Summary Of Judith Butler's 'The Suppliants'

The Suppliants is a tragic narrative regarding fifty maidens of Egyptian King Danaus who escaped from Africa to Greece. Their father accompanied them as they run to avoid marrying their fifty cousins. The marriage would have been committing incest in the eyes of God. In the ancient Greek city-states granted asylum only to those who took refuge in a temple or sacred place and called upon the gods for protection. The Suppliants therefore, had to be accepted officially as asylum seekers and be protected under the divine safety net by the city’s officials.
The Suppliants relates to today’s refugee crisis and how countries are responding to asylum seekers running away from violent conflict, or economic instability. It determines something fundamental about our humanity and above all responsibility cannot be avoided even if the political and the economic stakes are high. The play provides a historical depth view that reflects today’s

This process was called ‘performativity’ by Judith Butler and it refers to the repeated assumption of identities in daily life. Other identities rely explicitly on active processes of identification such as membership of a club or religion. This may involve a conscious counter-identification against institutionally and socially assigned identities for which they represent the meanings and values.
In Althusserian theory identification is central to the mechanisms through which individuals become knowing subjects. However, the range of identities available in a society and their modes of subjectivity are not open to every person every time in th society. These identities are restricted to specific groups on the basis of discourses of class, gender and race which are exclusive to and policed by groups in question. Althusser’s theory argues that non-recognition and non-identification leaves the individual in an abject state of non-subjectivity and lack of