Gender issues in Plato and Euripides: ancient bodies and gender performativity*

Abstract

The current article draws on Judith Butler's gender performativity theory to analyse two classical text of Greek Antiquity - the Bacchae by Euripides and The Republic by Plato. The concept of gender performativity will be used to illustrate analogously even anachronically, how much the Greek imaginary, in spite of being temporally distant, can fruitfully contribute to, what we would identify as one of the most sophisticated contemporary theories in contemporary gender studies, both as this imaginary emerges from the literary discourse of the tragedy or the discourse of philosophy. This will allow us to show how the two above mentioned texts can contribute to the contemporary debate on the critical theory of gender identity, as these are fixed in performative acts that make gender conform to anatomic sex, limiting gender to the two possibilities of masculine or feminine. Considering the historical context and the question that are specific to the world of Ancient Greece, our analysis will permit us to cast light, in particular, on the strategies that Plato and Euripides drew on to disrupt the gender norms of the polis. Examining the texts allows us to argue that in antiquity, as well as in the contemporary world, albeit in different ways, discussions of gender relations are fitted primarily by the political discourse regarding these relations.