Staying with Antigone

Antigone is the protagonist of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy, paying with her life the choice of rebelling against an ethically inadmissible law. Her tragedy highlights the question of disobedience when human dignity and life are at stake.

Last year, in response to the refugee crisis, Giuseppe Massa directed Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s Antigone Power, performed in Palermo, Italy, with professional and non-professional actors, mainly from a migrant and refugee background. Antigone’s defiance remains a powerful example, in literature and beyond, from Captain Carola Rackete who disobeyed the orders of the Italian Minister of Home Affairs to enter the port of Lampedusa with her salvage ship Sea-Watch 3 to the much-admired teenager and environmental activist Greta Thunberg, urging us to stand up and address the climate emergency on a global scale, among many more.

Our panel will explore how Antigone, writing, and collective performance allow us to imagine rebellion and challenge what is morally unacceptable. It will also discuss how artists and academics can facilitate the creation of novel syncretic spaces where culture, myth and storytelling can be in dialogue with each other, inspiring new forms of artistic and political intervention, identity, and belonging.