1 00:00:05,760 --> 00:00:11,600 I just had the zoom 'your internet is unstable sign', which I of course do not want to happen. 2 00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:14,640 Fingers crossed. 3 00:00:34,880 --> 00:00:39,920 Welcome everyone, whether you're watching us live or whether you're watching us on catch up. 4 00:00:39,920 --> 00:00:48,400 It's a great pleasure today to have Naomi Weiss to give an APGRD talk. I first met her back when 5 00:00:48,400 --> 00:00:53,440 she was still at Somerville here in Oxford - we talked about your graduate work, I remember. 6 00:00:54,480 --> 00:01:00,400 And then a couple of years ago - I last saw her 'live' a couple of years ago when we agreed that 7 00:01:00,400 --> 00:01:06,560 she really must give an APGRD talk. In between those two times she went to Berkeley, did her 8 00:01:06,560 --> 00:01:16,160 doctorate at Berkeley on 'mousike' in the broadest sense of the word, particularly song and dance, 9 00:01:16,880 --> 00:01:22,000 and particularly in tragedy, particularly in Euripides. Some of that turned into the book 10 00:01:23,440 --> 00:01:29,520 'The Music of Tragedy Performance and Imagination in Euripidean Theater' that came out in 2018. 11 00:01:30,080 --> 00:01:36,320 She's now working on audience experience and the aesthetics of audience experience and tragedy and 12 00:01:36,320 --> 00:01:44,320 is at Harvard, where she is the Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of the Humanities. 13 00:01:45,760 --> 00:01:50,400 And today, I think - am I right , Naomi?- this is the first time you've reached out into 14 00:01:51,440 --> 00:01:58,720 modern reception to talk about tragic form in Kamila Shamsie's 2017 15 00:02:00,160 --> 00:02:05,840 novel, 'Home Fire', a very powerful and unsettling novel. So 16 00:02:07,200 --> 00:02:12,880 greetings Naomi, even though at a distance, and we're delighted to have you talking to us today. 17 00:02:14,400 --> 00:02:20,400 Thank you so much Oliver and thank you to everyone who's tuning in to listen. It's lovely to have 18 00:02:20,400 --> 00:02:25,840 that introduction and wonderful to be part of this community with - as you say - my very first foray 19 00:02:25,840 --> 00:02:35,840 into Reception Studies. If you just bear with me while I share my screen. 20 00:02:37,920 --> 00:02:48,160 Okay. It seems easy to set fiction and theatre against each other: to juxtapose realism 21 00:02:48,160 --> 00:02:52,320 and theatricality, private reading and public theatre-going 22 00:02:52,320 --> 00:02:57,680 and performance. But the novel's borrowings from drama go all the way back to the genre's 23 00:02:57,680 --> 00:03:04,160 beginnings 2000 years ago and Greek writers like Heliodorus integrated tragedy and comedy 24 00:03:04,160 --> 00:03:12,320 within their prose tales of travel and romance and all the way forward into contemporary fiction. In 25 00:03:12,320 --> 00:03:17,760 the last couple of decades there's been a spate of retellings of Shakespeare in novels published in 26 00:03:17,760 --> 00:03:24,080 the U and the US led by the Hogarth Shakespeare initiative. There have also been numerous 27 00:03:24,080 --> 00:03:30,960 novelistic adaptations - in English - of Ancient Greek stories taken especially from epic but also 28 00:03:30,960 --> 00:03:39,200 from tragedy. 2017 alone saw the publication of Colm Tóibín's 'House of Names' (the Oresteia), 29 00:03:39,200 --> 00:03:43,760 David Vann's 'Bright Air Black' (Medea), Natalie Haynes' 'The 30 00:03:43,760 --> 00:03:47,040 Children of Jocasta' (a mix of Oedipus Tyrannus and 31 00:03:47,040 --> 00:03:54,000 Antigone) and Kamila Shamsie's 'Home Fire' (Antigone). Among these recent 32 00:03:54,000 --> 00:04:00,640 tragic retellings Shamsie's is unusual in the extent to which it draws on the ancient play 33 00:04:00,640 --> 00:04:07,040 behind it despite - unlike the others you see here on the screen - being set in the modern day. This 34 00:04:07,040 --> 00:04:13,360 novel doesn't just rework the story of antigone but is constructed around the dramatic form 35 00:04:13,360 --> 00:04:19,360 of Sophocles' tragedy. It is in quite a fundamental sense a play-turned novel. 36 00:04:21,280 --> 00:04:24,320 Kamila Shamsie is a very successful 37 00:04:24,320 --> 00:04:29,280 Pakistani-British novelist and non-fiction writer, she's published seven novels 38 00:04:29,280 --> 00:04:36,320 since 1998. 'Home Fire', her seventh, was received with much critical acclaim in both the US 39 00:04:36,320 --> 00:04:40,000 and the UK where it won the 2018 Women's 40 00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:45,680 Prize for Fiction. Originally the theatre director Jatinder Verma challenged her to 41 00:04:45,680 --> 00:04:51,280 write a play, as she has said, something like 'Antigone' in an 42 00:04:51,280 --> 00:04:54,400 Asian or British Asian context. Shamsie 43 00:04:54,400 --> 00:04:59,600 has claimed 'I pretended to myself I was thinking of a play but really all along 44 00:04:59,600 --> 00:05:05,840 I thought, oh, here's my next novel. The result is a multimedia text 45 00:05:05,840 --> 00:05:12,960 full of theatrical traces a literary archive that serves the dramatic quality of Sophocles' 46 00:05:12,960 --> 00:05:21,360 play, but also encompasses various forms of media elements: theatrical productions, tv dramas, 47 00:05:21,360 --> 00:05:25,280 news programs, social media, poetry and even pop songs. 48 00:05:26,560 --> 00:05:33,120 In this talk I'll first provide more of an introduction to 'Home Fire' and demonstrate 49 00:05:33,120 --> 00:05:39,440 some of the basic contours of its 'Antigone' plot. I'll also talk about some of Shamsie's intertexts 50 00:05:39,440 --> 00:05:45,840 across various media - other versions of antiquity and other examinations of British Muslims' 51 00:05:45,840 --> 00:05:52,400 relationship with the British state from the last two decades. The novel's intermediality will lead 52 00:05:52,400 --> 00:05:58,400 me then to focus on its theatrical engagement with Sophocles' play, specifically in terms of how it 53 00:05:58,400 --> 00:06:04,240 reworks some of the tragedy's formal elements, its structural features. I'll close by briefly 54 00:06:04,240 --> 00:06:10,960 suggesting how such manipulation of tragic form contributes to 'Home Fire''s political import. 55 00:06:11,600 --> 00:06:18,800 Antigone more than any other surviving tragedy has a rich, rich history of politically resonant 56 00:06:18,800 --> 00:06:24,320 adaptations from Jean Anouilh's 'Antigone', to Athol Fugard's 'The Island', to 57 00:06:24,320 --> 00:06:27,520 Theater of War's 'Antigone and Ferguson'. Such 58 00:06:27,520 --> 00:06:31,680 plays have often used Sophocles' tragedy to explore ways for the 59 00:06:31,680 --> 00:06:37,840 oppressed and the powerless to publicly counter their powerful oppressors. 'Home Fire' as 60 00:06:37,840 --> 00:06:44,480 a novel focused on Muslim identity, islamophobia and citizenship rights in contemporary Britain, 61 00:06:44,480 --> 00:06:48,400 fits within this tradition of Antigone's theatrical adaptations. 62 00:06:49,040 --> 00:06:54,640 I hope to show that it does so in part through its multimedia theatricality, 63 00:06:54,640 --> 00:06:58,720 for this facilitates in 'Home Fire' something that Greek tragedy itself, 64 00:06:58,720 --> 00:07:04,800 especially Antigone, produced - that is a contestation of multiple voices, a litany 65 00:07:04,800 --> 00:07:09,920 for its reader or its audience to hear, to critique, to put against their own. 66 00:07:13,120 --> 00:07:20,480 Home Fire is not Shamie's first experiment with integrating Ancient Greek texts into her fiction, 67 00:07:20,480 --> 00:07:23,840 perhaps unsurprising for a writer whose grandfather apparently 68 00:07:23,840 --> 00:07:30,080 read her Homer in Greek when she was a toddler. Her earlier novels contain numerous allusions 69 00:07:30,080 --> 00:07:35,520 to Greek myth and literature amid a really dazzling array of intertexts from the Qur'an 70 00:07:35,520 --> 00:07:42,000 to T.S Eliot to the exile poetry of Faiz Ahmad Faiz. 'A God in Every Stone', 71 00:07:42,560 --> 00:07:48,320 published three years before 'Home Fire', opens with an epigraph from Herodotus and indeed 72 00:07:48,320 --> 00:07:55,200 that sets the entire plot off. In Shamsie's second novel, 'Salt and Saffron' from 2000, 73 00:07:55,200 --> 00:08:02,480 Aliya and her not-quite twin Samia remember her family used to explain their relationship 74 00:08:02,480 --> 00:08:09,520 through the Greek story of Leda's twin eggs, one from Tyndareus and the other from Zeus. When 75 00:08:09,520 --> 00:08:16,560 Aliya dismisses it as mythology from a cultural tradition 'not our own', Samia points to the rich 76 00:08:17,200 --> 00:08:22,320 transcontinental cultural interactions and - really a hallmark of all Shamsie's fiction - 77 00:08:22,320 --> 00:08:27,360 she says actually Ancient Greek texts were kept alive through Arab translations. 78 00:08:28,960 --> 00:08:35,920 But 'Home Fire' is distinct from this earlier work by actually being modelled on an Ancient Greek 79 00:08:35,920 --> 00:08:42,160 text. Here's - for those of you who need it - a quick reminder of Sophocles' play about 80 00:08:42,160 --> 00:08:51,120 Oedipus' family. So, in the aftermath of Polynices attacking his own city of Thebes, resulting in 81 00:08:51,120 --> 00:08:56,440 the mutual slaughter of him and his brother, Eteocles, their uncle, Creon, is now king. 82 00:08:56,440 --> 00:09:02,480 His son Haemon is engaged to Antigone, sister of Polynices. 83 00:09:02,480 --> 00:09:09,040 Creon has ordered Polynices' body to be left unburied as punishment outside the city, 84 00:09:09,680 --> 00:09:16,000 but Antigone buries him despite her sister Ismene trying to stop her. As 85 00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:20,640 punishment Creon has Antigone locked up in a cave. He has second thoughts 86 00:09:21,280 --> 00:09:27,360 after the seer Tiresias intervenes, but it's too late - Antigone has hung herself. Then 87 00:09:27,360 --> 00:09:33,040 Creon and his men find Haemon, who then kills himself over Antigone's 88 00:09:33,040 --> 00:09:40,880 body. Creon's wife Eurydice also commits suicide and the play ends with the King's wretched 89 00:09:40,880 --> 00:09:49,280 mourning. This tragedy is still one of the most widely performed surviving Greek dramas. 90 00:09:49,280 --> 00:09:54,080 It's also the most extensively discussed across many disciplines: classics, of course, but also 91 00:09:55,200 --> 00:10:04,160 political science, psychoanalysis and gender studies. Now, 'Home Fire', set in 2015, revolves 92 00:10:04,160 --> 00:10:11,120 around the families of two British Muslims of Pakistani heritage: Adil Pasha, a jihadi 93 00:10:11,120 --> 00:10:18,240 killed years earlier on his way to Guantanamo; and Karamat Lone, the British Home Secretary. 94 00:10:18,240 --> 00:10:23,440 Just as a warning here, I hope you've read the novel already, because 'spoiler alert': 95 00:10:24,480 --> 00:10:30,880 Polynices is Parvaiz, a 19 year old recruited by the Islamic State to work in their media 96 00:10:30,880 --> 00:10:39,200 division in Syria. The story has five narratives, or 'acts', each focusing on a different character. 97 00:10:39,200 --> 00:10:44,800 It begins with Isma, Adil's daughter, who has recently arrived in Massachusetts to pursue 98 00:10:44,800 --> 00:10:52,320 postgraduate study after years of caring for her younger siblings, Parvaiz and his sister, Aneeka. 99 00:10:53,440 --> 00:11:00,720 Isma soon meets Eamonn, Karamat's son, whose mother, Terry, is Irish American. Their 100 00:11:00,720 --> 00:11:07,200 encounter results in Eamonn, in the next 'act', meeting Aneeka, a law student back in London. 101 00:11:07,920 --> 00:11:15,520 Eamonn and Aneeka soon embark on an intense sexual relationship. He later discovers that she has, 102 00:11:15,520 --> 00:11:21,200 though, an ulterior motive - to secure his assistance, as the Home Secretary's son, in 103 00:11:21,200 --> 00:11:27,280 getting Parvaiz back to the UK. Eamonn, besotted with Aneeka, goes to his father for help - 104 00:11:27,280 --> 00:11:34,960 unsuccessfully. The narrative then shifts in the next 'act' to Parvaiz. We learn of the process of 105 00:11:34,960 --> 00:11:40,400 his 'recruitment' (or entrapment) by ISIS. He desperately wants to come home and he gets in 106 00:11:40,400 --> 00:11:45,280 touch with Aneeka to form a plan, but he's killed as he makes his way to the British Consulate. 107 00:11:48,160 --> 00:11:55,520 Aneeka's 'act' comes next, followed Karamat. On his first day as Home Secretary, Karamat 108 00:11:55,520 --> 00:12:02,240 revoked the citizenship of all dual nationals who have left Britain 'to join our enemies'. Now he 109 00:12:02,240 --> 00:12:08,480 applies this law even to Parvaiz's dead body, which must be repatriated to Pakistan instead. 110 00:12:09,040 --> 00:12:14,080 Anneka then travels to Karachi and sits by her brother's corpse which has been 111 00:12:14,080 --> 00:12:21,680 covered with ice outside the British Deputy High Commission. Eamonn goes, but as he approaches 112 00:12:21,680 --> 00:12:28,000 two men fasten a suicide vest on him and the novel ends with his and Aneeka's final embrace. 113 00:12:30,080 --> 00:12:36,080 Now, though it stretches from London to Massachusetts, Syria, Turkey and Karachi, this 114 00:12:36,080 --> 00:12:42,160 novel actually doesn't feature the sort of really large-scale transcontinental cross-generational 115 00:12:42,160 --> 00:12:48,560 interaction common to much of Shamsie's previous work. 'A God in Every Stone' has characters from 116 00:12:48,560 --> 00:12:54,000 Turkey, Britain and pre-partition India; 'Burnt Shadows', from 2009, 117 00:12:54,000 --> 00:13:00,320 perhaps her other best known novel, moves with a multinational cast from Nagasaki, to Delhi, to 118 00:13:00,320 --> 00:13:07,680 Karachi, to New York, to Afghanistan. In contrast, 'Home Fire''s five protagonists are all British 119 00:13:08,240 --> 00:13:14,160 and all of Muslim Pakistani descent, though with different degrees of identification with Islam. 120 00:13:14,960 --> 00:13:20,480 'Antigone' concerns the city of Thebes; 'Home Fire' primarily concerns London, 121 00:13:20,480 --> 00:13:25,280 where Shamsie herself now lives.The city's urban fabric really weaves 122 00:13:25,840 --> 00:13:27,840 its way through much of the narrative. 123 00:13:28,720 --> 00:13:34,560 The story's chronological scope, like that of 'Antigone', is also more compact than that of 124 00:13:34,560 --> 00:13:39,360 her earlier novels, even as there's always a strong sense, of course, in 'Antigone', 125 00:13:39,920 --> 00:13:43,200 of the weight of the past - of the father - on the present. 126 00:13:45,200 --> 00:13:52,320 The novel's politics are similarly focused. Karamat, the novel's Creon, 127 00:13:53,040 --> 00:13:58,800 is modelled on Theresa May, Britain's anti-immigration Home Secretary 128 00:13:58,800 --> 00:14:06,720 from 2010 to 2016. His character is also in several respects Sajid Javid, one of May's 129 00:14:06,720 --> 00:14:13,040 successors, criticised intensely for his revocation of citizenship from Shamima Begum the 130 00:14:13,040 --> 00:14:20,160 ISIS bride (so-called) two years ago when she, like Aneeka and Parvaiz, was just 19 years old. 131 00:14:21,760 --> 00:14:30,080 Karamat's action on his first day in office was to make much more use of the Nationality 132 00:14:30,080 --> 00:14:37,120 Immigration Asylum Act of 2002 whereby the British government can strip any dual national 133 00:14:37,120 --> 00:14:42,640 Briton - whether naturalised or British-born of their citizenship status if and I quote: 134 00:14:43,200 --> 00:14:49,120 'the secretary of state is satisfied that the person has done anything seriously prejudicial 135 00:14:49,120 --> 00:14:56,400 to the vital interests of the United Kingdom or a British Overseas Territory'. Under Theresa May 136 00:14:56,400 --> 00:15:02,160 this law was expanded to include citizens without another nationality, who, with their British 137 00:15:02,160 --> 00:15:09,200 citizenship revoked, would then be stateless. Near the end of 'Home Fire' we learn that Karamat, 138 00:15:11,040 --> 00:15:17,280 against considerable opposition, is planning to expand the law similarly. He thinks it, I quote, 139 00:15:17,280 --> 00:15:22,960 as you see here: 'the sensible fulfillment of a law that was so far only half made'. 140 00:15:25,760 --> 00:15:32,960 In this particular political focus Shamsie draws not only from her extensive research 141 00:15:32,960 --> 00:15:38,000 on citizenship debates and Islamic State propaganda as well as from her 142 00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:42,400 own first-hand experience as a Muslim living in both the U.S. and Britain, 143 00:15:43,120 --> 00:15:49,520 but also from several previous re-workings of Sophocles' play, which become folded into her own. 144 00:15:52,720 --> 00:16:01,280 The novel's epigraph 'The ones we love... are enemies of the state' comes from Seamus Heaney's 145 00:16:01,280 --> 00:16:05,200 'Burial at Thebes', a loose translation of 'Antigone' 146 00:16:05,200 --> 00:16:08,720 commissioned for the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2004. 147 00:16:11,760 --> 00:16:17,920 Sorry, just checking my internet connection is okay. So it was commissioned in 2004. For Heaney, 148 00:16:19,120 --> 00:16:24,480 'Antigone' in part represents Ireland against her colonial British oppressor 149 00:16:25,280 --> 00:16:30,880 but other inspiration for him came from the Bush administration's 'War on Terror', 150 00:16:30,880 --> 00:16:34,320 as Heaney writes in his notes in to his translation. 151 00:16:34,320 --> 00:16:40,640 Just as Creon forced the citizens of Thebes into an 'either or' situation in relation to Antigone, 152 00:16:41,200 --> 00:16:47,600 the Bush administration was using the same tactic to forward its argument for war on Iraq, 153 00:16:48,160 --> 00:16:56,480 asking in effect are you in favour of democracy or are you not. Heaney's translation echoes the 154 00:16:56,480 --> 00:17:01,360 Bush administration's language of terrorism: we have 'enemies of the state', 'patriots', 155 00:17:01,360 --> 00:17:10,160 'traitors' - there's two lines which are 'whoever isn't for us is against us' and Shamsie, in turn, 156 00:17:10,160 --> 00:17:16,480 echoes Heaney as Karamat (Creon) views the post-911 world in similar terms. 157 00:17:17,680 --> 00:17:21,280 But the other translation that Shamsie mentions specifically 158 00:17:26,240 --> 00:17:33,440 and repeatedly in interviews is Anne Carson's 'Antigone' of 2015 (not to be confused with her 159 00:17:33,440 --> 00:17:39,200 'Antigonik'). This 'Antigone' combines such language of terrorism 160 00:17:39,200 --> 00:17:46,160 with an anti-immigrant strain as you can see in some of the quotations i've included here. 161 00:17:46,160 --> 00:17:52,720 Between the translations of Heaney and Carson are at least 162 00:17:53,600 --> 00:18:01,280 two other versions of 'Antigone'. One is a novel - Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya's 'The Watch', 163 00:18:01,280 --> 00:18:08,800 published in 2012, sets the story at a remote U.S. military base in present-day Afghanistan, where 164 00:18:08,800 --> 00:18:15,600 a young Pashtun woman pleads with the soldiers to return her brother's body. Shamsie herself, 165 00:18:15,600 --> 00:18:19,680 in a review of the book for the Guardian, notes a structural feature 166 00:18:19,680 --> 00:18:25,360 that's actually key to her own 'Antigone' novel - that is the series of character perspectives, 167 00:18:25,360 --> 00:18:32,000 a structure design, she says, to embrace a multiplicity of voices. In the same review she 168 00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:38,160 also mentions another 'Antigone', Polly Findlay's production at the National Theatre that year, 169 00:18:38,160 --> 00:18:44,080 which deliberately evoked the war in Afghanistan as well as the 'War on Terror' more generally. 170 00:18:44,080 --> 00:18:47,520 In interviews, Findlay likened 'Antigone' to a 9/11 bomber. 171 00:18:49,600 --> 00:18:53,200 'Home Fire''s 'Antigone' story weaves together these 172 00:18:53,200 --> 00:19:00,880 precedents in its focus on the sociological impact of the 'War on Terror'. That's actually what 173 00:19:00,880 --> 00:19:08,240 the character Isma is researching -she's co-writing a paper entitled 'The Insecurity State: 174 00:19:08,240 --> 00:19:14,400 Britain and the Instrumentalization of Fear'. Two other dramatic works 175 00:19:14,400 --> 00:19:22,400 feed into Shamsie's exploration of this particular issue: one is Gillian Slovo's 176 00:19:22,400 --> 00:19:29,280 'Another World: Losing Our Children to Islamic State', a play about rise of IS and its appeal 177 00:19:29,280 --> 00:19:35,200 to young Europeans. This was commissioned around the same time as 'Home Fire' and was shown at the 178 00:19:35,200 --> 00:19:42,240 National Theatre in 2016. It's a verbatim play - that is, it's interview-based, bringing together 179 00:19:42,240 --> 00:19:49,280 the testimony of young British Muslims, mothers whose children have joined the Islamic State, 180 00:19:49,280 --> 00:19:56,720 former Guantanamo prisoners, academics, lawyers and soldiers. Shamsie dedicates 'Home Fire' 181 00:19:56,720 --> 00:20:03,200 to Slovo and she notes in her acknowledgments how helpful it was to exchange ideas with her 182 00:20:03,200 --> 00:20:08,000 while they were writing respectively a play and a novel on a similar topic. 183 00:20:09,360 --> 00:20:18,080 The other work is Peter Kosminsky's 'Britz', a powerful two-part drama made for Channel 4 in 184 00:20:18,080 --> 00:20:25,200 2007, about the impact of British anti-terrorism legislation on Britain's Muslim community. 185 00:20:25,200 --> 00:20:32,080 I'll play it - but silently - for you here, a clip of the last scene. The Muslim protagonists 186 00:20:32,080 --> 00:20:37,760 whom you can see in this clip are brother and sister - he joins MI5, while she, 187 00:20:37,760 --> 00:20:43,440 a medical student, becomes increasingly radicalised. The ending of 'Home Fire' echoes 188 00:20:43,440 --> 00:20:50,000 the ending of 'Britz', when these two characters finally come together in an embrace as she 189 00:20:50,800 --> 00:20:57,520 (in 'Britz') flicks the switch of her suicide vest. Reading the last two pages of the novel, 190 00:20:58,240 --> 00:21:05,360 a description of Eamonn and Aneeka's final moments as shown on TV, think anyone who remembers 'Britz' 191 00:21:05,360 --> 00:21:12,560 has this final powerful tableau in mind. The embrace of a brother and sister in the embrace of 192 00:21:12,560 --> 00:21:18,800 Eamonn and Aneeka. And with this echo of 'Britz', lover and brother merge, just as they do at 193 00:21:18,800 --> 00:21:25,200 various other points in the novel, for 'Home Fire' subtly picks up on the currents of non-normative 194 00:21:25,200 --> 00:21:34,560 desire that flow through Sophocles' play. It's significant, I think, that so many of the multiple 195 00:21:35,120 --> 00:21:40,720 overlapping models or intertexts in Shamsie's version of 'Antigone' - a novel originally 196 00:21:40,720 --> 00:21:46,240 meant to be a play - are dramatic: from the stage, above all, but also from the screen. 197 00:21:47,520 --> 00:21:52,080 At the start I mentioned the novel's intermediality and this is why I think 198 00:21:52,080 --> 00:21:57,840 it's appropriate for a talk at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, 199 00:21:57,840 --> 00:22:03,440 since it's a novel born out of theatre and performance as much as it is out of text. 200 00:22:05,840 --> 00:22:14,160 So, now I want to go back to Shamsie's engagement with 'Antigone' itself and with Greek tragedy as 201 00:22:14,160 --> 00:22:23,360 a genre, for the theatricality of this novel lies not just in its interaction with actual dramatic 202 00:22:23,360 --> 00:22:29,440 productions, but also in how Shamsie integrates the formal elements of Sophocles' play. 203 00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:34,640 By 'formal elements', I mean some of tragedy's basic structural features. 204 00:22:34,640 --> 00:22:41,040 I'm going to focus on speech and dialogue, the 'agon' (or contest of speeches and arguments), 205 00:22:41,760 --> 00:22:47,920 the chorus, recognition ('anagnorisis') and reversal ('peripeteia') 206 00:22:47,920 --> 00:22:56,000 and the messenger speech. For the first of these, dialogue, I draw your attention again to what is 207 00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:58,480 perhaps the most obvious feature of the novel: 208 00:22:58,480 --> 00:23:03,520 its division into five 'acts', like dramatic acts, each from the 209 00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:10,160 perspective of a different character, as if each character is speaking in turn. As I mentioned, 210 00:23:10,160 --> 00:23:15,440 this 'relay race' as Shamsie herself has called it, may be influenced by the multiplicity 211 00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:22,480 of voices in Roy-Bhattacharya's 'The Watch'. Shamsie has also experimented with shifts from 212 00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:28,960 one character perspective to another, sometimes converging on the one event, especially in 'A God 213 00:23:28,960 --> 00:23:33,600 in Every Stone' and also in 'Burnt Shadows'. But it also evokes the 214 00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:40,160 dialogue form of drama - combined, perhaps, with the testimonial structure of Slovo's play. 215 00:23:40,800 --> 00:23:47,120 Even with each character having a distinct 'act' or 'testimony', there is from the start a strong 216 00:23:47,120 --> 00:23:52,880 sense of dialogue between them and also a sense of contrast each character with a distinctive 217 00:23:52,880 --> 00:24:01,200 voice, just as in Sophocles' play The Greek tragedy 'Antigone' begins with a dialogue, 218 00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:09,280 as Antigone addresses Ismene - literally ' Oh, common self-sistered head of Ismene', in, as I 219 00:24:09,280 --> 00:24:16,000 said, a literal, not very elegant translation. Such an emphatic declaration of sisterhood, 220 00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:22,640 like so much of the play's language, stresses what Mark Griffith has called the self-reflexivity of 221 00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:28,880 family affection, which is of course fundamental to Antigone's character and her motivation. 222 00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:36,400 Shamsie has said that her starting point for the novel was the centrality of sibling-hood, 223 00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:42,640 specifically at the beginning - the relationship between Isma and Aneeka (Ismene and Antigone). 224 00:24:43,360 --> 00:24:49,440 'Home Fire', like the first line of the play, begins with Isma (Ismene) and 225 00:24:49,440 --> 00:24:54,800 conversation with Aneeka (even though she's not actually directly there) quickly enters, 226 00:24:54,800 --> 00:25:00,320 initially in the form of a flashback to the sisters roleplaying before Isma's 227 00:25:00,320 --> 00:25:06,240 interrogation at Heathrow. This sets up their difference in language and 228 00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:13,040 attitudes towards the state and its islamophobic practices, so for example as I've included here, 229 00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:18,480 Aneeka recommends that she show at least a tiny bit of contempt and joke about the Queen; 230 00:25:18,480 --> 00:25:24,080 instead Isma says quite seriously: "I greatly admire Her Majesty's commitment to her role." 231 00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:31,840 Such differences set up a multi-vocal quality, a polyphony, 232 00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:38,400 that continues throughout the novel, both within immediate exchanges and from one 'act', or narrative, to 233 00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:46,640 the next. The contrast in style between Isma's and Aneeka's narratives is really striking. Aneeka's 234 00:25:46,640 --> 00:25:52,800 is divided into much shorter sections: the first is almost lyrical in its repetitions, quite unlike the 235 00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:57,920 more prosaic description of Isma's airport interrogation with which the novel begins. 236 00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:04,560 The contrast between the sisters' voices is emphasised a little later on in Aneeka's narrative, 237 00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:10,240 in a section of almost pure dialogue that reads like a script. Their exchange there also 238 00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:16,160 evokes the opening scene of Sophocles' play, as Aneeka asks for her sister's help in bringing 239 00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:25,200 Parvaiz's body home and Isma insists that they must accept the law even when it's unjust Between the 240 00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:31,760 two sisters' narratives are those of Eamonn and Parvaiz, but Aneeka's voice is always there, it always seems 241 00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:38,160 present through conversations with them both - Skype and text messages with Parvaiz and the 242 00:26:38,160 --> 00:26:46,000 things her voice said in Parvaiz's audio track, entitled 'Twin Heard from the Garden Shed'. 243 00:26:48,080 --> 00:26:54,480 Now, Isma largely fades away as a character once Eamonn's narrative begins and increasingly 244 00:26:54,480 --> 00:27:00,640 the dominant contrast of voices is the one between Aneeka on the one hand and Eamonn's father, 245 00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:07,680 Karamat on the other. Likewise, in 'Antigone' the drama revolves around the opposition of Antigone and 246 00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:13,760 Creon. As Anne Carson writes, they 'stand opposed to one another instinctually, in 247 00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:17,920 the very morphology of their language, in the very grain of the way they think and speak'. 248 00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:25,280 So, for example, Eamonn watches a clip of Karamat delivering a speech at a predominantly Muslim 249 00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:32,800 school in Bradford on how Muslims must abandon any 'outdated codes of behaviour', he says, that mark them 250 00:27:32,800 --> 00:27:39,360 as different. Eamonn briefly tries to defend this in the face of Anneka's fury. Their argument makes 251 00:27:39,360 --> 00:27:45,680 them openly acknowledge the differences between them: differences in religion, class, 252 00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:50,320 wealth and politics - but the underlying opposition here already seems to be 253 00:27:50,880 --> 00:27:58,160 the one between Aneeka and Karamat, channeled through his very defensive son. This opposition 254 00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:04,480 underscores another formal element of tragedy reworked in the novel, the 'agon', a 255 00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:09,920 set of opposing speeches, typically divided by a few lines spoken by the chorus. 256 00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:18,480 Antigone and Creon's 'agon' scene, beginning after the guard brings her on stage, is relatively brief - 257 00:28:18,480 --> 00:28:25,280 that of Haemon and Creon is actually longer. In 'Home Fire', Eamonn and Karamat face each other 258 00:28:25,280 --> 00:28:31,280 both at the end of the son's narrative and in the father's. There's a phone conversation 259 00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:35,520 that includes several echoes of their exchange in Sophocles' play. 260 00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:43,840 Aneeka and Karamat, on the other hand, never actually meet - but Shamsie really captures their opposition 261 00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:48,400 by placing their narratives against each other, next to each other, so we have a sort 262 00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:55,600 of juxtaposition of world views, of motivations, of registers. So, for example, Aneeka's narrative 263 00:28:55,600 --> 00:29:03,200 ends with her patient, steadfast, lyrical resolve to sit by her brother's corpse until the world 264 00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:09,040 changed or both of them crumbled into the soil around them. Karamat's then begins with his 265 00:29:09,040 --> 00:29:14,480 immediately more practical frustrated concern with how an insulated coffee mug doesn't keep 266 00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:21,200 one's hands warm and he then starts considering his relationship to Britain. Another voice enters 267 00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:28,480 that of Terry, his wife, whom he imagines calling his plan to amend citizenship laws contemptuous. 268 00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:37,440 The opposing voices of Anneka and Karamat also counter each other within the characters' own 269 00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:44,960 narratives. Within Anneka's, Karamat intrudes through the TV news report about his revoking the 270 00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:50,880 citizenship, even of a dead body and also through a newspaper article that mentions an upcoming 271 00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:55,920 immigration bill that would, I quote: make it possible to strip any British passport holders of 272 00:29:55,920 --> 00:30:02,080 their citizenship. Within the newspaper report there's also an opposing voice, a statement 273 00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:07,920 from 'Liberty', the human rights campaign group and then the 274 00:30:07,920 --> 00:30:14,720 narrative returns to Aneeka. I've included a photo here from my own copy of the novel, just so you 275 00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:20,880 can see this switch. You can see even just the visual effect of moving from one perspective 276 00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:29,040 to another. Within Karamat's narrative, as well, Aneeka increasingly intrudes. Already, just a couple 277 00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:35,840 of pages in, he's thinking of her as his opponent. Soon the narrative starts to be dominated by TV 278 00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:42,800 images of Aneeka in Karachi. At one point their speeches actually directly counter each other, 279 00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:49,680 even though they are not in the same physical space. So, after a dust storm, Aneeka faces the camera 280 00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:56,480 and speaks, as if to Karamat himself, as you can see here: 'Then she looked directly at the Home 281 00:30:56,480 --> 00:31:01,920 Secretary and spoke: "In the stories of wicked tyrants men and women are punished with exile, 282 00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:07,120 bodies are kept from their families - their heads impaled on spikes, their corpses thrown into 283 00:31:07,120 --> 00:31:13,360 unmarked graves. all these things happen according to the law but not according to justice."' The 284 00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:20,640 stories of "wicked tyrants" may be as close as the novel gets to more directly suggesting a mythical 285 00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:26,320 model, but with the opposition of justice and law, these lines also evoke the beginning 286 00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:33,280 of Antigone's speech to Creon in their 'agon' scene in Sophocles' play. Karamat's response, like Creon's, 287 00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:38,880 follows almost immediately, as he distorts Aneeka's words in his own speech in the 'agon' 288 00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:48,240 of Prime Minister's Questions in Parliament. The polyphony, the multi-vocality of 'Home Fire' 289 00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:53,120 also manifests itself through Shamsie's transformation of the tragic chorus. 290 00:31:55,680 --> 00:32:01,040 Allusions to Sophocles' play become most concentrated in Aneeka's narrative, 291 00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:06,400 - the moment, in the story, of the immediate aftermath of her brother's death, coincides 292 00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:13,600 with the start of the tragic plot. This narrative 'act', as we've already begun to see, is also the most 293 00:32:13,600 --> 00:32:19,840 experimental and polyphonic, with short sections focused on Aneeka herself, interrupted by other 294 00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:28,080 voices communicated through a variety of media. So we have tv interviews, newspaper articles, racist 295 00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:36,000 hashtags (I put 'memes' here, I meant hashtags), tweets mocking the twins' neighbour Gladys after 296 00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:44,960 she appears on TV and is talking sympathetically of Parvaiz and finally a poem. The poem 297 00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:51,840 comes right after a tabloid piece about the secret sex life of 'Pervy' Pasha's twin sister and 298 00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:58,480 it presents a completely different perspective on their relationship: Eamonn is opportunity, hope, love. 299 00:33:00,400 --> 00:33:07,680 Shamsie has talked about how this variety of media represents the novel's chorus. The more she thought 300 00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:12,560 about how fickle the chorus of 'Antigone' is, the more, she says, she thought: it's social 301 00:33:12,560 --> 00:33:21,760 media, it's the news. So the extracts of social media and news that interrupt Aneeka's narrative 302 00:33:21,760 --> 00:33:26,480 function like the chorus of Sophocles' play, representing the voices of the broader 303 00:33:26,480 --> 00:33:33,760 community: voices that can be sympathetic, but are often deeply racist, misogynistic and sensational. 304 00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:41,040 many draw directly from contemporary Islamophobic and anti-immigration rhetoric in Britain like 305 00:33:41,040 --> 00:33:48,080 Theresa May's 'Go Home' billboard campaign. The contrast of choral voices continues into Karamat's 306 00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:54,000 narrative where a negative tabloid headline is followed by TV interviews with people supporting 307 00:33:54,000 --> 00:34:00,400 Aneeka - pushback that we also see in Sophocles' play, as the chorus becomes more assertive against Creon. 308 00:34:02,320 --> 00:34:09,200 Most of these pieces of news and social media do not evoke particular choral odes from 'Antigone', 309 00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:16,640 but the tabloid article about Aneeka's secret sex life is, I think, perhaps reminiscent of the fourth 310 00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:23,360 song or could be reminiscent of the fourth song of 'Antigone': a short hymn to Eros and Aphrodite. 311 00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:32,000 On the surface the 'Eros' seems to be about Haemon's blinding desire, but as Mark Griffith says, it 312 00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:37,680 is and I quote: 'a one-sided interpretation that allows Sophocles to introduce telling ironies'. 313 00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:44,240 Its wedding imagery conflicts with Antigone being really determined to marry death, not Haemon and 314 00:34:44,240 --> 00:34:51,840 Haemon himself has shown that he's not motivated simply by love but is actually rebuking his father for his unjust 315 00:34:51,840 --> 00:35:00,240 acts. Actually Eamonn's entire narrative also recalls, I think, this ode - perhaps especially 316 00:35:00,240 --> 00:35:07,440 Carson's rendering where she has this great line: 'you change the levels of a person's mind'. 317 00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:15,520 But in this narrative Shamsie recalls it again and produces a similar sort of ironic effect to the 318 00:35:15,520 --> 00:35:21,840 original songs through the contrast, the juxtaposition of the tabloid and the poem, complicating any 319 00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:30,000 one-sided perspective. The increased integration of multiple forms of media toward the end of 320 00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:36,960 'Home Fire' is especially suggestive of the tragic chorus, but elements of its songs 321 00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:45,600 surface earlier in the novel as well. So, Parvaiz's narrative is like 322 00:35:45,600 --> 00:35:51,920 the 'parados', the chorus' entrance song, looking back to explain the present plot line 323 00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:59,200 and constantly shifting between different moments in time. More generally, references to music 324 00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:06,560 in the first half of the novel invoke, I think, the Ancient Greek chorus which would sing and dance 325 00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:12,480 at regular intervals, in the orchestra, during a dramatic performance. Such music can appear, 326 00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:19,040 as in tragedy, as a break before speech - like when Parvaiz remembers how he and Aneeka were listening 327 00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:24,480 and dancing to a playlist in the kitchen before Isma told them to turn the volume down and listen. 328 00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:31,440 It's also part of the novel's exploration of self-identity and familial connectedness 329 00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:39,760 for example in his second encounter with Isma, Eamonn sings some lines of a Pakistani pop song 330 00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:45,520 that he remembers from when he used to visit his father's relatives. Later he begins to learn Urdu 331 00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:52,000 with the help of music videos . When Farooq starts to attract Parvaiz towards joining the 332 00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:59,120 Islamic State, his story of Adil Pasha involves dance as well as musical sound, as you see here: 333 00:36:59,120 --> 00:37:05,840 'Here was Abu Parvaiz dipping his head into a mountain stream to perform his ablutions 334 00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:12,000 and coming up with a beard of icicles, which led to dancing on the riverbank as if he were Adil Pasha at 335 00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:18,640 a discotheque rather than Abu Parvaiz in Chechnya, whose every shake of the head produced the sound of wind 336 00:37:18,640 --> 00:37:23,520 chimes. Of all the stories this was the one that most clearly evoked the father he'd never known: 337 00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:29,200 the rushing stream, the dancing icicles, the men around him similarly braving the cold water 338 00:37:29,200 --> 00:37:35,760 so they could provide the jester-warrior Abu Parvaiz with an accompanying orchestra'. This story's 339 00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:44,480 musicality plays a part in Parvaiz's own identity formation in relation to his father, as the icicles 340 00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:50,560 on Adil's beard produce music and Adil's chorus of followers become an accompanying orchestra. 341 00:37:52,240 --> 00:37:58,960 The novel's music is also bound up with its focus throughout on sound and hearing. 342 00:38:00,240 --> 00:38:06,800 This motif, tied in particular to Parvaiz, who's an aspiring audio engineer, is 343 00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:14,320 closely connected to two more formal aspects of recognition or to use Aristotle's term 344 00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:21,920 'anagnorisis' and the often-related moment of reversal (or 'peripeteia'). The crucial scene of 345 00:38:21,920 --> 00:38:28,000 recognition and reversal in Antigone happens with the blind prophet Tiresias. After his 346 00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:34,640 departure, Creon - his mind disturbed, his opinion changed - attempts too late to undo his mistake. 347 00:38:35,520 --> 00:38:41,600 In 'Home Fire' there are several moments of recognition and reversal (or near reversal) 348 00:38:41,600 --> 00:38:47,680 all linked to a sound that forces another viewpoint - another voice, a different understanding - 349 00:38:47,680 --> 00:38:54,800 upon the listener. So, the first is Isma's own icicle scene: she hears very strange music 350 00:38:54,800 --> 00:39:01,840 in Massachusetts, she eventually then understands its source as the acoustics of ice on ice 351 00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:07,200 and allows herself to feel physically the pain of losing her little brother. In 352 00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:13,840 doing so she remembers him not as ungrateful or selfish but just as a boy obsessed with sound. 353 00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:21,520 The second moment of recognition and reversal is less temporary and more vital to the plot, 354 00:39:21,520 --> 00:39:27,600 when Parvaiz hears the voice of a wounded woman in Raqqa begging for help, but is forbidden from 355 00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:34,080 helping her because she's removed her veil, so he says: 'Oh God, a Londoner's voice, a young voice, 356 00:39:34,080 --> 00:39:39,600 maybe his age, Aneeka's age... Oh to be deaf. Allah take away my hearing.' 357 00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:48,480 The voice makes him remember Aneeka, also his mother, Isma and himself. It makes him wish to be deaf 358 00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:55,840 and it prompts him to make contact with Aneeka via a voice call on Skype to ask for help. 359 00:39:57,600 --> 00:40:04,400 Karamat's own moment of self-recognition and reversal comes in two stages: both of them closely 360 00:40:04,400 --> 00:40:11,680 linked to Sophocles' play. Evoking Antigone's cry amid the dust storm, as reported by the guard in 361 00:40:11,680 --> 00:40:18,720 the play, Aneeka's own cry is witnessed by Karamat on his TV screen - as you can see in the first quote 362 00:40:18,720 --> 00:40:25,120 here: 'For a few moments there was only a howling noise, the wind raging through the park, and then 363 00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:32,480 a hand plucked away the white cloth and the howl was the girl. A howl deeper than a girl, a howl that 364 00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:38,160 came out of the earth and through her and into the office of the Home Secretary, who took a step back. 365 00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:44,400 The physical impact on karamat here - the howl reaching him all the way from Karachi to London 366 00:40:45,200 --> 00:40:51,120 isn't enough to make him change course, but it does suggest the beginning of his unravelling. 367 00:40:51,120 --> 00:40:56,480 Just a couple of pages later the Pakistan High Commissioner tells him that their government 368 00:40:56,480 --> 00:41:03,200 can't intervene since support for Aneeka is growing and again Aneeka affects Karamat physically 369 00:41:03,200 --> 00:41:10,880 as he's left tasting dust on his hand. Karamat's moment of full self-recognition and reversal 370 00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:18,240 finally comes with his wife Terry who's the novel's Tiresias (not so much Eurydice), when she 371 00:41:18,240 --> 00:41:25,360 momentarily takes away his sight by placing her hand over his eyes and he focuses on other senses: 372 00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:30,880 the smell of the rotting body which seems to reach him from Karachi just like Aneeka's howl did. 373 00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:38,480 Terry's touch, which I quote: 'made something in him stop, something else in him start and 374 00:41:38,480 --> 00:41:44,320 her voice, saying "be human, fix it"' and then finally the cold touch of ice 375 00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:49,040 that he feels on his own fingertips, like Aneeka touching the ice coffin. 376 00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:59,840 The final formal moment I want to discuss is different, in that Shamsie's reworking 377 00:41:59,840 --> 00:42:06,480 of it doesn't immediately involve the sort of polyphony, the contestation of voices that the tragic 378 00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:13,360 structures provide. This is the messenger speech, which, in the play, reports the suicide of Haemon 379 00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:20,240 over the body of Antigone. In 'Home Fire', its contents are communicated via the TV screen, 380 00:42:20,240 --> 00:42:26,880 just like the dust storm and Antigone's (Aneeka's) howl. The final scene, as I mentioned earlier, is mediated through 381 00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:34,000 Kozminsky's 'Britz'. While we know that Karamat is watching - everybody's watching - it isn't 382 00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:40,720 framed by him. Everyone, instead, is watching as 'every television channel replayed it endlessly'. 383 00:42:42,240 --> 00:42:47,280 Some reviews of 'Home Fire' actually criticised the theatricality here, 384 00:42:47,280 --> 00:42:51,760 whereby the reader is put in the position of the spectator: watching as we might 385 00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:58,000 watch 'Antigone' or 'Britz'. From this position, we can't reach the interior world of either Eamonn 386 00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:04,080 or Aneeka - they're simply a man in a navy blue shirt and the woman he's come for. 387 00:43:05,520 --> 00:43:12,720 Rehana Ahmed has brilliantly shown how this ending maintains Aneeka's elusivity, 388 00:43:12,720 --> 00:43:19,040 undermining the surveillant gaze and denying the reader - especially the white secular middle class 389 00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:25,520 reader - knowledge of the Muslim woman at the heart of the book. But through the lack of involvement of 390 00:43:25,520 --> 00:43:32,240 the novel's other characters and the spectatorial perspective from which the scene is described, such 391 00:43:32,240 --> 00:43:40,000 an ending also directly engages us as the viewer- reader and all the more so because this is where 392 00:43:40,000 --> 00:43:47,520 we're left. In the play, both the chorus and the messenger maintain a heavy silence after his 393 00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:54,160 speech, just before Creon's final entrance. The novel's ending literalizes that silence. 394 00:43:55,040 --> 00:44:02,080 As a result - as Shamsie herself has pointed out - as you can see here, there's no longer any other 395 00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:08,480 media or chorus to interpret this moment for us. As she says, you're forced to think 'beyond 396 00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:16,720 the moment it ends at', go beyond that moment 'be the chorus yourself'. Ultimately, then, 'Home Fire' 397 00:44:16,720 --> 00:44:23,680 positions its readers as a sort of 'chorus', urging them to add their own voices to its polyphony. 398 00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:34,960 So, just over 10 years ago, Edith Hall drew our attention to a group of modern novels - not just 399 00:44:34,960 --> 00:44:41,920 anglophone ones - where, I quote: 'the question of rival subjectivities, the radically different 400 00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:48,160 ways in which individual subjects can experience the same events, is brought into focus through 401 00:44:48,160 --> 00:44:54,640 interaction with an Ancient Greek tragedy. Novels like Christa Wolf's 'Medea' and Barry Unsworth's 402 00:44:54,640 --> 00:45:01,280 'The Songs of the Kings' have heard in tragedy; I quote again: 'the plurality of voices, the polyphony, 403 00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:08,960 indeed the antiphony'. 'Home Fire', I think, belongs to such a group in its engagement with Sophocles' play. 404 00:45:09,600 --> 00:45:14,800 But what I've tried to show today is the close connection between its polyphony, 405 00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:21,920 its intermediality and its and tragic form; the contestation of voices produced through its 406 00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:27,760 integration of multiple media and it's reworking not simply of the story of Antigone, but of the 407 00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:36,560 structural building blocks of her tragedy. Carson's translation of Sophocles' play begins with Antigone 408 00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:44,320 saying 'We come out of the dark". As if responding to this opening line, Shamsie's novel makes visible and 409 00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:51,360 audible those typically in the dark: those denied a political voice, alongside those who have a very 410 00:45:51,360 --> 00:45:58,080 powerful one. In staging so many different voices in contestation with each other, Shamsie not only 411 00:45:58,080 --> 00:46:03,840 demonstrates the heterogeneity of the British Muslim community, but also on a broader scale, 412 00:46:03,840 --> 00:46:10,240 undermines any 'either-or' dichotomy of the sort that Heaney talks about in 'The Burial At Thebes'. 413 00:46:11,280 --> 00:46:17,920 We, the readers, are invited to participate in this multitude of voices and in this respect, 414 00:46:17,920 --> 00:46:24,400 tragic form does important political work. We don't know what will happen after Eamonn's vest 415 00:46:24,400 --> 00:46:31,200 explodes: we have no lament, no choral conclusion like we do in the play; we don't know if Karamat 416 00:46:31,200 --> 00:46:37,600 will want (or if he'll be able) to accomplish his plan to change citizenship laws as Theresa May did. 417 00:46:39,040 --> 00:46:45,760 The final image of Aneeka and Eamonn as lovers in an embrace - an embrace that Antigone and Haemon 418 00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:53,440 in Sophocles' tragedy have only as corpses - that final image renders us, like them, momentarily 419 00:46:53,440 --> 00:46:59,120 suspended. The scene's open-endedness raises the question of whether it could be otherwise 420 00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:03,920 and it leaves us to answer it. Thank you so much. 421 00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:13,760 Well ,thank you Naomi, that was terrific - it was a really gripping talk, thank you. 422 00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:20,480 I would love to ask questions myself -though anyone, please feel free to send in 423 00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:29,600 a question either through youtube or send an email to APGRD, 424 00:47:29,600 --> 00:47:33,680 because your questions will reach us that way as well. But while we wait, perhaps, 425 00:47:33,680 --> 00:47:38,320 can I just take you up at the very end there. It does seem to me that there 426 00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:46,320 is also a difference from the tragic form of 'Antigone' - and from typical tragic form - which 427 00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:53,360 shows you the aftermath of the catastrophe, the aftermath of the violent turning 428 00:47:53,360 --> 00:48:01,680 point. and Sophocles' play, you know, has this really protracted Creon scene at the end, whereas 429 00:48:01,680 --> 00:48:07,760 Karamat, as you said, you have no idea. I mean, I must say I took it that his life was 430 00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:13,600 in ruins, like Creon's. That he would never recover: he would abandon his political career and 431 00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:22,400 his marriage is over. But it seems to me that, arguably, Sophocles' play 432 00:48:24,160 --> 00:48:30,000 wrings out of Creon some kind of understanding of his 433 00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:35,920 position and of the suffering that he's brought on himself, but I'm not sure whether in the Shamsie 434 00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:44,480 novel Karamat is - he's given some understanding, but he's 435 00:48:47,520 --> 00:48:50,960 given very little in the way of redeeming features, you know. He's 436 00:48:50,960 --> 00:48:56,720 he's fairly close to a kind of modern political villain, almost, isn't he? Or am I wrong about that? 437 00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:05,680 Yeah, I don't think you're wrong - it's certainly true that the the novel just ends 438 00:49:05,680 --> 00:49:14,640 there and we don't have the sort of extended lament that Creon sings at the end 439 00:49:14,640 --> 00:49:21,600 of play. Where, as you say, you really get a sense that in some respect he's learned something 440 00:49:21,600 --> 00:49:28,320 and has been completely devastated, although we don't know exactly 441 00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:37,360 how he's going to act. With the novel, I think that open-endedness is is very 442 00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:45,920 deliberate, so we have to, as I said, we sort of have to think about how this might 443 00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:51,520 affect Karamat. I do wonder, if you're not - I mean, like most readers, if you if you don't have 'Antigone' 444 00:49:51,520 --> 00:49:59,360 in the back of your mind, how you would then interpret or think about Karamat at the end of 445 00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:08,720 the novel. I think it might be more open-ended as a result. I mean, his closeness to 446 00:50:08,720 --> 00:50:14,080 his son has been emphasised throughout and there are strong indications that his marriage is about 447 00:50:14,080 --> 00:50:22,720 to fall apart, where Terry crosses over with Eurydice -she leaves the room at very 448 00:50:22,720 --> 00:50:29,040 significant moment. So you do get that sense of unravelling but I still think there's a question mark 449 00:50:29,680 --> 00:50:37,840 left there. I guess the other thing I'd say is, while Karamat is certainly 450 00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:47,040 not very likable, one thing that I think Shamsie has really caught in the play, which a 451 00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:54,320 lot of adaptations don't, is some of the ways in which Creon and Antigone -you know, they're 452 00:50:54,320 --> 00:50:59,200 from the same family and they're they're both, in fact very elite. 453 00:50:59,200 --> 00:51:05,520 While there are very strong differences between them, there are also some important ways in 454 00:51:05,520 --> 00:51:14,560 which their background is the same and Shamsie communicates that through all these 455 00:51:14,560 --> 00:51:20,160 characters being from the British Muslim community and there even actually being 456 00:51:20,160 --> 00:51:30,400 more direct points of contact between Karamat's family and that of Anneka and her siblings. 457 00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:37,360 So there are various things that slightly muddy the idea that they're in 458 00:51:37,360 --> 00:51:43,840 any sense polar opposites and even his political stances, while some might seem - 459 00:51:45,120 --> 00:51:52,480 to those of us who are politically so inclined - 460 00:51:52,480 --> 00:51:59,440 abhorrent, they're combined actually with apparently more progressive approaches 461 00:52:00,240 --> 00:52:06,320 towards the community that he himself is from. So I think he's a slightly more 462 00:52:07,600 --> 00:52:16,160 ambiguous character, perhaps, than than we might initially think. Yes it reminds me that 463 00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:23,520 when Nelson Mandela organised a play reading of 'Antigone', he himself took 464 00:52:23,520 --> 00:52:29,200 on the part of Creon because he felt he wanted to understand what it was that made Creon 465 00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:37,520 tick, rather than simply uh be the Antigone. So have we got any questions arising? 466 00:52:40,960 --> 00:52:43,280 Just a comment so far, I think - 467 00:52:44,480 --> 00:52:51,040 that it won the London Hellenic Prize, this novel, which is 468 00:52:51,040 --> 00:52:57,200 for any kind of work, including our paltry scholarly works, connected to 469 00:52:57,200 --> 00:53:04,640 Hellenic culture and I think quite understandably, this novel was regarded as throwing as much, 470 00:53:04,640 --> 00:53:13,840 if not more, light on Hellenic culture than more conventional academic work. 471 00:53:16,480 --> 00:53:21,280 Now here's a new question to do with the role of the chorus. 472 00:53:26,320 --> 00:53:30,720 Yes, so this is to do with the spectators being called on to perform the role of the chorus 473 00:53:31,520 --> 00:53:36,960 and wondering in particular whether there's an element of its 474 00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:46,640 relating to a post-dramatic theatre, where this is a feature that instead of that 475 00:53:46,640 --> 00:53:51,680 instead of the chorus being there that you you are obliged to become the chorus. Naomi? 476 00:53:53,840 --> 00:54:06,640 Thank you so much, Fiona, for that question. Yes, I think that could definitely be in play, I definitely want to make it in play because 477 00:54:07,360 --> 00:54:14,880 I've thought about that sense of audience engagement, sort of directly 478 00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:21,680 looking at the spectators and confronting them and making them aware of their own spectatorial 479 00:54:21,680 --> 00:54:28,000 gaze, that can be a hallmark of quite a lot of, as fiona puts it, post-dramatic theatre. 480 00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:36,160 I've thought about that in connection with Ancient Greek theatre and moments when I think the 481 00:54:36,160 --> 00:54:41,840 audience is again confronted with their own role and made to really think about what they're 482 00:54:41,840 --> 00:54:47,920 doing as spectators. So then to also think about that in terms of what this novel is doing to its 483 00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:57,040 readers is great. So yeah, I think that's a wonderful way of thinking about this too, thank you. 484 00:54:58,320 --> 00:55:01,680 I see here a question relating to Judith Butler - who of course has 485 00:55:03,280 --> 00:55:07,280 taken this play as a centerpiece for some of her discussion of gender - 486 00:55:07,920 --> 00:55:13,840 and asking do you think that the novel has any interaction with that? 487 00:55:16,560 --> 00:55:25,280 So, from what I gather - having not managed to speak to her directly, Kamila Shamsie - I 488 00:55:25,280 --> 00:55:33,760 don't think is directly engaging with some of the, you know, really foundational 489 00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:41,040 discussions of this play going back to Hegel and Lacan through to Judith Butler 490 00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:52,080 um and Bonnie Honig. That said I do think there are aspects of Butler's approach 491 00:55:52,080 --> 00:55:57,680 and also to take another feminist approach (I hope i'm pronouncing her name right), Honig's 492 00:55:57,680 --> 00:56:02,480 one, I do think there are features there that are interesting to think 493 00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:10,480 about in relation to 'Home Fire'. So I mentioned, very briefly, the currents of non-normative desire 494 00:56:11,200 --> 00:56:18,640 that are flowing through Sophocles' play Butler - amongst others - drew our attention 495 00:56:18,640 --> 00:56:25,680 to in particular. I think Shamsie is very aware of that, those 496 00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:34,720 features at various points where Eamonn's activities start mirroring those of Parvaiz, 497 00:56:34,720 --> 00:56:44,800 Aneeka's brother, when they're in the full throes of their very intense sexual relationship. 498 00:56:44,800 --> 00:56:55,920 Also in other contexts - the guy who recruits Parvaiz, Farooq - there 499 00:56:55,920 --> 00:57:04,480 are moments in their encounters which also seem quite sexually charged. Indeed, 500 00:57:05,680 --> 00:57:11,520 Aneeka doesn't know about Farooq, but thinks that Parvaiz has met a woman and that he, you 501 00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:16,400 know, he's thinking that he might get married, or he's he's having a good time with her. So 502 00:57:16,400 --> 00:57:21,120 anyway, I think that side of things, you know, you could maybe draw some connections 503 00:57:21,120 --> 00:57:30,080 to Butler's work and then also, just thinking of Antigone-Aneeka as a very strongly powerful figure, 504 00:57:30,080 --> 00:57:36,880 I don't think she's there's anything abject about her in 'Home Fire'. 505 00:57:36,880 --> 00:57:45,280 She seems to be a quite a strong political agent, so we might 506 00:57:45,280 --> 00:57:52,240 think about that in relation to Butler's work. Also, as I said, Hoenig's work, because Hoenig 507 00:57:52,240 --> 00:57:58,960 brings in Ismene, whom Butler doesn't talk about very much. But I think 508 00:57:59,840 --> 00:58:07,840 Shamsie is really interested in Ismene: while Isma does recede from the novel, because she 509 00:58:07,840 --> 00:58:13,840 began it and she comes back into it in an exchange with Karamat, that's also very powerful, 510 00:58:13,840 --> 00:58:22,000 I think we're really meant to think about her role too, even if it's not the same sort of 511 00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:28,000 co-conspiratorial role that Hoenig discusses in her work. Thank you very much, Freya, for that 512 00:58:28,000 --> 00:58:33,520 question. I thought you brought out very well the way that she didn't come to 'Antigone' from a 513 00:58:34,240 --> 00:58:39,440 teaching or academic angle, but it was originally put in her 514 00:58:39,440 --> 00:58:44,640 mind by Jatinder Verma who was very much a man of the theatre, so she was thinking 515 00:58:44,640 --> 00:58:53,600 about it theatrically right from the start. I also wondered to what extent, 516 00:58:54,640 --> 00:59:01,440 you know, to bring in any of the most well-known fundamental versions of 517 00:59:01,440 --> 00:59:11,360 'Antigone', like Anouilh. Shamsie actually said in an interview 518 00:59:12,720 --> 00:59:19,520 point blank 'no, I haven't read that', so I don't know to what extent to 519 00:59:19,520 --> 00:59:26,880 put this novel in play with the numerous other dramatic versions 520 00:59:26,880 --> 00:59:34,080 of 'Antigone', versus some specific ones that I think we can identify at work within the novel. 521 00:59:38,240 --> 00:59:46,160 Good. Well, is there anything else? Claire is looking out for questions for us. 522 00:59:48,880 --> 00:59:55,280 Well, we're actually absolutely on the dot at three o'clock - or three o'clock our time - and 523 00:59:55,280 --> 01:00:02,880 I hope other people share with me, that I felt that was a fascinating talk and I 524 01:00:02,880 --> 01:00:09,360 learned a lot from it and I greatly admire your close reading and 525 01:00:09,360 --> 01:00:13,760 some of the themes you've brought out. I mean I hadn't really thought, for example, 526 01:00:13,760 --> 01:00:21,280 about the theme of the ice, which is fascinating. I mean, I think of you as 527 01:00:21,280 --> 01:00:30,000 a critic of of Greek poetry and Greek drama, as somebody with a very strong sensual 528 01:00:30,000 --> 01:00:35,680 approach and you brought that same approach to the novel as well. It was a marvellous talk. Naomi, 529 01:00:35,680 --> 01:00:40,480 we very much look forward to having you in Oxford, in person, where you can meet our students. I can't 530 01:00:40,480 --> 01:00:46,560 wait! We can take you out to supper. But thank you very much for 'zooming' 531 01:00:46,560 --> 01:00:56,160 to us today and we're looking forward to it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Oliver. Bye everybody, bye. 532 01:01:04,640 --> 01:01:05,140 Brilliant!