Synopses & Reviews
In Private Lives, Public Deaths, Jonathan Strauss shows how Sophocles' tragedy Antigone crystallized the political, intellectual, and aesthetic forces of an entire historical moment--fifth-century Athens--into one idea: the value of a single, living person. That idea existed, however, only as a powerful but unconscious desire. Drawing on classical studies, Hegel, and contemporary philosophical interpretations of this pivotal drama, Strauss argues that Antigone's tragedy, and perhaps all classical tragedy, represents a failure to satisfy this longing.
To the extent that the value of a living individual remains an open question, what Sophocles attempted to imagine still escapes our understanding. Antigone is, in this sense, a text not from the past, but from our future.
Review
Strauss' monograph stands as a unique contribution that will be impossible to ignore for many years to come. The reason is that Strauss does not simply do an analysis of Sophocles' play, nor does he merely review the literature - although his readings of both the play and the literature are exemplary. In addition, Strauss constructs 'Antigone' as a figure or a concept that is essential today in order to comprehend our individuality as well as the political.-Dimitris Vardoulakis, University of Western Sydney
About the Author
Jonathan Strauss is Professor of French at Miami University. He is the author of Subjects of Terror: Nerval, Hegel, and the Modern Self and of Human Remains: Medicine, Death, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Fordham).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliterations
Introduction: Tragedy, the City, and Its Dead
1. Two Orders of Individuality
2. The Citizen
3. Loss Embodied
4. States of Exclusion
5. Inventing Life
6. Mourning, Longing, Loving
7. Exit Tragedy
appendixes
Appendix A: Summary of Sophocles's Labdacid Cycle
Appendix B: Timeline of Relevant Events in Ancient Greece
Notes
Works Cited
Index