Against the Robots

Part 2: The Funeral

“ My dearest Ismene. I’m writing to tell you this morning that I’ve taken care of everything. I’ve used the same funeral home for both our brothers. I couldn’t choose, and since our brothers didn’t leave any last wishes, I took charge to get it all sorted out as quickly as possible. I’ve also arranged for an embalmer to make sure they look presentable. If you’d like to see them, they’ll be ready around 3 p.m. You don’t have to. But if you can spare ten minutes, that would be nice. It might be better to keep a picture of them happy, as children, for example. I’ve chosen the same urn for both of them. A priest will come to the funeral home and give a short eulogy before the cremation. I’ve arranged for him to come through the funeral home. You see, I’ve taken care of everything. Eteocles will be buried in the cemetery, which is about thirty minutes from Thebes on the main road.” For Polynices, it's more complicated because of our uncle Creon's law. I've decided to scatter his ashes on the battlefield since the king doesn't want him buried. It makes sense, doesn't it? Tell me what you think; I haven't made up my mind on this point. This portrait of Antigone, living in the 21st century, handing over her brothers' remains to the funeral director, sums up the funeral ritual of our time. Since the Industrial Revolution, the family has been rendered unproductive. Funerals are no longer part of family tradition. The modern world reassures itself by using the phrase " making sense ," as the translation of the Anglo-Saxon expression is heard these days, and how comforting it is to repeat it to ourselves even though it doesn't really make any sense. For what are these tiny meanings found on the ground almost by chance, these fleeting that appear without our involvement, or almost none, if not the remnants of a past meaning, a common sense, a good sense sculpted by centuries? Through the destruction of the family, the transmission between generations is lacking, the meaning of our actions is lost, so we must invent meaning, we must fabricate meaning, we must give ourselves the illusion of still living, of not having completely abdicated. Deception thrives on ignorance, and on this point too, trickery is nothing new. The meaning given to death within the family, a meaning almost entirely forgotten today, is recalled by Antigone in Sophocles' play, where she stands as a guardian of liberating values, because they protect humanity from the animalistic. Antigone reaffirms what humanity can and cannot do; she seizes a force meant to protect us from our will to power and to teach us about the importance of responsibility—a time now entrusted to specialists who replace the family, its members, and the tenuous bonds woven between them over time.

That morning, Antigone heard Creon's decree and spoke to Ismene, who was terrified by the whole affair. Antigone could not, in Pierre Boutang's admirable words, not bury her brother. She could not defy this unjust law. She could not fail to give her brother a proper funeral rite and thus part with him with dignity. Since Antigone could not remain inactive, since speaking to her sister had not received the desired response, she decided to cross the city at daybreak, while it was still cool. She dreaded this moment as much as she anticipated it. Certain moments concentrate all emotions, even the most contradictory. Antigone dreaded seeing her brother dead. Antigone crossed the city; few shops were open, and human activity was slowly beginning to stir. Deaths rain down daily, and the world keeps turning, but for the one who loses a loved one, the world stops. It flees. It slips away. It transforms into an endless vanishing point. Grief engulfs the world. All that remains is the stunned terror that marks a new time, a new era, a time one enters without knowing anything, without understanding anything, but apprehending it like a child standing on two legs for the first time. When Antigone arrives at the gates of Thebes, the guards watch her, her legs tremble, and she leaves the city. The now stronger heat of the sun reminds Antigone that she must hurry. The body will decompose. Suddenly, around a small mound in the distance, she glimpses Polynices' corpse. Antigone adopts a distracted air, acting as if she hadn't seen him. But deep down, she knows it's her brother. This lifeless form… it can only be him. She catches her breath. Her gaze sweeps around her, gathering strength. So now is the time. "You must look at him," her conscience whispers. "He's waiting for you…" Antigone fills her lungs, but cannot bring herself to look at the corpse as she approaches. This encounter, this reunion, she has longed for it since the moment she learned that her brothers had taken their own lives. Now the thought of standing before him paralyzes her. Antigone forgets to distinguish dream from reality. She perpetuates the confusion. She is deceiving herself. Is this what "know thyself" means? Knowing the other in their death? Is this the boundary drawn by the Ancients? And suddenly, unable to look away any longer, she turns her head, confronts her fear. Bravery is her ally, she knows it; she just has to seize it again, it's within reach. She sees her brother. She hits a wall. Her hand presses itself to her face. Tears escape her eyes, tears she can't hold back. The imagined image and the image of reality merge. Polynices lies before her, his face contorted with a grimace of regret she knows all too well. His sword is inches from her hand, which seems to yearn for it. The sword is stained with blood, his body is broken.

Where the dead lie, the funeral rite is also performed. Antigone knows this. She has crossed the barrier that separated her from the world of the dead. She regains her senses after the tears and the shock—not that the tears and the shock ever end, but they fade as life resumes its course. She now examines the body: she recognizes it, the clouds dissipate, she sees it now clearly, they are face to face, it is indeed him, her beloved brother, her hand brushes his cheek, already cold despite the ambient warmth, she recognizes the texture of his skin, the touch remains so silky, so alive; could the skin lie? Could the delicate touch deceive her? She bends down, rests her head on her brother's body, she weeps again, grief is an undertow, she returns to the hieratic rock, she almost always overwhelms it, and when she doesn't subdue it, it is only to better outwit it and embrace it the next time. Antigone straightens up. She thinks that if she had been there, she could have stopped the massacre. She blames herself. She imagines the vile knot of resentment that drove Eteocles against Polynices. A ball of festering resentment. A thirst for feeling superior when one believes oneself devalued; a memory that rebels and threatens, a geyser of the past; force as both possibility and solution. Antigone observes this lamentable outcome of humanity, her brothers delivered over to the sole will to power. There is something so human about believing oneself strong; strength drives one to believe oneself ever stronger. Centuries later, Saint Paul will teach that man is strong when he is weak. Antigone already knows this; she anticipates it and understands it. Her weakness—because she is a young woman, because she is unmarried, because she has no power, because she belongs to a race—is her strength in the face of her brother's body, in the face of Ismene, in the face of her uncle Creon, in the face of the gods. Her weakness is not akin to idealism; her weakness lies in representing authority against power—that is to say, not much in this world, compared to the measure of strength. With Antigone, two conceptions of strength clash: the strength of authority that protects and the strength of power that attacks. For a few minutes, she surveys the scene, she retraces time. She sees the exchange of sword blows, she discerns Eteocles's mark, she sees them fighting, armored by their hatred, Polynices turning on his heel, delivering the blow he believes will be fatal, she sees Eteocles shift to his right, thinking he has the upper hand as he delivers the final thrust. The two brothers, caught off guard when they thought themselves stronger than each other, fall at the same time. In a final glance at one another. And was that grimace of regret on Polynices's face shared by Eteocles? At the hour of death, what does hatred and resentment weigh?

Antigone sees the body of this young man, dead too soon. She looks at that face, too young to be lifeless. A new wave of grief overwhelms her; she begins to learn to live with this rain of tears that has settled within her, that subsides, but that constantly threatens to return, that is imminent. Antigone speaks to Polynices: she tells him about her morning conversation with Ismene, Creon's unjust law, how the city awoke this morning after the battle… She speaks to him gently, as one would speak to a sleeping person one doesn't quite want to wake. She simply wants to reclaim her silence. But, little by little, the lament rises within her that she doesn't want to hear, that she schemes to ignore, that she wants to stifle: Polynices doesn't answer. He won't answer. He will never answer again. Antigone displays a feminine quality prized by the Greeks, sophrosyne , decorum. The story unfolds through enigmas. It is impossible to know the innermost thoughts of the Greeks in the time of Pericles. We can only speculate. So many details escape us. What is clear to us is the desire for humanity, for expressing the human being at the heart of the universe. The Greeks didn't say "it's raining," but "Zeus is raining." The Greeks' relationship with the gods was revealed in their private lives. Being able to rest in the shadow of authority offers true comfort; responsibilities are established and fall into place. It is difficult to become lost in a confusion of burdens. The contemporary world rests in the shadow of technological power, which is entirely different, because technological power has no authority; it is a delusion that humankind invented to absolve itself of authority. The contemporary world has delegated all the human aspects of funerals to professionals, rendering them purely technical. Antigone rests in the shadow of authority. She contradicts Creon out of duty, out of love, which amounts to the same thing for her. Duty and love form the very fabric of her life. In ancient Greece, abandoning the dead, turning a blind eye to a deceased sibling, was unthinkable. For the Greeks, dignity often boiled down to this way of facing death. Nowadays, it's considered good form to forget death. Or at least to do everything possible to do so. Shortening one's life is a way of forgetting death, since in this way modern man feels he controls every last second of his life. Until he can no longer die, one must shorten life. The social bond, so strong throughout human history, between the dead and the living is gradually disappearing. Cemeteries are emptying of the living, vacant plots are multiplying, ashes are turning to dust… Technological advances allow us to ignore death a little more each day. But isn't the fear of death any different in our time? Throughout history, humankind has sought to postpone death. "Hide this dead person from my sight," and death itself will eventually disappear. Napoleon Bonaparte thus gradually pushed cemeteries out of cities. The invisible dead—death had better watch out. Creon proves to be a perfect modernist. What about the not-so-distant past when, "In the deceased's room, shutters are sometimes still closed, clocks are stopped, and mirrors are covered with a black veil. The dead person lies on their bed, dressed in their finest attire. Their hands, crossed over their abdomen, hold a rosary. Until the 19th century, it was customary to display the deceased at the door of their house, sometimes lying on straw." Balzac mentions it in *The Country Doctor* : “ At the door of this house (…), they saw a coffin covered with a black sheet, placed on two chairs amidst four candles, then on a stool a copper tray on which a sprig of boxwood was soaking in holy water. ” ^¹ If humanity rids itself of its fear of death, if it succeeds, thanks in particular to NBIC², ⁱⁿ no longer dying or rather in always living, it will have nothing left of humanity but the name. Of course, humanity cannot live without humanity, of course substitutes will be found, but uprooting traditions and the meaning of things in this way truly achieves only one thing: making humanity vulnerable and delivering it to the forces of profit. Our little Antigone of the 21st century, who spoke to Ismene earlier, what is she telling us that we don't already know? She is driven by her time, tossed about by the furious winds of change for change's sake. It expresses nothing profound about our humanity, about life, because it is merely a subterfuge. It does not live, or else one would believe that a dead leaf can fly. It is only the sum of its mimetic mechanisms. There is no point in being frightened by these robots from Asia that seem ready to conquer our place, for the robot is within us and it is watching us; it is watching for that point of no return where humankind, stripped of all humanity, will display its corpse, believing it has vanquished its worst enemy. The loss of know-how regarding death has gone hand in hand with the loss of ritual: almost nothing accompanies the dead to the realm of the dead, almost nothing liberates the living from the dead and the dead from the living. The gravediggers of humanity only attach importance to ritual in order to mock or harm it, without grasping the liberation it provides through the meaning it reveals.

It is the deaths of her family that allow Antigone to become Antigone. She successfully completes the processes of individuation: she becomes aware of her vocation and embraces her metamorphosis; she finds within herself the resources, the culture, to accept donning the new mantle of one who refuses to let others dictate the course of her life. "Know thyself" expresses nothing other than this decision to be content with who one is and to strive for the fulfillment of this vocation. This transfiguration derives its meaning largely from the closure of death. This transfiguration brings together all the knowledge that Antigone has accumulated through contact with the living and the dead of her family and gives rise to the resounding line 450:

In my opinion, Zeus did not proclaim that

Nor Justice, who dwells in the abode of the gods below;

They defined what constitutes law among men in this area;

I didn't think your proclamations

They possessed such strength that one could, being a man,

To transgress the unwritten and infallible laws of the gods.

Because laws have always existed, not just today

They're not from yesterday, and nobody knows where they came from.

No thought of a man could inspire fear in me

Who would encourage me to let myself be punished by the gods?

For that. I knew perfectly well that I could, of course,

And even if you hadn't made your proclamation. But, if I must die

I'm saying again, before it's even begun, that I'm winning by it.

How can one not gain anything by dying?

If one lives, as I do, overwhelmed by misery?

Thus, in my case, being struck by that death

It's a suffering that doesn't matter. On the contrary, if I had accepted that, the son

When my mother died, her body was left without a grave

That would have caused me pain. But, as it is, I don't feel any pain.

If you now think my action is crazy,

Perhaps it's a madman who's making me a madman?

The colossal force that the frail Antigone unleashes against Creon is akin to a tornado. Antigone's metamorphosis is revealed in the face of death. Metamorphosis, like an epiphany, is the human force that defies death. It is also the realm where humanity resides. Antigone proclaims her right, a right that has existed for millennia and will continue to exist after her. She does not invent it; she is merely its custodian—an immense task.

Antigone summons all that humanity has embodied since the dawn of time with this simple gesture: the burial of her brother. Funeral rites mark a boundary between human and animal. With a single gesture, she puts Creon, perched atop his law and thus his power, in his place. Creon is so modern, desperately trying to exist by legislating. I create a law, therefore I am. Power has its limits, which Creon, a technocrat before his time, does not recognize. Creon believes he holds the power to dictate a new law; he has lost touch with what transcends him, he believes himself to be the authority; yet it is precisely this forgetting of authority that drives him to act in this way. By asserting his power, Creon ultimately destroys it. Antigone, having crossed the threshold of reality, having cherished the body of her beloved brother, can face anything. She knows Creon's rights better than Creon himself. Charles Maurras would later write this magnificent definition of Creon's politics: "Imagine in the Christian city a criminal whom temporal power would punish by depriving him of eternal salvation, by casting him into eternal hell..." The separation between power and authority would only become fully clear with the appearance of Christ, who "legislates" for all politicians with the famous response to the Pharisees: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Antigone here foreshadows the first Christians of Ancient Rome. And Antigone rehabilitates ritual to prove Creon's error. A tradition becomes dormant if it is not embodied. Ritual provides a point of fixation for all personal appetites, preventing them from spreading like a cancer. Ritual unites the natural and the supernatural, power and authority, and prevents them from vying for the greater part. Antigone and Creon know this. Creon knows his law goes against everything people thought about funerals at that time, but he dreams of imposing his will, swells with pride, and wants to subject everyone to his power. Antigone could have given up. Antigone has suffered so much without ever saying a word about her lineage. She has endured jeers, sneers, and spitting. What could happen to her? She could have been swallowed up by infamy and, to end it, at least outwardly, cloak herself in anonymity, forget her honor, silence her indignation, become invisible. But no, she decided to rise from the abyss of shame, for fate is not something that should lead to shame, but, on the contrary, should provoke a particular acuity, a boundless understanding of humanity, and therefore, one without fear. Antigone seizes this path, this tradition, this meaning of her life. This meaning, its vocation, consists in upholding tradition, for tradition protects people from themselves. “It is not we who keep the rule, it is the rule that keeps us,” wrote Bernanos in Dialogues of the Carmelites . During the funeral rite, it is easy to imagine this little Antigone, this so very human Antigone, who seems so unified, collapsing as she undergoes the funeral rite. The funeral acts like a dart that pierces the abscess of grief, which can then flow gently and smoothly like an infusion, so that we become one with the one who remains on the shore of the living, but also change everything within them, forever. We do not mourn someone; it is mourning that shapes us, it is the loss of a loved one that molds us. Alone on the battlefield, Antigone covers her brother with dust; and with a sure gesture she finishes separating herself from the one she loves. The acute suffering felt during the rite, this stirring of all her entrails, this extreme tearing that finally tears the dead from the living, traces a second boundary which after the announcement of death — social death one might say — ratifies, seals and makes irreversible and indelible, a sacred boundary which precisely indicates life after death: the boundary of absence.