^aDepartment of Politics, International Relations and European Studies, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK. E-mail: moya.lloyd@ntlworld.com

¹I would like to thank Andrew Thacker and the two anonymous reviewers for Contemporary Political Theory for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Received 5 November 2003; Accepted 20 January 2004.

Abstract

The focus of this paper is Butler's recent work on Antigone, kinship and the state. Like many advocates of radical democracy, Butler is suspicious of attempts to enlist state support for political demands, preferring politics at the level of civil society. Butler turns to the narrative of Antigone, in part, to explore just such a version of (feminist?) resistance to the state but also, crucially, to contemplate the constitutive role that Antigone (and her contemporary counterparts) represents in respect of the formation of the state and politics. While sympathetic to Butler's thesis in general, in this paper, I raise three sets of questions concerning her reading of the state. First, I explore the ambiguity surrounding her conceptualization of the state. Next, I turn to the tension between the state's purported efficacy in achieving its aims and the theory of resignification that Butler deploys widely throughout her work. Finally, I look at the understated role of Creon whose failure to compel obedience from Antigone is largely occluded in Butler's re-reading of Antigone.