Title: Decolonizing Antígonas: Writing from Latin America

Abstract: “Our Greece is preferable to a Greece that is not ours,” wrote Cuban independence hero José Martí in his famous text Our America (1891). “Our Antígona is preferable to an Antigone that is not ours” could be the phrase that accounts for the intense creativity with which Latin Americans have imagined vernacular plays engaging the character of Antigone since the times of the 19th century wars of independence. In this talk, Fradinger suggests protocols to read the vast Antígona-corpus at the core of her book Antígonas: Writing from Latin America (OUP 2023), winner of the 2024 René Wellek Prize for outstanding monograph, awarded by the American Comparative Literature Association. Against the more common critical gesture of comparing/contrasting plays written in the South to ancient plays or modern European ones, the book offers a comparative approach that constructs a corpus and studies its internal dialogues. In this way, the author proposes to write from and with the South rather than about it. The corpus shows surprising patterns emerging throughout the region, unveiling an archive of political thought about political motherhood, womanhood, and the rise of diverse forms of post-independence necro-neocolonialism. The talk includes examples from Argentina, Haiti, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Uruguay, and Colombia.

If you would like to receive a Zoom link, please email Melody Wauke (maw2277@columbia.edu). The link will be sent the day before the event.