Considering Judith Butler's “tragic trilogy” — a set of interventions on Sophocles's Antigone, Euripides' Bacchae, and Aeschylus's Eumenides — this book seeks to understand not just how Butler uses and interprets Greek tragedy, but also how tragedy shapes Butler's thinking, even when their gaze is directed elsewhere. Through close readings of these tragedies, Mario Telò (Rhetoric, Ancient Greek & Roman Studies, and Comparative Literature) brings to light the tragic quality of Butler's writing. He shows how Butler's mode of reading tragedy offers a distinctive ethico-political response to the harrowing dilemmas of our current moment.

Deeply committed to both critical theory and political activism, Butler is one of the most influential intellectuals today. In encompassing gender performativity and sexual difference, vulnerability and precarity, disidentification and bodily interdependency, as well as the politics of protest, Butler's work is often predicated on a strong engagement with or proximity to Greek tragedy.
Teló is joined by Judith Butler (Comparative Literature). After a brief discussion, they respond to questions from the audience.