super short response to Antigone's Claim

Erin Walsh

ENGL 601

Reading Response

2/27/12

Response to Antigone’s Claim

            I’m not even sure this will qualify as a reading response because it is so short but I figured I would post it anyway because, after reading other people’s posted responses, I don't quite remember if some of these topics came up.  I will say however, that the frusteration and confusion that I’m guessing is what I sensed from my fellow classmate’s posts, was certainly felt by me as well by tenfold, especially because I am not entirely familiar with the tale of Antigone in the first place.

            Aside from not quite understanding the main reference this book was going off of, I will say that the feminism and gender based issues were, for the most part, seemingly universally relatable to anything taken into regards to the norms of family dynamics and what is socially acceptable.  In fact, some of the points Butler chose to bring up and translate, seemed so logically rational, that it made me wonder why she even bothered with the undertaking.  The concepts of incest, nature/culture, kinship/blood, and matriarch/patriarch relationships, though yes, were obviously key aspects of Antigone’s tale, were perhaps over-exhausted topics to cover in this book rather than, what I would have instead explored in more detail, the specific, individually unique relationship between the character of Antigone as being both feminine and masculine.

            (Somewhat following off of that, when the issue of “blood” was referenced as imagery for kinship and relations through blood lines and blood shed, it came to my mind that blood, depending upon its interpretation, can be symbolic for the most extremes of either masculinity- ‘father to son,’ ‘bloodshed and battle,’- or femininity- the essence and transition of womanhood.)

            Now, speaking of symbolism, I would like to briefly mention that this was perhaps the aspect of the book, (or at least the first two chapters), that bothered me the most.  Butler seemed too comfortable in describing signifiers, for example of family roles, as being “symbolic,” and choosing to find symbolism in tradition and accepted normality.  Though there were others, the example from the book of this that most prevalently comes to mind can be found about two-thirds in to the first chapter when Butler is actually exploring the concept of symbolism in relation to Antigone’s desires, intentions, and actions.  Here, her true interpretation on what qualifies as symbolic in the book seemed muffled but to me, it seemed as though she missed the mark, in failing to articulate that symbolism, at least to my understanding, is for the most part solely what you make of it, what you mean of it.  It is not mathematical, nor symmetrical in titling positions, nor based on desire.  It is an interpretation…which in saying that, I guess I’m being hypocritical in a sense, for bashing her interpretation of what I deem should be considered interpretation…

Okay, never mind for now.  I’m going to need to think on this.