The modern Medea : Euripides, anti-imperialism and infanticide

Euripides' Medea has been reinvented several times in the twentieth century. This paper uncovers the impetus that informs the lineage of Medeas that are overt in their politicisation of the problems of colonialism and/or institutionalised gender dissymmetry: the Medeas of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Heiner Mller, Brendan Kennelly, Liz Lochhead, Christa Wolf, Diana Wakoski, Tony Harrison - and more recently Wesley Enoch. What, however, lends the Euripidean narrative to such politicisations? To answer this question, the paper looks back to Euripides' play, offering a reappraisal of its representation of infanticide. The paper argues that while this motif is routinely dismissed in the scholarship as a demonising representation of the cultural and sexual Other, the infanticide motif is also the key to understanding Medea's radicality and politicisation of rights-bearing subjectivity in its ancient and modern incarnations.<br />