Lacan in Australia--Event: Reading Antigone

From William MacNeil, Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland:

I write to invite you to an upcoming theatrical performance in which I feature: a digital staging of Sophocles’ Antigone, delivered over two nights - Mon 3 August (Pt 1) & Monday 10 Aug (Pt 2) - from 7pm to 8:30pm. The cast is international and includes the following players: Stephanie Perera (Brisbane) as Antigone, Eva Sophie Reinhofer (Ireland/Germany) as Ismene, Camilo Salazar (Colombia) as Haemon and yours truly, William MacNeil, aka ‘Bill', as Creon, king of Thebes (who else?). Tickets are free, but you must register to receive the zoom log-on details. The link is supplied above. An online Q&A with the audience, actors and director will follow each performance. And not to fret if time zone differences preclude your attendance: the performances will be recorded, and these recordings will be made available in due course. If you liked Nolan’s The Odyssey, you’ll love this. Antigone is, of course, the play of law and does for jurisprudence what Oedipus Rex did for psychoanalysis. So, join us, for two evenings of high tragic drama, the play's themes directly addressing such heady - and still pertinent - topoi as the reach of the state, the role of the gods, the duty to family and the ethics of desire. Hope to see you there - and feel free to share this invitation with any interested others! [Email edited.--Ed.]

For more information, follow this link.

DeLoach on Antigone, Autonomy, and Higher Lawlessness

Andrew R. DeLoach, Trinity Law School, is publishing Antigone, Autonomy, and Higher Lawlessness in Law, Culture, and the Humanities. Here is the abstract.

The first surviving references to unwritten law and to autonomy come from Sophocles' Antigone. Yet legal readings of the tragedy routinely focus on the conflict between natural law and legal positivism. These readings typically assume the truth of Antigone's claim that unwritten laws require her defiance of Creon's decree. Likewise, they rarely ask whether her final argument is consistent with that claim. Antigone first appeals to the unwritten law of the gods-a Higher Law superseding a human decree. But then she changes her normative approach. Accused of acting autonomously (by her own rules), she abandons the Higher Law and appeals instead to a law she has made for herself. And it appears her claim was always rooted in autonomy. Unexplored but implied by the tragedy is the danger that appeals to Higher Law in contemporary adjudication may encourage claims based in autonomy, amounting to "Higher Lawlessness.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

DeLoach on Antigone, Autonomy, and Higher Lawlessness

Andrew R. DeLoach, Trinity Law School, has published Antigone, Autonomy, and Higher Lawlessness. Here is the abstract.

The first surviving references to unwritten law and to autonomy come from Sophocles' Antigone. Yet legal readings of the tragedy routinely focus on the conflict between natural law and legal positivism. These readings typically assume the truth of Antigone's claim that unwritten laws require her defiance of Creon's decree. Likewise, they rarely ask whether her final argument is consistent with that claim. Antigone first appeals to the unwritten law of the gods-a Higher Law superseding a human decree. But then she changes her normative approach. Accused of acting autonomously (by her own rules), she abandons the Higher Law and appeals instead to a law she has made for herself. And it appears her claim was always rooted in autonomy. Unexplored but implied by the tragedy is the danger that appeals to Higher Law in contemporary adjudication may encourage claims based in autonomy, amounting to "Higher Lawlessness.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Kenny on "Love Mounts to the Throne With Law": Citizenship in Northern Ireland and Seamus Heaney Antigone @dkennytcd @law_humanities

David Kenny, Trinity College Dublin School of Law, is publishing ‘Love Mounts to the Throne with Law’: Citizenship in Northern Ireland and Seamus Heaney’s Antigone in Law and Humanities (2022). Here is the abstract.

In this paper, I examine disputes about citizenship in Northern Ireland though the lens of poet Seamus Heaney’s 2004 version of Antigone, The Burial at Thebes. Citizenship and identity in Northern Ireland—if people are Irish or British—has been a central issue of the conflict there. The 1998 peace agreement promised to allow people to identify however they wished, and not be forced to adopt an identity they rejected. But recent controversies, including Brexit and a major legal challenge, have shown that the legal concept of citizenship has not been able to fulfil this promise. Sophocles’ Antigone presents a great clash between the authority of the State and deep personal/morality commitments, and the tragedy that result. Heaney’s Antigone casts light on the fundamental clash at the centre of citizenship, and points us toward a flexible, contextual multi-level citizenship as a solution to law’s rigid conception of what a citizen must be.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Kenny on "Love Mounts to the Throne with Law": Citizenship in Northern Ireland and Seamus Heaney's Antigone @dkennytcd @TCDLawSchool

David Kenny, Trinity College Dublin School of Law, is publishing ‘Love Mounts to the Throne with Law’: Citizenship in Northern Ireland and Seamus Heaney’s Antigone in Law and Humanities (2022). Here is the abstract.

In this paper, I examine disputes about citizenship in Northern Ireland though the lens of poet Seamus Heaney’s 2004 version of Antigone, The Burial at Thebes. Citizenship and identity in Northern Ireland—if people are Irish or British—has been a central issue of the conflict there. The 1998 peace agreement promised to allow people to identify however they wished, and not be forced to adopt an identity they rejected. But recent controversies, including Brexit and a major legal challenge, have shown that the legal concept of citizenship has not been able to fulfil this promise. Sophocles’ Antigone presents a great clash between the authority of the State and deep personal/morality commitments, and the tragedy that result. Heaney’s Antigone casts light on the fundamental clash at the centre of citizenship, and points us toward a flexible, contextual multi-level citizenship as a solution to law’s rigid conception of what a citizen must be.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

van den Berge on Sophocles' Antigone and the Promise of Ethical Life

Lukas van den Berge, Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), Erasmus School of Law, has published Sophocles’ Antigone and the Promise of Ethical Life: Tragic Ambiguity and the Pathologies of Reason. Here is the abstract.

This article aims to demonstrate that works of art and literature can provide important insights in law and justice that are hard to grasp by one-sidedly rationalist methods of academic analysis. It takes Sophocles’ Antigone - perhaps the most classical text of law and literature’s familiar catalogue - as a case in point, drawing attention to some important aspects of that play’s legal epistemic relevance that are still largely overlooked. Arguing that the widespread view on the confrontation between Antigone and Creon as a clash between ‘divine’ and ‘human’ law is mistaken, the article builds forth on Hegel’s view that the positions of both protagonists are likewise incomplete, denying elements of law and justice that are equally essential, the one being no less divine than the other. However, it departs from Hegel’s analysis in maintaining that the play does not entail the promise of ‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit) as some synthesis that recognises the specific value of both Antigone’s and Creon’s stances on law and justice but takes away their incompatibility. Instead, it is argued that the play rather teaches us that such a synthesis is unattainable - a no less valuable lesson indeed.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Antigone and Human Rights

Kevin P. Lee, Campbell University Law School, has published Emanuel Levinas on Hegel's Antigone: Levinas and the Problem of Modernity. Here is the abstract.

This essay introduces Emmanuel Levinas’s contribution to post-secular human rights discourse. It looks first to Levinas’s reading of Sophocles’ tragedy, Antigone, for an introduction to his thinking about the relationship between the human law and divine law. For his approach to “post-secularity” it compares Levinas to Jürgen Habermas’s critique of the “discourse on modernity” with particular concern for several issues of importance to human rights discourse. Levinas develops a “post-ontological” conception of religion as a part of his account of subjectivity. It suggests that, while flawed in many respects, Levinas’s work illustrates some of the complex issues facing those who seek to articulate a post secular theory of human rights.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. 

Antigone, the Whistle-Blower

Alessia Contu, University of Warwick, Warwick Business School, has published Whistle-Blowers’ Acts: Recasting Whistle-Blowing Through Readings of Antigone. Here is the abstract.

"Blowing the whistle" in organizational and public life is akin to speaking out and denouncing wrongdoings. Parrhesia, free speech, is a strongly-held value in western societies, but when manifested in organizations as whistle-blowing it is often seen as troublemaking. Most research on whistle-blowers is based on instrumental knowledge. But time has come to develop new perspectives on whistle-blowing (Wolfe Morrison, 2009). We answer the call to re-energize this research arena by developing a critical knowledge, which fosters reflection (Habermas, 2005: 316). Our discussion is based on exploring the analogy between Antigone, the Sophoclean heroine and whistle-blowers. Specifically, we address the readings of the tragedy by authors such as Hegel, Lacan and Heidegger considering what these offer to our understanding of whistle-blowing. These help us explain why whistle-blowers are often seen as ambiguous figures with ambivalent motives. And why whistle-blowing can be recast as an ethico-political act.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. 

Examining Antigone

Ruthann Robson, City University of New York, CUNY School of Law, has published "Democracy and Antigone," in volume 39 of the Stetson Law Review (2010). Here is the abstract.

This essay explores democracy, sexuality, gender and legal practices using the frameworks of law and literature. Law and Literature as an enterprise is commonly said to have two distinct strands. One strand focuses upon an artistic product and elaborates the legal themes within it. The other strand focuses upon a legal product, such as a notable United States Supreme Court opinion, and examines its artistry, including its rhetorical or cinematic qualities. This essay explores both strands as well as the territory where the two strands meet.

This essay’s artistic focus is the mythical and literary figure of Antigone. In addition to the standard Sophocles’ version, this essay explores Antigone in the works of French playwright Jean Anouilh, Nigerian playwright Femi Osofisan, and South African playwright Athol Fugard.

This essay’s legal focus is several cases interpreting the meaning of mythical and Greek words. A court in Athens Greece decided a claim about the permissible usage of the term "lesbian," the United States Supreme Court has interpreted the term “Olympics, ” and trademark litigation has considered the term “dyke.”

The confluence of these two strands of literature and law involve further explorations of Sappho as a poet and historical figure, of Derrida’s work on democracy and brotherhood, and of the meaning of “sisterhood” in feminist and legal texts.

Download the Article from SSRN at the link.

Antigone and the Politics of Lamentation

Bonnie Honig, American Bar Foundation, has published "Antigone's Laments, Creon's Grief: Mourning, Membership and the Politics of Exception," as American Bar Foundation Research Paper 08-02. Here is the abstract.

This paper develops a historically situated reading of Sophocles' Antigone as an exploration of the politics of lamentation and the larger ideological conflicts these stand for. The play is supposedly about Antigone's defiance of her uncle Creon's sovereign decree that her brother Polynices, who attacked the city with a foreign army and died in battle, be left unburied as a lesson to all regarding the consequences of treason. But, I argue, the play is not about Polynices and his treason. These are merely occasions for something else: The play explores the clash in 5th century Athens between Homeric/elite and democratic mourning practices. The former memorialize the unique individuality of the dead, focus on the family's loss and bereavement and call for vengeance. The latter, the democratic, memorialize the dead's contribution to the immortal polis and emphasize (as in the Funeral Oration) the replace-ability of those lost by other, future citizens yet to come. Both economies of mourning are limited, necessary and insufficient to the bereavement we feel in the face of death. By staging their critical agonistic engagement, the play calls attention to each one's limits, but also mounts a criticism of democratic Athens' (represented by Creon) intolerance of the Homeric view.

Download the paper from SSRN here.