Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Interruption
- Part II Conspiracy
- 4 Mourning, membership, and the politics of exception: plotting Creon's conspiracy with democracy
- 5 From lamentation to logos: Antigone’s conspiracy with language
- 6 Sacrifice, sorority, integrity: Antigone's conspiracy with Ismene
- Conclusion
- About the Cover Image
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Sacrifice, sorority, integrity: Antigone's conspiracy with Ismene
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Interruption
- Part II Conspiracy
- 4 Mourning, membership, and the politics of exception: plotting Creon's conspiracy with democracy
- 5 From lamentation to logos: Antigone’s conspiracy with language
- 6 Sacrifice, sorority, integrity: Antigone's conspiracy with Ismene
- Conclusion
- About the Cover Image
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Ismene: Such wretched straits.
Oedipus: Hers [Antigone’s] and mine?
Ismene: And mine too, my pain the third.
Sophocles, Oedipus at ColonusThe scenes looked at in this chapter come earlier in the play than Antigone’s dirge, the scene we just examined in detail in Chapter 5. If the ordering of these chapters violates the play’s chronology, that is for two reasons. First, having established the context of burial politics in Chapter 4, it made sense to move immediately in Chapter 5 to discuss Antigone’s dirge. Second, the earlier scenes I look at now here, in Chapter 6, include one in which Antigone conspires with Ismene, or so I will claim. That claim is easier to establish if we have in place some appreciation of Antigone’s capacity to conspire with language and it with her, and this appreciation postulates the close reading of her dirge that was the focus of Chapter 5. Thus, the non-chronological ordering is necessary to undo several settled elements of interpretation and reception and to make room for a more agonistic engagement with the play.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Antigone, Interrupted , pp. 151 - 189Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013