"You Are Alone": Singularity, Community, and the Possibility of Solidarity in Slavoj Žižek's The Three Lives of Antigone

Sophocles's tragedy Antigone is a singular play with a singular heroine, yet both the play and the titular heroine have been part of an ever-growing body of reinventions and adaptations. Slavoj & Zcaron;i & zcaron;ek's play The Three Lives of Antigone (2016) continues this tradition. & Zcaron;i & zcaron;ek offers three consecutive, different endings to Sophocles's tragedy: 1. The "original" ending in which neither Creon nor Antigone compromise on their principles, Antigone dies, and the chorus praises her conviction; 2. Antigone convinces Creon, but the city burns in a civil conflict as the chorus laments; 3. The chorus takes action, executes both Creon and Antigone and proclaims Thebes a people's republic. It is easy to assume that & Zcaron;i & zcaron;ek proposes the third option as the most desirable ending; the text, however, puts the onus to choose firmly on the audience. This article investigates the correlation between individual and community, original and adaptation, ensemble and spectator in & Zcaron;i & zcaron;ek's play, arguing that through the means of the stage, the 2020 German-language production of & Zcaron;i & zcaron;ek's adaptation successfully bridged the divide between the singular individual and the community suggested by Sophocles's and questioned by & Zcaron;i & zcaron;ek's versions of the myth.