It is as an example of the beautiful that Lacan reads Antigone and, particularly, within the play, Antigone. It is as such that, with Lacan, we find something in the text ‘other than a lesson on morality’.
This is not to claim that Antigone has, for Lacan, no ethical import. It is, after all, in the context of his seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis that he spends considerable time discussing the play.
It is rather to stress that the ethical import of the play lies not in the moralising arguments it might be understood to put forward, whether these be in the sense of a discourse between competing conceptions of the just or (moral) good or in the sense of an advocation of a position of transgression.
While both these positions are, of course, possible, neither addresses the question of ethics. They remain, rather, on the side of (questions of) the law.
The ethical is by definition a subjective moment, the moment of subjective assumption in response to the lack encountered in the Other and the other.
The ethical, that is, is the moment of assumption of that point which refuses recuperation to an image or to a rule, that point where the Symbolic and the Imaginary break down or break open upon the Real.
In terms of the moral law, the ethical is the point at which the subject assumes upon itself the impossible place of that which would guarantee the law. In terms of the Imaginary, ethics is the response to that in the other which refuses recuperation to a coherent image of identification. To render Antigone or Antigone as an ethical example, or as the ethical example par excellence, is to assume to generalise that which is by definition beyond generalisation.
That is to say, to confer upon Antigone the status of example would be to make of Antigone and her act a rule which might be followed; thou shalt transgress the symbolic. But such an example is clearly not an ethical example at all. The ethical moment would necessarily resist any such generalisation and return in the form of the necessity of the subject assuming upon itself the impetus to follow (or reject) the example.
It is not especially that Antigone or Antigone’s act cannot function as an ethical example. It is rather that the ethical cannot be exemplified without recuperating it to a law. Which is to say, precisely, without rendering it other than ethical.
As beautiful, as that which would simultaneously reflect and lure our desire, Antigone would demand a response. This demand would be the subject’s confrontation with the desire that is in it. That is to say, in its location at and as the limit point of the Real, that at which desire would impossibly aim, the beautiful can be understood to be that which would ask of the subject, ‘Have you acted in conformity with the desire that is in you?’ (Lacan Seminar VII p. 314)
As, that is, that which can simultaneously support and lure desire, that which allows the subject to confront das Ding without it destroying the subject, the beautiful would be that which would allow the subject to confront the desire that is in it and thus begin to name this desire, to bring it into the world.
That is to say, it is precisely insofar as the beautiful allows the possibility of encountering the limit of the Real without subsuming the subject in the Real and thus rendering the subject impossible, that it allows the subject the possibility of both confronting its desire and inscribing its desire in the Symbolic.
It is in this sense that the beautiful would entail a cathartic function. The beautiful would allow the possibility of the purification of desire, not in the sense of allowing the subject to attain and occupy pure desire but in the sense of allowing the subject to experience its desire stripped of the trappings of the Symbolic and Imaginary orders and, significantly, to return to the Symbolic and Imaginary orders, bringing with it ‘a new presence’, something which cannot simply be accommodated as though it had always already been there.
The ethical significance of Antigone lies, therefore, not in Antigone’s act in the sense that her act would function as the quintessential ethical example but, rather,
the ethical significance of the play lies in the manner in which it would relate to the desire of the spectator.
The extent to which we can discuss Antigone’s act at all is the extent to which it has been or is being (re)inscribed in the Symbolic. This should alert us to the ambiguity of the act insofar as it can become a topic for discussion.
Antigone’s act, in the proper Lacanian sense, is her act. It is only available for her. What impacts of Antigone’s act on others is either/both a moment of emergence of the Real and/or a Symbolic recuperation depending on the moment of logical time from which it is perceived.
That is to say, we might discern separate moments in Antigone’s so called act.
- There would be the moment of incomprehension wherein the act disrupts and cannot be explained.
- There would also be the moment of comprehension wherein the act is slotted into a framework of explanation – e.g. Antigone promotes an alternative discourse on what is just, Antigone constitutes the revolutionary stance par excellence precisely because she promotes no discourse on justice at all but is understood to have introduced a moment of radical disruption for the social weave of Thebes.
Neither of these perspectives, however, can be adequate to the act as it is assumed by Antigone, if it is in fact an act at all.
Given that she is never more than a fictional character, one might be justified in pointing out that ‘she’ cannot assume anything. The pertinent ethical question in Antigone is how we, the audience, the spectator, the reader, respond to the play and respond beyond the play.
The only true act in Antigone is precisely not in Antigone, it is in response to Antigone.