Antigone’s Choice: Tragedy and philosophy from dialectic to aporia

Magda Romanska

doi:10.21476/PP.2022.72347

Authors

Magda Romanska Harvard University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2022.72347

Keywords:

tragedy, Antigone, Hegel, Derrida, Lehmann

Abstract

Shaped by Hegel, philosophy’s approach to Antigone has always been firmly rooted in all the assumptions of realism, with proper, true-to-life, consistent, and plausible characters. These characterological mimetic interpretations often feed off of each other within the context of what’s perceived as “realist” drama, with its focus on characters and their insoluble, hence tragic, conflict. Starting with the twentieth-century avant-garde, however, theatre became less and less interested in characterological mimicry as a foundation of drama and what follows, as the foundation of the theatrical experience itself. Along with the shift in our approach to character, we have also experienced a shift in our understanding of other Aristotelian components of drama (“Plot” and “Thought”) and dramatic genres (“Tragedy”). As our sense of character and Thought shifted from stable to unstable, so did our understanding of tragedy and its role at the junction of theatre and philosophy. Tragedy has shifted from dialectic to aporia, from binary to polynary. Antigone—with its multiple interpretations and critical lenses—illuminates this fundamental shift in our understanding of tragedy and, thus, the fundamental shift in the relationship between theatre and philosophy in postdramatic theatre.

Author Biography

Magda Romanska, Harvard University

Magda Romanska’s research focuses on the intersection of theatre and transmedia, including multiplatform dramaturgy, human/AI interaction in performance, and posthuman theatre and performance. She is the founder of drametrics, a quantitative, computational analysis of dramatic texts.

She is a Principal at metaLAB (at) Harvard, a Research Associate at the Center for European Studies and Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard, and the Chair of Transmedia Arts Seminar at Harvard University Mahindra Humanities Center, where she curates a series of lectures on transmediality. She serves on the advisory board of DigitalTheatre+, and is a member of Leonardo, International Society for The Arts, Sciences, and Technology.

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