“Nothing More Than Nothing”: The Negative Theopolitics of Sophocles’s Antigone

Abstract

This article deals with the ending of Sophocles’s Antigone, the ingenious portrayal of Creon’s breakdown, remorse and withdrawal, which is too often overlooked in modern interpretations of this fundamental work of tragedy, focusing as they do above all on the central conflict between Antigone and Creon. A careful analysis of the concluding lines spoken by Creon and the Chorus, both in the original and in the rich tradition of Slovenian translations, and of their broader intellectual-historical context (particularly the Attic understanding of the relationship between divine and state law), reveals a challenging theopolitical point that traces the horizon of meaning of Sophocles’s entire work. In connection with this finding, the article develops the concept of negative politics, which provides a framework for understanding the two antagonistic theopolitical paradigms in Antigone and how the particular dynamics of the clash between them also foreshadows some recognizable spiritual and social upheavals of modernity.