Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death

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Columbia University Press, Apr 5, 2002 - Philosophy - 112 pages

The celebrated author of Gender Trouble here redefines Antigone's legacy, recovering her revolutionary significance and liberating it for a progressive feminism and sexual politics. Antigone has long been a feminist icon of defiance. But what has remained unclear is whether she escapes from the forms of power that she opposes, since the form of defiance she exemplifies also leads to her death. Butler argues that Antigone represents a form of feminist and sexual agency that is fraught with risk. Moreover, Antigone shows how a culture of normative heterosexuality obstructs our capacity to see what sexual freedom and political agency could be.

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About the author (2002)

Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley. Her many acclaimed critical works include Subjects of Desire, Gender Trouble, The Psychic Life of Power, and Bodies That Matter.


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