Publisher's Synopsis
This book explores the enduring myth of Antigone, constantly rediscovered and relevant across centuries. It examines how myth influences collective consciousness and is kept alive through rituals. Antigone's marginal position, created by the exclusion of Polynices from the death ritual, is analyzed using the concept of liminality developed by Van Gennep and Turner. The process of people on the threshold, likened to being in the womb by Turner, is explained through Kristeva's ideas of subjectivity, chora, abject, and poetic language, as well as the thoughts of Guattari and Levinas. It shows how subjectivity can be constructed as singularity in moments of crisis. The book also discusses how Antigone, a founding myth of Western thought, is reconstructed in the work of Kamila Shamsie. Her rewriting of Antigone, through the character of Aneeka, a Muslim Urdu-British woman, demonstrates Antigone's timeless power of resistance. Both Antigone and Aneeka validate Guattari's view that subjectivity can be individualized through social and semiological ties, positioning themselves in relation to otherness, family habits, local customs, and judicial laws.
