valerie a. hartouni Antigone’s Dilemma: A Problem in Political Membership What constitutes an adequate basis for feminist consciousness? ‘What values and concerns are feminists to bring to bear in challenging present standards of well-being and articulating alternative visions of collective life? This essay takes a close and critical look at these ques- tions as they are addressed in the work of political theorist Jean Elsh- tain An outspoken defender of ‘‘pro-family femimism,”’ Elshtain has urged contemporary feminists to reclaim the ‘female subject" within the private sphere Enormous problems attend Elshtain’s counsel and these have as much to do with the political implications of her argu- ment as with her reading of the Sophoclean tragedy Antigone With an eye towards foregrounding what some of these problems are, this essay elaborates an alternative reading of Sophocles’ Antigone and moves from that exposition to an examination of why it 1s that Elsh- tain’s claims and conclusions are politically unsound and unsus- taimable L a recent article, “‘Antigone’s Daughters,’’ Jean Elshtain (1982) cautioned feminists against seeking in the modern bureaucratic state a solution to the growing economic, occupational, political, and reproductive challenges confronting women in America While the state 1s, as she puts it, the ‘locus of structured, legitimate public hife’’ (Elshtain 1982, 49), both politically and economically, public life 1s “marked by bureaucratic rationalization’’ (Elshtain 1982, 50), m- creased centralization, and technocratization Within it, she contends, the ‘‘policy maker’? and the bureaucrat are principal actors They “operate in conformity to impersonal, abstract and rational stan- dards,’’ fashion strategy according to certain technical rules, em- pirical laws, and relevant, quantifiable data, and effect policy which merely serves and enhances state efficiency and control (Elshtain 1982, 51) Lacking the technical expertise, the refined, specialized knowledge of the elite policy makers, the citizen member 1s merely an 1 would ke to thank Donna Haraway, Barne Thorne, Daniel Scripture and, especially, Peter Euben for their many helpful comments and suggestions on various drafts of this article I would also like to thank Thelma Francis for her generous support and encouragement Hypatia, vol 1, no 1 (Spring 1986) © by Hypatia, Inc 3SS hypatia occasional player, at best marginal to areas of governmental decision making which increasingly include most of the vital fields of human activity ' Feminists who identify too fully with the bureaucratic state—either by “‘going public’’ as Elshtain puts it, becoming principal actors ‘in a truly equal partnership with men,” or by seeking to employ the state as a means to secure legal action on women’s behalf—run the risk of los- ing the critical distance they currently possess to critique and oppose the state’s growing ‘‘powers of surveillance and control over all aspects of intimate social relations’? (Elshtain 1982, 49) The trend of mainstream hberal ferninism over the last decade and a half can be characterized by demands both for full public participation and for favorable state ac- tion The state has been called upon to effect women’s full incorpora- tion in all areas of public ife—to sponsor around-the-clock day care centers, to fund abortions, to prohibit discrmination, to amend the constitution—thereby promoting the possibility of ‘‘the transformation of women into public persons with a public identity”’ (Elshtain 1982, 48) For these feminists, as Elshtain describes it, the public world 1s one in which individuals ‘‘make real choices, exercise authentic power and have efficacious control’? (Elshtain 1982, 49) In contrast, the private sphere—the sphere of the concrete, the particular, and the bodily, with which women have traditionally been associated and by which they have traditionally been defined—is seen by these feminists as one in which individuals are oppressed, powerless, and dehumanized Because women have been systematically excluded from the sphere of historic action, from public-political life and participation, they argue that women have been denied the integrity of a fully human life ‘Men have claimed the human point of view [as both public and private beings} they author it, they own it”? (Andrea Dworkin 1981, 48) For Elshtain, this 1s only part of the story and more by way of foot- note than theme Lost, she claims, on femimsts fleemg the home and seeking to liberate others from it 1s the fact that full social, economic, and political incorporation, and by implication the elimination or ab- sorption of the private sphere by the public realm will only enhance state intrusion into and control over otherwise autonomous areas of 1 Robert Pranger (1968, 77, 27) ‘While some types of democratic political theory invite the audience—the large mass of ordinary citizens—to participate occasionally in certain aspects of leadership, as in periodic elections, this 1s something like asking a per- son without expertise, but with information gained from watching television on Sunday afternoon, to play for one day on a professional football team The occasional player gathers little experience, never gains the team’s confidence, contributes nothing to the joint enterprise and because of his [sic] experience runs the risk of serious injury "” 4valerie a. hartouni social life (Elshtain 1982, 48) While women may gain a new public iden- tity by such incorporation, it 1s merely formal, legalistic, and abstract, and not, as some feminists have thought, an alternative identity marked by independence, ‘‘real’’ choice, authentic power, or efficacious control (Elshtain 1982, 55)? Citing French femmist Juha Knsteva, Elshtam warns that those feminisms which ‘“‘embrace without serious qualification the governing consciousness and norms of social organization of the cur- rent public world serve only its advanced needs to rationalize” (Elshtain 1982, 52) In view of this, Elshtain urges feminists to reclaim the ‘‘female subject”’ within the private sphere rather than allow or promote the elimination of this sphere She suggests that within this sphere there exists both the possibility for constructing a new base for feminist con- sciousness and the possibility for rethinking received categories and reconceptualizing social life (Elshtain 1982, 52,57) Located historically, “aware that they have traditions and values,’ women can ‘‘bring for- ward their everyday maternal world, an actual local and particular place in the world”’ (Elshtain 1982, 56) to put pressure on and critique contem- porary public policy and identities This would be, she suggests, to reaf- firm the standpoint of the mythic figure Antigone, placing contemporary women in a heritage of boldly opposing the illegitimate use and intrusion of state power, of sustaining hfe-giving-and-preserving values and of defending against the state “‘that arena of the social world where human hfe 1s nurtured and protected from day to day’’ (Elshtain 1982, 55) It 1s curious but not entirely surprising that Elshtain invokes the figure of Antigone as a model for contemporary women Antigone defends against the state—as Elshtam would have contemporary women, daughters of Antigone, defend against the state—the claims, duties, and responsibilities of the private sphere She 1s a woman who “breaks bounds with established law” and ‘‘throws sand into the machinery of ar- rogant public power’’ (Elshtain 1982, 55) By her action she recreates the possibihty of ‘“‘community,” of a shared common world that King Creon’s tyranny and misuse of public power threaten to destroy While others view her action as ‘‘wild and futile’’—for she acts against strong power where women must yield—her deed upholds against the state, the sanctity and integrity of human hfe It 1s Antigone’s attitude and 2 Zillah E:senstein (1981, 343-345) says of Liberal Feminism and the problems of incorporation ‘‘We need to rethink the very issues of Reform and Revolution and their relationship to each other We need also to come to terms with the consciousness of women today who, as Feminists, demand reform but who, in order to really achieve equality, would need a revolution. Liberalism and Feminism are at odds with each other given Liberalism’s unequal sexual base As a Feminist one has to move beyond Liberalism **hypatia “*standpoint’’—her defense of the claims of kinship, her loyalty to family honor and to those living and dead—that Elshtain claims 1s a new base for consciousness and a new poini of departure for action By her action, Antigone asserts that “‘there are matters of such deep significance that they begin and end where the state’s nght does not and must not run, where politics cannot presume to dictate to the human soul’’ (Elshtain 1982, 54) This assertion gains urgency in a world in which international politics is likened to poker, chess, dice throwing, or football, or in which the health of sensuous, hving human bodies continues to be confused with the health of the body politic Antigone is a compelling figure who has by and large escaped the notice of contemporary femimisms Her dilemma—the challenge she puts to the state as both a woman and a citizen member of the private sphere—prefigures the dilemma of contemporary women although in a way that Elshtain entirely ignores Elshtain omits in her analysis the controlling fact that Sophocles’ drama is a tragedy and that Antigone, for all the honor she may ultimately deserve, 1s not honored in her rebellion but banished from the city, condemned to die alone and unwept The ambiguities surrrounding her action and her death become secondary issues, Elshtain appears content to point out only that women are potentially capable of noble deeds and consequently fails to note at what price such deeds have often been performed Women hke Antigone who stray from their culturally legitimated roles or sphere of activity have been portrayed as corruptive, dangerous, disorderly, and threatening (Dworkin 1974, parts I and II) However noble their acts may finally appear, they are, as Antigone was, first silenced, destroyed, or nullified A closer look at the drama itself will bring this point into focus Antigone illustrates the extent to which women’s status as citizen members within Athenian society was a politically problematic and contested issue While women composed ‘‘half of the free population’’ and were in this sense citizen members, they were neither free nor citizens in the culturally articulated sense of the words Citizenship was at least partially predicated upon public-political association It was through public participation and association that one was educated 1n the obligations, duties, and habits of lhving which provided for and sustained the possibility of a commonly held world * Confined to the private sphere, women’s obligations and duties 3 Carol Gould (1976, 23) points out that women could not be Greek citizens in any political sense of the word **Since women could not rule or govern, since they were excluded from participation i governance and since such participation was taken to 6valerie a. hartouni engaged them in activities which had an exclusively functional or biological end—the production and reproduction of life This activity did not transcend itself morally or existentially nor was it transacted in association among equals While activity in the private sphere sustain- ed and maintained the possibility for collective life and thus con- stituted a necessary condition for it, 1t was not in itself distinctive of. human nature ‘Because men [sic] shared such necessity with all other species, these qualities could hardly be definitive of their humanity, what was definitive was poltical’’—that activity which ‘‘alone permit[ted] men to live as equals, free, under no master but the law, giving them the opportunity for biography as well as biology”’ (Peter Euben 1978, 214) To the extent therefore that women were not educated in those things which made a ‘‘human’”’ world possible —freedom, reciprocity, equality and justice—therr action was thought, necessarily, to incline toward tyranny and thus chaos and disorder Yet as citizens of the private realm, their kinship obligations and religious duties within it could necessitate action when transgres- sion against this realm was made Thus by acting, even when compell- ed by necessity to do so, women were simultaneously intruders in and sustainers of the polis—threatening its very foundation while serving and preserving it (Michael Shaw 1975, 266) It 1s just this conflict that Sophocles presents 1n its full complexity in the Antigone The drama tells of a woman who both acts and does not act, who speaks and does not speak, who recreates the possibility for order within the polity while at the same time threatening that order by her deed The nature of her action 1s unclear throughout the drama and remains unresolved at its end While its consequences are clearly political, the full meaning of this 1s transvalued by the fact that she 1s a woman and women are not, properly speaking, (political) actors Unlike most other tragic figures, Antigone knows the end to which her actions destine her She announces this end, as well as her inten- tion to act despite it, within the first fifty lines of the drama ‘* Her fate 1s deceptively transparent in this sense It 1s unhke that of Oedipus, Clytaemnestra, Agamemnon, or Creon, for whom knowledge of the consequence of word and deed 1s partial and self- escaping even though each assumes such knowledge with hubristic certainty The fate, moreover, of each of these figures embraces both be the essence of nature of the human as zoon politikon, {political animal] women were taken to be not fully human ”” 4 Thave rehied on three translations of the Antigone making minor changes where appropriate These are Antigone, trans F Storr (1912), The Oedipus Cvele, trans Fitts and Fitzgerald (1977), Antigone, trans Elizabeth Wyckoff (1956) 7hypatia the general and the particular Creon’s fate reveals to us as much about the general nature of tyranny as about the particular nature of his tyranny, and Oedipus’ fate as much about the general nature of human blindness as about the particular nature of his blindness An- tigone’s actions are not disclosing in this dual sense They reveal less about her particular nature than about the general nature of obhiga- tions in the private realm and the relationship of this realm to that of public affairs From the outset the terms of her deed are clear and bounded 1n the same sense that the terms of her existence as a woman are clear and bounded Her deed 1s executed by necessity as her life as a woman 1s bound by necessity Yet, because she acts publicly, the consequence of her deed 1s transformed as are its terms Antigone herself is not transformed, but rather the meaning of her deed It assumes a significance which far exceeds its initial intention Seeming to be one thing, it becomes quite another The drama opens with Antigone and her sister Ismene in counsel outside the walls of the household Their very location outside sug- gests dislocation, the presence of conflict (Shaw 1975, passim) As women and members of the polity, their membership 1s exclusively private To be taking counsel, therefore, outside their proper sphere of action prefigures a disturbance within it Their two brothers, Polyneices and Eteocless, have slain each other in struggle for the throne, the one a defender of the city, the other a traitor to it With the war concluded and the city tenuously secured, the king, Creon, has issued an edict which gives honor in the tomb to Eteocles while deny- ing burial to Polyneices The punishment 1s death should any of the citizens defy the decree Declaring that she ‘‘shall never be found her brother’s traitor,’? An- tigone resolves to give Polyneices proper burial, and by this act uphold the gods’ unwritten laws to honor the dead as the gods have honored them She challenges Ismene to show herself noble, to om with her in labor and in deed and to cancel by this action the hatreds of a divided house (R P Winnington-Ingram 1980, 132-133) * Ismene rejects this appeal, fearing that they will ‘perish terribly if [they] force the law/and try to cross the royal vote and power’’ (Wyckoff 1956, lines 59-60) As women, they are not framed by nature to contend with men (F Storr 1924, ne 61) To oppose Creon would be to exceed their 5 About Greek burial practice, Mary Ann Cline Horowitz (1976, n 198) importantly points out that ‘a common fear of Greeks was that after death the rites would not be performed for them, and that in consequence their souls would wander about restlessly The happiness of the dead was dependent on the continuity of descendents who would guard and respect the household hearth and ancestral tomb ”valerie a. hartouni natural limitations, their shared place and location Not only would it threaten further disorder within the state, but, more fundamentally, it would belie their natural constitution as women (Wyckoff 1956 lines 50-60) ‘‘We must remember,’”’ she counsels that we two are women, and so not to fight with men since we are subject to strong power we must obey these orders or any that may be worse In these things I am forced and shall obey the men in power I know that wild and futile action makes no sense I shall do no dishonor But to act against the citizens I cannot (Wyckoff 1956 lines 61-64, 66-68, 78-79) Ismene’s response places her in what appears to be a more tradi- tional role for women She 1s both submissive and unquestioning and yields to the power of the state, however misdirected it might be, on the grounds that as women they are obligated to obey (at least as much as they are obligated to honor the claims of kinship and religious duty) Her response is significant in another sense, however, for it establishes the terms according to which Antigone’s action will be misunderstood as the drama proceeds Ismene’s confusion merely an- ticipates that of the others For she, as they, will fail to see the loss of order which succeeds Creon’s resolution and which 1s already foreshadowed by their presence outside of the household Ismene 1s the first (but not the last) to mistake Creon’s decree for law and thereby to suppose that it has its origins in the approval and resolve of the citizenry—hence her refusal to act against the citizens This confusion 1s shared in turn by the Chorus—‘‘men of the City, men rich 1n possessions’’ (Wyckoff 1956, lines 210-220, 380-384) In- itially they understand the decree as Creon’s own, but they soon con- found its claims, which enforce an exception to the traditional rites of burial, with those having political-legal status Eventually even Creon mistakes the will of one (himself) for the will of the many (Wyckoff 1956, line 481), understanding Antigone to have ‘‘broke[n] bounds with established law’’ and thus to have defied and threatened both himself and the state In response to this charge, Antigone appeals to the authority of unwritten laws and opposes this authority to Creon’s as head of state For me it was not Zeus who made that order Nor did justice who lives with the gods below 9hypatia mark out such laws to hold among mankind Nor did I think our orders were so, strong that you, a mortal man, could overrun the gods’ unwritten and unfailing laws Not now, nor yesterday’s, they always live, and no one knows their origin in time So not through fear of any man’s proud spirit would I be likely to neglect these laws, draw upon myself the god’s sure punishment (Wyckoff 1956, lines 450-459) In these terms, the question 1s one of the relationship of the divine and human worlds and the claims appropriate to each On the one hand, Antigone accepts those which she takes to be divine and asks to be understood at least in part as doing so On the other hand, Creon sees himself as representing and embodying the claims of the state, by virtue of his power and throne, his practice of the government and the law Each proceeds as if their claims were antithetical and exclusive, thereby securing not the integration of the divine and human worlds, but the disintegration of their coherence as mutually dependent realms By appealing to a structure of divine but unwritten law, Antigone appears to locate herself outside of the human world, antagonistic to its clam for order and discipline Yet because these unwritten laws frame and authorize the claims of the private realm—of kinship and religious duty—they exist in conjunction with the laws of convention In this sense, Antigone is not altogether outside of the human world but rather acting consistently with her responsibilities within part of it Although a transgression against the gods occasions her deed, the obligations which motivate her to act, as well as the consequences which she effects by acting, are embedded in the world of human af- fairs both public and private To regard her action strictly in terms of the rehgious obligation it fulfills ignores the circumstances which foster it and the political dilemma which it 1n turn fosters As a woman and citizen of the private realm, Antigone 1s ‘‘bound to serve the children of [her] mother’s womb’’ as she 1s bound to serve the gods their yust due (Wyckoff 1956, line 512) But, in order to de- fend these claims and represent transgression against them, she must leave the household and enter the public realm As Ismene counseled, women are not naturally constituted to act—to contend with men That Antigone must so act, in order to defend the natural claims of the household and so avoid ‘‘the gods’ sure punishment,’’ underscores both the religious and the political pollution which has 10valerie a. hartouni befallen Thebes Divisiveness pervades the city—tyranny reigns and, with it, silence If law still mediated and structured the common world, Antigone’s deed would be, as Ismene claimed, ‘‘wild, futile and unintelligible,”’ without proper location and without boundaries Creon has, however, overstepped the boundaries of his political authority, collapsing the will of many into the will of one He has robbed the gods of what 1s properly theirs and confounded the public and private spheres, claim- ing what is common as his own ‘‘Is the town to tell me how to rule?”” he asks ‘‘Am I to rule by other mind than mine?”’ (Wyckoff 1956, lines 734, 736) Because Creon claims what is common as his own, he brings about the political disorder his edict intended to prevent His rule has occa- sioned not order, but absolute disorder It 1s only when law bounds, mediates, and lends coherence to human claims and actions that the common world has definition and human life and action within it, place and location Without law, neither effective speech nor effective action are possible That a woman acts when others cannot underscores this political impotence To the extent that tyranny 1s upon Thebes, the public realm or world-held-n-common ts effectively nonexistent With conventional law undermined, the only law that can be appealed to 1s that unwritten and divine law of which women, as citizens of the private sphere, are the protectors Because the divinely sponsored claims of kinship and religious duty constitute the terms and substance of women’s membership within the polity, the only ac- tion which 1s possible in defense of them 1s that of a woman As a woman and defender of the private realm, Antigone must act to defend its claims and avert the gods’ wrath Because she is a woman, however, her action 1s inherently problematic To give her brother proper burial, Antigone must go outside of her naturally con- stituted sphere of action, she must enter the public realm Yet by leav- ing the private sphere, she exceeds her proper place In so doing, she 1s understood as having forsaken her responsibilities within it She 1s no longer considered a proper representative of the claims and concerns of the private sphere and forfeits her right to represent these claims to the public Because Antigone 1s a woman, she 1s seen, heard, and judged as a Private person—one who 1s not properly educated in those things which made a commonly held world possible Although she must de- nounce transgressions against the private realm, her actual defense of that realm, publicly, undercuts her claim to do so At the moment she attempts to assert, politically, the authority which 1s hers by virtue of tradition to preserve and protect both kin and hearth, she ceases ilhypatia to possess it For by her deed she seems to transgress necessarily bond- ed spheres and recklessly to challenge the imperatives and respon- sibilities of each, thus threatening the very existence of the polity To act is to exceed her proper place Without place, Antigone 1s without membership, and without membership she 1s seen as one who thinks and acts alone, without regard for what 1s commonly held These are the terms in which Antigone’s deed is understood As a result, its deeper significance altogether escapes those who witness it Creon condemns Antigone not only for having ‘“‘broken bounds beyond established law,”’ but for having ceased to function well in her place (Wyckoff 1956, lines 480-580) As a woman who has acted, and by her action challenged not only the sphere of political rule and discourse, but also the sphere of (women’s) household duties, An- tugone ‘as gone beyond all bounds ‘Let her sing her song of Zeus who guards the kindred,”’ says Creon (Wyckoff 1956, lines 657-658), [but] if I allow disorder in my house I’d surely have to license 1t abroad The man the state has put in place must have obedient hearing to his last command when it’s right and even when it’s not He who accepts this teaching I trust, tuler, or ruled, to function in his place, I must guard the men who yield to order, not let myself be beaten by a woman Better, if 1t must happen, that a man should overset me 1 won’t be called weaker than womankind (Wyckoff, 1956 lines 659-660, 665-669, 676-680) * Having left the private realm, Antigone acts without ‘‘just claim’’ or authority, without place or location, and thus challenges law and the order which issues from it What both Ismene and Creon have failed to see, however, 1s that she acts on/y because the law 1s no longer the cohering principle mediating just claims (both public and private), and because as a consequence a// speech and action are without proper place and location Both understand her only as having aspired to be other than she 1s For as a woman she 1s not naturally fit for public 6 Because women were not considered legal equals of men, the responsibilities for their misdeeds passed to their closest male relative it 1s no small irony that, in Antigone’s case, this 1s Creon 12valerie a. hartouni participation Antigone 1s condemned to die entombed outside the city walls The town grieves for her, ‘“‘unjustly doomed if ever a woman was to die in shame for glorious deed done’? (Wyckoff 1956, lines 692-697, 832-836) Yet m their sympathy, Creon’s ‘‘fellow citizens’’—the polis—fundamentally misunderstand the character of her deed and banish her from the human world as Creon has done ‘‘Your self- sufficiency has brought you down,’’ they reflect, yet, In death you will have your fame to have gone like a god to your fate in living and in dying alike [emphasis not in original] (Wyckoff 1956, line 77, 834-836) To characterize Antigone as ‘‘god-like’’ in life and in death—suffi- cient unto herself—suggests that she does not hold a world in common with others (through her blood relationships), even though her deed ultimately recreates the possibility for such a world Moreover, it sug- gests that she has lived as only beasts or gods can live, that 1s, as one alone Because she was not understood as having lived within a com- monly held world, she has forfeited her right to it in death Her banishment from the city simply echoes this pronouncement She has lived alone and must die alone While this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of Antigone’s deed, it 1s a misunderstanding which 1s not reconciled by the drama’s end Antigone 1s not self-sufficient, nor does she understand herself as such She has acted in accord with her responsibilities as a woman and member of the private realm At first she attempts to enlist the sup- port of her sister, Ismene, arguing that 1f Ismene actually understood the responsibilities which attend place and membership she would join in her deed Ismene reyects this and thus rejects her responsibilities to kinship and the gods _In response to the Chorus’s depiction of her life as ‘‘god-like’’ and self-sufficient, Antigone mourns that she will die unwept, ‘‘no friend to bewail her fate” (Wyckoff 1956, line 878, 881) If she were self-sufficient and understood herself as such, she would need no friend and no tale sung of her in remembrance Yet she recalls her mortality, and by this recognizes the futility of her deed Its true glory has been without audience and her hfe without dis- tinction The ambiguity of Antigone’s deed and the contradictions in her status as a woman and member of the polity are made clear in con- traposition to the words and deeds of Creon The possibility for redemption—wisdom through sufferimg—is offered to Creon while it 1s withheld from Antigone (Winnington-Ingram 1980, 118) Where 13hypatia Creon 1s reconciled with his fate, Antigone 1s not, even though the movement and circumstances of action for each are symmetrically developed The drama opens with Antigone outside the household Once convicted, she 1s taken inside the house and once condemned, she 1s entombed outside the walls of her city Her sphere of action con- tracts, reflected in her movement from the public realm to the private realm to entombment as one alone With Creon, there is a similar spatial development When the drama commences he 1s king of Thebes, as it proceeds he becomes tyrant of Thebes, and at its end he has lost both city and family As with Antigone, there 1s a movement from public to private to one alone What distinguishes them, however, is their ultimate fate While Creon has suffered, his suffer- ing becomes a source of wisdom For Antigone, there 1s no such resolution Antigone dies alone, joined in death only later by Haemon, Creon’s son and her husband-to-be Whereas Creon brings Haemon’s body back into the city, however, recognizing that ‘it’s best to hold the laws of old tradition to the end of life,”” Antigone 1s left behind with no further mention (Wyckoff 1956, lines 1113-1114) She perishes out- side the realm of both public and private affairs, for the ultimate well- being of both While her action was necessary, it nonetheless precludes her further membership In creating the possibility for reconciliation between the human and divine worlds, as well as be- tween the public and private spheres, her action contradicts the very principles it re-establishes For although women’s activities ultimately sustain the realm of speech and action, women themselves do not speak or act They are members of the polity although invisible, citizens although private, participants without the necessary concomi- tant of word and deed As Antigone’s fate so clearly suggests, women are ‘‘of the polity but not in st’? (James Redfield 1977, 161) In many ways, Antigone’s dilemma 1s still with us Over the last three and a half centuries there has been a certain ‘‘constancy of prescriptive attitudes towards women’s place”’ (William Chafe 1977, 15), even when these attitudes have borne only indirect relevance to women’s daily lives The immersion of women in the private sphere, the conflation of their biological and social function so that reproduc- tive capacity has been taken to constitute a ‘‘naturally”’ derived social role, interpreted by federal courts as recently as 1970 as women’s primary ‘‘civic duty’? (Susan Okin 1979), their ‘‘exclusion from the full range of possibilities and responsibilities within the categories ‘person’ and ‘citizen’ because the category ‘woman’ has alone been sufficient to differentiate [them] from the category ‘male’ which has been synonymous with ‘person’ or ‘human being’ ” (Elshtain 1974, 14CE valerie a. hartouni 459), together prefigure what Sheila Rowbotham has called ‘‘woman’s profound alienation from any culture which can generalize itself” (Sheila Rowbotham 1974, 34) As Antigone was, contemporary women are still “‘of the polity but not 1n it,”’ full members without full membership status On the basis of certain physical characteristics, women have been assigned to a status to which an automatic set of duties and responsibilities correspond—duties which have comprised membership but have excluded women from full participatory, per- sonhood status in their fulfillment While ‘‘produc[ing as they] have [always] produced goods and services for society at large as well as for their famihes’’ (Joan Kelly 1979, 221), women have been denied the fundamental rights of citizenship throughout much of American history ‘‘Even more pernicious [is] a pattern of informal discrimination which [has] suffused nearly all areas of life,’”? and which serves to reinforce women’s social and economic subordination (Chafe 1977, 47) Although the last decade has seen discernible change in, for exam- ple, the judicial attitude regarding ‘‘sex as a reasonable classification standard,”’ beliefs about the natural characteristics of the sexes as well as about the traditional structure of the institution of the family and its relation to the public sphere continue to frame and inform judicial opinion in such areas as pregnancy and employment, battering, and rape (Okin 1979, 273, Carol Pateman 1980, Lenore Walker 1977) The last two decades have seen “‘less of a change in the definition of women’s place than an extension of this definition to incorporate new features’ (Chafe 1977, 29) ” 7 To pursue a career or enter the workforce 1s one thing To call into question the social aspects of traditional gender identities 1s quite another It is true that some women now have greater access to educational opportunities and that greater numbers of women are securing jobs in previously male-dominated professions The political gains which increased access to education or to the labor force mark, however, are merely formal As Susan Okin observes, (1979, 3, 290) these gains have “in no way en- sured the attamment of real equalities in the social and economic aspects of women’s lives In spite of the prevalent assumption that women have it within their power to be the equals of men, simply by taking up the equal opportunities offered them, the status of women in country, measured in terms of occupation, education and in- come has been gradually but persistently declining over the last few years *” This raises several questions First, what does the ‘‘attainment of real equalities” mean within a socio-economic structure in which women’s principal role in the labor force 1s, following Zillah Ersenstein (1981, 35-351), ‘to provide just about the cheapest labor possible?” Second, relative to whom 1s the ‘‘attainment of real equalities” sought when access to societal wealth 1s disproportionately distributed along the lines of class and race as well as sex? And, finally, in what sense 1s “equal opportunity before the law,”’ if treated as an end in itself, a solution to institutionalize inequalities (as oppos- ed to an extension of them)? 15hypatia This 1s the context within which Elshtain urges women to adopt the standpoint of an Antigone, to claim the private sphere—which others besides Elshtain now note 1s not a separate sphere or domain of ex- istence but a position within social existence generally’ (Kelly 1979, 221)—and from it to critique the state Of greater political significance for her than women’s history of exploitation, oppression, and exclusion, and the claims for incorporation that many contem- porary feminisms legitimate in terms of this history, 1s the current threat of a radically antidemocratic state, detached from and unresponsive to the actual conditions of human hfe A government which in principle derives its legitimacy from a people or citizenry now can and does operate virtually independent of that citizenry It has ceased ‘‘to be in any important sense a government of, by, and for the people [and] at best functions merely as a benevolent paternalism’’ (Christopher Lasch 1981, 7) Elshtain brings the issues of incorporation, the growth of the bureaucratic state, the formulation of policy within this state, and its abstract and hence life-threatening application of power into focus and maps these issues onto the terrain of feminist political discourse However, she does not consider or critically reassess the problematic status of the private sphere and the equally problematic status of women’s traditional association with this sphere In accepting both as social ‘‘givens’’ rather than as social ‘‘constructions,’’ she leaves her feminist ‘‘account’’ theoretically ungrounded While the pmvate sphere may not constitute a separate social domain, it occupies and has occupied a subordinate social position relative to the ‘‘public’”” realm Women’s labors within it have been devalued and, historically, have been ‘‘harnessed to sustain and reproduce’’ a sex-gender system which prefigures sexual hierarchy and male dominance (Kelly 1979, 225) Elshtain imphes that through ‘‘social feminist awareness,”’ a certain “revaluation’’ of women’s sphere, of women’s activities within it, or, more generally, of ‘‘recerved categories’’ can be brought about from within those categories themselves Accordingly, ‘maternal thought”’ or mothering capabilities—‘‘dramatically at odds with the prevailing norms of our bureaucratic and increasingly technological public order’’—can provide a base and a means for feminists to examine and critique an over-controlled public world without enhancing its powers of regulation and control in the process (Elshtain 1982, 58, Sara Rud- dick 1980) While fostering values which support societal life, women as mothers may also foster values which clash with prevailing public norms (Elshtain 1982) In this respect the implications of their ac- tivities within the private sphere are potentially radical Yet Elshtain 16SS valerie a. hartouni does not consider how this revaluation—this renaming and reconstitu- tion of ‘‘femininity,”” of female childbearing and childrearing ac- tivity—will be effected culture-wide She does not suggest how the social aspects of traditional gender roles and identities will be significantly altered, nor how her ‘‘new’’ female subyect—‘‘located historically and grounded in tradition,” possessing, by implication, a certain moral superiority to her public counterpart—differs substan- tially from culturally sanctioned and prescribed norms regarding womanhood While Elshtain may intend a difference, it 1t not clear in what this difference could consist when women possess neither the culturally recognized authority to name, to reconstitute meaning, nor to reascribe the terms of their membership Moreover, in her idealiza- tion of famihal bonds and her ardent call for ‘‘the redemption of everyday life,”’ her analysis remains oblivious to the realities of the daily ves of many women—particularly those who are not members of the white, middle class, heterosexual segments of society The closest she comes to addressing these issues 1s when she notes that “‘while the psychic-social authority of mothers 1s enormous, what this could lead to will always be problematic as long as mothers are social- ly subordinate’ (Elshtain 1982, 59) * The pivotal political problematic hes 1n this issue of social subordination Elshtain’s failure to engage it critically leaves open the question of how we get from a “‘func- tionalist’’ reasoning of women’s sphere to a ‘‘feminist’” reasoning of this sphere when the concepts which inform both remain uncontested and essentially unaltered The challenge that Antigone puts to the state, while legitimate in terms of the traditions it seeks to restore, 1s not recognized as such either publicly or politically before or after her death Ismene, Haemon, Creon, as well as the Chorus, all understand her as setting herself against the king as Creon sets himself against the ties of kin, but no one, despite their sympathies, takes her to be acting legitimate- ly Because of her action, she stands apart from and outside of established law and custom Acting to sustain both, she transgresses both Having left the private sphere to represent its claims, she forfeits the right to do so She 1s without location, without legitimate author- 8 I suspect that Elshtain’s ‘“‘idealization”’ of the family grows out of her attempt to take what she assumes are basic, commonly shared experiences of intimate associa- tion and relationship, and to theorize from these relationships an alternative under- standing of collective life and politics which lays the groundwork for a more human reconstitution of both The point is, however, that neither these relationships nor the heterosexual, nuclear family model from which they are derived are universal—or for that matter sufficiently particular to sustain the pohticai claims Elshtain wants to make in terms of them 17hypatia ity, and without membership Once she acts, she has no “standpoint ’’ For by her action she displaces herself into nonex- istence The standpoint which Elshtain urges contemporary women to adopt, the standpoint of an Antigone, dissolves in its enactment Within a culture that holds silence to be the condition of women’s honor, as in Antigone’s case, women’s speech and action have no public context Both remain incoherent in the existing political terms It 1s no different for contemporary women Action takes 1ts meaning from its context And within a context in which the President himself attributes the currently severe unemployment rates to the large number of women entering the work-force,” it 1s clear that traditional reasonings with respect to women’s proper place and activity have yet to undergo the revaluation which would make plausible or even noticable a ‘‘femimist’’ reappropriation of either 9 In Mr Reagan’s own words as reported in Time (July 12, 1982 23) ‘‘[part of the reason for unemployment] 1s not so much recession as it 1s the great increase in the people gomg into the yob market, and Ladies, I’m not picking on anyone, but [it 1s] because of the increase in women working today and two worker families,” 18valerie a. hartouni references Chafe, Wiliam 1977 Women and equality London Oxford Um- versity Press Cocks, J 1982 How long til equality? Time 120 (July 12) 20-24, 26, 29 Dworkin, Andrea 1974 Woman hating New York E P Dutton ——— 1981 Pornography Men possessing women New York G P Putnam’s Sons Eisenstein, Zillah 1981 Reform or revolution Towards a unified woman’s movement In Women and revoluton, edited by Lydia Sargent Boston Southend Press Elshtain, Jean Bethke 1974 The feminist movement and the question of equality Polity 7 (4) 452-477 ——— 1982 Antigone’s daughters Democracy 2 (2) 46-59 Euben, Peter 1978 Political equality and the green polis In Liberalism and the modern polity, edited by M J G McGrath New York Marcel Dekker Gould, Carol K 1976 The woman question Philosophy of liberation and the liberation of philosophy In Women and philosophy Toward a theory of liberation, edited by Carol Gould and Marx W Wartofsky New York GP Putnam’s Sons Horowitz, Mary Ann Cline 1976 Aristotle and women Journal of the History of Biology, 9 (2) 183-213 Kelly, Joan 1979 Double vision of feminist theory Femurust Studies 5 (1) 216-227 Lasch, Christopher 1981 Democracy and the crisis of confidence Democracy | (1) 25-40 Okin, Susan Moller 1979 Women in western political thought New Jersey Princeton University Press Pateman, Carol 1980 Women and consent Political Theory 8 (2) 149-168 Pranger, Robert 1968 The eclpse of citizenship Power and participation in contemporary politics New York Holt, Rinehart and Winston Redfield, James 1977 The women of Sparta Classical Journal 72 (2) 147-161 Rowbotham, Sheila 1974 Woman’s consciousness, man’s world London Penguin Books Ruddick, Sara 1980 Material thinking Feminist Studies 6 (2) 342-367 Shaw, Michael 1975 The female intruder Classical Philology 70 (4) 255-266 19hypatia Sophocles Antigone 1956 Trans Elizabeth Wycoff Chicago University of Chicago Press ——— 1912 Text with translation by F Storr New York G P Putnam’s Sons ——— 1977 The oedipus cycle Trans Fitts and Fitzgerald New York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Walker, Lenore E 1979 The battered woman New York Harper and Row Winnington-Ingram, R P 1980 Sophocles—an interpretation Cambridge Cambridge University PressCopyright © 2002 EBSCO Publishing