Filicide Contents
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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Frontispiece 2. The Discrimination of Violences I. FILICIDE 2. Filicidal Imperatives II THE FILICIDAL PAST 3. Greek Myth 4. Judeo-Christian Myth 5. European Myth 6. American Myth III THE FILICIDAL PRESENT 8. Children 9. The Paradox of Nonviolent Action
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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.