I don't fuck much with the past,
but I fuck plenty with the future (said by ?~ all you cats out there?)
I think you're plenty wrong, Frederick, about myth(s). They've always
functioned on both the psychological & relational planes, and they've never
been those stable allegories of hierarchy and patriarchal power, fatalism,
circularity etc that you project on to them. In Roberto Calasso's absorbing
& thrilling book _The Wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia_ an immense and
strangely fluctuating network of stories , full of variants, forgotten
threads & differing interpretations from past to present, it is made clear
that there will never be an end of telling, retelling, reforming, renewing;
another Robert's (Graves')anthology of them had already offered a wealth of
variants; parodies & debunking satires existed already in ancient times
(e.g. Lucian, who was the first I know of to describe a trip to the moon,
_The true history_, thus founding the genre of fantastic parables that
eventually mutated into SF), so you're right about "myth critiquing myth"
being pretty old-hat ~ but then most of the trappings of SF are too & carry
as many cultural bags, agendas, what you will: projection is as projection
does, I think. Myths are as "thick" or "thin" as you make them. Of course,
we know about all those millions of suburbanites "who don't have the time,
ability or desire to think about" life & prefer to endlessly fantasize about
Zeus' bit of bestial hanky-panky with Pasiphae (like that sterile bore,
Racine: "La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaé") or precisely what Circe did
wid' dose porkers, but not all of us myth-junkies are like that, honest, y'r
Honour. We see ambivalences, yea multivalences, floating signifiers &
matrifocal cocks (!) at the paternal snook, ambrosial ironies &
archaeological digs at too much foundational earnest, we have a new myth
every day, live? what?there's fate & masculine terror for you (for real) ~
nos serviteurs feront cela pour nous!
regards, Martin
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