antigonejournal.com: Over the past four years since the pandemic started, different countries have implemented distinct strategies to curb the spread of the Covid-19, often restricting freedom of movement as well as implementing a variety of draconian surveillance methods and compulsory measures, including cellphone and face-recognition contact tracing, quarantines, border closings, and vaccine and testing mandates. Most of these measures have not been accepted in democracies, where privacy laws and civil freedoms are considered the bedrock of a social contract.
4 comments:
The title compares two grand topics with Antigone, and that is the most interesting part about this compare and contrast perspective. I love how Antigone fits so well in explaining balancing the instabilities in life, and how the democratic government is built on an unstable nature of law. Everything seems to come together as history pushes us into the present day. I also love when I talk about Antigone is not just about individual rebellion but also about a state in a "survival crisis" trying to balance the rule of law against sanitary/biological necessity. But we ended up struggling with the worst of both systems.
This was a really fascinating read. I can’t really sum it up any better than my favorite quote from the article does:
"By juxtaposing these two state needs — the need for individual freedom vs the need to protect the population from the external biological threats and from the unchecked violence — as fundamentally contradictory and incongruous, the way that Sophocles does in [Antigone], Western democracies run the risk of forfeiting both their political foundations and the stability and security that democratic systems have historically nurtured and preserved. After all, the state’s priority, its raison d’être, is to protect the lives and welfare of its citizens."
The author, Magda Romanska, goes on to conclude that “lack of flexibility in resolving the incongruity” of government will lead to tragedy. The whole article makes constant connections between Antigone and our modern world in really interesting ways, discussing plague and disease and authoritarianism and freedom. My favorite connections are the ones that discuss the rule of law and the iron-fist approach of governing, as Romanksa describes these methods as dangerous, and unlikely to work for long periods of time. I think life reflects art and vice versa and this idea is comforting to me.
Antigonie was one of the plays I was definitely supposed to read in highschool, but it seemed very long, and very Greek, so I got about halfway though and gave up. This article points out the many reasons I probably should have read it. It’s an interesting philosophical question of control trying to decide between personal freedom and collective safety. In the end, there probably is not a great answer, even sophicalies just decided to kill everyone off instead of proposing an answer. I think that at the end of the day it all comes down to empathy, and the only real way to get a bunch of people to make a decision that will benefit someone beyond themselves is to be able to empathize with the other humans around them, something that seems to be going increasingly out of fashion in the modern world where everyone wants everything fast and for themselves.
Antigone is such an interesting show to me. My school did it my freshman year and I don’t particularly remember liking it, it was my first introduction to a heavy Greek show so many lines and script points went straight over my head. Then in the first semester at Carnegie Mellon they did it again so I got to revisit this script that I hadn’t even thought about since 4 years prior. I wish I could see it again after reading this article because so many things I missed the first and second time I would want to see again. It made sense that so many of these big plot points would relate so directly with the world today because I think many playwrights even from very back in the day make statements about their world and history repeats itself. This article was a super interesting read, I hope I get the opportunity to see it again.
Post a Comment