Transcript Introduction to Gender Studies

Myths
archaic sense: G. S. Kirk: “a traditional oral narrative”
Alan Dundes: “a sacred narrative explaining how the
world and man came to be in their present form”
 Eleazar Meletynsky: “The basic purpose of mythology
is the ordering of chaos into cosmos, and cosmos does,
from the very beginning, contain aspects of morality and
value.”
 world model: completeness; vertical - horizontal models
(cosmos - chaos; centre - periphery; axis mundi)
 modern sense (cultural myth): a common belief, an
ideological construct
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1. Cognitive - Symbolic (Ernst Cassirer)
2. Ritualistic (James G. Frazer: The Golden Bough);
search for a key myth (myth of the dying and reborn
god/king/hero); rites of passage
3. Functional (Emile Durkheim, Bronislaw Malinowski)
Malinowski: “Myth fulfills in primitive culture an
indispensable function; it expresses, enhances and
codifies belief’ it vouches for their efficiency and
contains practical rules for the guidance of man.”
4. Structuralist (Claude Lévi-Strauss: “I do not aim to
show how men think in myths, but how myth thinks in
men, unbeknownst to them.”)
5. Psychological (Carl Gustav Jung: collective
unconscious: “a potentiality handed down to us from
ancient times in the specific form of memory images”
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an archetype; the collective unconscious of
mankind
archetype: a residuum, “a figure that constantly
recurs in the course of history and appears
wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed.
Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure.”
Italo Calvino: “Myth is the hidden part of every
story, the underground part, the zone still
unexplored because there are still no words to
take us there … Myth feeds on silence as much
as on the spoken word.”
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Semiotic systems, always already
interpretation/representation – further
reinterpreted by later cultures/ages
Not given, but constructed
Its „truth” (relevance): as a system of
representation with multiple layers
Codifiers of human behaviour
Discursive practices in the formation of
subjectivity
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Their own history/genealogy
Changes: reflect social/historical changes
Archetypes: mental concepts
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Chaos → Gea: earth Goddess, mother of all
Uranus: sky God; son and husband (twelve
children)
Cronus: youngest; castrating the father with a
sickle given to him by the mother
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Cronus’s son: Zeus – takes over (ten years’ struggle
→ Cronus to Tartaros)
Olympian Gods
Main God: Zeus: whole, omnipotent
Other gods, incl. Goddesses: partial:
Hera
Aphrodite (Venus)
Demeter
Persephone (Proserpine)
Artemis (Diana)
Pallas Athene
Hestia (Vesta)
diversification and fragmentation: wholeness of the
Great Goddess is lost
Symptomatic of the gendered codification of culture
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Sacred text: holy word
Historical conglomerate of texts
Canonisation
Codification in the anthropological meaning
of myth
Basic patterns of behaviour, perception,
thinking, evaluations, morality, etc.
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1. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of
God created he him; male and female created he them.
2. 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and
man became the living soul.
2. 8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward of Eden;
and there he put the man whom he had formed.
2. 15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the
garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
2. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of
every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
2. 17 But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou
shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die.
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2. 18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man
should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
2. 21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon
Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed
up the flesh instead thereof;
2. 22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from the
man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
2. 23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and
flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she
was taken out of man.
2. 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother,
and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
2. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and
were not ashamed.
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3. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field
which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman,
Yea, hath god said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
3. 2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the
fruit of the trees of the garden:
3. 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the
garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of, neither shall you
touch it, lest ye die.
3. 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely
die:
3. 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your
eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil.
3. 6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to
make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and
gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
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3. 7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew
that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and
made themselves aprons.
3. 8. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the
garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid
themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the
trees of the garden.
3. 9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him,
Where art thou?
3. 10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was
afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
3. 11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast
thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou
shouldest not eat?
3. 12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be
with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
3. 13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that
thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me,
and I did eat.
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3. 14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou has
done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of
the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all
the days of thy life:
3. 15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou
shalt bruise his heel.
3. 16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and
thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy
desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
3. 17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto
the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I
commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the
ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy
life;
3. 18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou
shall eat the herb of the field;
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3. 19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou
return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
3. 20 And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was
mother of all living.
3. 21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make
coats of skins, and clothed them.
3. 22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one
of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his
hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
3. 23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of
Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
3. 24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the
garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned
every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
4. And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare
Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.
4.1 I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in
sorrow thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shalt be
unto thy husband.
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Monotheism: rule by Law
Repudiation of female deities
Snake: earlier cultures: Goddesses most
potent power symbol
Knowledge as gendered
Meaning of knowledge
Punishment of female curiosity (vs first
murder)
Naming as power
Spirituality/carnality (first/second)
Transcendence/immanence
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First unsplit creature: undifferentiated („earth
creature”)
Sexual markers: only after the split
Retrosepctive reading/fallacy: as if the newer
versions were fuller versions, not
interpretations (Mieke Bal)
Further interpretations: modify even that
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“Let the woman learn in silence with all
subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach,
nor to usurp authority over the man, but to
be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then
Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the
woman being deceived was in the
transgression.” (I Tim . 2:11–14)
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Woman’s voice
Subjection and authority
Primary creation as reason/cause
Deception
Knowledge as power
Hierarchical gender relations on account of
„teaching”
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mother of God
mother of the son by god
a virgin impregnated by a divine power
woman mourning her dead
Iconography:
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Cybele (imperial palladium)
Aphrodite Uranios (crown of stars and moon as footstool)
Spica Virgo (ear of corn)
Ishtar (dove)
Queen of Heaven (Maria Regina)
Mediator of Grace
the Church herself (Mater Ecclesiae from 1964 on)
the prototype of two kinds of love:
◦ of courtly love: the inaccessibility of the noble feudal lady of
medieval courts is modelled on her (see: Our Lady)
◦ of child love, the madonna of humility - a central icon in the
representation of motherhood, and comprises an essential
aspect of maternal psychology
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381: Council of Constantinople: Mary is a virgin even after giving
birth to Christ
451: Council of Ephesus: Mary is “Aieparthenos”—ever virgin,
and instead of mother of man or mother of Christ: mother of
God, “Theotokos”.
Counter-Reformation: the Jesuits, giving in to popular pressure,
venerated Mary in herself: a share of the maternal proved useful
to a certain balance between the two sexes
1854: the Catholic Church canonised the dogma of Immaculate
Conception (the idea first surfaced in 1140)
1950: the dogma of Assumption was accepted: Mary’s body and
soul rising towards the other world, without death, and without
Calvary
Orthodox Church: dogma of Dormition: Mary changes into a little
girl in the arms of her son, who thus becomes her father. In this
way Mary is mother, daughter and wife to Christ, exemplifying
the threefold metamorphosis of woman. Her corporeality
vanishes, but she retains her psychological functions
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translation error: Semitic term: the socio-legal status of a
young unmarried woman
into the Greek “parthenos”:virginity as a physiological and
psychological condition
physiological virginity in Latin: “intacta”
St Augustine posited Mary’s virginity as the logical
precondition of Christ’s chastity
virginity and divine impregnation: uniqueness among
women
an absolute lack of her body, sexuality, and activity: a
passive receptacle for the Holy Spirit
her virginity: the reflection of the male quest for spiritual
rebirth freed from carnal femaleness
repudiates the female as the source of all that pulls him
down into bodiliness, sin and death
Mariology: exalts the virginal, bodiless, obedient and
passive feminine, and is the manifestation of men’s fears
of real women in the flesh
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the return of the repressed Great Goddess in
a monotheistic patriarchal culture
the result of the efforts of a society to
reconcile the remnants of matrilineage and
the need for a symbolic paternal agency
by depriving her of autonomy and agency
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“The more remote and unreal the personal
feminine is, the more intense is the male’s
yearning for a projection of an ‘eternal
feminine’ onto the social institutions that
assume a maternal character in embracing,
protecting, nourishing, approving the
individual—from the Alma Mater of the
universities to the personification of cities,
countries, sciences, ideals and perhaps, most
of all, the Church. Thus, in eras and cultures
where male power has dominant sway, there
is a tendency to romanticise the feminine
principle” (Kolbenschlag 201)
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Exchange goods (commodities and ideas – or ideas as
commodities) throughout the symbolic form of the
female figure
Living allegory: „other speech”
Plural significations of womens’s bodies
Justice, Liberty, etc.: NOT because flesh and blood
women are considered like that
Central paradox: the recognition of a difference
between the symbolic order, inhabited by ideal,
allegorical figures, and the actual order depends on
the unlikelihood of women practising the concepts
they represent (Marina Warner)
Presence of female symbolism: does not guarantee
the appreciation of women
Flesh and blood women cannot completely fulfill the
criteria of the ideal
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Thank you for your attention!