The Prudent Dissident: Unheroic Resistance in Sophocles'<i>Antigone</i>

Kirkpatrick, Jennet

doi:10.1017/s0034670511003421

Cited by 46 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Another researcher, Françoise Meltzer (2011), presents also about desire in Antigonê. She The fourth study found to present discussion on Sophocles's Antigonê is the one written by Jennet Kirkpatrick (2011). Here she presents a kind of comparison between Antigonê and her sister Ismenê.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Inner Conflict: Conscience or State's Rule

Pramono

2023

LRJ

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Conflict is part of human life. No one can get rid of it. Some conflicts end in good resolution, some end in bad resolution, and some end in tragedy. Antigone, the main character, is encountering a dilemma of whether to keep on the conscience of burying her brother or to obey her king’s edict forbidding her to bury him otherwise death sentence she has to bear. This inner conflict represents the power relation between Antigone and the king. Foucault proposes that power relation comprises the productivity of power and the constitution of subjectivity. He also says that resistance is an endemic fact in the world of power relations. Furthermore, Kabeer states that the power of women signifies the ability of women to make choices. In determining choices, Antigone experiences inner conflict, and thus, she encounters a double struggle, i.e., against herself and against Creon, the king. With the knowledge that conscience or heaven's values are higher than man’s rule or earth’s values, Antigone seizes her power to deal with her conflicts. The conflict between Antigone and Creon, which is first between heaven and earth laws, turns out to be a conflict mostly covered by self-pride. This contestation of power leads her to agony and suicide, and this confirms that inner conflicts in power relations may end in tragedy.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Inner Conflict: Conscience or State's Rule

Pramono

2023

LRJ

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“…This binary logic obscures the complexities of resisting organized atrocity—the difficult choices and situations that stem from resisters’ embeddedness within the very conditions of systemic violence they are fighting to dismantle (Mrovlje 2017). Examples include the human rights violations committed in the service of freedom and justice; the ways in which the pursuit of moral goodness or self-sacrifice may backfire; and the ways that unheroic, compromised actions may constitute powerful avenues of resistance (Kirkpatrick 2011, 414–21; Leebaw 2019, 459–76; Mihai 2019; Mrovlje and Kirkpatrick 2020; Vogler 2020). A consideration of the complex experiences of resistance, these critics argue, can challenge the deeply entrenched patterns of complicity in systemic violence (Leebaw 2019, 475) and disclose “a richer—if less heroic—repertoire of political engagement” (Mihai 2019, 64).…”

Section: An Alternative Framework For Memorializing Betrayalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This essay aims to challenge simplistic practices of memorializing betrayal and examine the ambiguity of betrayal as it arises from the complex circumstances of resistance. Thereby, I contribute to the growing political theory literature that has contested heroic resistance myths and delved into the complexities of resisting state-sponsored violence yet has not explored the difficult issue of betrayal (Kirkpatrick 2011;Leebaw 2019;Mihai 2019Mihai , 2022.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ambiguity of Betrayal: Contesting Myths of Heroic Resistance in South Africa

Mrovlje

2023

Political Theory

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Hegemonic practices of memorialization rely on narratives of heroic, morally untainted resistance, which cast traitors as the aberrant “other.” This paper draws on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity and historical and sociological accounts of betrayal to trouble this binary and construct a framework for memorializing betrayal in its ambiguity—in relation to the everyday reality of tragic dilemmas that resisters face. I show how attentiveness to the ambiguity of betrayal can help rethink heroic resistance myths beyond the exclusionary logic pitting moral purity against the depravity of treason—and warn against the reproduction of systematic practices of othering in the new political order. The paper develops the political relevance of this theoretical exploration via the example of a South African novel, The Texture of Shadows, examining how its insights into the ambiguity of betrayal challenge the myths of heroic resistance in South Africa.

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“…8.Kirkpatrick (2011); see further Frank (2006), 339f. ; Rawlinson (2014), revised as (2016), 83–105; Engelstein (2015); cf.…”

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confidence: 99%

SHIFTING SISTERHOOD: ELECTRA AND CHRYSOTHEMIS IN SOPHOCLES’ELECTRA

Coo¹

2021

Ramus

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When Sophocles wrote Electra's story, he gave her a sister, Chrysothemis. In their two scenes together, the sisters warn, entreat, cajole, insult, spar with, and proclaim affection for each other. While Electra maintains her public mourning for their father Agamemnon, Chrysothemis chooses not to openly defy his murderers, Aegisthus and their mother Clytemnestra, believing that resistance that accomplishes nothing is futile. Time has not been kind to this more pragmatic sister. In English-language criticism, she has acquired her own epithet, ‘timid’; her femininity has been dismissed as vacuous and her morality as driven by material self-interest. For many critics, she is a shallow and conventional figure whose main purpose is to act as a foil to the exceptional Electra. Since the pairing of a ‘stronger’ and a ‘weaker’ sister recurs in the depiction of Antigone and Ismene in Sophocles’ Antigone, this portrait of two contrasting sisters has been recognised since antiquity as distinctively Sophoclean, and the corresponding reduction of the sister–sister bond to a template has frequently precluded deeper examination of this relationship in both plays.

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The Prudent Dissident: Unheroic Resistance in Sophocles'Antigone

Cited by 46 publications

References 24 publications

The Inner Conflict: Conscience or State's Rule

The Inner Conflict: Conscience or State's Rule

The Ambiguity of Betrayal: Contesting Myths of Heroic Resistance in South Africa

SHIFTING SISTERHOOD: ELECTRA AND CHRYSOTHEMIS IN SOPHOCLES’ELECTRA

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