New Antigone

For Authors

New Antigone inaugural issue (Vol 1 October 2005) is dedicated to J Butler’s study, Antigones Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (2000):

“Moreover, to the extent that the two figures, Creon and Antigone, are chiasmically related, it appears that there is no easy separation between the two and that Antigone’s power, to the extent that she still wields it for us, has to do not only with how kinship makes its claim within the language of the state but with the social deformation of both idealized kinship and political sovereignty that emerges as a consequence of her act”.

“In her act, she transgresses both gender and kinship norms, and though the Hegelian tradition reads her fate as a sure sign that this transgression is necessarily failed and fatal, another reading is possible in which she exposes the socially contingent character of kinship, only to become the repeated occasion in the critical literature for a rewriting of that contingency as immutable necessity.”                Judith Butler

"Butler explores the meaning of Antigone, wondering what forms of kinship might have allowed her to live. Along the way, she considers the works of such philosophers as Hegel, Lacan, and Irigaray. How, she asks, would psychoanalysis have been different if it had taken Antigone - the "postoedipal" subject -rather than Oedipus as its point of departure? If the incest taboo is reconceived so that it does not mandate heterosexuality as its solution, what forms of sexual alliance and new kinship might be acknowledged as a result? The book relates the courageous deeds of Antigone to the claims made by those whose relations are still not honoured as those of proper kinship, showing how a culture of normative heterosexuality obstructs our capacity to see what sexual freedom and political agency could be."                                Word Power

The theme of the inaugural issue is: Gender, Kinship and Family – Crossing Cultures and the submission deadline is extended until 1 September 2005.

Submissions for Future Themes are invited.



Cover Design: Artwork © Simone Slee

Look for the interview with Judith Butler in New Antigone, Vol 1 Spring October 2005

ISSN: 1832-7680
© Copyright for submitted materials are held exclusively by the Authors. All other copyrights are held by New Antigone © 2005. All rights reserved

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