Antigone in the Americas

Andrés Fabián Henao Castro

Description

Sophocles's classical tragedy, Antigone, is continually reinvented, particularly in the Americas. Theater practitioners and political theorists alike revisit the story to hold states accountable for their democratic exclusions, as Antigone did in disobeying the edict of her uncle, Creon, for refusing to bury her brother, Polynices. Antigone in the Americas not only analyzes the theoretical reception of Antigone, when resituated in the Americas, but further introduces decolonial rumination as a new interpretive methodology through which to approach classical texts. Traveling between modern present and ancient past, Andrés Fabián Henao Castro focuses on metics (resident aliens) and slaves, rather than citizens, making the feminist politics of burial long associated with Antigone relevant for theorizing militant forms of mourning in the global south. Grounded in settler colonial critique, black and woman of color feminisms, and queer and trans of color critique, Antigone in the Americas offers a more radical interpretation of Antigone, one relevant to subjects situated under multiple and interlocking systems of oppression.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Slaves, Metics, Citizens
The Ancient Drama of Political Membership: Slavery, Metoikia, and Citizenship in Sophocles's Antigone
The Modern/Colonial Drama of Political Membership, SettlerColonial Capitalism, and the Slave–Metic–Citizen Triad
Redefining the Political Through Its Subtending Racialized Logic of Valuation
From Antigone in the Americas to the Americas in Antigone
From Classicization to Decolonial Rumination
Chapter Overview

1. Antigone in Colonial Antiquity: A Critique of Democratic Theory in Ancient Athens
The Democratic Disavowal of Slavery and Metoikia
Tragedy's Misinterpellated Anarchy
Toward a Political Antigone
What If Antigone Was a Metic?
What If Polyneices Was a Slave?

2. Antigone in Colonial Modernity: A Critique of Feminist and Queer Theory in North America
Slavery, Metoikia, and Citizenship in Colonial Modernity
From the Queer Equivocality of Kinship Positions to the Racial Equivocality of Social Positions
Whose Ethical Act of Sublimation?
Tiresias's Gender Complementarity and the Fungibilitycum Fugitivity of Black Transness
Whose Future?
Fear of a Quare and TwoSpirit Planet

3. Antigone in Colonial Postmodernity: A Critique of Biopolitics in Latin America
Slavery, Metoikia, and Citizenship in Colonial Postmodernity
A Modern Biopolitical Antigone in Europe
Postmodern Necropolitical Antigones in Latin America
From Modern Melodrama to Postmodern Decolonial Cacophonies

4. Antigone in the Settler‑Colonial Present of the Racial Capitalocene: A Critique of Deconstruction in the Americas
Antigone in the Age of the Racial Capitalocene
The Racialized Burial and the Human Border
A Specter Is Haunting the Americas
Decolonial Mourning at the Level of WorldHistorical Events
Black and Indigenous Wakeful Mo'nin

Conclusion: What Is There Instead of Being Born?

Notes
Bibliography
Name Index
Subject Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• Cultures
• Gender studies
• Caribbean
• Latin America
• Indigenous peoples
• Comparative literature
• Ethnic studies
• Latin American

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438484297
• Langue: English

Extrait

Antigone in the Americas
SUNY series in Gender Theory

Tina Chanter, editor
Antigone in the Americas
Democracy, Sexuality, and Death in the Settler Colonial Present
ANDRÉS FABIÁN HENAO CASTRO
Cover photo is “Daniel/Daniela 2.” Lenticular photograph from Juan Manuel Echavarría’s series Requiem NN (2006–2013), reproduced with artist’s permission.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Henao Castro, Andres Fabian, author.
Title: Antigone in the Americas: democracy, sexuality, and death in the settler colonial present / Andrés Fabián Henao Castro.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2021] | Series: SUNY series in Gender Theory | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438484273 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438484297 (ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
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Contents
L IST OF I LLUSTRATIONS
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I NTRODUCTION Slaves, Metics , Citizens
The Ancient Drama of Political Membership: Slavery, Metoikia , and Citizenship in Sophocles’s Antigone
The Modern/Colonial Drama of Political Membership, SettlerColonial Capitalism, and the Slave– Metic –Citizen Triad
Redefining the Political Through Its Subtending Racialized Logic of Valuation
From Antigone in the Americas to the Americas in Antigone
From Classicization to Decolonial Rumination
Chapter Overview
C HAPTER 1 Antigone in Colonial Antiquity: A Critique of Democratic Theory in Ancient Athens
The Democratic Disavowal of Slavery and Metoikia
Tragedy’s Misinterpellated Anarchy
Toward a Political Antigone
What If Antigone Was a Metic ?
What If Polyneices Was a Slave?
C HAPTER 2 Antigone in Colonial Modernity: A Critique of Feminist and Queer Theory in North America
Slavery, Metoikia , and Citizenship in Colonial Modernity
From the Queer Equivocality of Kinship Positions to the Racial Equivocality of Social Positions
Whose Ethical Act of Sublimation?
Tiresias’s Gender Complementarity and the Fungibility cum Fugitivity of Black Transness
Whose Future?
Fear of a Quare and TwoSpirit Planet
C HAPTER 3 Antigone in Colonial Postmodernity: A Critique of Biopolitics in Latin America
Slavery, Metoikia , and Citizenship in Colonial Postmodernity
A Modern Biopolitical Antigone in Europe
Postmodern Necropolitical Antigones in Latin America
From Modern Melodrama to Postmodern Decolonial Cacophonies
C HAPTER 4 Antigone in the Settler-Colonial Present of the Racial Capitalocene: A Critique of Deconstruction in the Americas
Antigone in the Age of the Racial Capitalocene
The Racialized Burial and the Human Border
A Specter Is Haunting the Americas
Decolonial Mourning at the Level of WorldHistorical Events
Black and Indigenous Wakeful Mo’nin
C ONCLUSION What Is There Instead of Being Born?
N OTES
B IBLIOGRAPHY
N AME I NDEX
S UBJECT I NDEX
Illustrations
Figure 3.1 “Puerto Berrío’s Mausoleum.” Lenticular Photograph from Juan Manuel Echavarría’s series Réquiem NN (2006–2013) , reproduced with artist’s permission.
Figure 3.2 “Daniel/Daniela 1.” Lenticular Photograph from Juan Manuel Echavarría’s series Réquiem NN (2006–2013) , reproduced with artist’s permission.
Figure 3.3 “Daniel/Daniela 2.” Lenticular Photograph from Juan Manuel Echavarría’s series Réquiem NN (2006–2013) , reproduced with artist’s permission.
Acknowledgments
Antigone in the Americas took forever to finish and traveled a long distance. The idea of using Sophocles’s tragedy to dramatize contemporary problems of political membership took form after I participated in Bonnie Honig’s brilliant seminar on Antigone , during my attendance at the 2010 Summer School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. To all the participants in that seminar and especially to Bonnie, I owe an enormous debt. To frame the politics of burial of contemporary undocumented immigrants on the U.S. border through the tragedy of Antigone became the subject of my PhD dissertation, which I defended in 2014 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. My adviser, Nicholas Xenos, and the other members of my committee, Ivan Ascher, Adam Sitze, and Jim Hicks, supported this project since the very beginning. For the generosity of their intellectual engagement I only have the highest gratitude. My network of interlocutors at UMass Amherst was, however, much larger and I was able to discuss some of the ideas that would eventually make it into the book with other superb faculty and graduate students. I should have recorded many more names here but I would like to especially thank Roberto Alejandro, Angelica Bernal, Barbara Cruikshank, Sonia Alvarez, Agustin Lao-Montes, John Brigham, Jane Anderson, Leah Wing, Elva Fabiola Orozco Mendoza, Ruchika Singh, Martha Balaguera, Carlos Valderrama, Julieta Chaparro, Antonia Carcelen, Carmen Cosme, Andrés Jiménez, Leidy Hurtado, John Gibler, Aurora Vergara Figueroa, Bilal Gorguluoglu, Seda Saluk, Claire Sagan, Mike Stain, Alix Olson, Manuel Matos, Javier Campos, Hrvoje Cvijanovic, Dunya Deniz Cakir, Sid Issar, Kevin Henderson, Gabriel Mares, Luz María Sánchez, Tyler Schuenemann, Kanchuka Dharmasiri, Ivelisse Cuevas-Molina, and Ghazah Abbasi. Melissa Mueller deserves a special mention, as she was willing to engage in a close textual analysis of Sophocles’s original with me for a whole semester, just out of love for the tragedy. The same goes for Marios Philippides, Rex Wallace, and Debbie Felton who generously allowed me to join their classical Greek language courses, for me to be able to read Antigone in its original.
By the time I was about to defend my dissertation in 2014 I had become increasingly interested in another positionality, that of the enslaved. Such an interest coincided with my move to Amherst College, when I was selected as the Karl Lowenstein Fellow in 2014. The intellectual environment in Amherst was as stimulating, and I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Adam Sitze, Thomas Dumm, Andrew Poe, Austin Sarat, Pooja Rangan, Simon Stow, and Manuela Picq, and to the students who suffered through my seminar on Antigone for their creative interpretations and critiques of some of the texts that I engage in this book.
The tripartite system of political membership, as well as the reinterpretation of Antigone through the lenses of settler colonial critique that I offer in this text, fully formed during my research as an assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston, since the fall of 2014. Again, I should probably record many more names in here, but I would like to especially thank Heike Schotten, Leila Farsakh, Elizabeth Bussiere, Erin O’Brien, Joe Brown, Luis Jiménez, Ursula Tafe, Paul Watanabe, Shuai Jin, Caroline Coscia, Travis Johnston, Michelle Jurkovich, Paul Kowert, Rajini Srikhant, Meredith Reiches, Maria John, Denise Khor, Mickaella Perina, Karen Suyemoto, Elora Chowdhury, S. Tiffany Donaldson, Christina Bobel, Sofya Aptekar, Nedra Lee, Rakhshanda Saleem, Steven Levine, and Linda Uch for their intellectual camaraderie, collegiality, and friendship. As we all know, many ideas are first explored in the classroom, so I would also like to thank all of my students, especially Altan Atamer, Ezra Brown, Lucas Goren, Erin Mahoney, Kosar Mohamed, Bridget Mutebi, Brittany Orange, Lina Rubiere, Tatyana Shallop, Hadass Silver, and Sumaiya Zama, for their confidence in my teaching and for their very sharp observations about many political theories I address in this work. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my friends and comrades in the abolitionist organization Black Pink , especially to Anja Bircher, Michelle Jane Tat, Jason Lydon, and Johannes Mosquera.
I finished Antigone in the Americas in Bologna, after I was selected as the Post-Doctoral Fellow by the Academy of Global Humanities and Critical Theory (AGHCT) in 2018. Here, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to AGHCT Director Raffaele Laudani, for facilitating a great environment for the last part of my research. For their hospitality and our conversations, I would also like to thank Paolo Capuzzo, Davide Domenici, Carla Salvaterra, Maria Elena de Luna, Sandro Mezzadra, Antonio Schiavulli, and all the students who took my graduate seminar on “The Mis-Interpellated Subject.”
I undertook the final revisions of the book during my one-year residence at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) at Duke University, during the second year of my Fellowship with AGHCT, where I was able to organize another reading group on Antigone . Here, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the FHI Director, Ranji Khanna, as well as to Chris Chia, Sarah Rogers, Nima Bassiri, Roxana Bendezu, Carolyn Fulford, Pedro Gravatá Nicoli, Eva Wheeler, Riika Prattes, Magda Szczesniak, Marcelo Maciel Ramos, Eli Meyerhoff, Miriam Cooke, Veronica Davis, Charles Joseph del Dotto, Nick Hoff, Ryan Johnson, Saskia Cornes, Jennifer Zhou, and Claudia Milian.
Chapter 1 is a significantly modified version of a paper that I first presented at the 2014 NPSA Annual Meeting, under the invitation of David McIvor, who generously nominated the paper for the NPSA/McWilliams Best Paper prize in political theory, which I was awarded in 2015. I have most recently presented an updated version of this research