Toni Morrison, Sula // Stephanie Peters, Fire // Seneca, Medea (trans. A.j. Boyle) // david Mcconochie,

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One of the oldest goddesses in the historical record is Inanna of Mesopotamia, who was referred to, among other honorifics, as “She who makes a woman into a man, she who makes a man into a woman.” The power to alter such fundamental categories was evidence of her divine power. Inanna was served by at least half a dozen different types of transgendered priests, and one of her festivals apparently included a public celebration in which men and women exchanged garments. The memory of a liminal third-gender status has been lost, not only in countries dominated by Christian ideology, but also in many circles dedicated to the modern revival of goddess worship. Images of the divine feminine tend to appear alone, in Dianic rites, surrounded only by other women, or the goddess is represented with a male consort, often one with horns and an erect phallus. But it is equally valid to see her as a fag hag and a tranny chaser, attended by men who have sex with other men and people who are, in modern terms, transgendered or intersexed.

— Speaking Sex to Power: The Politics of Queer Sex by Patrick Califia

The costume of Medea worn by Maria Callas in Pasolini’s Medea (1969).

Image ID: An excepert, cut into two screenshots, from "The Archaeology of Caves in Ireland", by Marion Dowd, that reads:

DISAPPEARING UNDERGROUND

The idea that some ritual activities at caves involved people disappearing from view into darkness is powerful. In most cases only one individual or a small se- lect group could have entered caves at any one time. Thus the potentially public nature of early stages of some rituals, such as the entire community walking to a cave entrance, may have been juxtaposed by the secret activities that took place inside the cave involving just a few people. Witnessing this disappearance into darkness, and waiting for individuals to re-emerge, is likely to have been dramatic. The length of time spent inside a cave may have increased the feelings of anticipation, expectancy, anxiety, trepidation, fear or mystery experienced by those outside. People above ground were in the dark too. What was happening down there in the darkness? Who or what would be met in the cave? Why was the trip taking so long? Would s/he return? What would be the outcome?

These were religious and spiritual excursions into darkness that must have transformed those waiting outside but especially the person who had entered the cave. Such journeys may have conferred her/him with greater power, status, reverence or respect if caves were perceived as places of the Otherworld where it was possible to commune with the spirit world. Emerging from darkness and returning to the world of the living may have been seen as akin to a rebirth: emerging with new knowledge or insights, emerging as a new and transformed person.

/End ID

Here are some diversified open-source syllabi and reading lists on race, gender, Kashmir, Palestine, caste, sexuality, colonialism and modernism, design and systems, feminism, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, data and tech, labour studies, African studies, disability studies, violence and it’s textures by some amazing educators and activists. Reblog, share and email decolonis.zing@gmail.com to include more in the list!

Decoloniszing Gender - khari jackson, Malcolm Shanks

Modernity and Coloniality - Ahmed Ansari

Design Thinking For Complex Systems- Ahmed Ansari

Feminist and Social Justice Studies- Dr. Alex Ketchum

Afrotectopia

Design + Anthropology - Shannon Mattern

“Shakespeare in the ‘Post'Colonies” -Amrita Dhar

At the Intersection of Critical Race and Disability Studies: A Bibliography - Amrita Dhar

Testimonials + local literature - Mountain Voices

Introduction to Critical Race Theory for 2017- Adrienne Keene

Mini Courses on Art and Culture - Asia Art Archive

Sound and Violence, Sound as Violence - Pedro Oliveira

Violence - Pedro Oliveira

Border thinking and Border as culture - Pedro Oliveira

Introduction to decolonial thinking and decolonising methodologies -Pedro Oliveira

The Kashmir Syllabus - Stand With Kashmir

Palestine Reading List - Danah Abdulla

A Bibliography of Caste Readings - Jyothi James

Decolonizing the Malabari Mind - Jyothi James

Labour and Tech Reading List - Alexandra Mateescu and Eve Zelickson

Diversifying your Design Syllabus: Recommended Readings by Women, Non-binary, and Culturally Diverse Authors - Hillary Carey

Between Scarcity and Excess: Capitalism, Population Control and the Climate Crisis - Luiza Prado

Decolonising Science Reading List - Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Everyday Orientalism - Katherine Blouin, Usama Ali Gad, Rachel Mairs

As I am reading an aggregation notebook about fairytales, I am reminded of another reason for why there is this change from “folklorist” to “literary” studies of fairytales recently.

As you might know, the “folkloric” studies of fairytales led to typification, classification, catalogues - the famous Aarne-Thompson classification. We identified the “families” of fairytales, the common points they shared, the ingredients of the recipes, the pieces of the puzzle placed together ; we’ve got lists of archetypal characters and the typical scenarios and routines. And don’t get me wrong, this is really good and cool - through this we were able to identify the “untold rules” of fairytales, and the unofficial canons of the genre, and better highlight the unusual or brilliant variations…

But there is a slight problem with those studies. Their “break-down” method might start out or end as a catalogue, but it passes by a system of “molds”, if I dare say so. Basically, to forge types, to classify, to make lists and divided categories, they enforce the stories into a mold, into general archetypes, into “typical behaviors”… And this is where people see things differently nowadays.

The example I can bring forward is how the folklorist studies usually consider an archetype of the story to be the “aggressor”. You know, the typical fairytale villain. And this folklorist approach will often end up basing their categorization on “What does the aggressor does? How does the hero encounters the aggressor? Is the aggressor killed or robbed?”. But who is the aggressor? Anyone and nobody. In the “aggressor” position, they treat the very same way dragons and evil stepmothers, ogres and wicked fairies, witches and lustful kings, greedy knights and devious dwarves. These are all just “costumes”, for some folklorist, placed on an archetypal “fairytale aggressor”, and these “costumes” are just ornaments that are only a secondary, if not tertiary matter.

But… what the “literary studies” are bringing forth nowadays is the question: “Wait… Maybe it does matter. Maybe who or what the aggressor is does matter. Maybe we shouldn’t treat the same way stories that are about dragons and those about evil witches. Maybe there is a reason why the storyteller prefers to talk about a greedy abusive mother rather than an ogre deep in the woods. And the literary studies precisely ask those questions because - unlike the folklorist studies which mostly see fairytales as ancestral plans and outlines, traditional schemas and structure, cultural frameworks and fabrics, the literary studies try to consider the fairytales more as stories first. Stories told by a certain person, in front of a certain audience, crafted a certain way for a certain time and era. 

This is why, while the folklorist studies tend to discard or disregard the “little details” as not so important (because they are searching for the bone structure or “primordial core” of the story), the literary studies rather focus on these details - because it is those details that make the story. The little twists and turns that each storyteller adds to the formula, the specific additions of a man or woman’s own mind and culture. For a folklorist study, it doesn’t matter if the key is made out of gold or bronze - or even if it is a key at all, it might be a magical egg as long as it has to be found by the protagonist to open a magical door. But to the literary study, the implications of changing the key from gold to bronze will be questioned, and having an egg instead of a key will be a BIG deal. 

I don’t know if what I said is clear, but I just wanted to point it out. (With such a big topic as this whole literary VS folklorist debate, one needs to pile up the little crumbs over each other until they make a big pile, because that’s literaly centuries of scholarship, studies and popular culture reception at war here)

What is your favorite obscure Greek mythological fact

Hm, probably the Orphic fragment that says that Persephone was born with a monstrous appearance (fragment 87 according to Athanassakis, fragment 58 in the translation of Otto Kern’s compilation of fragments at HellenicGods.org):

…"of the daughter of Zeus, whom he begat of his mother Rhea; or of Demeter, as having two eyes in the natural order, and two in her forehead, and the face of an animal on the back part of her neck, and as having also horns, so that Rhea, frightened at her monster of a child, fled from her, and did not give her the breast (θηλη), whence mystically she is called Athêlâ, but commonly Phersephoné and Koré"…

It's so totally different from all other versions that only describe her as very beautiful (as goddesses tend to be). Sometimes I regret that I didn't give my Persephone horns.

"'Will Not Let Die': Debilitation and Inhuman Biopolitics in Palestine" in The Right to Maim, Jasbir Puar