Be good, it's Christmas

It is a bit outside the purpose of this blog, but this everyone should know about. Spread the word, for in Europe very few do know. Actually, SOAS would be a prefect place to organize some activity/presentation about this project...

Sinéad sings her epic story

She sings this one for the men.

For me, this particular re-telling of her Troy is one of the most beautiful things I have ever come across. No fancy lights, video, graphics, no orchestra; just raw passion and emotion right to the end. Can love exist without hate?  

For other re-tellings with lights, graphics and videos etc click the links below. Note the stage lighting in the 2nd version evoking images of her rising from the flames.

This version is visually and vocally softer. What deos she mean when she invites men to send in their applications? Is she daring you? 

Is this the original? Where/when does her story begin?

Have a good Christmas (even if you don't like it)

My Story

PART ONE
-Am I clear?
-[dismissive] Yeah, don’t worry she’ll never find out. I’m a good actor. You know, I’ll put up the ‘prince of Darkness’ face. That one always works.
-No no, I don’t worry about that. She might be pretty, but poor girl she’s not the sharpest tool in the box, if you know what I mean. Probably that comes from her father. She’ll fall into it shoes and all.
-[muttering] Not the sharpest tool? That’s an understatement...
-Whatever, you said you want her no? Go and get her.
-Will do, but remember your part. Everyone must believe you are seriously crushed, especially that old fool of your brother.
-That bastard would be our brother. And yes, I’m a pretty good liar, don’t you think you are the only one. I’ll make up Greek tragedy, then I’ll disappear. There will be famine and death. I’m sick and tired of playing the fertility charm.
-Well you’d better be good. That’s a dangerous game we are playing. If Zeus finds out that we intentionally toyed around with the welfare of humans to achieve your goal, he’s going to fucking nail us. You know how he likes his order.
-[enraged] Oh screw the humans. Was it for me, I’d exterminate those maggots. And if there is any way to upset that pig, I’ll do that: he never really paid for what he did to me. And it is not my goal. We have a deal darling: you take away that unbearable daughter of mine in your dark cave for a while and I promise you famine and death. I got my freedom, you got new minions to serve you and a girl to screw. I think it’s pretty fair.
-Fine, whatever. So, let me know when she’ll go out, and make sure to send her in that corn field. I cannot be bothered...
-As i said, tomorrow at 5.
-...to look around too much. I don’t enjoy sunlight.
-Yeah, I can see that. You are pale as a corpse.
[silence]
-Alright, I’ll call you again when all is done Demeter. [walks away]
-[spiteful] Don’t screw this up Pluto.

INTERLUDE 1

-I think something is going on. Pluto and Demeter have met in secret.
-[disinterested] Really? Amazing...
-They might be plotting something. I just can’t figure out what.
-[yawning] Well don’t push yourself to much darling, you are getting old...
-Fuck you Hera.
-Fuck you too Zeus.

END OF INTERLUDE 1

INTERLUDE 2

2-Father, I’ve seen Pluto luring a girl in his cave. I’ve seen him seducing her. I’ve seen him convincing her to eat some fruit.
1-Oh Jesus,you know that those Greek gods really have no imagination at all...
3-You are right. I should go and tell them that this is our story.
2-But who comes first?
1-I do of course.
2-No I meant myth-wise...
3-Isn’t the truth that we are supposed to come all together? Me circulating between you two?
1-What is the truth?
2-Dad, please, that sentence gives me the stigmata.

END OF INTERLUDE 2

PART TWO
-Where is she?
-Your inbred daughter is where she is supposed to be: in my chamber, asleep. She took those pills.
-Well done Pluto. Is she hurt?
-I didn’t even touch her. She actually looked happy... I told you I am good with words – when it comes to lie. Did you talk with someone?
-[arrogant] What do you think Einstein? No. The only person I’ve seen in the last day is that crackpot of Hekate. She helped me ‘looking around for my daughter’. Fool.
-[smiling] She’s more insightful that you would give her credit for. What did you call me? Ain’tstain?
-Nevermind, that still has to come.
- ...anyway, Zeus will intervene now. I’ve been summoned to see him.
-What are you going to tell him?
-We’ll stick with the plan: I want to marry her, keep her forever...
-[smiling]He’ll be tempted to say yes, I’m sure, just to piss me off. But he’ll have to also find a way to make me go back to work. His humans are too important. Who will worship him if they are unhappy and hungry? He’ll put up the I’m-the-wise-father-of-the-gods face and he’ll call me and he’ll try to find a compromise. I bet he cannot even spell that.
-Well, be happy. That’s what we planned. Your daughter is useful after all...
-Indeed.


OUT OF PLACE
-Grandma? Why doesn’t Demeter love her daughter?
-Sweetie, because this is just a myth of course. Its not true. Nothing like this ever happens in real life. Anyway, the point here was to explain why the winter that follows the summer...
-...but they told us in school that’s because of the Earth’s axis is tilted! Plus, Pluto is not a person. It’s not even a planet!
-Oh well. You are right. Back in my days it was a planet (and Mickey Mouse’s dog) and I guess that back in the days of the Greeks it was a God. Which one it really is? It’s just a word anyway. That being the case, I might as well throw this old book away. Goodnight dear.

Moses' Re-telling

http://mythmakin.blogspot.com/2008/12/gangs-of-london-gods-mortalised.html

Sangseraima's version

...can be read here

Holly's version

Holly's version can be read here

Ed and Theo's Story

Demeter and Persephone

If you're anything like me you constantly lie awake at night wondering what the myth of Demeter and Persephone would be like if Demeter and the other Olympian Gods were James Bond style super villains. Wonder no more:

The false-volcano secret base was empty. Not technically empty of course, it was full of nameless henchmen going about their business in gray jumpsuits, full of communications systems monitoring transmissions from spies hidden in all first-world governments, full of highly advanced weapons systems, the prize among which was the Weather Machine. But the base was missing a daughter, and that was all that had been occupying Demeter's mind for over a week. Demeter had focused all of her efforts on finding Persephone, but had found no trace of her. At this point it was quite clear to Demeter that her daughter had been kidnapped, though by whom was less clear. Had it been some secret government agency hoping to gain some advantage over Demeter? Trying to use her daughter as leverage? That was unlikely, Demeter had more eyes than Argus in those places and they had seen nothing. The only organizations that could hide Persephone from her were those of other evil geniuses, and it was as she was formulating a list in her mind about potentially vindictive rivals that one of her henchmen burst into her control room.

He stepped forward to her desk, attempting to compose himself. “We are receiving a transmission from Helios Ma'am. He has apparently heard of our situation and is offering his assistance.”

Demeter considered this for a moment as her henchman rushed out again. Helios was odd, without a doubt, floating over the world in his space station alone, processing data from his multitudes of satellites scanning every inch of the globe. She felt she could trust him though, Demeter knew he had not taken her daughter. In fact, because Persephone was not a shrinking ice cap, a swallow migration route, or an amorous couple on a secluded beach, Demeter doubted Helios cared about her daughter at all. She stood up and walked over to a screen on her wall. “Open communication” she said clearly and Helios' face flickered onto the screen.

“Hello Demeter, how are you?”

“Save it Helios, you know how I am, and you know I don't have much time.”

“Fair enough, I know who took your daughter. All I want in exchange for this information is enough money to repair one of the four thrusters on my Chariot.”

“Done” Demeter responded immediately. “Close communication” and Helios faded away. He was replaced by a video feed of a grassy park, and sitting in the middle of this park was Persephone, apparently talking with her friends. Demeter was so focused on her daughter that she barely noticed a slight movement of the ground next to her. Apparently Persephone noticed something wrong as well, as she stood up and began looking around. Suddenly a machine with a great drill on its nose burst from the ground beside Persephone. As she tried to run away, tripping over some dislodged earth, a hatch on the top of the machine opened and a man jumped out. He rushed over, picked up Persephone and carried her into the machine, which quickly disappeared back into the hole it had come from.

Hades, that lecherous old man. Demeter had seen how he looked at Persephone when the villains gathered together under the mantle of OLYMPIAN for one of Zeus' grand schemes. Persephone had always attracted attention, and always from the wrong people. Demeter often blamed herself for that though. If she had named her daughter “Pussy Galore” or “Octopussy” the secret agents would be falling over each other trying to get at her. So instead of well-dressed secret agents, who admittedly probably didn't have monogamous long-term relationships in mind, Persephone was trapped in the lair of some man who thought he was Dr. Frankenstein.

Zeus would have to hear about this. Demeter didn't like asking him for help, he could be exceedingly strange sometimes, but he liked to keep relations between the villains amicable at least. “Open communication: Zeus.”

A few moments later the majestic bearded face of Zeus appeared in front of her. “Let me guess,” he began, arrogantly “you found out who took your daughter and need me to get her back.”

“Hades... I don't want my daughter around him and all of his experiments with dead bodies.”

“My brother is a misunderstood man, I don't want a squabble between you two to disrupt my plans. I'll see what I can do.” Zeus vanished and Demeter was left standing alone in her control room. She sat back down and tried to take her mind off of the wait by developing a plot to genetically engineer corn crops, but it didn't do the job.

----------

Hermes arrived the next day, bringing Persephone with him. Demeter was extremely relieved to have her daughter back, but Hades had not returned her without making sure he had a contingency plan in effect. While keeping Persephone captive he had fed her pomegranate, the seeds of which he had ingeniously replaced with minuscule pills. The poison in the pills would be released in eight months at which point Persephone would need to return to him for the antidote. He had agreed to release her again after four months, new pills in her system. It was diabolical.

Demeter walked down to the office of the head of her weapons division. She wanted to know how much strain the Weather Machine would be under if it was in constant use for four months.

Greg Normand's Story

Demeter's story


Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.

Al andar se hace camino
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.


The rain had been falling all morning, but it was not cold. The grass glistened in the half light of the half morning. The building--Eleusina--was a solid block of Victorian architecture, with deep bays and ceilings much too high, he was sure. Upon arrival he was assigned to a bald headed nurse or minder, to whom he should deffer any questions or problems and who would assign him task or distraction. Neither he nor the management seemed to want him to be there, and it had fallen upon the bald man to manage his stay.
"cup of tea"
"you should make the tea. You're going to have to do something, or you're going to get very bored today"
The boy somehow seemed to end up in the middle of a busy thoroughfare whenever he came to a standstill, even when expressly trying to press himself against the red papered walls or miscellaneous pieces of furniture, standing as close as he could without touching anything. Not having to touching anything had in fact been one of the preconditions he had set himself during the morning's rain, in exchange for not running away. His non-touching rule had been purposefully vague when drafted, being able, if the situation so demanded, to be enacted with reference to the soft skinned old and infirm. He feared the old, their lived lives too visible in their exposed bones and wet eyes.
Tea making proved a satisfactory task, being able--unsupervised--to stretch the time of making one cup of tea over two, or even three cups' worth of time. squeezing, spinning then re-squeezing each bag before adding the milk. He imagined the lives of these people, condemned as they were to spend the end of their lives in a half-world, a sub-society embedded within his. Does bitter tea make one bitter? Or is it bitterness that makes one less sensitive to subtleties?
Give tea, sit down, speak, or avoid speaking, these were the tasks he was to fulfill, angry both at his superfluity and at his unwillingness to really help, really care about these people stuck outside their time. He was sure people were not meant to live these artificially extended lives, you can only adapt and upgrade so much before you become obsolete, then all that is left is a life in storage.
"Here"
"Sit down here, bring the chair a little closer to me so I can hear you well"
Setting down the tea where she instructed, he scraped the chain over the deep carpet and sat. Her--Demeter--hands were soft with visible gristle when the fingers moved. He followed the veins or arteries down her arm towards her hands. Followed them up-stream as they split and split into smaller tributaries, finally going under the surface over her knuckles. He did not look up at her face as she began to speak.
"You know, I have a daughter. She's not your age, not anymore, but being around young people reminds me of her. Reminds me of the pain, as well as great happiness she gave me. She was taken you know"
He lined up each finger tip with its opposite on the far side of the cup, then brought it up to his mouth for a tentative sip. He looked at her for the first time, looked through her thin hair and at her aged face. She was more elegant than the rest of the 'residents', they had loosened, given in, in exchange they had happiness of a sort. She was not happy, she stared out the window at the rain, blurring and swaying, not even noticing that he looked at her. He admired her unhappiness, or at least what it stood for, she had not succumb to being old as the others had.
"My daughter..." she continued "You have a mother don't you?" She said twisting her face around and looking him in the eyes for the first time. The boy nodded. She slowly turned away to face the rain once again.
"She must love you very much. I loved my daughter very much, as all mothers love theirs. But our love seemed special. We were together all the time, she would help me work, planting, harvesting... together we reaped and sowed, we nurtured the young and weak plants during their fragile, tentative early life. Together... nature was ours, and we were nature. We could create the green earth and sweet fruit... grains for bread, grass and small shrubs feed the animals and we feast on the fruit and nuts, the future lives of the plants themselves. That's why they are so good for you... did you know that?"
He shook his head slowly. She had suddenly come alive, she was hot now with memories and emotions running through her body and mind. She seemed suddenly sharper, even her voice seemed to have taken on a harder, more attacking timbre.
"We lived like this for a long time, i don't remember how long, but it seemed to last forever. When something is unchanging it lasts a long time, because your memories get muddled and you remember them more than once. You see? So I can't say how long it was exactly"
She lent over to the small table beside her and brought her tea up to her eyes before lowering it to her mouth. she drank half the cup's contents in consecutive gulps before setting it down again.
"She was taken. She was picking flowers or fruits from trees with some other sweet things when the ground split. It shook and crumbled, throwing earth and stones into the air. The fissure was as deep as anything can be deep, and dark. Light did not come out of it, it could only enter. She was taken down to the world below ours. It screams and throbs, yet cannot utter words. It is reliant on us, on our world for its sustenance, it sucks us, want us as part of it, yet cannot escape itself, cannot become us, so robs. He robbed me of my daughter."
Small balls, like pearls, of sweat or tears could be seen down the front of her face. They hesitated, then rolled, riding over the contours and cracks. Her Voice remained strong though, it did not quiver or thin.
"I did not find all this out until later of course. I spent time, all of time, searching for my dear daughter, the earth died, nothing grew, I couldn't celebrate in life's abundances and pleasures without her. I wished away all that was green, and embraced the dry, the pain, the barren, my nostrils were filled with bitterness, nothing was sweet to me"
Turning to look at him again, he saw the strain on her face, what she suffered to tell her life.
"You do understand don't you? This was never-ending. As the unchanging stretches in our memory, so does pain. All pain is never-ending, is unbearable and insurmountable. And so it was. Time passed, all time passed, and she was returned to me. she was retrieved from darkness and returned to my breast as my world was on the brink of losing all its colour, fading. But she had cheated, or been cheated by another. Before her return she took six seeds and feasted upon them. Had she bought her own return? Her motivation was never revealed to me. She returned, always only to be taken away again, and so my life was lived, in sorrow and in joy, with life and death always close to one another"

Squeezing, spinning, squeezing. Squeezing, spinning, squeezing.
"I see you met Demeter? Sorry to abandon you, ...she's ...well, she can be very emotional, people sometimes find it difficult to talk to her, even some of the permanent staff"
The bald man-nurse had come up behind the boy as he made another batch of tea in the small, yellowing kitchenette. They carried tree mugs of tea in each hand as they walked into the main room, past the reception.
"What... do you know what happened to her daughter?"
He stopped and put his mugs down on a small ornamental table with tall thin legs "She doesn't have a daughter. They... her stories, they are all a part of her life, her past, her youth. We don't really know much about her. We suppose she grew up in the countryside somewhere, but there is no evidence that she ever had a daughter"
They stood in silence for a minute. The boy seemed upset.
"You know... she is a very important character in here. Everything and everyone become very important, and take on special significance if you live in such close confines. For Eleusinians she is very important and will be remembered for a long time to come. Her stories and her person represent for them renewal, they represent the cycles of life that come to be very important as you age... " He bend over taking up his six cups again "Your path is made by walking it, you should take everything you can from it, as looking back you'll see the path you can never again tread... Come"

a modern twist on an ancient myth

My version of demeter and persephone is now up on the BLE.
Have a look!
Thanks
Victoria

Kristen Park's Story

I miss her, I miss part of me, I miss…I’m missing. No matter where I go I can’t find what’s lacking. The wind, the earth, the trees and flowers, I don’t care anymore.
A life once abundant, fruitful, pregnable with pleasure, satisfaction, contentment and joy.
A distant memory. A distant dream.
All desire and will, escaped, into the realm of nothingness. All I have left is loss, a missing space, a hole of anti-fulfilment grasps me, encompasses me.
Where has she gone? Why has she gone from me?
This world, this land, me. Departed, abandoned, lost…stolen?
Faith, love, hope, life – despairing.
I cannot rest until I know; I feel and hear her again.
I am in limbo. I am in Hell. But I am on earth, in heaven, in the world. I am uncertain, I am despair and I am desire. Desire for past and future. Desire for what is part of me to be returned, without I am incomplete.
All you hear me! Fend for yourselves, I work for you no longer, energy depleted I must care for the absence; tend instead to this moment, my moment, her moment. Nothing else compares.
All you hear me! Fend for yourselves, live by yourselves dependent on yourselves or return to me what belongs to me!


Where have I landed? In what world? In what domain? In what Hell? I yearn for freedom, for the moment, for life. For death?
This man I see, this beast, this God, this spectre, shadow, foreign form has taken me over. I yearn for up, I yearn for down. My will and pure self assures me this is not my place, not meant to be my whole life. What of my other life? What distant memory – an alter-ego – an alternate realm of existence. Have I escaped restrictions of space and time? Am I now so detached from what I knew, familiarity. Family?
My mother, my earth, the flowers that bloom, the trees that shade, the peace that gleams and the life that pulls me. What I see before me, where I see before me has an unknown air. Am I to live it, feel it, know it, explore it? A new realm, new, unknown, a realm of uncertainty. Should I embrace it? Should I understand it? Should I yearn for things no longer? What is a life full of yearning, a life inadequate, a life of want? Empty? Nothing? Unsatisfactory? Bleak?
No. what life is that. Shall I? Shan’t I? What will happen? Will I forget? Will I become detached? Will I forget the love I felt from my mother? The security of love and safety, is it too safe, will it be all the same? So many questions, too many.
Yes. I must know, I must explore, I must…eat.




Where is she?
Return to me what I long for, yearn for, desire for!
Return to me what I believe to be MINE!



Welcome, welcome to my domain. Now you shall remain.
You are my wife; you and me together can live this life.
No need to think how it came to be but merely to know this is how it is for me.
I want, I take, I need, I know, but all in balance, we need not challenge what I’ve made it to be.




Six? That’s all? Six? No more?
She is tied, she is bound I can do nothing. Shackled to what she fears yet also to what she does not have but wants. The earth is barren, life dwindles and fights yet it will not be enough. The work, the power of the mother, a mother of sense for the earth, without which we cannot fight. Cannot grow. Cannot receive offerings of the earth. What then?
Six. Six. That’s all. It is enough and not.
What is wanted shall be granted.
One – a life to be rejuvenated. Granted a second chance. Once again to be fulfilled. Less wandering, less absence, something more than nothing. Yet still with an air of dissatisfaction. A portion must still be spent in limbo, for six, only six has bound her. Bound numbers of lives to this situation.
Two – a life led double. Two worlds, two realms, two needs, two thoughts. A dichotomy of desire.
Three – left much the same. Yet still only six and not more. Here a desire shall feel for longer, it was never meant to be his to take. It should be this way. He knows.
What now belongs between two worlds shall flitter between two lives. A balance, a dichotomy the way it had been made to be.

Imsa Ieva's Story

Laura Lauberte's Story

"Seiren" - Demeter and Persephone: A Reorientation

When one is alone, one fears the hollow echo of one’s voice. I fear the echo now, of a voice aeons-hoarse from singing, as I tell this story. A tale I have told before, that is not my tale; by telling it I will not be reconciled to my fate. But I must tell it. If this tale is mine, it is only of my failure.
This is the tale of she who I failed and will one day know again, of how she came to moisten mortal springs with tears and take her pleasures in cursing men and ruling spectres. Only one’s songs have stirred her in the aeons I have been condemned to sing, and those were the haunting ballads of Orpheus. This how she became the Iron Queen, and how she was before when she still demurely smiled: Maiden of Antenor, Proserpine, Kore, Persephone, my friend…

I want to state that it was spring, but it couldn’t have been. There were no seasons in that age. This is their tale as well. I remember the narcissi were blooming, I remember that clearly. We were in Enna, in Sicily. Kore, as I and my sisters called her, was young then – for a goddess. Many gods had tried to woo her, but her mother had rejected them all. Sometimes I wonder if that was for the best; perhaps it would have altered both our fates… selfish thoughts. She and her mother were close, very close. Was I jealous? I don’t remember. Aeons dull such feelings. But I remember it was I who suggested we go to Enna to pick the narcissi in bloom. Kore loved narcissi, but Enna was very far from her mother. She hadn’t wanted to go so far.
But we went to Enna—Kore, my two sisters and myself—and wandered the countryside of Sicily’s navel. My sisters left us alone. She was so beautiful and radiant. I remember how I used to watch her. I remember how I sang to her, before my voice took on its rapine euphony. No, perhaps it had it even then, unbeknownst to me. Perhaps that song which I was to sing again and again was what condemned her. But she loved my singing. It was my pride, my joy.
We spent most of that last day alone. Hyperion alone beheld us. The last day… I didn’t know it was the last day then…
Eventually we met up with my sisters, and the four of us continued our search for the narcissi. The day was waning and Kore wanted to return, but I insisted on finding the flowers. (Just one more minute, one more moment…) So we searched, and the shadows lengthened, and eventually we found one, I found one, weeping. I called to her; she came. I remember her smile, that beautiful smile, so radiant it burns me to recall it, as she knelt besides the bloom as it wept, as she reached out and took it in her alabaster hand. Oh gods, how that memory is tainted for me. That last smile. She plucked it, with her pristine hands at my behest. Mine! I was the one, me, my fault, my sin, not hers, and yet I could do nothing!
She fell at that moment. The earth opened and consumed her, and I did nothing, could do nothing. What could I have done? It was so fast. Hyperion saw, as I later learned, for he sees all. The earth swallowed her, down among the dead and the dank and the dark, my pure and radiant Persephone; my Kore; my guilt.
(Why didn’t he take me? Was I just not pure enough for his tastes, that king of shadows?)
I searched through the night, with my sisters. (It was not their sin, why did they suffer? Why was it only they who cast themselves onto the rocks when Odysseus passed? Why am I the only one to remain? I know why: because I am a coward, because I cannot face her even now, when aeons segregate us.) But we searched and scoured and cried the night away, perhaps I more desperately then my siblings. We found nothing, and I returned to Kore’s mother full of sin. My sisters did not deserve their fate.
It was that day that we were bound to sing, and so my greatest joy became my greatest pain. I have never seen Kore since that day; I learnt what happened from Hermes. Even when she returns to her mother’s side for half the year I do not see her. I cannot see her. And why would she want to see me, who led her to the place of her fall? I who condemned her to her torment: once-friend and companion. I doubt she would recognise me. I am hideous now, hideous and hoarse from singing. But this is not my story.

It was Hades who had taken her, I later found, down to his hidden halls beneath the world. The earth bleed dry at her descent; Demeter could not be consoled. She eventually learnt from Hyperion what had happened, though while he sees all he did not tell her everything. I am grateful for that. Perhaps he pities me, gazing down at me upon the rocks crying to the sea.
Hades held her captive for a long time. The gods tried to bargain with him, but he would not listen. What did he care for the earth? Its desolation filled his halls and Hades always loved it when his kingdom waxed. They said that Kore ate nothing, slowly wasting away. She would not wed him. The moons went by. Everything died. And all the time I sung. I could do no other: a solemn requiem, a hollow echo.
Eventually they rescued Kore from her prison. Hecate and Hermes did it, smuggling her up from the avernine halls to the embracing arms of her mother. But she was no longer Kore. She had eaten six pomegranate seeds, only six, but anyone who eats in Hades’ halls becomes his property. That was the Law. So when Hades came charging to reclaim their prize, they struck a deal. Six months below, six months above. His property. How could they… to her?
But it was my fault. If I had never taken her selfishly to Enna she would not have fallen. She is different now, I hear. She doesn’t smile. Her gaze is empty and pitiless. My sisters have descended, and daily I send hapless sailors to meet her through their watery graves. I cannot face her, even if she no longer knows me for who I was, even if my curse and the millennia I have sung have twisted me.
(My fault, my sin, my crime, my passion…)

I am old now. Nymphs are not immortal. I will have to see her. Her stare will fall to me. I look at my reflection in the water. What remains of the me that was? The bones of my sisters have long worn away. I open my mouth and listen once again to the hollow echo of a voice aeons-hoarse from singing. Endlessly singing the song I sang to her that day beneath Hyperion’s gaze: Maiden of Antenor, Proserpine, Kore, Persephone, my love… forgive me.

Retelling of Demeter and Persephone

Now I feel exposed..

One thing about having a fertility goddess as a mother is that you always see too many damn trees, and flowers, and mating animals. I mean, don’t these people ever get bored of just endless nature in harmony. You’d think so, but then, they’re Gods, I guess they can’t help being kind of... conceptual in scope, it’s just how they seem to get imagined a lot of the time, not least of all by me. Anyway, you get the general idea. There I was, just frolicking endlessly around in the hills, basking in the glory of the natural world and it was starting to get pretty dull, let me tell you that. So when this guy shows up, gets talking, then grabs me by the wrist and drags me off you’d think I’d be a bit more horrified than I actually was.

So anyway, suddenly I’m miles away from my little eternity of flowers and fornication, and there I am in the middle of the underworld. Of course, I didn’t know it was the underworld. I think what hit me first was ‘Well, this is all a bit different.’ Because I suppose the underworld really is just a place which is not, I don't know what to call it, the overworld? Anyway, you’re probably better off imagining it yourself. Picture the epitome of overflowing natural bliss I was living in before (because you didn’t imagine that up, seriously, that's just how things are - right?) and then imagine the furthest thing removed from that, like a little binary, in fact. Imagine a world without sustainability or regrowth, and then pretend you're not already living in it at least a little. Anyway, the important thing is that it wasn’t where I was before, because that's the only way you could ever tell that the scene had changed. Seriously, though, I’m getting way beyond myself. Work that one out for yourself, I suppose. Not that I’m saying you should particularly care about a binary I imagined – but hey, didn't you imagine something like that? Really?

So yeah, Hades, that’s the guy who dragged me there, introduces himself and reveals that he’s brought me to be his wife. I’m serious - and yes, it doesn't sound like this guy gets out much, does it? So anyway, there I am about to explain that you can’t just go out and grab random women off a hillside when I realize I don’t know how to get back. Anyway, I talk about how my mother is a goddess and all, and how pissed she’s going to be if I’m not back on time. But Hades just keeps going on about how beautiful and great I am and how I have to stay with him forever. After a while, it just becomes kind of pathetic, so I figure I might as well stay. I mean, it’s not as if I had a choice anyway, and I can think of worse fates than being eternally worshiped by deluded deities. At least, it doesn’t sound so bad to me. Kind of ironic, when you think about it.

Anyway. Some time passes, damned if I know how long because it’s not really important to the story (maybe) and I’m starting to get a little annoyed. If you think snatching women off hillsides hints at some kind of deep insecurity, well, you’re probably right, and I mean the probably. The weird fixation was fun at first, I’ll admit, but after a while it was really starting to grate. Talk about clingy. That, and the underworld isn’t actually as interesting as you’d think, assuming you might have somehow got the idea it would be interesting. I mean, there’s only so many times you can watch the same guy push a boulder up a hill or get pecked to death by eagles before it just gets old. Oh, and I was absolutely starving. I mean, apparently there’s this rule where I wasn’t supposed to eat food from the underworld. Don’t ask me, why would I have made something like that up, maybe some kind of metaphorical warning about the dangers of the unknown. Personally though, I reckon it’s all about sex, in which case I’d appreciate it if you’d just come out and say it directly instead of all this shit about pomegranate seeds. Why all this ‘she was so hungry, she just had to eat the seeds’ or ‘oh, how deceived she was when she munched on those seeds’ instead of ‘intercourse ensued’ or, if you want to be blunt about it, ‘he fucked her.’ Of course, in the highly likely event that you weren’t thinking that, I’m sorry. You’re obviously better adjusted (or repressed) than I give you credit for, or perhaps just more so than me. I guess you can relate anything to anything if you're thus inclined, but isn’t that kind of the point (and I use the word ‘point’ loosely.)

So anyway, yeah, I ‘ate the pomegranate seeds,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean (seriously, what do you want it to mean?) which supposedly bound me to the underworld and to him forever. Sucks to be Persephone. I was a bit pissed off when that one got explained to me. Who needs an eternity of being static and unchanging, be it stuck in a rut back in dear mummy’s pointless sweaty life-planet or down here in miserable death world where all that seems to happen is people doing the same things over and over again. Damnit, so boring! Fortunately/unfortunately, I’d reckoned without mother. Apparently, she’d got all the other Gods involved, and they’d all got very angry with Hades and forced him into a compromise. Naturally, noone thought to clear all this with me, but still it was probably the best result I could have hoped for really. Half the year of nature and sunshine with mother, the other half I get to be queen of the underworld and be generally adored by an emotionally stunted funerary deity. Fun, in small doses.

Anyway, what’s this ‘point’ I’ve been trying not to refer to but seem to be unable to resist coming back to over and over again? I suppose if you wanted to look clever you could maybe say that it’s all about how the natural world functions in cycles. Winter to spring, then through summer and autumn and back to winter again, but what about me! Just because I’m a mythological figure whose purpose is to be wheeled out to illustrate things for you doesn’t mean I deserve that kind of impersonal treatment. Maybe you can let a little ambiguity in and suggest that maybe it’s about how no-one ever completely fits into one category, we all have to find our place, even if that place is in a kind of borderland between two states, constantly flicking backwards and forwards. I like that one, except that it's still too simple. Personally, I think the real story, despite what might be implied from this neat and coherent little narrative I’ve created here, is that stories are arbitrary collections of images which don’t have to have a neat point or easy summary - but wait, isn’t that a point? Oops. Well, I guess with the point having been made and a purpose established for these lines of text, I imagine this must be the end.

Dolor

Drifting slowly, silent Dolor’s pitiful form

dragged himself along, exhausted,

watching vain, false hopes –

hopes flitting past him and the goddess.

 

Withered and wasted arms,

tired and aching legs, still kept ever driving him forwards,

quivering with the burden of untold griefs;

 

Griefs as countless as the grains of sand on the shore, leaves in a forest,

stalks of corn once so often seen at harvest time;

stalks which now ceased to bear some – any -

craved, desired, crucial sustenance for the people of the earth.  Crops caused to

wither by the neglect of Ceres, mother of the earth, goddess of the harvest.

 

The once fruitful fields, swaying gently in the mellow summer breeze,

nodding sleepily with heavy heads of corn, full of sun and rain,

had long perished. 

Desolate earth was all that remained, cold and wintered, barren and bare,

 

Over which Dolor wandered, his gaunt

And sallow face immortally etched by the burden of turmoil.

Pale presence, trembling lips, sunken eyes

spoke - and kept speaking – of innumerable nights, alone with tears of anxiety.

Wasted body racked with the sobs of despair, of lost Joy

- Joy fleetingly come and gone -

not even a shadow of a being.

 

His every presence hung over Ceres,

trailing steadily and stealthily behind the goddess, step for step,

as she drifted over the landscape in search of her beloved child,

Prosperina.   

Tutorial Questions

What is the difference between representational and ontological narrativity? What is the relationship between narrative and experience? What are the benefits of taking an ontological approach to narrativity particularly in terms of the 'dimensions of narrativity' that Somers outlines? And finally, do you think that we could analyse the theorists and theories of myth we have looked at this term using Somer's reconfigured theory of narrativity? What would be revealed if we did?

If that doesn't grab you, maybe a trip to the pub after the lecture on Thursday will?

Pennie does pomegranate

...and he tells me that my breasts are getting empty. I mean, I know 6 years is a long time by most peoples standards but what better way of feeding Xena in times of drought than by the most natural thing a woman can give a child, the milk of a mother.

We go together to feed the animals, plough the fields and water the plants: she's very strong--it's a family trait. The rest of the household will do their bit later. I still don't understand why my small breasts are such a big issue.

Read the rest here

A Re-telling

Essays

Just to remind you the possible essay topics. For any question, either comment down here or ask me (or James) during next week's tutorial. Have fun.

In this essay you should examine the ways in which the category of ‘myth’ is produced and to what ends. Choose one of the following 3 quotations and discuss with reference to any of the myth theorists or theories covered in class in term 1:

1. ‘There may be the word “myth”, but the word names numerous and conflicting “objects” of inquiry, not a “thing” with its name written on it. Myth names a reality that we “cut out”, not one that “stands out”’ (Strenski 1987: 1).

OR

2. 'The category ['myth'] is often intellectually committed to an a priori clean distinction between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood, fabulous delusion and scientific lucidity, us and them, just as it is rhetorically wielded to reinforce these oppositions by coordinating them with a scale of moral, social and political values' (McCutcheon 2000:192).

OR

3. '...whenever someone calls something a "myth", powerful--and highly consequential--assertions are being made about its relative level of validity and authority vis-à-vis other sorts of discourse' (Lincoln 1999: ix).

Submission Deadline: 4pm, January 5th 2009
Word limit: 4-5000 words

And remember that it will be electronic submission via the Ble! Don't go with the essay to the faculty office because they won't accept it!

Annie tells stories too

Read the Annie's brand-new story at the usual place.

Hope

Six pomegranate seeds.

That’s all it took.

The things we don’t know when we finally give in. If only we did.

‘Persephone’. A rich, sylvan name. Fecund. Sylph-like. We try out these syllables on our tongues, tasting the fruit that dooms us to a cold dark world at least half the time.

‘Demeter’ altogether more real, determined, sharp somehow. It is her will that won’t be bent. She doesn’t eat—no hidden, forbidden fruit for her. She doesn’t sleep, dream, hope, relent until that which is hers is hers again. What is it to be a mother who yearns for what she will never keep? For that which was never hers to begin with?

And where do we begin?

With the gathering of flowers. Hyacinth, Narcissus, Anemone. Mythical names. A mythical girl who somehow stands in for all of us who are lost and who yearn for our mothers.

I miss her.

And the dark shadow lurks. Spectre. Lord of ghosts. Thief.

He rends the earth. Splits it in two. Swallows a whole life whole. Makes it his. But not wholly. Because six pomegranate seeds were not twelve. No disciples here then.

I miss her.

This is what everything means to me.

The vanishing point. That’s where Demeter roams. Wild hair, ravaged face. Tears that drip drip drip without awareness. It’s her body that is ripped in two. Always two. Her fate.

The gods think her grief is intolerable, failing all the while to notice that it is her grief. Others are stake apparently. The world pivots on a mother’s love apparently. Is Demeter still a mother? Her daughter gone. Hope is gone. She’s gone. Is Demeter a mother? A compromise must be reached for the sake of the other.

Persephone in her prison grieves too.
Perfect symmetry. If they could both but know it, maybe there would be some small comfort in a mourning that is shared.

But no.

Burning for comfort. Refusing comfort. There is none to be had.

The storytellers don’t notice her grief. Because it’s still, frozen, disbelieving.

Because of six pomegranate seeds. They mark six moments of (in)decision. Irrevocable. The law you see. There is a law that says No. The law. Of the name. Of the Father. Non. Nom. None. Not one. A compromise is always a decision.

She eats the seeds without thinking. Why don’t the poets see that that is the point? She does not know. She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t know that in saying yes she was yielding to the big No. The big zero. The vanishing point. That vanishing now marks the hours, the days, the minutes. Marks all of our time.

She returns from time to time. In dreams. It makes her want to die without death and without killing. To die up against her mother. To place her head on her shoulder, enter into her chest and double-lock herself in.

Instead, the back and forth. The interminable wandering. The dark, the light both flooding through her. Mostly in the dark. She never saw the light. Never sees it.

I miss her.

Henry tells a story

Henry has told a splendid story! And you can too!
https://www.ble.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_17098_1%26url%3D

Parodying

Following the discussions about language and retelling the classics, I thought I might put the marvellous Wendy Cope's limericks parodying the Waste Land on the blog, since we studied T.S.Eliot a couple of weeks ago. So funny and mordant, especially the end of the third...


Waste Land Limericks

I

In April one seldom feels cheerful;
Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
Clairvoyantes distress me,
Commuters depress me--
Met Stetson and gave him an earful.

II

She sat on a mighty fine chair,
Sparks flew as she tidied her hair;
She asks many questions,
I make few suggestions--
Bad as Albert and Lil--what a pair!

III

The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep;
Tiresias fancies a peep--
A typist is laid,
A record is played--
Wei la la. After this it gets deep.

IV

A Phoenician named Phlebas forgot
About birds and his business--the lot,
Which is no surprise,
Since he'd met his demise
And been left in the ocean to rot.

V

No water. Dry rocks and dry throats,
Then thunder, a shower of quotes
From the Sanskrit and Dante.
Da. Damyata. Shantih.
I hope you'll make sense of the notes.

 -- Wendy Cope

Challenged as I am computerwise, I couldn't find the real thing on the blog anymore. It's linked here.

Also, here's a link to an article which continues on the Rothko-Art-Money discussion. It's the Times Literary Supplement, so prepare for a dash of ponciness, but anyway, it touches upon those topics here and there. And the author used the word 'perfidious', which is a brilliant word that I didn't know existed in English.

Question

Thursday's tutorial question is as follows:

Are Jung's theories wholly explainable in terms of his psychology, national origin, and political commitments? What does knowing about the various anti-semitic statements he made make you think about his theories? Is it important to know the biography of a scholar in order to understand and assess his or her theories? In what ways is the discussion of Jung's biography itself a form of mythmaking?

Stories

Just to remind you that last time we decided for the last day of this term to be the deadline for your stories. So far we got only 2 of them: one is here, and the other you can find in the BLE (it was too long to form a post) if you log in, then click on the Myth and Mythmaking course, then click on 'Teaching Resources' and open the folder 'Demeter and Persephone'.

For those of you who still have no idea what this storytelling businness is (i'm sure there is someone...), I suggest you go back and read some previous posts in this blog, here and here.

I hope it's all clear.

Have fun.

UPDATE: now (Wed 3/12) there is a third story to read on the BLE!

Reliable Web?

About our conversations of last time on the reliability of the informations on the Internet, check out this article on the CNN website.

Second Order Signification?

From Prospect Magazine:

Reading Sarah Palin’s anguished interview with Greta van Susteren of Fox News just after the election, I had an epiphany: Palin is a poet, and a fine one at that. What the philistine media take for incoherence is, in fact, the fruitful ambiguity of verse.

Here she is, in a work I have taken to calling “The Relevance of Africa.” (Not a single word or comma has been changed, but the line breaks are placed where they naturally fall.) In it, Palin blends the energy of free verse with the austerity of a classic 14-line sonnet.

It reads: “And the relevance to me /With that issue, /As we spoke /About Africa and some /Of the countries /There that were /Kind of the people succumbing /To the dictators /And the corruption /Of some collapsed governments /On the /Continent, /The relevance /Was Alaska’s.”

A great poet needs to leave open the door between the conscious and unconscious; Sarah Palin has removed her door from its hinges. A great poet does not self-censor; Sarah Palin seems authentically innocent of what she is saying. She could be the most natural, visionary poet since William Blake.

Guess What

Here we go with the questions:

Do you think that Barthes' theory of a second-order semiological system is a helpful way of looking at how 'myth' works? Do you agree with Barthes' when he says (p. 117) that 'myth has in fact a double function: it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us'. What contemporary examples of this 'double function' of myth can you think of?

Moreover, i believe it is time for you to start thinking seriously about essay topics... Prepare some questions if you need, and we can spend some time brainstorming about that.

Art for the masses?

A few very scattered thoughts on art. I would love to knit them together better but am trying to concentrate on my real homework (honest). Please feel free to comment below.

Following a psuedo-structuralist discussion we had in the smoking area about the marvel, or not, of Rothko "Is it red? Is it Burgundy? Does it matter?" I thought you might be interested to read this. The journalist writes how art is replacing the religious experience in this supposedly 'increasingly unreligious world'.

Rothko himself, who committed suicide in 1970 from anti-depressants, found painting to be a release from the pressures that life placed upon him and at the same time gained comfort from the feeling of solidarity from his admirers: "The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.", he said.

Many people ask the questions: what is art? Who gets to say? What is at stake? Is producing and experiencing art a purely aesthetic experience? Is art shaped by the world around us? and many many more...

On a recent rip to the Tate Modern armed with a new found interest in the links between art and politcs I bumped into one of our fellow class mates who had free entry to the Rothko exhibition. At £12.50 a ticket to what was previously a free exhibition in the same museum one has to question whether the next government will keep to their promise of free entry.

As we face the largest economic crisis since the 1930's sales of art are experiencing the same crashes as elsewhere. Read also at Press TV.

When art is produced purely as an item to be sold, rather than as an expression of the artists creativity, art becomes a slave to capitalist competition and consumerist contortions.

Barthes - Mythologies

hello everyone here is a link to Mythologies. its amazing read it. well you can if you like.

Mythologies by Roland Barthes, as selected and translated by Annette Lavers

Get your own at Scribd or explore others: Music Spirituality world magic

Being (hyper)Historical

I was reading something related to our nice conversations of today and I thought to share a passage about history by Tomoko Masuzawa that I find very nice:

What if "being historical" is not a matter of recovering and reconstructing a richly nuanced narrative truth, full of "thick descriptions", of a certain wholeness of a past, but instead is a matter of more or less outwitting such a compelling narrative truth and letting some forgotten moments and contours of the past "flare up", as Walter Benjamin would say, in order to illumine and decompose the compulsive narrativity of history that dictates the ideology of the present?

You find it in the chapter called 'Culture' in M.C.Taylor's Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago: Chigago University Press, p.91). It's in the library (many copies) for the most willing of you (A210.14 /826952).

By the way, coming back to my 'hypertext' historical theory (that the most lucky of you enjoyed today) think for a second about what I've just done: I copied a passage from a book (a passage chosen by me and eradicated from the context), posted it onto a blog, and i've hyperlinked it to other texts. For all practical purposes I've 'exploded' it to both a wider range of users and to a wider network of informations/meanings.

How postmodern of me.

And finally, the question(s)

I know you've all been impatient, but finally here are the questions for our next tutorial:

Under modernism, why are modernity and history opposed? What is at stake in setting these up as an opposition? What does de Man suggest might be the reason for this? How might de Man's reflections on the literature of modernity be applied to the modernist appropriation of myth? And what does this tell us about the relationship of the category 'myth' to modern conceptions of past, present and future?

Of course, if you want more questions, you will be given more.

See you soon.

Ideology&Roses (and the Hope for the Future)

The great philosopher Slavoj Žižek (above, the one that with a microphone does not look that cool) pronounced his authoritative opinion about the recent election of Barak Obama in this article (hinting in the title at of one of the greatest albums of rock history...how dare he?).

Anyway, after reporting the words of someone else, he comments:

Rarely was the function of ideology described in clearer terms: to defend the existing system against any serious critique, legitimising it as a direct expression of human nature.

This -at least- we like.

To question or not to question, that is the question...

...and since we can't access the BLE we need to know what the question is. Does anybody know what is--if, indeed, there is one--the question? (I don't know how to do em-rules on my new computer. SORRY)

To blog or not to blog

I have noted with deep dismay that some people still have done nothing to create a Gmail account and join the blog. Not many, I could name them, but that would be embarrassing wouldn't it?
Now, if you belong to this short list, why not spend 5 minutes of your precious time at the computer to do it and email me about it?

Be nice.

To Know what it is like to Know

I was you-tubing around watching old physics lectures from the 60s (I must be a real dork) and I ran into this video. If you have never heard of Richard Feynman, you can either click on his name and visit the wikipedia page or just be happy of knowing that he was a big shot American physicist, won the Nobel prize in 1965, is famous for a series of lectures in physics he gave in 1961 at Caltech, and was a quite annoying mysoginist. In the field, he is a myth. They even made a movie about him.

But this is not the point: watch the video, and please do comment (don't let it go like the Foucault-Chomsky videos: I was very hearbroken that no one liked them). I think I lot could be taken out of it and it is quite coherent with what we discussed last time in the tutorial.

Fired Up! Ready to Go!

Dearest Myth and Mythmaking people,

As always, I'm posting here the question for next week's tutorial

Do you agree that Frazer’s concern with facticity is an attempt to authorise evolutionary anthropology and comparative mythology? Why should this be necessary if it is the case? What strategies does Frazer employ to achieve this authorisation? What is at stake for Frazer himself in his work and how does it contribute to the production of that very work?

I hope you had a great and relaxing reading week, full of reading and sleeping.

See you soon

Demeter and Persephone: A Re-Telling

You can read the latest fantastic re-telling of Demeter and Persephone by going to the BLE (http://www.ble.ac.uk/), clicking on 'Teaching Resources', opening the folder 'Demeter and Persephone' and tada, there it will be. Alternatively, you can click on the title of this blog entry and should almost take you there.

Conference at SOAS this weekend.

Historical Materialism is a high level conference with some fabulous speakers right on our dorrsteps at SOAS this weekend.

Sessions on Adorno-Emancipatory praxis and conceptuality in Adorno: Some notes on the time of insurrection. One on "All that is fluid is frozen to stone: sex, individuality, non-identity"

Vygotsky, Gramsci, Zizek, Althusser, Lucaks, Orientalism, Postcolonialism, New left in Palestine and much more.

It suggests a donation for entrance but you could blag it if you bemoan the fact that we are studying at universties in a neo-liberal world; (correct this time? please, please say yes) fees, kids, having to work etc!!

Call me on 07958 034 181 if you want to meet up.

Link to website and full program: http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/hm/

Two sessions to wet (whet?) your whistle eg. Friday 10am:

MARX AND PHILOSOPHY SOCIETY: NORMATIVITY AND ALIENATION
Chair: Martin McIvor
Sean Sayers
Alienation as a critical concept
Gaspar Miklos Tamas
The uniqueness of capitalism and the normative content of a socialist political philosophy
Nicholas Joll
The normativity problem in critical theory: Adorno, Bernstein, Freyenhagen

MARXISMS AND RELIGION
Chair: Peter Thomas
John Roberts
Marx and the "critique of the critique of religion‟ today
Sami Khatib
Capitalism as religion: Re-reading Walter Benjamin‟s Marxism
Alberto Toscano
The mask of apocalypse, the flag of fanaticism: Marxism, religion and revolt

Anyway, hope to see you there...x

Philosophy disco

Perhaps Sian et al would like to pilot this programme. I for one would be quite up for a being a guinea pig, not liking those pesky words so much. I can just see us errecting (and then perhaps deconstructing) a big Maypole .

Oooh, i feel a bit of a barndance coming on...

Crossposted from Infinite Thought blog. (Links other than the first posted by me-Clare)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I like Jarvis Cocker's plan to incorporate lectures into his gigs.

Oxbridge lecturers will doubtless be watching these gigs carefully, waiting to see if the lecture-disco format takes off.

Well, I may not be an Oxbridge lecturer, but I could probably do with more music in my classes. When teaching Adorno I once played some selections from Swing Tanzen Verboten!, a collection of Nazi swing music from WWII. Fearing the mystical transformative properties of the tunes, one of my students asked me if he could hold me personally responsible if he became a fascist. But of course, dear boy.

Of late I have been trying to think which areas of philosophy I really, definitely don't want to teach, so that when asked I can resolutely say 'no, not my area!'. So far I have determined two: logic/calculus and ethics. I really, really hate teaching ethics. Kant's categorical imperative, fine, but talking about ickle bitty foetuses with undergraduates - horrible. If ethics means anything it's only as a branch of politics. A very tiny branch, too fragile to hold even the smallest of birds. Perhaps, in retrospect, I wasn't the best person to be appointed to the Ethics committee...but who else was going to approve the participant observation burlesque project!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In addition: Adorno about Popular Music (now with english annotation)

Persephone's Flight in 2 minutes

Thx Marco for your You Tube tip.



I don't like words anyway...

a subversive reading??

It might not be one of her best written books, but Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad makes an interesting read against The Odyssey. It retells The Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope and the twelve maids in an attempt to reclaim a bit of personality for poor ol' Penelope, who gets a bit of a raw deal in Homer's version! It's quite funny but if you ask me I might not say it's as cutting as it perhaps intends to be. It doesn't really create a new perspective but merely defends Penelope and the maids of Homer by giving them a bit more depth and a good dose of synicism. All the good ones (Helen, Eurycleia, Telemachus etc.) are irritating and unrealistic and the Gods aren't all they're cracked up to be, is the general take. Taster below to see if you're interested. It's an easy read and won't take very long to get through but it gave me a bit to think about:

"He was always so plausible. Many people have believed that his version of events was the true one, give or take a few murders, a few beautiful seductresses, a few one-eyed monsters. Even I believed him, from time to time. I knew he was tricky and a liar. I just didn't think he would play his tricks and try out his lies on me. Hadn't I been faithful? ... And what did I amount to, once the official version gained ground? An edifying legend. A stick used to beat other women with.

...

"Day after day I would climb up to the top floor of the palace and look out over the harbour. Day after day there was no sign. Sometimes there were ships, but never the ship I longed to see.

Rumours came, carried by other ships. Odysseus and his men had got drunk at their first port of call and the men had mutinied, said some; no, said others, they'd eaten a magic plant that had caused them to lose their memories, and Odysseus had saved them by having them tied up and carried onto the ships. Odysseus had been in a fight with a giant one-eyed Cyclops, said some; no, it was only a one-eyed tavern keeper, said another, and the fight was over non-payment of the bill. Some of the men had been eaten by cannibals, said some; no, it was just a brawl of the usual kind, said others, with ear-bitings and nosebleeds and stabbings and eviscerations. Odysseus was the guest of a goddess on an enchanted isle, said some; she'd turned his men into pigs - not a hard job in my view - but had turned them back into men because she'd fallen in love with him and was feeding him unheard-of delicacies prepared by her own immortal hands, and the two of them made love deliriously every night; no, said others, it was just an expensive whorehouse, and he was sponging off the Madam"

Maama Blair and She One Pickney

Maama Blair and She One Pickney!

Or

A Tale of Authority

Ay buoy guess wa appen, me hear se dis maanin over Maasa Pickens lan se sombudy grab up Maama Blair daata!

Mek a tell wa appen it seem like Maama went fe look fe she one pickney and keyaan see she nowhere, Maama search all over de fe she, she waak an look from one side a de land to de udder askin every baady if dem see er.

Well it look like some lil bouy dem was tendin sum goat and dem tell Maama Blair se dem see Maasa Pickens’ overseer grab de gaal wile she was washing dem clothes and tek er pan is haas an dem gaan in de grung.

Well wen Maama Blair heer dis maan she gaan mad, she halla and baal till dem could hear she till a BackDam. Maama tek she bed an nah move from deh an nah mek no healin fa nobaady. Wen dem caal she fi cum she na movin fi nobaady.

Well dis carry on fah me na know how lang but lang lang time, dem seh she lay dung feh a lang lang time an she kass-kass. Dem people workin ah de plantation sick, dem come dung wid dis an dat an cut demself bad. But maan she nah get up but stay ah she bed an cry an wail.

So nex, ting me ere say she start fe get up an look pan sum a de sick people, she keyaan stop carin fah dem udder people pickney yuh see.

But ebry minute she get she look fuh she only daata Cicely. Waakin all aroun’ an about weh de maasa people let she, till she gan an aks Maasa Pickens fe she daata an tell im all dat she hear from de lil bouy dem. Maasa nah k wah appen but im seh im will aks de overseer an see wha im seh.

Well im cum bak tell maama dat de overseer keyaan give up Cicely cause im does get one pound for every child im faader pan de gaal.

Maama wail and baal and say she nah guh do nutt’n anymore, seh she nah go help or tek care a dem people who hut demself an dem one who keyaan walk an bleedin an bruck up. .

An so yuh know maasa know im have fe get in de cane an need im slaves fuh do it, de white dackta won’t look pan we maama is de one who look pan dem, mek dem feel good yuh see.
Maasa tell Maama Blair if Cicely av pickney she av fe stay wid de overseer, she ave fe care fe she pickney.

Anyhow maama went fe get she daata, eh eh nex ting one a dem ouse bouys tell Maasa Pickens Cicely gat six pickney !

Maan mek a tel yuh Maasa tun pan Maama and tell she Cicely a fe stay wid de overseer fuh six mont a de year fe raise she pickney dem an den she keyaan cum back to she maama fe de res a de time.

Well yuh know all ting cum roun an Maama does fix up people now, and look after dem but wen dark time does cum she stay inna she ouse an nah see nobaady an nah do nutt'in.

But buoy de las ting me guh tell yuh? Cicely is Maasa Pickens daata!

MA Tutorial Group Activity – Positive Group

Firstly, apologies to Holly for the late response to her post, this will be the first time that I have used a blog and (being the technophobe that I am) I have had to gear myself up to do it.

In the tutorial I was paired with Jonathon and we were set the task of critiquing the scholarship of Holly and Jenny in a positive way. Without reiterating what Holly has said, the exercise was an example of the ways in which myth is constructed as a category. Here is what Jonathon and I came up with…

“The scholarship of Holly and Jenny is one of cutting edge genius. Their academia addresses the reassessment of contemporary issues spanning the globe, from the UK to South Asia. Their field of study allows for the de-construction of the errors of the past, creating a new, self-reflexive, insight that is vital for understanding the controversies of modern life today. Their work is breaking boundaries, with a particular focus towards championing feminism. Studying at SOAS encourages these two mavericks to flourish within a pioneering academic institution.”

Next Week

The tutorial question for next week:

What is particularly ‘romantic’ about the concept of the ‘folk’ and what is dangerous about connecting the folk to conceptions of national identity? What role does myth play in this formulation?

Moreover, think about the keywords that Sian mentioned during the last lecture: 'authentic' (you might want to jump a little to existentialism/Heidegger/Nazism?), 'pure', 'original'.

Whatever new ideas you might have about these are welcome so feel free to use this page to comment.

Have a nice weekend

Music

Dear all,

Following Bidi's request, I fixed a way to embed music on the blog. Below, you will find an example of how it works (please comment below if you cannot hear the music or see the player. If you don't it's most probably that you need to install the Quicktime plugin for your browser). I picked something short and uncopyrighted for starters. Anyway, since we all only buy legal music on iTunes™ and the blog is private to us, I'm sure there will be no major problems with that.
Keep this option in mind when writing your story, in case you want to add music.
Unless you know how to host an .mp3 (or .m4a if coming from iTunes™) file on a hosting website (ad ex. here), you will have to send the music file to me™, and I'll put it on.

Thanks to all the BA students for the interesting conversations of today (and I'm sure you MA students did great too...).

I'll soon send a collective email to make it clearer who is in which timeslot for the tutorials. Please respect them next week, so we can have a good number of people in both.

Subversive tale telling

Click on the image to read the story...

Horkheimer and Adorno

Now that you have all read Horkheimer and Adorno you may like to take a look at this extract from an article that unpacks it a little. But is this all we can say about their relationship to myth in 'dialectic of Enlightenment'? What does the context of the time they were writing add to our understanding of their critique of myth of Enlightenment?

J. Schmidt, ‘Language, Mythology, and Enlightenment: Historical Notes on Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment’, Social Research, 1998 (winter)

MA tutorial group activity - negative group

The MA's were divided into two groups this week to play around with the idea of self representation in language and how 'myths' can be created using similar language but for very different purposes. Perhaps an illustration of the ways in which meaning is created through interpretation both by 'creator' and reader:

The religionists in the MA course have a very narrow specialisation (with a focus particularly on dead-languages) for the purposes of examinining diverse and heterogeneous phenomenons which become universalised and totalised under their 'objective' gaze. The discipline of which they are a part is closed and does not engage with discourses going on outside of their specialisation, preventing the authority of their discipline from coming under scrutiny.

I hope that the other group blogs theirs up soon, as otherwise this looks like some random abuse of all you SoR bods ;-p

Extra readings for Critical Theory/Myth & Mythmaking

Click here for link to the list. I will update this list regularly as and when I remember or find more titles. Please add any more that you come across.

Nb. The Bookshop that i have recommened, Bookmarks, the Socialist Bookshop, is a small independent bookshop fighting it's way against the big, bad, meany multi-nationals; (correct use of a semi-colon?!) most of which have decreased stocks of academic books, especially the not-so-mainstream variety due to the fact that they're not 'bestsellers'.

The lovely, knowledgable workers will help you find what you are looking for, and perhaps suggest titles that you didn't know you are looking for. They can order ANY book, even capitalist stuff if you like...

If you set up an account and direct debit of £10 per month you get 10% off. It's great coz when you go in to get books it feels like you're getting free books! They also do many events; book launches with great speakers, filmshowings, parties and the such like. Enjoy.

In solidarity, Clare

Next Week

The tutorial question for next week is:

What is the ‘dialectic of Enlightenment’ and what are its main characteristics? What ‘myth of Enlightenment’ are Adorno and Horkheimer challenging in this article? What and whose purpose might that myth serve? What might be at stake in maintaining it as the foundation of western rationality? Whose myth is it?

Keep in mind some things:

1) The article refers heavily to the Odyssey, which by now you should know like the back of your hand.
2) Read it critically: by now you should have enough theoretical background on myth, progress and interests in myth formation (courtesy of Sian's lectures) to spot the subtext and the expectations that underlie the paper.
3) Keep in mind who the guys who wrote that paper are (Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer) hence what they might be aiming at.

Above you see two pics of the two in question: Horkheimer above and Adorno below (what is it with bald philosophers?)