#24 | The Anthropocene is a Motherf*cker- Jane Caputi
“The opposite of life is not death. The opposite of life is deathlessness.”
My guest today is Jane Caputi, a professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University. Dr. Caputi’s primary research is in contemporary American cultural studies, including pop culture, gender and violence, and eco-feminism. She is the author of many articles and four books, including The Age of Sex Crime; Gossips, Gorgons, and Crones: The Fates of the Earth; and Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power and Popular Culture.
Her most recent work is Call Your Mutha: A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene, which does fierce and mythic battle against the techno-hegemony of The Age of Man.
In our conversation today, we explore the roots of patriarchy from a mythic lens, we illuminate startling perspectives on ancient stories, from Gilgamesh to the Garden of Eden, and we wonder what might it take for civilization to come back into right relationship with the life force of the Earth Mother, lest she turn away, forever.
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SHOW NOTES
Growing up with mythology
Initiation into the mysteries
Confrontation with the Catholic worldview
Heading to Boston College and meeting Mary Daly
Studying male sexual serial killers
The gossip, gorgons and crones
The pornographic of everday life
Sexuality as a way of knowing
The origin of "motherfucker"
The Anthropocene and the Age of Man
Man is not a unified We
The slaying of Tiamat
"In order for there to be civilization, the mother must be destroyed"
Gilgamesh and the origin of Western patriarchy
The goddess was the last to go
The "bargain" of patriarchy is no longer working
Womb envy
Fear of the earth mother is the fear of death
The opposite of life is deathlessness
Is the life force turning away?
The masculine is a subset of the feminine
Gender as a volatile essence
On the mythopoetic men's movement
Black Panther and healing oppositional dualism
The problem with Moana
Western understanding of God as a psychopath
There are many models of divinity
Unthinkable thoughts
A leprechaun in a dream
Invoking the mutha
