Deon Liebenberg: Culture, Nature, Mind and Womb. A Gender-Political Analysis of Mythic Thought
Abstract
Using Philippe Descola’s treatment of the culture-nature dichotomy as a starting point, I argue that indigenous conceptions of the relationship between culture and nature are bound up with conceptions of time, space, and, particularly, gender. All of these issues are treated here in terms of the Female Cosmetic Coalition model to argue that the conceptions of culture and nature discussed by Descola refer to nature as found in the present age – a mediated nature regulated by culture, just as female gender, in its “normal” (socially acceptable) form, is mediated female gender under the regulation of patriarchal culture. Both myth and ritual widely posit the additional existence of a “pure” form of primordial culture centered on the male mind as well as that of a chaotic, undifferentiated form of primordial nature, which is closely identified with the female reproductive system and which needs to be regulated/differentiated by patriarchal culture.
[culture; nature; mind; womb; gender; sex-strike; patriarchal]
