Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 17:57:37 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: M-TH: Antigone, Anarchy, and Law & Order (was Easy Virtue or Hard


Perhaps the exchange between Carrol and Justin is a good starting point
to discuss not only the emergence and development of modern
psychologized & privatized identities + subjectivities but also the
role that a morality of hard choices + non-choices has played in its
development.


First of all, the meanings of art cannot be fully understood without
considering the context of its production and reception. Greek plays
such as _Antigone_ didn't have the same meanings for their original
audiences that modern readers/theatre-goers might find in them.


(1) Greek plays were produced in the open air in the atmosphere of
Festival. It was common to have three tragedies staged in succession.
After the third, the satyr play and then comedies were presented. The
dramatic festivals went on several days. Such a context of production
suggests that audiences couldn't have very well approached each
individual play with our modern notions of artistic "appreciation" and
"interpretation" of the "unique significances" of individual
characters, plays, and playwrights. Drama in this context must have
primarily functioned as part of social life and communal (not
individual) experience of catharsis and pleasure. It was a public, not
private, occasion.


(2) Subjects of Greek drama were not original creations of individual
playwrights. They came from common legends whose characters and plots
most members of the audience knew very well. In fact, ideas such as
originality and individuality of playwrights and their works would have
been alien to them. This is another reason to argue against the
psychologized + privatized readings of the plays.


(3) Both the plot structure and the use of the chorus of Greek drama
indicate that main dramatic concerns were not the fates of protagonists
alone. Instead, the plot and the chorus together reminded the audience
of the inseparability of the fate of the protagonist from that of the
whole *polis*. In other words, drama was primarily *public and
political*, as opposed to *private and psychological*.


Now, let us look at what the text of _Antigone_ has to tell us about
the difference between public + political functions of Greek drama and
modern habits of privatizing + psychologizing + individualizing art and
its meanings.


The first words are spoken by Antigone:

<paraindent><param>right,right,left,left</param>Antigone: Ismene, dear
sister,

</paraindent><paraindent><param>right,right,right,left,left,left</param>you
would think that we had already suffered enough

for the curse on Oedipus.

</paraindent>

As I said above, the line makes it clear that the audience's knowledge
of who Antigone is and of the curse on Oedipus is taken for granted,
since nowhere in the play is the story of Oedipus explained to the
audience. Nor is _Oedipus Rex_ used to explain the character of
Antigone and her motivation + the central meaning of the play
_Antigone_. This simple + straightforward *assumption of communal
knowledge* is different from *modern uses of allusion* which tend to
set off some detective work on the part of individual readers/audiences
and to be used for the purpose of allegorical doublings of meanings and
affects.


Antigone tells Ismene of the new decree of King Creon--that nobody
should bury Polyneices whose body is to be at the mercy of carrion
birds and that the penalty for those who violate his decree is stoning
to death. Now, does Antigone tell all this to discuss with Ismene about
what is to be done, to think about "choices" (hard or not), and then at
one decisive + climactic moment to make a "hard moral choice"? By no
means. No psychological drama of private agony here. The first line she
utters with regard to what to do, at the second time she speaks in the
play, is: "There is something we must do."


That the play prefers *Antigone* who has neither private moral agony
over hard choices nor moments of doubt + indecision to *Ismene* who
experiences some conflicts between love for family members and fearful
submission to authority (Creon) as its *protagonist* says much about
the *nature of agon* in Greek drama. Greek plays and their audiences
were not interested in psychologies of individual characters; if they
had been, Antigone would have been a poor candidate for the center
stage.


What Greek drama did concern itself with was the nature of governance
and public conflicts between different principles.


After the prologue, in scene I, Creon enters and gives the following
speech, which explains the political nature of his refusal to allow the
burial of Polyneices:


<paraindent><param>right,right,left,left</param>Creon:...I am aware, of
course, that no Ruler can expect complete

</paraindent><paraindent><param>right,right,right,left,left,left</param>loyalty
from his subjects until he has been tested in office. Nevertheless, I
say to you at the very outset that I have nothing but contempt for the
kind of Governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the
course that he knows is best for the State; and as for the man who sets
private friendship above the public welfare--I have no use for him,
either....and I need hardly remind you that I would never have any
dealings with an enemy of the people....These are my principles...and
that is why I have made the following decision concerning the sons of
Oedipus; Eteocles, who died as a man should die, fighting for his
country, is to be buried with full military honors...but his brother
Polyneices, who broke his exile to come back with fire and sword
against his native city and the shrines of his father's
gods...Polyneices, I say, is to have no burial....As long as I am King,
no traitor is going to be honored with the loyal man.


</paraindent>This public principle of loyalty to the polis Creon
invokes is what Antigone's equally public principle of loyalty to the
family and gods clashes against. When she breaks the law and buries her
brother, therefore, her crime is not an individual transgression but a
public challenge to the State: Anarchy. Note in the following speech
that, when Creon first hears of the burial, what he immediately
suspects is not an individual moral wrong but a public conspiracy:


<paraindent><param>right,right,left,left</param>Creon:...No, from the
very beginning

</paraindent><paraindent><param>right,right,right,left,left,left</param>There
have been those who have whispered together,

Stiff-necked anarchists, putting their heads together,

Scheming against me in alleys....


</paraindent>When Antigone and then her sister Ismene are brought
before Creon to be tried, the contrast between the two sisters is
striking. When asked by Creon if she confesses her act, Antigone says:
"I do. I deny nothing." What she confesses, however, is the nature of
her act and principles behind it only, and she has nothing to say about
her private psychological motivation. This is not to say that Antigone
possesses no subjectivity; but we must remember that her feelings of
love and honor are not colored by modern individualist meanings. She
loves her brother *because* he is her brother, that is, because of
*social relations* between them; her love for him is *not* conditional
upon any private individual quality of his character or even a hint of
a unique bond between them.


When Ismene tries to share in Antigone's guilt because Ismene knew what
Antigone was going to do, Antigone coldly says: "No, Ismene. You have
no right to say so." After being begged by Ismene who wants to take her
share of punishment, Antigone declares: "The dead man and the gods who
rule the dead know whose act this was. Words are not friends." If the
play is to concern itself with private guilt born of second thoughts on
hard choices made in private, it must be Ismene who should become the
center of the audience's attention. However, it is *not* Ismene's
*mind* that the play is interested in; it is Antigone's *act* that
commands the audience's attention. And the significance of that act is
public, not private; in scene III, Creon's speech returns to the theme
of the clash between Anarchy and Law & Order:


<paraindent><param>right,right,left,left</param>Creon:...Anarchy,
anarchy! Show me a greater evil!

</paraindent><paraindent><param>right,right,right,left,left,left</param>This
is why cities tumble and the great houses rain down,

This is what scatters armies!

No, no; good lives are made so by discipline.

We keep the laws then, and the lawmakers,

And no woman shall seduce us. If we must lose,

Let's lose to a man, at least! Is a woman stronger than we?


</paraindent>By now it should be clear that what is at stake is the
state power (and patriarchal power) and the ruler's ability to hold on
to it. It is not Antigone as individual that is to be feared. It is
what her *public act* represents and *what it might set in motion* that
are riveting both for Creon and the audience. As Creon's son Haimon
warns:


<paraindent><param>right,right,left,left</param>Haimon:...You [Creon]
are not in a position to know everything,

</paraindent><paraindent><param>right,right,right,left,left,left</param>That
people say or do, or what they feel;

Your temper terrifies--everyone

Will tell you only what you like to hear.

But I, at any rate, can listen; and I have heard them

Muttering and whispering in the dark about this girl.

They say no woman has ever, so unreasonably,

Died so shameful a death for a generous act:

"...Is this a crime? Death?--She should have all the honor that we can
give her!"


</paraindent>_Antigone_ is a political play, not a modern psychological
play that revolves around the morality of private individuals, their
minds, their choices. By watching or reading it, we will never get to
know much about Antigone as individual. However, the play still
resonates with us if what we would like to understand is the nature of
political power.


Yoshie Furuhashi




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