Creon’s New Clothes: Žižek’s Interpretation of Sophocles’ Antigone
Keywords:
literature and ethics, Greek drama, Sophocles, Antigone, literary interpretations, Brecht, Bertolt, Anouilh, Jean, Smole, Dominik, philosophical interpretations, Žižek, Slavoj, ethics of violenceAbstract
The article critically evaluates The Three Lives of Antigone, Slavoj Žižek’s first dramatic work. Žižek’s polemical rewriting of Sophocles’ tragedy is examined in the broader perspective of Žižek’s philosophy and other Antigones: those of Sophocles, Anouilh and Brecht. Slavoj Žižek has interpreted Sophocles’ Antigone in numerous philosophical works. In his earlier treatises, he mainly gave a cautious summary of Hegel’s, Heidegger’s and Lacan’s theses on Antigone; lately, however, Žižek’s attitude to Sophocles’ Antigone has grown decidedly negative. The main point in Žižek’s critique of Sophocles’ tragedy is that his Antigone is not an appropriate symbol of genuine social revolt. Based on this conviction, Žižek contrived his own version of Antigone with an alternative ending in which the choir carries out a revolution and condemns Antigone to death. Žižek’s dramatic project fails to convince; rather, it reveals both the author’s dramaturgical awkwardness and his unfamiliarity with some prominent philological and literary interpretations of Greek tragedy. The central political message of Žižek’s play and its conceptual background is also poor: It is essentially a superficial apology for political violence, which can ultimately only be understood as a veiled defense of the political status quo.References
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