Emily Klotz
Eric Heyne
ENGL 601
Feb. 26, 2012
Reading Response#1: Antigone’s Claim
Despite its relative lack of bulk, Antigone’s Claim was a difficult text to get through. Judith Butler has several very interesting points to make, but I found myself getting lost in her somewhat circular language, esoteric vocabulary, and repetition of certain points, without being clear on what her main point actually was. From my final understanding, Butler was simply trying to examine and question the “exogamic, heterosexual conclusion to the oedipal drama,” specifically through the figure of Antigone, who both seems to defy the Law and yet also uses the language and terms of the Law in order to do so. What her final conclusion was, or if she even came to any, I’m not sure of.
The first chapter I could probably summarize fairly quickly: Antigone is problematic as a feminist figure of defiance and/or a representation of Kinship vs. the State, because while she defies the Law of the state, she does so by using the language of the state, and she never claims her defiant deed in language: merely refuses to deny it. This point was repeated several times throughout, while Butler examined and critiqued the Lacanian/Hegelian reading of Antigone. I found myself wondering why it was such a problem that Antigone used the language of the patriarchal state in order to defy its laws. It reminded me of Graff’s critique of Tannen in Clueless in Academe, in which he tried to undermine her argument against argument by pointing out that she, herself, was making an argument. Tannen had to use the “masculine” method of the argument in order to make her point; and in that case, as with Antigone, I found myself wondering what alternative methods there could be for someone who wished to defy the patriarchal rules running the system? I can’t answer this question; it’s merely something I wondered. Butler doesn’t really seem to explore what other alternatives Antigone might have had as far as defying the State, language-wise (at least, not that I can remember, though honestly the first chapters are a little blurry).
The final chapter seemed to move on to more “real-life” issues, in questioning the normative function of both kinship and the state, and what can result from a less-than-perfect Oedipal development process. The ambiguity of Antigone’s loyalty to her “brother” (the fact that, while Antigone seems to think the word refers to Polyneices, but she could also be referring to her father Oedipus or her other brother) I found very interesting, at least as an examination of the twisted familial struggles going on within Antigone as a character. In literary criticism, I’m naturally more drawn to character studies than anything else, which is probably why I found this portion interesting. Because of all the Lacan-reading I did last weekend, I came (probably too excitedly) to the conclusion that “Brother,” in Antigone’s case, was a master signifier – a.k.a. a phallic signifier – the signifier that orders her perceptions of the world, yet seems to point to no particular sign. In Antigone’s case, everything revolves around her brother – but “brother” is undefined for her, due to her excruciatingly screwed-up family tree. As Butler argues, “brother” for Antigone takes on a phallic significance, representing everyone and everything that she’s lost/will never get, yet the word itself is vague and full of confusion. It seems that structuring her symbolic order around the master signifier “brother” is rather disastrous for Antigone, considering that it leads to her death. It’s disastrous, I think, due to the fact that it represents the violated incest taboo itself: in perversely referring both to her brothers and her father, it’s an empty signifier that not only prohibits Antigone from being a part of the heteronormative State (getting married and having children), but also causes her entire reality to be disordered and unbalanced.
I had trouble following some of Butler’s arguments, possibly due to my own misunderstanding, and possibly (strangely enough) because I’ve still got Lacan on my mind from last week. At one point in the last chapter, while summarizing Zizek’s analysis of Antigone (which, as far as I can tell, she agrees with), she mentions that Antigone’s “no!” to Creon is a “feminine and destructive act”; however, isn’t the Law (a.k.a. the masculine Law) really the negative act? It would seem, if Antigone represents the feminine and the realm outside the Law, while Creon represents the masculine and the Law, it’s the masculine that ought to be negative. The Law is naturally exclusive, of course, which Butler discusses throughout the book. Lacan called the Law in the Oedipal stage the “Name of the Father” (nom du pere), which was a kind of a pun also meaning the “No of the Father” (non du pere). So, again, why is the feminine associated with negativity here? I suppose I just didn’t quite follow this argument, or see why it was necessary in the chapter, as it seemed to contradict other points. Also, one of her big points – that the Law itself is perverse – didn’t quite compute to me, since “perverseness” is supposed to be a result of a failed or incomplete castration in the Oedipal stage, but the castrating force basically is the Law. I don’t know, I think I just didn’t follow her logic. Was she saying that the Law is perverse because, without perverseness, there would be nothing to “castrate” or prohibit? I can obviously see that the Law couldn’t exist without perverseness – that seems like common sense – but I didn’t see how that led to her conclusion that the Law itself is perverse. Like I said, though, it’s probably due to my own misunderstanding of her argument.
The parts of Butler that I could follow were extremely interesting, though. I was intrigued by her questioning of the “Mother” and “Father” roles in the Oedipal complex, since I was wondering about that myself (what happens if there is no Father or Mother? Can that even happen, or do the roles just get transferred somewhere else? Are these roles necessary? Must they necessarily take on specific forms?). Her overall explanation of Antigone’s situation as a subversion of the norm was very well done, and several times she seemed to be reaching for an entirely new psychoanalytic approach to development: one that uses Antigone, rather than Oedipus, as a formative metaphor, and one that does not exclude those outside of the heterosexual, “functional” nuclear family. I just wish she’d have made it a bit clearer where she was going with her arguments, and had arrived at a more solid conclusion (but perhaps she was afraid of being too solid?).
Oh, and I found a typo on pg. 79! Tee-hee, sadistic joy.
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