The Author as Antigone
The importance of calling out injustice, and about dealing with the threat of state-sanctioned violence that this brings.
Content Warnings: death, state-sanctioned violence.
This essay is a self-portrait, and this essay is a message.
I am drawn to Antigone in many ways. I am drawn to Antigone as the teenage girl who said “no”. I am drawn to Antigone as a recognition from two and a half thousand years ago that sometimes obeying authority makes a person wrong and complicit. I am drawn to Antigone as an acknowledged Classical work from two and a half thousand years ago that points out the only moral thing to do is break the law. I am drawn to Antigone as a girl vilified, called a “terrorist” or “radical,” hundreds of years spent explaining how the wicked king who did not grant basic human dignity was the real tragic hero of the play called by Antigone’s name. I am drawn to Antigone as somebody who did not tolerate inaction to save oneself, who did not tolerate inaction of fear for one’s own life, who did not tolerate inaction as anything other than allowing wickedness. I am drawn to Antigone as a young person who realised her brother was being denied his human rights, even as the other was glorified, and did something about it. I am drawn to Antigone as a person who knew full well the consequences of what she did before she did it. I am drawn to Antigone for understanding that acting in the face of injustice is a duty one has no choice to shirk, and even more so because I recognise the people around her refusing to understand this in preservation of their own shallow, selfish lives.
Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald translate Antigone as having said “I say that this crime is holy”. Anne Carson tells the child “Dear Antigone, / I take it as the task of the translator / to forbid that you should ever lose your screams.” I am doing this work of which Anne Carson wrote. I am the voice crying in the desert, over the bodies of her loved ones, begging for peace for them. I am carrying on her screams with my strong, headstrong voice. I am the carrier, and I am Antigone herself. I am Antigone herself, and I am Antigone’s scream.
Jean Anouilh puts into our mouths: “You disgust me, all of you, with your happiness! With your life that must be loved at all costs. […] I spit on your idea of life! […] I do not want to understand. I am here for something other than understanding. I am here to tell you no, and to die. To tell you no and to die.” As Fitz and Fitzgerald say, “[685] Be witnesses for me, denied all pity, Unjustly judge!”
I know consequences. I know Justice. I know duty. I know what is right. I know what is holy. I say that this crime is holy. Or, as Anne Carson phrased the same line,
Antigone says unholy not to. As for the fourth commandment? Get back to me when you carry your cross with me, prepared for your execution. Antigone killed by the king Creon, on the orders of her relative, buried in the sealed stone tomb; Christ killed by the king Herod, and on the orders of His Father, buried in the sealed stone tomb. I will not obey those who do injustice. I will bury my brother’s body; I will walk through your city gates. I will not save my life if to do so leaves others dead.
The prophet Tiresias is the one to tell Creon that he is in the wrong. It does not escape my notice that Tiresias is blind. I am drawn to Antigone, recognised in my right-doing by only other disabled. People accuse me of making trouble. I do no such thing. Rather, I draw attention to the trouble they have been ignoring so as to excuse themselves of their culpability. I reject their wilful ignorance of the harm they are doing. I am not making trouble; I am pointing at the trouble that they have made.
As Jean Anouilh, once again, put into our mouths: “I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl.”
I am here to tell you no. I am terrified to die. There is no excuse for me not to act. You have left my people, my siblings, to desiccate and to be consumed, comfortable separated from your acts by the walls you exist comfortably behind. I have been screaming for my entire life. I will not stop. I have no intention to stop. I refuse to stop screaming. I refuse to lose my screams.
Get thee hence, get behind me, or do your duty with me. If you do nothing, you are guilty. If you do the wrong thing, you are guilty. To do nothing is the wrong thing. As Anne Carson also put it, if with Classical absence of punctuation, “What’s up, Terisias?”
