Readings of Antigone or the Inclined City

Abstract

George Steiner wrote that “Sophocle’s Antigone is not just any text”: it is one of those lasting actions of the history of our philosophical, literary and political conscience. Yet, does Antigone continue being relevant in our present? To what extent does it offer keys to rethinking exile? In this article, we try to answer these questions through the analysis of Antigone’s readings offered by Maria Zambrano, Adriana Cavarero, and Judith Butler. The three, from the recovery of the Sophoclean figure as a carrier of a unique symbolic charge, they approach the difficult topic of the relations between body, exile and politics: the incestuous body, the body between life and death, the exiled body, body and blood as spheres of recognition or non-recognition. Definitely, the Antigones of Zambrano, Cavarero and Butler invite us to rethink the polis from the exile.