The mother archetype and the abyss

The current global crises, the health crisis and the information wars and their axiological aspects, have created risks and threats to the security of human beings and societies. The postmodern approach comes with a skepticism, subjectivism and relativism, a suspicion of the foundations of Western culture. Their systematic destruction, the use of language to promote an ideology becomes the source of chaos and decreases the degree of social cohesion in any society. The values of the postmodern world, tolerance and equality, come into conflfl ict with the traditional society that had at the top of the hierarchy a truth of a religious nature. The current COVID-19 crisis leads to a dangerous mutation of two state archetypal modelsT. Hobbes’s leviathan with C. G Jung’s devouring mother archetype, leads to a the limitation in rights and a degradation of the human being. In the curent information wars to ensure the security of the citizen, axiological immunization provides the way for global problems at the local level.

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The "Motherland": An Archetypal and Postcolonial Reading of Ghassan Kanafani's Umm Saad

Jordan Journal of Modern Languages and Literature ◽

10.47012/jjmll.13.4.5 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (4) ◽

pp. 681-700

Keyword(s):

Resistance Literature ◽

The Earth ◽

Archetypal Criticism ◽

Political Statement ◽

Arab Politics ◽

Human Need ◽

Mother Archetype ◽

Arabic Fiction ◽

Poor Peasant

Working at the intersection of postcolonial and archetypal criticism, this article investigates the role of women in resistance literature by looking at a piece of postcolonial Arabic fiction, Ghassan Kanafani's Umm Saad (1969). Rooted in Arab politics concerning land rights and anti-Zionist struggle, the text offers a related archetypal approach to the depiction of women in politicized literature. Umm Saad allegorizes the struggles of Palestinians to reclaim their land. A poor peasant woman, the titular heroine embodies the intimate connection between Palestinians and their land, acting as a helper to combative men and a primal symbol for attachment to the enduring land. Umm Saad is a personal mother and a trope for a feminized colonized territory, metaphorically representing the Palestinian nation and assuming mythological features enabling her to identify with the Earth Mother to send a message against dispossession. Since she embodies positive mother archetype symbolism (the personal mother and the Earth Mother), she acts as a source of fertility and protection. Expressing a political statement via the mother archetype, Kanafani appeals to a basic human need, i.e. the need to settle down in one’s land, which makes woman an indispensible part of the collective unconscious of any nation. Keywords: Archetypal Criticism; Kanafani; Mother(land); Postcolonial Arabic Fiction; Umm Saad.

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PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE MOTHER ARCHETYPE

Aspects of the Feminine ◽

10.2307/j.ctvzxx9ww.9 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 103-140

Keyword(s):

Psychological Aspects ◽

Mother Archetype

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The Legacy of the Terrible Mother Archetype in Post-War British Drama

Advances in Linguistics and Communication Studies - Handbook of Research on Translating Myth and Reality in Women Imagery Across Disciplines ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-6458-5.ch009 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 174-192

Author(s):

Işıl Şahin Gülter

Keyword(s):

Special Reference ◽

Creative Power ◽

British Drama ◽

The Feminine ◽

Mother Archetype ◽

Post War ◽

Comprehensive Framework

The theatre provides the playwrights with a public platform through which they open up a more comprehensive framework to reinterpret the concept of the feminine. The chapter, in which translation remains a fundamental instrument that will be utilized to offer new interpretations to old ideas about the feminine, explores how the post-war British woman playwright Ann Jellicoe translates a women-related myth and reinterprets the concept of the feminine in The Sport of My Mad Mother (w.1958, r.1962). In this context, the chapter focuses on the concept of the Terrible Mother archetype which represents the female creative power as well as the potential for destruction in the play within a special reference to Jung's premises on the archetypal nature of the femininity and maternity. Thus, the chapter indicates that Ann Jellicoe, taking on board and challenging the perceived social, ideological, and psychological ideals of femininity, reclaims the legacy of the female strength.

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