Claiming Antigone? The character as epistemological "différend" in Judith Butler's "Antigone's Claim" and Jacques Lacan's "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis".

  • Chantal Delourme Paris Ouest Nanterre
Mots-clés: Character, Psychoanalysis, Ethics, Desire, Subjectivity, Figure, Antigone

Résumé

This paper addresses both the points of contact manifested by the treatment of the character of Antigone in Jacques Lacan’s The Ethics of Psychoanalysis and Judith Butler’s essay Antigone’s Claim and the forms of the différend it generates.  Antigone’s singular position « between life and death » gives way to radically different conceptual elaborations whose epistemological, ethical and political dimensions are explored. The character of Antigone furthermore proves to be a fecund site for the examination of her construction as image, speech, discourse or figure. The epistemological différend which emerges then opposing cultural theories of subjectivity and the psychoanalytical theory of the subject of desire finds in the literary text and the play of its letter as « character » one site of its insistence calling for its formulation to be constantly renewed.

Biographie de l'auteur

Chantal Delourme, Paris Ouest Nanterre

Professeur

Littérature anglaise

Département d'Etudes Anglophones

UFR LCE

Publiée
2010-05-10