STRUCTURE AND DECONSTRUCTION IN THE ELECTRA MYTH AND BEYOND A Thesis by Jason Myles Felihkatubbe Bachelor of Business Administration, Wichita State University, 2009 Bachelor of Arts, Wichita State University, 2007 Submitted to the Department of Liberal Studies and the faculty of the Graduate School of Wichita State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts May 2013 © Copyright 2013 by Jason Myles Felihkatubbe All Rights Reserved STRUCTURE AND DECONSTRUCTION IN THE ELECTRA MYTH AND BEYOND The following faculty members have examined the final copy of this thesis for form and content, and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts with a major in Liberal Studies. Wilson Baldridge, Committee Chair David Soles, Committee Member Jens Kreinath, Committee Member iii “J’ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage.” “Parade,” Illuminations and Other Poems, Arthur Rimbaud iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Yakoke: Wilson Baldridge Dorothy Billings Janice Ewing Jens Kreinath Kimberly McDowell David Soles Without you all this work would not be possible. v ABSTRACT This research examines the ideas of myth and intertextuality. The Electra myth is utilized and various versions of the Electra myth are examined from different cultures through the world starting with the earliest known version of the Electra myth up to the 20th century before focusing on Jean-Paul Sartre’s telling of the Electra myth, The Flies. A structural analysis according to Lévi-Strauss is conducted on The Flies. A deconstruction according to Derrida is then performed not simply on the ideas presented by Sartre in The Flies, but on the entire idea of myth, itself. This deconstruction then leads to the idea that myth is nothing more than a metaphor, providing further evidence to Lévi-Strauss’ idea that all problems are linguistic ones. When viewed as existing within Derrida’s idea of espacement one finds that myth isn’t simply a metaphor, or the “beginning,” but there exists a co-constitution of both μύθος and λόγος. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page 1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………………………………….……..1 2. THE IDEA OF MYTH…………………………………………………………..………………………………..………....6 2.1 Introduction to the Idea of Myth………………………………………………………………..……...6 2.2 Myth and Popular Usage…………………………………………………………………………………....6 2.3 Theories of Myth………………………………………………………………………………………….…....7 2.3.1. The Greeks and Myth………………………………………………………………………………8 2.3.2 The Beginning of Modern Thought on Myth……………………………………...…..9 2.3.3 Myths and Fiske………………………………………………………………………………..…...9 2.3.4 Malinowski and Myth………………………………………………………………………..…10 2.3.5 The 1950s-1980s- An Explosion of Myth……………………………………………….13 2.3.6 Myth in Recent Years……………………………………………………………………….……19 2.4 Claude Lévi-Strauss and Myth………………………………………………………………………..…20 2.4.1. Interpretations and Criticisms of Lévi-Strauss…………………………….……..…20 2.4.2 Lévi-Strauss: The Source…………………………………………………………….………...26 2.4.3 Lévi-Strauss: The Method…………………………………………………………….……….34 3. THE IDEA OF INTERTEXTUALITY…………………….………………..……………………………….............37 3.1 The Idea of Intertextuality………………………………………………………………………………..37 3.2 The Earliest Known Version of the Electra Myth……………………………………………...42 3.2.1 The Nostoi…………………………………………………………………………………………….43 3.2.2 The Odyssey………………………………………………………………………………………….43 3.2.3 The Oresteia-The Story..……………………………………………………………………….45 3.2.4 The Oresteia- Comment……………………………………………………………………….49 3.3 The Greeks: Euripides and Sophocles……………………………………………………………….50 3.3.1 Electra- Euripides- The Story..…………………………………………………………….…50 3.3.2 Electra- Euripides- Comment…………………………………………………………………54 3.3.3 Electra- Sophocles- The Story………………………………………………………………..54 3.3.4 Electra- Sophocles- Comment……………………………………………………………….57 3.4 The Americans: Ezra Pound and Rudd Fleming………………………………………..........57 3.4.1 Elektra- The Story………………………………………………………………………………….57 3.4.2 Elektra- Comment…………………………………………………………………………………59 3.5 The Latin Americans: Gabriela Mistral and Magaly Alabau……………………………….60 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Chapter Page 3.5.1 Electra en la niebla- The Poem.................................................................60 3.5.2 Electra en la niebla- Comment……………………………………………………………..61 3.5.3 Clitemnestra- The Poem………………………………………………………………………..62 3.5.4 Clitemnestra- Comment………………………………………………………………………..63 3.5.5 Electra, Clytemnestra- The Poems……………………………………………………..64 3.5.6 Electra, Clytemnestra- Comment……………………………………………………….66 3.6 The French: Jean Giraudoux and Jean-Paul Sartre………………………………………….67 3.6.1 Electra- Giraudoux- The Story…………………………………………………………….67 3.6.2 Electra- Giraudoux- Comment……………………………………………………………70 3.6.3 The Flies- Sartre- The Story………………………………………………………….70 3.6.4 The Flies- Sartre- Comment…………………………………………………………75 4. MYTH AND INTERTEXTUALITY……………………………………………………………………………………76 4.1 Myth and Intertextuality: An Introduction………………………………………………….…76 4.2 The Flies, the Incest Taboo…………………………………………..………………………………..78 4.3 Structural Analysis of The Flies…….………………………………………………………………..79 5. SARTRE’S The Flies………..…………………………………………………………………………………………...85 5.1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………….85 5.2 The Beginning………………………………………………………………………………………………...86 5.3 Time…………………………………………….……………………………………………………………..….89 5.4 The Idea of Freedom in TheFlies……………………………………………………………………..92 5.5 Problems with the Idea of Freedom……………………………………………..………………..96 6. LA CLÉ SELON DERRIDA…………………………….……………………………………………………………….98 6.1 La Structure et Derrida………………………………………………………………………………....98 6.2 Freeplay and Structure……………………………………………………………………….………….99 6.3 Freeplay, Derrida, and Lévi-Strauss……………………………………………………………….100 6.4 The Missing Link…………………………………………………………………………………..……….101 6.5 Différance…………………………………………………………………………………………………….102 6.6 Espacement………………………………………………………………………………………………....103 6.7 Espacement and Myth…………………………………………………………………………………..104 6.8 Myth as Metaphor…………………………………………………………………………………….….107 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Chapter Page 7. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………………………..……….110 7.1 λόγος ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………110 7.2 A Return to the Beginning……………………………………………..…………………………..…114 7.3 Rapprochement: A New “Theory” of Myth………………………………………………….117 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………………………………………...119 ix LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Oedipus Mythemes……………………………………………………………………………………………………35 2. Structural Analysis of The Flies………………………………………………………………………………….81 3. Electra Mythemes……………………………………………………………………………………………….…….83 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Hierarchal Pyramid of Culture………………………………………………………………………………..2, 115 2. Myth and Intertextuality at Work According to Lévi-Strauss and Kristeva……………….…..77 3. The Flies as Drama……………………………………………………………………………………………………….78 4. A Detailed Interpretation of Lévi-Strauss’ Work on Myth……………………………………………..87 5. Sartre’s Ideas of Time Applied to Lévi-Strauss’ Ideas of Myth………………………………………91 xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION If men have always been concerned with only one task-how to create a society fit to live in-the forces which inspired our distant ancestors are also present in us. Nothing is settled; everything can still be altered. What was done, but turned out wrong, can be done again. ‘The Golden Age, which blind superstition had placed behind [or ahead of] us, is in us.’ The brotherhood of man acquires a concrete meaning when it makes us see, in the poorest tribe, a confirmation of our own image and an experience, the lessons of which we can assimilate, along with so many others. We may even discover a pristine freshness in these lessons. Since we know that, for thousands of years, man has succeeded only in repeating himself, we will attain to that nobility of thought which consists in going back beyond all repetitions and taking as the starting-point of our reflections, the indefinable grandeur of man’s beginnings. Being human signifies, for each one of us, belonging to a class, a society, a country, a continent and a civilization (Lévi- Strauss 393). This quote comes from Lévi-Strauss’ Tristes Tropiques. When I read this quote, I see the works and ideas of Lévi-Strauss, Malinowski, Sartre, Hegel, Rousseau, and Derrida all at play. I have chosen to open the introduction with this quote by Lévi-Strauss because for me it so eloquently describes what this research and work is about: 1) Examining the work of “our distant ancestors” which is “present in us.” 2) Examining “our own images.” 1 3) Going back to the beginning, “…beyond all repetitions.” In this work I have chosen the subject of myth because myth is one of the building blocks of culture. To better understand this, I refer the reader to Maslow’s hierarchal pyramid. At the very top of the pyramid is “self-actualization” and every building block is nothing more than a step towards self-actualization. If one were to apply Maslow’s hierarchal pyramid to the subject of culture, then it would look something like this: Self- Actualization Freedom Science Written Word Culture Myth μύθος and λόγος Figure 1: Hierarchal Pyramid of Culture Figure 1 makes things much easier for the reader to see what it is that I am discussing. All things, as can be seen, are descended from myth, which in turn descends from μύθος and λόγος, or very simply language and thought, respectively. Any one point in time, a culture is at one of these levels, with the most “primitive” of cultures being towards the bottom and the most “advanced” at the top. Therefore to understand