Date of Award

2004

Document Type

Thesis - ECU Access Only

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Community Services, Education and Social Sciences

First Supervisor

Andrew Taylor

Second Supervisor

Dr Richard Rossiter

Abstract

This thesis is comprised of two parts. First, the prologue and first act of the play entitled Kalon Kakon. Second, a critical essay entitled 'Myths of the Kalan Kakon: Apocalyptic Femininity'. Both the creative and critical work attempt to expose the mythological/semiological process by which the signifying system of patriarchal monotheism misappropriated and suppressed the historic matriarchal symbolism and cosmologies of the Great Goddess. This creative-critical study shows that the genesis and supremacy of the myth of the exclusive, transcendent, anthropomorphic God and the patriarchal interpretative (symbolic) system, depended upon the subjugation of the Creatrix in the creation of entirely negative and illusionistic apocalyptic trajectories of the feminine, specifically the myth of the Kalan (beautiful) Kakon (evil or disaster). Kalon Kalron and the critical essay examine the patriarchal oppositional Signs or defense-objects (canonized myths-as-stories and patriarchal archetypes of masculinity and femininity) endemic to Judea-Christian, Graeco-Roman and other ancient and contemporary Iron-Age cultures, in the historic, socio-syrnbolic context of the Goddess. I have brought into play the Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age Goddess or Mother cultures and symbols of Sumeria, Akkadia, Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt and Canaan, all of which signify a precursory historical consciousness, an alternative symbolic/political economy of life and re-birth, modeled on the creative and inclusive lunar principle. Symbolic of the lunar cycle, the Creatrix expressed an archetypal unity and multiplicity which mediated an alternative, non-hierarchical model of relationship that did not disassociate creation from the creative source. A comparative study of the way in which the Creatrix and the patriarchal God function as symbols of divinity in the constitution and naturalisation of specific mytho-political economies, is crucial to this work. Ar. a divine signifier, the uroboric (non-dualistic), bodily unabstracted identity of the Primal Goddess provided a mythological model of immanently divine Creation (Paradise). This creative-critical work reveals that the solar hero or god-king of Babylonian Creation mythology and its mythological heir, the exclusive, patriarchal God of monotheistic traditions, achieved presence by rupturing the archetypal unity between Creator and Creation, symbolized through the body of the Great Mother. Kalon Kakon and the critical work attempt to deconstruct and repoliticise this mythical division or space of fear and desire in which patriarchal myths of the feminine- Signs of the binary, of Empire and of the m(other)- became imaginable and/or materialized. The re-mythologisation of the Goddess (female creativity/sexuality) as Primal Sin, the Origin (scapegoat) and vessel/Sign of chaos and death, served to desacralise the signifying body (the creative and symbolic power) of the Goddess and legitimize the authority of the male Creator over the goddess/creation. The critical work examines the way in which patriarchal myths of the feminine (Kalan Kakons) function as Signs of absolute Law or prohibition, obscuring the historic-symbolic significance of the Creatrix and of all creative (m)others as divine signifiers. The patriarchal myth-as-story in which the Goddess is rendered the sinner (Eve) and the sinner is rendered sexless (non-creative) and therefore reformed and sanctified (the Second-Eve), exemplifies the patriarchal mythological (double-censorship) process which has allowed for the patriarchal monopolization of symbols (the signifying world) in monotheistic civilization. The play and essay critically reveal how the violation and dissolution of the original feminine archetype into two categories of patriarchal derivation, the sexual object to be denied and the (reformed) sexless, barren mother, constituted the patriarchal Creator (mythologically) as the exclusive maker and master of (Mother) creation. This creative-critical work challenges the exclusivity and origins of this mythological process and the Signs of creative prohibition - of the Fall of the Great Mother - which have become the mythological-symbolic (doctrinal) inheritance of hierarchical Father-cultures.

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