Of Love and Beauty in Lacan's Antigone

This article explores the famous reading of Sophocles' Antigone that Lacan produced in his seminar The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Lacan's account is more obscure and suggestive than clear and expository, and this article attempts to clarify three main issues: Lacan's disagreement with Hegel's reading of the play, his focus on the “beauty” or “striking image” of Antigone, and his emphasis on catharsis in relation to the audience. Each of these issues is developed as a dialogue with a major philosopher: first, Hegel's master-slave relation, second, Kant's esthetics, and third, Aristotle's Poetics. The first issue is developed as a contrast between “desire” and “law,” whereby Antigone's desire is distinguished from her assertion of any general principle or law. The second issue is developed through Lacan's treatment of the “beautiful” in Kant, which Lacan presents as a rupture with the imaginary, and as a first formulation of his later conception of the “gaze,” with particular emphasis on its esthetic function in tragedy. The third issue is developed as a relation between Aristotle's account of catharsis and Lacan's emerging concern with the problems of jouissance and affect. The article also elaborates the “politics of psychoanalysis,” by exploring the relation between Antigone's burial of her brother (based on her desire), and the effect of her action on the audience in the theater.