ABSTRACT
Antigone's words bring out, time and again, the motif of unknowing, insecurity and uncertainty directed against the 'prescribed' law. Such language conspicuously avoids taking a position; instead, it offers negations and indirect discourse. When Creon declares that Antigone has transgressed his nomos, she does not oppose a nomos of her own. Judith Butler shows how Antigone, time and again, has provided the model for fundamental philosophical, social and gender-theoretical positions. In the sixteenth century, she embodied piété, the fear of God the fascination extends to Rotrou and Racine, and on to Hölderlin, Brecht and Anouilh. As Antigone brings it into play, kinship does not designate a 'political' point of opposition so much as a 'transcendental' principle: it can be understood as the 'prepolitical' condition for the possibility of all politics. Antigone 'figures the limits of intelligibility exposed at the limits of kinship', even though she remains within them insofar as she accepts the dominant discourse.
