Hakan Ozlen, University of Wisconsin
Forgetting as a form of repressive erasure has been forced upon human beings against their interests and their will throughout history (Connerton, 2011). This paper examines the relationship between forgetting and silence in the face of authority through Sophocles' Antigone. In this paper, I claim that in Antigone, repressive erasure carries a paradoxical need for a constant reminder and it creates silence based on fear rather than a natural forgetting. I then draw a connection between that erasure and the silence around the HIV/AIDS crisis which was resisted in the form of memorialization. Like Antigone, the queer community rallied around insistent remembrance in the face of repressive silence.
On forgetting, Milan Kundera says that “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” (Kundera, 1999). The first part of this paper establishes a connection between silence and repressive erasure through the silence of others in Sophocles’ play to which Antigone often refers: “οἴμοι, καταύδα· πολλὸν ἐχθίων ἔσῃσιγῶσ᾿, ἐὰν μὴ πᾶσι κηρύξῃς τάδε.” “Ah, tell them all! I shall hate you far more if you remain silent, and do not proclaim this to all.” (Antigone 86-7), “τούτοις τοῦτο πᾶσιν ἁνδάνειν λέγοιμ ̓ ἄν, εἰ μὴ γλῶσσαν ἐγκλῄοι φόβος” “I would say that all these men would approve this, if it were not that fear shuts their mouths.” (Antigone 504), “ὁρῶσι χοὖτοι· σοὶ δ ̓ ὑπίλλουσι στόμα.” “These men too see it; but they curb their tongues to please you.” (Antigone 509). The pressure from Creon creates a paradox as it pushes people to remain silent and to forget. When we are told to remember to forget, we are in effect being told to remember what is supposedly forgotten. The use of authority for censorship produces loud silences.
Using this context, the second part focuses on similarities between Antigone and The Gay Men's Health Clinic in NYC. Within the "buddy system," people took on each other's medical responsibilities as well as undertaking and burying the dead (Butler, 2000). Antigone’s fight against the silence of others and the decision of authority echoes the gay community’s fight during the AIDS crisis against the silence of the public in an environment of taboo and exclusion created by an authoritarian society.
Repressive erasure carries a paradoxical need for a constant reminder, and it creates a silence based on fear rather than a natural forgetting. This is demonstrated in Antigone, as well as in the queer community’s fight against the silence of the public during the HIV/AIDS crisis. The fight against power is a fight against forgetting, and the power of memory and remembrance is a key tool in the resistance against the oppressive silences created by authoritarianism.