Julia Kristeva's theory of the abject provides an illuminating and interrogative hermeneutic technique for Sophocles' Antigone. Kristeva has demonstrated the applicability of this theory to the Theban saga (although, perhaps, with mixed results) in her reading of Sophocles's Oedipus Tyrranos and Oedipus at Colonus. ¹ Her interpretation of Oedipus Tyrranos not only reinforces Lacanian psychoanalytical theory, but also situates the concept of the abject, as an extension of Lacan, within the ancient text as the agos, "defilement" of Oedipus. Kristeva argues that the new king, as agos, represents the source of the abject and embodies its purification as pharmakos: "scapegoat." The structural and thematic oppositions in the Antigone between patriarchal, institutional uniformity in the polis and the more antiquated, chthonic obligations of the heterogeneous dead mark this drama, too, as extraordinarily well-suited for reinterpretation as a confrontation between an archaic, Greek Symbolic and the abject. In this paper, I use Kristevan theory to elucidate and reinterpret the primary oppositions in Sophocles's Antigone and demonstrate how such a reading differs from the structuralist interpretations of C.W. Oudemans and J.P. Vernant. ²  Instead of reducing the antagonism of Antigone and Creon to a Hegelian or structuralist reading of binary opposition between equally legitimate claims, I demonstrate that the conflicts in the Antigone reflect the psychological tension between nascent patriarchal institutions and the excluded, but sanctified, feminine Other.

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¹ Julia Kristeva. Powers of Horror. Trans. Leon Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. 83-89.

² See C. W. Oudemans. Tragic Ambiguity: Anthropology, Philosophy and Sophocles Antigone. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987. Also J. P. Vernant. "Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy." Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece. Ed. J. P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet. New York: Zone Books, 1988. 29-48.