DGD: Textiles-White Series 26 (clonografía), 2010
[I read an abridged version of this text, under the title The original and erotic myth unbalanced trinity - as a paper at the XIII International Meeting of Writers (general theme was "Sexuality and Literature), held in Monterrey by the Council for Culture and Arts of Nuevo Leon from September 29 to October 5, 2008. I submit the entire text in three parts.]
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* A trinary base thought
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No group of people without a myth founding. As for the essential grounds of love, sexuality and gender, the West is based on the myth of the androgyne, and such a degree that archetype has become the stereotype essential. Thus, the "idea" that literature and mass media spread the myth of the androgyne is the original single-sex, this being had a half man and half woman and taken away by pride, he wanted to be equal to the gods and was punished with demediación.
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The original story is in that passage of The banquet that Plato puts into the mouth of Aristophanes' explanation of this myth. In these pages, Aristophanes says that in the beginning there were three sexes: male, female and androgynous. Interestingly, the latter said that "no longer exists and its name is in disrepute," but in an archetypal level, as glimpsed here, try the opposite happens: the androgyne as a myth is the only one there and the other two not only disappeared but they were never given name. Aristophanes tells the events after the rebellion:
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Then Zeus and other gods deliberated, were faced with a dilemma, since neither could kill or get rid of its kind, the lightning glared as the giants Disappear, because then the honors and sacrifices that the men were taxed, nor allowed to continue being arrogant. After much reflection, Zeus finally had an idea and said: "I think I have a ploy to continue having men and stop being arrogant, and is reducing its forces. Right now, in effect, "he continued," I will cut in two each, and so will be at the same time weaker and more useful to us, having increased their numbers. " [...] So, once the nature of this being was cut in two, each party missed the half, and when he met her, surrounded with arms of one another, driven by the desire to regain his former unit.
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modern reading that makes this myth is so simple and the West needed to "avoid confusion" after being divided, the Androgyne disappeared leaving only the two fundamental human equality:
* Already in Plato's time there was a tendency to "avoid confusion" as the author of Dialogues decides to discuss the confusion surrounding the eroticism even then, it does not without daring and risk. Very significantly, forgetting a very timely coverage in the millennia following the explanation in The banquet .
* Aristophanes says that man originally came from the Sun, the Earth's Original Women and the Androgyne of the Moon, "that part of the Earth and the Sun." The "official version" of the myth used to this last item to affirm the suggestion that only the Androgynous rebelled, because it was like the moon, changeable and unpredictable. But Aristophanes not only give those items to the androgynous and actually refers to the three sexes when he says: "On these principles [Sun, Earth, Moon] received as and how to move, is spherical. The bodies were robust and vigorous and courageous heart, and thus conceived the bold idea to climb the sky and fight with the gods. "
* Therefore, it is not the exclusive Androgynous would be equal to the gods because he only changed as the moon, but there was pride (hubris ) in the three genders, simply because they were all spherical, and no less unpredictable. In other words, Zeus punished not only the excess (insolence, lack of restraint) of androgynous, separating each one in two individuals but also to the men and Original women-in the logic of myth itself is shown by a mere quantitative consideration, since it was to make everyone "at the same time weaker and more useful to us, having increased their numbers."
* The official version is based on a misrepresentation of levels: if she accepts the existence of three original sexes, it immediately just to provoke the understanding that after the separation of Androgyny in a male half and other women, these new beings were matched, at the same level , the original Women and Men, those who, by this account, would not have been broken, "thereby discredited the latter are and beyond the myth as mere" repetition ": the male half of the Androgyne" repeats "the whole man, while the female half represents only a" redundancy "Women's Original. (Obviously not: be a serious imbalance Androgynous punish the separation and leave intact the Man and Woman, which exceed in strength and skill that halves.) This maneuver is based the idea of \u200b\u200ba single original sex and therefore, there is a unique legendary support to heterosexuality.
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But what explains Aristophanes is very different: the split gave rise to androgynous heterosexual love (half man half woman looking for), while the original Women and Men, after separation gave rise to love homosexual (each half will look to his neighbor). Aristophanes says
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Each of us is nothing more than a half has been separated from her primarily as a road is divided in two. These halves are always looking for your half. Men from the separation of these compounds beings, called androgynous, love women, and most of the adulterers belongs this species, as well as women who love men and violate the laws of matrimony. But women from the separation of primitive women, do not call attention to the men and women more inclined, on this species belong tribadism. Similarly, men from the separation of primitive men seeking men.
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The original outline of the myth, then, is very different from how he is remembered. If you would like to return to that original vision, at the same level would be essential symbolic Androgynous relocate the other two myths removed from the collective memory. The first thing that stands out is that no name, and therefore should be baptized, this would not be arbitrary, since their titles are already in the word Androgynous. In this way the propose here, to call it Original Women Ginógina and Original Man, Androandro .
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Prime parentheses around the names
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exceptionally When it comes to correct the distortion widely practiced in the mythical descriptions of The banquet, etymologically absurd you say things like this that sits on a popular online encyclopedia: "The philosopher of Athens also speaks of an androgynous-made before the separation-of two bodies of men and an androgynous composed of two female bodies." None of them can be called "androgynous" if they are to their respective names in fact reflect its nature, calling them "androgynous" is, even if inadvertently, to give primacy to one of three base models and the other two character of "anomalies ".
* The issue of names is significant in light of a similar Greek myth, in Metamorphoses, Ovid tells the story of the Hermaphrodite, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose body was fused with a nymph, or Salmacis Salmacis, with the result of an individual possessing the characteristics of male and female sexes. So not a little curious, Hermaphrodite, when it was only male sex and gender, biogenerics already had a name (this name expressed offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite, but also marked its destination), so that after integration with the Naiad , if he had wanted to keep the name legendary loyalty to both sides of their nature, they should have been called Hermafrócide.
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This corresponds, in modern terminology, a simultaneous hermaphrodite, unlike the sequential or successive; example of the latter is Tiresias, the blind seer who appears in the Oedipus cycle and the Odyssey (Tiresias, born a boy, the goddess Hera changed woman for seven years, after which he returned masculinity). In both cases one speaks of a transformation, or metamorphosis, in the terminology of Ovid. Disturbing mirror symmetry: The Androgynous mentioned in The banquet birth has a dual nature and is then halved, the reverse of the Hermaphrodite and Salmacis, whose natures originating are individual and are later merged into a single being. The line is clear: all demediación is the demand for reinstatement.
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The three primeval beings
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The banquet In Aristophanes points out an essential effect of separation on the three main creatures: the insatiable anxiety each half looking for her "better half" (as stated by the vox populi ), but does not describe the three beings with the same application. In the case of the Androgyne, generator of heterosexuality, is limited to mention adultery, ie polygamy Women's Original (here called Ginógina) seems to care to speak, and only gives the example of tribadism-word from the Greek verb that corresponds to rub, mashing, squeezing, scraping, grinding -; only abundant in the description of Man Original (here called Androandro) and his descendants: "While they are young, love men, are pleased to sleep with them and be in his arms are the first among adolescents and adults as they are of a much more manly. No reason reproaches are living without shame, because it is the lack of which makes doing so, but, ensouled strong, manly courage and manly character, seeking their fellows, and proves that over time are more likely than others to serve the state. " Aristophanes adds:
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men turn to young love, and if they marry and have families, it is because nature inclines them to it, but because the law requires. What I prefer is to spend life with each other in celibacy. The only purpose of the men of this character, love or be loved, is to meet those who resemble them. When the one who loves the young or anyone else ever find your half, sympathy, friendship, love unites them in a way so wonderful, they do not want in any way be separated even for a moment. These same men who spend their whole lives together, they can not say what they want from each other, because if they find such pleasure in living in this way, it is to believe that this is the cause of the pleasure of the senses. Evidently his soul desires nothing, she can not express, but who reads and implies [...], that is, the desire to be united and confused with the beloved object, to form but one being with him. The reason for this is that our original nature was one, and we were a complete whole, and given the name of love, desire and pursuit of this ancient state.
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In his time, Plato does the same thing over the centuries, philosophers and poets do: search the founding myth, and not without risk tracked with extreme caution, perhaps remembering the fate of Orpheus myth, which treat to convince men of Thrace to practice pedophilia was dismembered by the Maenads. However, it is essential that Aristophanes (ie Plato, Socrates ie, ie deeper Greece) states her search from a database creation myth trinary thought totally alien to our modern binary mindset, the same way Plato had said in the Republic that a man who has dominated both his mind (head, intellect) and their appetites (sex, instinct), wakes up one third where wisdom resides, "is when reality catches better." [1]
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Note
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[1] In Le Sexe incertain. Androgynie et dans l'Antiquité romaine hermaphrodisme (Belles Lettres, des Mythes Vérité, Paris, 1997), Luc Brisson trinary examines the basis of thought not only in the Platonic Symposium and the myth of Salmacis and Hermaphrodite, but cosmogonic mythology in the poetry of Hesiod, the Orphic Rhapsodies, Gnosticism, the Hermetic Corpus and so-called Chaldean Oracles. That study had begun in another book Brisson: Platon, les mots et les Mythes. Comment et pourquoi Platon Nommo Mythe him? (La Découverte, Textes à l'appui, Paris, 1982).
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