Re-semanticisation

or the contribution each of us can make to “setting the upside-down world back on its feet” (1)

But what is this RE-SEMANTICISATION? It is an invitation to re-visit and critically re-consider the meaning of the terms of our language(s), first of all to grasp their slavish adherence to the dominant patriarchal culture – which often verges on distortion and which we calmly accept and use with incredible automatism.

Once awareness has begun, each of us should look for a more pertinent and “honest” meaning, starting from the most distant origins possible but above all paying the greatest attention to the perspective from which we work. That is when the surprises begin!

Continuing the research, I make other interesting discoveries. First, reading in the Pianigiani etymological dictionary this definition of HYSTERIA = a state of over-excitement of the uterus and of reaction of this organ on the nervous system… I can’t help exclaiming: “It’s like reading a medieval text!”.

But the surprises are not over, because – in the Grande Enciclopedia De Agostini – I discover that the situation got worse AFTER the Middle Ages (just as happened to women healers-witches… but that is another long and harrowing chapter, still to be rewritten…).

In fact, the term HYSTERICUS, hysterical = irritable and extravagant, apparently appeared only in the 17th century, while HYSTERIA – as the name of this disorder – appeared at the end of the 19th century!

What can this mean?

That this “disease”, which supposedly includes psychological and physical symptoms of various kinds, either did not exist before, or did not have this name – which, with such fine misogyny, was given to it by the good doctors and psychoanalysts at the end of the 1800s!

“The very origin of psychoanalysis is traced back to the observation of hysterical patients…” says the Grande Enciclopedia De Agostini again… speaking of anguish, anxiety, paralysis and amnesia…

Now I reflect:

If a disease with these symptoms already existed, why was it not given a name from the start?

And why precisely this name, so deeply and offensively steeped in misogyny? “A nervous disease more common in women, accompanied by various disorders”: is it possible that nobody ever thought – in this as in other cases – that the disease itself might be a cultural ill, that is, induced, and then inevitably perpetuated, for generations and generations, by “our” fatal culture?

Those words echo in my head: anxiety, anguish, disease, above all of women…

Poor things: after centuries of patriarchy – of repression, marginalisation, persecution – they were expected to stay pretty and perky too!

After centuries in which “the accumulation of inhibitions, exclusions, self-censorship, forced renunciations, self-deprivation, unwelcome obedience, unbelieved submission, repressed indignation… exploded into frustration, and from frustration, the passive form of aggression, there oozed… those typically female forms that are frigidity, depression and, at the extreme, manic-depressive psychosis (the typicality of these forms emerges from psychiatric admissions)”, they were expected not only to have survived, but to be healthy too.

To be continued…

“Go to the Devil”

Don’t be afraid!

After reading this second instalment – dedicated precisely to the word “Devil” – we will be able to say the phrase above quite calmly, because it will no longer be heard as a horrible curse.

Let us start the research on this poor Devil at once – a much-abused name that instantly evokes Evil, Perfidy, Temptation: not for nothing is he the “Prince of the Underworld” (2) or “Prince of Darkness”.

I turn to the etymological dictionary (3) and find “Devil, from Latin diabolus = slanderer, and from Greek diaballo = I throw across, I pierce, that is dia + ballo: I throw, I put”.

None of this satisfies me at all; it seems very superficial and tendentious. So I turn to an encyclopaedia (4), but it too repeats the same old tune: diabolus = slanderer, “in agreement with most etymologists…”

I continue the research and notice – surprise – that the “Devil” did not appear until the 13th century (1200!). The encyclopaedia says: “The idea of the devil as a symbol of evil is typically Christian. Close antecedents: Satan and Beelzebub in Judaism.

In the process of evangelisation it met other evil spirits of other cultures and acquired many of their features, customs and beliefs. Example: the black horse in the legend of Theodoric, or the devil in goat form (5) from Pan of Greek mythology (6).

The doctrine of Demons was systematised by St Thomas, and developed between the 15th and 17th centuries in connection with the witch trials (…)

In Christian art of the early centuries the Devil is depicted only symbolically, as a serpent or dragon and sometimes a lion. The serpent in particular, already present in the 9th century in the Bible of Alcuin, remains typical of the whole Christian iconographic tradition from the episode of the temptation of Eve onwards (e.g. Modena Cathedral – Wiligelmo – and the Sistine Chapel – Michelangelo). In the scene of the Last Judgement the Devil is shown (as already in the Utrecht Psalter, 9th century) as a monstrous figure, which in Romanesque art often takes on some iconographic features of the satyrs of antiquity: pointed ears, hairy body, beard and goat’s feet. Only from the 15th century, especially in Italian art, does the Devil take on a human appearance (e.g. Luca Signorelli’s Last Judgement in Orvieto Cathedral), while in northern art he keeps a monstrous appearance, e.g. in Bosch, Dürer, Bruegel, etc.”

To be continued…

Notes

1. By re-semanticisation I mean the etymological search for a meaning that is not necessarily conformist: it is an encouragement for each of us to carry out, or take an interest in, such research (see the part in the previous issue of the M.U.C. journal).
2. In inverted commas, because these two terms too are longing to be re-semanticised… For now it is enough to recall that the concept of hell appeared only in the 11th century.
3. I am using O. Pianigiani’s, 1984 edition.
4. The Grande Enciclopedia De Agostini.
5. Apparently this is the most frequent representation of the “Devil”, complete with horns and hooves. Especially in the iconography of the “witch-hunt” period – which cost the lives of 9 million human beings, most of them women – this was precisely the image of the diabolical being they were supposed to worship: they even flew, carried on the back of the goat-devil, to the sabbaths, where they performed unspeakable acts with him; but this deserves a discussion of its own, far broader and very painful…
6. Besides the Greek culture, there is another from which to draw significant information: the Arbëresh-Albanian culture, in which the wild goat is called Dhía. The devil, in turn, is called Djall. The female deity is Perendía. In the 1400s the helmet of the national hero, Skanderbeg, bore a fine pair of goat’s horns; indeed, the helmet itself is a wild goat’s head. It was worn only by the leader, who passed it to a deputy only if his life was in danger: it was therefore the emblem of command par excellence, a very ancient sign of power, like the crown for a king – which has a great deal to do with horns. All this means that the goat (Dhía), on which the ancestors of this people depended for their survival – like other very ancient nomadic herding peoples – was considered so important as to be almost deified. This corresponds, moreover, to the sacralisation – and, conversely, with patriarchy, the demonisation and tabooing – in different cultures of the animals on which those peoples equally depended (the Cow, the Bull, the Sow, the Pig, the Camel – which the Arabs call Devé – the Hind, the She-bear, the Elk, etc.). Here too, I refer to further study.

Excerpts from articles published in the journal “Donne e ragazzi Casalinghi”