Re-reading Tragedy in a Time of Extinction

Abstract

As a palliative to despair over climatic and biospheric collapse, classical tragedy, particularly that of Aeschylus and Sophocles, may continue to serve its cathartic function when read in light of Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of tragedy, in which, through catastrophe, ‘Nature’ is revealed as ‘eternally powerful and pleasurable’, despite all change and loss. Aeschylus’ Oresteia illuminates this divine, chthonic power in the chorus of the Erinyes (Furies), the ‘terrible goddesses’, who uphold the cosmic order with their power to blight or to bless. Under the shadow of Anthropocenic destruction of entangled life-worlds, the Erinyes emerge as transvalued champions of Earth’s primacy, under the sign of justice.