Filicide:
To support this disturbing thesis, Milburn re-examines a number of the most dominant myths of the Western world--Oedipus, Abraham, Jesus, Hamlet, Faust, and Frankenstein--from the child's point-of-view. Such a perspective yields astonishing results, turning received interpretations of the old stories on their heads. As final proof of the extent to which the filicidal past is not merely still with us but is controlling our behavior in dangerous, unexamined ways, Milburn re-reads more recent narratives of contemporary mythology as embodied in the HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Myra Breckinridge. Just one of several paradoxical conclusions: "Before George Washington was, Myra Breckinridge is." A book that challenges ideologies across the board from theology to science, from psychology to politics, Filicide offers hope for readers willing to re-examine some of our most fundamental assumptions in this increasingly unquestioning, theocratic age. Paperback, 178 pp.
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FILICIDE The Mythic Reality of Childhood by [Note: You can read our exclusive interview Internet Edition
Copyright © 1982 Douglas Milburn. Electronic Edition Copyright © 1996 Douglas
Milburn
For M.W.S. and her progeny:
PREFACE Children are still terrae incognitae. If, as seems more and more likely, the future judges ours to have been primarily an age of exploration, we will then be rightly celebrated for the wide range of our curiosity. At the same time we will be wondered at for our failure to explore in detail certain proximate areas. Paramount among these would have to be childhood. Not that we have been totally remiss. We have produced clever, even admirable works about children, running the gamut from theoretical studies (Reich) to empirical studies (Piaget) and practical studies (Dr. Spock). We have even on occasion found room for children in our art, though not very often. And--cries the educationist from the back row--don't forget the volumes and volumes on pedagogy. Indeed, let us not forget the schoolmasters and schoolmarms, for it is truly into their hands that we have delivered the children. Yes, books about children we have in great number. Filicide is a book about children from a curious perspective, namely that of an adult who has attempted to see and interpret history from the child's perspective while using adult abilities to describe and articulate the child's perceptions. The result is a book unlike most of our books about children in that it is heavily biased in favor of children. This bias may cause certain problems for the adult reader, since we are so accustomed to having things our way. The argument from childhood, for example, produces a number of unusual skirmishes with several of the most beloved idols of our age (rationality and science, to name two), the outcome of which is a series of judgments of adult behavior at the heart of the book. These judgments may at first strike the adult reader as outrageous, or hectoring, or both. The territory out of which I have tried to speak here--the world of children--is, as Novalis observed, peculiarly unknown to us We were after all once children ourselves. It is a world which is congruent with ours in time and space and which appears to share many of the same values. But how rarely and poorly we remember that world. It is perhaps less saccharine and surely more profound than we would have it be in our social imagery. The indirect route I have chosen to get into that world--that of myth--leads one into a topsy-turvy world where many of our most treasured truths turn out to be self-serving adult assumptions designed to shore up this rather shaky version of reality which we call civilization. If my formulations of the outrage of children are improperly outrageous, then I have spoken poorly in their stead. The children's words, if they could ever get our attention, would surely ring true no matter how outrageous the content. If my tone has in places become hectoring, then I have succumbed to the temptation of ideological argument. The children would surely speak with the natural force of long affliction. The book grew out of my own experience as child and adult, as son and father, experience which, I should note here, is not as negative as some readers might assume from the following pages. Observing my behavior as a father, I became curious to understand and eager to correct certain differences between my conscious intentions toward my children and my actual behavior. Initially my thinking was influenced and encouraged by the women's movement. For quite some time I thought I was writing a men's liberation book, or some such thing. I eventually realized that to write that sort of book in this patriarchy, one has to define one's masculine self in terms of the oppression of women. While there is much to be said for the cathartic effect of a proper mea culpa, that approach yielded only partial answers to the widespread problem of adult hypocrisy toward children. I had nowhere left to look but to the common heritage we all share beneath our sex roles, namely, childhood. What began parochially as a book of men's liberation became, presumptuously perhaps, a book of children's liberation and then, surprisingly, a book about the sources of human suffering and certain possibilities for release. Through it all the child's perspective prevailed. The review of history from that perspective produced several unexpected, rich juxtapositions. These range from an illumination of the way in which the two sex roles are more alike than they are different, to an unusual view of the nature of the interior corrf lict which informs and possibly creates what what we think of as personality. Given the nature of my thesis, the multiplication of examples presented an even larger problem than usual. The myths discussed are intended to be not exhaustive but suggestive. The reader whose interest is piqued will be able to generate additional examples at will. Only one work is missing which I would like to have been able to include. The proper explication of Anne Rice's extraordinary novel, Interview with the Vampire, which I believe can be given the same sort of close, filicidal reading which I give an earlier "horror" novel here, must await someone with a more profound feminist experience than my own. It may seem that I have
(childishly?) ignored or undervalued various aspects of the culture which are important to
us adults. For example, the name Bach will not be found in Filicide, though there are
passages of cultural critique which may at f irst strike the reader as excessively
negative and where some reference to the accomplishments of the past is called for. Some,
perhaps many, adults derive great solace from Bach as they make their way through a
difficult world. If I have not mentioned Bach and other comparable figures, it is because
in a world seen through child's eyes, Bach offers precious little solace. And the adult in
me is left to ask: what of comparable power and beauty and sustenance has this culture
created where children may reliably expect to find solace? The possible answers--this or
that fairy tale, this or that religious celebration, this or that intelligent television
program--when considered carefully indicate something of the degree of adult bias in the
culture. More important, that sort of question can lead us into an understanding of
children very much at odds with the most traditional as well as the most enlightened views
of the lost world which they, and perhaps we too, still inhabit.
Filicide:
The Mythic Reality of Childhood: Contents
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If "interference is violence; and violence, interference,"
then it follows that the acculturation of children, in Douglas Milburn's startling
analysis of the mythic reality of childhood, is the most pervasive and violent of
civilized acts. So limiting to our seemingly infinite potential is the act of
child-rearing that Milburn sees it as a kind of filicide: the psychic murder of children,
carried out, tragically, with the best of intentions, Milburn argues that, whatever its
long-ago survival value, this process of acculturation now only sows the seeds of
continuing violence, both psychic and physical. As adults we then spend much of our lives
trying to find a way out of the small cultural prison in which we've been placed.
