Review: Myth and Feminism

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
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 552 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

MYTH AND FEMINISM

ZAJKO (V.), LEONARD (M.) (edd.) Laughing with Medusa.

Classical Myth and Feminist Thought. Pp. xiv + 445, ills. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006. Cased, ?55. ISBN: 978-0-19-927438-3.
doi: 10.1017/S0009840X07001412

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

'precisely in hypothesizing a feminine coun

..., notably through her book Themis (191
transformed a phallic lack into a feminist
positive, definable female substance freq
interpreters, Pollock suggests that the story
Oedipal, phallic definition of sexual differen
specificity cannot be imagined as constitu
concludes that mythic feminine figures like
matrixial concept of the feminine as a pr
Western ethics, aesthetics, and human socia
femaleness from the margins to the heart of
Bridging Parts I and 2, Miriam Leonard n
explicitly politicized understanding of the
Oedipus (p. 122), and that her myth 'has bec
the interrelationship between political ac
Simon Goldhill insightfully explores this
through Antigone's relationship with both h
newly emerging use in the fifth century of t
ethical and civic relationships in the shift
democratic polis, also illustrated by the incr
between Electra and Orestes in the extant El
Like Goldhill's essay, those that address
feminist perspectives open new ways of p
impacts. Regarding 'myth [as] important t
literate culture that [can] incorporate wom
Lillian Doherty cogently argues that the H
of The Odyssey reflect a female poetic trad
performance. She invites us to consider how
ancient poetic activity. Similarly, Penny M
Levertov's energetic Muse who flings her
Goddess', With Eves at the Back of' Our
female-identified image of poetic inspira
invocations of the Muse. Or, by exploring
'male science' in her 'Gendered Reading of L
De Rerum Natura 'implies the possibility of a
the present, androcentrically framed sci
tensions and relativity' (p. 274), which wo
sation of science. In like manner, in 'A
O'Gorman suggests that the women's lame
Women provide modes of representing wa
warfare, reconfiguring what can be accou
through the figure of Helen in Homer, sh
men s wars.

I have only been able to highlight analytic points in these essays

stimulating, provocative interpretations that in every case offer n
the concepts of both classical myth and feminist thought, maki
volume in its radical approaches and in its diversity. Consequently,
the rather large number of typographical errors throughout and by
of substance and oversight. Since much of O'Gorman's discuss
Helen's moral position, I was surprised to find no citation of

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554 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

addressing this subject, most particularly

Homeric Insult' (CA 14 [1995], 41-61), whose
discussion. I was particularly shocked by her st
is in the bedchamber, lying next to Mene
significant error that surely the volume Editors
all presses should have caught. Besides correcti
her erroneous claim, to have included Helen'
15.123ff. and 171ff. would have substantial
Despite such errors this is a broadly edifyin
collection.

University of Arizona BELLA VIVANTE

bvivante@email.arizon

NOTIONS OF THE CLASSICAL

PORTER (J. I.) (ed.) Classical Pasts.: the Classical Tr

and Rome. Pp. xiv + 450, ills. Princeton and Ox
University Press, 2006. Paper, ?17.95, US$27.95 (C
ISBN: 978-0-691-08942-3 (978-0-691-08941-6 hbk).
doi: 10.1017/S0009840X07001424

'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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