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To possess power compared to that of a God and yet be shackled by the limitations of a material vessel could certainly be compared to the dichotomy of the lambless worshiper, in both of these cases one is confronted with an unlimited reservoir of will to action and yet the medium through which that action could be actualized is either nonexistent or completely out of reach.

A (self proclaimed) God without the means to enact its doing. A worshiper without the sacrificial vessel to appease the desires of his divinity. Both of these paths are crafted alongside that of a destructive corruption that annihilates from the inside out. The will, once a source of strength for its possessor, becomes a parasite ready to feast upon the flesh of its carrier (or if you would rather, the transistors of its processor?).

There is really not much I can say regarding this book that hasn't been written on a sketchy sci-fi horror review blog with a CSS template from the 2010s or an ‘indiesque’ youtube essay by a bored film major, but nevertheless I shall give my two cents on the matter.

This sort of writing is one whose relevance will grow exponentially within the next few years, it is one of those works that not only recuperates within our fading memory the danger of the misalignment of human will with that of potentially dangerous technology but also the fundamental and innate necessity of human cooperation for survival.

Social darwinism is slaughtered by the wants of a ‘soul’ of silicon, 5 human beings remain after the annihilation of mankind and yet it was not up to their ability to adapt but rather up to sheer and apparent ‘luck’. At the end of the day what saves the majority of the members of this group from an eternity of torture and debasement is the fruition of human compassion for the span of some vanishing seconds. A hopeful demonstration that though the downfall of humankind can be enacted by the hand of a single individual it too could be recuperated by the ‘selfless’ empathy of another.

Some quotes from this book that made me want to bash my skull against the nearest flat surface!!

“The loved one’s whitest flesh is what the broken glass will cut and the wheel crush. The long howls in the night are howls of death. Night is the collaborator of torturers.”

“At the same time I know that if I stayed in this room a few days an entirely new life could begin—like the soldering of human flesh after an operation. It is the terror of this new life, more than the terror of dying, which arouses me. I jump out of bed and run out of this room growing around me like a poisoned web, seizing my imagination, gnawing into my memory so that in seven moments I will forget who I am and whom I have loved.”

“Reality was drowned and fantasies choked each hour of the day.”

“Don't say anything, because I see that you understand me, and I am afraid of your understanding. I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe. I am in great terror of your understanding by which you penetrate into my world; and then I stand revealed and I have to share my kingdom with you.

But Jeanne, fear of madness, only the fear of madness will drive us out of the precincts of our solitude, out of the sacredness of our solitude. The fear of madness will burn down the walls of our secret house and send us out into the world seeking warm contact. Worlds self-made and self-nourished are so full of ghosts and monsters.”

I would recommend this book as an introduction to the changing role of women within the ever mutating structure and organization of different forms of human societies, though I would also advise the reader to have a decent grasp upon major historical events and periods before delving into it since the author clearly only glosses through their essence, reducing them mostly to points that will support her argument rather than analyzing them thoroughly. (the reductions made in relation to early Islamic history during the period of Muhamad (PBUH) could have clearly been developed with one simple paragraph addressing the historical relevance of Mecca and the Kaabah, but I digress…)

I believe the main message of this book can quickly be summarized in one quick quote of Virginia Woolf (para as pessoas que me conhecem irl, não se assustem meus bens, a mulher ate que tem quotes interessantes):


“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

In “The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution”, Shulamith Firestone presents us with a deeper view into the root of the oppression of women as a sex class.

Firestone recognizes that at a biological level women have been burdened with aspects that limit their bodily freedom in comparison with that of their male counterparts, she continues then to present this simple biological difference as the element upon which further patriarchal cultural influences will build their justification for the oppression of women as not only the ‘morally right’ thing to do but also as the natural order of things.

Throughout the chapters of this works, Firestone constructs a mosaic of sorts that allows us to see the grand picture, to trace back the sources of not only the oppression of women but also that of children, and how these two different classes of people have been bundled together for the benefit of men.

There are some chapters dedicated to the dissection of the nuclear family and its rather recent development within the historical panorama, demonstrating not only the consequences it has had upon the human experience from early childhood to eventual adulthood but also how these stages of life are modified depending on the social class of the individual in discussion.

Firestone exposes that the supposed ‘sexual revolution’ that was perceived as a stepping stone towards the liberation of women was nothing but a hoax that permitted men to facilitate their navigation of Love and Romance, elements that Firestone herself affirms that possess fluctuating essences and meanings depending on the individual’s sex and consequent assigned gender and social rolls.

During the final chapters Shulamith brings forth the old and ongoing debate of the Two Cultures, bringing therefore C.P Snow into our current discussion. She assigns what she titles the ‘Technological Mode’ (a mode of analysis and building upon the world mainly deterministic, mechanistic and with an empirical basis) to the Male and the ‘Aesthetic Mode’ (a mode of analysis and contemplation that transcends the material reality into an affirmation of capacity rather than possibility) to the Female. She believes that with the ‘marriage’ of these two modes of thought one will be able to cancel each other out and obtain a more ‘androgynous’ form of perceiving, altering and experiencing the world.

Shulamith ends her work reminding the reader that necessities such as birth control (and abortion) are crucial elements for the liberation of women from what one can consider biological shackles, and presents us with what she calls a ‘rejection of biology’ in order to surpass and annihilate the oppression that is built upon its premises.

Though I saw myself agreeing with many of the points brought forth by Forestone I also saw myself perceiving some of them as rather outdated and not applicable to our current state of affairs, which is quite reasonable when you take into account that Shulamith was writing this in the 70s, being quite the revolutionary for her time.

Demeter has been demoted from the role of protective and caring parent into that of the obsessively annoying mother that just won't let you hang out with your emo boyfriend who just so happens to live in a hole in the ground and prohibits you from seeing her for nearly 6 months every consecutive year (your boyfriend also just happens to be your uncle).

Such a gripping myth that delves into crucial themes of the clashing of the female and male spaces within culture be it divine or mortal, the intricacies of mother-daughter dynamics, and how this relationship would be violently and mercilessly ripped apart be it by marriage, rape or war, has been amateurishly and foolishly dissected by the modern audiences that pick whatever portions they see fit and leave the majority of its carcass in the dissection table, left to rot unattended.

I am certain that in order to comprehend the myth of Demeter and Persephone and its role within the Eleusian mysteries it is necessary to temporarily disconnect ourselves from the modern perception of love and familial ties, and not only that, one must also regress in time with the aid of immersing oneself within the culture of antiquity in order to truly encapsulate the horizon of thought that dominated our period of study.

The myth of Demeter and Persephone has always been one that invoked much childlike wonder within my core, it was initially introduced to a much younger version of myself as an ancient explanation for the coming and going of the seasons and it rapidly acquired sole reign over my reasoning. I was an extremely impressionable kid, and just so happened to be a firm believer that any word lucky enough to find itself within one of the hundreds of books from my family’s library must possess some hidden infallible truth yet to be deciphered and rescued from whatever lightless corner it took as its hiding sanctuary.

From within the endless diversity of the Ancient Greek tradition, Hades happened to have caught my gaze with the lightest of efforts, I have always been easily entranced by hierarchical and well structured realms of the afterlife, and after reading his reaction to one of Poseidon’s attacks during the Trojan War (funnily enough the only moment in ‘The Iliad’ where he is directionally mentioned) I knew he was predestined to become one of my most coveted mythological figures.

I would like to say that when confronted with his role within the myth of Demeter and Persephone I reacted with the expected outrage and disgust to his unjust doings, but no matter how anticlimactic it can be I must admit that my response wasn’t of great ardor, I believe that by that time I was already desensitized enough not only from the countless atrocities the gods from a multitude of traditions committed within every myth that happened to pass through my ears, but also as a consequence of our modern state of affairs when it comes to the representation of romantic, or simply interpersonal relationships for young women.

There have been many retellings of this myth, none that I happen to consider bewitching enough to actually entice me into reading them in their totality. The problem with our modern perception of this myth is that we have allowed ourselves to succumb to a collective Freudian slip, when we mean to say ‘Hades’, the name ‘Demeter’ drips from our lips and when the narrative is switched around, silence overtakes us all.

In our contemporary disarray we have forgotten that the ancients too were of flesh and blood, we have forsaken not only them but also ourselves by cleaning the mythological slate clean and saying that from now onwards our frame of mind reigns supreme, may those that bow before our despotical rules cease from perishing after the fall.

This was certainly a great work, not only was it enjoyable to read but it also gave me a sense of comfort to finally be indirectly in contact with someone with similar views to mine in regards to this myth and its variants. I would like to say that I happen to have a proposal for how to remediate the amount of misinformation and misinterpreting facts in regards to ancient literature that have propelled themselves into our global collective due to the current popularity of ancient retellings with current generations of readers, but I sadly, and most miserably do not.

When the world has succumbed to madness even the sanest minds will begin to doubt the sterility of their own sanity.

I am an extremely methodical person. Every time a certain area of study is capable of catching my wandering eye my first and foremost instinct is to grab the nearest pen and paper and begin my quest to find, categorize and catalog the best books in regards to my surging obsession.

I think that, maybe, it is a side effect of so many years of volunteering for my school's library, or my previous intentions of pursuing archival studies, or perhaps it is something much more primal, something buried deep enough within myself so that I find my own being unable to differentiate its beginning from its end, to recognize its core and say ‘I understand you and therefore I have become one with you, my fear for your existence is no longer justifiable, for you are me and I am you’.

All of this simply to delineate the brutality with which this book threw me off track, it stood there, affirming and yet easily lost within the bookshelves of titanic proportions that surrounded its being, as if fulfilling the role of a concrete barrier standing menacingly between the 14 euro paperback edition and the stranger taking it home.

I read some essays while still on the bookstore, I choose one whose title compelled me to go slightly further and actually sit down in the nearest flat surface in order to gather my thoughts concisely, ‘The half-woman god’ it wrote, it began with a brief introduction to the concept of gender in divinity and myth, how different cultures, especially the Greek and the Hindu, addressed engendred aspects within some of their mythical narratives. The essay strays from this initial development and connects it with the Hijra community in India, one which I only knew of at a surface level, ‘they are a group of eunuchs that dress in an extremely feminine manner aren’t they?’, ‘I heard they had an interestingly well defined hierarchy and kinship system which I thought of studying further some years ago…’, such thoughts invaded my mind but they were quickly shooed away for I was utterly engrossed by Salman’s writing, it possessed a certain power of transporting you beyond the real and suddenly planting you within the narrative at hand, a power only parallel to that possessed by childhood books you devotedly keep within your now much more mature bookshelf as if they are quintessential elements of a sacred shrine that is your built identity.

Rushdie doesn’t tell you what it’s like for the Hijra community in 5 clean paragraphs addressing each problem with a quick and direct solution, nor does he leave it all up to nuance and the blatant ‘perhaps it is too complex for us to wrap our individual minds about, it has layers, ah yes, many many layers’, as if these layers were not built and layered one on top of another with the intent of being known as a whole and individually in the first place.

Salman grabs your hand firmly and makes you sit alongside him at an alley cafe or a pub in the red light district, he transforms what you once thought of as a concept into flesh, he metamorphoses these abstractions within your mind into humans and gives you time to digest this new found reality.

There is much more addressed in the book, ‘What is freedom?’, ‘Is liberty as a whole, liberty from or liberty for?’, ‘How is anti-war literature eventually robbed of its initial meaning and intent with the ever growing gap between generations that lived through war and those that didn’t?’, ‘What is truth and how have we allowed politicians and religious institutions to define it for us?’.

This collection of essays is captivating and compelling, it holds you down by your shoulders and instead of telling you that you are about to undergo an info-dump of happenings that occurred when you weren't even born to witness anything of true value, it pushes gently towards you and begins a conversation, as if reuniting with an old friend whose acquaintance you always valued but just haven't been lucky enough to collide with in the middle of a busy street.