Abstract

This chapter brings together the two sets of concerns, the first clustering around ethics and sexual difference, the second around race, slavery, and colonialism. The author suggests that, for Derrida, each of these concerns implicates the other, and to the extent that this is true, his reflections on Hegel's Antigone have not been read as carefully as they need to be. At the same time, the author says that Derrida has not read Sophocles as well or as closely as he might have done. The claim is rather to read Hegel, who himself, as many have pointed out, could be called to account for not reading Sophocles closely, for not even wanting to do so, for appropriating Antigone only as a pretext, using her as fodder for his dialectical machine–and that is precisely the issue at stake here.