Risky Subjectivity: Antigone, Action, and Universal Trespass

Abstract

In this paper, I draw on the mutually implicated structures of tragedy and self-formation found in Hegel's use of Sophocles' Antigone in the Phenomenology. By emphasizing the apparent distinction between particular and universal in Hegel's reading of the tragedies in Antigone, I propose that a tragedy of action (which particularizes a universal) is inescapable for subjectivity understood as socially constituted and always already socially engaged. I consider universal/particular relations in three communities: Hegel's Greek polis, his community of conscience, and my reading of certain feminist communities. The position I propose establishes a ground from which to approach subjects, and implies that all subjects may be understood as the result of relations embodying potential tragedy. This speaks to contemporary concerns about marginalization, identity articulation, and relations of recognition.

Repression and Return of Nature in Hegel and Beyond

“…Regarding the interplay of life, self-consciousness, and community, Karen Ng holds that to become actualized in truth and to "to fully become objective to itself", it is insufficient for self-consciousness to find life as the other of itself [28] 11 . Instead, what is needed is that self-consciousness find itself by facing another self-consciousness 12 . This relationship, Ng writes, "culminates in an entire cultural and ethical world that knows itself to varying degrees which Hegel calls spirit (Geist)" 13 .…”

“…In respect of my focus on the suppression of nature in the Phenomenology, and especially in self-consciousness sections, see recent feminist and psychoanalytical studies of the subject, including in Hegel's Phenomenology, by Karin de Boer, "Hegel's Antigone and the Tragedy of Cultural Difference" [9] (31-45); Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, "The Freudian Subject, from Politics to Ethics" [10] (109-127). Hereafter, "The Freudian Subject"; Luce Irigaray, "Love Between Us" [11] (180-190); Anna Mudde, "Risky Subjectivity: Antigone, Action, and Universal Trespass" [12] (183-200); Tuija Pulkkinen, "Differing Spirits: Reflections on Hegelian Inspiration in Feminist Theory" [13] (19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37). See also Jacques Derrida's account of Hegel's examination of Antigone in Glas [14].…”

Formulating professional identity

“…This distinction produces an account that renders NGO activity answerable to demands for involvement and affiliation, while at the same time defining such affiliation in terms of the organization's otherwise non-partisan stance. Again, note how this subjectivity is negatively articulated relative to the aporiatic terms to which NGO work is made answerable (see also Hardimon 1994, Mudde 2009). Put differently, just as in the accounts recorded in Extracts 1.1 and 1.2, where Paige's appeal to effectiveness shines a light on the contradictory terms of reference to which aid work is made accountable, so too, Sonja's invocation here of the organizational mandate aims at making her professional activities answerable to the same sort of moral imperatives.…”