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Reviewed Work(s): Laughing with Medusa. Classical Myth and Feminist Thought by V.
Zajko and M. Leonard
Review by: Bella Vivante
Source: The Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Oct., 2007), pp. 552-554
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4497664
Accessed: 28-11-2016 07:28 UTC
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552 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW
This anthology has an amazing range in its scope. Inspired by Helne Cixous' pivotal
essay 'The Laugh of the Medusa' (Signs, 1976), the collection 'aims to explore how
classical myth has been central to the development of feminist thought' (p. 3),
privileging feminism among the many discourses that 'mediate our relationship to
antiquity ... as a particularly rigorous and self-aware model for negotiating presentist
concerns and their investment in the past' (p. 10). In his essay, Gregory Staley
articulates why investigating myth is a worthwhile feminist enterprise: 'Myth becomes
a tool through which women can escape the world which men have constructed for
them through myth, can attack it, can begin their own voyage of discovery' (p. 219).
These essays challenge received assumptions and seek to open up new mythically-
inspired conceptual horizons in five areas where ancient Greek and Roman myth
have significantly shaped modern discourse: Psychoanalysis, Politics, History,
Science and Poetry. Mostly focussing on the current state of their fields in a critical,
multi-disciplinary expansion of the 'classical tradition', rather than interpretations of
ancient myths, the contributing authors explore the relations between classical myth
and feminist thought through widely divergent intellectual approaches. Although the
Editors twice reject it as the book's aim, some essays employ contemporary feminist
methodologies to examine ancient material - the most valuable essays to me. Others
investigate the continuing implications of the defining framework particular ancient
myths have set for their disciplinary discourses in the fields of science, history and
psychoanalysis. Others consider the reason for and use modern works make of
ancient myths; these intriguingly examine the conflicting interpretations of Anouilh's
Antigone, the significance of Helen in modern Greek poetry and cyborgs from Homer
to science fiction. The volume ends with Elizabeth Cook's mythic re-creation,
'Iphigeneia's Wedding'.
Reflecting the Editors' own interests, the first four essays informatively summarise
the role classical myths played in formulating psychological theories by examining
how Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan used classical myths to reinforce rigidly
defined phallogocentric conceptual frameworks as the basis of psychoanalytic
investigation. In their critiques, gynocentric theorists from Melanie Klein to H6lne
Cixous and Luce Irigaray counter-posed myths that model female modes of
perception, discourse, ethics and creativity. By proposing myths as opportunities to
unmask the male theorists' phallogocentrism and to open new possibilities for
conceptualising female identity, the works of Cixous and Irigaray are fundamental to
these articles' analyses. At one pole, Rachel Bowlby's opening essay on the Cronus
story in Freud's theories of developing gender identities concludes that this 'myth in
which women's most fundamental conflicts are determined by the realization that they
can never be men' (p. 44) is now anachronistic, thus closing the chapter on the need for
such theoretical engagement with Freud's phallogocentric ideas.
In contrast, Griselda Pollock's essay, 'Beyond Oedipus: Feminist Thought, Psycho-
analysis, and Mythical Figurations of the Feminine', articulates some of the
principles entailed in the struggle by some psychoanalytic theorists to move beyond
the inherited phallo- and phallogocentrism of their field. Pollock observes that
The Classical Review vol. 57 no. 2 ? The Classical Association 2007; all rights reserved
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THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 553
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554 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW
'What is "Classical" About Classical Antiquity?' asks James Porter in the Introduction
to this outstanding collection focussing on the cultural history of classical traditions in
ancient Greece and Rome. The question encapsulates the major intentions of the book,
which aims to establish a theoretical debate about the meaning of the classical as
applied to Greek and Roman antiquity. 'The label', P. writes, 'inherited and ubiquitous,
is for the most part taken for granted rather than questioned even among those who
study it' (p. 3). However, at no point in the history of classicism has there been
agreement as to the meaning of the word and the concept linked to it. It is impossible to
designate either a set of properties that define classical objects or a period in history
that could unequivocally be described as such. Far from presenting a singular meaning,
the term evokes a battlefield where different traditions and social groups contest the
right to establish definitions. The book seeks to highlight this struggle and spell out its
epistemological, historiographical and political implications. Its aim is not therefore to
suggest a final definition, but to reflect on what it is that allows classicists, historians
and critics to call Greek and Roman antiquity classical.
The book goes beyond an account of the history of modern classicism. The idea of
antiquity forged in Europe after the Renaissance, it argues, did not merely invent
'classical' antiquity, however anachronistic it may seem to have been. Modern
classicists, as P. puts it, have been 'responding to something' (p. 29). And while that
something turns out to be less stable or universally valued than the classical ideal
conjured in modern times, its historical development is already implicated in the
constitution of the classical. Another aim of the book is therefore to indicate the
interlinking of ancient and modern constructions of the classical, in a way that
illustrates how each of these traditions is predicated on the formation of the other.
Critical accounts of classicism, both within and outside classical studies, have often
demonstrated the retrospective and regressive dimension of any attempt to sustain
classical pasts. The originality of this book lies in exploring how these traits are
inseparable from two further modes of constituting the classical: the prospective or
The Classical Review vol. 57 no. 2 ? The Classical Association 2007; all rights reserved
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