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Ambivalence and Penetration of Boundaries in the Worship Of 1 Ambivalence and penetration of boundaries in the worship of Dionysos: Analysing the enacting of psychical conflicts in religious ritual and myth, with reference to societal structure Shehzad Dorai Raj A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies University of Essex 2018 2 © Copyright 2018 Shehzad Dorai Raj All rights reserved 3 4 Abstract This thesis draws on Freud to understand the innate human need to create boundaries and argues that ambivalence is an inescapable dilemma in their creation. It argues that a re- reading of Freud’s major thesis in Totem and Taboo via an engagement with the Dionysos myth and cult scholarship allows for a new understanding of dominant forms of hegemonic psychic and social formations that attempt to keep in place a false opposition of polis and phusis , self and Other, resulting in the perpetuation of oppressive structures and processes. The primary methodological claim of the thesis is that prior psychoanalytic engagements with cultus scholarship have suffered from being either insufficiently thorough or diffused in attempts to be comparative. A more holistic and detailed approach allows us to ground a psychoanalytic interpretation in the realities of said culture, allowing us to critique Freud’s misreading of Dionysos regarding the Primal Father and the psychic transmission of the Primal Crime. This thesis posits that Dionysos needs to acknowledged as a projection of the Primal Father fantasy linked to a basic ambivalence about the necessity of boundaries in psychosocial life. Using research from the classics and psychoanalysis alongside Queer and post- colonial theory, as well as extensive fieldwork and primary source analysis, this thesis provides a grounded materialist critique of psychoanalysis’ complicity in reproducing a false dichotomy between polis and phusis , a dichotomy that furthers the projection onto marginalised groups whose othering is linked to a fear and desire of a return to phusis and denial of its constant presence in the psyche and polis . This re-reading of Dionysos challenges the defensive structures, which are organised around ideas of subjectification that posit that phusis must be severed from polis /ego and projected onto Dionysos and all groups that threaten the precariousness of these boundaries. 5 Acknowledgments I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my parents and family for their sacrifices and the faith they have had in me. I would also like to thank my supervisor Dr. Matt ffytche for his continuous support, patience, and motivation over the course of my thesis. As well as my supervisor, I’d like to extend my thanks to the members of my thesis committee, Professors Karl Figlio and Roderick Main, for their incisive commentary and encouragements, critique and questions that widened my perspective in my area of study. Without the support I have received from them so far, I wouldn’t have found myself here today. To my fellow researchers in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies and the University of Essex, thank you for your work and stimulating debate. In particular, dear sister in spirit Giselle Manica, Natalia Hernández Jiménez, Orsolya Lukács, Irini Apanomeritaki and Lenia Galata for remembering that theory belongs in the lecture hall. Their humour and support has been indispensable. My sincere thanks to Christopher Hauke, for his questions and thoughts on my study. To my housemate Tom Sparrow, whose daily debate and discussions have been enlightening and invigorating. To beloved Uche Onwukwe, Jocelyn Hayes, and Natalie Thomas, for being there for me for as long as I can remember. To Ray Sneddon, whose faith in me never wavered. To Tal and Ronna Lee, for being testaments to strength always filled with kindness and love. To Namrata Nadkarni and Sunday Swift for being so supportive over the trials of this year. To Gergõ Muráth for the constant stream of cat pictures and rum. To all my friends who have supported me, to all the academics and artists whose arduous work brought me here, to all my siblings in the struggle, my deepest gratitude. And finally, thank you, Dionysos, for knowing a thousand ways to break the hardest of hearts. 6 ὁρῶν ὁρῶντα - The Bacchae of Euripides . Noore chashmat gar bebinom, del sarmast shavad Sare zolfat raa begirom, del heyraan shavad - Yek Nazar, Niyaz. ﺑﻨﮕﺮﻡ ﺗﻮ ﺩﺭ ﺗﺎ ﺧﻮﺍﻫﻢ ﻭﺍﻡ ﭼﺸﻢ ﺻﺪ - Looking for Your Face, Rumi. 7 Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………..4 Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………………………….5 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………….9 Chapter 1 Cultus Scholarship & Establishing the Thesis Foundation: A Review.22 1.1. Literature Review of Cultus Scholarship……………………………………………………………….22 1.2. The World of Phusis : Nature’s Hunting Ground………………………………………………….30 Chapter 2 Dionysos in Grecian Cultus…………………………………………………..….…50 2.1. Dionysos in Grecian Myth………………………………………………………………………………….50 2.2. Ritual in the Dionysos Cults………………………………………………………………………………..61 2.2.1. Philology of the Blurring of Boundaries and the Bacchic Bodies………………….63 2.2.2. Hesiod & Prometheus, Versus the Orphics & Dionysiacs: Polis & Phusis ……..77 Chapter 3 Primary Psychoanalytic Concepts and the Field’s Relationship with Mythology: A Review…………………………………………………………………………………87 3.1. A Review of Primary Psychoanalytic Concepts………………………………………………………91 3.2. Totem and Taboo (1913)………………………………………………………………………………….108 3.2.1. Exposition of Freud’s ‘ Totem and Taboo’ (1913)…………………………………….108 3.2.2. A Critique of Totem and Taboo (1913)…………………………………………………..125 3.3.1. Psychoanalysis and Mythology: The Allegorical Approach ……………………….138 3.3.2. Lacan and Lévi-Strauss: Psychoanalysis and Myth as Simultaneous Discourse……………………………………………………………………………………………..148 8 Chapter 4: Intrigue and Repulsion: Ambivalence and Projection on the Other……………………………………………………………………………………………………..154 4.1. The Building and Blurring of Boundaries: Dionysos and the Other……………………..155 4.1.1. Who is the Other?............................................................................................159 4.1.2. Dionysos the Barbarian: Cultural Divisions and Misobarbaron ………………….164 4.1.3. All Endowed, the Great Calamity; femininity and misogyny……………………….174 4.1.4. Liminal Animals; Dionysos and Queer Antiquity……………………………………..183 4.2. Projection, Ambivalence, and fear of Permeability: Repressed Manifest…………………199 Chapter 5: Negotiating with Dionysos: Manoeuvring Psychical Conflict…………223 5.1. The Breaking of Ritual Taboos and Transgression in Dionysiac Ritual………………….224 5.2. Communion with the Repressed: Punishment of Endogamy and Fall of Polis………..238 Chapter 6: Psychoanalytic Examination of the Orality and Ingestion in Dionysian Sacrifice………………………………………………………………………………………………….251 6.1. The Eating of the Primal Father in ‘ Totem and Taboo ’……………………………………….255 6.2. From Phusis to Polis : Cooking the Primal Father………………………………………………..273 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………..287 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………………292 9 Introduction This thesis draws on Freud to understand the innate human need to create boundaries, and argues that ambivalence is an inescapable dilemma in their creation. This was accomplished by thorough research into, and analysing the function of, cultus (myth and ritual) in social and psychic boundary building and transgression in the Grecian Dionysos cults. The project deepens the understanding of these cults and gives a more sophisticated example of how psychoanalysis can be used in conjunction with cultus scholarship. Psychoanalysis has attempted to apply the theory of its field to religion to controversial effect. Totem and Taboo (1913) is such a text, that fails to account for cultural difference and instead is written to prop psychoanalysis up as a theory. Primarily, this thesis is a study in how texts like Totem and Taboo (Freud, 1913), though seminal and unique, struggle in portraying an accurate or respectful depiction and analysis of religion using psychoanalytic tools. Its drawbacks highlight the merits of focusing on specific religious cults one at a time, with a more in-depth ethnographical awareness that places myth in context of ritual, time, and culture – acknowledging cultural influences, such as politics, history, gender relations, as well as zoology, botany, and cuisine. We will see how this approach differs from texts like Totem and Taboo (Freud, 1913) or The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (Rank, 2004) by not falling into the trap of leaping from continent to continent and in the process not appreciating a divinity’s complexity, resulting in an arguably flawed analysis. We see how Freud’s lack of appreciation of complex myth and ritual in the Dionysos cult resulted in his misunderstanding of Dionysos’ position in the Grecian pantheon; and how this results in a misreading of the cult of Dionysos as a son-god 10 religion (pp. 151-5). This is one of the reasons I select the Dionysos cults of Grecian culture to study. Another reason is that in Freudian discourse, Dionysos’ cultus suits that of the Primal Father. Chapter 1 gives body to the polarity of city and wild presented by Detienne’s works, establishing the constructed boundary between civilisation ( polis ) and non-civilisation (phusis ). It provides an overview of the laws of polis and the demand for mediocrity to participate. It shows how the defiance of gender boundaries and sexuality of polis deem one to be animal and foreign to Grecian culture. Only when the scene is set
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