Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death

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"Qual é a voz contemporânea que adentra a linguagem da lei para interromper seu funcionamento unívoco? Observe que, na situação de famílias cuja estrutura é mista, uma criança diz ‘mãe’ e pode esperar que mais de um indivíduo responda ao chamado. Ou, no caso da adoção, uma criança pode dizer ‘pai’ referindo-se tanto ao fantasma ausente que nunca conheceu quanto àquele que assume tal lugar na memória viva." [97]

对黑格尔国族家庭二分的驳斥（身份之越界）比较清晰，但很大一部分论点仍然沿着拉康的符号论断轨迹叙述，并未跳脱出这个基本逻辑，自有观点似比较模糊。

One of the better Butler books. Digs into Antigone using Hegel, Levi-Strauss, Lacan and others to critique an entire Western philosophical tradition built on the crumbling pillars of heteronormativity and the nuclear family via the incest taboo.

I would've liked to see a little more of what Butler noted as a psychoanalysis built around Antigone rather than Oedipus. I understand the point is that the very notion is made impossible because of our ideological attachments to kinship, etc. but isn't the point to think the impossible?

One thing bothered me, and this wasn't strictly an issue with Butler, but with the critical theoretical tradition within which she places herself... where earlier philosophy, and some of the more solid contemporary stuff, built itself on First Principles, late 20th and early 21st Century theory replaces first principles with inter-referenciality to build its arguments. Butler writes "Hegel states this," "Levi-Strauss claims that," and we're meant to accept that their claims are legitimate because they are "Hegel" and "Levi-Strauss." So she has to become strangely conservative in her acknowledgment of their authority so she can build her iconoclasm on the assumption of their importance. She reifies them so she can tear them down. Granted, Hegel, Lacan, Levi-Strauss are "big names" in theoretical circles, but isn't this what others have railed against when they went after the "author" in the 70s? I always think the quality of a good philosophy book can be measured if you removed all the proper names and read the argument. Butler's book would still stand, because the argument is necessary and compelling.

This begs the question - why mention all the names? I worry the answer is more troubling than anyone is willing to admit. It has something to do with the professionalization and compartmentalization of thought via the university. She's staking a claim within a particular field that has been marked out as "continental philosophy" within Anglo-American circles, so mention of Hegel, Lacan, Levi-Strauss becomes a bit like wearing gang colors. Why not build your own counter-interpretation free of the weight of their names? Because other academics wouldn't recognize it as proper scholarship? Because she wouldn't get published by a university press? (Hint: academics tend to look down their noses at popular presses.)

There is a real danger to thought when names carry the weight of a philosophical argument. I had the feeling every once and a while reading Butler that her argument started to pull off the face of the planet and became a bit of a dance at the level representation with no roots in "real" claims. I understand this is part of her overall point in many of her books- our desire for rootedness makes us victim to reified concepts - but the use of names and putting them in circulation the way she does makes it all feel a bit... dare I say, academically incestuous? But not in a good way.

At the same time, I'm all on her side in that her real target was the entire Western Philosophical tradition using Antigone as her foil. Instead of being too literal in her attack on those who studied Antigone, maybe she could've shown how their First Principles made their interpretations of Antigone necessary, and then gone after say the dialectic, the mathematization of psychology, or anthropology itself? Or she could've pulled a Greenblatt - pulled something way out of left field from the enlightenment tradition and shown how it's logic is fundamentally related to the quieting of Antigone. This would show us our own discursive adherence to the Oedipalization of thought at the very roots of our shared philosophies.. but then that would be a whole other book.

Anyway, just a thought.

Through incredible writing and logic, Butler has presented an incredible analysis of Antigone as a character and in reference to our society.

Maybe, just maybe, we picked the wrong tragic Theban to build psychoanalysis around.

Overwhelming

Perdín parte da miña cordura tras ler isto