The politics of kinship

Judith Butler’s Antigone’s Claim explores our most intimate ties to others – the ties of kinship. Antigone’s Claim explores the politics of kinship through a reading of the figure of Antigone. For Butler, Antigone represents a crisis of the Oedipal order of kinship, revealing the possibility of new forms of kinship itself. Butler presents a persuasive and moving argument for the necessity of changes in our conception and practice of kinship. However, her account of new kinship forms is less persuasive, failing to engage adequately with the sociality of kinship or to provide a radical model of its new forms. Butler argues that Antigone does not represent a feminist politics. However, Antigone’s Claim suggests that, if we are to re-conceive the politics of kinship, then it is necessary to reread Antigone as a political figure.