"Lacan's "Antigone

The analysis of Sophocles' Antigone by Jacques Lacan' clearly professes a complex mission, to explore an ethical territory commensurate with the interests of psychoanalysis--a close scrutiny that entails scanning the entire field from a philosophical and ontological perspective and to show with conclusive evidence that the Freudian project, when put to a rigorous test, always will identify human action, in its relationship to desire, as something that invariably will shelter a veiled meaning. To pursue Lacan's subtle thoughts on Antigone is to glean uncommon aesthetic insights germane to the circumstances that authorize the appearance of the tragic hero and that shape tragic action. It is astonishing to observe how far Lacan's ethical inquest penetrates beyond the age-old controversies surrounding the problem of tragedy. Lacan's astute appraisal of the Sophoclean text is indebted to his particular methodology, one that has received extensive recognition from scholars who are active in numerous interdisciplinary studies. Concomitant with his psychoanalytical approach, Lacan upholds the primacy of language in accordance with the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure. The seminar on Antigone exposes the reader not only to an unprecedented interpretation of the classical text but to a set of theoretical formulations that test and expand Freud's own ethical and aesthetic principles

Psychoanalysis · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology