Antígonas vulnerables: Hermenéutica del mito

Abstract

The present thesis aims to carry out a hermeneutic analysis of Antigone, the tragedy written by Sophocles in 442 BC, and four of its contemporary rewritings: Antigone by the French playwright Jean Anouilh (1942-1944), La tumba de Antígona by the exiled philosopher-poet María Zambrano (1967), Antígona González by the Mexican writer Sara Uribe (2012) and the Colombian play Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres by Tramaluna Teatro and Carlos Satizábal (2014). The main objective is to produce an exegesis that addresses the ethical possibilities of the dimension acquired by the tragic, and its conflict in the plays. The methodology of this research is developed through an interdisciplinary dialogue that relates literary creation with three theoretical frameworks that are inscribed in different areas of cultural studies and have in common the establishment of a critical distance about the theoretical current that was inaugurated with the Socratic school and integrated into the great paradigms of modern Western thought. In its origins, this was articulated around a dichotomous and hierarchical taxonomy where man, masculinity, heterosexuality, upper class, and adulthood, linked to attributes such as rationality, autonomy, independence, coherence, or emotional containment, became the privileged and normative categories as opposed to other ways of being, knowing and relating. The approach to these critical approaches and their conceptual universe will serve as a support to approach this analytical task and establish parallels between the texts and their aesthetic, historical, and cultural contexts of production. We refer to: (a) the hermeneutic current that has investigated, updated, and defended the continuity of the genre of tragedy in contemporary times from different areas of knowledge, such as anthropology, philosophy, literary criticism, and sociology; (b) the ethics of care; and (c) poststructuralist and queer feminisms. As will be seen, canonical interpretations of the Sophoclean Antigone and its rewritings tend to define and analyze the tragic conflict in terms of an irreconcilable dichotomous tension: individual/community, private/public, masculine/feminine, or familial/political. This research hypothesizes that this conception is indebted to the aforementioned Socratic system of thought that perpetuates a hierarchical, patriarchal, and essentialist narrative about the tragic event and the human being. From this starting point, the objectives are twofold: to analyze the presence of this perspective in the texts and, on other hand, to carry out a critique of the plays, from the aforementioned theoretical frameworks, which seeks to destabilize and even transcend the dichotomous perspective on the tragic conflict of the Antigones. Ultimately, the aim is to explore whether the hermeneutics employed possess an ethical potential that connects the plays and their tragic nature with the reality in which they have been produced and read and with a present traversed by the presence of multiple forms of violence. Ultimately, this thesis aims to contribute to existing analyses of the classical play and the aforementioned versions through a broad, comparative critical perspective that connects the hermeneutic production of Greek tragedy with contemporary hermeneutics, post-structuralist and queer feminisms, and the ethics of care.