Antigone, Interrupted

Bonnie Honig is Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Political Science at Brown University, Rhode Island. She was formerly Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor in Political Science at Northwestern University, Illinois and Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation, Chicago. She is an award-winning author whose work has been translated into numerous languages and is read by a wide interdisciplinary audience composed of scholars and researchers in political theory, philosophy, classics, gender studies, cultural studies, American studies, comparative literature, critical theory, media studies, law and international relations.

• Preface; Introduction; Part I. Interruption: Introduction to Part I: 1. Tragedy, maternalism, ethics: toward an agonistic humanism; 2. 'Antigone versus Oedipus', I: feminist theory and the turn to Antigone; 3. 'Antigone versus Oedipus', II: the directors' agon in Germany in Autumn; Part II. Conspiracy: Introduction to Part II: 4. Mourning, membership, and the politics of exception: plotting Creon's conspiracy with democracy; 5. From lamentation to logos: Antigone's conspiracy with language; 6. Sacrifice, sorority, integrity: Antigone's conspiracy with Ismene; Conclusion.

'Honig's sweeping consideration of how the 'Antigone' is read and misread offers us a new way to approach the pauses, the ellipses, and the frank interruptions that punctuate this classic text. We have all struggled so hard to make the words mean in this or that way that we have perhaps forgotten the more dramatic features of the text in which relationships rupture, words trail off, and events still language. This book offers a trenchant analysis of sovereignty, belonging, and freedom through a perspective at once dramatic, literary, and political. Honig's sustained engagement with contemporary criticism shows how important the figure and text of Antigone is for any effort to think about the risks and the necessity of contestatory democratic culture.' Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley