Female rage, the politics of care, and ambivalence of liberal democracy in Bratya Basu's Creusa – The Queen

Abstract

Bratya Basu's play, ‘Creusa – The Queen’ is an adaptation of Euripides’ Ion that centers Creusa and her experience. Basu's adaptation critiques not only the relationship between humans and gods like in Euripides’ original, but also the entanglement of religious and secular law, and the idea of the rational individual subject. By centering Creusa and her lived experience, Basu articulates an ambivalence towards traditional liberal democracy based on its reliance on the image of a rational individual subject that serves the image of the law rather than using the law to facilitate, develop, and reflect relations, experiences, and communities of care that make up the body politic. Through its use of suspense and focus on Creusa, the play challenges binaries still found in contemporary political theory such as emotional/rational, domestic/public, care/justice, female/male. In this essay we outline the erasure of women as liberal subjects, the affective turn in politics, and the role of Creusa's experience in the play in challenging the rational traditional subject as a model for an effective political subject. Ultimately, it is Creusa's certainty about and acceptance of the divine and secular orders that allow liberal democracy to survive, thus grounding the power of the project in Creusa's affective response.