Antigone's Claim

Rating:
Summary: Does this woman know any Greek?
Review: I have located several misquotations and several mispellings of what little Greek she uses. Apart from it being gruesomely written, I suspect this woman does not know Antigone in Greek--she quotes widely from other sources but prefers to stay away from the original. I am tempted to at a later date say with Voltaire "I am sitting in the smallest room of the house. I have your book in front of me--soon it will be behind me"

Rating:
Summary: ?!
Review: It is clear that Professor Butler does not know Greek, knows little or nothing about both ancient Greek culture and the critical tradition of the play. This work is a travesty of scholarship at every level: it is poorly written and tendentious, but above all it will be totally irrelevant to the group of scholars whom Butler might have intellectually transformed (or at least moved), namely, classicists. The already converted will find this book indispensable--I can see it gathering dust on many theorists' bookshelves next to those other books it is so necessary to own, but never read (e. g., Bourdieu's Distinction and Derrida's Glas). I await the day when academics as smart as Butler clearly is actually try to speak to people outside a coterie audience.

Rating:
Summary: Butler (Miss Butler if ur nasty) is at is again...
Review: Judging from the reader reviews on this website, Judith Butler has yet again succeeded in provoking the outrage of several diehard and blue-in-the-face classics scholars. Those classicists who feel outraged by her work might consider her illuliminating comments on Hölderlin's own translation of Antigone, translations that themselves were received as scandals in their time and that continue, like Antigone in Butler's view, to provoke critical thought. If you think Antigone belongs on the shelves of a dusty library, you might as well leave this book alone, since here she's haunting queer bars and dining at the most interesting and vital family meals imaginable, where queer sons and daughters struggle together with their just as queer parents to figure out how it is that we might say our word to a world that persists in ignoring what it is that we have to say.

Rating:
Summary: it's all greek to me
Review: Prof. Butler has many references to Hegel and Lacan but remarkably few to the play itself. Of those only one or two are in Greek. It is not at all clear that she is familiar with the language--for example: on page 8 of her book she transliterates Antigone's response to Creon as "kai phemi drasai kouk aparnoumai to ne". This may be a misprint but in any case the last word should be "mey" (mu eta). Does Prof. Butler understand the force of the initial "kai" or the function of the article at the end? I have no sense of engagement with the line--instead she offers two translations, both inaccurate. . The problem is that Antigone is such an ambiguous text that even a reading in Greek using the lines as evidence is problematic. She seems to depend on what others have said about Antigone rather than going through the work of actually reading the play in Greek by herself. The line I quoted is I think -- apart from translating "glory" as "kleos"(correct as far as it goes though had she bothered to study the linguistic history and possibilities of the word she might have helped her argument)-- the only sign of any contact with the Greek. The passage she presents about the primacy of the brother over the child--a passage that has troubled readers of Antigone since the nineteenth century-- is given in English and her conclusion that Antigone's notion of Kinship is eccentric seems to suggest she has not read recent scholarship. Rather Prof. Butler has an agenda (nb her anti-Catholicism) which she presents using the play as a forum. She is certainly entitled to her agenda and entitled to argue that Antigone represents it. Problem is she offers no textual evidence and has I fear little or no familiarity with Greek. If you want to make an argument you have to back it up with evidence not hearsay--where's the beef?

Rating:
Summary: Very interesting book
Review: Some of the previous reviewers' responses to this book might give an idea of what's so interesting and provocative about it, and about Butler's work overall. Even if you're not a classicist with too much time on your hands.