Antigone, Interrupted. By Bonnie Honig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 321 pp. $29.99 paper.

• Date: 01 September 2014
• Published date: 01 September 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12098

Antigone, Interrupted. By Bonnie Honig. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2013. 321 pp. $29.99 paper.

Reviewed by Leonard Feldman, Department of Political Science,

Hunter College, CUNY

Ismene did it. In a bold and fresh rereading of Sophocles’ Antigone,

Greek tragedy positively bristles with intrigue, conspiracy, and par-

tisan political conflict. Antigone also turns into something of a who-

dunit: Ismene, sister of Antigone, emerges as Antigone’s secret

co-conspirator and, crucially, the heretofore unrecognized guilty

party—responsible for the first burial of the traitorous but beloved

brother Polynices. Honig does not convert Antigone into an

agonistic democrat—indeed, crucial to the argument is the way in

which Antigone’s actions and words present an aristocratic critique

of the surprisingly democratic Creon. Rather, Antigone manifests

certain virtues for our democracy and these virtues appear through

her conspiratorial action with her sister. Antigone needs to be

retrieved from those readings of the play that present her as either

a lonely hero manifesting humanist ethics above and against unjust

law or as an extrapolitical figure of common human suffering and

grief. Antigone is neither the saintly embodiment of a higher law

nor a prepolitical devotee of private familial care—she is a thor-

oughly engaged partisan, a wily political actor.

In Honig’s innovative and compelling reading, Antigone stages

not a clash between ethics and law, or between higher law and

human law, but between two rival political frames—the Homeric/

aristocratic and the democratic. This conflict is seen most vividly in

the conflict over burial and mourning practices. Creon’s banning

of Polynices’ burial represents not (or not simply) the actions

of a tyrant violating the moral order, but (substantively if not

procedurally) the democratic approach to mourning and burial.

Thus, in one of the compelling ironies of the analysis, Antigone

becomes a rich figure for democratic theory, but not because she

represents a democratic position (of civil disobedience or anti-

statism) against a tyrant. On the contrary, Antigone brings an aris-

tocratic frame to bear against Creon’s position which substantively

has more in common with the prevailing democratic culture of

Athens. What makes Antigone a rich figure for democratic (as well

as, I would add, legal) thinking according to Honig is the way she

grieves. Honig points to the multiple senses of grieving—to mourn,

to express grief, as well as to invoke law in order to redress an

injustice. By repositioning Antigone as an engaged political actor

with alliances, strategies, and partiality, Antigone, Interrupted pro-

vides a corrective to the current “mortalist humanist” Antigone that

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