In the 2007-2008 academic year a series of events will take place focused on the figure of Antigone, the tragic heroine of Sophocles’ play of the same name. The objective is to explore the play in an interdisciplinary context, paying particular attention to both ancient and contemporary analyses, translations, and adaptations. To quote from a recent call for papers—for a conference that in itself is a sign of the explosion of interest around the play--Antigone has been seen as “a feminist, a terrorist, a model for resistance against oppression, a self-destructive ideologue, an exponent of feminine desire, and a victim … Antigone is reinvented for every generation.”¹

    In recent years there has been renewed interest in the play from a number of quarters. Following the publication of lectures, seminars and essays by, among others, philosophers Jacques Derrida (1984), Martin Heidegger (1975; 1996), Sarah Kofman (1978), psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1992), and feminist theorist Luce Irigaray (1985), several leading contemporary theorists—inspired in part by such interventions--have contributed innovative readings to the literature on Antigone. These include Slavoj Zizek (1992), Judith Butler (2000), and Carol Jacobs (1996). Having long inspired new translations and adaptations, the play has had a peculiarly fertile political legacy. As J. Michael Walton puts it “Such is the fundamental nature of the clash between temporal power and moral stance around which this play revolves, that it is virtually impossible to detach it from whatever context the audience finds itself in” (2002, 17).

    Jean Anouilh’s Antigone (1951), for example, based on Sophocles’ play, was performed during occupied France in 1944, with Antigone’s resistance to Creon becoming symbolic of the French resistance to Nazi German occupation. Athol Fugard’s The Island adapts the themes of Antigone to South Africa; Fugard describes how performances of Antigone inspired and provided courage for prisoners at Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated under the apartheid regime. Polish playwright Janus Glowacki adapts the play to explore issues of homelessness in New York. Within the last thirty years, five Irish literary figures have produced versions of the play which highlight the political context of the Anglo-Irish conflict, some of which also situate the concerns raised by Sophocles’ Antigone against the background of America’s war with Iraq, or set the play in the context of the middle east (see, for example, Heaney 2004; Paulin 1985).

    From a pedagogical point of view, the play lends itself to consideration—to name only the most obvious arenas--within the spheres of classics, literature, political theory, theater, philosophy, and women’s and gender studies. The central clash between protagonists Antigone and Creon concerns their diametrically opposed interpretations of justice (dikē). According to Hegel, Antigone’s fierce allegiance to her brother, Polynices, more particularly her determination to bury him, despite Creon’s ruling prohibiting his burial, aligns her with the family, blood kinship, and femininity. Creon, on the other hand, represents the law, the sanctity of the state, and political order. Hegel’s reading of the play in terms of two extreme and irreconcilable interpretations of justice, with Antigone as representative of the private, familial realm, and Creon as representative of the public, civic realm, has proved to be contentious, to say the least. Issuing an implicit challenge to Aristotle’s view that Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex constitutes the best exemplar of Greek tragedy, Hegel’s judgment is that Antigone is the purest tragic hero. If the terms in which Hegel has analyzed the play remain controversial, Sophocles’ Antigone continues to offer, as Walton puts it, “in harshly moving terms the necessary reminder of the immediate historical lesson and the hugeness of that metaphor for any government of oppressive decree in the face of the single-minded protest” (Walton 2002, 17). At the same time, since, at least arguably, the play makes of the figure Antigone a tragic hero, it has served to provoke the reflections of feminist theorists, some of whom have taken Antigone’s courageous and tenacious stand to be exemplary (see Irigaray), while others have found it necessary to complicate the terms in which Antigone might become exemplary (see Butler and Jacobs).

    The series of events will have a local focus as well as taking advantage of the expertise of nationally and internationally renowned scholars from a variety of disciplines. The year of events will culminate in the conference, Antigones. The intention of this scholarly conference is to facilitate sustained and informed interdisciplinary, scholarly and political discussion of, and reflection on, the play and the theoretical and political issues it raises. To this end, we are inviting experts on Antigone who have backgrounds in political science, classics, theater, psychoanalysis, literary theory, women’s and gender studies and philosophy. We will also engage students as moderators, respondents, and presenters.

    By approaching the play in a variety of contexts (theatrical, pedagogical, scholarly), and liaising with arts centers, bookstores, colleges and universities across the Chicago area, we aim to consolidate links between our university and the community. We share DePaul University’s commitment to interdisciplinary studies and its attempt to make the process of learning one that engages students in rigorous intellectual ways that relate to crucial political, artistic and world issues. Integrating study of Antigone into courses taught both in the philosophy department, and in other programs and departments (for example Comparative Literature, and Women’s and Gender Studies), our aim is to supplement the opportunities students will have to become familiar with its interpretative issues in the classroom with an array of opportunities to think about the play in innovative ways outside the classroom. Students will therefore be well prepared to contribute to, and learn from, the scholarly discussions at the conference, in which the year culminates.

    By drawing on not only the resources of the philosophy department and the DePaul community as a whole, but the faculties of other Chicagoland colleges and universities, we want very much for this year to bring together interested individuals from all over the city, employing various sites across a number of campuses and off-campus locations, such as theaters, small movie venues, and bookshops. We believe the Year of Antigones will provide a focal point that is relevant and important for multiple communities, constituting an innovative pedagogical and scholarly event for everyone concerned.