The Name Of Oedipus Play Analysis

Elinor Fuchs starts her argument by questioning the matter of “subjectivity” in postmodern theatre (6). She points out that “the subject was no longer an essence” and postmodern attempts to de-substantiate character on stage (3). Fuchs explains that “the burden of signification” and the act of questioning character might still fail to de-centralize subject because modernists tended to deal with “a humanistic problem” (35). What Fuchs illustrates throughout her book is to tell us that postmodern “character is dead” (176).
The matter of subjectivity is constantly challenged in Helen Cixous’s The Name of Oedipus: Song of the Forbidden Body (1978). The play is providing a feminine perspective on Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex asking the matter of existence, name,
From the beginning, Jocasta asks Oedipus to “not be Oedipus” (Cixous 255) and “disown the name” (256). The matter of calling the name is questioned. The name makes the meaning and the significance makes the subject to be centered. The word “afraid” becomes the “name” of fear the act of calling name produces the meaning (261). Jocasta points out the weight of “a word” that could cause death, separation, and preservation (278). Cixous does not focus on understanding; she rather concentrates on the questionable state of understanding. Jocasta confesses that she does “not understand” though she thinks she understands but she does not get “what [she] understand[s]” (285). Oedipus also admits “Oedipus…no longer means anything” (293). The matter of “name” is directly related to the “word” that creates “meaning” and provides the existence as a subject. The Name of Oedipus illustrates “the burden of signification” and questions the “essence” that Fuchs talks about in her book. The plot of Oedipus Rex remains on the surface but the significance of the plot does not exist or is challenged because the word that indicates the