Author: Judith Butler
Antigone's Claim
Publisher: Suhrkamp
156 pages
ISBN: 978-3-5181-2187-0
Antigone's Claim is the first work of Judith Butler to be translated into Vietnamese. The work deals with Sophocles' classic Antigone, the most commented-upon play in the history of philosophy and political theory. Antigone's Claim is Butler's attempt to demonstrate that Antigone is the one who is capable of opening possibilities, forcing us to rethink and somewhat expand the boundaries of seemingly natural and unmalleable norms, synchronically and diachronically. We will also see here concepts that have formed the backbone of Butler’s entire career to the present: the concept of the subject of desire, gender performativity and the precarity of human life in the world.
In addition to the main text of Antigone's Claim, this publication contains two appendices. Appendix 1 is Judith Butler's famous article “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”. This article is fully translated and published with the permission of the author and Johns Hopkins University Press. Appendix 2 is an excerpt from Lacan's discussion of Antigone in his seminar VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis.
Antigone’s Claim is a turning point in the history of interpretation of Antigone. Butler moves her out of the “straight” category into the “queer” category. The book is also a model of critical thinking in the sense that it questions many traditional constructs and continues to open up interesting debates about Antigone in the world as well as in Vietnam.
To the book launch on May 14, 2022
is a professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. An influential scholar, she is also an advocate of the idea of “a livable life” for all humans. She addresses in particular women, sexual minorities and gender nonconformists.
Nguyen Thi Minh (*1985) - Translator
is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies, Ho Chi Minh City University of Education. Her main research interests are comparative literature, and film adaptation based on subjectivity theory and semiotics. She has participated in collaborative research activities in Japan (2017, 2019) and the United States (2017-2020), participated in organizing and presenting reports at many conferences at home and abroad. She is also the co-founder of "The Ladder - a Learning Space for Community", a space for those who love wisdom to share and make academic knowledge becomes more available to everyone, especially the youngsters in Vietnam. She translated: "Between Past and Future" (Hannah Arendt), Knowledge Publishing House, 2020; "History of Philosophy, volume 2" (co-translation) (Johannes Hirschberger), Knowledge Publishing House, 2020; "Antigone’s Claim" (Judith Butler), Women’s Publishing House Vietnam, 2021; "A History of the Breast" (Marilyn Yalom), Women’s Publishing House Vietnam, 2022.
