Multiple Identities

Literatim & Theology, Vol 10, No 2, June 1996
MYTH, MIMESIS AND MULTIPLE IDENTITIES: FEMINIST TOOLS FOR TRANSFORMING THEOLOGY
Pamela Anderson
Abstract
Downloaded from http://litthe.oxfordjournals.org/ at Thueringer Univ. und Landesbibliothek Jena on May 25, 2012
Mythical configurations of a personal deity and a dominant sexual identity are part of our western history. In particular, the religious myths of patriarchy have privileged a male God and devalued female desireand, with her desire, sexual difference. There can be no facile way beyond these myths. Instead the proposal here is for feminist theologians to attempt new configurations of old mydis and disruptive refigurations, 1 e. transformative mimesis, of biased beliefs. Myth and mimesis can enable expression of multiple identities. Only ldennnes-in-process preserve the possibility for a peaceful revolution of our desires and our differences, religious and sexual. I. INTRODUCTION
do desire, sexual identity, myth and mimesis have to do with theology? For those who seek to bring literature and theology together, it might not be difficult to give a substantial and affirmative answer to this question. However, for those who seek to bring theology together with philosophy, this question raises various significant difficulties. Typically a contemporary philosopher of rehgion tries to associate theology with reason, not desire and with disembodied, not sexual identity; and a philosophical case is still made today for the need to retainor even to restoretheology as a formally rational enterprise engaged in articulating the Faith in and the revelation about God. For example, according to empirical realist forms of Christian theism, faith in Godas an all-powerful, all-knowing, supremely good, perfecdy free, eternal yet personal, creator who saves (his) sinful creaturesneeds to be strictly conceived and rationally justified.1 Notwidistanding diis philosophical need, as a feminist philosopher of religion, I would like to contend something differentwhich also could be attractive to theologians with literary sensibilities. It seems to me that the urgent need is to transform theology as conventionally conceived by radically questioning such hidden assumptions as a disemWHAT, IF ANYTHING, O Oxford University Press 1996
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bodied conception of rationality. By disembodied is meant thinking (as if) independent of a body, e.g. reason is separated from the body, so that corporeal relations do not affect one's perspective on die world, nor affect concrete relations to other persons or to any specific material objects affecting rational knowledge. Supposedly die modern philosopher, following Rene Descartes (1596-1650), can imagine himself (sic) as disembodied. Disembodied is different from non-embodied; the latter, if applied to the theistic God of empirical realism, for example, would imply not having (and never having had) a substantial body like men and women have, but possibly having a personal relation to material objects and subjects. Nevertheless, modern philosophers of religion keen to preserve objectivity and rationality tend to seek a view of the world which would be (at least momentarily) disembodied. Such a view aims at the neutrality of rationally justified true belief. Yet, arguably, diis view remains blindly biased, especially biased against women's embodiment, e.g. female desire, and so sexual difference. Hence, die disembodied objectivity of die privileged male subject can be identified as 'maleneutral', i.e. as a male point of view with only die pretence of neutrality and objectivity. Equally, with this notion of disembodied objectivity, there is a problem of bias against non-privileged races, religions and ethnicities. This problematic conception of rationality for women and marginalized odiers would function in contemporary dieology insofar as theology is held to be a formally rational enterprise which achieves truth, objectivity and neutrality, from a supposedly disembodied, 'God's-eye-view' of human reality. Here God's-eye-view is to indicate an omniscient view and, apparendy, not necessarily a non-embodied view. Consequendy, to achieve any critical defence of die need to transform theology conceived in this blindly privileged way, I have in mind to raise die following line of questions. From where has the content of theological concepts come? And from where have the concepts which shape theological content into beliefs come? Moreover, for whom are contemporary theistic beliefs and concepts constructed? In fact, are they selfconsciously and critically constructed? The concept of onginal sm with its accompanying beliefs is a good one to consider in dus regard. The proposed answers will suggest that contemporary realist constructions of religious belief on die basis of immediate experience of empirical material alone are, at least, inappropriate to religion, and, at most, the arguments for dieir justification are fallacious in terms of dieir own logic. By inappropriate is meant that from immediate experience we might construct beliefs concerning, for instance, the occurrence of a bolt of lightning, but diat this cannot serve as a proper example for constructing belief in die existence of a supremely good, all-powerful, all-knowing, eternal yet personal God. By definition it would seem that God could be given neidier an empirical
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referent (like a tree standing in a garden), nor a coherent sense as a religious belief about intensely subjective experiences (like a terrifying and tremendous vision accompanying a bolt of lightning, striking the tree), without assuming much more than either perception of empirical material or reflection upon subjective perceptions could offer. Given more space it could be argued that the religious beliefs of the empirical realist are formulated by a rational subject who demes his (sic) own embodiment in order to gain the supposed neutrality and objectivity. Now by embodiment is meant much more than immediate experience (in the German sense of Erfahrung) of sense perception. Instead the denial of embodiment has to do with excluding the far more substantially significant realms of lived-experience (or Erlebnis). Lived experience would cover the multidimensioned spheres of meaning and the linguistic structures of complex spatial-temporal, mind-body beings who reason, desire, intuit, feel, enjoy (including sexual pleasures). By contrast the content of a theological concept, e.g. of the theistic God, which is derived from empirical realism appears far too restricted, since implicitly or explicitly devaluing the specificities of sexual differences. Such concepts as that of a personal, supremely good, all-powerful, all-knowing, eternal, transcendent God or of an undefiled, submissive, virgin mother of a man-god are themselves constrained by the subject's own epistemological and methodological assumptions. Furthermore, the more self-conscious theologianse.g. feminist theologianswho think reflexively and critically will find themselves asking about the ethical truth and justice of the theological concepts which result from this dominant sort of empirical construction of religious belief. Personally I would go so far as to claim that such beliefs are not only restrictive, but partial and biased. We can find certain feminists who claim that the religious paradigm of empiricists is a decisive factor m the racial and ethnic biases of academic men and women, including those of privileged feminist empiricists.2 Admittedly, some feminist empiricists and social theorists argue just the opposite!3 But to broach points concerning racial, sexual and ethnic biases in theology, religious beliefs cannot be treated like technological-cognitive beliefs about empirical material and events, e.g. bolts of lightning or electronic communications, which are explainable and manipulateable in terms of contingent evidence from the physical world. Instead the origin of religious belief is, arguably, closer to noncontingent ideas which are regulative of our world and as such are better represented by myths. That is, myths as narrative configurations of human reality do serve, whether consciously or unconsciously, both to regulate or limit our explainable knowledge and to found or make possible our multiple identities as both reasoning and desiring, embodied beings. This also means, as men and women, we are decentred by our own conscious and unconscious myths of divine/human reality.
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Since the earliest Greek philosophers, there have been philosophers of rehgion who have brought myth (muthos) and mimesis into the assessment of the truth-claims comprising religious beliefs. Myth, defined in more detail later, can mean a story configuring into a narrative unity the actions endorsed by and the emotions evoked by men's and women's theistic or nontheistic beliefs. And mimesis, in its capacity to imitate or re-enact, can refigure the dominant configurations of religious beliefs; this capacity includes the possibility in imitating myths disruptively, as in mimicry or miming. Importantly, it is on the level of myth and mimesis that the philosophical significance of sex, gender, class and race differences emerge. Ultimately I would like to propose that mythical configurations of a personal deity and a dominant sexual identity are part of our western history which can be refigured. The refiguring or miming of myths could make manifest what content has been excluded from the more narrowly rational construction of religious beliefs. By content is meant, besides empirical or intellectual intuition, such material dimensions of reality as desire and love or, in more general terms, one's physicality and so sexuality. Elsewhere I have demonstrated in even greater detail that myth and mimesis can serve as philosophical tools for feminists who endeavour to transform the patriarchal structures of empirical realist forms of theism. This includes structures which constitute sexual, racial and ethnic hierarchies of privileged vs less-privileged beliefs. As will be developed in the later sections of this article, mythical configuring and mimetic refigunng enable unsettling entrenched positions. This means positions which remain especially difficult to dislodge, since reason has been conceived as disembodied (male) and as such superior to desire, love, death. These latter, deeply ambiguous realities are largely excluded from or devalued by philosophy, but portrayed in myth. The mythical figures which come to mind as representing female desire and sexuality include Circe, the Greek goddess of the sun, who is configured as seducer and enchantress, turning men into animals. Notably, Circe appears as the seductive female in both Homer's Odyssey and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Similarly, the figures of Persephone and Eve represent female desire as seductive, so both dangerous and attractive for the male subject of patriarchy. Patriarchal myths use such seductive female figures to configure the origin of sin, as if female desire has to do with the source of evil. Yet, for us, it is the multiple identities of these female figures, as variously configured in myths, which allow for refigunng disruptively the privileging of both a dominant sexual identity and a personal male deity. Later mention will be made of such other female figures as the Virgin Mary and Antigone who take on the opposite, mythical meaning as submissive (rather than seductive) women, but equally retain a disruptive possibility, due to their multiple identities as mythical figures.
u6 PAMELA ANDERSON Yet, to qualify this reading of myths for feminist scholars of theology and literature, it is not being suggested that philosophical defences of religious belief should be replaced with mythical reflection, nor reason with desire. Instead appeal is being made here for theologians to collapse the opposition between the rational subject and his (sic) own matenally conditioned status which has been projected onto the female other and portrayed in myth. In any case, this is a precarious division, to say the least! Nevertheless this selfdivision has characterised modern rationality and so Enlightenment theology conceived as a formally rational enterprise. This tends to be instrumental rationality, i.e. ends-justify-means reasoning, and so the opposite of substantive reason, i.e. embodied dunking which remains attached to the substance of desire and bodily life.
II. MYTHS
Myths are not a product of instrumental rationality; in fact, they are what is excluded by formal reasoning. So myths have the potential to reflect an embodied form of rationality. Post-Enlightenment theologians, in particular, have continued to (re)produceperhaps unconsciouslycertain founding myths. A founding myth refers to a narrative whose symbolism functions to give meaning to a culture and identity to a people. As an example, the Adamic myth can be described as a symbolic narrative .which founds both the religious culture and sexual identity of men under patriarchy, while marginalising women after Eve.4 But myths are narratives which, although configuring into a meaningful unity the heterogeneous experiences of concrete men and women, always remain open to refiguring. In this light, we might want to postulate that a certain mythopoetic activity constitutes the energy behind variable, mythical representations of religious meaning. To support the preceding descriptive assertions concerning myth, first, I will offer vanous claims concerning the continuing presence of myth in history as something different from reason, fiction and philosophy as stnctly conceived. Second, I will explore the nature of myth, which unlike philosophy but similar to music, is fluid and so open to new vanatdons (e.g. of gender constructions), all-the-while retaining a thematic core of symbolic meaning. Third, I will suggest the significance of feminist miming of specific myths for disrupting dominant representations of the fixed identity and hierarchy of sex/gender. First, the continuing presence of myth makes it different from empirical and contingent truths of reason which manipulate values. ... the totality of the practical efforts of our brains, muscles, and hearts, are possessed of a meaning only thanks to the presence of the mythical layer of our existence.
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if ... we ascribe the same manipulative (cognitive) value to words directed towards mythical reality as to words sprung from empirical material, we are condemned to barren disputes regarding the truth of conflicting myths.5 The passage from one era to the next cannot be made simply by negating what already exists ... ... To consider the meaning of mythical representations of reality as merely incidental is concomitant to repressing and destroying certain cultural dimensions that relate to the economy of difference between the sexes. Such an approach also leads to a partial, reductive, and fruitless conception of History.6 ... For myth is not a story independent of History, but rather expresses History in colourful accounts that illustrate the major trends of an era ... they retained a special relationship to space, time and the manifestation of the forms of incarnation.7 Myth is about embodiment, i.e. space, time, action and passion. Its relation to history is, then, not a contingent matter but necessary. There is a danger in separating myth too sharply from either history or reason. Myth gives a certain meaning to human history. Yet some rational activity is needed to assess self-reflexively and communally the truth and justice for others and ourselves of mythical realities, of identities and deities. Depending upon their appropriate and adequate conceptions as regulative, reason and myth are necessary as counterbalances to each other. An important distinction can now be made between myth and fiction. In particular, myths are different from novels and so other forms of fiction in that Mythical figures live many lives, die many deaths, and in this they differ from the characters we find m novels, who can never go beyond the single gesture. But in each of these lives and deaths all the others are present, and we can hear their echo. Only when we become aware of a sudden consistency amongst incompatibles can we say we have crossed the threshold of myth.8 The significance of becoming aware of consistency amongst incompatibles is the ability of myth to configure into natural relations otherwise unrecognised relationships between assumed opposites. Following Roland Barthes, we might claim that myth transforms history into nature. 9 This is true insofar as, in myth, contingent relations become necessary and (seemingly) eternal; arbitrary relationships are rendered natural. Myth links space and time to human incarnation; but this is still different from the empirical time of history. Myth's relation to history is retained only because myth gives fundamental meaning and continuing value to history as human; but mythical time is not continuous with empirical time.
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For the sake of discussion here, let us agree, minimally, that the continuing presence of myths lies in the fact that Myths are stories [which] are distinguished by a high degree of constancy in their narrative core and by an equally pronounced capacity for marginal variation. These two characteristics make mydis transmissible by tradition: dieir constancy produces die attraction of recognizing diem in artistic or ritual representation as well [as recital], and their variability produces die attraction of trying out new and personal means of presenting diem. It is die relationship of 'dieme and variations,' whose attractiveness for bodi composers and listeners is familiar from music. So myths are not like 'holy texts,' which cannot be altered by one iota.10 From the above, there arise certain questions. Is the core constancy of myth something unconscious which re-emerges? Or, is it some essential structure of meaning? Would either be decisively undermined by poststructuralist critiques of logocentrism? Notwithstanding these critical questions, in the light of feminists' concerns with concrete hved-expenence, an outright rejection of the role of myth in constituting dimensions of meaning is thought unwise. Second, to continue with my case for using myth and its symbols as a feminist tool, it is helpful to extend the last long quotation with its comparison of myth and music. Such a comparison is also implicit in Paul Ricoeur's 'Interlude' (L'interlude) on the Greek myth of Antigone. Similar to a musical interlude, his Interlude on myth constitutes a short, self-contained piece presented between the parts of his more sustained (philosophical) argument. 11 Choosing a myth about a tragic heroine reinforces the association of woman with nonphdosophy; that is, Ricoeur's explicit description of his interlude on myth as 'nonphilosophical' recalls an ancient opposition between logos and muthos; and woman is not placed on the side of logos. 12 In fact mythical configurations of Sophocles' tragedy by other modern philosophers have tended to use Antigone to identify woman with familial duty, religious belief, burial rites and the abjection of physicahty, e.g. burial of a corpse.13 Crucially, as a French philosopher of religion, Ricoeur would agree to the existence of a core of narrative constancy as well as to myth's marginal variability. In addition, Ricoeur stresses that myth is irreducible to secular history insofar as myth invokes the spiritual powers of divinities or, as we might say, of gods and goddesses, which pomt to the inevitable limit of human mstitutions. But the question for us, is whedier or not the gendered identities configured by myths are part of its marginal variability. In order to consider the configurations of masculinity and femininity in certain mythical narratives, in male and female actions, the reader is directed to Ricoeur's phenomenological account of ancient myths from i960. It has become apposite (again) in recent years for feminists in philosophy to (re)turn
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to phenomenologydespite poststructuralist critiquesin order to elucidate the lived-expenences of oppression which are not generally apparent in empirical accounts of immediate experience. In other words, phenomenology can offer feminists tools for uncovering the general structures of meaning which constitute various dimensions of lived-experiences, including religious, sexual and familial. Poststructuralists have tended to criticise phenomenology for bemg irredeemably metaphysical. But, to reiterate, given the concern of many feminists not to move away from concrete hved-reahty it seems precipitate to rule out definitively a phenomenologjcal approach to refigunng our vision of the world. For his part, Ricoeur offers helpful distinctions for elucidating the different dimensions of mythical symbolism. In particular, desires and emotions concerning the sacred and a loss of the bond with the sacred give rise to three different levels of language, moving from the more concrete to the more abstract. On a first level, there are the primary symbols which exhibit a double intentionality by pointing to both an apparent and a latent meaning. For example, defilement is constituted as a symbol by a double intentionahty with a first level intention which gives rise to further thought and a second level of possible meaning. Its first intention points to a pre-ethical awareness of a blemish or stain; this consciousness of impurity gives rise to the further meaning of 'a quasi-material something that infects as a sort of filth, ... that nevertheless works in the manner of a force in the field of our undivided psychic and corporeal existence'.14 The primary symbol, also and importantly, seems to be at the invariable core of myths insofar as the meaning of a symbol such as defilement endures, although often in constantly new configurations. On a second level, myths are second-degree symbols in that the mythical narrative gives further elaboration to the primary symbols. So the Adarmc myth narrates the events and actions which represent the way in which defilement emerges in the context of the loss of a bond with the sacred. Ricoeur also refers to the re-enactment of experiences of defilement through religious myth and rites of purification. And, in his writings during the 1960s and 1970s, Ricoeur becomes increasingly aware of the different manifestations of myth on the cosmos, in the psyche and through dreams. On a third level, the symbolism of myth gives rise to the more abstract language of concepts which shape the spiritual content of religious belief. Ricoeur critically interprets the concept of original sin and so illustrates the constructive work of theologians at this abstract level. It is looking at this levelat some distance from Ricoeurthat we find answers to our questions, from where has the content of theological concepts come? For whom are theistic beliefs constructed? There seems to be a forgetting or erasure of the two previous levels of symbol and myth m privileging the abstract concept.
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One problem at this third level of language is that symbols can become fixed so, for instance, they can easily be conceptualised as gnosis or, as Ricoeur himself recognises, false knowledge. He illustrates the problem of gnosis by describing the way in which the concept of original sin became fixed for theologians following St Augustine; it was as if this concept came to represent literal knowledge of sin as our original condition resulting from the inordinate desire in the sexual act at conception and from the further defiling effect of the materiality in childbirth.15 Another problem is that these levels presuppose a hierarchy of value: the abstract, purity, reason are given greater value than the concrete, impurity and desire. It is important to remember that we found Ricoeur railing myth 'nonphilosophy'; and now we find that he represents impurity, sexual identity and gendered characters in myth, while philosophy represents purification, neutral identity (which is arguably male) and no sexually specific characters. The early Ricoeur clearly affirms that certain [Greek] myths
are themselves interpretations, descriptive and explanatory exegeses of beliefs and rites relative to defilement ... [the] bond between defilement, purification and philosophy obliges us to be attentive to the spiritual potential of this theme. Because of its connection with philosophy, it cannot be a simple survival or a simple loss, but a matrix of meaning. ... The sense of the testimony of the historians, orators, and dramatists is, therefore, completely missed when one gives only a sociological interpretation of it and sees it in only the resistance of the archaic rights of the family to the new law of the city ... another kind of 'understanding' ... bears on the unlimited potentiality for symbolization and transposition of the themes of defilement, punty, and purification. It is precisely the connection of defilement with words that define it which brings to light the pnmordially symbolic character of the representation of the pure and the impure 16
Notice Ricoeur's connection of philosophy with myth on the theme of purity/impurity. He suggests that philosophers (of religion) should turn to myths and their potential for symbohsatton of spiritually significant themes and issues. In addition, he seems to allude specifically to the spiritual potential in the myth of Antigone, i.e. where the spiritual but archaic rights of the family are opposed to the new law of the city. Antigone, as the ideal of femininity within this (modem) patriarchal configuration of myth developed from an ancient Greek tragedy, is associated with the abject corpse, as well as with the private sphere of religion and family, but not with the public sphere of rights and rational, political action. Purity/impurity seems to be the binary opposition which dominates representations of defilement from the concrete to the more abstract levels of symbol, myth and philosophy. According to Ricoeur, 'Katharos [to purify] ...
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expresses very well the ambiguity of purity, which oscillates between the physical and the ethical'.17 Given the space, we could discover that the meanings of and connections between the Greek terms, kathairo, katharsis, katharos, and deinon, deinos (to purify, purification, pure or unsoiled and strange, terrifying, monstrous or wondrous) continue to inform Ricoeur's recent configurations of defilement m myth. 18 It would become immediately obvious that the binary opposition always gives greater value to the first term, in this case, purity and so to philosophy and male-neutral logic. Third, in addition to, first, asserting the presence of myth and to, second, recognising the way in which more abstract concepts and more variable identities derive from an invariant matrix of meaning m primary symbols, we can discover in Luce Irigaray a different, poststructuralist account of myths and belief. Her feminist account is indebted to an unusual combination of philosophical approaches to the Other in its ethical and religious dimensions, including the influence of Jacques Lacan, Emmanual Levinas, Ludwig Feuerbach and ancient Greek philosophers and tragedians. In particular, Irigaray supports transforming the myths which have constituted our sexual identity, our religious ntes and forms of belief. Rather than calling for an end to history, especially to its myths of (male) sexual identity and representations of religious belief, we would do well in following Irigaray, to call for myth's transformation and so religion's rethinking. It seems we are unable to eliminate or suppress the phenomenon of religion. It reemerges in different forms, some of them perverse: sectarianism, theoretical or political dogmatism, religiosity. ... Therefore, it is crucial that we rethink religion, and especially religious structures, categories, initiations, rules, and Utopias, all of which have been masculine for centuries.19 But this does not mean simply replaang myths of male identity or masculine representations of religious belief with female identity and feminine representations of religious belief.
III. RELIGIOUS AND SEXUAL IDENTITY
The dominant (sexual) identity of our western history and culture appears to be constituted by a male-neutral mythology. For her part, Irigaray claims that our contemporary culture has forgotten our female ancestry, becoming 'unisex in our drives'.20 In her most recendy translated writings, Irigaray seeks to create a new ethical order among women and men.21 She calls for a new order in which both women and men remember their respective divine and sexual ancestries in myths which represent the difference of thensexual desires (but this doesn't necessarily mean entrenched oppositions). This
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remembering of distinctive ancestries is a novel proposal in the light of our forgetting. Contrary to what has been thought in forgetting the past, myths as part of our history are not locked into univocal meanings nor timeless configurations. To support this claim, Irigaray insists that dominant interpretations of myths concerning Antigone, Persephone or Eve have changed in order to constitute the patriarchal order of the present culture; and this means that today our culture is only contingently ordered by patriarchal configurations of these mythswhich, however, may appear tunelessly true.22
The destruction of female ancestry, especially its divine aspect, is recounted in a variety of ways in the Greek myths and tragedies... Antigone's uncle, the tyrant Creon, punishes by death her faith, her loyalty to her maternal ancestry and its laws, in order to safeguard his power in the polls.23 In later versions or interpretations, Kore/Persephone has become more or less responsible for her own fate, and is thus more like Eve the seductress, who leads man to his fall. It was nothing like that m the initial versions. But the story of Demeter and Kore/Persephone is so terrible and so exemplary that it is understandable that the patriarchal era wished to make the seductive woman bear the responsibility for its crimes.24
Persephone, who is the maiden daughter (Kore) of the Greek goddess and god, Demeter and Zeus, is raped by Hades, god of the underworld and so becomes queen of the underworld. According to the patriarchal configuration of this mythical event, Kore/Persephone, not unlike Circe and Eve, is blamed for being seductive and so blamed for her own rape by the male god, since she was out picking flowers. Irigaray aims to refigure this myth. In this way, Irigaray refigures the concept of original sin and its accompanying biased beliefs.
Patriarchy has constructed its heaven and hell upon this original sin. It has imposed silence upon the daughter. It has dissociated her body from her speech, and her pleasure from her language. It has dragged her down into the world of male dnves, a world where she has become invisible and blind to herself, her mother, other women and even men, who perhaps want her that way. Patriarchy has thus destroyed the most precious site of love and its fertility ... Hell appears to be a result of a culture that has annihilated happiness on earth by sending love, including divine love, into a time and place beyond our relationships here and now.25
Irigaray realises the importance of new ethical relations between women and men, besides uncovering the significance of women-amongst-women.26 Yet, in the 1970s, Julia Kristeva is already warning that a new religion of a matrilinear form would not avoid violence nor a new terrorism, if only

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reversing the form of sexism. Kristeva cautions against creating a new belief in Woman, which would become entrenched and not allow for exploration of ever-new possibilities for women and men. The myth upon which Kristeva focuses is that of the Virgin Mary. Kristeva develops a double-writing opposing the patriarchal myth of a virgin mother to women's lived-experiences of motherhood. This double-writing can be read as a mythical configuration set against a mimetic refiguration.28 Kristeva's novel reading of motherhood, entitled 'Stabat Mater', works with the acts of configuring and refiguring. Kristeva divides her page of writing on motherhood in half vertically. To begin with and then continuing on the right side of the page, there is an analysis of the mythical configuration of motherhood from the history of Christianity. Marina Warner's account of the myth and the cult of the Virgin Mary serves as Kristeva's subtext.29 With this first half of writing, Kristeva suggests that the patriarchal configuration of the Virgin Mary obscures women's lived experiences of motherhood. But on the left side of her page, a miming of her own experience of motherhood emerges to break up the other mythical configuration. This is a disruptive refiguration insofar as the hold of the patriarchal myth is unsettled, yet not decisively dislodged. Refiguring, in anticipating a transformative mimesis, of myth offers both possibility and impossibility. Disruption is possible; at the same time, complete rejection of the past is impossible, smce something of the past is (potentially) binding. Kristeva herself confirms this double use of myth and mimesis as different from a proposal for the construction of a woman's religion or of a female deity.30 The implication of Kristeva's readings of the myth and the cult of the Virgin Mary is that there can be no facile end of theology, history nor, in the West, of the dominant religious myths of patriarchy. Instead the dangers of merely proposing a new religion over and against the old have been suggested a number of times elsewhere. Given more space, we could examine these dangers in, for example, the writings of Mary Daly. Patriarchal theology and mythical representations of reality, of our desires, loves or fears are part of our history. The danger lies in a matriarchal theology which would maintain sharp oppositions, only reversing the sexism in new entrenched conflict. Yet, without going to this extreme of oppositional thinking, we can still refigure not only the present and future, but the pasti.e. that history of oppression. To begin refiguring the damage which has been done in the past to women and marginalised others, recall the way in which mythical configurations of Adam and Eve have supported the concept of original sin, equating inordinate desire and sexual sinfulness.31 Yet these same configurations tend to leave gaps or silences, as points which can be opened up, and their meaning can be mimed. Concerning the Adamic myth, at one important point Ricoeur
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admits that 'it must be granted that the story [of Eve's defilement] gives evidence of a very masculine resentment, which serves to justify the state of dependence in which all, or almost all, societies have kept women'.32 He insists that the Adamic myth remains both dominant in Western societies and 'anthropological'.33 This means that Ricoeur's mythical configuration of Adam and Eve's story is, in more contemporary terms, androcentric.34 In his words, [Eve] represents the point of weakness and giving way in the presence of the seducer, the serpent tempts the man through the woman. .. the biblical myth, in spite of Eve and the serpent, remains 'Adamic'that is to say, anthropological.35
With this admission, Ricoeur identifies Eve, in contradistinction from Adam, as weakeven as a tragic figure. Admittedly, Ricoeur has the serpent play a significant role in the drama of temptation; but the serpent represents the tragic and passive aspect of the subject who is tempted, without changing the anthropology. In Ricoeur's terms, the serpent signifies the 'quasiexternahty'36 of temptation projected onto the mediating object which seduces. While the man is associated with a good father-God and must learn to be the responsiblefigure,the woman is associated with an evil serpent becoming the tragicfigurewho leads into temptation; and, then according to patriarchal configurations of 'the fall,' she becomes a figure of abjection who must be excluded from sacred places.37 But note here male autonomy appears dependent upon devaluing the female, her desires and sexual difference. In this way, Ricoeur's explicit assertion that Eve represents 'the point of weakness' or 'the point of least resistance' leads him to an androcentric dare we also say, misogynistconfiguration of the Hebrew myth. At another significant point, the early Ricoeur attempts to apologise for this configuration in admitting 'evidence of a very masculine resentment'.38 Yet the decisive fact is that Ricoeur uses an active verb in stating that all women sin in Adam (toutefemmepeche 'en' Adam ...), but a passive tense to state that every man is seduced in Eve (tout homme est seduit 'en' Eve). Clearly, man m this configuration has been led to his fall by way of the desire of his partner against which he must subsequently guard himself. Interestingly Ricoeur realises that, in the earlier Babylonian myth concerning the origin and end of evil, the female goddess, Tiamat, represents a primordial chaos out of which order, the heavens and the earths are created.39 But this means that evil is assoaated with a primordial mother goddess whose chaos mcludes violence and a lack of identity, while the male god, Marduk, who kills Tiamat represents order and definition. Images from this Babylonian

40
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myth appear in the Hebrew scriptures. So we find that, in the earliest of mythical types constituting patriarchy, the primordial female figure already represents the evil of excessive disorder and the dangers of female fluidity. According to Irigaray, the killing of the primondal mother is an act of matricide which founds our patriarchal history. For Irigaray, the myths of patriarchy seem to go hand-in-hand with an androcentric bias. There is both a hierarchy of father-son relations and a man-centred account of relations with the divine. Human (male) identity as sameness is guaranteed by a divine maleness, e.g. in the Hebrew myth by a masculine and ideally paternal God, and both a paternal God and a feminine other bolster masculine identity as powerful. In particular, evil is displaced upon woman devaluing females. For Irigaray, a masculine (androcentric) bias implies desire of 'the self-same'.41 And male desire of the self-same implies both male sexual identity as sameness and male gender as divinised in the ideal attributes of the monotheistic God who reigns transcendent, supremely good, all-powerful, all-knowing and so on. Together male self-sameness and masculine divinity repress female difference: she remains the mirror which makes possible male sameness as 'the same of the other';42 but she remains the mediation of the divine.43 As a female figure associated with the vastness and the fluidity of the sea, whether as Tiamat from the ancient Babylonian epic or as the marine lover of Nietzsche, female desire is figured as the pretext and the excess in experiences of the male divine.44
IV. MIMESIS
The crucial proposal being considered m this article is that myths can be constandy configured and/or refigured; and this remains consistent widi recent accounts of mimesis, including the different accounts of Ricoeur, Kristeva and Irigaray. A certain form of mimesis would allow for new configurations of sex/gender m a text and, ultimately, refigurations of sexual difference. The danger with certain forms of mimesis lies in assuming an implicit, hierarchical opposition between texts and subjects, whereby configuration has to do with texts and refiguration with subjects. Yet, as long as sex/gender is not shown to be prefigured as part of the invanant core of mythical configurations, then, categories and relations of gender (or sexual difference45) could vary with mimetic refigurations of characters and their actions. For instance, Irigaray's novel insight concerning mimetic refiguring can serve to force a new self-reflexive moment in Ricoeur's potential pivileging of configured (patriarchal) texts over subjects. Ricoeur's own idea of refiguration can be set, in a more radical form, against his own account.46 But, there is only room to suggest this internal critique of Ricoeur, we can point
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back to Ricoeur's early account of the dominant myth of man (sic), with its gaps and silences, as well as forward to his recent account of a threefold form of mimesis. These accounts reveal a development in his critical thinking, but also a continuity in hisfor us problematicprivileging of the configured texts of modern patriarchy, following especially Descartes, Kant and Hegel.47 Let us, then, take Ricoeur's account as the paradigm for elucidating the patriarchal assumptions which underlie dominant, 20th century philosophies of religion (m the West). First, recalling Ricoeur's i960 androcentric and patriarchal configuration of the story of 'the fall' in Genesis, we found in the previous section that his configuration not only privileges Adam over Eve but dominant father-son relations over any other. Yet it is worth stressing again that Ricoeur's androcentric configuration leaves certain gaps which can serve as openings for (our) new configurations and miming. For further examples of these openings, he asks, 'why is the woman chosen for the confrontation of interdict and desire?' and '(is there a way) beyond the legitimate criticism that a Nietzschean spirit might level against the resentment of the Yahwist?'48 Second, turning to Ricoeur's recent account, configuration identifies one of three forms of narrative mimesis, the other two being, prefiguration and refiguration. For his meta-theory on narrative mimesis, Ricoeur appropriates both Aristode's notion of muthos or emplotment and Kant's notion of 'synthesis of the heterogeneous' to define configuration.49 Roughly stated, configuring is an act of bringing separate and diverse characters and actions together to form a plot or story and, hence, a narrative unity. Any myth can have various configurations insofar as the meaning of its symbols and actions can be imitated and performed in ever new ways. For Ricoeur, refigunng is an act of reading which moves beyond the configured text; this move is achieved by the effective action of the subject upon the world in front of the text. Finally, Irigaray's account of the hysteric's dilemma in miming male desire is something significant for us to consider, if proposing to push beyond Ricoeur's privileging of the patriarchal text. Irigaray's mimetic refigunng aims to transform, philosophically, the myths and the religion, whose androcentncism and patriarchal order, are deeply embedded in our western consciousness. Miming aimed at disrupting the hierarchy which has remained dominant is necessary, if transformation is to go ahead. For this, consider Irigaray's own account of the hysteric's position: ... there is a revolutionary potential in hysteria. Even in her paralysis, the hysteric exhibits a potential for gestures and desires ... A movement of revolt and refusal, a desire for/of the living mother who would be more than a reproductive body in the pay of the polis, a living, loving woman. It is because they want neither to see nor hear that movement that they so despise the hysteric.50
127
Isn't hysteria a privileged place for preservingbut 'in latency', 'in sufferance' that which does not speak? ... [t]hose aspects of women's earliest desires that find themselves reduced to silence in terms of a culture that does not allow them to be expressed ... ... Both mutism and mimicry are then left to hysteria. Hysteria is silent and at
the same time it mimes Andhow could it be otherwisemiming/reproducing a language that it is not its own, masculine language, it caricatures and deforms that
language: it 'lies', it 'deceives', as women have always been reputed to do.51
The obvious problem lies in finding criteria for distinguishing expressions which might be adequate in representing a new feminine speaking, i.e. an authentic female symbolic, from that which is only a hysterical symptom of a repressed femininity. To go some way to addressing this problem, we should bear in mind an important distinction concerning femininity made by both Knsteva and Irigaray: they both distinguish femininity (and female desire) from any metaphysical essence. Although neither Kristeva nor Ingaray speak in terms of a sex/gender distinction in which sex is a biological category and gender is a social construct, both Knsteva and Irigaray speak about female desire which has been excluded from modern philosophy and devalued in modem religion. In particular, they both refer to femininity as Sigmund Freud's 'dark continent'. That is, femininity remains that which is excluded from patriarchal configurations and can only be discovered in the gaps and silences of the male texts. However, the crucial thing is that they each resist speaking of femininity or of female desire as a transhistorical essence. In other words, they are not as some critics have argued, biological essentialists, even though lacking the (Anglo-American) notion of gender.52 Together their difficulty and their distinctiveness remains in trying to discover in the gaps of patriarchal configurations that which has been repressed and settled, i.e. repressed female desire. The process proposed for this discovery and unsettling is a special form of miming or a problematic mimicry. Kristeva and Ingaray do not agree on femininity's relation to sexual identity. For instance, they would seem to disagree over whether or not men can speak female desire. But the significant point for us is the idea of a miming from the position of a hysteric; this is explicit in Irigaray and implicit in Kristeva (e.g. in her reading, 'Stabat Mater').53 The notion of a problematic mimicry names the difficulty of both the impossibility and possibility for changing patriarchal exclusions of sexual difference. What needs to be confronted in future work, are the specific criteria for distinguishing between expressions adequate in representing the feminine symbolic and so sexual difference, and expressions inadequate, since remaining unintelligible symptoms of the hysteric's desire, as repressed by
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PAMELA
ANDERSON
patriarchy. At this stage, it seems to me that the most we can be confident

of is the ability to explore the multiple identities of women and men which are given expression by freely configuring and refiguring myths. But the goal of this
exploration is significant: to discover a new Utopian vision and, in Irigarayan terms, to think the difference for a peaceful revolution of our desires and sexual identity.
v.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, the aim of this article has been to propose new uses of myth and mimesis as philosophical tools for feminists who endeavour to transform the enduring, patriarchal structures of traditional theology. The tools of configuration and refigurataon potentially disrupt the dominant configurations of religious and sexual identity in patriarchal myths. These are configured positions which are dislodged by collapsing the privilege of reason over desire. In other words, the aim in proposing new uses of myth and mimesis includes unsettling reason conceived as disembodied and as superior to sexual love, death and those realities largely excluded from philosophy but portrayed in myth. Feminist theologians are not admonished to replace philosophical defences of religious belief with mythical reflection, nor reason with desire. But male and female theologians sympathetic to feminist philosophy of religion are encouraged to work together at collapsing such hierarchical divisions as that between the rational subject and his own materially conditioned status which has been projected onto the female other in symbol and myth. In turn, these theologians would come to recognise and, inevitably, seek to change their own precarious position as supposedly disembodied subjects. The hope is that creating new versions of old myths or a transformative mimesis of these myths can, in fact, connect us with our own history as embodied beings and with each other as desiring, reasoning women and reasoning, desiring men.
University of Sunderland
REFERENCES
1
Pamela Sue Anderson, Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief A Feminist Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996), Chapter 1. For a significant, epistemological criacism of writings on non-European religion by academic women, including feminist empiricists, see Mamia Lazreg, 'Feminism and Difference: The Penis of Writing as a Woman on Women in Algeria', in
Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller, (Eds), Conflicts in Feminism (London. Routledge, 1990), pp. 32648; also, Lazreg, 'Women's Experience and Feminist Epistemology: A Critical Neo-Raaonalist Approach', in Kathleen Lennon and Margaret Whitford (Eds) Knowing the Difference Feminist Perspectives in Epistemology (London; Routledge, 1994), pp 45-62 Amy Newman, 'Feminist Social Cn&cism

and Marx's T h e o r y of Religion', Hypatia, vol. 9, n o . 4 (Fall 1994), p p 1 5 - 3 7 , cf Anderson, Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief, Chapter 4. For m o r e o n founding myths and o n t h e mythical first m a n , w h o represents t h e (male) idea] of unity-in-multiplicity, see Paul Pvicoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, I9<57), PP- 5, 244. Leszek Kolakowski, The Presence of Myth (Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 1989), p p I3of. Luce Ingaray, 'Religious and Civil Myths', lnjc, Tu, Nous Toward a Culture of Difference, trans. Alison Martin (London: R o u t ledge, 1993). PP- 23.24Ingaray, ' T h e Forgotten Mystery of Female Ancestry', in Thinking the Difference: Towards a Peaceful Revolution, trans. K a n n M o n t i n (London T h e Athlone Press, 1994), P- 101 Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (London Vintage, 1994), p 22 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Laver (London Jonathan Cape, 1972), PP 129-31, 142-4 Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth, trans. Robert M Wallace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), p. 34. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans Kathleen Blarney (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp 241-9. Ibid., p 241 Ibid, cf Julia Knsteva, Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection, trans. Leon R o u d i e z ( N e w York Columbia University Press, 1980). R i c o e u r , The Symbolism of Evil, p 25 Ibid; and R i c o e u r , '"Original S i n " A Study in Meaning', trans. Peter M c C o r m lck, in The Conflict of Interpretations Essays in Hermeneutia, I (Evanston Northwestern University Press, 1974), pp. 2 6 9 - 8 6 . R i c o e u r , The Symbolism of Evil, p . 39 Ibid , p 37R i c o e u r , Oneself as Another, pp. 2 4 4 - 8 . Ingaray, ' W o m e n , the Sacred and M o n e y ' , in Sexes and Genealogies, trans. Gillian C . Gill ( N e w York. Columbia University Press, 1993), p . 75
20
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21 22 23 24 25 26
27
28
29
30 31
32 33 34
10
35
11
36 37
12 13
38 39
40
14 15
41
42
16 17 18 19
43
44 45
Ingaray, ' T h e Forgotten Mystery of Female Ancestry', in Thinking the Difference, p . 92. Ibid., p p . 9 1 - 1 1 3 . Ibid., p p . 1 0 0 - 1 . Ibid , p 100 Ibid , p 102. Ibid., p . 112. Irigaray, 'Civil Rights and Responsibilities for the T w o Sexes', Thinking the Difference, p p 65fF. Julia Knsteva, ' W o m e n ' s T i m e ' , m The Kristeva Reader, edited T o n l M01 (Oxford: BlackwelL 1986), p . 208. Knsteva, 'Stabat Mater', in The Knsteva Reader, p p 160-86. M a n n a Warner, Alone of All Her Sex The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1976). Knsteva, ' W o m e n ' s T i m e ' , p p 1 8 7 - 2 1 3 . Ingaray, ' T h e Forgotten Mystery of Female Ancestry', pp. 9 1 - 1 0 0 R i c o e u r , The Symbolism of Evil, p p 2545. Ibid , p . 260 Cf. E n n W h i t e , 'Religion and t h e H e r m e n e u n c s of G e n d e r A n Examination of the W o r k of Paul R i c o e u r ' , in Religion and Gender, edited Ursula King (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994), p p 7 7 - 1 0 1 Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Etnl, PP 2 5 4 - 5 , 260 Ibid., 256. Ibid., p p 3940, 2 4 3 - 6 0 ; cf. Knsteva, Powers of Horror. R i c o e u r , The Symbolism of Evil, p p 2 5 4 - 5 Ibid., p p . 17584, cf. Ingaray, Marine Lover, trans. Gillian C . Gill ( N e w York C o l u m b i a University Press, 1991), p p I2ff. Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, pp.198-206 Ingaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C . Gill (Ithaca, N e w Y o r k Cornell University Press, 1985), p p . 3 2 - 4 Ingaray, "The Female G e n d e r ' , m Sexes and Genealogies, p . i n . Ingaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. C a r o l y n B u r k e a n d Gillian Gill L o n d o n : T h e A t h l o n e Press, 1993), p p . 11629. Irigaray, Marine Lover, p p 12S See Rosi Braidotn, 'What's W r o n g with Gender?', in Fokkehen van Dijk-Hemmers and Athalya Brenner (Eds), Reflections on
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44
Theology and Gender (Kampen, The ford (Oxford. Blackwell, 1991), pp. 47-8, and 138. Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing 47 C A n d e r s o n , Ricoeur and Kant, a n d The House, 1994), pp. 49-70. Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief. C Ricoeur, Time and Natrattve, vol. 1, 48 R i c o e u r , The Symbolism of Evil, p p . 2 5 4 - 5 trans. Kathleen [McLaughlin] Blarney and 49 David Pelkuer (Chicago: University of 50 R i c o e u r , Time and Narrative, vols. 13. Irigaray, 'Women-Mothers, the Silent SubChicago Press, 1984), pp. 4, 52-7, Time stratum of the Social Order', pp. 47-8 and Narrative, vol. 3 (University of Chicago 5t Ingaray, 'Questions', in The Irigaray Press, 1988), pp. II, 99-103, 159, 270, 326; Reader, p 138. and Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, " See Braidotti, 'What's Wrong with PP 53-5. 59-<5l, 71. 103; Ingaray, Gender''. "Women-Mothers, the Silent Substratum 53 Ingaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, of the Social Order' and 'Questions', in PP- 535, 59-61; Knsteva, 'Stabat Mater', The Ingaray Reader, edited Margaret Whitpp 160-86.

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Literatim & Theology, Vol 10, No 2, June 1996

MYTH, MIMESIS AND MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

MYTH, MIMESIS AND MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

MYTH, MIMESIS AND MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

MYTH, MIMESIS AND MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

MYTH, MIMESIS AND MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

III. RELIGIOUS AND SEXUAL IDENTITY

MYTH, MIMESIS AND MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

MYTH, MIMESIS AND MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

MYTH, MIMESIS AND MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

language: it 'lies', it 'deceives', as women have always been reputed to do.51

patriarchy. At this stage, it seems to me that the most we can be confident

MYTH, MIMESIS AND MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

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