- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Literature, Violence, and Politics
- Part I: Sophocles' <i>Antigone</i> or The Invention of Politics: We the City
- Antigone and the Polis
- The Most Modern of Tragedies: The Politics of Burial
- Creon's Edict: The Barbarians at Home
- Dying Democratically: Antigone's Ritual
- Interlude
- Modern Tempo—Democratic Overture, State Finale
- Part II D. A. F. de Sade's <i>One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom</i> or The Reinvention of Politics: We the People
- Sade's Text and Sade's Times
- The Libertine Alliance: No Ordinary Pact in Times of War
- Necrophiliac Cannibals: Dismembering “Nonpeople,” Membering “The People”
- Domestic Consistency: Not Laws, but Order
- Frame within the Frame: Riveting Voices and Gazes
- Interlude
- Modern Sovereignty: Perversion of Democracy?
- Part III Mario Vargas Llosa's <i>The Feast of the Goat</i> or Sovereign Politics: We the Nation-State
- Vargas Liosa's Appeal to History: Within and Beyond Latin America
- Necropolitics I: From an “African Horde” to a Modern Country
- Necropolitics II: Rebonding the Nation
- Epilogue
- The Force of Imagination
- Case Index
The Most Modern of Tragedies: The Politics of Burial
The Most Modern of Tragedies: The Politics of Burial
- Chapter:
- (p.46) The Most Modern of Tragedies: The Politics of Burial
- Source:
- Binding Violence
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
This chapter analyzes the link between democracy and the tragedy. It argues that the absence of intervening gods places the funeral rite in the realm of political autonomy, confronting two forms of political speech—a ritual and an edict. Antigone's laws differ from Creon's not because hers are godly but because they have not been pronounced by one single authority. Antigone's is the rule of law; Creon's is the rule of men. Both characters expose two disparate forms of regulating internal violence.
Keywords: tragedy, democracy, funeral rite, political autonomy, ritual, edict, political speech, Creon, internal violence
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Literature, Violence, and Politics
- Part I: Sophocles' <i>Antigone</i> or The Invention of Politics: We the City
- Antigone and the Polis
- The Most Modern of Tragedies: The Politics of Burial
- Creon's Edict: The Barbarians at Home
- Dying Democratically: Antigone's Ritual
- Interlude
- Modern Tempo—Democratic Overture, State Finale
- Part II D. A. F. de Sade's <i>One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom</i> or The Reinvention of Politics: We the People
- Sade's Text and Sade's Times
- The Libertine Alliance: No Ordinary Pact in Times of War
- Necrophiliac Cannibals: Dismembering “Nonpeople,” Membering “The People”
- Domestic Consistency: Not Laws, but Order
- Frame within the Frame: Riveting Voices and Gazes
- Interlude
- Modern Sovereignty: Perversion of Democracy?
- Part III Mario Vargas Llosa's <i>The Feast of the Goat</i> or Sovereign Politics: We the Nation-State
- Vargas Liosa's Appeal to History: Within and Beyond Latin America
- Necropolitics I: From an “African Horde” to a Modern Country
- Necropolitics II: Rebonding the Nation
- Epilogue
- The Force of Imagination
- Case Index
