Medusa’s Mind

Why do I call my blog Medusa’s mind?

A, because all literary discussions refer only to Medusa’s head but never her mind as if prompted by a natural presumption that Medusa would not have a mind or even if she did, it was not necessary to talk about her mind as it was to talk about her head considering the spectacle she offered. B, because my mind resembles Medusa’s a bit as serpent like thoughts seem to spring out of them all the time at any given moment. C, because I am in love with the spectacle called Medusa and the writhing snakes in her head which to me represent an extreme projection of a patriarchal anxiety of a woman with a potential mind and not just a body, an urgent need to render ugly and venomous and vicious the mind of a woman and then mythicise it through a repulsive yet fascinating graphic so that it has a permanent imprint on the collective unconscious of an entire community. Drawing attention to her head to distract attention from her mind. Or perhaps conflating the figurative ‘evil’ head with the metaphorical ‘evil’ mind implying any woman who is capable of thinking is apparently ‘evil’ and a threat to society.

Medusa wasn’t always like this. She was turned into a gorgon by Athena after she was raped by Poseidon. How different was it then from now? A woman subjected to anything ranging from censure to damnation and having to pay in addition to being raped, chastised and shamed by other women. Medusa also had the ability to turn people to stone, in other words literally petrify people. People who had one look at her turned to stone, so terrifying was her semblance. Were they terrified because of her ugliness or because she was different? Who decides what is ugly and repulsive, what is desirable and beautiful? Value assignment is a cultural exercise engineered through religious, mythological and folk narratives. A serpent is venomous but that venom acquires an attribute of a certain viciousness only through a human exercise of value judgment, through a perception that is subjective and therefore biased.

Poets, writers, artists and philosophers have had a long standing relation with Medusa. They are at once fascinated and repulsed by her. Attracted and terrified at the same time. Ugly or otherwise the serpents writhing and crawling on her head bespeak activity and movement suggesting a mind that is alive and if one were to extend the serpent metaphor, also a mind that can attack and resist and also sting if need be.

So Perseuses are created to behead the Medusas of the world, to rid the world of such contumelious and malevolent women. Does the act of Perseus beheading Medusa but retaining her head as a fancy weapon to terrify adversaries say anything about the politics of owning and appropriating? It could be read as laying claim over a woman’s mind or appropriating what was truly and originally her strength and prowess or subduing a woman different from her creed?

So coming back to Medusa’s mind, there could be thoughts that manifest themselves in this blog that are not exactly savoury or palatable, that might antagonise some and terrify others because they contest and challenge the given and the acceptable. But they will surely fascinate, impelling one to go beyond the agonising exterior of the gorgon realising it as a mask, symbolic of an arrested trauma and reconcile with reflections, opinions and musings that are off the beaten track.

My Articles

Feminist Economist Nancy Folbre on the Political Economy of Care

Feminist Economist Nancy Folbre on the Political Economy of Care Liberal Feminism and Socialist feminism have always been ideologically pitted against each other on the continuum of feminist theory in that the former stressed on the idea of women being ‘equal to’ or ‘no less than men’, foregrounding the need for women to be more like men and adopt masculine traits of behaviour and attitude whereas the latter (socialist feminism) believed in studying and revisiting economic and cultural......

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Robert Jensen on Questions of Masculinity

Robert Jensen on Questions of Masculinity Robert Jensen, in his talk, starts by asking and eliciting from his audience, the qualities they would want the ideal man to have or putting it differently, if they were raising a male child what were the values they would inculcate in the child so that he developed certain qualities. The responses that come are qualifiers like affectionate, provider, protector, self-reliant, hardworking, respectful, caring, etc. He goes on to reflect on if what he has......

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How the powerful become powerful in the first place and continue to be so: an observation through Antonio Gramsci’s theory of Hegemony

How the powerful become powerful in the first place and continue to be so: an observation through Antonio Gramsci’s theory of Hegemony Gramsci, one of the neo-Marxists revived and even modified the idea of Hegemony. He understood hegemony as and associated it more with leading than with ruling. Gramsci while analysing Marx wondered how, if it was so obvious that the proletariat was exploited by the ruling class and this, as posited and argued by Marx, by and large had been the phenomenon and......

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Kate Millet and Sexual Politics

Kate Millet’s thesis ‘Sexual Politics’ was groundbreaking and radical in it that it challenged the so called sexual revolution brought about by certain writers of a leftist bent in the realm of literature. She refused to see sex as something natural and impulsive and sexual acts as a result of pure natural desire. She politicised sex and her thesis posited that there are certain ways in which sexuality and sexual acts are constructed which retain and sustain the domination by men over......