Women in Politics: From Antigone to Modern Feminism

1
Tutorial Buikema: final paper – Evelien Geerts (Research Master Gender and Ethnicity, student number
3615170) (amount of words, heading, footnotes, and bibliography excluded: 7553)
Antigone and Ismene reclaimed. From tragic female figures to
feminist-political paradigms.
Introduction. The problematical situation of Oedipal female rivalry in
politics and the possible ‘theoretical subversiveness of feminism’1
.
“I would find it extremely unpleasant if I should have to ask myself every day if I‟m in the board of
directors because of the fact that I‟m qualified, or just because of the fact that I am a woman. ‘Look,
there is our token woman’. […] I couldn‟t care less whether my perspective is feminist or not. It‟s a
realistic point of view.”2
(Liesbeth Homans, N-VA politician)
“How many more quota laws are they going to invent – after the quota for foreigners and women
maybe it‟s time for quota targeted at dumb blonde women? That‟s just too absurd for words […].”3
(Anke Van dermeersch, Vlaams Belang politician)
It might seem a bit peculiar to open an essay on a feminist theme with quotes from two right-
winged Flemish female politicians, however, these two citations actually provide us with the
main issues that I want to take up here, namely Oedipal rivalry between women in today‟s
politics and the heated debate that has been going on in Flemish politics about the legal
implementation of quota for women in the boards of directors of governmental and non-
governmental stock listed companies. The quota law in itself isn‟t that novel anymore:
diversity has been a central theme in Flemish politics for quite a while, and there have been
1
The title „the theoretical subversiveness of feminism‟ refers to an essay written by Carole Pateman. In this
essay, she explores what feminist political theory and philosophy should do as disciplines, in order to be taken as
serious academic enterprises. Pateman here stresses that feminist political theory was and still is subversive,
since feminist theorists usually do more than just adding women and women‟s issues to the picture and then
shaking and stirring everything until they get a more inclusive theory. Pateman thus argues against the traditional
idea that “feminist theory is nothing more than the inclusion of women and the relation between the sexes into
existing theories”, and claims that feminist political theory is a critical and self-critical enterprise. In this paper, I
would like to emphasize this aspect of feminist subversiveness, by presenting Luce Irigaray‟s conceptualization
of the figures of Antigone (and Ismene) as inspirational political paradigms that have to power to alter feminist
political philosophy and reality. See C. Pateman, “Introduction. The theoretical subversiveness of feminism”, in:
C. Pateman – E. Gross (eds.), Feminist Challenges. Social and Political Theory, Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 1987, The Northeastern Series in Feminist Philosophy, p. 4 for the above quote.
2
L. Homans, translated quotation in J. Verelst, “Not a product of „denigratory‟ quota that she has professionally
annihilated earlier this week” / “Géén product van de 'denigrerende' quota die ze deze week vakkundig door de
gehaktmolen haalde”, De Morgen, 05/03/2011, on http://www.liesbethhomans.be/citaten/g%C3%A9%C3%A9n-
product-van-de-denigrerende-quota-die-ze-deze-week-vakkundig-door-de-gehaktmolen-haalde (accessed on
11/07/2011).
3
A. Van dermeersch, translated quotation, taken from “Women‟s quota can only cure the symptoms” /
“Vrouwenquota zijn slechts symptoombestrijding”, 30/03/2011, on http://www.ankevandermeersch.be/6/105
(accessed on 11/07/2011).

2
quota measurements to increase women‟s participation in politics for a couple of decades now
– which seems to have worked well. But what is new and also problematic is the fact that
certain Flemish female politicians (mostly from the right-winged, conservative parties such as
the N-VA and Vlaams Belang) are all of the sudden heavily protesting against this new quota
law, either via a conservative non-feminist approach (like Homans in the quote above) or by
making use of a perverted feminist rhetoric, as Van dermeersch, who claims that men are now
being discriminated through the implementation of this seemingly anti-discrimination law.
The irony of the whole situation becomes obvious, analyzed through a feminist perspective:
women that have officially „made‟ it and that have broken the glass ceiling of politics – the
most patriarchic domain of it all! – are now trying to make sure that other women are unable
to take up the same positions of power. Some female politicians have thus become chauvinist
pigs, so to say, and are repeating patriarchic oppression all over again, whilst downplaying the
value of feminist politics by claiming that women in this supposedly post-feminist era can
make it on their own anyways.
This „feminized‟ patriarchic mentality has led to two obviously complex problems:
first of all, this explicit rejection of quota has resulted in an even wider divide between female
politicians from the left Flemish parties and the right-winged ones when it comes to women‟s
and gender issues.4
Women in Flemish politics are now more than ever opposing each other
when it comes to topics that should in fact unite them. Secondly, one could even argue that
this issue has led to a return of Oedipal rivalry between women: women are cat fighting and
bashing each other in order to get the same masculine privileges as men have had for
centuries. By doing so, they seem to be obeying the Law of the Father more than ever, rather
4
In contrast to the opinion of female politicians from the right-winged parties, Eva Brems, who is member of
Groen!, Flanders‟ ecologists party, has supported the quota law and even wanted to expand it to other sectors.
She has said the following: “The glass ceiling is still manifestly present in many sectors. The boards of directors
of governmental and stock listed companies are good examples of that, because women are so extremely
underrepresented there. Yet the problem does not only manifest itself there. For our party this law isn‟t a final
piece, but rather a socially relevant topic. If even private companies have to take gender into account, then so
should the highest courts, universities and unions […].” E. Brems, translated as quoted in S. Bex, “The Chamber
has ratified the bill for „women‟s quota‟” / “Kamer keurt wetsvoorstel „vrouwenquota‟ goed”, on
http://www.evabrems.be/kamer_keurt_wetsvoorstel_%E2%80%98vrouwenquota%E2%80%99_goed (accessed
on 11/07/2011). Other female left-winged politicians such as Caroline Gennez and Kathleen Van Brempt have
stated the same. The quota law thus has divided the Flemish political scene, and when the bill was up for
discussion in the Senate, the conservative parties of N-VA, Vlaams Belang, LDD, and the liberals of Open Vld
voted against it. Yet the bill was passed in June, thanks to a left-winged majority. Liesbeth Homans still does not
agree with the quota law, since she considers it to be “counterproductive”, and she will keep on trying to
undermine the law by taking further political action. See Belga/kh, “The Chamber obliges some companies to
have one third of women in their boards of directors” / “Kamer verplicht sommige bedrijven een derde vrouwen
in bestuursraden te hebben”, De Morgen, 16/06/2011
(http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/5036/Wetstraat/article/detail/1279749/2011/06/16/Kamer-verplicht-sommige-
bedrijven-een-derde-vrouwen-in-bestuursraden-te-hebben.dhtml, accessed on 11/07/2011).

3
than changing politics in a feminine or feminist way!
Although it might be naïve to state that analyzing this phenomenon of rivalry will
solve everything, I do want to claim that theorizing and conceptualizing this trend is one of
the first things that we need to do in order to change this rather depressing situation. This is
the reason why this essay will take up the task of examining these issues by focusing on Luce
Irigaray‟s psychoanalytically inspired feminist philosophy. However, I will not merely make
use of Irigaray‟s perspective in order to counter this situation of rivalry, but I will also try to
open up a more positive feminist reconceptualization of politics by analyzing the female
figures of Antigone (and Ismene) as possible alternative inspirational models of feminist
politics in which women would see each other as sisters, instead of enemies. And I will do so
by again focusing on Irigaray‟s feminist philosophy that is known to be theoretically
subversive.
Starting from the Nussbaumian5
intuition that feminist philosophy and psychoanalysis
are capable of telling us something relevant about reality and that hence could help us with
sketching out theoretical frameworks and practical guidelines, I would like to investigate
whether we could make a connection between theory and practice by analyzing some of the
rereadings of Sophocles‟ The Antigone. Special attention will be paid to the figure of
Antigone, since she, seen as a female figure of disruption and subversion, has been a
persistent point of interest in the feminist philosophical oeuvre of Luce Irigaray. The main
research question of this essay is hence connected to the possible exemplary status of
Antigone herself: although the practical relevance of Antigone is pretty clear, since she has
mainly been perceived as an ethical figure, one of course still has to investigate whether
Antigone‟s subversive actions against the state were political and feminist enough in order for
Antigone to be seen as a contemporary feminist-political paradigm. Is Antigone more than the
tragic intuitively principled woman that unconsciously acted ethically, as presented in the
readings of G.W.F. Hegel, Jacques Lacan and Simone de Beauvoir? Is she a mere „victim‟ of
patriarchy, or could we get Antigone out of this phallogocentric web, by for instance
accentuating the traces of a maternal genealogy, as Bracha Ettinger has done?
By going through the previously mentioned philosophical and psychoanalytical
rereadings that mainly focus on the ethical Antigone, this essay will prove via Irigaray that
5
Martha Nussbaum is convinced of the fact that good philosophical theories in general are practically relevant:
“Philosophy often fails to impress people with its relevance, and sometimes this is the fault of philosophers.
Philosophy can offer good guidance to practice, I believe, only if it is responsive to experience and periodically
immersed in it.” See M. C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development. The Capabilities Approach,
Cambridge – New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 300.

4
there is also another side to Antigone, namely a political-feminist one6
, and that Ismene,
Antigone‟s sister, has erroneously been ignored by the formerly mentioned theorists. Yet both
Antigone and Ismene are needed, in order to come to an Irigarayian inspired political feminist
theory that could get us out of the current Oedipal rivalry condition.
Before we take a look at how Antigone has been represented by these authors, one has
to take one specific warning into account: when constructing a political-feminist theory, by
taking up a figure from the past and thus elevating Antigone to a paradigm for the present,
one should not conflate the present with the past since we then would risk to “normalize”7
the
latter; as political philosopher Catherine Holland has claimed. Taking up Antigone out of
nowhere as a figure for political theory (and practice) today is indeed problematic, and that is
why this essay will start with a contextualization of The Antigone by taking a look at some of
its rereadings, whilst later contextualizing Antigone and Ismene as inspirational figures via an
Irigarayian framework. These two strategies should prevent us from over-emblematizing
Antigone (and Ismene) as ideal, ahistorical figures.
Part One. The ethical importance of Antigone. An overview of the
traditional philosophical and psychoanalytical rereadings of the figure of
Antigone.
“Such is our Antigone, the bride of sorrow. She consecrates her life to sorrow over her father‟s
destiny, over her own. […] And as the Greek Antigone cannot bear to have her brother‟s corpse flung
away without the last honours, so she feels how cruel it would be should no one come to know of this.
[…] Thus is Antigone great in her pain.”
(Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, p. 156)
Sophocles‟ The Antigone has been interpreted innumerably since the tragedy was written in
the 5th
century BC. Strikingly, most of its interpreters have mainly focused on Antigone and
her uncle Creon, in order to theorize the supposedly oppositional logics between the two of
6
There are of course other feminist political philosophers who saw Antigone as an adequate feminist paradigm.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Mary Dietz and Linda Zerilli have all constructed political models via Antigone. A good
overview of these three quite opposing views on Antigone can be found in C. A. Holland, “After Antigone.
Women, the Past, and the Future of Feminist Political Thought”, American Journal of Political Science 42
(1998) 4, p. 1108-1132 (hereafter: Holland, “After Antigone”). According to Holland, Elshtain‟s and Dietz‟s
views are quite problematic since they both reduce Antigone by either maternalizing her (as Elshtain does), or by
politicizing her and making her into an emblem of a radical feminist democratic politics (Dietz‟s idea). I agree
with Holland that both views are problematic, and I thus don‟t want to over-emblematize Antigone in this essay,
but rather use her image and that of her sister Ismene as modes of inspiration for feminist thought, or as
hermeneutical thinking tools, as I have also stated in the main text. Holland also criticizes Zerilli, yet I find
Linda Zerilli‟s article, that stresses the issues of alterity and difference, quite interesting since it has been
influenced by Irigaray‟s philosophy. See L. M. G. Zerilli, “Machiavelli‟s Sisters. Women and „the
Conversation‟ of Political Theory”, Political Theory 19 (1991) 2, p. 252-276.
7
See Holland, “After Antigone”, p. 1110 who has taken up this idea in her essay.

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them: while Creon, Thebes‟ patriarch, wants to hold on tightly to the laws of the state, and
thus forbids the burial of the rebel Polyneices, Antigone‟s brother – who has perished whilst
killing his own brother Eteocles during the Theban civil war – Antigone respects the familial
and divine laws. She gets caught while burying Polyneices‟ body for the second time (the first
burial, which was probably undertaken by Antigone as well, only left a layer of dust on his
corpse) and then is arrested and imprisoned by Creon for defying him, as the righteous male
ruler. Yet, Antigone has the last word, so to say, since she commits suicide by hanging herself
instead of accepting the fact that she‟s imprisoned in a tomb for life. Creon‟s son, Haemon,
the lover of Antigone, and Creon‟s wife, Eurydice, also commit suicide – events that bring the
antagonism between Antigone and Creon to a climax.
Next to this conflictual element, much attention has been devoted to Antigone‟s
motivations: most of the traditional interpretations focus on Antigone‟s ethical character and
actions: the Danish existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard for instance has described
Antigone as a model of pure ethical (and ethical-religious) subjectivity in Either/Or (1843),
and thus saw her as an autonomous agent. It is this accentuation on Antigone‟s ethical „purity‟
that has been central to the interpretations of Hegel, de Beauvoir, Lacan, and Ettinger –
readings which will be presented here – although one has to note that Hegel and Lacan,
probably because of their theoretical entrapment in phallogocentrism, have disregarded
Antigone‟s consciously ethical behavior, which is problematic, as I will argue.
1.1. Hegel’s Antigone. An (unconsciously) ethical agent.
Hegel‟s reception of The Antigone focuses on the adversary relationship between Antigone
and Creon, and in his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), he explains Antigone‟s actions by
placing them under the broader frame of his own philosophy of the „Geist‟. Hegel‟s
Phenomenology tackles the development of self-consciousness and subjectivity, and
according to Hegel, one can only become a full subject when one is recognized by another
subject. This idea of recognition plays an important role in his rereading, as we will see.8
8
What follows, is a summary of what I find the most interesting in Hegel‟s Phenomenology of Spirit when it
comes to his rereading of The Antigone. Tina Chanter‟s essay on Irigaray‟s rewriting of Hegel will be used and
paraphrased here, but I will also refer to Hegel‟s Phenomenology itself. Chanter criticizes Hegel‟s rereading of
The Antigone, because Hegel doesn‟t provide Antigone with a model of subjectivity of her own. I fully agree
with her critique and I want to accentuate this before analyzing Irigaray‟s critiques in the second part of this
paper, starting from p. 13. See T. Chanter, “Looking at Hegel‟s Antigone through Irigaray‟s Speculum”, in: T.
Chanter, Ethics of Eros. Irigaray’s Rewriting of the Philosophers, New York – London: Routledge, p. 80-126
(hereafter: Chanter, “Looking at Hegel‟s Antigone through Irigaray‟s Speculum”). And see G. W. F. Hegel,
Phenomenology of Spirit, Translated by A. V. Miller, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979 (hereafter: Hegel,
Phenomenology of Spirit).

6
First of all, in order to understand the animosity between Creon and Antigone, one has
to realize that for Hegel Antigone‟s acts have to be seen as familial acts, while the patriarch
Creon is trying to protect the interests of the Theban state.9
As a woman10
, Antigone is
immediately put in the private sphere of the family by Hegel, which “as the element of the
nation‟s actual existence, […] stands opposed to the nation itself, [and] as the immediate
being of the ethical order, […] stands over against that order which shapes and maintains
itself by working for the universal.”11
Hegel divides the family into a “natural ethical
community”12
and a spiritual one, and claims that the family as a natural entity opposes the
state; yet, on the other hand, it also seems to be the case that the family, as the state‟s
antithesis, prefigures and nurtures the state, since it provides the nation with male citizens.
Although “the Penates [i.e. the Roman household gods] stand opposed to the universal
Spirit”13
, both the family and the state in fact need each other, in order to function in Hegel‟s
dialectical scheme.
A lot more could be said about Hegel‟s dialectic, but what is important here is that this
dialectical scheme is being transposed onto Antigone and Creon, whilst adding the notion of
sexual difference14
to it as well: Antigone is the subversive woman who adheres to the
ancestral norms, while Creon is Antigone‟s antithesis, being a male ruler who wants to do
good for the state by criminalizing Polyneices‟ actions. Yet, this element of sexual difference
is then immediately downplayed when it comes to the issue of recognition: while Antigone
and Creon are more or less trapped in a master-slave dialectic, the highest mode of
recognition is to be found in the familial relationship between Antigone and Polyneices,
which is marked by a blood bond without desire. According to Hegel “the loss of the brother
is […] irreparable to the sister and her duty towards him is the highest”15
and “the moment of
the individual self, recognizing and being recognized, can here assert its right, because its
linked to the equilibrium of the blood and is a relation devoid of desire”16
. In the eyes of
9
This is suggested by Hegel himself, when he links the family to “the feminine” and ascribes “a masculine
character” to the state. See Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 445.
10
Hegel namely says the following about women and their relationship to the familial sphere: “The woman is
associated with these household gods and beholds in them both her universal substance and her particular
individuality, yet in such a way that this relation of her individuality to them is at the same time not the natural
one of desire.” See Ibid., p. 274.
11
Ibid., p. 268.
12
Ibid., p. 552.
13
Ibid., p. 268.
14
We will come back to the issue of sexual difference in Hegel‟s Phenomenology (and also in some of his other
works) since Irigaray pays special attention to this issue in her own critique of Hegel. See this paper, starting
from p. 13.
15
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 275.
16
Loc. cit.

7
Hegel, both Antigone and Polyneices seem to recognize each other as subjects, since
Antigone respects her brother by burying him, so that he gets the political acknowledgment he
deserves17
, whilst that burial makes her into “the head of the household and the guardian of
the divine law”18
. Hegel‟s Antigone thus seems to resemble the ethical-religious Antigone of
Kierkegaard, since she in the end buries Polyneices out of respect for the familial and divine
laws. Hegel then states that both of “the two sexes overcome their (merely) natural beings and
appear in their ethical significance”19
, yet his statement is not very convincing, since Antigone
in the end is indeed seen as an ethical agent, but not fully recognized as a conscious
autonomous subject by Hegel:
“[…] The feminine, in the form of the sister, has the highest intuitive awareness of what is ethical. She
does not attain to consciousness of it, or to the objective existence of it, because the Law of the Family
is an implicit, inner essence which is not exposed to the daylight of consciousness, but remains an
inner feeling […].”20
Antigone thus is acting ethically, yet, she‟s not consciously and rationally doing so in
Hegel‟s eyes: she stays in the domain of the family – the realm of emotions and intuitions to
which women „naturally‟ belong. This trivializing of Antigone‟s subjectivity has to do with
the fact that Hegel prejudicially focuses on the dichotomized binary of masculine versus
feminine throughout his Phenomenology21
: when explaining the evolution of “the Earth-
Spirit”22
or the „Geist‟, Hegel seems to be equating masculinity with subjectivity (“the self-
impelling force of self-conscious existence”23
) and being feminine with having a mere
supportive role as “the principle of nourishment”24
. He thus sticks to the biased concept of
passive femininity, which makes Hegel‟s Antigone into the mere object of Polyneices‟ will
from within the grave to be recognized as a political subject: the sister is hence nothing but
the mirror of her brother‟s wishes. Hegel appears to be trapped in a phallogocentric
framework here, and hence doesn‟t really come across as a thinker who provides us with an
adequate, feminist rereading of Antigone.
In order to come to such a reading, might it be possible to alter Hegel‟s
17
Or in Hegelian terms, Polyneices “passes from the divine law, within whose sphere he lived, over to human
law”. See Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 275.
18
Loc. cit.
19
Loc. cit.
20
Ibid., p. 274.
21
And also in some of his other works, as Irigaray has claimed. See this paper for her critiques starting from p.
13.
22
23
Loc. cit.
24
Loc. cit.

8
phallogocentric framework by adding a feminist touch to it? This question will be answered
by analyzing Antigone under the existential framework of Simone de Beauvoir.
1.2. De Beauvoir’s Antigone. A feminist Hegelian reconceptualization of
the tragic woman?
Although Simone de Beauvoir hasn‟t explicitly referred to Antigone in The Second Sex
(1949), she has taken up Hegel‟s dialectical philosophy in order to analyze the socio-cultural
oppression of women. This is noticeable when she states that “the duality of the sexes, like
any duality, creates conflict”25
. She thus considers men and women to be each other‟s
„Others‟, yet, women mostly have been regarded as the inferior antitheses of men. This
reminds us of Hegelian philosophy, yet her attachment to Hegel isn‟t always so clear: some of
de Beauvoir‟s interpreters have claimed that she is completely equating the position of slavery
with the historical situation of women (and thus putting Hegel‟s master-slave dialectic onto
the relationship between men and women), whilst others have argued that she has only
compared women‟s inferior positions with “the work of the slave in the master-slave
dialectic”26
, which makes women‟s condition less tragic and opens up the possibility of
change.
Whether de Beauvoir indeed has gone so far as to fully equate women with slaves of
men or not, it is obvious that she wants to tackle the lesser position of women:
“Now woman has always been man‟s dependent, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shared the
world in equality. And even today woman is heavily handicapped, though her situation is beginning to
change.”27
This quote already reveals de Beauvoir‟s intentions: she focuses on changing women‟s
inferior positions, via a dialectical philosophy of equality. Since women are doomed to take
on “the status of the Other”28
, they are stuck in the situation of “immanence”29
– a situation in
which their subjectivity and freedom are severely limited. Men on the other hand have been
25
S. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Translated by H. M. Parshley, with an introduction to the vintage edition by
D. Bair, New York: Vintage Books, 1989, p. xxvii (hereafter: de Beauvoir, The Second Sex).
26
See E. Miller, “The „Paradoxical Displacement‟. Beauvoir and Irigaray on Hegel‟s Antigone”, The Journal of
Speculative Philosophy 14 (2000) 2, p. 122. Miller is convinced of the fact that de Beauvoir wasn‟t so naïve to
completely equate women‟s positions with the ones of slaves, since that would undermine change and female
liberation too much. On the other hand, Tina Chanter (who is more of an Irigarayian herself) has argued the
exact opposite and has criticized de Beauvoir for taking up Hegel‟s problematic model, or as she has said it:
“Not only does the use of this model assume that, like the master-slave relationship, the relationship between
men and women is necessarily conflictual, but it also holds out little hope of any fundamental change.” Chanter,
“Looking at Hegel‟s Antigone through Irigaray‟s Speculum”, p. 81.
27
de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. xxvi.
28
Ibid., p. xxxv.
29
Loc. cit.

9
able to exist as subjects for themselves, and have transcended their mere immanent, biological
existence. The goal of de Beauvoir in The Second Sex is to get women out of their Otherness,
by granting them the same position of transcendence, and she thus wants to reverse the
structures of power, in order to make women more equal to men.
If one then were to apply de Beauvoir‟s philosophy to Hegel‟s Antigone, one
seemingly would add a feminist touch to her: in de Beauvoirian terms, Antigone could be
seen as a proto-feminist. She willingly goes against Creon‟s authority and steps out of the
immanent familial sphere by crossing the borders between the private and the public domain.
Yet, Antigone, in a de Beauvoirian perspective, appears to be undertaking rather „masculine‟
actions in a rebellious, heroic way, which in the end makes her lose a part of herself, namely
her femininity. In order to be equal to men – to Creon – Antigone not only gives up her
motherhood, but also her feminine self.
A de Beauvoirian revision of Antigone would thus, in contrast to Hegel, accentuate
her subjectivity, yet, Antigone would also become somewhat of a “a tragic figure”30
, who has
to denounce her female specificity in order to become something she is not – a man. De
Beauvoir‟s Antigone is still too entrenched in the Hegelian dialectic in order to make
Antigone into a feminine, consciously ethical subject. Are we then to leave the path of
Hegelian philosophy, in order to come to a more feminist rereading of Antigone?
1.3. Lacan’s Antigone. A paradigm of ethics and desire.
One of the rereadings of The Antigone that goes against Hegel‟s dialectic is Jacques Lacan‟s.
Lacan has investigated the figure of Antigone in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1986), where
he, like Hegel, has emphasized the ethical and tragic importance of Antigone. Yet, Lacan at
the same time also moves away from the Hegelian path of thesis and antithesis:
30
J. Purvis, “Generations of Antigone. An Intra-Feminist Dialogue with Beauvoir, Irigaray, and Butler”, New
Antigone 1 (2005) Spring/October, p. 6 (hereafter: Purvis, “Generations of Antigone”). Purvis claims in her
article that a de Beauvoirian view on Antigone would make her into a tragic woman, stuck in the situation of
immanence. I agree with the tragic part, since Antigone, as stated in the main text, would probably have to give
up her femininity in order to access the domain of transcendence in de Beauvoir‟s equality perspective, yet, I do
not agree with the fact that de Beauvoir‟s Antigone would be stuck in immanence forever. De Beauvoir is not
that naive, her equality perspective is just a bit too non-nuanced to analyze such a complex figure as Antigone,
who seems to be transgressing the borders between immanence and transcendence.

10
“According to Hegel, there is a conflict of discourses, it being assumed that the discourses of the
spoken dialogues embody the fundamental concerns of the play, and that they, moreover, move toward
some form of reconciliation. I just wonder what the reconciliation of the end of Antigone might be.”31
Lacan seems to be disapproving Hegel‟s application of synthesis to The Antigone, since
neither Creon and Antigone, nor Polyneices and Antigone, seem to be reconciled with each
other at the end of the play – Antigone in fact commits suicide and she is hence a “tragic
hero”32
. Lacan doesn‟t focus on reconciliation, but pays attention to the element of desire.
According to Lacan “[The] Antigone reveals to us the line of sight that defines desire”33
. This
focus on Antigone who actively desires, and who has a tremendous amount of “self-
knowledge”34
makes Antigone into a self-conscious, rational subject – which is very un-
Hegelian.
Lacan sketches out an innovative picture of a woman who actively accepts her fate as
a cursed member of the house of Labdacus35
and who “pushes to the limit the realization of
something that might be called the pure and simple desire of death as such”36
. Antigone
personifies the death drive, and she inhabits “the zone between life and death”37
: she is in-
between the Symbolic and the Imaginary. This makes Antigone into a subversive, border
crossing figure, yet, Lacan unexpectedly also falls back on the “blood relations”38
between
Antigone and Polyneices. According to him, Antigone is motivated by the fact that her
brother is “unique”39
and she therefore elevates him to her object of desire and care –
something that Hegel has argued as well. But what is new here is that Lacan at the end of his
lectures opens up a new theme, namely Antigone‟s devotion to her mother, Jocaste:
“What happens to her [i.e. Antigone‟s] desire? Shouldn‟t it be the desire of the mother? The text
alludes to the fact that the desire of the mother is the origin of everything.”40
By bringing in the issue of the mother-daughter relationship, Lacan seems to be
opening up his framework for a more feminine (but not exactly feminist) analysis: Antigone
31
J. Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book VII, Edited by J.-A.
Miller, Translated with notes by D. Porter, London – New York: Routledge, 2008, p. 307 (hereafter: Lacan, The
Ethics of Psychoanalysis).
32
Ibid., p. 333.
33
Ibid., p. 304.
34
Ibid., p. 336.
35
Labdacus was Oedipus‟ grandfather. In Greek myth, Oedipus and his offspring are cursed twice: Oedipus‟
father – Laois – the son of Labdacus, was cursed because he had raped Chrysippus, the son of Pelops, the King
of Pisa. Chrysippus committed suicide afterwards, which made Pelops curse the House of Labdacus, claiming
that no male offspring of Laois would ever survive. Later on, the House of Labdacus was cursed again because
of the incestuous relationship between Oedipus and his mother Jocaste.
36
Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, p. 348.
37
Ibid., p. 345.
38
Ibid., p. 341.
39
Ibid., p. 343.
40
Ibid., p. 348.

11
not only mimics her mother‟s incestuous affair with Oedipus through Polyneices, but also
shares her death wish, and hangs herself, just like Jocaste has done after discovering her
incestuous crime. Lacan‟s emphasis on the mother is at least a step in the right direction, but
his analysis is still trapped in phallogocentric thought, since he forgets to distinguish women
as women from women as mothers41
, and uses the mother figure to come back to his
phallogocentric version of the Oedipus complex. Yet it is this Lacanian psychoanalytical
perspective of Antigone that has been made fruitful for feminist theory by Bracha Ettinger.
1.4. Ettinger’s Antigone. Matrixial reminiscences.
Before we examine Irigaray‟s rereading of The Antigone, I would like to take a look at
Ettinger‟s rather complex, yet intriguing psychoanalytical analysis. It might seem
anachronistic to focus on Ettinger before focusing on Irigaray (since Ettinger has been
inspired by the latter), yet I want to analyze her essay “Antigone with(out) Jocaste”42
first,
since Ettinger also doesn‟t conceptualize Antigone as a political figure.
Ettinger starts her essay with referring to Judith Butler‟s book Antigone’s Claim43
(2000) where Butler has stated that Antigone “has […] taken the place of nearly every man in
her family”44
. Antigone is hereby made into a mere heir of patriarchy, while Ettinger on the
other hand wants to leave this rather Lacanian Oedipal perspective behind and highlight the
41
This critique is of course Irigarayian of nature, and Irigaray‟s Speculum of the other woman as a whole could
be seen as criticizing the Freudian and Lacanian views of femininity – views which focus on phallic motherhood
and nothing more. See L. Irigaray, Speculum of the other woman, translated by G. C. Gill, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1985 (hereafter: Irigaray, Speculum of the other woman). The same critique has also been
uttered by Rachel Jones, who has said the following: “[…] Lacan, no less than Hegel, fails to allow women to
exist as individualized selves.” See R. Jones, Irigaray. Towards a Sexuate Philosophy, Cambridge – Malden:
Polity Press, p. 204 (hereafter: Jones, Irigaray).
42
B. L. Ettinger, “Antigone with(out) Jocaste”, in: S. E. Wilmer – A. Žukauskaitė (eds.), Interrogating Antigone
in Postmodern Philosophy and Criticism, Oxford – New York: Oxford University press, 2010, p. 212-229
(hereafter: Ettinger, “Antigone with(out) Jocaste”). What follows, is a short summary of Ettinger‟s essay, and
while I have to admit that this reading of Ettinger is quite Irigarayian inspired, I do think that it catches all its
main points.
43
J. Butler, Antigone’s Claim. Kinship Between Life & Death, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000
(hereafter: Butler, Antigone’s Claim). Butler in this book mostly takes on the Hegelian and Lacanian readings of
The Antigone, in order to show that the figure of Antigone should not be immediately emblematized as a
“representative for a certain kind of feminist politics” (Ibid., p. 2), since she is locked up in a patriarchic and
heteronormative structure. This does not mean however that Butler will deny the feminist and queer potential of
Antigone. According to Butler, Antigone is “not quite a queer heroine” (Ibid., p. 72), but she is transgressing the
norms of patriarchy and heteronormativity, by constantly disturbing “the vocabulary of kinship” (Ibid., p. 82), by
burying her brother, and by committing suicide instead of becoming a faithful wife and mother.
44
See Ibid., p. 62. Ettinger seems to be taking up this quote of Butler in order to suggest that although Butler is
indeed on to something when she‟s describing Antigone‟s disruptive powers when it comes to kinship,
patriarchy, and heteronormativity; her analysis seems to be lacking an exploration of Jocaste and of the mother-
daughter relationship between Jocaste and Antigone.

12
“encounter-event with the m/Other”45
, whilst also focusing on the notion of kinship, as Butler
has done. This place of encounter, or “the matrixial”46
, engenders a meeting between the
subject and the non-I, and thus confronts the subject with the non-I‟s, or the Other‟s, alterity.
Ettinger then continues her psychoanalytical reading by focusing on Jocaste, who she
analyzes, not via the Lacanian Oedipus complex, but by the stressing that “the maternal
womb”47
should keep its feminine specificity. Ettinger here thus suggests that we should
focus on the mother-daughter relationship, instead of looking at the brother via the mother,
and then ignoring her, as Lacan has done. Antigone thus “is heir to a Jocaste complex, too”48
,
which seems to be referring to the trauma of Antigone being abandoned by her mother who
committed suicide.49
Yet, since “Antigone-with-Jocaste”50
(i.e. the phase in which mother and
daughter are still in symbiosis) precedes “Antigone-without-Jocaste”51
(i.e. the phase in which
the child has to differentiate itself from the mother, and/or the phase of abandonment of the
child by the mother), Antigone is forever connected to her mother. And it is this permanent
metaphorical umbilical cord between daughter and mother that makes her into a specifically
feminine subject:
“Thus, long before but also beside and even after gender and personal identity, a feminine sexual
difference continually informs the subject. A female body is impressed by the difference of the female
child from another female (m/Other).”52
Next to paying attention to the female specificity of Antigone (which is quite
innovative, considering that even de Beauvoir‟s seemingly feminist framework would
transform Antigone in a man), Ettinger seems to be focusing on Jocaste as the source of
kinship between Antigone and Polyneices, instead of Oedipus. She claims that the Lacanian
focus on the paternal genealogy has “erased [and] silenced”53
the m/Other and suggests that
alterations in the Symbolic need to be implemented by theorizing the m/Other.
Although Ettinger seems to be rereading Antigone in a feminist way, by accentuating
her female specificity, there are still two shortcomings in her theory, in my opinion: first of
all, Ettinger‟s mother-daughter approach comes across as pessimistic; it could be the case that
she‟s trying to open up a space for rethinking how the Mother has been left out as a structural
45
Ettinger, “Antigone with(out) Jocaste”, p. 213.
46
Loc. cit.
47
Ibid., p. 214.
48
Ibid., p. 216.
49
Or what Ettinger has named the “Primal Mother-phantasy of abandonment”. See Ibid., p. 217.
50
Ibid., p. 216.
51
Loc. cit.
52
Ibid., p. 220.
53
Ibid., p. 227.

13
element in the Symbolic, and thus therefore focuses on the negative consequences that that
has provoked, yet, “Antigone With(out) Jocaste” emphasizes the destruction of these two
women way too much in order to give us a workable mother-daughter relationship theory.
Secondly, by foregrounding the (m)/Other, Ettinger appears to be analyzing Antigone and
Jocaste via a very Levinas-like ethical perspective – which is not problematic, were it not that
we need a more political rereading of Antigone in order to touch upon the issue of Oedipal
rivalry between women.
Part Two. Antigone (and Ismene) respecularized and politicized through an
Irigarayian perspective.
“Her [i.e. Antigone‟s] example is always worth reflecting upon as a historical figure and as an identity
or identification for many girls and women living today.”
(Irigaray, Thinking the Difference, p. 70)
So far, we have encountered four different rereadings of the figure of Antigone, which all
touched upon some valuable elements, but weren‟t exactly feminist or political enough in
order to sketch out another feminine Symbolic and constructive mother-daughter relationship.
This is why the second part of this paper will focus on Luce Irigaray‟s reception of Antigone
in Speculum of the other woman (1974), An ethics of sexual difference54
(1984), and Thinking
the Difference. For a Peaceful Revolution55
(1989). Irigaray has constructed her theory of
Antigone through her method of “having a fling with the philosopher[s]”56
and the
psychoanalysts: she takes up certain Hegelian and Lacanian ideas, and then deconstructs them
to make her own feminine perspective visible, as we will see.
2.1. Luce Irigaray’s deconstructive fling with Hegel’s and Lacan’s readings of
Antigone.
In Speculum, Irigaray seems to be flirting with Hegel and Lacan, and by making them fight
with each other, she tries to discover the blind spots that are operative in their receptions of
54
See L. Irigaray, An ethics of sexual difference, translated from the French by C. Burke and G. C. Gill, London
– New York: Continuum, 2004 (originally published in French in 1984) (hereafter: Irigaray, An ethics of sexual
difference).
55
See L. Irigaray, Thinking the Difference. For a Peaceful Revolution, Translated by K. Montin, London: The
Athlone Press, 1994 (originally published in French in 1989) (hereafter: Irigaray, Thinking the Difference).
56
See L. Irigaray, This sex which is not one, translated by C. Porter with C. Burke, Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1985, p. 151 for this quote. This is one Irigaray‟s most famous methods of doing feminist philosophy: by
critically rereading and deconstructing the masculine canon of philosophy, and by seducing the male
philosophers and psychoanalysts, Irigaray tries to subvert and alter the canon from within.

14
Antigone. In what follows, I will first highlight some of the Irigarayian critiques on Hegel and
Lacan, and then pinpoint at the new material Irigaray is bringing to this debate.57
For starters, both Hegel and Lacan will be blamed by Irigaray for making the same
mistake. They both ignore the issues of sexual difference, female specificity and Antigone‟s
maternal genealogy, given that their frameworks are embedded in phallogocentrism: both
theorists have conceptualized the feminine Antigone via their own biased masculine
perspective, and have thus only described her as the negative, the “lack, absence, default”58
;
as the raw material for supporting male subjectivity. Antigone is only seen as “the living
mirror, the source reflecting the growing autonomy of the self-same”59
.
Irigaray, on the other hand, will positively reconceptualize this image of the mirroring
Antigone, who she has also labeled with the term of “the antiwoman [sic]”60
– since Antigone
is “a production of a culture that has been written by men alone”61
. She will do so by creating
her own feminine and feminist body politics that focuses on the mother and her “red blood”62
that runs through Oedipus‟, Polyneices‟ and Antigone‟s veins. This already becomes clear in
Irigaray‟s interpretation of Hegel: her essay in Speculum, deliberately titled “The Eternal
Irony of the Community”, starts with two short quotes from Hegel‟s Philosophy of Nature
(1817), where Hegel constructs his own phallogocentric body politics by claiming women to
be passive, and men to be subjects, because of the different functions of their reproductive
organs. This bias – operating in the background of Hegel‟s philosophy – has influenced his
57
Similar versions of Irigaray‟s critiques on Hegel and Lacan can be found in the essays by Tina Chanter and
Rachel Jones, yet my version here tries to focus on aspects in Irigaray‟s rereading that I find important myself –
such as the mother figure, female subjectivity, and the political relevance of Antigone. See Chanter, “Looking at
Hegel‟s Antigone Through Irigaray‟s Speculum”, and Jones, Irigaray.
58
Irigaray, Speculum of the other woman, p. 42.
59
Ibid., p. 221.
60
Irigaray, An ethics of sexual difference, p. 101.
61
Loc. cit. Some of Irigaray‟s interpreters have misunderstood Irigaray‟s goals when it comes to her analysis of
Antigone as the anti-woman in Speculum and in An ethics. Carol Jacobs, for instance, who has written an
otherwise excellent article on Irigaray‟s and Hegel‟s Antigone, seems to be claiming that Irigaray is stuck in
rather negative and hence problematic conceptualization of Antigone in Speculum. See C. Jacobs, “Dusting
Antigone”, MLN 111 (1996) 5, Comparative Literature Issue, p. 889-917. Jacobs states that Irigaray sees her as
the Other of the Same, “as a traitor to the position of woman, to „maternal filiation‟” (Ibid., p. 890), while she
only starts to rehabilitate Antigone as a valuable source for feminist philosophy from Thinking the Difference
onwards. I personally don‟t agree with Jacob‟s point of view, since I have the feeling that when Irigaray is
talking about Antigone as the anti-woman, she‟s taking up that negative phallogocentric perspective, mimicking
it in a strategic way, wanting to deconstruct it from the inside out. This all falls under her well-known strategy of
strategic essentialism that plays a key role in Speculum. My own claims can be backed up by Jennifer Purvis,
who has stated that “Irigaray utilizes the position of women within the Hegelian framework as a disruptive force
[…]”. See Purvis, “Generations of Antigone”, p. 5. Tina Chanter agrees with Purvis‟ statement and argues that
“Irigaray exploits the marginality of Antigone‟s position in a way that puts into question the system that
designates Antigone its inferior”. See Chanter, “Looking at Hegel‟s Antigone Through Irigaray‟s Speculum”, p.
81.
62
Irigaray, Speculum of the other woman, p. 116. Irigaray constantly takes up the concept of red blood in
Speculum in order to refer to the mother, and to a maternal lineage and genealogy. Also see Ibid., p. 221.

15
reception of Antigone, according to Irigaray, and she will try to deconstruct this Hegelian
image of Antigone as the unconsciously (and thus in way passively) acting ethical „agent‟ by
highlighting two issues, namely Hegel‟s problematic account of sexual difference and the
utopian “Hegelian dream”63
that is attached to it, and the ironical status of women.
Hegel, as we have mentioned before, does pay attention to sexual difference when it
comes to Creon and Antigone, yet, instead of creating an ethics of sexual difference where
female specificity is valued in its own right, Hegel restrains Antigone‟s agency by locking her
up in the natural female sphere of the family, and by doing so, he disregards the political
characteristics of her actions, and the active female subject that she really is. According to
Irigaray, Hegel thereby reduces her to “sensible matter”64
and passivity. Therefore, Antigone
“has no gaze, no discourse for her specific specularization that with allow her to identify with
herself […].”65
Since “woman is the guardian of the blood”66
, in the opinion of Hegel,
Antigone buries and pays respect to Polyneices, since they share the “same blood”67
and “do
not desire each other”68
. By taking away the element of desire, sister and brother should be
partaking in a relationship that focuses on “equal recognition”69
, yet this is all just a
phallogocentric fantasy, according to Irigaray:
“The war of the sexes would not take place here. But this moment is mythical, of course, and the
Hegelian dream outlined above is already the effect of a dialectic produced by the discourse of
patriarchy.”70
At first, one could think that the relationship between Antigone and Polyneices is indeed pure
and non-antagonistic, since the element of desire supposedly – I say supposedly because
Antigone‟s family is founded on incestuous desire – is lacking here. Yet, once Polyneices has
been buried, Antigone‟s task is done; she is imprisoned and in the end commits suicide. She is
never recognized as a subject of her own in Hegel‟s version of the story, as she is merely
acting intuitively, as we have seen.
This brings us to the ironical status of Antigone: for Hegel, “womankind” 71
is “that
eternal source of irony […]”72
, which means that women, as guardians of the family, are
meant to keep the public political domain going by producing male citizens. Yet, while they
63
64
Ibid., p. 224.
65
Loc. cit.
66
Ibid., p. 225.
67
Ibid., p. 216.
68
Loc. cit.
69
Ibid., p. 222.
70
Ibid., p. 217.
71
72
Loc. cit.

16
are supporting the public sphere, they are never allowed to be part of it; hence Antigone‟s
status of an intuitive ethical agent. Full citizenship and subjectivity aren‟t accessible to
women: Hegel‟s phallogocentric body politics rather makes the so-called passive anatomy of
women into a decisive factor to de-subjectify them. Irigaray, in her response to Hegel, in fact
doubles, or even triples, this element of irony by noting that this view of Antigone as a
passive woman isn‟t correct at all – if she is so passive and submissive, then why is she
considered to be a political threat, as a figure of “revolt”73
, in the eyes of Creon? The situation
becomes even more ironical when one considers that the Hegelian framework – if it wasn‟t so
rooted in the economy of the Same – in fact should allow Antigone to be a conscious subject,
or as Irigaray says it:
“What an amazing vicious circle in a single syllogistic system. Whereby the unconscious, while
remaining unconscious, is yet supposed to know the laws of a consciousness – which is permitted to
remain ignorant of it […].”74
Irigaray thus spots a logical contradiction in Hegel‟s philosophy, since he, according to his
own idea of synthesis or reconciliation, should allow women to become political conscious
subjects after all.
Luce Irigaray will thus move beyond Hegel by going back to Lacan‟s reading and
focusing on the element of Antigone‟s desire or „jouissance‟. Yet, she also criticizes Lacan in
her essay for bringing Jocaste in and then making her disappear again under a phallogocentric
framework. According to Lacan, Antigone copies her mother‟s desire, and thus takes up the
mother role in a patriarchic system, yet, this surely contradicts Sophocles‟ story in which
Antigone dies as a “virgin”. Antigone indeed identifies with her mother, but not in order to
become a mother herself. And this is what Lacan doesn‟t see: his reading is trapped in “the
dreadful paradigm of a mother who is both wife and mother to her husband”75
, since he
forgets to distinguish between women as mothers and women as women. Irigaray doesn‟t
disregard the fact that Antigone commits suicide, and thus indeed is motivated by a death
drive of some sort, yet, Antigone hangs herself in order to not to become another phallic
mother, but to stay the female subject she truly is. Next to her search for female subjectivity,
Antigone also appears to be longing for the reinstalment of a maternal, female genealogy,
which would make it possible for women to be subjects of their own.76
In the Irigarayian
73
74
Ibid., p. 223.
75
Ibid., p. 218.
76
Irigaray seems to be hinting at the possibility of the existence of such a maternal genealogy when stating the
following: “Could it be their [i.e. Antigone‟s and Polyneices‟] complicity in the permanence, the continuance of
blood that a matriarchal type of lineage ensures in its purest and most universal being? […] Or is it rather that

17
sense, the anti-woman thus is a subversive female agent who has acted in a political way as
well, by going against the patriarch‟s power.
The Irigarayian Antigone that is presented to us in An ethics and in Thinking is the
same subversive woman as in Speculum, yet, Irigaray has now made her into an emblem of
her ethics of sexual difference and of feminist political philosophy, by having liberated her
from the former phallogocentric framework. In An ethics, Irigaray again argues against
Hegel‟s (and de Beauvoir‟s) dialectic by stating that Antigone is “neither master nor slave”77
,
and claims that in order to come to an ethics of sexual difference, “the role historically
allotted to woman”78
should be transformed. Irigaray then claims that Antigone could be an
ethical inspiration to us, by stating that “she must be allowed to speak”79
so that a more
feminine Symbolic might start to rise up. This (re)creation of a feminine Symbolic would not
only make female subjectivity possible, but would also bring men and women closer together,
according to Irigaray, since women would now have the right to be conscious subjects (unlike
Hegel‟s Antigone), and men would no longer be closed up in solipsism (like Hegel‟s
Creon).80
However, what really makes Irigaray‟s reconceptualization of Antigone so different
from the four former ethical rereadings is that she politicizes Antigone as well in a feminine
manner in Thinking. As argued before, this political aspect is already present in Speculum
where Irigaray connects Antigone to the disruption and subversion of patriarchy, yet it‟s only
in the later works that she‟s actually constructing a political theory of sexuate rights via the
figure of Antigone.81
In Thinking, Irigaray is trying to create a political feminist philosophy of
“social justice”82
, by focusing on “the great mother-daughter couples of mythology”83
, such as
Jocaste and Antigone, in order to counter patriarchy.
We will come back to how Irigaray makes this mother-daughter relationship and the
figure of Antigone fruitful for analyzing the problem of female Oedipal rivalry in the
conclusion, but first, two critical remarks have to be made when it comes to Irigaray‟s
analysis.
brother and sister share in the same sperm […]?”. See Irigaray, Speculum of the other woman, p. 216. We will
come back to the issue of genealogies in the conclusion of this paper starting from p. 19.
77
78
Ibid., p. 100.
79
Ibid., p. 107.
80
See Loc. cit.
81
Next to Thinking, another example of Irigaray‟s more politically oriented approach can be found in L. Irigaray,
“How To Define Sexuate Rights?”, Translated by D. Macey, in: M. Whitford (ed.), The Irigaray Reader,
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992, p. 204-212 (hereafter: Whitford (ed.), The Irigaray Reader).
82
Irigaray, Thinking the Difference, p. 9.
83
Loc. cit.

18
2.2. Irigaray’s Antigone evaluated. Some critical notes.
Although I would like to claim that Irigaray‟s reception of Antigone can be seen as politically
relevant, Judith Butler seems to think otherwise: in Antigone’s Claim, she argues that Irigaray
doesn‟t see Antigone as a political being, but rather as someone “who articulates a prepolitical
opposition to politics”84
and thus has to be situated in the prepolitical, familial sphere.
Antigone only “represents kinship”85
, and although Antigone points at a different (maybe
even pre-existing?) matriarchal genealogy, she is only theorized by Irigaray as a prepolitical
subject, which doesn‟t make her significant when wanting to construct a feminist politics. Yet
Butler‟s analysis isn‟t really nuanced: she first of all fails at contextualizing Irigaray‟s
conceptualization of Antigone. Butler is obviously referring to Antigone as the anti-woman in
Speculum, but forgets that Irigaray is intentionally working with this negative
phallogocentric-like description of Antigone in order to subvert this image. Butler just isn‟t
attentive to Irigaray‟s typical strategy of essentialism, and secondly, she ignores all of the
other instances in which Irigaray has constructed a more positive, ethical and political image
of Antigone.86
One of the reasons why Butler has reacted so negatively towards Irigaray‟s
conceptualization of Antigone could have to do with the fact that Butler has argued elsewhere
that disrupting the masculine Symbolic of patriarchy isn‟t far-reaching enough to bring about
change on a political level87
, yet, I find her position problematic.
There is one real deficiency in Irigaray‟s reception, however, and that has to do with
Antigone‟s sister, Ismene, and the fact that Irigaray seemingly hasn‟t really mentioned her
much. In Speculum, Irigaray does describe Ismene as Antigone‟s overemotional sister, who‟s
almost collaborating with patriarchy, and tries to stop Antigone from acting as a disloyal
84
Butler, Antigone’s Claim, p. 2.
85
Ibid., p. 4.
86
By not taking An ethics of sexual difference, and Thinking the Difference into account, Butler falls back into a
very superficial and non-contextualized reading of Irigaray‟s Antigone. That this is highly problematic becomes
clear when Butler states the following: “Indeed, one finds Antigone defended and championed, for instance, by
Luce Irigaray as a principle of feminine defiance of statism and an example of anti-authoritarianism.” See Ibid.,
p. 1. This might be applicable to Antigone as the anti-woman (and even then there‟s more to Antigone than this),
yet it is totally incompatible with Irigaray‟s own views. In Thinking, Irigaray for instance states that she
disagrees with the traditional interpretations of Antigone who see her as “a sort of a young anarchist”. Antigone
rather upholds the positive values of a feminine politics. See Irigaray, Thinking the Difference, p. 67.
87
See for instance J. Butler, “The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva”, Hypatia 3 (1989) 3, p. 104-118, where she
has criticized Julia Kristeva‟s concept of the semiotic chora for not being permanently subversive. I have the
feeling that Butler often mistakes Kristeva‟s and Irigaray‟s theories for being apolitical, or prepolitical, while I
would like to argue that that is not the case: their theories are in fact feminist, and revolutionary political of
nature.

19
woman.88
The reason why Irigaray is only portraying Ismene as a passive, neurotic female
figure probably has to do with the fact that she in Speculum is strategically mimicking the
Hegelian and Lacanian readings. But, one does wonder why Irigaray is focusing so much on
Antigone, while, according to her own philosophy in Speculum, Ismene might be an even
more ideal candidate to subvert patriarchy – since it is her, and not Antigone, that is described
as the stereotypical hysterical woman. Irigaray could have probably made Ismene more
fruitful for her own theory, by reading her as a possible paradigm for her own hysterical-
mimetical strategy in Speculum, in my opinion. Yet, I do want to defend Irigaray‟s reading,
and that is why I would like to argue that although Irigaray has let Antigone overshadow
Ismene, she in fact has constantly emphasized the importance of creating another Symbolic
via theorizing sisterhood and the mother-daughter relationship in a feminine, non-phallic way.
In the conclusion that follows, I thus would like to argue that Irigaray is interested in
not only reshaping the vertical, but also the horizontal, sisterly relations between women,
since, according to her, “there are indeed almost no symbolic forms of love of the same in the
feminine”89
. This symbolic (and cultural) devaluation of the feminine self has led to rivalry
between women, and this is something that Irigaray wants to solve – since female rivalry only
reinforces phallogocentrism and patriarchy.
Conclusion. Some useful Irigarayian tools for a theory of change. Irigaray’s
Antigone and Ismene as feminist-political symbols.
“Without realizing it, or willing it, in most cases, women constitute the most terrible instrument of
their own oppression: they destroy anything that emerges from their undifferentiated condition and
thus become agents of their own annihilation, their reduction to a sameness that is not their own.”
(Irigaray, An ethics of sexual difference, p. 88)
In the beginning of this paper, I mentioned the political issue of female Oedipal rivalry, and
how this phenomenon only works to the advantage of patriarchic politics and patriarchy in
general, since female politicians are then divided over important feminist topics, instead of
forming a sisterly front. I have argued that we need some kind of a feminist-political
paradigm in order to come to a new kind of politics, and that is why I have chosen to take a
look at a couple of rereadings of the figure of Antigone. In this conclusion, I will try to
88
See Irigaray, Speculum of the other woman, p. 218 where Irigaray mentions Ismene twice: “Ismene seems
indisputably a „woman‟ in her weakness, her fear, her submissive obedience, her tears, madness, hysteria […].”
And then: “Ismene is subsequently shut up, as a punishment, in the palace, in the house, with the other women
[…].” The image that we get of Ismene here is rather phallogocentric: she‟s the silenced, muted woman.
89
L. Irigaray, “Women-Amongst-Themselves. Creating a Woman-to-Woman Sociality”, in: Whitford (ed.), The
Irigaray Reader, Translated by D. Macey, p. 192 (hereafter: Irigaray, “Women-Amongst-Themselves”).

20
present Antigone and her sister Ismene as political-feminist paradigms via an Irigarayian
perspective, since Irigaray‟s rereading of Antigone (and also of Ismene if we take her analysis
of sisterhood into account) is ethical and political of nature.
Yet, before we look into the possibility of constructing such a feminine politics, based
on sisterhood, I would first of all want to stress that using an Irigarayian perspective in a
paper that mentions women fighting for or against quota laws, isn‟t that evident: the quota
laws that are currently being executed in Flemish politics have to be located in positive
discrimination strategies that are part of the agenda of equality (feminist) politics. Irigaray, as
a difference feminist, has never been very enthusiastic about equality politics and equality
feminism in particular: when arguing against de Beauvoir, she for instance has stated the
following:
“Demanding equality, as women, seems to me to be an erroneous expression of a real issue.
Demanding to be equal presupposes a term of comparison. Equal to what? What do women want to be
equal to? Men? […]”90
This doesn‟t mean however that Irigaray‟s perspective now all of the sudden has become
irrelevant here; she is not anti-equality, yet, she wants to create a nuanced feminist politics in
which quota for women are supported and guided by a meticulous deconstruction of
patriarchic structures, so that quota could actually stand a chance, if implemented. Irigaray
thus recognizes the potential danger of falling back into a superficial equality politics that
would just turn the tables around and that would thus leave the hegemony of power intact – as
we have seen, this is exactly the kind of risky anti-politics that has created the problematic
situation of rivalry between female politicians!
With this warning in mind, we can now turn to the question whether we could
transform these rivalrous women in politics into sisters. As we have seen, the sisterly bond
between Antigone and Ismene in The Antigone, and in Irigaray‟s Speculum, appears to be
rather non-existent at first: in the original play, the sisters seem to be bickering more than
anything else, and Ismene‟s help is bitterly rejected by Antigone.91
Irigaray is of course only
repeating the phallogocentric rereadings of Antigone and Ismene which seem to be playing
out these women as enemies. Since she is deconstructing these phallogocentric images, her
perspective is probably open for another, more feminine, sisterly analysis of Antigone and
90
L. Irigaray, “Equal or Different?”, Translated by D. Macey, in: Whitford (ed.), The Irigaray Reader, p. 32.
91
See for instance the following quote by Antigone: “I won‟t insist, no, even if you should have a change of
heart, I‟d never welcome you in the labor, not with me.” See Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays. Antigone;
Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus, Translated by R. Fagles, with an introduction and notes by B. Knox,
New York: Penguin Books, 1984, p. 63.

21
Ismene, yet, we‟re of course still trapped within the problematic framework of the original
play. However, Sophocles‟ version has left a lot of things open for interpretation, as argued by
political theorist Bonnie Honig: in her essay “Ismene‟s Forced Choice”92
, she tackles the
mystery of Polyneices‟ first burial and claims that Sophocles might be suggesting that Ismene
has buried him the first time. This suggestion would then change Ismene from a passive figure
into an equally politically active character as Antigone, and both of them could then be seen
as “partners in action”93
, rather than as rivals. This is exactly what we‟re looking for, and this
more feminist interpretation of the two sisters as anti-patriarchic partners in crime can be
theoretically supported by Irigaray‟s ideas about maternal genealogies and sisterhood, as
presented and in her essays “The Bodily Encounter With The Mother”94
, “Women-Amongst-
Themselves”, and in An ethics.
One of Irigaray‟s theses is that our Western culture is founded on a “matricide”95
which has resulted in an undervaluation of the mother figure and of her genealogy. Any
“bodily encounter with the mother”96
since then has been forbidden, and in order to become a
(male) subject, one has to detach oneself from one‟s motherly origin, as can be seen in the
Oedipus complex. This has resulted in an overemphasis on a merely masculine Symbolic, and
this in turn has deprived women of their subjectivity. Irigaray wants to change this situation,
by first of all revaluing the importance of the mother figure: women have to place themselves
in the “genealogy of women”97
once more, so that vertical relationships between daughters
and mothers may come into being again. Women need “a shared horizon”98
, a feminine
Symbolic of their own in order to become speaking subjects, and this can only be created via
a positive reinstalment of mother-daughter relationships, according to Irigaray. Women can
only refrain from seeing each other as rivals (i.e. as competitors for the same men) if they no
longer perceive their mother as the woman they have to replace in order to become part of
society, or as Irigaray has stated it:
“If we are to be desired and loved by men, we must abandon our mothers, substitute for them,
eliminate them in order to be the same. All of which destroys the possibility of a love between mother
92
B. Honig, “Ismene‟s Forced Choice. Sacrifice And Sorority in Sophocles‟ Antigone”, Arethusa 44 (2011), p.
29-68 (hereafter: Honig, “Ismene‟s Forced Choice”).
93
Ibid., p. 61.
94
L. Irigaray, “The Bodily Encounter With The Mother”, Translated by D. Macey, in: Whitford (ed.), The
Irigaray Reader, p. 34-46 (hereafter: Irigaray, “The Bodily Encounter With The Mother”).
95
Ibid., p. 36.
96
Ibid., p. 39.
97
Ibid., p. 44.
98
Irigaray, “Women-Amongst-Themselves”, p. 192.

22
and daughter. The two become at once accomplices and rivals in order to move into the single possible
position in the desire of man.”99
If we succeed at reconceptualizing this negative image of the phallic mother, then
horizontal, non-rivalrous bonds between women become possible as well, since they no
longer would have to compete with each other to be “the mother of mothers”100
. Once the
cultural debt towards the mother has been repaid, by making women aware of this
problematic situation through certain strategies101
, horizontal, sisterly relationships will arise,
since women will now be able to see each others as individuals. A “female ethics”102
would
then come into being, and this ethics (which for Irigaray is a prerequisite for an ethics of
sexual difference between female and male subjects) also has political consequences, since
women as sisters would be able to team up against patriarchic, anti-feminist politics.
I would like to claim that Antigone and Ismene would be the perfect paradigms for an
Irigarayian inspired feminist politics: both figures shouldn‟t be located in the domain of the
prepolitical, nor in the ethical sphere only – they truly are political, revolutionary, and
subversive feminine agents that want to bring about change. Although Luce Irigaray hasn‟t
provided us with an immediately applicable response to the problem of female Oedipal
rivalry, her feminist theoretical ideas on mother-daughter relations and sisterhood have given
us a clear starting point to purify Antigone and Ismene from their former phallogocentric
connotations. And although it is obvious that the issue of female rivalry still plays a role in
contemporary politics and our society – which means that an Irigarayian feminine Symbolic is
still in the making – it is also clear that these two rebellious sisters could be used as feminist-
political paradigms of inspiration in order to establish a new kind of feminine, and feminist,
politics…
Bibliography.
Books.
Butler, Judith, Antigone’s Claim. Kinship Between Life and Death, New York: Columbia
University Press, 2000.
99
100
Loc. cit.
101
Strategies such as publicly displaying images of ancient mother-daughter couples in order to revalue these
relationships, as Irigaray has suggested in Thinking the Difference, p. 12.
102

23
de Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex, Translated by Parshley, H. M., with an introduction to
the vintage edition by Bair, Deirde, New York: Vintage Books, 1989 (originally
published in French as Le deuxième sexe, Paris: Gallimard, 1949).
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24
Lacan, Jacques, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan.
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Seuil, 1986).
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published in Greek as Antigone in the 5th century B.C.).
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Arethusa 44 (2011), p. 29-68.

25
Irigaray, Luce, “Equal or Different?”, Translated by Macey, David, in: Whitford, Margaret
(ed.), The Irigaray Reader, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992 (first published in
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------------------, “How To Define Sexuate Rights?”, -----------------------------------, p. 204-212.
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, p. 190-197.
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Antigone”, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 14 (2000) 2, p. 121-137.
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Belga/kh, “The Chamber obliges some companies to have one third of women in their boards
of directors” / “Kamer verplicht sommige bedrijven een derde vrouwen in
bestuursraden te hebben”, De Morgen, 16/06/2011
(http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/5036/Wetstraat/article/detail/1279749/2011/06/16/Ka
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keurt wetsvoorstel „vrouwenquota‟ goed”, posted on
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26
Homans, Liesbeth, in: Verelst, Jeroen, “Not a product of „denigratory‟ quota that she has
professionally annihilated earlier this week” / “Géén product van de 'denigrerende'
quota die ze deze week vakkundig door de gehaktmolen haalde”, De Morgen,
05/03/2011, see http://www.liesbethhomans.be/citaten/g%C3%A9%C3%A9n-
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haalde (accessed on 11/07/2011).
Van dermeersch, Anke, “Women‟s quota can only cure the symptoms” / “Vrouwenquota zijn
slechts symptoombestrijding”, 30/03/2011, see
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