This volume’s title combines a reference to Helene Cixous’ seminal essay, “Laugh of the Medusa,” with the mythological figure of Medusa, who “has become an archetype through her multiple receptions” (13). Medusa has been viewed as a muse by poets and as a sign of powerful womanhood by feminists; for psychoanalysts she symbolizes fear of castration; for political theorists she symbolizes revolt. That is, the reception of a mythical figure in different disciplines alters the identity of that figure (13). Working from this premise, the editors have divided their book into five sections, each of which juxtaposes myth with a particular discipline. Under each heading, individual essays, most by professors of Classics or English, apply feminist theory to very specific topics in Greek myth. Acknowledging that these myths are products of an androcentric society, this book focuses on the importance of Greek myth in the formulation of feminist thought and politics rather than positioning itself as a feminist guide to classical myth.
In the first part, “Myth and Psychoanalysis,” each essay represents a major stand in the reception of Freud. For example, Rachel Bowlby’s essay, “The Cronus Complex,” examines how Freudian theory of sexual differentiation is grounded in a reading of the classical succession myth of Uranus’ castration by his son Cronus, who is later overthrown by his son Zeus. Griselda Pollock’s “Beyond Oedipus” combines feminist thought and psychoanalysis to suggest that Antigone’s relationship with her brother Polyneices can be reconfigured as an unconditional bond to the maternal other, a model for moving beyond sexual difference.
Section II, “Myth and Politics,” continues the discussion of Antigone by discussing different aspects of her ideological appropriation. Miriam Leonard’s “Lacan, Irigaray, and Beyond” demonstrates how, although Oedipus remained a major figure for Freud himself, Oedipus’ daughter Antigone played a crucial role in the history of psychoanalysis after Freud, specifically in post-war France. Lacan, for example, placed Sophocles’ Antigone at the center of the history of moral and political thought (123); his disciple Irigaray argued that even so, Lacanian psychoanalysis remained on the side of patriarchy. In a sense, Leonard argues, psychoanalysis has “waged its own battle about the political over the body of Antigone” just as Antigone herself waged a battle with Creon over the body of Polyneices (37-38). Simon Goldhill, in “Antigone and the Politics of Sisterhood,” explains why Sophocles’ heroine has been so popular in feminist theory and focuses instead on her sister Ismene and Antigone’s dismissive attitude toward her, starting with “a passionate appeal to the normativity of sisterhood.” Antigone moves to “an equally total rejection of her sister,” providing a very critical look at the politics of sisterhood (57-161). Of particular interest may be Katie Fleming’s essay, “Fascism on Stage: Jean Anouilh’s Antigone,” which discusses the Nazi’s appropriation of Greek myth. Anouilh’s version has been mistakenly believed to reflect the French Resistance; rather, his dramatic agenda includes replacing the Sophoclean heroic temper of Antigone with an irrational fatalism and giving Creon a particularly sympathetic portrayal, resulting in a play that distressed the Resistance and served the Vichy regime (173-178).
The essays in Part III, “Myth and History,” address how ancient mythological figures inform contemporary historiographical debates about memory, representation, and identity. Ellen O’Gorman’s “A Woman’s History of Warfare” questions feminism’s failure to engage in the project of narrating a history of warfare, beginning with a quote from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, “It is not womanly to desire combat” (line 940). She points out that “The feminist project with history has often been glossed as ‘writing women back into history,’ in which case women’s role in warfare would seem to be long overdue for revisionist treatment” (193). O’Gorman focuses on the myth of Helen of Troy as well as the fate of the Trojan women, particularly in Euripides’ play of the same name as well as in the Iliad, and whether we can identify their “combat experiences” (207). The other essay here, Gregory Staley’s “Feminism, Myth, and America,” examines the role of myth in the construction of the United States of America, and whether America wanted to be an “antiland” based on truth and the rational instead of on mythical examples of nation founding, associated with “falsehood and the irrational” (222-25).
Perhaps the most dense part of the volume, Part IV presents three essays on the intersection of “Myth and Science,” focusing on how myths of gender structure the theory and practice of science. Duncan Kennedy’s “Atoms, Individuals, and Myths” takes Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura as a departing point for the role of reductionism in feminist accounts of science, while Alison Sharrock, in “The Philosopher and the Mother Cow” (a title that plays with gendered oppositions) investigates why Lucretius framed his theories of atomism with accounts of female mythical characters. In “Science Fiction and Cyber Myths,” Genevieve Liveley questions what constitutes “feminist science,” examining the myth of the cyborg (“cybernetic organism,” a fusion of organism, machine, and code). A potential problem here is Liveley’s failure to define what she means by “science fiction” and whether the term can be applied to ancient Greek literature: is Talos, the animated bronze guardian of Crete, along with other metal automata created by Hephaestus, really to be considered a prototype of the cyborg, when the Greeks had no concept that a metal automaton was scientifically possible? Is the presence of metal sufficient to qualify such beings as part machine, and so do people with pacemakers qualify as cyborgs (yes, actually, according to some). The essay is nevertheless one of the more interesting and provocative in this volume, ultimately focusing as it does on Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” and the symbolic function of the cyborg.
Part V, “Myth and Poetry,” deals with the relationship between creativity and the feminine. Penny Murray’s essay on “Reclaiming the Muses” explores the significance of the Muses and their gender: woman inspires, man creates; but can the Muses be seen as figures of power rather than as icons of feminine passivity? Efi Spentzou examines the legacy of Helen in modern Greek poetry in “Defying History,” while Rowena Fowler seeks to account for the continuing vitality of one particular myth by analyzing how the story of Daphne and Apollo provides an insight into women’s experience as subjects and makers of poems (382). She focuses on the poems of Jorie Graham and Eavan Boland. The volume ends with a specially commissioned fictional account, “Iphigenia’s Wedding,” by Elizabeth Cook, author of Achilles.
This volume cannot be said to be aimed toward a general audience, but rather, given the highly specific focus of most of the essays, will appeal primarily to classicists who specialize in feminist theory or to feminist theorists with an interest in classical myth and its reception. Good translations are provided for all the Greek and Latin cited in the essays. Given the abstract nature of many of the arguments, some may find them less than convincing, but, as Sharrock observes (274), doing feminist analysis is still highly worthwhile, “because the process brings personal and intellectual growth, even if it doesn’t bring answers.”
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[Review length: 1187 words • Review posted on December 12, 2007]