Literary Criticism: Antigone

Panopticism in Antigone

Power relation between human and the God in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex seems to be the recurring theme; similarly it is in the third sequel of his trilogy, Antigone. Speaking of power relation, it is inevitable to not mention Foucault’s writings. In his work entitled The History of Sexuality, Foucault (1978) says that power is characterized as being repressive and it takes the form of a law and demands obedience. Where there is power, however, there is always resistance that balances it. He adds that power does not rely on anyone, which means that it is the entity on its own (impersonality); power always exists in a relationship (relationality); there is no source of it (decentredness); it goes and come from anywhere (multidirectionality); and it can be placed in where it is needed (strategic nature). In this play, I find that both God and Creon use the same way as the means of power to control the people. In this essay, therefore, I am using Foucauldian reading as the framework to make a close observation on how God and Creon exercise their power through several means which are discipline and punishment; also to see whether there is an absolute power or not in this play.

From his work Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Foucault (1975) states that discipline is used to create docile people so that the power can be exercised in an unobstructed way; to control those docile people, they must be constantly observed and recorded—or at least they should feel that they are. He adds that this concept to discipline people is similar to Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon—the architectural model for perfect prison which is structured in a way that cells would be open to a central tower. In the model, individuals in the cells do not interact with each other and are constantly confronted by the panoptic tower (pan=all; optic=seeing). They cannot, however, see when there is a person in the tower; they must believe that they could be watched at any moment: "the inmate must never know whether he is being watched at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so" (p.201). In Antigone, both God and Creon use this method of panopticon to discipline the people and to exercise their power. In the case of God, the panopticon is portrayed as the sun which is described by the chorus in the Parodos:

Now the long blade of the sun, lying  

Level east to west, touches with glory

Thebes of the Seven Gates. Open, unlidded

Eye of golden day! O marching light

Across the eddy and rush of Dirce’s stream,

Striking the white shields of the enemy  

Thrown headlong backward from the blaze of morning!  

(Sophocles, 441B.C. Parodos. 85-91)

In this excerpt, the sun is associated with the open and unlidded eye that sees all what happen beneath it and watch those who break the God’s law. In the play, Creon conspicuously breaks the law by stating that nobody shall neither burry nor pray for Polyneices; in short, Creon breaks the law by abandoning the dead under the God’s ‘surveillance’ undisguisedly for he does it in the day; under the sun. In the same way, Creon also uses this panoptic means to demand people’s obedience by putting his ‘surveillance’ to observe those who break his law. Creon’s ‘all seeing eye’ is the Sentry as it is portrayed in the scene 2 of the play when the Sentry says:

I saw her with my own eyes…

So we sat on a hill to windward and kept guard….

…And then we looked, and there was Antigone!

I have seen…

…And then she brought more dust

And sprinkled wine three times for her brother’s ghost.

.

(Sophocles, 441B.C. 2. 320-341)

This excerpt clearly depicts the Sentry as Creon’s ‘surveillance’ because the Sentry guards and observes what happens beneath him before he reports all what he sees to Creon. Both the sun and Sentry function as the embodiment of God’s and Creon’s eyes as the means of their power to discipline the people so that they will not break the law. Interestingly, those who breaks the law—Creon and Antigone—do it conspicuously under the ‘surveillance’ of the ‘all-seeing eye’ for Creon do it before the sun and Antigone do it before the Sentry, both of them do it in the day.

The second means of power is punishment, which according to Foucault (1975) is a certain mechanism of power that is unhesitant to exert itself directly on people and strengthened by its visible manifestations as means of maintaining order. In Antigone, punishment is used by both God and Creon to give the sense of repentant and deterrent effect for those who break the law as well as to warn other people. In the case of Creon, he punishes Polyneices by abandoning his dead body unburied. He, moreover, punishes Antigone who breaks his law by incarcerating her in the stone chamber. All of his efforts are meant to maintain his power and discipline the people he is ruling. Similarly, God punishes Creon by crushing him the tragic fate that his son and wife dead. Likewise, the reasons are to maintain his power and discipline the people.

After all, God’s and Creon’s means of power are the same that they both exert discipline and punishment to maintain their order. However, there are differences between their power in term of the panopticon and punishment system. In Creon’s panoptic system, the Sentry is not consistent and omnisentient; it is described in scene 1 when the Sentry reports that someone has partially buried the dead body:

I did not it. I did not see who did it. You must not punish me for what someone else has done.

…A dreadful thing… I don’t know how to put it––

(Sophocles, 441B.C. 1. 200-208)

This excerpt shows that Creon’s panoptic system is imperfect because it fails to see what happen to the dead body at the first time Antigone pours the sands and wine as the ceremony to properly burry Polyneices. However, the God’s panopticon never fails because it sees all what happen beneath it. Moreover, in term of the punishment, the God’s and Creon’s perseverance is totally different. In the case of Creon, he finally withdraws his own law after Teiresias remind him about the God’s will and power. The withdrawal is described in scene 5 after Teiresias left; Creon talks to Choragos that he will withdraw his edict:

It is hard to deny the heart! But I will do it: I will not fight with destiny…

…I will go.    ––Bring axes, servants: Come with me to the tomb. I buried him, I  Will set her free… / …Oh quickly!  My mind misgives––

The laws of the Gods are mighty, and a man must serve them to the last day of his life!

(Sophocles, 441B.C. 5. 874-880)

This excerpt shows that Creon finally surrenders to the God and takes back his words. Conversely, God do not; although Creon has redeemed and compensated for his sin, the God is persistent to what He says that tragic fate will befall those who break his law.

Until this point, it seems that God has the absolute power for He strikes those who break his laws. Nevertheless, Foucault (1978) will disagree with this assumption because—as it is mentioned in the first paragraph—he states that power is decentered, multidirectional, and strategic. For these reason there is no source of power since it comes from and goes anywhere depend on where it is needed. The power of God in this play is contested by Polyneices as it is described in Scene 1 when Creon says that Polyneices “broke his exile to come back with fire and sword against his native city and the shrines of his fathers’ gods” (Antigone, 441B.C. 1. 165-166). This excerpt shows resistance from Polyneices toward God. Polyneices consciously excerts his power to resist God by striking with fire and sword against the shrines of the Gods as well as Thebes; the feature of power exerted by Polyneices is the strategic one for it is placed in where it is needed. Similarly, as it is seen in whole the play, Creon—to some extent—resists God by averting from His rules. From the analysis, the spread/ division/ source of power in this play is random because there are exertion and resistance toward power. I analogized the spread/ division/ source of power in this play with the child’s game Rock-Paper-Scissors. Rock beats scissors, scissors cuts paper, and paper beats rocks—but in term of power in Antigone, the source and direction is not that neat, instead, it is way too random to be analogized with anything. There is, therefore, no such thing as absolute power in the play since the power is always balanced by the presence of resistance.

Both the God and Creon are the hierarchically high figures in Antigone who exert their power through discipline and punishment. In term of discipline they both have panoptic system to observe all that happen in their territory. Moreover, in term of punishment, they both punish those who break the law to maintain their order as well as to give the sense of repentant and deterrent effect to the people. However, there are also differences in term of the discipline and punishment applied by Creon and the God; when Creon’s is respectively limited and dynamic, the God’s is omnipresent and static. The God’s power, however, is not absolute for there are resistances that balance it is like when Polyneices strikes the God’s shrines and when Creon averts from God’s rules. Therefore, the spread/ division/ source of power in this play are random because there are exertion and resistance of power.

References

Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of The Prison. (Alan Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Vintage Book.

Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality. New York: Pantheon Books.

Sophocles. (441B.C). Antigone. (Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, Trans.). Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. Robert Di Yanni. (6th ed.) Boston: McGraw-Hill.