Andrés Fabián Henao Castro is Affiliate Professor of Political Science on the College of Massachusetts Boston. His analysis broadly seeks to rethink the connection between politics and aesthetics in relation to gender-differentiated colonial logics of capitalist accumulation. His latest ebook, Antigone in the Americas: Democracy, Sexuality and Death in the Settler Colonial Present (SUNY Press 2021), seeks for example the relevance of Sophocles’ tragedy, Antigone, to the up to date vital race philosophy/concept. On this Lately Revealed E book Highlight, Castro discusses his means of decolonial rumination, wherein he displays backwards and forwards on the unique Greek textual content and up to date diversifications/rewritings of the tragedy within the Americas, in addition to the insights these readings present.
What’s your work about?
My ebook is about making Sophocles’ Antigone related to the considerations of up to date vital race philosophy/concept, broadly understood, inclusive of decolonial concept, settler colonial critique, Afro-pessimism, and queer of colour critique, amongst others. I used to be drawn to the tragedy due to the central position that it performs in my self-discipline, as a canonical textual content of political concept/philosophy. Like many feminist theorists, I concentrate on the explanations behind Antigone’s determination to bury her brother in defiance of Creon’s inaugural determination, as Thebes’ new sovereign, to instrumentalise the corpse of Polyneices to determine the boundaries (or, arguably, the shortage thereof) of his personal sovereign proper over life and demise. Not like many feminist theorists (aside from Tina Chanter), I concentrate on Antigone’s motive to bury Polyneices as a result of he was not Eteocles’ slave. Had Polyneices been a slave, Antigone would probably not have carried out her dissident burial. However I additionally concentrate on Antigone’s declare to be a metic (resident foreigner), which I interpret in much less rhetorical and extra statutory phrases to open the textual content to the figuration of different companies. Extra broadly, I concentrate on the methods wherein studying historical imperialism in relation to trendy colonialism modifies our understanding of Antigone’s varied claims and their theoretical interpretation. Classical sovereignty modified after the colonization of the Americas and the institutionalization of the trans-Atlantic slave commerce inaugurated capitalism as a racially and gender-differentiated world-system. These structural processes modified, too, the vital reception of Antigone within the Americas the place Antigone performs fairly otherwise in her varied journeys by means of the worldwide south. Partaking in what I name within the ebook, decolonial rumination, a type of studying backwards and forwards, that time-travels between the unique Greek textual content and up to date diversifications/rewritings of the tragedy within the Americas, I wished to re-read the play from the angle of those that had been/are mis-interpellated by its message (an thought I take from James Martel). In different phrases, I wished to learn the play from the angle of metics (resident foreigners) and from the angle of the enslaved, fairly than from the angle of residents. And I wished to carry out that studying, to be able to make the play theoretically and politically related to Black and Indigenous peoples immediately, that’s to say, to those that stay subjected to slavery’s aftermath (an thought I take from Saidiya Hartman), and to different folks of colour within the international south who, when pressured to go away their nations of origin, will not be given citizenship however one thing akin to metoikia within the US and Canada (as refugees, stateless, or undocumented immigrants, primarily).
What instructions would you wish to take your work sooner or later?
Sooner or later, I want to carry out this sort of theoretical reinterpretation of historical Greek myths from the unique perspective of girls of colour feminisms. I’d revisit Antigone in that future work, however I’ll be specializing in different proto-feminist characters from the wealthy historical Greek archive. Some shall be as well-known as Antigone, as it’s the case with the ebook chapter on Medea that Sara Brill and Catherine McKeen invited me to contribute to The Routledge Handbook on Girls and Historical Greek Philosophy. Others is not going to. For example, I want to write in regards to the servant’s presumable betrayal of Penelope in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (itself a rewriting of Homer’s Odyssey from the angle of Penelope), which I feel is as misunderstood as Penelope’s strategic use of the loom to ward-off the reinstitution of patriarchy tout court docket, fairly than to guard her constancy to Odysseus, as it’s typically understood. Each the actions of the servant and people of Penelope are depoliticized, if for various albeit tragically interconnected causes. To know the sophisticated politics of that connection is essential for up to date intersectional feminist concept and follow fascinated by transnational solidarity.
This broader venture will even supply me the chance to revisit Gayatri Spivak’s interpretation of Echo, in a vital engagement with psychoanalytic concept that can prolong my very own engagement with Jacques Lacan’s studying of Antigone to the sphere of language and the issue of the voice. In that future work, I additionally anticipate to have interaction the parable of Procne and Philomena, important to the feminist politics of Chilean arpilleras (political weavers) in opposition to the US backed dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile, together with its resonances in Mampuján (Colombia) and different locations within the international south. Likewise, this work will give me the chance to advance my very own political reinterpretation of Jocasta, for my part the strongest and most neglected character from Oedipus Tyrannos.
Which of your insights or conclusions do you discover most enjoyable?
For a play that accumulates 2,500 years of interpretation—literary, philosophical, and political—my two most enjoyable insights had been: first, to noticeably take into account what if Antigone had been a metic; and second, to think about what if one had been to retell the story of Oedipus from the angle of the enslaved. Most interpretations of Antigone both explicitly or implicitly assume the place of the citizen or universalize it, as if slavery or metoikia might don’t have any affect on the common humanism attributed to the politics of Antigone’s burial. I present in any other case and thus have one thing fairly considerably new so as to add to the in any other case huge current literature on this play. When you concentrate on the imperial historical past of historical Athens and join that historical past to European colonialism’s manner of influencing the reception of the classics, you begin to consider militant burials otherwise. You even begin to take into account, as I do within the final chapter of the ebook, that mourning and melancholia are inadequate classes for vital concept to grasp the methods wherein Black, Indigenous and different folks of colour confront losses that don’t have any place within the symbolic order of their colonially remade polis.
How have readers responded? (Or how do you hope they’ll reply?)
As a non-classicist, the response from students in classics has been extra constructive than I might have ever anticipated. Tristan Bradshaw and Ben Brown, co-founders of the Critical Antiquities Network, invited me to debate the ebook of their workshop and my interpretation was obtained with the best curiosity and essentially the most beneficiant feedback. However my settlement with Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang’s declare that it is very important cease metaphorizing decolonization, I felt like of us in classics had been able to decolonize antiquity. My ebook was, thus, a greater than welcomed contribution to what I really feel the Community desires to do on this discipline of examine. The interview will be seen here.
The response from comparative literature has been equally constructive. Moira Fradinger, the literary professional on the reception/adaptation of Antigone in Latin America delivered the nicest evaluate that I’ve ever obtained about my work, when discussing the ebook on the Antigone’s Worldlings Colloquium, an occasion that I co-organized with Ranji Khanna when in residency on the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke. That interview shall be accessible quickly however info on that occasion can already be discovered here. Lastly, the ebook has additionally been nicely obtained in my very own self-discipline: political concept. Jane Gordon invited me to debate the ebook on the Connecticut-UMass Amherst Political Concept Group, a bunch that’s admittedly already on board with decolonial concept, and enthusiastic about anti/alter-canonical readings of foundational texts like that of Antigone. The ambiance of camaraderie was heartwarming, and the mental dialog in regards to the limits of the trans-historical connection I make stimulating, as questions of race and colonial constructions have modified significantly all through historical past. I have no idea if Antigone within the Americas could have a broader readership, because it stays a ebook centered on the interpretation of fairly demanding theoretical frameworks (democratic concept, feminist and queer concept, psychoanalysis, the speculation of biopolitics and necropolitics, and deconstruction) however I hope that if something, the ebook at the least motivates extra experimental readings of historical tragedies by vital race theorists.
How has your work influenced your educating?
I might put it otherwise, as it’s typically my educating that finally ends up influencing my work. The classroom is a type of philosophical laboratory of types, one in which you’ll be able to experiment with various theoretical interpretations of the textual content in query, till you lastly discover the one which lets you make a extra significant political/theoretical intervention in your discipline. I attempted this with Antigone but in addition with different texts. Thus, after a number of years of educating Trendy Political Concept whereas making an attempt to retell Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Mandrake from a feminist perspective, I ended up publishing “Queering Lucrezia’s Virtú.” Whereas engaged on that piece, I began to ask my college students, for his or her ultimate paper, to write down an extra scene wherein they’ll be retelling the play from Lucrezia’s perspective, fairly than from the dominant ones of Callimaco and Ligurio, whereas making an attempt to take action in Machiavelli’s political model. This isn’t removed from what I attempt to do in Antigone within the Americas, after I take into consideration Black and Indigenous Antigones within the trendy Americas and a couple of metic Antigone and an enslaved Polyneices in historical Greece.And I’ve, since, completed comparable experiments with Plato’s Republic and Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos, when educating Historical Political Concept, and with different texts, movies and performs I train in my Decolonial Concept seminar, amongst different programs I train.
What else would you love to do along with your analysis, should you might do something?
I want to see both a brand new theatrical or movie rendition of Oedipus Tyrannos that retells the story from the angle of the enslaved, as I do within the ebook. In that retelling, the story that we’re all conversant in, the story of Oedipus’s parricide and incest, strikes to the background of the narrative. Within the foreground, against this, what we’d lastly see is the political deliberation of the enslaved, insurgently plotting for the liberation of their respective cities. On the middle of these discussions shall be their effort at instrumentalizing the prophecy that turns Oedipus right into a revolutionary weapon of their palms, for the enslaved to do away with their respective enslavers first in Thebes after which in Corinth.
What’s subsequent for you?
This tutorial yr I’ll be having fun with my sabbatical, whereas ending my second ebook, titled: The Militant Intellect: Critical Theory’s Conceptual Personae, scheduled to be launched within the Fall of 2022 by Rowman & Littlefield. Written as my manner of answering my college students what’s it that I do, as a vital theorist who writes books, The Militant Mind provides a manner of rethinking the connection between vital concept and politics. In that ebook I argue that vital concept cultivates the militancy of the overall mind by coaching that mind to work in the direction of the intersectional and structural demise of the colonist and thus to check on the similar time the materialization of that feminist decolonial communist queer marronage world that constitutes its emancipatory horizon. Within the ebook I borrow and develop on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s thought of conceptual persona to qualify the mental labor of vital concept as an undisciplined discipline, that performs its labor by means of the creation of conceptual personae able to subjectivizing vital thought. Doing so, The Militant Mind argues for the indispensable reinterpretation of Plato’s Thinker Sovereign, Karl Marx’s Communist, Frantz Fanon’s Insurgent, Jacques Derrida’s Specter, Gayatri Spivak’s Subaltern, Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Life, Jacques Rancière’s Ignorant Schoolmaster, Judith Butler’s Antigone/Ismene, and Jordy Rosenberg’s Fox as compelling personifications of mental militancy for the overall mind to have new scripts able to cultivating the virtuosity of its extra revolutionary performances.
Maryellen Stohlman-Vanderveen is the APA Weblog’s Variety and Inclusion Editor and Analysis Editor. She graduated from Smith School in 2019 with a Bachelor’s diploma in Philosophy and a minor in Psychology. She is at present pursuing an MSc in Philosophy and Public Coverage on the London Faculty of Economics. Her analysis pursuits embody conceptual engineering, normative ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of know-how. Maryellen beforehand served as a 2019-20 Fulbright fellow to the Czech Republic and as a Morningside School Junior Fellow on the Chinese language College of Hong Kong the place she taught introductory ethics and repair studying programs.
