Thursday, May 12, 2011

Archetypes as Masks

Reflections on Girard's "Violence and religion":

Archetypes may be powerful and "true" because they are necessary to mask even more powerful truths.

If “the whore” archetype seems unavoidable for women (as I have been told), is it because the image masks the deeper, more frightening truth of their power . . . including violence?

Re. Oedipus. Is it the father we (men and women) seek to kill, or is it violence? Is violence not the truer father/mother of man and woman? And is violence, also, a defense against love?

Self-sacrific may be a form of intra-psychic mob rule. Are there conditions by which self-sacrifice (as violence against violence) either is or is not acceptable?