Blood Lines: Biopolitics, Patriarchy, Myth
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Sacrifice is mainly a patriarchal institution. Nancy Jay argued that sacrifice serves as a ritual supplement and replacement for natural birth, and attempts to establish the dominance and priority of descent through the father over descent through the mother. I demonstrate the cogency of Jay’s analysis across a number of traditions. My focus is not on sacrificial rituals, but instead on a series of myths – Hebrew biblical, ancient Greek, and Vedic Indian – that disclose the manner in which sacrifice inhabits a continuum with a broader array of struggles for dominance within the family including, but not limited to, the contestation between patriarchy and matriarchy. In many myths, the kinship group becomes a primary metaphor, both for the competition over scarce goods, including power and authority within the family unit, and for modeling the body politic in a microcosm.
Source: Open Theology
Author: Robert A. Yelle
Institution: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,082
OpenAlex ID: W4401754942