The Abject: Kristeva and the Antigone

Abstract

The Abject: Kristeva and the Antigone Clifford Davis Julia Kristeva's theory of the abject provides an illuminating and interrogative hermeneutic technique for Sophocles' Antigone. Kristeva has demonstrated the applicability of this theory to the Theban saga (although, perhaps, with mixed results) in her reading of Sophocles's Oedipus Tyrranos and Oedipus at Colonus (Powers of Horror 83-89). Her interpretation of Oedipus Tyrranos not only reinforces Lacanian psychoanalytical theory, but also situates the concept of the abject, as an extension of Lacan, within the ancient text as the agos, defilement of Oedipus. Kristeva argues that the new king, as agos, represents the source of the abject and embodies its purification as pharmakos: scapegoat. The structural and the­ matic oppositions in the Antigone between patriarchal, institutional uniformity in the polis and the more antiquated, chthonic obliga­ tions of the heterogeneous dead mark this drama, too, as extraordi­ narily well-suited for reinterpretation as a confrontation between an archaic, Greek Symbolic and the abject. In this paper, I use Kristevan theory to elucidate and reinterpret the primary opposi­ tions in Sophocles's Antigone and demonstrate how such a reading differs from the structuralist interpretations of C.W. Oudemans and J.P. Vernant. Instead of reducing the antagonism of Antigone and Creon to a Hegelian or structuralist reading of binary opposi­ tion between equally legitimate claims, I demonstrate that the conflicts in the Antigone reflect the psychological tension between nascent patriarchal institutions and the excluded, but sanctified, feminine Other. First, however, it is necessary to present the main tenets of Kristeva's theory of the abject. I. Lacan and Kristeva Julia Kristeva's work is deeply indebted to Jacques Lacan and his reinterpretation of Freudian principles in terms of post-struc­ turalist discourse theory (Lacan, Ecrits; Television). Lacan's theory of the symbolic order (or Symbolic) describes the indoctrination of the child into the phallocentric system of cultural institutions. The Symbolic is a monolithic, unitary system that pervades language and, therefore, all cultural institutions because they are conceived