Book Launch – Andrés Henao Castro (University of Massachusetts, Boston)

Antigone in the Americas: Democracy, Sexuality, and Death in the Settler Colonial Present (SUNY Press, 2021) 

With comments presented by the author and distinguished guests Demetra Kasimis (University of Chicago) and Ely Orrego-Torres (Northwestern University)

Book Blurb:  

Sophocles’s classical tragedy, Antigone, is continually reinvented, particularly in the Americas. Theater practitioners and political theorists alike revisit the story to hold states accountable for their democratic exclusions, as Antigone did in disobeying the edict of her uncle, Creon, for refusing to bury her brother, Polynices. Antigone in the Americas not only analyzes the theoretical reception of Antigone, when resituated in the Americas, but further introduces decolonial rumination as a new interpretive methodology through which to approach classical texts. Traveling between modern present and ancient past, Andrés Fabián Henao Castro focuses on metics (resident aliens) and slaves, rather than citizens, making the feminist politics of burial long associated with Antigone relevant for theorizing militant forms of mourning in the global south. Grounded in settler colonial critique, black and woman of color feminisms, and queer and trans of color critique, Antigone in the Americas offers a more radical interpretation of Antigone, one relevant to subjects situated under multiple and interlocking systems of oppression. 

Where
On Zoom

When

Sydney: Friday, October 8, 11am – 12:30pm

New York: Thursday, October 7, 8pm – 9:30pm

The Zoom link
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Complete Critical Antiquities Workshop program can be found here

The Critical Antiquities Workshop is an initiative of the Critical Antiquities Network (CAN) at the University of Sydney. CAN, co-directed by Ben Brown and Tristan Bradshaw, connects scholars working at the intersection of ancient traditions and contemporary critical theory.

The Department of Classics and Ancient History is part of the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry (SOPHI).

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