Motherless Daughters and Female Monsters

“Jessica Elbert Decker is a modern muse. Writing with passion and luminosity, Decker creatively weaves psychoanalysis, philosophy, and poetry into an original reading of Greek figures, giving new voice and power to the feminine.” —Shannon M. Mussett, Professor of Philosophy, Utah Valley University, author of Entropic Philosophy: Chaos, Breakdown, and Creation “Decker’s use of Sappho to unchain Western thought from its legacy of androcentric fantasies is an urgent contribution to our shared future. This brilliant book weaves a poetic counternarrative where nature is no longer only teleological, desire is no longer meant to destroy or be destroyed, and a multiplicity of subjects are henceforth freed to be as they are.” —Chelsea C. Harry, Professor of Philosophy, Southern Connecticut State University, author of Chronos in Aristotle’s Physics iv 10-14: On the Nature of Time “In a provocative reassessment of ancient Greek myth, Decker exposes the prevalence of masculinist envy, anxiety and impotency before feminine/queer life and nature. Tracking the repeated attempts to regulate problematic or liminal figures like Hecate or Medusa to the role of the subservient or monstrous, this book expertly analyzes how these androcentric fantasies emerge in Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual narratives and case-studies.” —Danielle A. Layne, Professor of Philosophy, Gonzaga University, author of Plotinus: Ennead I.5, “On Whether Well Being Increases With Time” Translation, with an Introduction and Commentary This book is a feminist analysis of Greek myth and tragedy that reimagines the structures of Freudian theory. The objective of this analysis is political—by revealing the structures that undergird patriarchal oppression, feminist thinkers can work to transform these symbolic constellations through the work of sabotage, parody, and imagination. Jessica Elbert Decker attempts here to read Freudian theory through a wider lens of Ancient Greek culture, since our contemporary philosophical and social culture has inherited many of its symbolic structures (e.g., patriarchy, binary thinking). The major argument of the book is that our Western philosophical, social, and symbolic systems are, as they were in the Ancient Greek world, suffused with a set of values that reflect one version of masculinity and androcentrism, and that those values are destructive to human beings as well as the non-human world, including other beings. Jessica Elbert Decker is Professor of Philosophy at California State University, San Marcos, where she teaches in the philosophy and environmental studies programs.