Heidegger and Gender: An Uncanny Retrieval of Hegel's Antigone

In order to tackle the question of Martin Heidegger and gender I approach his philosophy through the general problematic of art, with specific reference to Sophocles‘ Antigone. I read Heidegger against the backdrop of G.W.F. Hegel, arguing that Heidegger‘s understanding of the uncanny sublimates Hegel‘s rigorously sexualized, representationalist account of Antigone‘s and Creon‘s mutually exclusive ethical stances. I suggest that feminist responses to Hegel‘s reading of Antigone stand in need of complication, because they remain attached to an understanding of sexual difference that is still too metaphysical.