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زندگی سه باره آنتیگونه
در صحنه ای از فیلم «آلمان در پاییز» سازندگان یک اجرای تلویزیونی از «آنتیگونه» سوفوکلس، بر سر حذف برخی کلمات و افزودن پاره ای توضیحات در ازای گرفتن پروانۀ پخش، با مدیران شبکه چانه می زنند.
در پایان-به رغم نرمش ایشان-مقام مسئول کوتاه نمی آید و حکم می دهد که متن «متأسفانه زیادی به روز است» و پخش آن با توجه به حساسیت های زمانه خطرناک است. آنچه در این صحنه در پوشش طنز بیان می شود، موضوعی بسیار جدی است: یک متن دوهزاروپانصدساله، در اواخر قرن بیستم، هنوز برای نظام سیاسیِ مستقر زهردار است.
در پایان-به رغم نرمش ایشان-مقام مسئول کوتاه نمی آید و حکم می دهد که متن «متأسفانه زیادی به روز است» و پخش آن با توجه به حساسیت های زمانه خطرناک است. آنچه در این صحنه در پوشش طنز بیان می شود، موضوعی بسیار جدی است: یک متن دوهزاروپانصدساله، در اواخر قرن بیستم، هنوز برای نظام سیاسیِ مستقر زهردار است.
137 pages, Paperback
First published February 27, 2015
27 people are currently reading
341 people want to read
About the author
Slavoj Žižek
638 books7,546 followersSlavoj Žižek is a Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic.
He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).
Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."
He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).
Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."
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January 19, 2019
«Vivimos dentro y según la ley. Ella nos convierte en lo que somos: ciudadanos y empleados. Doctores y cónyuges, personas que poseen cosas».
Ronald Dworkin, El imperio de la justicia, p. 11
Sigo leyendo como desesperado, viendo Suits, trabajando, y mi plan original de comentar mis lecturas para hacer una pausa, para hacer una reflexión sobre lo leído, para que no se quede en algo estéril, solo se acumula sobre la mesa de mi escritorio.
Esta mañana me levanto con la noticia de que ya suman 67 muertos, y otras 76 heridas, por la explosión en Tlahuelilpan, y mi diaria revisión de la temperatura en Twitter me abruma y deprime. Tantas estúpidas opiniones, tantas opiniones, tantos comentarios, información, contrainformación, ataques verbales, desinformación, ruido en la red; tanta palabrería vana me excede y me encabrona. Hacemos un uso de nuestra libertad que apabulla, y todos contribuimos a ese tsunami de palabras.
Como estos mis comentarios sobre las lecturas, como seguir escribiendo cuando cada vez lo veo más innecesario.
Me debato entre la lectura de mis contemporáneos y los “antiguos”, muchos de los escritores actuales, a quienes admiro y respeto, me serían imposibles de comprender y abarcar en su totalidad si no leyera a los “clásicos”, o al menos a autores anteriores a nuestra época, de distintas latitudes, de distintos contextos. Para entender un poco mejor de dónde vienen, hacia dónde se dirigen, releer a los clásicos se me figura más urgente ahora en mi vida que nunca antes.
Leer antes que escribir es para mí el punto de partida.
El primer hallazgo en la Antígona de Žižek es en las primeras páginas, donde hace referencia al filme de Zacharias Kunuk, Atanarjuat (2001), para establecer el punto desde el cual él escribe su versión del mito: desde la tradición. Ser parte de la tradición te permite modificar o actualizar el mito, la idea del valor de lo “original” es de los advenedizos, de los recién llegados.
Partiendo de ahí, me quedo con dos grandes temas en la Antígona de Žižek: lo que podríamos entender por la justicia, y el peso de la muerte en la humanidad.
Contrario a lo que uno podría llegar a pensar como falsificación, como lo señalaba Lafargue «nuestra época será llamada la “edad de la falsificación”», reescribir el mito es precisamente no falsificarlo, Žižek se sigue sintiendo parte de él, y por ende se siente con la libertad de moldearlo a su visión hegelieana-lacaniana-marxista del mundo, una visión donde se discuten las “leyes humanas” y las “leyes divinas”, sin acotarlo a una religión en particular, sino extrapolando dos puntos de vista sobre lo que debe ser la ley en el mundo.
«No pensaba que tus proclamas tuvieran tanto poder como para que un mortal pudiera transgredir las leyes no escritas e inquebrantables de los dioses. Estas no son de hoy ni de ayer, sino de siempre, y nadie sabe de donde surgieron» (p. 93), le responde Antígona a Creonte.
La justicia creo que no es aquello que podemos imaginar en donde todos nos vemos o beneficiados o no perjudicados por el actuar de los otros. No. La justicia es algo que el hombre decide en particular y en específico sobre cada caso en el que debamos revisarlo, un crimen, una falta, un delito, tendrá parangones con otros, y habrá jurisprudencias y demás, pero, seguirá siendo necesario un juez que establezca hacia dónde se inclina la balanza, de ahí mi referencia inicial al “imperio de la justicia” dworkiniano, las interpretaciones que el hombre pueda hacer de la ley es una que no es rígida y nunca lo será, tal como el mito no está “escrito en piedra” y es necesario que volvamos a ellos y los reescribamos cada cierto tiempo.
De ahí que la traducción, la traslación, sea no solo idiomática, sino temporal, económica. Y más que nunca: necesaria.
Entre los temas que había (hay) en el aire mientras leía esta obra, está el caso de los cambios que habrá en materia de cultura en México, y la posible fusión entre el Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE) y la Dirección General de Publicaciones (DGP), y como esto puede representar una pérdida para ambas instituciones: el FCE surge (entre otras cosas) para poder hacer suyos un legado cultural propio, para generar el conocimiento que nos sirva a nosotros como mexicanos, como latinoamericanos.
De acuerdo, leo la obra de Žižek en una traducción española, muy buena por cierto, pero es el tema que representa lo que me interesa resaltar, no es anarquía, no, es cuestionar la ley y lo establecido respondiendo a una escala de valores que “supera” lo humano, la ley divina, diríamos en el mito.
Releí la Antígona de Sófocles, durante la lectura de la de Žižek, y la idea de ocultar los cadáveres que tenemos me remitió inmediatamente en Karl Ove Knausgård, entiendo las cuestiones rituales y sanitarias al respecto de cómo disponemos a nuestros muertos, pero más bien la pregunta, el foco, está en la comprensión que tenemos del cuerpo muerto, y ese pudor ante su no-espectáculo, Knausgård hace énfasis en la muerte y como los cadáveres siguen siendo personas para nosotros, y por alguna extraña razón los ocultamos, los tapamos, parece como si nos dijéramos que la muerte no puede ser visible de esa manera, que podemos ver otras cosas muertas, pero no a nuestros semejantes.
Antígona no “teme” a la muerte porque se reconoce como mortal: “Sabía que iba a morir, ¿cómo no?, aún cuando tú no lo hubieras hecho pregonar”, le responde a Creonte en la versión de Žižek; pero no tolera que uno de sus hermanos quede sin sepultar insultando a los dioses.
En la versión posmoderna de Žižek, Antígona no tiene un solo final, no puede tener un solo final, aquí nos presenta tres versiones de final, y ninguna podría satisfacer a todos, porque “ese” es realmente el final: no todos obtendremos satisfacción, nunca.
Quiero agregar algo con respecto a que ya “matamos” a Dios, y que hemos encumbrado nuestros nuevos mitos en la ciencia; y que ello, de alguna manera nos llevará a “matar” la idea que tenemos de la muerte. Pero, ya me fui demasiado por las ramas. Y eso más bien es tema de otro texto.
Ronald Dworkin, El imperio de la justicia, p. 11
Sigo leyendo como desesperado, viendo Suits, trabajando, y mi plan original de comentar mis lecturas para hacer una pausa, para hacer una reflexión sobre lo leído, para que no se quede en algo estéril, solo se acumula sobre la mesa de mi escritorio.
Esta mañana me levanto con la noticia de que ya suman 67 muertos, y otras 76 heridas, por la explosión en Tlahuelilpan, y mi diaria revisión de la temperatura en Twitter me abruma y deprime. Tantas estúpidas opiniones, tantas opiniones, tantos comentarios, información, contrainformación, ataques verbales, desinformación, ruido en la red; tanta palabrería vana me excede y me encabrona. Hacemos un uso de nuestra libertad que apabulla, y todos contribuimos a ese tsunami de palabras.
Como estos mis comentarios sobre las lecturas, como seguir escribiendo cuando cada vez lo veo más innecesario.
Me debato entre la lectura de mis contemporáneos y los “antiguos”, muchos de los escritores actuales, a quienes admiro y respeto, me serían imposibles de comprender y abarcar en su totalidad si no leyera a los “clásicos”, o al menos a autores anteriores a nuestra época, de distintas latitudes, de distintos contextos. Para entender un poco mejor de dónde vienen, hacia dónde se dirigen, releer a los clásicos se me figura más urgente ahora en mi vida que nunca antes.
Leer antes que escribir es para mí el punto de partida.
El primer hallazgo en la Antígona de Žižek es en las primeras páginas, donde hace referencia al filme de Zacharias Kunuk, Atanarjuat (2001), para establecer el punto desde el cual él escribe su versión del mito: desde la tradición. Ser parte de la tradición te permite modificar o actualizar el mito, la idea del valor de lo “original” es de los advenedizos, de los recién llegados.
Partiendo de ahí, me quedo con dos grandes temas en la Antígona de Žižek: lo que podríamos entender por la justicia, y el peso de la muerte en la humanidad.
Contrario a lo que uno podría llegar a pensar como falsificación, como lo señalaba Lafargue «nuestra época será llamada la “edad de la falsificación”», reescribir el mito es precisamente no falsificarlo, Žižek se sigue sintiendo parte de él, y por ende se siente con la libertad de moldearlo a su visión hegelieana-lacaniana-marxista del mundo, una visión donde se discuten las “leyes humanas” y las “leyes divinas”, sin acotarlo a una religión en particular, sino extrapolando dos puntos de vista sobre lo que debe ser la ley en el mundo.
«No pensaba que tus proclamas tuvieran tanto poder como para que un mortal pudiera transgredir las leyes no escritas e inquebrantables de los dioses. Estas no son de hoy ni de ayer, sino de siempre, y nadie sabe de donde surgieron» (p. 93), le responde Antígona a Creonte.
La justicia creo que no es aquello que podemos imaginar en donde todos nos vemos o beneficiados o no perjudicados por el actuar de los otros. No. La justicia es algo que el hombre decide en particular y en específico sobre cada caso en el que debamos revisarlo, un crimen, una falta, un delito, tendrá parangones con otros, y habrá jurisprudencias y demás, pero, seguirá siendo necesario un juez que establezca hacia dónde se inclina la balanza, de ahí mi referencia inicial al “imperio de la justicia” dworkiniano, las interpretaciones que el hombre pueda hacer de la ley es una que no es rígida y nunca lo será, tal como el mito no está “escrito en piedra” y es necesario que volvamos a ellos y los reescribamos cada cierto tiempo.
De ahí que la traducción, la traslación, sea no solo idiomática, sino temporal, económica. Y más que nunca: necesaria.
Entre los temas que había (hay) en el aire mientras leía esta obra, está el caso de los cambios que habrá en materia de cultura en México, y la posible fusión entre el Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE) y la Dirección General de Publicaciones (DGP), y como esto puede representar una pérdida para ambas instituciones: el FCE surge (entre otras cosas) para poder hacer suyos un legado cultural propio, para generar el conocimiento que nos sirva a nosotros como mexicanos, como latinoamericanos.
De acuerdo, leo la obra de Žižek en una traducción española, muy buena por cierto, pero es el tema que representa lo que me interesa resaltar, no es anarquía, no, es cuestionar la ley y lo establecido respondiendo a una escala de valores que “supera” lo humano, la ley divina, diríamos en el mito.
Releí la Antígona de Sófocles, durante la lectura de la de Žižek, y la idea de ocultar los cadáveres que tenemos me remitió inmediatamente en Karl Ove Knausgård, entiendo las cuestiones rituales y sanitarias al respecto de cómo disponemos a nuestros muertos, pero más bien la pregunta, el foco, está en la comprensión que tenemos del cuerpo muerto, y ese pudor ante su no-espectáculo, Knausgård hace énfasis en la muerte y como los cadáveres siguen siendo personas para nosotros, y por alguna extraña razón los ocultamos, los tapamos, parece como si nos dijéramos que la muerte no puede ser visible de esa manera, que podemos ver otras cosas muertas, pero no a nuestros semejantes.
Antígona no “teme” a la muerte porque se reconoce como mortal: “Sabía que iba a morir, ¿cómo no?, aún cuando tú no lo hubieras hecho pregonar”, le responde a Creonte en la versión de Žižek; pero no tolera que uno de sus hermanos quede sin sepultar insultando a los dioses.
En la versión posmoderna de Žižek, Antígona no tiene un solo final, no puede tener un solo final, aquí nos presenta tres versiones de final, y ninguna podría satisfacer a todos, porque “ese” es realmente el final: no todos obtendremos satisfacción, nunca.
Quiero agregar algo con respecto a que ya “matamos” a Dios, y que hemos encumbrado nuestros nuevos mitos en la ciencia; y que ello, de alguna manera nos llevará a “matar” la idea que tenemos de la muerte. Pero, ya me fui demasiado por las ramas. Y eso más bien es tema de otro texto.
January 7, 2023
Zizek gibt drei Alternativen, wie die Geschichte mit Antigone enden könnte. Fand ich ausgezeichnet.
February 10, 2016
https://procitajto.com/2016/02/09/ant...
Čemu služi umjetnost ako je posve apolitična? Nije li dužnost umjetnika povremeno upiknuti goruću točku društva i na taj način izazvati željenu reakciju? Živi li klasično djelo zatvorimo li ga u njegove okvire i ostavimo li ga takvim, autentičnim, konzerviranim, prekrasnim i dalekim? Možemo se diviti ljepoti, možemo se diviti mrtvilu, no mrtvačku ćemo ukočenost klasičnog djela opustiti samo shvatimo li ga kao nešto otvoreno. No, učinimo li tako, usmjerimo li ga prema budućnosti i udahnemo li mu novu životnost svojom intervencijom, nećemo li ga time i oskvrnuti, oduzeti mu ponešto od njegove autentičnosti?
„Autentičnost je precijenjena!“uzvik je što glasno, tako glasno da para uši odzvanja kroz svih, gotovo stotinu, stranica postmodernističkog ispisivanja Sofoklove Antigone, onakve kakvom je vidi najopasniji filozof Zapada, Slavoj Žižek. Iako biste od filozofa očekivali da svoje misli čitatelju podastre u obliku gusto ispisanog, teorijski natopljenog i nadasve provokativnog eseja, Žižek se ovog puta okušao u za njega posve nepoznatoj, dramskoj formi. Njegova je Antigona nastala kao prvo teatrološko djelo proizašlo iz Filozofskog teatra, projekta vraćanja filozofije u kazalište pod čijim okriljem filozof Srećko Horvat u zagrebačkom Hrvatskom narodnom kazalištu s eminentnim gostima razgovara o problemima vremena u kojem živimo. Kako je na Antigoninu zagrebačkom predstavljanju istaknula intendantica kazališne kuće Dubravka Vrgoč, nisu se htjeli zaustaviti samo na razgovorima već su, kao istinsko ispunjenje Filozofskog teatra vidjeli nastanak i uprizorenje važnih tekstova koji će obilježiti suvremenost. Razrađujući ideju, Vrgoč i Horvat odlučili su pkušati uvjeriti Žižeka da upravo on svojim tekstom pridonese spajanju i ostvarivanju onog filozofskog u teatru i teatralnog u filozofiji.
U njegovoj je filozofiji uvijek mnogo drame, njegovi su nastupi izrazito scenični i teatralni, Žižek gledateljevu pozornost zarobljuje onime što govori jednako kao i načinom na koji to govori, mimikom, popratnom gestikulacijom, aurom što je oko sebe stvara. Za zaključiti je stoga kako niti Žižekova drama neće biti lišena filozofije. No, Žižekova je Antigona podijeljena u dva dijela i dok je esej, kako je na prestavljanju primjetio glavni urednik Frakture u čijem je suizdanju knjiga u Hrvatskoj objavljena, očekivano provokativan drama je nešto posve drugo. Naslovivši je Trostruki život Antigonin autor na prvi pogled otkriva čitatelju u čemu je njegova novina, u kojem se trenutku zbiva njegova intervencija u samom tekstu. Početak je isti kao kod Sofokla, prvotni se moment ne mijenja; Antigona, tragična junakinja vođena božanskim osjećajem za pravdu i potaknuta neizrecivom ljubavlju prema bratu Poliniku čiji je pokop zabranio njihov ujak, okrutni tebanski vladar Kreont odlučuje se za ultimativni čin građanskog neposluha i održava pogrebni obred pokojnome bratu u čast.
I tu dolazi do Žižekova upliva. Kako je autor istaknuo u uvodnom eseju Trči, Antigono, trči tri su projekcije Antigone; antička, Sofoklova, djelatna Antigona postavljena nasuprot Kirkengardovoj modernoj, nedjelatnoj Antigoni zauvijek osuđenoj na ravnodušnu patnju, a s njima je u suprotnosti postmodernistička Antigona za koju bi etičko bilo samo iskušenje kojem biva izložena. Tri Antigone iz uvoda i tri svršetka u kojima se izmjenjuju Antigonin, Kreontov i položaj zbora nisu u izravnoj korelaciji, no poveznica između postmodernističke Antigone i postmodernističkog razvoja sukoba i svršetka za kakvim traga Žižek svakako postoji.
Prva je inačica vjerna tradiciji i slijedi Sofoklov rasplet; zbor na samom svršetku hvali Antigoninu spremnost da slijedi božanska načela do samog kraja i veliča njezinu ustrajnost. Drugi mogući svršetak prikazuje što bi se dogodilo da je Antigona uvjerila Kreonta da dopusti dostojan ukop njena brata i zapravo je brechtovska pohvala pragmatizmu kojom se šalje jasna poruka o vladajućoj klasi kao onoj što si može priuštiti poštovanje časnih i strogih načela dok puk plaća visoku cijenu za to. I premda se već u drugom svršetku može iščitati onaj ubadajući moment Antigone kao subverzivne, kao one koja progovara za one bez vlastitog glasa i jasno definiranog ontološkog statusa, ali ne i u ime svih onih iz javnog diskursa, treća je mogućnost svršetka najzanimljivija, djeluje kao veliko finale i predstavlja katarzu suvremenog društva. U njoj, naime, zbor preuzima aktivnu ulogu, izlazi iz okvira pukog prenositelja istine, kori protagoniste, kažnjava ih i preuzima vodstvo uspostavljajući narodnu demokraciju u Tebi.
Je li upravo to i Žižekovo rješenje za krizu u suvremenim društvima? Odbacite vjerske i svjetovne uplive i okrenite se sebi kao ishodištu, ali i rješenju problema. Ne. Žižek je ovom dramom tek postavio pravo pitanje na koje tek treba dati odgovor. I premda on tvrdi kako je njegova Antigona tek eksperiment u mišljenju, a ne autentičan umjetnički tekst, ona je zapravo ono što doista zaslužuje stajati na polici „novo“ u poplavi modernog i autentičnog u literarnom diskursu.
Čemu služi umjetnost ako je posve apolitična? Nije li dužnost umjetnika povremeno upiknuti goruću točku društva i na taj način izazvati željenu reakciju? Živi li klasično djelo zatvorimo li ga u njegove okvire i ostavimo li ga takvim, autentičnim, konzerviranim, prekrasnim i dalekim? Možemo se diviti ljepoti, možemo se diviti mrtvilu, no mrtvačku ćemo ukočenost klasičnog djela opustiti samo shvatimo li ga kao nešto otvoreno. No, učinimo li tako, usmjerimo li ga prema budućnosti i udahnemo li mu novu životnost svojom intervencijom, nećemo li ga time i oskvrnuti, oduzeti mu ponešto od njegove autentičnosti?
„Autentičnost je precijenjena!“uzvik je što glasno, tako glasno da para uši odzvanja kroz svih, gotovo stotinu, stranica postmodernističkog ispisivanja Sofoklove Antigone, onakve kakvom je vidi najopasniji filozof Zapada, Slavoj Žižek. Iako biste od filozofa očekivali da svoje misli čitatelju podastre u obliku gusto ispisanog, teorijski natopljenog i nadasve provokativnog eseja, Žižek se ovog puta okušao u za njega posve nepoznatoj, dramskoj formi. Njegova je Antigona nastala kao prvo teatrološko djelo proizašlo iz Filozofskog teatra, projekta vraćanja filozofije u kazalište pod čijim okriljem filozof Srećko Horvat u zagrebačkom Hrvatskom narodnom kazalištu s eminentnim gostima razgovara o problemima vremena u kojem živimo. Kako je na Antigoninu zagrebačkom predstavljanju istaknula intendantica kazališne kuće Dubravka Vrgoč, nisu se htjeli zaustaviti samo na razgovorima već su, kao istinsko ispunjenje Filozofskog teatra vidjeli nastanak i uprizorenje važnih tekstova koji će obilježiti suvremenost. Razrađujući ideju, Vrgoč i Horvat odlučili su pkušati uvjeriti Žižeka da upravo on svojim tekstom pridonese spajanju i ostvarivanju onog filozofskog u teatru i teatralnog u filozofiji.
U njegovoj je filozofiji uvijek mnogo drame, njegovi su nastupi izrazito scenični i teatralni, Žižek gledateljevu pozornost zarobljuje onime što govori jednako kao i načinom na koji to govori, mimikom, popratnom gestikulacijom, aurom što je oko sebe stvara. Za zaključiti je stoga kako niti Žižekova drama neće biti lišena filozofije. No, Žižekova je Antigona podijeljena u dva dijela i dok je esej, kako je na prestavljanju primjetio glavni urednik Frakture u čijem je suizdanju knjiga u Hrvatskoj objavljena, očekivano provokativan drama je nešto posve drugo. Naslovivši je Trostruki život Antigonin autor na prvi pogled otkriva čitatelju u čemu je njegova novina, u kojem se trenutku zbiva njegova intervencija u samom tekstu. Početak je isti kao kod Sofokla, prvotni se moment ne mijenja; Antigona, tragična junakinja vođena božanskim osjećajem za pravdu i potaknuta neizrecivom ljubavlju prema bratu Poliniku čiji je pokop zabranio njihov ujak, okrutni tebanski vladar Kreont odlučuje se za ultimativni čin građanskog neposluha i održava pogrebni obred pokojnome bratu u čast.
I tu dolazi do Žižekova upliva. Kako je autor istaknuo u uvodnom eseju Trči, Antigono, trči tri su projekcije Antigone; antička, Sofoklova, djelatna Antigona postavljena nasuprot Kirkengardovoj modernoj, nedjelatnoj Antigoni zauvijek osuđenoj na ravnodušnu patnju, a s njima je u suprotnosti postmodernistička Antigona za koju bi etičko bilo samo iskušenje kojem biva izložena. Tri Antigone iz uvoda i tri svršetka u kojima se izmjenjuju Antigonin, Kreontov i položaj zbora nisu u izravnoj korelaciji, no poveznica između postmodernističke Antigone i postmodernističkog razvoja sukoba i svršetka za kakvim traga Žižek svakako postoji.
Prva je inačica vjerna tradiciji i slijedi Sofoklov rasplet; zbor na samom svršetku hvali Antigoninu spremnost da slijedi božanska načela do samog kraja i veliča njezinu ustrajnost. Drugi mogući svršetak prikazuje što bi se dogodilo da je Antigona uvjerila Kreonta da dopusti dostojan ukop njena brata i zapravo je brechtovska pohvala pragmatizmu kojom se šalje jasna poruka o vladajućoj klasi kao onoj što si može priuštiti poštovanje časnih i strogih načela dok puk plaća visoku cijenu za to. I premda se već u drugom svršetku može iščitati onaj ubadajući moment Antigone kao subverzivne, kao one koja progovara za one bez vlastitog glasa i jasno definiranog ontološkog statusa, ali ne i u ime svih onih iz javnog diskursa, treća je mogućnost svršetka najzanimljivija, djeluje kao veliko finale i predstavlja katarzu suvremenog društva. U njoj, naime, zbor preuzima aktivnu ulogu, izlazi iz okvira pukog prenositelja istine, kori protagoniste, kažnjava ih i preuzima vodstvo uspostavljajući narodnu demokraciju u Tebi.
Je li upravo to i Žižekovo rješenje za krizu u suvremenim društvima? Odbacite vjerske i svjetovne uplive i okrenite se sebi kao ishodištu, ali i rješenju problema. Ne. Žižek je ovom dramom tek postavio pravo pitanje na koje tek treba dati odgovor. I premda on tvrdi kako je njegova Antigona tek eksperiment u mišljenju, a ne autentičan umjetnički tekst, ona je zapravo ono što doista zaslužuje stajati na polici „novo“ u poplavi modernog i autentičnog u literarnom diskursu.
May 2, 2019
Not sure why the English edition isn't on Goodreads but anyways, Zizek does a great job of embedding his analysis into a new rendition of Antigone.
Read
March 5, 2024Hou het maar lekker bij de filosofische traktaten Slavoj
January 8, 2017
This text is interesting, not necessarily because it is/would be a good play, but because it is didactic. Zizek's project in rewriting Antigone is theoretical, rather than aesthetic. His version shows three endings to the Antigone story--in a really compact space, only about 30 pages of actual play, with an intro almost as long--in which first Creon triumphs and experiences the tragedy Sophokles gave us, then Antigone triumphs and Thebes is destroyed by riots, and finally where the Chorus recognizes that both Creon and Antigone's ethical stances will lead to violence and tragedy and the Chorus rises up to establish a collective (democratic?) rule.
One thing that's really interesting here is that the Chorus, even though it ostensibly speaks for the people of Thebes, really sounds like Zizek. Although the idea is for the Chorus to take on a Brechtian distancing in order to educate the audience through the play and the performers' self-aware critical commentary, much of the Choral language speaks in Zizek's style: what I call the triple reversal. Zizek often begins from a commonly accepted premise, then explains why that premise is actually self-contradictory, then explains why the self-contradiction is actually self-contradictory (in other words, here's what you believe, here's why it's wrong, and here's why the wrongness is wrong). For instance, during the first ending--which roughly follows Sophokles' plotline--the Chorus tells Antigone that her mistake was the vanity of refusing to give up her sacrifice. That she is unable to transcend and become a properly ethical figure precisely because she is willing to sacrifice everything but her sacrifice, everything but her fidelity to her own truth. To truly be an ethical figure, the Chorus says, she would need to be willing to sacrifice even the evental truth of her sacrificial gesture. This is a profound insight, but it is a typically Zizekian insight, and so even as the Chorus ostensibly speaks for the Theban people, it continues to speak with Zizek's voice. And this may be the fourth reversal in the play's Zizekian triple reversal structure.
One thing that's really interesting here is that the Chorus, even though it ostensibly speaks for the people of Thebes, really sounds like Zizek. Although the idea is for the Chorus to take on a Brechtian distancing in order to educate the audience through the play and the performers' self-aware critical commentary, much of the Choral language speaks in Zizek's style: what I call the triple reversal. Zizek often begins from a commonly accepted premise, then explains why that premise is actually self-contradictory, then explains why the self-contradiction is actually self-contradictory (in other words, here's what you believe, here's why it's wrong, and here's why the wrongness is wrong). For instance, during the first ending--which roughly follows Sophokles' plotline--the Chorus tells Antigone that her mistake was the vanity of refusing to give up her sacrifice. That she is unable to transcend and become a properly ethical figure precisely because she is willing to sacrifice everything but her sacrifice, everything but her fidelity to her own truth. To truly be an ethical figure, the Chorus says, she would need to be willing to sacrifice even the evental truth of her sacrificial gesture. This is a profound insight, but it is a typically Zizekian insight, and so even as the Chorus ostensibly speaks for the Theban people, it continues to speak with Zizek's voice. And this may be the fourth reversal in the play's Zizekian triple reversal structure.
January 11, 2019
This book is something I randomly picked up off the library shelves. I admire the character of Antigone that Sophocles originally wrote and I've seen the original play performed by Naseeruddin Shah's Motley theatre company at the Prithvi theatre in Mumbai back in 2012 and I remember enjoying it. Shah described Antigone as a 'terrorist' - taking on the state for the sake of a personal belief system - seeking to bury her fallen brother's corpse that her uncle Creon refuses to give the honour of last rites to, because he fought against the city. A political statement made in a personal fashion.n
Zizek rewrites the play to end in three different ways - making a political and ethical argument with his last ending. I would say, it's interesting as an experiment but I felt the sting of the original story is missing. A thought experiment this may be, and Zizek writes a lengthy, technical introduction analysing, even psychoanalysing his intentions in the creation of the play. I would say it may be better performed than studied, really.
Zizek rewrites the play to end in three different ways - making a political and ethical argument with his last ending. I would say, it's interesting as an experiment but I felt the sting of the original story is missing. A thought experiment this may be, and Zizek writes a lengthy, technical introduction analysing, even psychoanalysing his intentions in the creation of the play. I would say it may be better performed than studied, really.
May 21, 2020
I have not read the "original" antigone as of yet. This one is written by zizek and is apparently inspired by the original. As far as the drama is concerned, I think it was good.
But zizek's introduction at the beginning leaves a very bad taste in mouth. Zizek's introduction to this book is like bones in the fish which has not been cleaned properly.
Also, zizek is not a "communist".
But zizek's introduction at the beginning leaves a very bad taste in mouth. Zizek's introduction to this book is like bones in the fish which has not been cleaned properly.
Also, zizek is not a "communist".
February 13, 2023
ما توی اپیزود جدید پادکست هنرجوییمون، نمایشنامهخوانی آنتیگونه رو منتشر کردیم. درواقع براساس این و آنتیگونهی سوفوکل.
خوشحال میشیم اگه توی کست باکس با آیدی basirolmolk.podcast به روایت ما از آنتیگونه، گوش بدید💙
خوشحال میشیم اگه توی کست باکس با آیدی basirolmolk.podcast به روایت ما از آنتیگونه، گوش بدید💙
April 29, 2017
Mnogo je začudnog i demonskog na svijetu,
ali ništa nije tako začudno i demonsko kao čovjek.
Ovladao je govorom i razmišlja brzinom vjetra,
uvježbao je osjećaje za život u zajednici,
naučio umaknuti ledenim strijelama mraza,
surovom životu pod otvorenim nebom,
oštrom pljusku kišnih kapi u zimskoj oluji.
Takav je čovjek – snalažljiv u svemu što čini.
Vještinom se umije oduprijeti svemu
osim smrti – jedino nju ne može izbjeći.
Vrednote njegovih domišljatih vještina
oblikuju umjetnost o kojoj i ne sanja
te ga potiču katkad na loše, katkad na dobro.
Stoga je najvažniji dio istinskog uspjeha
znati postupati s demonskim ispadima,
posebno onih ljudi koji imaju vlast nad nama.
Jer vladanje ljudima jača demonske ispade
i nijedan čovjek nije primjeren za samostalno
vladanje.
Jedino je ispravno kad skupno vladaju. Tad
nadziru jedni druge i priječe demonske ispade
koji mogu dovesti do katastrofe. Čak i kad nema
bogova
da im pomognu, takav skup jednakih
povezuje sveti duh, veza jača od sudbine,
veza kojom će se oduprijeti svim zemaljskim
moćima,
a možda ponekim božanskima.
(Zbor)
ali ništa nije tako začudno i demonsko kao čovjek.
Ovladao je govorom i razmišlja brzinom vjetra,
uvježbao je osjećaje za život u zajednici,
naučio umaknuti ledenim strijelama mraza,
surovom životu pod otvorenim nebom,
oštrom pljusku kišnih kapi u zimskoj oluji.
Takav je čovjek – snalažljiv u svemu što čini.
Vještinom se umije oduprijeti svemu
osim smrti – jedino nju ne može izbjeći.
Vrednote njegovih domišljatih vještina
oblikuju umjetnost o kojoj i ne sanja
te ga potiču katkad na loše, katkad na dobro.
Stoga je najvažniji dio istinskog uspjeha
znati postupati s demonskim ispadima,
posebno onih ljudi koji imaju vlast nad nama.
Jer vladanje ljudima jača demonske ispade
i nijedan čovjek nije primjeren za samostalno
vladanje.
Jedino je ispravno kad skupno vladaju. Tad
nadziru jedni druge i priječe demonske ispade
koji mogu dovesti do katastrofe. Čak i kad nema
bogova
da im pomognu, takav skup jednakih
povezuje sveti duh, veza jača od sudbine,
veza kojom će se oduprijeti svim zemaljskim
moćima,
a možda ponekim božanskima.
(Zbor)
March 25, 2018
Kadim bilgelikte doğru denmiş,
Kaderimizin pençesinden kaçamıyoruz.
Ama bu bilgelik bir şeyi de görmüyor,
sorumluluğumuzun ağırlığından da kaçamıyoruz. - Sayfa 79
Kaderimizin pençesinden kaçamıyoruz.
Ama bu bilgelik bir şeyi de görmüyor,
sorumluluğumuzun ağırlığından da kaçamıyoruz. - Sayfa 79
May 27, 2018
De las versiones más interesantes, el final merece aplausos, interesante el ejercicio de un filósofo reescribiendo textos clásicos
January 27, 2024
Ok u made ur point.
August 16, 2022
“Antigone is a particularly modern heroine. She is a rebel, a refusenik, a feminist, an anti-capitalist (principles are more important than money), a suicide perhaps, certainly a martyr, and without doubt a difficult, insistent person, not unlike some of Ibsen’s women. More decisive, less irritating, talky and circular than Hamlet – but, you might say, equally teenage – she has blazed through the centuries to remain one of the great characters of all literature. Is she a saint, a criminal of extraordinary integrity, a masochist, or just stubborn and insolent? Or even ‘mad’, in the sense of impossible to understand?”
“The text, described by Hegel as ‘one of the most sublime, and in every respect, most consummate works of human effort ever brought forth’, is a contribution to showbiz and not a thesis, although as a character Antigone is infinitely interpretable and has been repeatedly written about by philosophers, psychoanalysts, feminists, literary critics and revolutionaries.”
“There cannot be exceptions, that is the point of the law: it is absolute. But for her the law is pathological and sadistic, and ethics are ideology.”
“Antigone is certainly a feminist, a girl defying patriarchy, a lone woman standing up to a cruel man. But she ain’t no sister; there’s no solidarity or community in her actions. She is a rebel but not a revolutionary.”
“What is terrible about Antigone is not so much her belief, but the way she assumes it. She is entirely certain. She is no paragon; and rather than being an example of someone who sticks to their desire, she is a person who cannot think, lacking intellectual flexibility.”
“The good is that which can be argued about, but there is no possibility of a final position without imposing it, a form of utopia which can only lead to fascism.”
“But this beautiful story of ‘demonic excess’ can only end badly on both sides, with Antigone killing herself and Creon having lost his son, consumed with guilt and eventually murdered by the mob, his palace burned down.”
“The play doesn’t tell us what to think, for it is not a guide to thought, but is another thing altogether: a guide to the necessity of perplexity. It illustrates a necessary conflict, showing that useful rather than deadly conflicts make democracy possible.”
Hanif Kureishi
“The Fast Runner, a unique film retelling an old Inuit (Eskimo) legend, was made by the Canadian Inuits themselves in 2001; the director Zacharias Kunuk decided to change the ending, replacing the original slaughter in which all participants die with a more conciliatory conclusion. When a culturally sensitive journalist accused Kunuk of betraying authentic tradition for the cheap appeal to contemporary public, Kunuk replied by accusing the journalist of cultural ignorance: this very readiness to adapt the story to today’s specific needs attests to the fact that the authors were still part of the ancient Inuit tradition – such ‘opportunistic’ rewriting is a feature of premodern cultures, while the very notion of the ‘fidelity to the original’ signals that we are already in the space of modernity, that we lost our immediate contact with tradition.”
“Such experiments often ridiculously misfire – however, not always, and there is no way to tell it in advance, so one has to take the risk. Only one thing is sure: the only way to be faithful to a classic work is to take such as risk...”
“to use the metaphor evoked by Walter Benjamin, to act as if the classic work is a film for which the appropriate chemical liquid to develop it was invented only later, so that it is only today that we can get the full picture.”
“... the change has a tremendous power of revelation: one cannot resist the strong impression that ‘this is how it really should be’.”
“So can we imagine a similar change in staging Antigone, one of the founding narratives of the Western tradition? The path was shown by none other than Kierkegaard who, in ‘The Ancient Tragical Motif as Reflected in the Modern’, a chapter of Volume I of Either/Or, proposed his fantasy of what a modern Antigone would have been. The conflict is now entirely internalized: there is no longer a need for Creon.”
“Her deadlock is that she is prevented from sharing this accursed knowledge (like Abraham, who also could not communicate to others the divine injunction to sacrifice his son): she cannot complain, share her pain and sorrow with others.”
“We can imagine the same shift also in the case of Abraham. The God who commands Abraham to sacrifice his son is the superego-God who, for his own perverse pleasure, submits his servant to the utter test. What makes Abraham’s situation non-tragic is that God’s demand cannot be rendered public, shared by the community of believers, included into the big Other: the sublime tragic moment occurs precisely when the hero addresses the public with his terrible plight, when he puts into words his predicament.”
“Can we not imagine God himself giving a similar answer if Abraham were to ask him publicly, in front of his fellow wise elders, if he really wants Abraham to kill his only son? ‘If I should say I do not want you to kill Isaac I might say perhaps more than I think. And if I should say you should do it, I might plunge myself into peril (of appearing an evil barbaric God, asking you to violate my own sacred Laws), from which you, my faithful follower, labour to save me.”
“Furthermore, insofar as Kierkegaard’s Antigone is a paradigmatically modernist figure, one should go on with his mental experiment and imagine a postmodern Antigone with, of course, a Stalinist twist to her image: in contrast to the modernist one, she should find herself in a position in which, to quote Kierkegaard himself, the ethical itself would be the temptation.”
“Antigone insists up to her death on performing a precise symbolic gesture: the proper burial of her brother. Like Hamlet, Antigone is a drama of a failed symbolic ritual – Lacan insisted on this continuity (he analysed Hamlet in his seminar that precedes The Ethics of Psychoanalysis). Antigone does not stand for some extra-symbolic real, but for the pure signifier – her ‘purity’ is that of a signifier. This is why, although her act is suicidal...”
“And, back to Christ, this, then, should be the first step of a consequent reading of Christianity: the dying Christ is on the side of Sygne, not on the side of Antigone; Christ on the cross is not a sublime apparition but an embarrassing monstrosity. Another aspect of this monstrosity was clearly perceived by Rembrandt, whose ‘Lazarus’, one of the most traumatic classic paintings, is a depiction of Christ at the moment he is raising Lazarus from the dead. What strikes the eye is not only the figure of Lazarus, a monstrous living dead returning to life, but, even more so, the terrified expression on Christ’s face, as if he is a magician shocked that his spell really worked, disgusted by what he brought back to life, aware that he is playing with forces better left alone. This is a true Kierkegaardian Christ, shocked not by his mortality but by the heavy burden of his supernatural powers which border on blasphemy...”
“Sygne stands for the Christian tragedy. Sygne lives in the modern world where God is dead: there is no objective Fate, our fate is our own choice, we are fully responsible for it. Sygne first follows the path of ecstatic love to the end, sacrificing her good, her ethical substance, for God, for His pure Otherness; and she doesn’t do it on account of some external pressure, but out of the innermost freedom of her being – she cannot blame any Fate when she finds herself totally humiliated, deprived of all ethical substance of her being. This, however, is why Sygne’s tragedy is much more radical than that of Oedipus or Antigone...”
“she refuses to confer any deeper sacrificial meaning on her suicidal interposition, there is no tragic beauty in this refusal... she remains a disgusting excremental stain of humanity, a living shell deprived of life. There is no love here either; all her love went into her previous renunciations.”
“This moment of tragedy, this return of the tragic in the very heart of Christianity as the religion of love, is also the point which the self-erasing mystique of ecstatic love cannot properly grasp: when mystics talk about the ‘Night of the World’, they directly identify this Night (the withdrawal from external reality into the void of pure innerness) with the divine Beatitude, with the self-erasing immersion into Divinity; for Christianity, in contrast, the unbearable and unsurpassable tension remains...”
“From the standpoint of eumonia, Antigone is definitely demonic/uncanny: her defying act expresses a stance of de-measured excessive insistence which disturbs the ‘beautiful order’ of the city; her unconditional ethics violates the harmony of the polis and is as such ‘beyond human boundary’.”
“So while Antigone is an uncanny figure who disturbs the harmony of the traditional universe, one should no less resist the opposite temptation to interpret her as a proto-modern emancipatory heroine who speaks for all those excluded from the public domain, all those whose voices are not heard; in short, for what Agamben calls homo sacer. Agamben’s analysis should be given its full radical character: his notion of homo sacer should NOT be watered down into an element of a radical-democratic project whose aim is to renegotiate or redefine the limits of in- and exclusion, so that the symbolic field will be more and more open also to the voices of those who are excluded by the hegemonic configuration of the public discourse.”
“Butler develops her reading in contrast to two main opponents, not only Hegel but also Lacan.”
“In what one is almost tempted to call a dialectical synthesis, Butler rejects both extremes (Hegel’s location of the conflict WITHIN the socio-symbolic order; Lacan’s notion of Antigone as standing for the going-to-the-limit, for reaching the OUTSIDE of this order): Antigone undermines the existing symbolic order not simply from its radical outside, but from a utopian standpoint of aiming at its radical rearticulation. Antigone is a ‘living dead’ not in the sense (which Butler attributes to Lacan) of entering the mysterious domain of Até,1 of going to the limit of the Law; she is a ‘living dead’ in the sense of publicly assuming an uninhabitable position, a position for which there is no place in the public space – not a priori, but only with regard to the way this space is structured now, in the historically contingent and specific conditions.”
“Antigone speaks for all the subversive ‘pathological’ claims which crave to be admitted into the public space; however, to identify what she stands for in this reading with homo sacer misses the basic thrust of Agamben’s analysis. There is no place in Agamben for the ‘democratic’ project of ‘renegotiating’ the limit which separates full citizens from homo sacer by gradually allowing their voices to be heard; his point is, rather, that, in today’s ‘post-politics’, the very democratic public space is a mask concealing the fact that, ultimately, we are all homo sacer.”
“Although Agamben denies any ‘democratic’ way out, in his detailed reading of Saint Paul, he violently reasserts the ‘revolutionary’ Messianic dimension – and if this Messianic dimension means anything at all, it means that ‘mere life’ is no longer the ultimate terrain of politics. That is to say, what is suspended in the Messianic attitude of ‘awaiting the end of time’ is precisely the central place of ‘mere life’; in clear contrast to it, the fundamental feature of post-politics is the reduction of politics to ‘biopolitics’ in the precise sense of administering and regulating ‘mere life’.”
“Which Antigone would fit this contemporary condition? Coping with this problem, I imagined another triad: the starting point remains the same, and it is only at the crucial point in the middle of the play – the big confrontation between Antigone and Creon – that the three versions would diverge:
•The first version follows Sophocles’ denouement, and the concluding chorus praises Antigone’s unconditional insistence on her principle...
•The second version shows what would have happened if Antigone were to win, convincing Creon to allow the proper burial of Polyneices, i.e. if her principled attitude were to prevail. In this version, the concluding chorus sings a Brechtian praise of pragmatism: the ruling class can afford to obey honour and rigid principles, while ordinary people pay the price for it.
•In the third version, Chorus is no longer the purveyor of stupid commonplace wisdoms, it becomes an active agent. At the climactic moment of the ferocious debate between Antigone and Creon, Chorus steps forward, castigating both of them for their stupid conflict which threatens the survival of the entire city. Acting like a kind of comité de salut public, Chorus takes over as a collective organ and imposes a new rule of law, installing people’s democracy...”
“Sophocles’ Antigone is thus retold here in the mode of Bertolt Brecht’s three learning plays...”
“Chorus:
But how does your consideration of the dead
help or hurt the living? Hear us then:
we know you are our enemy, an even more dangerous one
than your uncle. This is why we shall now
put you in front of a hole in the earth.
But in consideration of your merits and good qualities
we shall decapitate you with a good sword and bury you with a good shovel in the good earth.
Antigone:
No matter what you say, it’s horrible
to kill a human being …
Chorus:
… but sometimes,
when doing nothing opens up a gate
to the flood of corpses, not to kill
can be an even greater crime.”
“The most important part of true success
is therefore how to deal with man’s demonic excess,
especially with the excess of those who rule us.
Since ruling over people strengthens this demonic excess,
no single man is fit to rule alone. It’s only right
that they rule themselves collectively. In such a way,
they control each other to prevent demonic outbursts
which can lead to catastrophe. Even if there are no gods
to help them, such a collective of equals
is bound by a holy spirit, a bond stronger than fate,
a bond that can defy all earthly powers
and maybe even some divine.”
“The text, described by Hegel as ‘one of the most sublime, and in every respect, most consummate works of human effort ever brought forth’, is a contribution to showbiz and not a thesis, although as a character Antigone is infinitely interpretable and has been repeatedly written about by philosophers, psychoanalysts, feminists, literary critics and revolutionaries.”
“There cannot be exceptions, that is the point of the law: it is absolute. But for her the law is pathological and sadistic, and ethics are ideology.”
“Antigone is certainly a feminist, a girl defying patriarchy, a lone woman standing up to a cruel man. But she ain’t no sister; there’s no solidarity or community in her actions. She is a rebel but not a revolutionary.”
“What is terrible about Antigone is not so much her belief, but the way she assumes it. She is entirely certain. She is no paragon; and rather than being an example of someone who sticks to their desire, she is a person who cannot think, lacking intellectual flexibility.”
“The good is that which can be argued about, but there is no possibility of a final position without imposing it, a form of utopia which can only lead to fascism.”
“But this beautiful story of ‘demonic excess’ can only end badly on both sides, with Antigone killing herself and Creon having lost his son, consumed with guilt and eventually murdered by the mob, his palace burned down.”
“The play doesn’t tell us what to think, for it is not a guide to thought, but is another thing altogether: a guide to the necessity of perplexity. It illustrates a necessary conflict, showing that useful rather than deadly conflicts make democracy possible.”
Hanif Kureishi
“The Fast Runner, a unique film retelling an old Inuit (Eskimo) legend, was made by the Canadian Inuits themselves in 2001; the director Zacharias Kunuk decided to change the ending, replacing the original slaughter in which all participants die with a more conciliatory conclusion. When a culturally sensitive journalist accused Kunuk of betraying authentic tradition for the cheap appeal to contemporary public, Kunuk replied by accusing the journalist of cultural ignorance: this very readiness to adapt the story to today’s specific needs attests to the fact that the authors were still part of the ancient Inuit tradition – such ‘opportunistic’ rewriting is a feature of premodern cultures, while the very notion of the ‘fidelity to the original’ signals that we are already in the space of modernity, that we lost our immediate contact with tradition.”
“Such experiments often ridiculously misfire – however, not always, and there is no way to tell it in advance, so one has to take the risk. Only one thing is sure: the only way to be faithful to a classic work is to take such as risk...”
“to use the metaphor evoked by Walter Benjamin, to act as if the classic work is a film for which the appropriate chemical liquid to develop it was invented only later, so that it is only today that we can get the full picture.”
“... the change has a tremendous power of revelation: one cannot resist the strong impression that ‘this is how it really should be’.”
“So can we imagine a similar change in staging Antigone, one of the founding narratives of the Western tradition? The path was shown by none other than Kierkegaard who, in ‘The Ancient Tragical Motif as Reflected in the Modern’, a chapter of Volume I of Either/Or, proposed his fantasy of what a modern Antigone would have been. The conflict is now entirely internalized: there is no longer a need for Creon.”
“Her deadlock is that she is prevented from sharing this accursed knowledge (like Abraham, who also could not communicate to others the divine injunction to sacrifice his son): she cannot complain, share her pain and sorrow with others.”
“We can imagine the same shift also in the case of Abraham. The God who commands Abraham to sacrifice his son is the superego-God who, for his own perverse pleasure, submits his servant to the utter test. What makes Abraham’s situation non-tragic is that God’s demand cannot be rendered public, shared by the community of believers, included into the big Other: the sublime tragic moment occurs precisely when the hero addresses the public with his terrible plight, when he puts into words his predicament.”
“Can we not imagine God himself giving a similar answer if Abraham were to ask him publicly, in front of his fellow wise elders, if he really wants Abraham to kill his only son? ‘If I should say I do not want you to kill Isaac I might say perhaps more than I think. And if I should say you should do it, I might plunge myself into peril (of appearing an evil barbaric God, asking you to violate my own sacred Laws), from which you, my faithful follower, labour to save me.”
“Furthermore, insofar as Kierkegaard’s Antigone is a paradigmatically modernist figure, one should go on with his mental experiment and imagine a postmodern Antigone with, of course, a Stalinist twist to her image: in contrast to the modernist one, she should find herself in a position in which, to quote Kierkegaard himself, the ethical itself would be the temptation.”
“Antigone insists up to her death on performing a precise symbolic gesture: the proper burial of her brother. Like Hamlet, Antigone is a drama of a failed symbolic ritual – Lacan insisted on this continuity (he analysed Hamlet in his seminar that precedes The Ethics of Psychoanalysis). Antigone does not stand for some extra-symbolic real, but for the pure signifier – her ‘purity’ is that of a signifier. This is why, although her act is suicidal...”
“And, back to Christ, this, then, should be the first step of a consequent reading of Christianity: the dying Christ is on the side of Sygne, not on the side of Antigone; Christ on the cross is not a sublime apparition but an embarrassing monstrosity. Another aspect of this monstrosity was clearly perceived by Rembrandt, whose ‘Lazarus’, one of the most traumatic classic paintings, is a depiction of Christ at the moment he is raising Lazarus from the dead. What strikes the eye is not only the figure of Lazarus, a monstrous living dead returning to life, but, even more so, the terrified expression on Christ’s face, as if he is a magician shocked that his spell really worked, disgusted by what he brought back to life, aware that he is playing with forces better left alone. This is a true Kierkegaardian Christ, shocked not by his mortality but by the heavy burden of his supernatural powers which border on blasphemy...”
“Sygne stands for the Christian tragedy. Sygne lives in the modern world where God is dead: there is no objective Fate, our fate is our own choice, we are fully responsible for it. Sygne first follows the path of ecstatic love to the end, sacrificing her good, her ethical substance, for God, for His pure Otherness; and she doesn’t do it on account of some external pressure, but out of the innermost freedom of her being – she cannot blame any Fate when she finds herself totally humiliated, deprived of all ethical substance of her being. This, however, is why Sygne’s tragedy is much more radical than that of Oedipus or Antigone...”
“she refuses to confer any deeper sacrificial meaning on her suicidal interposition, there is no tragic beauty in this refusal... she remains a disgusting excremental stain of humanity, a living shell deprived of life. There is no love here either; all her love went into her previous renunciations.”
“This moment of tragedy, this return of the tragic in the very heart of Christianity as the religion of love, is also the point which the self-erasing mystique of ecstatic love cannot properly grasp: when mystics talk about the ‘Night of the World’, they directly identify this Night (the withdrawal from external reality into the void of pure innerness) with the divine Beatitude, with the self-erasing immersion into Divinity; for Christianity, in contrast, the unbearable and unsurpassable tension remains...”
“From the standpoint of eumonia, Antigone is definitely demonic/uncanny: her defying act expresses a stance of de-measured excessive insistence which disturbs the ‘beautiful order’ of the city; her unconditional ethics violates the harmony of the polis and is as such ‘beyond human boundary’.”
“So while Antigone is an uncanny figure who disturbs the harmony of the traditional universe, one should no less resist the opposite temptation to interpret her as a proto-modern emancipatory heroine who speaks for all those excluded from the public domain, all those whose voices are not heard; in short, for what Agamben calls homo sacer. Agamben’s analysis should be given its full radical character: his notion of homo sacer should NOT be watered down into an element of a radical-democratic project whose aim is to renegotiate or redefine the limits of in- and exclusion, so that the symbolic field will be more and more open also to the voices of those who are excluded by the hegemonic configuration of the public discourse.”
“Butler develops her reading in contrast to two main opponents, not only Hegel but also Lacan.”
“In what one is almost tempted to call a dialectical synthesis, Butler rejects both extremes (Hegel’s location of the conflict WITHIN the socio-symbolic order; Lacan’s notion of Antigone as standing for the going-to-the-limit, for reaching the OUTSIDE of this order): Antigone undermines the existing symbolic order not simply from its radical outside, but from a utopian standpoint of aiming at its radical rearticulation. Antigone is a ‘living dead’ not in the sense (which Butler attributes to Lacan) of entering the mysterious domain of Até,1 of going to the limit of the Law; she is a ‘living dead’ in the sense of publicly assuming an uninhabitable position, a position for which there is no place in the public space – not a priori, but only with regard to the way this space is structured now, in the historically contingent and specific conditions.”
“Antigone speaks for all the subversive ‘pathological’ claims which crave to be admitted into the public space; however, to identify what she stands for in this reading with homo sacer misses the basic thrust of Agamben’s analysis. There is no place in Agamben for the ‘democratic’ project of ‘renegotiating’ the limit which separates full citizens from homo sacer by gradually allowing their voices to be heard; his point is, rather, that, in today’s ‘post-politics’, the very democratic public space is a mask concealing the fact that, ultimately, we are all homo sacer.”
“Although Agamben denies any ‘democratic’ way out, in his detailed reading of Saint Paul, he violently reasserts the ‘revolutionary’ Messianic dimension – and if this Messianic dimension means anything at all, it means that ‘mere life’ is no longer the ultimate terrain of politics. That is to say, what is suspended in the Messianic attitude of ‘awaiting the end of time’ is precisely the central place of ‘mere life’; in clear contrast to it, the fundamental feature of post-politics is the reduction of politics to ‘biopolitics’ in the precise sense of administering and regulating ‘mere life’.”
“Which Antigone would fit this contemporary condition? Coping with this problem, I imagined another triad: the starting point remains the same, and it is only at the crucial point in the middle of the play – the big confrontation between Antigone and Creon – that the three versions would diverge:
•The first version follows Sophocles’ denouement, and the concluding chorus praises Antigone’s unconditional insistence on her principle...
•The second version shows what would have happened if Antigone were to win, convincing Creon to allow the proper burial of Polyneices, i.e. if her principled attitude were to prevail. In this version, the concluding chorus sings a Brechtian praise of pragmatism: the ruling class can afford to obey honour and rigid principles, while ordinary people pay the price for it.
•In the third version, Chorus is no longer the purveyor of stupid commonplace wisdoms, it becomes an active agent. At the climactic moment of the ferocious debate between Antigone and Creon, Chorus steps forward, castigating both of them for their stupid conflict which threatens the survival of the entire city. Acting like a kind of comité de salut public, Chorus takes over as a collective organ and imposes a new rule of law, installing people’s democracy...”
“Sophocles’ Antigone is thus retold here in the mode of Bertolt Brecht’s three learning plays...”
“Chorus:
But how does your consideration of the dead
help or hurt the living? Hear us then:
we know you are our enemy, an even more dangerous one
than your uncle. This is why we shall now
put you in front of a hole in the earth.
But in consideration of your merits and good qualities
we shall decapitate you with a good sword and bury you with a good shovel in the good earth.
Antigone:
No matter what you say, it’s horrible
to kill a human being …
Chorus:
… but sometimes,
when doing nothing opens up a gate
to the flood of corpses, not to kill
can be an even greater crime.”
“The most important part of true success
is therefore how to deal with man’s demonic excess,
especially with the excess of those who rule us.
Since ruling over people strengthens this demonic excess,
no single man is fit to rule alone. It’s only right
that they rule themselves collectively. In such a way,
they control each other to prevent demonic outbursts
which can lead to catastrophe. Even if there are no gods
to help them, such a collective of equals
is bound by a holy spirit, a bond stronger than fate,
a bond that can defy all earthly powers
and maybe even some divine.”
September 18, 2024
I keep returning to Brecht
who made you do the whole play with a door strapped to your back
a door can have diverse meanings
I stand outside your door
the odd thing is, you stand outside your door too
— Anne Carson, Antigonick (2012)
On the Uninhabitable
In her translation of The Oresteia (2009) Anne Carson remarks, "it is a truism of ancient stagecraft that the one who controls the doorway controls the tragedy." (We remind ourselves of Clytemnestra rolling out the red carpet for Agamemnon.) One wonders, then, about Antigone's relation to Control in the Brechtian staging of the play with that door strapped to her back. (It seems to be an error that Carson omits this connection in Antigonick.) The possession of a door in the closest possible proximity (and yet inaccessible) seems to be a metaphor for how Žižek reads Antigone in his introduction to this text (via Judith Butler), "Antigone undermines the existing symbolic order [. . .] she publicly assumes an uninhabitable position, a position for which there is no place in the public space – not a priori, but only with regard to the way this space is structured now, in the historically contingent and specific conditions” (23).
At this point, Žižek also references that other "uninhabitable position" i.e. Kierkegaard's Abraham who cannot communicate the meaning of the divine subpoena because, though he might say it all plainly, the decision comes from a place which can't be understood. "[Antigone's] deadlock is that she is prevented from sharing this accursed knowledge (like Abraham, who also could not communicate to others the divine injunction to sacrifice his son)" (14). Žižek is playing an interesting shell-game here: Kierkegaard's redemption "by virtue of the absurd" (which is "Real" in the sense that biblical story is "True") is likened to Antigone's "uninhabitable position" of non-relation to the "big Other" ("but only with regard to historically contingent and specific conditions"), the solution for which is the "[Agambenian] violent [reassertion of] the ‘revolutionary’ Messianic dimension of politics" (24). In short, what this means (without so many parentheticals) is that the Kierkegaardian "paradox of faith" is proposed as a kind of way to do politics. By an interesting transitive property, Žižek shows that Antigone's position isn't "uninhabitable" so long as we can inhabit the position which brings about its condition of possibility. (Notably, the way Žižek uses Fear and Trembling (1843) as a political workhorse re-doubles the "uninhabitable" position of what Kierkegaard calls, "Religiousness B.")
Messianism as a political ethos seems to be the necessary response to anxiety about "Closure;" i.e. that feeling that comes from reading too much Agamben. Though one wonders whether this is a proper Socialist impulse. In The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012) Žižek notes how liberals, after viewing Triumph of the Will (1935), often remark how they finally understand the appeal of 1930's German fascism. The response, of course, is that all the "volkish" appeal of that propaganda piece was appropriated from the left-wing Workers Movement. By the same token we might remark that "Messianism" is not the characteristic ethos of left-wing movements (contra what Walter Benjamin might say), but that Messianism has been appropriated from its origin in the diverse paleo-political movements whose common characteristic is that they're "always-already a failure." We recall here the consequence for the actor who plays Antigone in the Brechtian staging always on the threshold: "Let’s return to Brecht, maybe he got you best / to carry one’s own door will make a person / clumsy, tired and strange” (Carson, Antigonick).
It isn't clear how close Žižek comes to accomplishing his object in his construction of this text: "My retelling is consciously anachronistic – It doesn’t pretend to be a work of art but an ethico-political exercise" (25). To the extent that we are reading an "ethico-political exercise," the project seems to be haunted by a special anxiety: how does Žižek understands his task as translator/playwright. (It is a remarkable elision for a text with such a long introduction to leave this unaddressed. For the sake of comparison, Anne Carson says: "I take it as the task of the translator to forbid that you should ever lose your screams” (Carson, Antigonick).) Perhaps Kierkegaard would be able to name Žižek's anxiety here. The characteristic pivot to political "Messianism" as an escape from hypostatized "closure" suggests "the despair of willing to be other-than-oneself," (from The Concept of Anxiety, (1844)). What's remarkable in this is that while Žižek uses Kierkegaard as a case study, the process also appears to be working in reverse. The forces of revolution, as Žižek imagines them, seem to be drawn, ineluctably, toward Kierkegaard's subsequent category of "Demonic dread," that is, "willing, in despair, to be oneself." This quality of Presumption appears to be what our violent revolutionary forces, internet forum partisans, and translators-who-yet-do-not-intend-to-write-good-verse have in common. At the limit of the-end-of-civilization, male "virtue" approximates, once again, that uninhabitable position which was, for the Greeks, female iniquity: total presumption.
EPITAPH FOR ARCHEDIKE, DAUGHTHER OF HIPPIAS
(Last tyrant of Athens)
"Of a man who himself was best in Greece of the men of his day:
Hippias’ daughter Archedike this dust hides,
She of a father, of a husband, of brothers, of children all tyrants
being.
Nor did she push her mind up into presumption”
— Simonides (trans. Anne Carson)
July 24, 2024
Unangenehm direkt geschrieben, aber ein paar nette Denkanstöße wenn man schon im Antigone Thema drin ist
January 2, 2025
Lo primero que leo de Zizek y, en realidad, tenía la filosofía bastante abandonada. Me ha gustado esta vuelta, leeré alguno más de sus libros.
November 23, 2025
Ok, zanimivo
July 6, 2016
Inanilmaz lezzetli bir paralelleme. Tamam, koronun yonetime el koymasi karikaturlestirilmis, Kreon'la "karsi kenar" arasindaki gerilim nasil oldu da bu ikisiyle koro arasinda bir gerilim yaratti, bu gerilimi gostermeden oluvermis gibi, koro yalnizca "halk"a indirgenmis -aslinda klasik yunan tiyatrosunda oldugu gibi kabul edilse devrimin ruhu bile cikarmis- , vs. Ama fikir cok cok cok iyi. Gelistirilmeli...
October 27, 2016
Stellar concept and deployment of the swerve, the multiple veerings of this re-imagined drama.
May 30, 2020
"Slavoj Žižek es un filósofo que ocupa un lugar ambiguo y polémico en el panorama de la filosofia contemporánea occidental. En EE.UU. es casi una figura de culto mediático y aquí, con aura de provocador y comediante, aparece frecuentemente como un charlatán. Sin duda, el esloveno es un filósofo difícil de definir, filósofo que ahora se pone a hacer de dramaturgo. Esta nueva versión de Antígona es igual de polémica que su creador. La heroína llega a morir hasta tres veces y la reescritura del mito se multiplica por tres. Justo en el punto donde el drama se desencadena, tres son las posibilidades de acción para Antígona, Creonte, Ismene, Hemón y un coro con mucho protagonismo. Lo que tenemos es la puesta en escena de un mito que el autor había ya interpretado en otras de sus obras, véase El espinoso sujeto. En diálogo abierto con la teoría de la performatividad de Judith Butler, Antígona era mostrada como ejemplo paradigmático de un acto radicalmente antifoucaultiano, y como encarnadora de lo que Lacan teorizó como el acto ético por excelencia. ¿Es esta la Antígona que aquí también se muestra? Žižek nunca ha sido dramaturgo; cómo él mismo dice en el prólogo, la obra «no pretende ser una obra de arte, sino un ejercicio ético-político»." Laura Sala
June 23, 2022
Este pequeño libro consta de dos partes. La parte principal es una re-escritura de la tragedia griega de Antígona por Slavoj Žižek, la cual viene acompañada de una pequeña introducción para explicar los fundamento para su versión de este clásico griego.
La introducción es muy interesante en términos teóricos, al analizar Antígona desde diferentes autores, Agamben, Hegel, Lacan y Buttler. Sobre los cuales discute sobre la posible radicalidad de Antígona, la ética de sus actos y las consecuencias políticas que tendría.
Finalmente, la versión de Antígona consta de tres partes, las cuales consisten en tres finales distintos, tomando en cuenta qué pasaría si Antígona realiza su deseo, si Creonte actúa de acuerdo a lo que le solicita Antígona o si el coro interviene en la disputa.
La introducción es muy interesante en términos teóricos, al analizar Antígona desde diferentes autores, Agamben, Hegel, Lacan y Buttler. Sobre los cuales discute sobre la posible radicalidad de Antígona, la ética de sus actos y las consecuencias políticas que tendría.
Finalmente, la versión de Antígona consta de tres partes, las cuales consisten en tres finales distintos, tomando en cuenta qué pasaría si Antígona realiza su deseo, si Creonte actúa de acuerdo a lo que le solicita Antígona o si el coro interviene en la disputa.
August 12, 2022
I love this form of philosophical essay: the reimagining, retelling, and reinterpretation of a classic story within the philosophical framework of a particular thinker. This book gave me an aesthetic as well as general understanding of Žižek’s socio-philosophical thought, and it made me see my favorite Greek tragedy under a new lens. If you enjoy this type of writing, or at least enjoy Greek tragedies, you’ll find something worth thinking about here.
I found this book via the introduction to Anne Carson’s Antigonick, and I feel that this book does a better job of what Carson was trying to do. Žižek’s retelling is more overtly philosophical and less artistically daring, but at least it lacks the clunky allusions to Hegel Carson uncharacteristically employed.
I found this book via the introduction to Anne Carson’s Antigonick, and I feel that this book does a better job of what Carson was trying to do. Žižek’s retelling is more overtly philosophical and less artistically daring, but at least it lacks the clunky allusions to Hegel Carson uncharacteristically employed.
August 26, 2025
Slavoj ziziek’s translation of Antigone is fantastic. Antigone has two brothers who have battled for Thebes. One brother tried to destroy it, the other died defending it. Creon who is now acting as king in Oedipus stead grants burial rights to one brother and not the other. Antigone defies orders and preformed a crude burial right on her brother. She is doomed to imprisonment and death for her actions. The chorus explored three potential endings to the tale. An engaging and very intently clear version of this Greek classic.
July 5, 2023
ne znam zašto uopće imam žižekovu knjigu doma... očito sam bio pod nekih groznim supstancama čim sam je kupio, ali nećemo sad o tome
ova knjiga... oke, ima dobre namjere (polazi od kierkegaardove misli o književnom kanonu i kako se odnositi prema klasicima)
that being said... žižek, kao i uvijek (ne znam iskreno što sam očekivao), okreće apsolutno sve PA TAKO I ANTIGONU u staljinističkom smjeru
ja iskreno ne znam zašto taj čovjek misli da postmodernizam = staljinizam
pun mi ga je kurac više
od antigone radi ništa drugo doli ideološku mašinu, za koju bi on sam rekao da je štetna za društvo
i sve bih to mogao i oprostiti, ALI NOVONAPRAVLJENA ANTIGONA NIJE NAPISAMA U HEKSAMETRU
ova knjiga... oke, ima dobre namjere (polazi od kierkegaardove misli o književnom kanonu i kako se odnositi prema klasicima)
that being said... žižek, kao i uvijek (ne znam iskreno što sam očekivao), okreće apsolutno sve PA TAKO I ANTIGONU u staljinističkom smjeru
ja iskreno ne znam zašto taj čovjek misli da postmodernizam = staljinizam
pun mi ga je kurac više
od antigone radi ništa drugo doli ideološku mašinu, za koju bi on sam rekao da je štetna za društvo
i sve bih to mogao i oprostiti, ALI NOVONAPRAVLJENA ANTIGONA NIJE NAPISAMA U HEKSAMETRU
September 18, 2025
Zizek says his (2016) book is a modern, dialectical teaching play, not an artistic attempt. Yet he offers three alternatives that presents Antigone as a modern heroine, rebel and feminist using beautiful Sophoclean prose. Zizek points out Antigone's name points to her destiny, anti (against) gone (bending). By reframing Antigone in a contemporary context an open future-pointing context is maintained. He contrasts the play Sygne de Confontaine whose heroine's hysteric facial twitch at the end of the play produces a mortal rendering opposed to the sublime beauty of Antigone, immortalized by her principles. Zisek then offers his alternatives: 1. Antigone survives on the grounds that the chorus agrees with the attitude, let justice be done; 2. Creon agrees to Antigone's burial of Polyneices and the chorus gives them high Brechtian praise for their pragmatism; and 3. the chorus is an active agent that reprimands both Antigone and Creon for their conflict that has jeopardized the city and installs a new rule of law whereby both Antigone and Creon are disposed of and replaced by democracy.
July 26, 2022
Este man piensa que los actos de Antígona y las órdenes de Creonte son opuestas y la verdad está como a medio camino, y yo me quedo con cara de pero qué me estás contando socio. Al principio del libro dice que sus referencia es Kirkegård, habrá que leerle para ver si dice algo parecido a esto.
January 21, 2020
Interesting renditions of Antigone by Zizek
June 16, 2021
kinda bad tbh
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