Notes from Source: This article takes the opportunity, occasioned by the publication of Bonnie Honig’s profound meditations on the figure of Antigone, to dwell on the implications of the many interpretations of this ancient Greek character in modern and postmodern theory. From Hegel to Honig, we have seen a wide variety of readings of this crucial and excruciated girl, this virgin, this hero, the emblematic female, embodying family for Hegel (Phenomenology, Aesthetics), pure desire for Lacan (1997), queerness for Judith Butler (2002). This article will focus on what is lost when we read Greek tragedy for “character,” for the individual who speaks–as a character. Are we retrojecting a Cartesian selfhood, a possessive individualism, a “humanism”? The article goes back to an older philological text, R.F. Goheen’s The Imagery of Sophocles’ Antigone (1950), implicates this reading with Nicole Loraux’s observations on voices in mourning (1999), Anne Carson’s new translation of the play (2012), and thinks about the ways in which tragedy is a web of words, a rhizome.

Further Notes: Publisher: Springer