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Document Details : Title: Antigone Subtitle: Mimetic Violence, Tragedy, and Ethics Author(s): VAN COILLIE, Geert Journal: Ethical Perspectives Volume: 15 Issue: 1 Date: March 2008 Pages: 81-102 DOI: 10.2143/EP.15.1.2029558 Abstract : René Girard’s mimetic theory allows for an anthropological recontextualization of ancient Greek literature against the backdrop of biblical texts. The story (epic), dialogue (drama, rhetoric) and reflection (lyric, philosophy) are the basic forms of mythos and logos, in which man translates and gives shape to his violent origin. Greek drama, which represents the ‘poli-tical’ crisis of human existence, offers a partial deconstruction of the scapegoat mechanism as the hidden foundation of society. On the tragic stage all protagonists are divided and united in a non-decidable dispute – a mimetic-sacrificial non-difference which is decided at the expense of the hero/scapegoat who eventually ‘makes a difference.’ Sophocles’ Antigone resists the mythical lie of a decisive difference between the mimetic doubles and enemy brothers Eteocles and Polynices. As a prefiguration of Christ (praefiguratio Christi), the tragic heroine Antigone reveals the collective hatred and the unanimous violence against the scapegoat as the bloody foundation of human civilization. Antigone’s ethical ‘an-archy’ and ‘non-in-difference’ remains a blind spot in Heidegger’s and Lacan’s philosophical and psychoanalytical interpretations. |
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