- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Antigone's Political Legacies: Abjection in Defiance of Mourning
- 2 Naked Life; Arendt and the Exile at Colonus
- 3 Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim
- 4 The Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility and the Responsibility of Ethics
- 5 Lacan's Antigone
- 6 Psychoanalysing <i>Antigone</i>
- 7 One Amongst Many: The Ethical Significance of <i>Antigone</i> and the Films of Lars Von Trier
- 8 <i>Antigone</i>, Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of the Law
- 9 Sophocles' <i>Antigone</i> and the Democratic Voice
- 10 <i>Antigone</i> and the Law: Legal Theory and the Ambiguities of Performance
- 11 <sup>1</sup>Between Myth and History: The Tragedy of Antigone
- 12 Antigone with(out) Jocaste
- 13 Autochthonous Antigone: Breaking Ground
- 14 Antigone and her Brother: What Sort of Special Relationship?
- 15 Reclaiming Femininity: Antigone's ‘Choice’ in Art and Art History
- 16 Reading <i>Antigone</i> in Translation: Text, Paratext, Intertext
- 17 Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau and Sophocles
- 18 Politicizing <i>Antigone</i>
- 19 From Ancient Greek Drama to Argentina's ‘Dirty War’; <i>Antígona Furiosa</i>: On Bodies and the State
- 20 Revolutionary Muse: Fémi Òsófisan's <i>Tègònni: An African Antigone</i><sup>1</sup>
- 21 Performing <i>Antigone</i> in the Twenty‐First Century
- Bibliography
- Index
The Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility and the Responsibility of Ethics
The Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility and the Responsibility of Ethics
- Chapter:
- (p.82) 4 The Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility and the Responsibility of Ethics
- Source:
- Interrogating Antigone in Postmodern Philosophy and Criticism
- Author(s):
Eugene O'Brien
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This chapter discusses the ethical implications of the choice made by Antigone in terms of loyalty to her family or loyalty to her polis. It does this through the prism of Jacques Derrida's ideas on responsibility and irresponsibility. For Derrida, to be responsible to one is of necessity to be irresponsible to the other, so the choice made by Antigone is a synecdoche of the ethical dilemma of all such choices. Examples are adduced in the chapter to underline this point: the invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, the Northern Irish IRA hunger striker Francis Hughes, Robert McCartney, murdered by the IRA in Belfast.
Keywords: Seamus Heaney, responsibility, Jacques Derrida, ethics, Antigone, justice, Jacques Lacan, Northern Ireland, Iraq, Francis Hughes
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Antigone's Political Legacies: Abjection in Defiance of Mourning
- 2 Naked Life; Arendt and the Exile at Colonus
- 3 Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim
- 4 The Body Politic: The Ethics of Responsibility and the Responsibility of Ethics
- 5 Lacan's Antigone
- 6 Psychoanalysing <i>Antigone</i>
- 7 One Amongst Many: The Ethical Significance of <i>Antigone</i> and the Films of Lars Von Trier
- 8 <i>Antigone</i>, Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of the Law
- 9 Sophocles' <i>Antigone</i> and the Democratic Voice
- 10 <i>Antigone</i> and the Law: Legal Theory and the Ambiguities of Performance
- 11 <sup>1</sup>Between Myth and History: The Tragedy of Antigone
- 12 Antigone with(out) Jocaste
- 13 Autochthonous Antigone: Breaking Ground
- 14 Antigone and her Brother: What Sort of Special Relationship?
- 15 Reclaiming Femininity: Antigone's ‘Choice’ in Art and Art History
- 16 Reading <i>Antigone</i> in Translation: Text, Paratext, Intertext
- 17 Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau and Sophocles
- 18 Politicizing <i>Antigone</i>
- 19 From Ancient Greek Drama to Argentina's ‘Dirty War’; <i>Antígona Furiosa</i>: On Bodies and the State
- 20 Revolutionary Muse: Fémi Òsófisan's <i>Tègònni: An African Antigone</i><sup>1</sup>
- 21 Performing <i>Antigone</i> in the Twenty‐First Century
- Bibliography
- Index
