Continue reading "The Israeli
Castration Complex: From the 1972 Munich Massacre to Anne-Marie Slaughter's 'Crazy Idea'" at...
When Superman loses his powers, it's a kind of
castration complex by proxy.
The Oedipus complex with its vertical 'before and after' (the pre-oedipal mother and the father of the
castration complex) is the shibboleth around which the theory revolves.
Circumcision plays a key role in this analysis because of its literal embodiment of Jews' otherness, symbolic link with the Freudian
castration complex, and the majority Germanic view of Jewish men of the period as feminized.
For instance, Bruno Sibona extends the
castration complex he locates in or offloads onto one Hugo poem to three contemporary poets beyond our ken.
No reasonable literary critic would disagree with Patterson (and countless others') claim that the
castration complex can be a trite, oversimplifying allegory that obscures valuable historical specificities.