Laughing with Medusa

A collection of essays on the reception of classical myth within feminist writing across a wide range of subject areas, including poetry, philosophy, science, politics, critical theory, and psychoanalysis. The contributors show that myth has been central to the formulation and development of feminist thought and politics. Laughing with Medusa explores a series of interlinking questions, including: Does history's self-positioning as the successor of myth result in the exclusion of alternative narratives of the past? How does feminism exclude itself from certain historical discourses? Why has psychoanalysis placed myth at the centre of its explorations of the modern subject? Why are the Muses feminine? Do the categories of myth and politics intersect or are they mutually exclusive? Does feminism's recourse to myth offer a script of resistance or commit it to an ineffective utopianism? Covering a wide range of subject areas including poetry, philosophy, science, history, and psychoanalysis as well as classics, this book engages with these questions from a truly interdisciplinary perspective. It includes a specially commisssioned work of fiction, `Iphigeneia's Wedding', by the poet Elizabeth Cook.