1. Sophocles’ Hypsipolis – Apolis Antithesis, and Castoriadis’s Imaginary Institution of Classical Athens

For more than fifteen years, I have been studying the works of Sophocles. In class, in print, as well as in diverse academic settings, I have reflected on various aspects of his work. The more deeply I have immersed myself in his poetry, the more profoundly I appreciate his dramatic artistry. To me, one of the most beautiful lines of poetry ever written is one of exquisite simplicity and poignancy from Ajax (394) σκότος, ἐμὸν φάος—“ah darkness, that you are my light”—three everyday words imbued with all the emotion of a man on the point of suicide. At the same time, my sense that Sophocles’ work is also extremely political has grown. I am aware that this is no novel conviction; at least since the time of the invaluable Paris School, Hellenists can no longer see Attic drama in a cultural and ideological vacuum. Instead, we contextualize it within the confines of the polis that incubates it. Of course, interpretations vary in orientation and intensity. My own particular political approach, focusing on the autonomous individual in a self-instituting society, will be elaborated in the course of this book. Here, however, I admit to two starting points that have informed my reading of the Sophoclean corpus since I first encountered them.

In the famous first stasimon of Antigone, for no apparent reason, the playwright exalts the many achievements of man in creating human culture. Among the many practical skills essential to mere survival (building, sea-faring, agriculture, the crafts of hunting and fishing, medicine), he also proudly lists more sophisticated forms of human invention engendering arts and sciences: letters, numbers, religion, oracles, and, above all of these, laws safeguarding the survival of human societies. Laws are, of course, the major issue in Sophocles’ Antigone . Without debating the reasons for the enforced disjunction between human and divine laws, I shall dwell briefly on the antithesis in line 370 between the hypsipolis and apolis citizen. Man inclines, says Sophocles, sometimes towards evil and sometimes towards good (367); consequently, life in the polis bears the marks of these twofold tendencies. The ideal citizen (hypsipolis = thought of highly in his polis) applies the laws of men (νόμους χθονός, 368) and the justice of gods ensured by the gravity of oaths (θεῶν τ’ ἔνορκον δίκαν, 369). The chorus establishes this conjunction, which will be seriously undermined in the course of the play. Conversely, the individual who defies the conjoined laws, an individual consorting with evil, should be expelled from the city. He becomes apolis, a social and political outcast (μήτ[ε] παρέστιος ... /... μήτ’ ἴσον φρονῶν, 373–374). I argue that this crucial dichotomy runs throughout the extant works of Sophocles, and marks his reflection on contemporary reality. The major preoccupation of his plays is to explore the dilemmas of characters from the perspective of their suitability as citizens in the discourse of the Athenian polis.

This readjustment of civic ideology can only be done effectively in a society that is autonomous rather than heteronomous; that is, in a self-legislating society, where “nothing is enforced as inviolable law by a higher authority, a god, an emperor, or a religious or political elite.” [1] In an autonomous society, such as radically democratic Athens, the dêmos (the citizenry), who are also autodikos (self-judging), and autotelês (self-governing), is the same body that watches en masse the dramatic performances in the Theater of Dionysus. To engage there, as audience, in debates over all the issues concerning life in the polis becomes possible through the dynamic medium of dramatic art. Issues including identity, kinship, political loyalty, religious sanctions, and ethics are fiercely debated among the dramatis personae faced with extreme situations and dilemmas within a society of peers. The same body politic will later debate issues in “real” political life in the Assembly of the citizens; issues crucial to sustaining a democratic polis.

How is this apparently “standard” procedure of political praxis transferable from the realm of the imaginary to the “real” world? Comprehending this process is facilitated by an understanding of the sophisticated procedures involved in the twofold structure of human institutions, as argued by the contemporary Greek political philosopher, Cornelius Castoriadis. [2] An institution, says the philosopher, is a “socially sanctioned, symbolic network in which a functional and an imaginary component are combined in variable proportions and relations.” [3] In order to be able to establish or reform an institution (the term “institution” is understood here in its broadest meaning: everything institutionalized by human political activity), the body politic needs the ability to create and re-create its social significations on the imaginary level—it needs to imagine first what it would be like to have such and such a law/reform/ institution in society. This is inextricably linked with the people having a certain concept of themselves—what it is to be a citizen of Athens, what can be tolerated, and what cannot. [4] Castoriadis argues eloquently about how philosophical questions were tackled and formulated in poetry, “long before philosophy existed as an explicit reflection”; and he continues, “… [man] is a poetic animal that gave in imaginary the answers to those questions.” [5] The social imaginary significations (responsible for the radical activity of the social creation and thus the radical direct democratic system of Athens) is what holds a society together and empowers the body politic to reform the political reality in which they live.

Now, we can understand better the hypsipolis/apolis antithesis that Sophocles embedded in his tragic vision. Sophocles, a great artist as well as an important intellectual, “tries out” the thoughts and actions of his characters that make them apolides: undeserving of being part of their polis. This is not necessarily done with disdain. Antigone can be considered apolis, as can Oedipus. However, what is it to be apolis, despite one’s fortitude and courage? How does one disrupt the civic order, despite the sincere wish to be part of it? How is this order reconstituted, while the protagonists are expelled or die? And finally, what constitutes an ideal citizen and what does not?

Through this lens, civic identity in this radical and direct democracy becomes one of the focal points of tragic discourse. Thus the recalibration of the consideration of Oedipus Tyrannus as a play about identity positions it at the inception of existence in the polis. The “Who Am I?” of my title does not refer to any modern existential or philosophical category of being. Rather, Oedipus’ deficit in knowledge about his identity incapacitates him as an esteemed member of his polis. In the Introduction to my close reading (“Who Am I? A Tragedy of Identity”), I explain that there is a very simple idea triggering the refocusing of my interpretation: “Oedipus’ major handicap in life is ‘not knowing who he is’; the parricide and incest come about as the result of this ignorance.” [6] Of course, any examination of civic identity inevitably embraces the concomitant notions of political, religious, and societal systems and their codes of behavior and thinking. Thus, viewed through the lens of civic identity, a wealth of other issues concerning the well-being of Athenian society are revealed. However, because of the long history of the reception of Oedipus Tyrannus in philosophy, ethics, social sciences, and psychoanalysis, we have been distracted from considering the simple fact that the playwright constructs the conceptual plot of his play around the discovery of the identity of Oedipus, as will be argued in the course of this book. Sophocles has transformed a popular legend, common to many cultures, into a profound reflection on identity, in the absence of which one’s position in the polis is jeopardized.

I have acknowledged thus far the two major starting points informing my reading of Greek antiquity, Attic drama, and Oedipus Tyrannus in particular: the Sophoclean apolis and the Castoriadian imaginary institution of society. However, this is far from being the end of the story. I am also much indebted to many other intellectuals and scholars for, as Nobel laureate Giorgos Seferis reminds us, εἶναι παιδιά πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων τά λόγια μας, “our words are children of many men”: Claude Lévi-Strauss for understanding the laws of kinship; Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre for the construction of civic identity; Michel Foucault for mapping power relations and their ensuing ideologies in human societies, as informed by historical circumstances; Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, and contemporary feminist critics for reconfiguring gender identity and the laws of kinship establishing patriarchy; Josiah Ober for understanding the functioning and success of the radical and direct Athenian democracy. Lastly, although prior to all the above, are Jean-Pierre Vernant, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Nicole Loraux, and their peers from the Paris School, who so strongly established the polis on the map of Hellenic scholarship. Had they not paved the way, we would still be wandering, bereft of our intellectual poleis, as was Oedipus.