Antigone Antigone Kahane Offprint

8/6/2019 Antigone Antigone Kahane Offprint

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M P G B ook s G rou p, B odm in and K ing ', L ynn

Contents, Acknowledgement s viiL i st o f I ll u st r at io n s viiiL i st o f Con tr ib u to r s ixIntroductionS. E. W ilm er a nd A ud ro ne Z uk au sk ai te

PART I.PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS

I 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 ~ 2

5. Lacan's Antigone 101Te r ry Eag le t on

6. Psychoanalysing Antigone 110Ma rk G r if fi th

7. One Amongst Many: The Ethical Significance of Antigoneand the Films of Lars Von Trier 135C alu m N eil l

8 . A n ti go n e, Antigone: Lacan and the Structure of the La w 147A hu vi a K ah an e9. Sophocles' Antigone and the Democratic Voice 168

J u di th F le tc he r1 0 . A n ti go n e and the Law: Legal Theory and the Ambiguitiesof Performance

K la a s T in d em a ns 185

I. Antigone's Political Legacies: Abjection in Defiance of Mourning J 9T in a C h an te r2. Naked Life;Arendt and the Exile at Colonus 48Cec il ia S j jj h olm3. Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim 67

A u dr o ne Z u ka u sk a it e4. The Body Polit ic: The Ethics of Responsibil ity andthe Responsibility of Ethics 82

E u ge n e O 'B r ie n

PART II. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE LAW

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vi ContentsPART III. GENDER AND KINSHIP

II. Between Myth and History: The Tragedy of AntigoneLu ce I ri ga r ay

12. Antigone with(out) IocasteBracha L. Ettinger

13. Autochthonous Antigone: Breaking GroundLiz Appel14. Antigone and her Brother: What Sort of Special Relationship?

I sa b el le T o rr a nc e15. Reclaiming Femininity: Antigone's 'Choice' in Art

and Art HistoryMar tin a M ey er

PART IV. TRANSLATIONS, ADAPTATIONS,AND PERFORMANCE

16. Reading Antigone in Translation: Text, Paratext, lntertextDeborah H. Roberts

17. Speed and Tragedy in Cocteau and SophoclesSean D. Kirkland

18. Politicizing AntigoneEr ika F ischer -I - ich te

19. From Ancient Greek Drama to Argentina's 'Dirty War';A nt ig on a F ur io sa : On Bodies and the StateMar ia F /o re nc ia N ell i

20. Revolutionary Muse: Pemi Osofisan's T hg on ni : A n A fr ic anAntigoneA str id V an W ey en be rg

21. Performing Antigone in the Twenty-First CenturyS. E. Wilmer

BibliographyIndex

197 Acknowledgements21 2

22 9We wish to thank University of Chicago Press for permission to reprintextracts from Mark Griff ith's essay 'The Subject of Desire in Sophocles'Antigone', The Soul of Tragedy: E ssays on A thenian D ram a (Chicago, 2005)and Mosaic for permission to reprint a revised vers ion of Judith Fletcher' s'Citing the Law in Sophocles ' Antigone', which she presented at the ' Inter-rogating Antigone' conference in Trinity College Dublin and that subsequent-lyappeared in Mosaic: A J o ur n al f or the I nt er di sc ip li na ry S tu dy o f L it er at ur e 41(2008). We are also grateful to Marcus Tan for his help in compi ling theBibliography, and Gabriella Calchi-Novati for her assistance in organizing the'Interrogating Antigone' conference at Trinity College Dublin in October2006.

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CLASS ICAL PRESENCES Interrogating Antigonein PostrnodernPhilosophy and

Criticism

The texts, ideas, images, and material cul ture of ancient Greece and Romehave always been crucial to attempts to appropriate the past in order toauthenticate the present. They underlie the mapping of change and theasser tion and challenging of values and ident it ies, old and new. Classica lPresences brings the latest scholarship to bear on the contexts, theory, andpractice of such use, and abuse, of the classical past.

Edited byS. E. W ILM ER

ANDA UD RO NE Z UK AU SK AIT E

OXFORDUNIVERSITY PRESS


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146 P sy ch oa na ly si s a nd t he L awscenario. They cannot ignore such immediately intrusive behaviour. Theycannot object. They cannot join in. They are caught in an imposs ibility wheret he ' co rr ect ' r esponse i s not avai lab le and th is d iscomfor t, t his impossi bil ity istransferred to the audience. We too do not know how to react. When the carereventual ly succeeds i n pe rsuading the two men out si de, with t he help o f Karen ,the soon-to-be embroiled central character, aU four get in a taxi and the twomen's behaviour instant ly changes. It is clear that they had been acting in therestaurant; what they refer to as 'spazzing. At this point, the audience is given asecond jolt. Like the diners , we did not know how to react and now, realizingthat, like them, we have been duped, we are left even more confused. Onereac ti on i s to be appalled and not a few have been extremely appalled at vonTrier for presenting such a scene, complaining that he is lampooning peoplewit h d isab ili ti es . But i s such a reac tion rea1ly ju st if iable ? In the moment whenwe bel ieve we are wit nessing peopl e wit h 'r eal ' d isab il iti es , we are consumed bydi scomfor t. The moment we d iscover t he ' joke', we d isavow this d iscomfort andadopt a position of outrage instead. Only the first reaction, as dis avowed, doesno t d isappea r. Our reac tion i se ff ect ive ly t urned ins ide ou t. We are, that is , f a cedwith our own pol it ic all y cor re ct hypocr isy. When we know c le ar ly t hat wha t weare dealing with is a hoax, it is easy enough to decry what we-are faced with ass ick, but wha t exact ly is s ick abou t i t? The behav iour we witness i n the openingscene shi fts , r et roac ti vel y, f rom being uncomfortably accep tab le t o being unac-c ep tab le. The judgement shi fts f rom in terna l to ex terna l, f rom subj ect to o ther .What is significant in T h e I di ot s is that there is no comfortable position to

ass ume in response. Which is to say that it is a film which demands a responsefrom each viewer which is uniquely the response of that viewer. There is nosymbol ic, p re-packaged react ion avai lable . We have to ac tuall y feel and th inkabout it ourselves and choose how we react. This is what renders the filme th ica ll y s ignif icant. Jus t a s Sophocl es ' p lay s tages a con fli ct between a spec ts ofthe law, an aporia which furnis hes us with no alternative but to choose and nopre-given rules by which to choose, so von Trier's work pushes us to confrontourse lves and decide. It is in this unavoidable confrontation, in this irrefu-sable decision, that we discern that, while the law may be on the side of theOther , t he e th ica l always li es uniquely with t he sub jec t.

8Antigone, Antigone: Lacan andthe Structure of the Law

Ahuvia Kahane

The tyranny of memory is that which is elaborated in what we callstructure.

J . wall,The Ethics of Psychoanalysis IAs a psychoanalys t-and here we catch a glimpse of the differencebetween psychoanalysis and phi losophy Of psychology-he lucan]doe s no t r ead the behaviour of each of t he p ro tagoni st s, he def ines thestfuctu re through which their acts must be read.

J. Copjec, Imagine There's N o W om an2Sophocles' Antigone is a complex play. Yet, at its heart there lies what mayseem like a simple legal/ethical principle or economic claim. Antigone willbury her brother and doing so will die: Keinon d' e go / t ha p so . k al on mo i t ou topoiousei thanein (Ant. 71_2) .3 She wil l exchange an act ion, a r espons ib il ity , fordeath. It i s, she says, a beaut iful (kalon) end.Such basic simplicity of action is not trivial. It is, however, at odds with

some readings of the play, and has been challenged, not the least by JacquesLacan , whose v iew of Antigone, will be dis cussed in this chapter. Lacan and hiswork on Antigone have themse lves been the sub je ct of s ignif icant chall enge ,

I Lacan (1999: 223)., Copjec (2002; 16)., 'I wil l b ury him-it would honour me/be beaut iful to me to di e while doing that .' I t is

interesting to note that although the Greek text ofSophocles' Alltigoneis problematic (d.Lloyd-Jones and WiJ.wn 1'190). there are no textual difficulties asfar asthe kq verses on which Lacan'sreading of the p lay res ts and espec ia lly Antigone' s emphasis on the irrep laceab il ity of herbro ther. We will, funher below, conside r Goe the' s v iews on the strangeness of Antigone'sargument and his famous comment 'I wish .. . that one day some scholar will reveal t o usthat this passage is a later addition' (d.Lacan 1999: 255).


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148 P sy ch oa na ly si s a nd t he L aw A nt ig on e: L ac al l a nd t he S tr uc tu re o f t he L aw 14 9recently and prominently, for example, byJudith Butler, whose work weshallconsider too. Negotiating both the Lacanian claim and aspects of its critiquein terms of quest ions ofstructure can help us trace a distinct trajectory of theproblem. It can also, as I hope to show, lead us to a different, revisedunderstanding ofAntigone and her actions,"But before we begin, we need to clarify the particular notion of simplicity

which underscores the questions a t hand , and i ts relat ion to structure. Theterms of Antigone's action---on the one hand the burial, and on the otherhand her death-s-have been much discussed . They are not a t a ll s imple . Thepredication ofAntigone's exchange is not simple, either. In line 72above, forexample, she says, tha t to d ie would be kalon to her (she uses mot, the firstperson, so-called 'ethical' dative). Her decision. then, hangs on this adjective,which bears within i t-as iswel lknown-both the 'good' and the 'beau ti fu l:and which thus b inds together being and the phenomenal . We are immedi-ately faced with heavy questions of ontology, ethics, and aesthetics." Likewise.the relationship between kinship and social norm in the play, and, fundamen-tally, the positions occupied by the main players, Antigone and Creon, relativeto k inship and socia l norm, to which we shall return. are complex." Yet ,wemight also consider the basic form of Antigone's exchange-its principles ofsyn tax. This fo rm, i t would appear , i s s imple : Take 'a ', give 'b ', o r indeed,symbolically, a = h . A cer ta in sat isfact ion of intent ion , a certain p leasure , acertain movement or discharge, is, it seems, achieved in return for---or at theexpense of-punishment, that is to say, of another kind of movement. Ino ther words, what seems simple here , regard less of the complexi ty of thesystem's terms, o r i ts moral posi tions, is the structure of the laws, the mor-phology, we might say.of the equation and the system qua system?This idea of simplicity is very common. It can be found as a broad

methodolog ical pr inc ip le in o ther domains, somet imes even in readings

tha t a ttempt to resis t i t most , and perhaps in Lacan's reading too (a lthoughthe fai lure to resist may also be theorized within such read ings) . Let us, inorder to illustrate this point, briefly consider the case of so-called 'classical'scientific systems." Classical science offers highly evolved, intricate views ofthe world. Yetsuch science grasps, or 'maps', the world in terms of laws (e.g,Newtonian laws) that are essentially reductive, comprehensive, deterministic,and mostly reversible, The system, relative to the world it describes, is, in thissense, inherently s imple, even as it is unders tood as a complete and truerepresentation. Indeed, the power of sys tems of this type, of mapping ingeneral, resides precisely ill the paradox (not, of course, seen as paradox bythe system) of their compact completeness. World and system are construedas synchronous, A mismatch between them, where detec ted, is def ined asincidental aberration, the result of insufficiently precise de-facto measure-ments, less- than-perfect too ls , and so on-in other words, as external to thelogic of the world. The world istherefore also seen as representable, accessible,and, in this sense, fundamentally simple."If we now think back to Sophocles ' Antigone, and to the possibi li ty of an

analogous simple struc tu re fo r Ant igone 's act ions, we can easily see theattraction. Reading line 72 and the s tate of being it represents, we wouldseem to understand in full, not the play, tobe sure, but the essential rules ofitsacl ion. Herein l iesone k ind of beau ty of ' take a ,g ive b '.But there is a lso the resis tance to simpl ic ity, a t t imes f rom the outside ,

but also from within systems and consequent to their economy. Thi s hasbeen attested with prominence in many different ways in the humani tiesand social sciences and no less in the sciences proper, especia lly in the lastseveral decades. Briefly taking up our scientific analogue again, we could,for example, mention Hei senberg or GOdel, Schrodinger (and his cat),

4 Bask references in e.g. Steiner (l996). Some references on Amigo"e and psychoanalysis inZajko and Leonard (2006) (alw notes p . 122), but missing e .g , Ede lman (2004), Copiec (2002),Stavrakakis (1999), Grosz (1990), etc. Informative comments on the literature in Butler (20001.esp. ch, 3 (and references, 82-5 nn, 1-10)., The reson ance , of c our se, of kalon, ' beau tifu l' , ' good , of f ine qua li ty ', ' ausp ic ious : ( in amoral sense) 'beautiful, noble, honourable' (LSn, also 'honour', 'glury', erc., is attested in almostevery aspect of ancient Greek culiure, in poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, history, etc, The insepa-rability of ethics and aesthetics isweDrecognized by Lacan. It is,arguably, a factor in Aristotle'sPoerics (e.g. in comments on katharsis in Politics VlIJ), and has received new substance in recentdiscussions, e.g. Badiou (2005); Ranciere (2oo4a).

6 For But ler 's c ri ti que of kinship in Antigone (Butler 2000), and especially of Antigone'srelationship to her brother, see further below. For a critique of Butler, see e.g. Edelman (2004).

7 See Copjec in the epigraph above (2002: 16). Prima fac ie , the psychoana ly tic focus onstructure 5uggests a division of form and content (and an ethical funct ionalityof this division).This isprecisely what leads, aswe shall see, to Butler's critique.

The term 'clas sica l' here does not refer to the Greek and Roman world , but to large tracts of'modem' (mostly pre 19SOs)scientific thought. See e.g. Nicolis and Prigogine (l9g9, p. x]: 'Ourphysical world is 110 longer symbolized bythe s table and periodic p lane ta ry motions tha t a re a tthe heart o f c lass ical mechanics '. The s lippage between the usage of the term 'classical' i n theh urnanuies and in the sciences is important , g iven the d iachronic rnapping of the relationshi pbetween the two domains, relative to 'antiquity' and 'modernity: This matter requires a separatestudy. For complexity theory in the sciences and in psychoanalysis, see e.g. Hayles (1990). 'At the beginning of this century, continuing the tradition ofthe classical research program,

physicists were a lmos t unanimous in agree ing tha t the fundamental laws of the universe werede te r minis t ic and reversible. Processes tha t did not Iit this scheme were ta ken 10 be exceptions,me rely a rt ifa ct s du e to complex ity, which i tse lf ha d to b e ac coun ted for by invoking ourignorance , o r our lack ofcontro l of the variables involved' {Nicu lis and Prigogine 1989: 3). Asin science , the essen tial 'orde r' o f the world does not exc lude the pOSl; ib il ityof excep tioo .Likewise, ' cha os' do es not l ead to a col laps e. Cornel iu s Ca stnr iadi s f amously sa ys, 'Theworld-not only ours-s-is fragmented. Yetit does nut fallto pieces. Toreflect upon this stuatjonseem. to me to be one of the primary fac ts of philosophy today ' (Casroriadis 1997, p . v ii}.


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ISO Psychoanalysis a nd tile Law A ntig on e: L ac an a nd th e S tru ctu re o f th e Law lSIcer ta in aspects of 'complex ity' in material science (e.g, 'Benar t cel ls ' inthermodynamics), meteorological systems, and so on. These examples mani-fest important specific differences, but we are merely trying to stress a generalpoint: In their various ways, and coming from within highly formalized andr igorous cri tica l d iscourses, these provide an impor tant coun terpoint toprinciples of simplicity.Let me briefly adduce jus t one paradigmati c case, namely Russell's

paradox . The paradox , pu t for th in 1902 in a let te r to Frege , suggests tha t i ti s no t possib le to form sets f rom every pred ica te . 10To rephrase this in verygeneral terms, i t suggests that we cannot reduce an objec t to a closed set ofdescriptions. Transposing this idea to the context of Antigone implies that wecannot describe the objects of exchange in complete terms. The nature of theexchange may thus require a very different kind of understanding.The core of Russell's paradox can be described thus: Take, for example, 'The

set of horses' . This set isnot itself 'a horse'. Since something has to be a horseto be counted in the set o fhorses, wecould say that ' the set of horses' i snot ' amember of itself' . Nevertheless, ' the set of sets that are not members ofthemselves' , if it is a member of itself, is by definition no t a member of itself;ifi t i snot a member of i tsel f, then bydefini tion i t i sa member of i tsel f. and soon. Russell 's paradox is a prominent point of reference which challenges thenot ion of a f ixed set of descript ions which define an objec t or a set , and thus,more broadly, challenges the idea of determinate positive representation. II Ifthe fixed description of obj ects 'a' and 'b' is challenged, then, again, theequation a = b and something of the struc tu ral p rinc iples of the economyof exchange requires some rethinking, too.There is no need to retrace the history of the critique of the economy of

systems in further detail here. This critique is not predicated asa single 'object,or a system, or aview ofthe word. 12 But it can provide a general framework forcer ta in gestures towards the ' law', and specifica lly, in our case, for Lacan's

reading of Antigone. We might, nevertheless, usefully mention, as briefly aspossible, at least one more well-known critical moment, which anchors ourdiscussion and which is more directly related to our material. This, ofcourse,concerns Freud and his observations in B ey on d t il e P le as ur e P ri nc ip le andelsewhere, on his youn gnephew's little game of fon-da and its phenomenolo-gy. J3 Here, focused on the death drive, the relationship between, let us say,dasDingin its irretrievable fullness, and its representations, between desire and its'objec t', be tween desi re and i ts ful fi lment , and thus between the real andsystematic structure, is realigned. This, arguably, is another basic moment ofchallenge to any ' take a, giveb' principle (also literally . .. ) .It isat this point that wemay turn back to Greek tragedy. Freud, of course,

looked to Oedipus , not to Ant igone, in hi s comments . 'What would havehappened ifPsychoanalysis were to have taken Antigone rather than Oedipusas its point of departure?' I t' s an old chestnut. 14 Freud's material substance isnot unimportant. Yet,pace interventions by Kristeva, Irigaray, and others, andtheir cri tique of Freud, and Lacan, and keeping in mind crucial recentcomments on Antigone by Butler (to which weshall return), one oft hethingsthat 'will have happened' (Lacan's arguments on 'logical time' and onsequencing are of importance here) 15 i s Lacan' s reading of the p lay. Th isread ing is widely accessible, and there is no need to rehearse i ts de ta ils yetagain.16 Let us simply recall the basics. 'Antigone: says Lacan,

10 See Russell 0967: 124-5), Russell 0903: ch. X, 1(0). Russe ll , we should note, s truggledaga inst the conclus ions of the paradox for the res t o fh is l if e. II is, in this sense, an argument a[ortiori.II Thi s remains a mat te r for di sc ussion el sewhe re. J oan Cop jec (2002: 2-5), following

Badiou, rightly points out that this argument on its own can l ead to other positions, e.g.nominalist or Kantian transcendentalist, both significantly different from Lacan's, Prege, likeRussell, was shaken by the paradox (which posed a dJ alIenge to the project of extensionalism,fo r example) . Ye t eve n Freg e's wo rk, f or ex amp le hi s s eminal a rgument about sen se andreference and espec ia lly h is 'Te lescope metaphor' , i f read carefuUy, h in ts a t the possibi li ty ofrad ical ly non-reduc tive and thus non-s imple readings of the world . Frege says: ,i duo idem~ium, lion esl idem (1956: 60). See Prege in Geach and Black (1960: 59---(0).

12 Th is phrasing i s i ts el f an ins tanc e of Rus sel l' s paradox and thus, perhaps , a fonn o frepresenting the non-representability of the world.

IJ (Freud 2001: 14-15): 'This good little boy, however, had an occasional disturbing habit oftak ing any small objec ts he could get hold of and throwing them away f rom him into a corner,under the bed , and 50 on, so that hunt ing f or hi s toy s and picking them up was oft en qui te abus iness. Ashe d id this he gave ven t to a loud, long-drawn-out "n-o-o-n", accompanied by anexpress ion of interes t and satis fact ion. His mother and the write r of the present account wereagreed in think ing tha t this was not a mere interject ion but represented the Gennan word to n[gone). I eventua lly rea lized tha t i twasa game and tha t the only use he made ofany ofh is toy .was to p lay "gone" with them. One day I made an observa tion which confirmed my view. Thech ild h ad a wooden reel wi th a p iece of st rmg t ied a round i t. I t n eve r occ ur re d to him to pu ll i talong the floor b ehind h im, for inst an ce, a nd play at i ts being a ca rr iag e. What he did was \0hold the reel by the string and very skilfully throw it over the edge of his curtained cor, so tha t i td isappeared into i t, a t the same time uttering h is express ive "0-0-0-0." He then polled the ree laga in by the s tr ing and hailed its reappearance with a joyfu l "da" [there] , This. then, was thecomplete game ofdisappearance and return. As a rule one only witnessed its first act. which wasrepea ted untir ingly asa game in itself, though there is no doubt tha t the greater p leasure wasattadied to the second act. The interpretation of the game then became obvious. It was relatedto the child's great cultural achievement-the instinctual renunciation (that is, the renunciationof inst inctual sat isfac ti on] which h e had made in al lowing hi s mothe r to go away wi thou tprotesting.' See recently e.g. Johnson (2005). In the context of Antigolle, see Copjec (2002: 30--1).

14 Steiner (1996: I a), Butler (2000: 57), etc." Lacan (198ab). Discuss ion in Plu th and Hoens (2004).I~ Lacan (1999) and extensive discussions in scholarship. See especially Butler (2000: 40-55).


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15 2 P syc ho a na ly si s a n d t he L aw A nt ig on e: L ac an a mi t he S tr uc tu re o f t he l .a wBut let us focus on the problem with which we began, and on the structure ofAntigone's economy. For here, and elsewhere, Lacan's conception of sirnplici-ty is very different from the one we have earlier outlined. We can explain thisdifference, for example, in terms of some of Lacan's comments on Kant.23In h i sEssayson Negat ive Greatness. ,Kant put s before us, among other th ings,

several nar ra tives or ' lit tl e stori es: as Lacan call s them. One of these concerns aman who, if he is to spend the night with a lady he desires unlawfully, will, onhis way out, be put to death. Lacan provides a close commentary: 'Kant, ourdear Kant: he says, 'tells us in all his innocence, his innocent subterfuge,that ... everyone, every man of good sense, will say no [i.e, will refuse to giveup his life for the sake of spending the night with this woman]'.H Practicalreason here dict ates the response and Kant' s judgement , ' in purely reasonablet erms'. For Kant . the pleasure of the lady' s company i sopposed to , and weighedaga inst, the pain ofdea th . But th is, as Lacan points out , ' homogenizes' t he two:'There is in terms of pleasure a plus and a minus'. Lacan-this is precisely apoint of structure-s-sees the world in very different terms:

15 3isa tragedy, and tragedy is in the forefront of our experience as analvsts=-somethingthat i s confi rmed by the references Freud found in O ed ip us R ex as well as in othertragedies ... and ifhe himself [Freud] didn't expressly discuss Antigone as tragedy, thatdoesn't mean to say it cannot be done at this crossroads to which Ihave brought you[in the Seminar of 1959-601.17It is Antigone's unique historical position in the field of ethics and the law thatdraws him to the play: 'Is there anyone who doesn't evoke Antigone wheneverthere is a question of a law that causes conflict in us even though it isacknowledged by the community to be a just law?']8 The play Antigone. inother words, is a moment at which the asking of questions about the law (byHegel, and many others after him) becomes particularly prominent. Yet, tothis Lacan has much to add. For Antigone, as he famously says,reveals 10 us the l ine of s ight that defines desire. This l ine of s ight focuses on an imagethat possesses a mystery which up til l now has never been art iculated, s ince i t forcesyou 10 dose your eyesat the very moment you look at i t. Yetthat image isat the centreof tragedy, since it isthe fascinating image of Antigone herself. Weknow very wellthatover and beyond the dialogue, over and beyond the quest ion of family and country ,over and beyond the moralizing arguments , i t isAntigone herself who fascinates us,Antigone in her unbearable splendor. 1~Here. in a nutshell, is Lacan on t ragedy, desi re, speech, and speakability, andthe law. This is why Lacan places so much emphasis on Antigone's splendourand on her beauty. This is why he begins his analysis with a discussion of thefigure of Antigone, within which this splendour is invested: 'What does onef ind in Antigone? First of al l, one f inds Antigone.f" This vi sion of the heroine,the vision of her splendour and the effect of beauty, is, as Lacan plainly says, 'ablindness effect'. The importance of this effect, both as a vehicle, that is to say,as the material of tragedy, and as an end, that is to say, as a moraJ principle, isfundamental. Lacan concludes his discussion of Antigone by st res sing th ispoint . Antigone appearsasa pure and simple relat ionship ofthe human being to that ofwhich hemiraculouslyhappens to be the bearer, nameJy, the signifying cut [emphasis added}" that conferson him the indomi table power ofbeing that he is in the face of everyth ing tha t mayoppose him.22

17 Lacan (1999: 243). Cf. alsoe.g. (1999: 291~30J) (The Tragic Dimensioncf PsychoanalyticExr,.erience').8 Lacan (l999: 243).

19 Ibid. 247.20 Ibid. 250.21 The cut (ccmpure)isimportant: Topology privilegesthe function ofthe cut, sincethecut iswhat distinguishes a discontinuous transformation from a continuous one" (Evans 19%: 208).22 Lacan (I999: 283).

[O]ne only has to make a conceptual shif t and move the night spent with the ladyfrom the category of pleasure to that of jouissance, gillen thaI jouissance impliesp r ec is e ly t he a c cep tan ce o f d eat h [emphasis added] . .. for the example to be ruined.I other words, i t is enough for jouissance 10 bea form ofevi l for the whole th ing tochange it s charac te r comple tely, and for the meaning of the moral l aw it se lf to be

comple te ly changed. Anyone can see tha t if the moral l aw is, in e ffec t, capable ofplaying some role here, i t isprecisely as a support for the jouissance involved; it is sothat the sin becomes what Saint Paul calls inordinately sinful. That's what Kant on thisoccasion simply ignores."It is important here to stress that most basic of facts, namely that for Lacan, asindeed for Freud, the drive is something partial and paradoxical (thus, forexample, to follow the death drive is not to be suicidal). This partiality is theincompleteness of the drive, its fragmentary and self-inhibiting nature inre lat ion to it s par ti al object s ( ob je ts p et it a ), which are of course, now con-ceived. in their partial ity, as total it ies. Das Ding, to quote Joan Copjec in 'TheTomb of Perseverence: On Antigone',isno longer conceivable [in Kantian terms] asa noumenal object and isretained onlybythe description of Vorstel lungreprasentanz as partial. It isdear from the theory thatwhen this partial object arrives on the scene, i tblocks the path to the old conception ofdus Ding, which is now only a retrospective illusion?'"

H ForKantand Lacan, set: especiallyCopjec (2002, ch, I).l4 Lacan (1999: 189).lJ Lacan (1999: 189). For joujjUlnCt, see e.g, Evans (1996: 91~2).2 . Copjec (2002: 37). A usefu l d iscuss ion can be found in Laclau (2005: III ff.).


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154 A nt ig on e: L ac an a nd t he S tr uc tu re o f t he L awcomments on Antigone should, a t least in part , bear the responsibi li ty andfinality, and thus also the consequences, of their own historicity, whether theythemselves aspire 10 transcend it or not. Indeed, recent critiques, notably byButler, mark, rightly perhaps, some significant elisions in Lacan's argument,in regard to what Butler at one point calls 'kinship trouble', and morefundamentally. in regard to Antigone's relationship to law and to what, fromour perspective, we migh t ca ll the structure of the law.31 There is a broadnexus of methodological. ethical. and ontological issues at stake which, wemight add, also bears upon our immediate responses to everyday situations.Consider, then, some of these 'elisions'. They reach back to Hegel, of course.

Hegel's Antigone is excluded from citizenship. Antigone's juridical position isalso, in an important sense, put aside by Lacan, 'The state ', as Butler says,'makes no appearance in Lacan's discussion of Antigone,.ll Lacan (and in adifferent way Hegel-that's part of the critiquel) seems to sever Antigone as afigure ofpure being (and as a figure ofpure defiance, a figure that exposes thestatus of the symbolic) from the social. Against this, Butler argues that

155Psychoanal y si s and the LawIfwe are to follow Lacan, then, it would seem that Antigone's relationship tothe 's ignifying cu t: to the rea l, i s ' pure and simple' . Yet the structure of thatre la tionship and of the law isnot simple a t a iL It i scer ta inly no t a p lus and aminus, not ' take "a~ give "b"',We might add that, historically, this structurehas often extended beyond any straightforward practical exchange, even, forexample, in the Bibl ical pr inc iple of ' an eye fo r an eye' , or in Aeschyleandrama,27 let alone, for example, in Buber or Levinas, or in the work ofDerridaon exchange and death." It i s, in a basic sense, no t an equi libr ium; i t i s no tachieved through the conjunction of a 'plus' and a 'minus' .29But Lacan is a figure of his time. II i s perhaps inev itable tha t his own

discourse should occur within the closure of language and history and againstthe background to his thought, say,Hegel, LeviStrauss, and so on.30 Lacan's

l7 Levit icus 24: 20: 'Practure for f racture, an eye for an eye, a tooth for rooth ' (,hew, tachat,heYer, 'a ill tamar' aill, she ll t acha I ,herr). The I iteratu re on this quest ion isextens ive, of course,But s ee e .g . E . Lev inas 's d is cu ss ion o f t he Lex Tal ion i s. Oosdy echoi ng t he midra,h, he says(1990: 147): 'The principle stated by the Bible here (Le,"an eye for an eye") , which appears to beso cruel , seeks only jus tice . I t inser ts i rself i n to a soc ia l o rder i n whi ch no sane t ion, howevers light, can be inf licted outside a jur id ical sentence. !t has been J i nt er pr et ed i n t he l ight o f t h espi ri t tha t pervades the whole of the Bible . Wecall this method of understanding: Talmud. Thedoctors of the Talmud ant ic ipated modern scruples: eye for an eye means a f ine. Not for nothingi s r he pas sage r el at ing t o t he mat er ia l d amages whi ch t he B ib le demands for t he l os s o f a bea stgiven alongside the precepts 0f ey e for an eye.The passage invites us to reread the verses relat ingto disfigurement , as i f the quest ion ofdamages should hold sway with the judges over the nobleanger provoked by t he wrongdo ing. V io lence cal ls up v io lence, but we mus t put a s top t o t hi schain react ion. That is the nature of just ice . .. , Jus tice without passion isnot the only thing manmust possess . He must a lso have jus tice without kil ling.' The l iterature on the Lex Tlllionis andreciprocity in Greek Tragedy, and especially in Aeschylus' Oresteian Trilogy, and the EUmellid~islikewise extensive. But, at the very least , cri tics wiDagree that by the t ime we have reached theEumenides; act ion is taken on a basis oth er tha n st ra ight forward reciproci ty (see e .g . Eumenides735-41; 'my vot e Iw i ll a dd t o Ore st es ' s id e. For I h ave no mothe r t ha t g aveme b inh, and i n a llt hi ng s, s ave wed lock , I am for t he mal e w it h a ll my sou l, a nd am ent ir el y on t he f at he r's s id e.Therefore IwiDnot hold ofgreater value the death ofa wife who slewher lord, the lawful masterof the house . Orestes , even wirh equaI bal lo ts , wins ,'

28 See n. 66, below.19 See Butler (2000: 46, citing Lacan): 'Something invari ably emerges in the very trajectory of

des ire that appears enigmat ic or mysterious from the conscious point of view that isor ientedtoward the pursuit of the good: " In the i rreducible margin asweDasat the l imit of' his own good,t he sub je ct r evea ls h imsdf t o t he never ent ir el y r eso Ived my~ te ry o f t he nat ur e 0f h is d es i re( Ie $ u je t s e r ev e le IIu m y! r er e irriso! u de u q u ' e s t SOn d es ir r '.

:10 Butier (2000: 30) saYi:'Tbe psychi c relation to social norms can, under certa in conditions,pos i t t ho se norms a s i nt ra ct a b le , pun it iv e, and e temal , but t ha t f igur at i on o f norms a lr eadyt akes p la ce w it hi n wha t F reud cal le d " th e cul tu re o f t h e dea th d ri ve ," I n o th er words , t he verydescription of the symbolic as intractable law takes place within a fantasy of law as insurpassableauthori ty . In my view, Lacan at once analyses and symptomises this fantasy.' She immediate lyadd s 'I hope t o sugge st t ba t t he not ion o f t h e symbo li c i s l im it ed by t he des cr ip ti on o f i t s owntranscendentalizing function, that it call ackllowledge the comil lgencr o f i ts own structure!mphasis added] only by disavowing the possibi li ty of any substantial a lterat ion in i ts f ie ld of

the dist inctio n [m ade by Lacan] between symbolic and social law cannot finallyhold ... not only is the symbolic its elf the sedim entatio n of soc ial prac tices but ...r ad ic al a lt er at ions i n k in sh ip demand a r ea rt ic ul at ion o f t he s tr uc tu ra li st p re suppos i-tions of psych oanaly sis an d, hen ce, of cont empo rary gende r a nd sexu al tbe ory.']There is an impor tant point here tha t marks a basic d ivide. But ler c lear lystates in the beginning of her argument thatfor Lacan, Antigone pursues a desire that can only lead to death precisely because itseeks to defy symboli c norms [the pr ohibit ion o f t he F ather, etc .]. But i s t his the rightway to interpret her desire! Or has the symbolic itself produced a crisis for its ownintelligibility? Can we assume that Antigone has no confusion about who is herb ro th er , a nd who i sher f at he r, t ha t Ant igone i s not , a s i twe re , l iv ing t he equ ivocat ionsth at un ravel the p urity and unive rsality o f th ose struct ural rule S?l4

opera tion. My suggest ion wiU be that the relat ion between symbol" posit ion and socia l normneeds to be rethought. '1I But ler (2000: 62, 7l) .II But ler (2000: 12) , where Hegel 's posit ion is a lso discussed. The impor tance of But ler' s

cri tique of Lacan l ies precise ly in i ts a ttempt to draw Antig"ne and the ethics of psychoanalysisinto a relation 0f responsibili ty towards the political.II Ibid. 19.14 Ibid. 17-18. See also 53: 'wbat Lacan elides at this moment (when Ant igone ins is ts on her

brother's uniqueness, remaining on the side of the incommunicable sign, the ineffable characterofwhat is (Lacan 1999: 279)J , manifes ti ng hisown blind ness perhaps , i s tbat she suffers a fatalcondemnat ion byvirtue ofabrogating the inces t taboo that art iculates kinship and the symbolic.It is not t bat the pure content of the brot her is i rretrie v a ble from behin d the symbol icarticulation of the brother but that the symbolic itself islimited byits constitutive interdictions.'


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156 P sy ch oa na ly sis a nd th e L aw A ntig on e: L aca n a nd tile S tr uctu re of th e L awec on om y, to o, is d efin ed b y o ve rd ete rm in ed a nd , a rg ua bly , u nte na ble s tru c-t ur in g p ri nc ip le s o f e co no m y, e xc ha ng e, l an gu ag e, a nd r ep re se nt at io n. 'A nt ig -one', says Butler, 'is the one for whom sym bolic positions have becomeIncoherenr.'"H isto ric ally , B utle r a rg ue s, th e p ro ble m lie s w ith th e s tru ctu ra lis t b ag ga geof psychoanalysis and of Lacan's th in kin g: F ollo win g L ev i Strauss, Lacansees kinship (and the incest taboo. for exam ple) as a fundam ental form ofthe sym bolic, a linguistic m echanism . a fram ew ork of exchange that. likela ng ua ge , e sta blish es a s oc ia l b on d a mo ng m en . T his sy mb olic fu nc tio n is th ~L aw and it is, acco rding to Lacan, s om eth in g th at p re ce de s th e h um an order."Indeed. this 'circuitry ', as Lacan calls it. w hich transcends the subject, isprecisely the Sym bolic, and the Law . If, then. in psychoanalysis, the lawre qu ire s its p erv ers io n, an d if A ntig on e re pr ese nts th is n ec es sa ry p erv er sio n,th en both A ntig one an d th e law o perate w ithin w hat is ultim ately a structureth at r el ie s o n e xc lu si on :

157T he p ro ble m is w ith th e 'th eo lo gic al' im pu ls e th at g ov ern s L ac an 's re ad in g

a nd p erh ap s p sy ch oa na ly sis m ore b ro ad ly (' t he la w o f p sy ch oa na ly sis itse lf)w hich is, in the end, tautological.P Fo r, as B utler exp lain s, 'if a social no rm isnot the sam e as a sym bolic position , then a sym bolic position, here under-sto od as th e sedimented id eality of the norm , app ears to depart from itself","T he p ra ctic ally nc hp in o f Bu tier's arg um en t is th e qu estion of kinship and

th e id ea o f th e b ro th er. L ac an (fo llo win g u p o n G oe th e's p uz zJ ed o bs erv atio nson Ant. 911-12) insists on the importance of the brother as the anchor ofA ntig on e's b ein g. S he e ffe ctiv ely sa ys, 'm y b ro th er is m y b ro th er'. T he b ro th eras pu re sym bol enters the field .37 B utler's extend ed op position n eed n ot berepeated here. H er basic point, quite rightly , is that when A ntigone actsaccording to the law that gives her brother precedence, 'she m eans m oreth an s he in te nd s'. H er brother could also be her father (O edipus, w ho is theson of her m other), or her other brother, Ereocles. 'There is noth ing in then om en cla tu re o f k in sh ip th at ca n s uc ce ssfu lly r estric t its sc op e o f referentialityto th e s in gle p ers on , Polynices':" Earlier on. w e saw how Lacan opposes thestructure of the ethical exchange, replacing it w ith a particular and veryd iff er en t k in d o f re la tio ns hip o f s im plic ity . Here w e see that his p rop osed

T o e st ab li sh t he struduml necessity [e mp ha sis a dd ed ] o f p erv ersio n to th e la w is topo sit a static relation b etw een the tw o in w hich each entails th e o ther and , int ha t s en se , i s n oth in g w it ho ut t he o th er . T hi s f or m o f n eg at iv e d ia le ct ic s p ro du ce sth e s at is fa ct io n t ha t t he l aw i s invested in p erv ers io n a nd th at th e la w is n ot w ha t itse em s to b e. It d oes n ot h elp to m ak e p os sib le , h ow ev er , o th er fo rm s o f s oc ia l life ,i na d ve rt en t p os si bi li ti es p ro d uc ed b y the p roh i bi ti o ns t h at come to u nd er min e th ec on cl us io n t ha t a n i nv ar ia nt s oc ia l o rg a ni za ti on o f s ex ua l i ty f ol low s of necessi ty f romt he p ro h ib it iv e l aw .41If w e accep t B utler's critique, then, h aving go ne ro und the b lock, w e return, itseem s, to the old problem of structure, and thus to a problem of form alismw hi ch 's ec ur es t he s tr uc tu re a ga in st c ri ti ca l c ha ll en ge '. I n f ac t, B ut le r s ug ge st sthat Antigone seem s to com pel a reading that is exactly the opposite, thatchallenges structure, that does not conform to the sym bolic law , and that'd oe s n ot p re fig ure a fin al re stitu tio n o f th e la w'.4 2

H is to ric ally s pe ak in g, w e m ay be ju stifie d to le ve l su ch c ritic is m a t Lacan,an d perh ap s also, as B utler and others h ave sugg ested, against som e aspects.for example, of fem inist thought in the context of Antigone.41 W e m ig htnev ertheless ask if, despite this, it is po ssible to trace a different reading of

!!Th e p aradox of law, theanomie na I re ofsovere igny,and I e p a r a d igmati, st a tu s ofs ta tesof exception i s a w idel ydiscussed topic in recentyears -- espe


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158 Psychoanalysis and the La w A nt ig on e: L ac an a nd t he S tr uc tu re o f t he L awt ha t t ime r e tr o ac ti ve ly me a ni ng fu l . .. t h i is t he mome nt o f w h a t Lacan callsanticipatoryc er ti tu de . B y t hi s h e m e am t ha t A l ea p s a h e ad t o a c o nc lu s io n who se groll",1 or reason canonly be v e ri fi ed a ft er t he a c t [emphasisaddedJ.48The act, in other words, is an element in the line of reasoning itself. It is'anticipatory certitude', which both severs moments in time from each other,

h h . (gand keeps t em toget er, as It were.Can we, from this point progress to a re- reading of Lacan's Antigone, ofAntigone, and ofAntigone? Let's again try to think of this problem in ter~s of

structure. Antigone isthe eponymous hero ofa drama. For Lacan too, Antigo-nestands at the centre ofthe play: 'What does one find in Antigone? First ofall,one f inds Ant igone .'$OAnd what is a t the cen tre of Antigone , tha t is, a t thecentre of the 'figure' ofAntigone? Lacan, at least, suggests that 'at the centre ofAntigone's whole drama' isan important term, repeated twenty times, the termate.51 We could try to take account of the mater ia l image that emerges fromthese observations combined.Technica lly, and in the most pract ical sense, 'Antigone 's d rama ' is, o fcourse, the play Antigone itself, something which surrounds the figure ofAntigone at its centre. At the same time, at the centre ofthe figure ofAntigoneisher ate. Yetagain, this at e is, arguably, 'the whole drama' that surrounds thefigure of Antigone; it is thus, technically, the figure of Antigone. We have tostress that weare not playing with words here. Quite the contrary: words hereare a very precise representation of something which isotherwise difficult tograsp.52Yetthis something in itself isalso, it seems to me, very precise. Indeed,we could even sugges t that it is a geometrical principle. In essence, what we

159structure within the piayAntigone' itself', and, perhaps, with in Lacan's readingof Antigone. Of course, in order to be usefu l, an answer would have to of fermediation without, as it were, resolution. It might , for example- -I am hereborrowing from another contemporary line of argumentation-i-have to severthe association of meaning and truth." Wewould be seeking a different kindof 'structural' principle.In order to explore this, J et us first reconsider Russell's paradox. Theproblem here is ultimately the problem of the 'object,.45 Can we enumerate

its attributes? Can we, at some level, no matter how basic, describe itss truc ture, that is to say, the formal re la tionship between i ts componen ts?Lacan 's answer , on the one hand, holds on to the not ion of the 'ob jec t: and ofdesignation, even as, on the other hand, it opens that object to complete andradical inaccessibility (or change of attributes). This is achieved through theprocess of retroactive narning" An object's identity is both guaranteed andyet remains open to all alterations, to all critiques, through the retroactiveprocess whereby i t is given a name, through that qui lt ing point ( po in t d ecaption) which t ies i t a ll , as i t were, within a single ( re troact ive) 'knot ,.47Close ly related, and perhaps even more important , i s the no tion of 'logica ltime' . Here, Lacan's argument rests on a reading of the following dilemma:three prisoners (A, B,and C) each have, on their backs a disc-either black orwhite. Eachcan see the other two, but not himself , and theyare not allowed tospeak. Theyare told tha t in al l there are three whi te and two black discs. Thef irs t to guess the colour of the d isc on h is own back wil l be a llowed to leave .Conventionally, the answer isa matter ofdeduction: Ifprisoner A sees two

black discs, he knows his d isc is whi te ; i f he sees two whites, he 's fo rced tohypothesize, first, that his disc is black. If so, and if B's disc is black too,C would, of course, leave the room immediately. Now, C hesitates and doesnot leave the room immediately, so B should conclude tha t he is whi te ( st il lsupposing A to be black) . But B does no t leave , thus A may conclude tha t hisdisc is white, and so on. To this, however, Lacan objects. Prisoner A realizesthat h is reasoning isvalid on ly so long asBand C do not move, and that oncethey do move, his reasoning fails. As recent commentators noteWhat A realizesis that he urgentlyhas to end his thinking process and head for thedoor. Sohe jumps to a conclusion that closesthe time forcomprehending, a nd ma ke s

See Ranciere (1994), esp . 28--9 on meaning and truth . Also, see e .g .Ranciere (2004a, 2007)and e 'l 'e da ll y t he d i scus si on o f Hegel and t he que st i on o f r ep re sent at ion ( 'A re Some ThingsUnrepreseruablef 109--38).

4S See e.g . Ziiek (1989, esp. 94 ff.).46 See Ziiek (J989)47 Ibid. 95--6; Bowie (1993: 74), etc.

P lu th and Hoens ( 2004 : 194 ).49 The re i s much more t o t hi s examp le t han we can d is cu ss i n t hi s chapt er , See P lu th and

Hoens ( 2004 ). i n par ti cu la r, one has t o con si de r A la in Bad iou's r eadi ng o f La. canon ' logi ca lt ime' (Badiou 1982. S ee disc ussions in Plu th an d Hoe ns 2004 and e sp. the rein 25 7 n. 4 forfurther references). Badiou's objection isthat, in fact,for Lacan, Prisoner A's conclusion relies Onan a ssumpt ion o f r a ti onal it y on t he par t u f t he o th er , i n o th er words , on a k ind of 'algebra' orsymbolk process. B a diou's fund amenta l quest ion is 'Wbat i f the other is s il lp id?' (~adiou 1982:270 ). I f Band C a re not a ct ing r at iona ll y, t hi s wou ld , o f cou rs e, o ff se t t he l .a cani an cal cu lu s.Once that is aUowed, wecan (according to Badiou) read the decis ion as the resul t of' haste' . Suchhas te i s not i nf er ab le f rom the symbo li c, a nd ' is t he mode i n whi ch t he sub je ct exceeds t hesymbolic by exposing himself to the real' (Badi~~ 1982, c ited in Ptuth ~nd Hoen~ 2004: 194).Here both Badiou and Butler (from different positions) challenge a certain underlying stru~lur-al assumpt ion. Badiou' s concept ion of the subject , and his whole phi losophical project , IS, ofcourse, c losely informed by-bJlt very dif ferent f rom Lacan's, For Badiou and Lacan IIIgeneral,see e .g . Bosteels (200I , 2002) ; Ziiek (2004b) .s o L ac an (1999: 250).51 ibid. 262. But ler (2000: 5lJ .S2 One could argue that this, precisely, isone of the reasons for non-melancholy readings {'post-

continental' , 'posI-DeIeuzian', etc.} of the world which point beyond the tenets of the 'postmodern'(other aspects of such readings being attitudes towards universality, mathematics, tru til, erc.),


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160 Psychoanalysis a nd the Law Antigone: L acall and the Structure of tile tawWith this renewed emphasis on time, and its importance for the grasping oftopological objects (and hence of objects in general, as in our earlier discus-sion), we can now turn back to the question of kinship, to Antigone's prefer-ence for her brother in Antigone, li nes 911-12, to Goethe's puzzled reac tion tothese verses (and its implications for the notion of 'text'), and. to Lacan'sresponse . Thi s is where the several knots of our a rgument so far come toge ther .Seen in the light of time, Antigone's statement of her principles and of her

commitment to her brother is surpris ingly straightforward, It is worth quoting alarger section ofher speech, which, of course, Antigone addresses to the object thatis at once her tomb, her bridal-chamber, and her prison (Ant, 891-912).56 Wemight. incidentaUy, note the appropriateness of this multipl icity of the 'object ' ofAntigone's speech: the moment we parse it s sequence and components-s-tornb,bridal-chamber, prison-is the moment wefalsely parse i t, just as wemight falselyparse the st ages of reasoning in the case of the pri soner 's d ilemma.Antigone says:

161

Fig. 8.1 Moebius strip.

have here is the figure of the play, Antigone, which 'contains' the figure ofAntigone, which 'contains' the figure of ate, which is, or 'contains' the figureof the play Antigone, which 'contains' the figure of Antigone, and so on ...Thus, geometrically, or rather topologically speaking, we have here a particularfigure, perhaps, for example, something akin to a Moebius strip.Topology, as we know, is one of the tropes of Lacan's ontologv." Be the

criticism of such use of topology and of Lacan's use of mathematics (ormathematical notation) as it may, what is important for us here is a basicpoint: A Moebius strip does not have an 'inside' or 'outside: no 'top' which isthe opposi te of ' bolt om: A Moebius st rip i snot the subject of so-cal led dial ec ti-cal analysis. It is, nevertheless, an 'object :54 I I i s a dif ferent k ind of st ructure,which requires different elements. most prominently perhaps the element oftime. What should we make of this elernenti Jean Granon-Lafont notes that:Only a temporal event dif ferenti ates the back and the f ront [of the st rip I, which areseparated. by the time of making an addit ional tum. The dichotomy between the twonotions, the back and the front , doesn't reappear exceptat the price ofintervention ofanew dimension, namely, a temporal dimension. Time, as continuous, produces thedifference between the two faces. If there are no longer two measures for the surface, butinstead a single edge, then time isessential in order to render account of the band.s>

o tomb,57 bridal-chamber, eternal prison in the caverned rock, whithergo to find mine own, those many who have perished, and whom Persephonehath received among the dead! Lastof all shall I pass thi ther, andfar most miserably of all , before the term of my life isspent . ButIcherish good hope that my coming will bewelcome to my father, andpleasant to thee, my mother, and welcome, brother, to thee; for,when ye died , with mine own hands J washed and dressed you, and poureddrink-offerings at your graves; and now, Polyneices, 'tis fortending thy corpse that I win such recompense as Ihis.And yet Ihonoured thee, as the wise wil l deem, rightly . Never,had I been a mother of children, or if a husband had been moulder ingin death, would I have taken this t ask upon me inthe c ity'sdespite. What law,58you ask, is my warrant for that word? The husband

5) See primarily Granon-Lafont (1985).54 There isan i mporta n t relat ionship here between indeterrn i nacy and being (0 r t ru th) . Byway ofa very broad ana logy (bu t lIot asa precise iIlus trat iun), one could think , for example , o f

GooeJ' s proo f The point i s thi s: Par t o f Godel 's proof (of incomplet en ess, but thi s does notmatte r here) consists in showing tha t a lthough a certa in formula (in an axiomatic sys tem) isundec idab le , i t can nevertheless be demonstra ted (assuming Iha t the axioms of the sys tem areconsistenI--a n essenrial assumption), tha t this formu la is true (th rou gh meta -rnathema ticaIreasoning). The result o f the process is, to put i tve ry crude ly , a demonstra tion tha t something ishoth undecida bte and true."Granon-Lafont (J985: 30).

S6 Lacan (1999: 254-55) cites lines 911-12 and considers specifically Goethe's response tothese lines.

S7 Here, and often e lsewhere , Sophocles uses the Greek word Jumbos, no t the wo rd serna.Both are sometimes translated as 'tomb', but, arguably, embody somewhat different ontologies.Serna is the s ign, i t cannot function o therwise , and does not depend on the materia li ty of thebody (on which see Kahane 2(05). Tumbos ismuch more c lose ly def ined in relat ion to the body(1 iving or dead) i t receiyes , and functions d iff eren tly. The dist ine t ion between them (and thequestion of the body) would require a long, separate discussion.sa The word used is l Iomos, 'mor tal l aw .' Laca n (19'1 9: 2 78) i s r ig ht to s ugg est tha t ' she[Antigonel pointedly distinguishes herself from dikl. Note, however, tha t the speech-ac t isinterrogative, nut declarative, shi fr ing the emphasis onto the relationship between speaker andhearer. This formal distinction is philosophically salient, especially since Antigone here speaksfor the o ther. For whom? For her tomb? Her brida l bed? Her prison? The audience? \ 1 1 1 1 1 0 speaks;then? Nomos here is, a rguably, not quite the ord inary written law,but marks , perhaps as Lacan(J999: 278) says, 'a certa in legality'.


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162 P sy ch oa na ly sis a nd th e Ln w Antigone: Lam n and the Structure of the LawIn the order of tim e, a brother, in relation to a husband for exa mple, is the

fig ur e, o r th e na me , of a bs olute un iq u ene ss , o f r ad ic al u nr ep ea ta blili t y, whichis none the less com plete in its partiality. This radical unrepearablity isnothing m ore, nothing less. than the truth of being m orta l. O nce repeated.w e m ig ht s ay, tim e c ea se s to e xis t a nd be in gs c ede the ir m orta lity. W e s hou lds tre ss th at th is o rd er of tim e, lik e th e p oint o n th e M oe biu s s tr ip, is absolutelyunique. It is thus not change, or transformation, o r t he c yc le s o f g en er at io na nd d ec ay . t ha t m ar k, f or e xamp le , A ri st ot el ia n diachrony a nd i ts c on ce pt io no f tim e a s nu mbe r.62In contra st to the brothe r, the husba nd, w ithi n this order of tim e, could be

m arked as the nam e of radical iterability, I n A ntig on e's w ord s, the hu sb andseem s to mark time that com es around and goes around. W e might betterun de rs ta nd this ide a if w e th ink , f or e xa mp le , o f H om er 's Odyssey. Antigone,of course, says nothing of Homer. But he is not an accidental intertext. Inclassical antiquity, in a ncie nt poe try and culture, in A thenian ('G ree k')tra ge dy, H om er 's po etry a lw ay s f un ctio ns a s a key p oi nt o f r ef er en ce , i s a lw ay sthe re in the background. A nd H om er's Odyssey. let us recall, portrays theq ui nte ss en tia l, p ara dig ma tic 'r etu rn o f th e hu sba nd ', tha t is to sa y, th e nostosof O dysse us, w hich occurs as the ye ars 'com es around and goes around' (cf.the 'summary' of the poem in the proem , Odyssey 1.I6: p er ip io me nb n e n-iauton).63 My point is that in the return of Odysseus after twenty years ofa bs en ce , s om eth in g of th e e ss en tia l na tur e of tim e a nd o f O dys se us ' m orta lityis ob lite ra te d. T im e w ill ha ve h ad n o e ffe ct on the m or ta l m an. P erh ap s th er e'sgood reason in Odysseus being known as d io s O d ys se u s. 'bright/divine

163l os t, a na l h e r m ig ht h av e b e en f ou nd , a nd c hi ld f ro m a no th er , t oreplace t he f ir st -b or n: b ut , f at he r a nd m ot he r h id de n w it h H ad es , n ob ro th er 's l if e c ou ld e ve r b lo om f or m e a ga in . S uc h was t he l aw whe re byI e ld t he e f ir st i n h on ou r, b ut C re on d eeme d m e g ui lt y o f e r ro rt he re in , a nd o f o ut ra ge , ah b ro th er m in e! A nd n ow h e l ea ds m e t hu s,a capt iv e in h is h an ds ; n o b ri da l b ed , n o b ri da l s on g h at h b ee nm in e, n o j oy o f m ar ri ag e, n o p or ti on i n the n ur tu re o f c hi ld re n; b utt hu s, f or lo rn o f f ri en ds , u nh ap py o ne , I go livi ng 10 t he v au lt s o fdeath.

A ntigone m akes it plain that she does not generally spurn the law s of the city.U nde r d iff ere nt c irc um sta nc es, s he w ou ld ne ve r h ave ta ke n u po n he rs elf th ist as k a ga in st h er c it y (o u ga r pot: 'n ev er ', [ ha d t he matter i nv ol ve d a ny th in g b utt he b rothe r J b ia i p ol it on t on d' a n e iromin penon; 'would I a ve ta ke n th is ta sku pon m e in th e c ity 's d es pite '). Y et s he a ls o m ake s it c le ar th at s he 's no t a ctin grandom ly. R ather, she a cts 'under a certain le gality ... som ething that is. ine ff ec t. of the o rd er of la w, b ut w hic h is n ot d ev elo pe d in a ny s ig nif yin g c ha ino r i n a ny th in g eise:S9 A ntig on e h ers elf ra is es th e q ue stio n o f th e le ga lity tha tregulate s her a ction and w arrants her position. It's of note that she does thison the one hand, only in the form of a question, that is, not as a statem entembodying positive content, but on the other hand, using the term 'law',n om os itin o n om ou d e ta uta p ro s c ha rin legO? 'W hat law, you ask, is myw arrant for that w ordr). This legality is focused on the brother. For Laea n,it is 'a n h or iz on d ete rm in ed b y a s tru ctur al re la tion ' w hic h 'o nly e xists o n theb as is o f the la ng ua ge of w ord s'. 60B ut le r, c ri ti ci zi ng t he r es id ua l c om po ne nt o f n eg at iv e d ia le ct ic i n t hi s v ie w,

rightly stresses the open reference of this brother. The whole fam ily, theLabdakides, suffers from ra dica l 'kinship trouble'. W hat, then, is the thingtha t de fine s th e no n- re pla ce ability , th e a bs olu te un iqu en es s of the b ro th er?Lacan, i t s e em s, f ai ls t o a ns we r t hi s c ru ci al q ue st io n. A nd y et A nt ig on e e xp la in st hi s v er y c le ar ly : i t i s t h e e leme nt o f t ime . O nc e h er p are nts a re d ea d, as t he y a re ,s he c an not ha ve a no the r b roth er.61 A ntigone's O rder of L aw , w e c ould thusa rg ue , is a n ob je ct. N ot a n ob je ct like a to mb , o r a br ida l- ch am be r, or a pr iso nind iv idu ally , b ut a no th er k in d of o bje ct w hic h is s im ila r to th e p hy sic al o ne s hea ddr es se s, a nd w hic h is a lso like the M oe biu s s tr ip. I ts s tru ctur e is b oun d w iththe order of events and the order of tim e and m ortality.

50 Lacan (1999: 278).60 Ibid.61 Sheusestheword au tadelphos . As for all two-endingGreek adjectives,this form (- os) ca nap ply to b o th ma lean d female ,an d can th u s a l so r e fe r t o Ismene (d. AII~ I). The immediate

circumstances h e re d o no t ca ll f o r t h i s.

.2 ForAristot leon t ime, see recently,e.g.Coope (2005). Earl ierd iscussion in Annas (1975),Bostock(1980) (using the term 'durat ion ', bu t withno referenceto Bergsonor the Bergsoniant radi t ion ) , Hussey(1993) ( a commen ta ry o n Physics 4), Sorabji (19S3), e t c. I twou ld b e h a rdtosummarizeAristo tle 'sv iewon th is d ifficu ltand con troversial issue,bu t he speaks of time asinvolvingchange (kinesis) o r mov emen t.A r i s to t lea rg u es th at t h er e i s n o p e rcept io n o f t imew i th o ut p e rcept io n o f ch an g e. Ye t t ime fo rh im is no t change i tself . It i s r a th e r t h e n umber(llrithmos) o fch ang e in th e sense o f th e thin g b e in g numbered ( r ath er t h an th e th in g bywh ichwe number ). A r is t ot le 's v iew i s tha t n umber s a r e jus t t h e n a tu r al n umber s. Th e p r in c ip a lpassagein questi 0n is Ph ysk~ I V 2 19 b1 If.., It might a t f ir s t s eem th a t t h e Odyey presents the opposite.Penelope,afterall,steadfastlywa i ted fo r t h e r e tu rn o f Ody sseus over a period of twen ty years, refusing the persistent andaggressiveadvancesof the suitorsand any rep lacemen t.Bu t Penelope'sposi t ion isno t withou tambigui ty (cf . e.g, t h e f amou s ep iso de in Odyssey IS.158-303, which has generatedmuch

scholarly con troversy .See Wohl 1993: 40). More signif ican t ly , the essent ialquestion is no t'cana nyonebe Penelope'shusband?'but rather, 'Can Penelope'shusband be anyone?'Odysseus,Penelope'shusband, isradicallyreplaceableeven as he is verywelldefined (just as , fo rexample,there can be in fin i ty with in a p reciselydefined l inearsegmen t ,within a set o f numbers, etc.),Odysseusis preciselythe ull-named 'man' (andra) i n t h ev e ry f i rs t , 't h ema t ic ' wo rd o f th e f i rs tline o f t h e p oem (OdYSjey 1.1). Furthermore, h e i sb o th ' an yon e ', a s h e p rov es f rom h i smanyassumed iden ti t ies ,and also 'no-one' ("uris), a s h e calls h imself in the Cyclopsep isode.


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164 Psychoanalysis and the Law Antigone: Lacan and t he Structure of the LiW 165Odysseus '. The oppos ite is true of the brother: i t is precisely this element oft ime and mortal ity that is preserved in his irreplaceabili ty, in whose nameAntigone dies.64Antigone's 'exchange' involves trading one absolutely irreplaceable thing

for another absolutely irreplaceable thing. The structure ofher exchange, evenas 'objects' are involved, is radically incommensurable. It would require aseparate essay,but one could perhaps also argue that it isprecisely in this actof giving, in her dying for her brother. that Antigone 'reveals to us the line ofsight that defines desire.'" But for the fact that this is not an exchange, wecould saythat i t isa cause well worth dying for.66An important part of the claim here isprecisely that Antigone does not die

'for' something inasmuch as by this we mean an exchange of a plus and aminus. Antigone's living death (e ntr e la v ie e t la m ort), her tomb is her cause,and is,we might say,the structure ofher law,the synchrony ofher law.She maythus be a figure that ' reveals to us the l ine of thought that def ines desire ' andaffects katharsis (but no t an Aristotelian katharsis) and is thus at the heart ofboth tragedy and psychoanalysis. Indeed, elsewhere it might even be possible toexpand Antigone's commitment to the absolutely unique in Freudian terms of arelease from repeti tion (an idea Freud pursues , for example, in B eyo nd th ePleasure Principle).The argument, nevertheless, needs to be taken further, in a direction which

isnot quite Lacan's. AsGranon-Lafont says, wecan use the temporal event todifferentiate tWO faces of the Moebius strip, a 'back' and' front'. But here isthecrux. First, the dialectical opposition between 'back' and 'front' would onlyappear if we approach the Moebius strip as a t lat, two-dimensional shapetwisted 180 degrees and joined together to form a new, strangely three-dimensional object. In other words, the opposition comes into being only ifweset out and define this otherwise irreducible reality ofspace interms oftwodimensions and dialectical oppositions. Yet there is nothing in the inherentgeometry of two dimensions that allows us to deduce a third from it as amatter ofcourse. There isno inherent space in flatland. Tothis wemust add asecond point, namely that any conceptualization process of this type is,

necessarily, a temporal/historical process, a diachronic process. And, a thirdpoint, this process only comes into being through the deferral, or elision, ofwhat we might call the real temporal/historical process. The opposition,in other words, is only possible if we map the relationship between theflat two-dimensional strip in a world of opposites and the three-dimensionaltopological object as two points along a ' timeline' , a movement from point' a' to point 'b; which is i tself elided from our consciousness of the object.The same 'object', inother words, exists asat least two different objects in twoworlds-but where i ts essential irreplaceabil ity is elided. The fourth andpossibly most important point isan interpolation of the previous elements:We can, of course, given the above, imagine any number of specific coordi-nates on the Moebius strip which will have a 'f ront' and 'back ' or a 'top ' and'bottom'. The crucial point is this: If, following Butler, ' front' and 'back' aretaken as moments of 'negative dialectics' in Lucan's structure, then we have alegitimate critique. This is where the Lacanian reading effects an exclusion.Our suggestion, however, isthat we can only mark these places and concep-tualize them in this way byconceptualizing the strip asa flat object (our firstpoint), and asone inwhich time isdefined by means offixedcoordinates (thesecond and third points). This occlusive conceptualization, we might furthersuggest (although, ultimately, this requires a separate argument), rests on theAristotel ian legacy of defining 't ime as number' (Arist . Physics IV, 229b),which is guided by an interest in an instrumental notion of diachrouy" Incontrast, if we view Antigone's l aw, and the precedence she gives to herbrother , and the notion, or structure, of t ime, from a revised ' topological 'perspective, we have a possible outlet, although it is not quite Lacanian/"This chapter isnot meant asa discussion oftopology. Ihope, however, that,

with the topological example in the background, it becomes clear why a

. . The presentat ion ofbrothe rs in Homer might further support this idea. Agamemnon andMenelaos a re not rep laceab le ; nei ther Odysseus nor Telemachus have bro thers, indeed, theyare emphatically' only sons' .

65 Lacan (1999: 247).M I am, aga in , think ing here of well-rehearsed arguments about exchange and the gift and.

u lt imately, o f L Derrida 's v iews , and of h is d iscuss ion of Patocka and his to ry (ef fect ively-diachrony), for example, in The Gif t o f Dea th (Derrida 1995), but a lso in Adieu to EmmanuelLevina, (1999), of Ho,pitality (2000), Given Time: Counteriei: Mo.,,!}, (1992), The In, tant o fMyDeath (2000), and many of h is o ther works .

67 See above, n. 62. Again, Aristotle argues that where there is no perception ofchange (in these nse of a p ercept ion of movement from one ' number ' t o ano ther ). t here i s n o p erce pt io n oft ime. Weconld a t this point introduce Lacan 's notion of the ' second dea th ' and its relat ion tobeing. In the 'Supplementary Note' to his discussion of Antigone (1999: 285), Lacan says: ' ... he[Sophocles Isituates the hero in a sphere where death encroaches on life, in his relationship, thati s. t o wha t 1 h ave b een cal li ng the second death he re. Th is r el at io nsh ip to b eing susp end severy th ing tha t has to do with trans formation, with the cyde of generat ion and decay or withhi story i tsel f, a nd i t p lac es us on a lev el tha t i smore e xt reme than any o the r insofa r a s i t i sdirectl y attached to Ian goa II" assuch .'To po t i t i n the t erms of Levi -St ra uss -and I am cer ta in that 1 am no t mist ak en in invok inghim here, since t was ins trumenta l in hav ing had him reread All/igone and he expressed himself

to me i n s uch terms-Ant igon e wi th rel at ion to Creon finds h er sel f i n p lac e of syn chrony inop!:osition to diachrony.'8 Ats take isa large princ ip le . But wemus t not forger the pointed materia li ty of the tex t northe lectio stararia {'the art of reading slowly', as [akubson defined philology. See Ziolkowski


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166 P sy ch oa na ly si s a nd t he La w A ntigo ne: L acan a nd th e S truc ture of th e L aw 167cri tique of the residual 'negative d ia lect ic ' embodied in Lacan's not ion ofk inship and u lt imately in h is reading of the e th ics of Antigone is, on the onehand , cruc ia l as a cri tique of a kind of relat ionship between synchrony andbeing that isassociated with Lacan, On the o ther hand, Ia lsohope that wecansee that there is a possibili tyof extracting ourselves from this dialectic, and ofreading Antigone's claim and the structure of her exchange differently. Whatweare suggesting isthat wecan 'structure' the play Antigone, and the figure ofAntigone, and Antigone's ate topologically, as it were, beyond ate. 69 It ex-poses-perhaps we can use Lacanian words here after all-'the l imit t hathuman life can only briefly cross: 70 Itexposes-we can now come back to thatword with which we began this chapter, but, as in the Moebius s tri p, in adifferent sense-the simplicity of the structure ofAntigone's claim. We havehere , in revised form, a 'pure and simple relat ionsh ip of the human being tothat of which he miraculously happens to be the bearer' ,"

A ll o ude n au toi t on emon l . . . 'mit,,!! Itis,we should add , a typ ical ly Sophoclean, perhaps even typ ical ly ' trag ic : usage (met" is verse-terminal in thirteen out ofeighteen extant attestations: Alit. 48,70,73; Aj. 160,256,950; or247,414,990; EI. 700; Ph. 184,298, 343, 11]0, 1312; DC 639, 1636; F r, 479.3. Likewise the word isverse-terminal in the majority ofinstances in extant Greek rragedy). It's akind of 'with: lIlet", wemight s ay, that comes 'af ter ' ev erything , a t t he end. I t i s p ar t of a meM-physi cs, i f y ou wi ll(Aristotle's Mer"phY5ics is, in the f irst ins tance, s imply tha t work which comes ajter the physi",and yet works with it; it isthe philosoph ical notion of r n e t a p h ysi '" which evoIye s especiaUy post-Descartes and Kant through, we might say , an act of retroac tive naming), This special k ind ofmeta works tempora lly, b ring ing to a dose the d iachronic f low of iambic trime te r verses. Andyet, even as this word, meta, a ppe ar s at t he end o f the l ine, i t d oes not qu it e fol low the 'l aw' oflinear, spatial sequencing. It transcends the metrical law ... the law of Aristotelian, arithmeticalt ime and physics , the grammatical law,and so on. Met" here partakes of the 'normal,' preposi-t iona l u se of the word, of the usa ge that preced es i ts (gramma ti ca l) ca se, But i t al so st ri ves'beyond ', i t s tr ives 'backwards: Tha t, i ts eems to me, isa small , materia l example of the k ind ofexpansive ' structure' , the 'kind of lega li ty ', i fyou will, tha t wef ind in Antigone and in Alltigolle,and which, we might suggest, is a suitable structure for ethical action.69 Antigone wants to gomas a t n . (tllIl. 614,625), to a place, significantly beyond hope (d.

also Ant 330). Lacan saysquite explicitly: 'What does it mean to U5 ifAntigone goes beyond thelimits of the human? What does i t mean ifno t tha t her des ire a ims a t the following , the beyondof tlri.' (I999: 263; see also 264-5.)70 Ibid. 262-3. On the beyond, see e.g. Lacoue- Labarthe (1996-7).71 Lacan (1999: 283). Quoted above , n . 22.

1990). Discussing the 'limit~ Lacan points ' in passing' to lines 48, 70, and 73, in which 'Antigoneexp resse s a kind o f idiocy that i s a pparent at t he end o f a se nten ce in the wo rd metd (Lacan1999: 265). Here a re the l ines (translat ion as in the English tex t of the Seminar):

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