Anti Antigone

Antigone is, arguably, the feminine figure most examined and exalted both by and in the philosophical tradition. For just this reason, Antigone has also repeatedly been reclaimed by generations of women working in the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminist theory, political theory and literature. This paper explores the thought that Antigone is not a “woman” in any simple sense at all. As a virgin/sister who dares to appeal to a law beyond the polis, Antigone occupies the position of a phallic virgin whose power and authority are inextricable from a certain (essentially male) fantasy of phallic infallibility—a fantasy that is, paradoxically, often incarnated by an exceptional form of femininity. But whether she is understood as uniquely authorized to appeal to a law beyond the human or read as a figure that discloses a fissure within the human, Antigone challenges what it means to be a woman in theory.