Antigone's Sisters

Lenart Škof

Description

In Antigone's Sisters, Lenart Škof explores the power of love in our world—stronger than violence and, ultimately, stronger even than death. Focusing on Antigone, Savitri, and Mary, the book offers an investigation into various goddesses and feminine figures from a variety of philosophical, mythological, theological, and literary contexts. The book also elaborates on the feminine aspects of selected concepts from modern philosophical texts, such as the Matrix in Jakob Böhme, Clara in F. W. J. Schelling, beyng in Martin Heidegger, chóra in Jacques Derrida, and breath in Luce Irigaray's thought. Drawing on Bracha M. Ettinger's concept of matrixiality, Škof proposes a new matrixial theory of philosophy, cosmology, and theology of love. Despite its many usages and appropriations, love remains a neglected topic within Western philosophy. With its new interpretation of Antigone and related readings of Irigaray, Kristeva, and Ettinger, Antigone's Sisters aims to identify some of the reasons for this forgetting of love, and to show that it is only love that can bring peace to our ethically disrupted world.
Acknowledgments

Prelude: The Matrix of Love / Ettingerian Matrixial Web

Part I: Cosmology / Theology of Love

1. Antigone / Savitri

2. Metis / Lepa Vida

3. Bethlehemite Concubine / Mary

Interlude: Interval / Time of Love

Part II: Philosophy / Ontology of Love

4. Clara / The Matrix

5. Beyng / Sister

6. Irigaray / Breath

Postlude: Jesus / Antigone

Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Sujets

• Gender studies
• Philosophy of religion
• Theology

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438482750
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

ANTIGONE’S SISTERS
SUNY series in Theology and Continental Thought

Douglas L. Donkel, editor
ANTIGONE’S SISTERS
O N THE M ATRIX OF L OVE
LENART ŠKOF
Cover image: “Matrixial Web,” from the series Elartemis#ses3 by Maja Bjelica
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
Names: Škof, Lenart, 1972– author.
Title: Antigone’s sisters : on the matrix of love / Lenart Škof.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2021. | Series: SUNY series in theology and continental thought | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020024808 | ISBN 9781438482736 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438482750 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Antigone (Mythological character) | Femininity (Philosophy) | Love.
Classification: LCC BL820.A68 S56 2021 | DDC 128/.46—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024808
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
PRELUDE: The Matrix of Love / Ettingerian Matrixial Web
P ART I: C OSMOLOGY / T HEOLOGY OF L OVE
1 Antigone / Savitri
2 Metis / Lepa Vida
3 Bethlehemite Concubine / Mary
INTERLUDE: Interval / Time of Love
P ART II: P HILOSOPHY / O NTOLOGY OF L OVE
4 Clara / The Matrix
5 Beyng / Sister
6 Irigaray / Breath
POSTLUDE: Jesus / Antigone
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many philosophers and theologians that should be mentioned at the beginning of this book. I hope that my humble indebtedness to all them is visible throughout the book. First of all, let me thank Tine Hribar for his encouragements and support to embark on another philosophical journey—this time by writing a book on Antigone. Among my main influences, I wish to highlight in particular various encounters with the thoughts of Luce Irigaray, Bracha L. Ettinger, John D. Caputo, and Clemens Sedmak. Without them this book could not have been written in its present form.
I would like to thank my dear colleague Maja Bjelica from the Institute for Philosophical Studies at Science and Research Centre Koper for the beautiful photos from her Elartemis#Ses3 series, which express our philosophical correspondences and our ethical conspiracy in a beautiful way. Also, I thank her cordially for all her assistance with the editorial work.
I also thank Vlasta Pacheiner-Klander for her illuminative reflections on Savitri, and also my sincere thanks to Robert Faas for sharing with me his careful translations of insightful mystical materials of Jakob Böhme. I wish to express my thanks to my friend Jeff Stewart for allowing me to publish from his unpublished work. I want to thank three anonymous reviewers for their criticism and extremely valuable suggestions for improvements of my arguments in the book. I also want to express my gratitude to SUNY Press editors Doug Donkel and James Peltz—for their editorial support and care for this project, and to Eileen Nizer for taking care of the publication process of the book. Finally, I am indebted to my colleague Gašper Pirc for helping me with the final version of my index.
Some chapters and sections of this book were previously published in the following journals and edited collections:
“Antigone / Savitri”: short parts of this chapter (also without the appendix on Alcestis) were published as “On Sacred Genealogies in Antigone and Savitri,” in Poesis of Peace: Narratives, Cultures, and Philosophies , edited by Klaus-Gerd Giesen, Carool Kersten, and Lenart Škof, 68–77 (New York: Routledge, 2017). Materials reprinted with permission.
“Metis / Fair Vida”: an earlier and shorter version of this chapter (also without appendix on Favour) was published as “The Material Principle and an Ethics of Hospitality and Compassion: Requiem for Lampedusa,” Annales, Series historia et sociologia 25, no. 2 (2015): 263–72. Materials reprinted with permission.
“Bethlehemite Concubine / Mary”: an earlier and shorter version of this chapter (also without the appendix on Sophia) was first published as “God, Incarnation in the Feminine, and the Third Presence,” Sophia 2018, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-018-0646-9 . Materials reprinted with permission.
“Interval / Time of Love”: originally published as “An Interval of Grace: The Time of Ethics,” SpazioFilosofico 17, no. 2 (2016): 211–24. Reprinted with permission.
“Irigaray / Breath”: an earlier and shorter version of this chapter (without the appendix on Chora) was published as “Breath as a Way of Self-Affection” in Bogoslovni vestnik 77, no. 3/4 (2017): 577−87 and in Atmospheres of Breathing , edited by Lenart Škof and Petri Berndtson (Albany: SUNY Press, 2018), 51−67. Materials reprinted with permission.
The following chapters and sections of this book were translated into English by Petra Berlot Kužner: Introduction, part on Savitri, all supplements to chapters, and chapter “ Beyng / Sister .” Also attributed to her are the translations of Irigaray’s later works in Italian and selected translations of Claudel’s poetry in the book.
Finally, I want to thank to Suzana, Lucijan and Lev, for providing me with the most elemental matrix of all matrixes—our family.
Lenart Škof, January 2021
Photos by Dr. Maja Bjelica: Elartemis#Ses3
The photographic series Elartemis#Ses3 is one of the rings of the chain project Elartemis , in which the author researches the visual worlds of the elements, emotions, and echoing experiences. Images are created out of analogue unedited black and white photographs that she takes randomly and intuitively. The photographs are then digitally reframed and presented in print after a playful mirroring process that brings the eye unimagined realities and sp(l)aces.
The sequence presented here was inspired by thoughts on the feminine and matrixiality by Lenart Škof, which the author was following through her postgraduate studies in philosophy and anthropology. The title of this sequence, the third one of the larger ongoing project of fourfold symmetrals Elartemis , is constructed as Ses3 . This, in the Slovenian language, the mother tongue of both authors, reads as “ sestri ” and carries a double meaning, “two sisters” and “to (a) sister.” It derives directly from the inspiration of Lenart Škof’s present work, which gives voice, voice in différance, to the sisters of this (and other) worlds. Intuitively selected, the images offered in this book are a result of both authors’ mutual commitment and meeting expressions.


unending matrix
PRELUDE


emanating love

T HE M ATRIX OF L OVE / E TTINGERIAN M ATRIXIAL W EB
This matrixial awareness accompanies us from the dawn of life.
—Bracha L. Ettinger, The Matrixial Borderspace
Christ and Mary, differently and together, recognize, in short, the sovereign lucidity of Antigone … And they invite all women, natural mothers of the species, not to halt the flow of childbearing but to join with them (Jesus and Mary) at one of the possible crossroads of Greek and Jewish memory.
—Julia Kristeva, “Antigone: Limit and Horizon”
O my daughter! O little child like my essential soul, you whom I must again resemble. / When desire is purged by desire. / Blessed be God, for in my place there is born a child without pride. …
—Paul Claudel, Five Great Odes , trans. Edward Lucie-Smith
This book is about Antigone and the related cosmic, philosophical, and theological possibilities for a new thinking on the matrix of love. Antigone is thus put in dialogue with her genealogical sisters; among them are ancient mythological and cosmological characters on one side, and various philosophical and theological feminine figures on the other side. For this purpose, a series of readings, relating to Antigone and her unconditional ethical gesture, is offered in this book. This attempt rests upon a belief that a shift from the ontology of violence to the ethics of love and tenderness would only be possible through an enhanced matrixial 1 identity as developed and defended throughout this book: by matrixial identity, we point to the ontologico-ethical core of the feminine identity, whose lack or even absence in our cultures of intersubjectivities and/or communities is visible in numerous sufferings of women, children, and men throughout history and in every culture of this world that we are sharing. According to Ettinger, an ethical difference that is feminine, and will guide us throughout this book, is explained as follows:
I propose departing from a difference that is feminine from the onset, from a rapport of borderlinking in an originary psychical sphere that I have named “matrixial.” In the matrixial sphere, not-knowing the feminine difference is impossible inasmuch as this difference in itself is a co-naissance (knowledge of being-born-together). … This cross-inscription is transmitted by matrixial effects such as empathy, awe, com-passion and compassion, languishing, horror, and maybe telepathy. However, the transgression itself is a bridging and an accessing to the other already in the feminine. … The matrixi