The 204-page book, translated by Nguyen Thi Minh, discusses the classic work Antigone by Sophocles - the most mentioned play in the history of Western philosophy and political theory.
John Seery, an American political theorist, commented that the book is "one of the most important works of scholarship in the past 50 years", not only that, "such a reading of a classical text appears only once every 2,500 years or so".
Cover of the book "Antigone's Claim" (Photo: Vietnamese Women's Publishing House).
For a long time, Sophocles' character Antigone has often been considered a female image, representing family and kinship, viewed from the perspective of Creon - a character representing masculinity.
However, Judith Butler re-questions this and offers a reading in which the protagonist is Antigone with her claims.
First, the representativeness of Antigone herself: she is a fictional character, difficult to use as a model without falling into unreality.
Second, Antigone is hardly a representative of feminism, because she herself is involved in the power that feminism is fighting against.
Antigone herself is not a pure female model: she does not act or speak like a woman, does not marry or have children.
Antigone also finds it difficult to represent her family, because of the troubles and deviations of the family she is attached to.
The author uses the views of Hegel and Lacan - whose readings of Antigone have been the most influential to date - to counter them, and at the same time tries to answer the question: "What would happen if psychoanalysis took Antigone, rather than Oedipus, as its starting point?".
Antigone's claim is Butler's attempt to demonstrate that Antigone is a character capable of opening up possibilities, making us rethink and somewhat expanding the boundaries of seemingly natural and immutable norms, in history as well as in life.
Judith Butler, 67, is an influential philosopher and gender researcher who advocates for a life worth living for all people (especially women, gender nonconforming people, and sexual minorities).
She teaches in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Critical Theory program at the University of California, Berkeley.
Her quote is often quoted and widely supported: "Life is more worth living when we are not imprisoned in categories that do not suit us, categories that impose themselves and take away our freedom."
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