Confrontations over power: the myth of Antigone in contemporary Argentine dramaturgy

Abstract

In the attempt to build its identity, each culture appeals to its own and foreign elements, trying to generate representations of itself. In the case of Argentine culture, among the non-proprietary elements are those that belong to the GrecoLatin culture, among them the literary system, on which we focus our gaze. For various purposes, the authors appropriate the classical greco-latin texts by re-elaborating and resignifying them. In this paper we focus on a rewriting of Antigone by Sophocles: Antígonas: linaje de hembras by Jorge Huertas, contemporary Argentine playwright, to analyze the relationships and confrontations that are gestated around the use/abuse of power. The transfer of the Greek tragedy to contemporary Argentina allows us to deal with a problem of old roots, the issue of power and the relationships that are established around it, with new perspectives. Thus, the appropriation and recreation of a classic text allows testing new ways of saying reality, always complex and multiple, accounting for the contribution of the ancient world to the Western cultural corpus, in general, and the Argentine, in particular.