Antigone’s Choice: Tragedy and philosophy from dialectic to aporia

Shaped by Hegel, philosophy’s approach to Antigone has always been firmly rooted in all the assumptions of realism, with proper, true-to-life, consistent, and plausible characters. These characterological mimetic interpretations often feed off each other within context what’s perceived as “realist” drama, its focus on characters their insoluble, hence tragic, conflict. Starting twentieth-century avant-garde, however, theatre became less interested mimicry a foundation drama what follows, theatrical experience itself. Along shift our character, we have also experienced understanding Aristotelian components (“Plot” “Thought”) dramatic genres (“Tragedy”). As sense character Thought shifted from stable unstable, so did tragedy role at junction philosophy. Tragedy dialectic aporia, binary polynary. Antigone—with multiple critical lenses—illuminates this fundamental and, thus, relationship between philosophy postdramatic theatre.