentina Moro, Istituto italiano per gli studi filosofici, Naples, Italy