ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author discusses Sophocles' Antigone as a paradigmatic example of what the Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben identified as homo sacer, that is, someone who is simultaneously cursed and declared sacred. She elaborates on the ways in which Antigone dwells at the zone of indistinction between the public and the private, the included and the excluded, life and death, the animal and the human. Antigone dwells exposes the ways in which particularly woman and the feminine stands for bare life, and as such is exposed to an unconditioned capacity to be killed. Antigone becomes the paradigmatic example of homo sacer, because she is signified as a woman, and as such, more than man, finds herself in the zone of indistinction, where homo sacer dwells. The author aims to explicate the specific gendered dimensions of the figure of homo sacer, which continue to haunt women who challenge power today.
