- ISSN: 1876-9071
- E-ISSN: 2214-5729
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OA‘Ik ga geen terrorist begraven, ik ga mijn broer begraven.’
Tragische conflictstructuren in Stefan Hertmans Antigone in Molenbeek en Kamila Shamsies Home Fire
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Internationale Neerlandistiek, Volume 63, Issue 2, Aug 2025, p. 157 - 170
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- 01 Aug 2025
Abstract
Sophocles’ Antigone is frequently drawn on to stage and interpretate contemporary societal conflicts. This contribution focuses on two Antigone adaptations written in the past ten years, Stefan Hertmans’s play Antigone in Molenbeek (2017) and Kamila Shamsie’s novel Home Fire (2017). The emphasis will be on Hertmans’s text which was produced in direct reaction to the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels in November 2015 and March 2016. It shares with Shamsie’s adaptation a critical interest in identifying and analyzing the structures of conflict and power in, and the democratic self-understanding of multicultural societies. By way of the Antigone, both texts take up a political discourse in which the radicalization of young Muslims and the terror of the so-called Islamic State triggered fundamental debates about cultural and political belonging. Hertmans and Shamsie both provide complex explorations of these debates, but with different emphases, namely, decision making in Hertmans and possibilities of mediation in Shamsie. In their nuanced actualizations of tragedy’s characteristics, they thereby showcase both the ongoing importance and the affordances of Greek tragedy today.
