Mujalifah's mighty musings in mirth and magnanimity

Sunday, January 22, 2006

mujalifah's gone to christodeklerk.com

I'll no longer be posting here.

But I will be posting here.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

sexuality, metaphor and metamorphosis



Rushdie says that the fear of women's sexuality is partly behind Islamic extremism. I infer from the article that this is how he explains the Western embrace of women's sexuality:

"The Western-Christian world view deals with the issues of guilt and salvation, a concept that is completely unimportant in the East because there is no original sin and no savior," he said

And what I get from this quote is that when we talk about women's sexuality, we're just talking about sexuality period.




And then there's this interesting bit on the notions of metaphor and metamorphosis from the philosopher Santayana's "Life of Reason". Apparently Greeks seldom if ever used metaphors, says Santayana.

"the classic mind could well conceive transformation, of which indeed nature is full; and in Greek fables anything might change its form, become something else, and display its plasticity, not by imperfectly being many things at once, but by being the perfection of many things in succession. While metaphor was thus unintelligible and confusing to the Greek, metamorphosis was perfectly familiar to him." (Chapter 6 of Reason in Religion)

Santayana goes on to say that this is why Christ's metaphor at his Last Supper was transformed into a doctrine and practice of metamorphosis. It was easier for the Greek-influenced mind to swallow metamorphosis than metaphor.