A review of the city’s conservative tendency and feminism with Antigone

One of the most famous myths of ancient Greece revolves around Antigone, who was buried alive because of the dignified burial of one of his brothers, who is accused of betraying the country. Sophocles passed on the legacy of Antigone with one of his tragedies, which shows the opposition between the civil order and the divine order. This is a majority question and accepted by other thinkers like Hegel, but it is not the only one. And this is exactly what Professors Laura Levadot and Bertha M.

Levadot is the coordinator of the Master of Modern Thought and Classical Tradition at the University of Barcelona and the author of the book. My wound existed before me, Which inspires this conversation. “One of the chapters of the book is called Antigone’s inflexibility And part of Hegel’s reading of this tragedy, according to which Antigone represents the law of the family, the archaic and the divine, which opposes the new law of the city, the law of men, which Creon seeks to establish, and that it will eventually be. Ours, ”explains the teacher.

For a long time this was a universally accepted question until feminist philosophers appeared who denounced his patriarchal bias and debated Hegel’s interpretation. “For Judith Butler, Antigone represents the city’s noisy, rebellious, expelled, and legitimate claimant. For his part, Lucy Irigaray criticizes Antigone’s figure for the place she occupies in her bosom when she is buried alive, as it will henceforth be a woman’s place in society, impotent and without her own will. Depicts Levadot.

And why look at feminism through this figure in mythology? “The Antigone tragedy is, in this sense, the expulsion of women from the social contract. Maria Zambrano writes against Antigone against Sophocles and Hegel, which begins just when she is already buried. Doing in it The wandering of Antigone, In which all the characters of the tragedy appear and resemble the buried memory of our history. “There are voices of the losers and Antigone’s claim of justice, which goes beyond the law of the city,” the speaker explained.

For him, Antigone expresses the view that “there is a gap between law and justice, that the law does not include claims to justice.” His story “teaches us that the social organization itself always crosses claims that show how and where society fails.” For his part, Creon’s attitude, by burying him alive, “shows the conservative tendency of the city, the excess of power, which is manifested in the suppression of certain voices, in their underground burial, and as if nothing had happened.”

About the “Trans” claim

My wound existed before me It has more to do with the myth of Antigone. “In the book, I offer a critique of the sexual difference, a political device that divides us as men and women, that assigns us social roles and mandates according to our gender, that affect our work, our sentimental and sexual relationships. This division is not only unfair and violent for bodies that do not recognize themselves in these identities, but for everyone because it prevents us from leaving these prefabricated roles. Our identity documents decide who we are and treat us socially based on this classification. “Escape from the roles that the city imposes seems essential to me,” said Laura Levadot.

The teacher draws a parallel between what was the ancient city that is today between the state and the social contract that we will never sign, “but we are all faithful.” “A social contract is actually a sexual contract through which a part of the population, due to certain physical characteristics, takes the place of domination and exploitation. That is why city law needs identities. “You have representation only insofar as you are an identifiable entity,” he condemns, as is the case today with trans claims and certain feminized bodies.

“So we have two problems: on the one hand, the social contract, which is sexual, hierarchizes the representative bodies, and on the other hand, expels the unrepresented bodies and exposes them too much violence,” the author goes on to say. This debate, based on theory Strange And the recognition of trans women has reached the core of the feminist movement and caused a great rift.

With this in mind, Levadot argues that “when certain feminist positions expel bodies that are not within the parameters of the city, what they are doing is reproducing the masculine logic we must fight against.” For all this, “we need to broaden the perspective and conceptually see what the problem is.”

These differences did not escape the university and learning environment. A few months ago, students of Gender and Communication at the Autonomous University of Barcelona decided to stop attending Professor Juana Galego’s classes because of criticism of the theory. Strange And trans law in its verses. He denounced in his networks that they were boycotting him and that “if the university is not a place where you can debate, it becomes a madrassa”. Although Laura Levadot, who teaches at the same university, does not share Galego’s perspective, she believes in academic freedom: “You have to teach what you learn. Teaching can not be separated from research.

“I do not know exactly what happened, but I understand that if someone does not work on the theory StrangeYou do not need to show it. Another thing is that our teaching, like the law, closes in on itself and becomes dogmatic. It will be an error as well as its cancellation. I believe in academic freedom, but also in opening our teaching to other issues. “Our task is to offer tools for the student to think for himself and to create a framework for his own understanding, and not for him to repeat ours,” he said.