Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death

Review
" Antigone's Claim is a work of intricate and detailed analysis of enormously difficult material. Butler masterfully leads us to... a newfound theoretical activism within the political domain." -- Maria Cimitile, Hypatia


Review
"Could Antigone offer a model for a feminism (and more generally a radical politics) which resists and redefines the state, rather than seeks to enlist the state for its complaints? Most interpretations of Antigone's dilemma conscript her in the end for the state she opposes, even if only as a sign of that state's limits. In this brilliant book, Judith Butler explores Antigone's intricate family relations (she is her father's half-sister and her brother's aunt) as an interrogation of kinship and sexuality that in turn interrogate the state. 'Although not quite a queer heroine,'Butler writes, 'Antigone does emblematize a certain heterosexual fatality that remains to be read.'" -- Michael Wood, author of Children of Silence: On Contemporary Fiction


Book Description
The celebrated author of Gender Trouble here redefines Antigone's legacy, recovering her revolutionary significance and liberating it for a progressive feminism and sexual politics. Antigone has long been a feminist icon of defiance. But what has remained unclear is whether she escapes from the forms of power that she opposes, since the form of defiance she exemplifies also leads to her death. Butler argues that Antigone represents a form of feminist and sexual agency that is fraught with risk. Moreover, Antigone shows how a culture of normative heterosexuality obstructs our capacity to see what sexual freedom and political agency could be.


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Greek


About the Author
Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley. Her many acclaimed critical works include Subjects of Desire, Gender Trouble, The Psychic Life of Power, and Bodies That Matter.


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Presents the text of three of Butler's (rhetoric and comparative literature, U. of California-Berkeley) 1998 lectures exploring the meaning of Antigone. Questioning what forms of kinship might have allowed Antigone to live, Butler discusses the work of philosophers including Hegel, Lacan, and Irigaray and discusses how a culture of normative heterosexuality obstructs our capacity to see what sexual and political agency could be. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)


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