Back From the Dead
The New Yorker|June 12, 2023
The afterlife of Susan Taubes.
By Merve Emre
Back From the Dead

Previously unpublished work casts new light on Taubes, who killed herself in 1969.

In Sigmund Freud’s “Rat Man,” a case history of a neurotic young man, there is a curious footnote about the natural uncertainty of paternity. For a man to believe that his father truly was his father, he had to accept what no evidence could corroborate. Paternity was not a physical relation, Freud explained. It was an idea that sprang, as if already fully formed, from one’s mind. “The prehistoric figures which show a smaller person sitting upon the head of a larger one are representations of patrilineal descent,” he wrote. “Athena had no mother, but sprang from the head of Zeus.”

But Freud was wrong. Athena did have a mother: Metis, whom Zeus swallowed, fearing that the children she bore would be too mighty for him to govern. In some versions of the myth, Metis, while pregnant inside Zeus, made her daughter a breastplate, which Athena eventually adorned with the decapitated head of the gorgon Medusa, whose eyes held the power to turn anyone who looked upon her into stone. “To decapitate = to castrate,” Freud wrote elsewhere. Had he put the two heads together, he might have wondered at the paradox they presented: that the fierce and divine female child could symbolize both the extension of the patriarch’s authority and its undoing.

Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin June 12, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin June 12, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

THE NEW YORKER DERGISINDEN DAHA FAZLA HIKAYETümünü görüntüle
YULE RULES
The New Yorker

YULE RULES

“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”

time-read
6 dak  |
November 18, 2024
COLLISION COURSE
The New Yorker

COLLISION COURSE

In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.

time-read
8 dak  |
November 18, 2024
NEW CHAPTER
The New Yorker

NEW CHAPTER

Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?

time-read
10+ dak  |
November 18, 2024
STUCK ON YOU
The New Yorker

STUCK ON YOU

Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.

time-read
10+ dak  |
November 18, 2024
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
The New Yorker

HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG

Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.

time-read
10+ dak  |
November 18, 2024
REPRISE
The New Yorker

REPRISE

Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.

time-read
10 dak  |
November 18, 2024
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
The New Yorker

WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?

Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.

time-read
2 dak  |
November 18, 2024
COLOR INSTINCT
The New Yorker

COLOR INSTINCT

Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.

time-read
10+ dak  |
November 18, 2024
THE FAMILY PLAN
The New Yorker

THE FAMILY PLAN

The pro-life movement’ new playbook.

time-read
10+ dak  |
November 18, 2024
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
The New Yorker

President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.

On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.

time-read
8 dak  |
November 11, 2024