Tragic and comic tactics for confronting power: Antigone and Lysistrata

Abstract

Antigone and Lysistrata, the protagonists who give their names to the famous tragic and comic pieces, have tactics for confronting power that can perhaps be characterised as antagonistic. The first goes tenaciously and consciously towards death, fulfilling the task that seems right to her and at the same time reaping the glory that will accompany her deed (Antigone, v. 502): the success of her enterprise is inseparable from her own sacrifice. The second dribbles past the representatives of power with strategic planning and guile; her endeavour is successful and crowned with a comic feast. The first has confrontation (anti-, against) inscribed in her name, the second liberation (lysis-, the action of untying, releasing). On the one hand, both can be seen as representatives of their literary genres: the first going against power and deliberately perishing as a result; the other cleverly dissolving, in a stroke of wit with doses of absurdity and comicality, the obstacles that stand in her way. On the other hand, both can also be seen as representatives of the same feminine gender, and in this sense there are many themes that bring them together: the opposition between the logic of political power and the logic of the family and the oikos; the disastrous consequences that male warfare causes in the feminine sphere; the privileged relationship of women with philia and marriage are some of them. The aim of this paper is to compare the tactics of the two heroines in terms of how they use their feminine status to confront the prevailing masculine power.