What exactly does womanhood mean? I’ve contemplated this question almost daily since learning that there was a name for the role I have been taught and expected to play. Gender is something I have spent pretty much my entire life thinking about. I have studied it, written about it, deconstructed it, and I have never been able to find a satisfactory answer to whether I can experience its existence outside the confines of patriarchal definitions. I cannot produce a beautiful, eloquent definition of my womanhood, because I only have the vocabulary provided to me by the oppressive system in which it emerged. I wish I could point to an internal feeling and say “this, this is my womanhood”, but instead what comes to mind when I contemplate my womanhood are my memories, reproductive traumas, violence, fear, betrayal, and the countless ways in which I have learnt the consequences of being born female in a world organised through gender. This is why I find the question so difficult… I have never experienced womanhood outside of patriarchy.

My body answers first

Neither pure biology nor pure socialisation offer me a satisfying understanding of what womanhood means to me. But in my personal experience, when I try to answer that question, the first thing I picture is the six hours I spent alone in my bathroom last year, bleeding out a pregnancy that, had I been given more of a choice, I would have held onto. My mind goes to the context surrounding that pregnancy: the interpersonal dynamic that almost exactly mirrored the broader structural context in which it occurred. I did not need a textbook to understand that my autonomy could be overridden by people and by structures. I understood it in a bathroom, alone, at the exact moment understanding it stopped being theoretical.

I can tell you, with total intellectual confidence, that gender is constructed, that womanhood is not destiny, that biology is not the final word on anything. What I can also tell you is that the situation in which my reproductive choices became entangled with another person's power over me was as profoundly bodily as it was profoundly social. What was targeted in that moment was my female body and its reproductive capacity, but what happened to my body was not simply a biological event. It was shaped by relationships, institutions, consent, coercion, reproductive politics, and the unequal distribution of power - all of which are shaped by patriarchy’s normative framework of gender.

My body and institutions

Beyond the patriarchal dynamics within the intimate, when I think of my womanhood personally, I think of the institutions that failed me. I think of the clinic that should have ensured I was safe, informed, and consenting. I think about the institutions I turned to in the aftermath, the ones who protected my abuser and silenced me. I think about the institutions that protected themselves, their reputations, and their profitability at the expense of the safety of all the female victims who have come forward.

This is perhaps why I personally cannot separate my own womanhood from the institutions that have defined and weaponised it. The subject (in this case, the “woman”), is not formed outside power and subsequently subjected to it - it is formed and rendered intelligible by these institutions. The creation of womanhood is structural; at least that is my experience. Power produces the categories we are then judged against, the standard of the credible complainant, the acceptable victim, the woman whose account is trustworthy versus the one who is difficult, dramatic, or wrong. I did not fail to be believed because the truth was unclear. I failed to be believed because the categories I was being measured against were never built to hold what happened to me as fully real. That is not an accident of my particular case. It is what those categories were built to do.

I experienced myself through structures that had already decided, in many ways, what being a woman meant.

Womanhood as constraint

I think this is why I cannot conceptualise my womanhood beyond the negative. It has been unquestionably shaped by abuse, loss, interpersonal and institutional betrayal, discomfort, fear, and the never-ending performance of ideal femininity simply to be respected and accepted. Womanhood, for me, has meant learning how to perform femininity in such a way that I may be perceived as credible, assertive but not aggressive, sufficiently emotional but not irrational.

When people say their experience of womanhood is beautiful, I believe them. But I cannot relate to that beauty when my womanhood has consisted of learning how to survive it.

I don’t think I can claim that womanhood itself is inherently oppressive, or that the experience of womanhood can be reduced to suffering alone. But my experience of the concept has been remarkably shaped by the fact that I only ever encountered it through a patriarchal world. Before I ever had the opportunity to decide what womanhood meant to me, I had already been taught what it meant to everyone else.

Constructed, not chosen

It is true that one is not born a woman but rather becomes one (de Beauvoir, 1949). But if “woman” was something I became, why does it not feel alterable to me? My womanhood does not feel like something I have authorship over. My womanhood being a construction, a product of discourse, separate from my femaleness, does not make it any less consequential than if it were a pre-discursive, biological fact. Social constructs have enormous material consequence. Money, nations, and the law are all constructions with world-shaping effects. My womanhood - the category I was declared into by virtue of my anatomy - is at the root of most of my experiences.

To have been declared a “girl” the second I exited the womb was at once a command and a threat, rather than a mere observation. To be raised a girl and socialised (or rather, disciplined) into womanhood was not my choice. To continue to live in a world today where this womanhood of mine has consequences… is not my choice. Because of how the world functions around these categories of gender, my womanhood does not feel empowering; it feels like a life sentence. One I can’t get out of simply by soul-searching or contemplating my own inner essence. I can deconstruct my gender all I like, but I haven’t ever felt as if I can escape the way it continues to construct my life.

Do I “feel” like a “woman”?

“Woman” is not a natural category but a political one, one structured by and within patriarchy. This is the only way I have ever been able to conceptualise it. I don’t know what it would be like to “feel” like a woman outside of these patriarchal structures where womanhood is enforced, sometimes violently. There is no essence within my psyche that announces itself as “woman”. I cannot locate my womanhood within my consciousness apart from patriarchy. It just doesn’t feel possible.

Sometimes I’m not even sure if my experiences have been shaped more by my body (my sex) or by the social interpretation of it (my gender). The two have seemed inseparable in my own experience. I know what it feels like to inhabit a female body, and for that body to come with particular demands, expectations, roles, and oppression. Society interprets, weaponises, and controls this female body of mine through the concept of womanhood.

Some of the harm I’ve experienced was not directly about my body, some of it pointed to my role, my position, the instrumental use I was presumed to have. A lot of the treatment I experienced was not rooted in my chromosomes or my uterus. But I cannot fully disregard my body in all this. The pregnancy, the bleeding, was not political in any abstract sense while it was happening. It was physical, specific, mine. Perhaps I don’t need to figure out whether my experiences have been shaped by my femaleness or my womannness - because for me they arrived together, indistinguishable, on the same day, in the same room. I can theorise the distinction. I have not been able to feel it.

Girlhood

I don’t know what womanhood as an essence is. Whatever womanhood is underneath, I only know what it has required of me on the surface. I only know womanhood as a constant performance of an ideal femininity I have never fully believed in but have rarely felt safe enough to abandon. When I think of my womanhood, it is inseparable from my girlhood.

When I think of times when I’ve felt womanhood as a performance most pungently, I think back to my childhood, to all the times I felt embarrassed for existing too wholly, laughing too loudly, asserting an opinion too boldly. I remember the interactions with men and boys that showed me, when I was a little girl, that manhood comes with its own inherent, patriarchally prescribed relationship to girlhood, and it is one of sexual domination, entitlement, instrumental use, and degradation. And because this is never explicitly articulated, you’re raised, as a girl, to believe it to be normal. To be groped, to be groomed, to make yourself silent and small out of a desire to go unnoticed, but at the same time to want to be noticed by someone safe, to learn to cry for help in manners deemed socially acceptable, to want the inner turmoil made visible somehow, to starve yourself to get closer and closer to a standard that is never explicitly verbalised but always mutually understood, to be abused by someone you love, to have sex and wonder years later whether it was consensual or coerced, and eventually, to unconsciously seek out these same dynamics as a grown and consenting adult… this is what I have always experienced girlhood and womanhood as.

Can womanhood exist outside of patriarchy?

I’ve always said that if womanhood were offered to me as a choice, I’d have rejected it. Some might tell me that I can reject my womanhood, that I can free myself from the expectations of “women” by simply ridding myself of any “femininity”. But that’s not true, in my experience (trust me, I have tried).

To assume that I can shed my womanhood and experience the world differently is to assume that my womanhood has an existence of its own, independent of the structures that created and enforce it. I cannot leave my womanhood folded neatly on my bedroom floor before I go to work each morning. It is something that I have been trained into, something that is inscribed onto me, something that will externally define me - regardless of how I wish to internally define myself - which defines every single aspect of my life in a world structured through gender. If gender is a performance, it is not a performance that is mine alone. It is co-constituted through every interaction and institution that regulates my being. Whenever I have refused to perform femininity, I still walked into a world that treated me according to my assigned role.

Rejecting my femininity, in fact, cost me the safety that performance bought me. Because the performance isn’t solely mine, and it didn’t originate with me. It is a direct product of patriarchy.

Conclusion

I don't have a redemptive ending for this, and I'm not going to manufacture one. My relationship to womanhood has never been simple (has anyone’s?), and I cannot manufacture a beautiful definition because that might be more comforting. My experience of womanhood is not limited to my body, but my body has profoundly shaped it. My body, my reproductive experience, the sexual violence I have endured, institutions, relationships, etc - they all shape my “feeling” of womanhood in irreversible ways.

Perhaps one day I will be able to define womanhood for myself in terms that feel less like constraint and more like possibility. Perhaps I will discover something in the category that belongs to me rather than something that was imposed upon me. Or perhaps I will ultimately conclude that womanhood cannot be defined at all. For now, I can only say what it has meant to me. And what it has meant to me has rarely been beautiful. But perhaps there is something important in refusing to make it beautiful before I have had the opportunity to decide what it means.

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Introduction

In the age of neoliberalism and “girlboss” feminism, we are constantly told that we as women have made it. We’re encouraged to dream big, pursue a career, become financially independent, embrace our sexuality, and curate the perfect lives for ourselves. Contemporary culture insists that we are freer than ever before. In this narrative, feminism has done its job, and there is nothing more left to accomplish. Feminist cultural theorist Angela McRobbie poses a difficult question: what if this language of “empowerment” is another form of control?

In Top Girls? Young Women and the Post-Feminist Sexual Contract, McRobbie argues that patriarchy has not simply disappeared now that women are formally liberated in most of the world. Rather, patriarchy adapted alongside neoliberal capitalism. Women are no longer overtly kept out of the workplace, universities, and public life. Instead, we are encouraged to become productive, attractive, sexually free, and endlessly self-improving subjects.

The catch is that this freedom is conditional. We can “have it all” as long as we perfectly manage our bodies, careers, emotions, relationships, and public image.

What is neoliberalism?

Theorists such as David Harvey, Pierre Bourdieu, and Wendy Brown argue that neoliberalism is not just an economic system, but a way of organising society and shaping the ways individuals think about themselves and others.

Harvey describes neoliberalism as a political project built around free markets, privatisation, deregulation, and individual competition. Under neoliberalism, social welfare is deprioritised, and individuals are encouraged to be self-responsible. In the bootstrapping logic of neoliberalism, structural issues such as poverty, unemployment, burnout, hunger, financial struggles, etc., are treated as private issues that individuals ought to solve on their own. According to this rationality, if you’re poor or unemployed, you simply need to work harder, be more efficient, manage yourself properly, subject every decision you make to a cost-benefit analysis, and become better adjusted to the logic of the market.

Bourdieu takes this even further. He argues that the Darwinian logic of neoliberalism destroys collective structures and ways of thinking and replaces them with isolation and competition. Communities weaken, solidarity weakens, and everyone becomes an individual competitor trying to survive. The result is anxiety, insecurity, and constant pressure to perform.

Drawing on Michel Foucault, Wendy Brown argues that neoliberalism changes the very meaning of being human in that people are encouraged to think of themselves as little businesses. Your body, your personality, your relationships, your education, and your social media presence all become something to optimise and invest in. You are expected to constantly improve yourself and remain competitive. And this is where McRobbie enters the conversation.

The “empowered woman” under neoliberalism

McRobbie argues that contemporary culture presents women with what she calls a “new sexual contract.” Women are offered visibility, education, careers, consumer freedom, and even forms of sexual liberation. But the catch is that feminism itself must quietly disappear.

Feminism today is treated as outdated, as it has supposedly already achieved everything it set out to achieve, including equality. In terms of institutional rights, we can vote, we can work, we can technically become a CEO. This leaves many questioning what feminists are still complaining about. This is what McRobbie calls postfeminism. Feminism is simultaneously acknowledged and erased. Society borrows the language of empowerment while stripping away its political critique.

This is nowhere more explicit than in beauty culture today. Things like makeup, plastic surgery, dieting, “hyper-femininity”, and “wellness” are rarely framed as patriarchal expectations anymore. Instead, women are told they are doing these things for themselves. The pressure remains, but it disguises itself as freedom and self-care. This is a “postfeminist masquerade”: women are encouraged to participate in their own surveillance voluntarily. The ideal woman is no longer simply obedient; she is self-disciplined.

Even sexual liberation becomes conditional. McRobbie’s concept of the “phallic girl” describes women who appear to enjoy freedoms once associated with men (drinking openly, engaging in casual sex, being sexually confident and publicly visible, etc). On the surface, this looks liberating. But these freedoms come with intense expectations and conditions. Women must remain desirable, emotionally controlled, professionally successful, and “respectable” all at once (all while unevenly bearing the responsibility for reproductive consequences).

The labour of being a woman

One of the most powerful implications of McRobbie's argument is that under neoliberal patriarchy, womanhood itself increasingly becomes a form of labour. Historically, feminist scholars have drawn attention to the unpaid labour women perform through childcare, domestic work, and emotional caregiving. However, neoliberalism expands the boundaries of what counts as work. The modern woman is expected not only to perform productive labour in the workplace, but also to continuously labour on herself.

Under neoliberal logic, the body becomes a project. Women are expected to invest significant time, energy, and money into maintaining their appearance through skincare routines, makeup, haircare, fitness regimes, dieting, cosmetic procedures, fashion, and wellness practices. What was once recognised as social pressure is increasingly reframed as self-care, self-expression, or empowerment. Yet the labour remains.

This labour extends far beyond the body. Women are increasingly expected to engage in emotional labour by carefully managing their feelings, relationships, and reactions. They must be confident but not arrogant, assertive but not aggressive, ambitious but not intimidating, attractive but not vain, sexually liberated but not promiscuous. Every aspect of femininity becomes a balancing act requiring constant self-monitoring. The neoliberal woman is expected to curate not only her appearance, but also her personality.

Crucially, this labour is rarely recognised as labour. Unlike paid employment, there is no salary for maintaining beauty standards, managing emotions, cultivating likability, or constantly improving oneself. Yet failure to perform this work often carries social penalties. Women who neglect their appearance may be judged as unprofessional. Women who express anger may be labelled irrational. Women who fail to balance career success with femininity may be criticised regardless of which expectation they prioritise. The burden of navigating these contradictory demands falls upon individual women rather than the social structures that produce them.

This is perhaps one of neoliberal patriarchy's most effective strategies. Rather than excluding women from public life, it incorporates them into the labour market while simultaneously expanding the amount of labour required to be recognised as a successful woman. The contemporary ideal woman must excel at paid work, maintain an attractive appearance, manage her emotional life, cultivate meaningful relationships, remain physically healthy, and continuously improve herself. Freedom is granted, but it comes attached to an endless list of responsibilities. As McRobbie demonstrates, the neoliberal promise of empowerment often conceals an ever-expanding workload, one in which womanhood itself becomes a full-time job.

Conclusion

Women’s liberation is far from complete. While young women have undoubtedly gained access to education, careers, and forms of public visibility that previous generations could only imagine, McRobbie argues that these gains have been absorbed into a neoliberal system that demands constant self-management and self-improvement. Drawing on broader critiques of neoliberalism from David Harvey, Pierre Bourdieu, and Wendy Brown, her work demonstrates that power today often operates not through overt restriction but through the cultivation of subjects who willingly regulate themselves. The modern woman is expected to be endlessly productive, attractive, resilient, ambitious, and emotionally intelligent, transforming every aspect of her life into a site of labour and optimisation. What appears as freedom can therefore mask new forms of discipline. McRobbie's central insight is not that women are less free than before, but that patriarchy has adapted to the language of empowerment, choice, and individuality. By recognising how these forces operate, we are better equipped to distinguish genuine liberation from a system that simply asks women to work harder in the name of freedom.

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But why are they so blinded to his true character? Why is it so easy for them to dismiss the victim’s claims? The answer is that they, too, are the victims of his manipulation. And as a result, they have become the new perpetrators and perpetuators of his abuse in a society that is designed to protect entitled men.

Grooming in abusive relationships

Grooming is often associated with a very specific set of scenarios: an older man and a younger woman; a teacher and student; a priest; a family member; etc. Grooming is imagined mostly as situations involving some sort of formal authority, and as relationships that are innately inappropriate or imbalanced. It is often treated as something exceptional which does not take place in relationships between two autonomous, consenting adults. But grooming is not limited to those outwardly predatory relationships. Grooming is a key part of abusive romantic relationships.

In romantic relationships, grooming can appear initially as extreme devotion and quick intensity. It can start with love-bombing, future-faking, and it usually disguises itself as inexplicable passion that feels flattering rather than coercive. But slowly, boundaries are re-negotiated, broken down, and ignored. Disrespect is framed as concern, criticism as care, and discomfort as misunderstanding. Over time, the victim is slowly coerced, controlled, and manipulated into a dynamic that is so subtle it will become almost impossible for her to realise she is being abused.

Because she has been “eased into” the abuse, so to speak, she will not easily be able to name it. At this point, she has learnt to second-guess every alarm bell going off about her abusive partner, and she has lost all trust in her own perception of reality. Grooming in this context serves to weaken the victim’s version of events. But abusers don’t stop there. They extend these tactics to their entire social circle.

Grooming the social circle

Abusers don’t seek to simply control their victim; they also seek to control the story that might one day be told about the control itself. Long before the victim ever speaks out, an abuser will seek to pre-emptively preserve his reputation, manage how his actions are perceived, and evade the social consequences of his actions.

To do this, the abuser must expand his manipulative and abusive tactics far beyond the privacy of his relationship. To avoid his victim being believed, he must groom friends, family members, co-workers, and anyone in his broader social network that may one day hear of the abuse. The social grooming starts quietly. While he privately works to destroy his victim’s sense of reality, he publicly works to create an image of himself as a man of stability, calmness, reason, innocence, and even victimhood. And in painting himself this way, he actively sets out to paint his victim oppositely.

To his social network, the victim is implied to be the irrational, unstable, unreasonable, guilty party. This smear campaign begins long before the victim ever speaks out. It is calculated and strategic. He knows his actions constitute abuse, and he knows that if his victim were to let it slip, everyone would know this, too. But before there is ever even an accusation, he must get ahead of the narrative. Before she has even realised she is being abused, the seed of doubt has been sewn in her circles. The groundwork for disbelief must be laid in advance if the abuser hopes to protect his image. This way, he ensures that, upon coming forward, his victim will inevitably be met with disbelief and hostility. The truth may one day arrive, but it will land on meticulously deafened ears. This is the anticipatory silencing of the victim. She is not silenced by force, but by the thorough and deliberate shaping of the conditions in which her story may one day be heard.

This is not a simple emotional power imbalance; it is epistemic. The abuser gets to control how the victim is received, how he is perceived, and who is understood as credible. These smear campaigns are inherently misogynistic, relying on gendered tropes like the “hysterical” woman; the scorned woman; the vindictive liar; the jealous girlfriend; the “crazy ex”; etc. The abuser doesn’t need to invent these notions; they exist already, just waiting for him to weaponise them. And in doing so, the victim is once again stripped of her agency, her credibility, and her dignity. Anything the victim says, any proof she provides, will irrevocably be filtered through her abuser’s lens.

And so, people will choose his side. Not because the victim lacks credibility, but because her audience has been groomed as well. But being victims of his manipulation does not absolve them of their secondary abuse of the victim. It does not excuse complicity, silence, disbelief, or even neutrality. Everyone has a moral obligation to interrogate the narratives we are provided with, and everyone has the responsibility to examine how they came to believe anything they believe. Failure to do so results in turning us not only into witnesses of abuse, but active extensions of it. It is our responsibility to believe victims.

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Introduction

There is a violence in being seen. There is a silent, invisible cruelty when the female body exists as a spectacle. What happens when a woman’s body stops being her own? When perfection isn’t a personal goal, but a performance demanded by a gaze that she can never hope to escape? In Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan and Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, two women chase an unachievable, internalised ideal of perfection.

Black Swan’s (2010) Nina Sayers is a psychologically fragile ballerina consumed by her desire to embody discipline and perfection. Under this pressure, Nina’s reality slowly begins to crumble. After landing the coveted lead role in the Swan Lake ballet, Nina becomes obsessive, paranoid, and her real and fictional worlds begin to blur into one. Nina’s story is one of the horror and violence of feminine performance, and completely losing one’s sense of self to “perfection”.

The Substance’s (2024) Elisabeth Sparkle is an ageing celebrity who is fired from her television role as an aerobics instructor the moment she turns fifty, discarded by a culture obsessed with beauty, youth, and flawlessness. Desperate to reclaim her status, she turns to a mysterious substance which promises to restore her to her former glory. The “substance” creates a copy in her image, one of youth and perfection. But what follows is a spine-chilling, gory body-horror descent into violence and jealousy.

This piece explores how Black Swan and The Substance reveal the brutality of the male gaze and capitalist commodification, and how the impossible-to-reach standards of perfection haunt the female psyche.

The body as a commodity

On a material level, both Black Swan and The Substance portray the horror of the commodification of the female body. From a Marxist lens, the pursuit of perfection is the pursuit of a marketable product, a commodity to be bought, sold, and consumed by others. When the body ceases to hold exchange value in a neoliberal society, it is discarded.

In Black Swan, Nina’s skill is a commodity. Her value is tied to her ability to dance perfectly, and her ability to embody a role and be moulded by her director. Nina is not her own subject, but a vessel for a performance created for the generation of profit (either in the form of ticket sales or prestige). Beth McIntyre, a former prima ballerina who is discarded after she ages and no longer serves the company’s interests, is Nina’s constant reminder of this. This constant awareness of her disposability alienates Nina from her body and her sense of self. She is no longer simply Nina, but a slave to the ballet machine.

The Substance offers an even more literal critique. Elisabeth’s body is a product which has aged past its shelf life and is discarded the minute it is deemed no longer palatable to the masses. Upon her consumption of the “substance”, a younger, more marketable version of herself is created, one which is granted the opportunity to enter the market based on her perceived perfection and desirability. But this new, perfectly engineered body, Sue, is not hers to control. Sue belongs to the cultural machine that produced her. Elisabeth’s doubling reveals how women’s bodies are infinitely replaceable products, rendering their true selves and identities irrelevant as their worth is extracted directly from the physical. Under capitalism, a woman’s worth is determined solely by her body’s ability to conform to standards of perfection and desirability.

Both films touch on how capitalism not only commodifies labour, but also skill, bodies, and appearances. The violence suffered by Nina and Elisabeth is not an isolated or random occurrence; it is systemic. It is born out of the capitalistic drive to extract value and discard waste. Youth, beauty, and perfection are commodities with expiration dates. These women are not discarded and destroyed because of any inherent worthlessness or inability, but because they exist within a system designed to consume them.

The gaze and performing perfection

The cruelty of constant visibility does not only come from the knowledge that you are constantly being watched, but the way you learn to observe yourself through the eyes of others. Feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey writes about how the “male gaze” positions women in cinema as objects to be looked at, objectifying and sexualising them for male pleasure, rather than framing them as independent agents. But the horror deepens when the gaze is no longer just external. It is here that we find an intersection between Mulvey’s “male gaze” and French post-structuralist Michel Foucault’s “panopticon”.

The panopticon is a circular prison design where a watchman is able to observe every prisoner without them being aware when they are being watched. The brilliance (and horror) of the panopticon lies in this uncertainty. Prisoners, aware of the potential of being watched, begin to regulate their own behaviour, no longer needing direct instruction and punishment to obey. The prisoner has internalised the gaze. Foucault uses the panopticon as a metaphor to describe the ways in which norms and invisible systems of power govern, discipline, and regulate bodies and minds.

In both movies, the female characters become their own wardens, internalising the “gaze” and policing themselves and their performances accordingly. Nina lives under constant and suffocating observation from her mother and her director, Thomas. She performs for her director, who manipulates her through a combination of praise and degradation, leaving her in an endless loop of fragile striving. She performs for her controlling mother, a former ballerina whose failed aspirations have made Nina’s perfection her only salvation. And perhaps most devastatingly, she performs for an invisible audience. She performs for a faceless, omnipresent gaze that exists not only in front of the stage but in her psyche. For Nina, perfection is a desperate, self-destructive performance for others, rather than a personal aspiration.

Elisabeth’s ever-present audience is a culture that values aesthetics, youth, and desirability above all else. As a TV star, her image is her currency, and her worth is ultimately dependent on her appearance. When the ageing process begins to unravel her image, she is discarded. Elisabeth resorts to taking “the substance” in an attempt to regain control and reclaim the patriarchal beauty she once possessed. Through her copy, Sue, Elisabeth performs “perfection” once again, for a world that has decided that without her beauty, she is obsolete.

The fragmentation of the self

In post-structuralist philosophy, the idea of a stable, coherent, and static“self” is an illusion. Thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Judith Butler argue that there is no fixed and innate essence. Rather, identity is shaped and constructed through socio-cultural contexts, discourse, and power. The characters of Nina and Elisabeth display this instability, with the motif of doubling showing the women losing their grasp of a unified sense of self under the never-ending pressure of perfection.

Nina exists in a constant state of fracture. Emotionally, she has split herself in two: on the one hand, she is the virginal white swan, and on the other hand, she is the sensual, dark, black swan. Psychologically, she exists in two different realms: reality, where she is a dancer in a ballet, and the fictional universe in which the ballet takes place. These selves are not neatly separated. They bleed into one another, with the lines between them blurring more and more as Nina sinks into a psychosis, trying to reconcile them. Rather than simply reflecting “true” reality, mirrors become portals, and Nina hallucinates each of her fragmented selves. She falls apart as she becomes unable to distinguish between herself and others, the real and the fictional, performance and personhood.

Elisabeth’s fragmentation is less metaphorical, as she has split into two, quite literally. Her younger double, created by the substance, embodies patriarchal flawlessness. Sue embodies what she no longer can: the culture’s obsession with youth and beauty. Elisabeth becomes severed from her own subjectivity, her body becoming a battleground where identity crumbles under the weight of the expectation of perfection. The grotesqueness lies not only in this physical split, but in the realisation that her perfected self was never truly hers, but the culture’s.

The violence of the body

When the body becomes a site of performance and control, it ceases to be a private vessel. Out of this emerges violence: violence of the self against the self, and violence of the self against the system demanding perfection. In both Black Swan and The Substance, body horror makes visible the invisible violence of the systems that demand the performance of perfection, and the violence of one’s body no longer being one’s own.

Nina’s body is a battleground for control. Her body (and the striving for its perfection) falls under the control of her mother, her director, and her ballet company. Her body begins to betray her as the pressure to embody both the black and white swan perfectly intensifies. She hallucinates feathers breaking through her skin, scratches herself raw in her sleep, and picks away at her skin as if trying to peel away the physical parts of her that do not conform. Her actions could be seen as a symptom of her madness, but they may also be acts of rebellion and desperation. These acts of self-harm may be the only means to exercise self-control over a body that others have claimed. Aronofsky uses these bodily disruptions to visualise the violence of the demand for feminine perfection. The film’s harrowing climax sees Nina’s complete physical transformation into the black swan. This transformation is both a triumph and a tragedy, as Nina finally achieves perfection, but only by destroying herself in the process.

The Substance takes this metaphorical violence into the corporeal realm. Elisabeth’s body is not simply controlled and self-disciplined but fully split, dismembered, and replicated. Images of shattered bones, melting flesh, and bodies being split open and torn apart make literal the horror of a culture that rips into and discards the bodies of women when they no longer cater to the gaze. Elisabeth’s body is mutilated, not only by others but by herself. She is an active participant in her own undoing as she desperately attempts to reclaim the power she never truly had as a woman in show business.

Through the spectacle of mutilated or transformed bodies, horror becomes the language that communicates the psychological and physical cruelty of objectification. There is a horror in the realisation that this violence is ordinary, living unnoticed in cosmetic advertisements, mirrors, audition rooms, and everyday beauty standards. These films show how the pursuit of conformity to patriarchal standards of perfection is an act of socially-sanctioned self-torment which, in the cases of Nina and Elisabeth, ultimately ends in death.

Conclusion

Though separated by time and fictional landscapes, both films portray women who are devoured by the same predator: the commodification of the body, the gaze, and the endless demand to remain perfect. Perfection is not simply a goal, it is a life sentence. It turns the body into a combat zone, a theatre where they are trapped in a performance that they did not choreograph. Under the relentless gaze of capitalism, patriarchy, and culture, their bodies rebel, and they become participants in their own torture.

Through gruesome and grotesque body horror and psychological terror, these films explore the structural violence of what it means to be a woman in this neoliberal, patriarchal society. These systems, which compel the feminine psyche to perform its own undoing, leave no survivors. To be a woman is to be a commodity, a spectacle, and ultimately, a ghost.

Bibliography

Foucault, M., 1975. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Translated by A. Sheridan. Paris: Gallimard.

Mulvey, L., 2001. Unmasking the gaze: some thoughts on new feminist film theory and history. Lectora (Barcelona), (7), pp.5–14.

In 1968, black students, led by Steve Biko, parted ways with the National Union for South African Students (NUSAS) and formed their own organisation, the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO). Steve Biko’s departure reflected a deep-seated and ongoing conflict between the ideologies and approaches of black students and that of white liberals (Magaziner, 2009: 222). Many black students viewed the liberal white students in NUSAS as lacking the militancy required in the liberation struggle, and thus forming part of white imperialism in their desires and ways of thinking (Veranes, 2021: 237). Additionally, white students did not experience the forms of oppression that their black counterparts did, and as such, were only able to analyse political issues from their white points of view (Veranes, 2021: 237). This historical event exemplifies the dangers and difficulties of solidarity amongst people of colour and white allies in the fight against white supremacy. To answer the question of whether solidarity between whites and non-whites is possible, this paper will take inspiration from the philosophy of Steve Biko, with a special focus on South Africa as an exemplary case to demonstrate the pitfalls of solidarity between people of colour and white allies. After exploring a critical philosophy of race approach to race and racism, as well as analysing the features of blackness and whiteness, this paper will touch on numerous ways in which whiteness does make for productive allies in the struggle against racism and white supremacy. However, this claim is made with a major caveat: solidarity may be possible in the future, under certain conditions.

A critical philosophy of race approach to race and racism

Critical philosophy of race, which differs from uncritical approaches to race which view race as natural and biological (Mills, 2016: 1), often takes a social constructionist approach to the concept of race (Mills, 2015: 47). Rather than conceiving of race as merely genotypical and phenotypical differences amongst different groups (Glasgow, 2017: 170), a social constructionist approach recognises the socio-historical contingency of the nature of race (Mills, 2015: 47). Racism, which is premised on racial categorisation, has been defined in numerous ways. In its institutionalised form, racism can be seen in arguably its most pronounced form in South Africa’s Apartheid regime in which racial hierarchies (Mills, 2015: 43) consisted of whites in a position of superiority, with non-whites subjugated underneath them. Steve Biko (2005: 50) defines racism as a situation in which “whites derive pleasure and security in entrenching white racism and further exploiting the minds and bodies of the unsuspecting black masses”. Sally Matthews (2015: 124) notes that racism is not always a conscious individual prejudice. Rather, it operates silently and unconsciously, with whiteness becoming a universalised norm against which everything is measured (Vice, 2010: 324). One of the basic tenets of critical race theory, which is closely linked with critical philosophy of race, is the belief that racism is an ordinary, common, and everyday phenomenon (Delgado & Stefancic, 2023: 19). Racism is not about extreme incidents, but rather exists in “mundane practices”, discourse, and modes of thought (Van Der Westhuizen, 2016: 227).

Blackness

In I Write What I Like, Biko (2005: 48) defines blackness using two criteria: “those who are by law or tradition politically, economically and socially discriminated against as a group in the South African society” as well as those who identify themselves “as a unit in the struggle towards the realisation of their aspirations”. Biko’s definition of blackness represents a constructionist approach to race, acknowledging the contextual rather than biological constitution of racial categories and oppressed racial groups. This is especially highlighted by Biko’s insistence that blackness is not found in one’s pigmentation but in one’s attitude (Biko, 2005: 48).

Since blackness is not a matter of pigmentation, it is Biko’s belief that any individual with Black Consciousness who falls into a group being oppressed under the Apartheid regime could be classified as black (Biko, 2005: 48). Biko (2005: 48) calls for solidarity between all oppressed racial groups in South Africa, including Africans, coloureds, and Indians. Although, Biko notes the fragmentation of politically black people due to the aspirations of certain individuals and groups to whiteness (Biko, 2005: 36). He describes coloured South Africans, for example, as secretly wishing to become “brown Afrikaners” and seeking entry into whiteness (Biko, 2005: 36). This coloured aspiration to whiteness, according to Lynsey Ebony Chutel and Tessa Dooms (2023: 43), is a result of the understanding that, under white supremacy, proximity to whiteness and adherence to white standards is one means by which to attempt to secure privilege. However, while many argue that the coloured identity itself is inextricably linked with white supremacy (Chutel & Dooms, 2023: 44), solidarity amongst oppressed racial groups against white supremacy is still possible. Perhaps a more complex matter is the question of solidarity between oppressed racial groups and white allies, which is complicated by several factors and features inherent within whiteness.

Whiteness and white supremacy

To understand what makes solidarity amongst oppressed racial groups and white allies difficult and potentially more harmful than beneficial, it is necessary to dissect the characteristics that constitute whiteness and white allies. For the purposes of this paper, white allies can be thought of as white liberals who are not necessarily “signatories” to the racial contract in which non-whites are oppressed and subjugated, but are still “beneficiaries”, as explained by Charles Mills (2019: 11). White allies can be thought of as whites who – although they may oppose institutional and individual racism – are assigned the normative conceptions of rights and freedoms, which are denied to their non-white counterparts (Mills, 2019: 11). One of the core features of whiteness (which is, indeed, also present in white allies who are not metaphorical signatories) is the state of viewing the world through the lens of one’s whiteness (Vice, 2010: 324). Whiteness and white supremacy constitute an epistemic position which informs one’s meaning-making processes, with whiteness acting as the standard by which norms are formed and measured (Vice, 2010: 324).

Whites do not only come to understand the world through their white lenses, but they also come to understand themselves in a whitely manner. Michel Foucault (1982: 777) describes this process of meaning-making and identity formation as subjectification: the means by which people are made subjects. The process of subjectification is interconnected with discourse, which serves as a paradigm in which normative conceptions are formed and internalised (Green, 2010: 319). In South Africa, the system of Apartheid and the discourse emanating therefrom became the foundation which provided white South Africans with their identities, values, and belief systems (Van Der Westhuizen, 2016: 223). Apartheid served as what Christi Van Der Westhuizen (2016: 223) describes as the “explanatory framework” from which whites drew normative ideas of law and order, and due to the deeply ingrained nature of the discourse of Apartheid, any resistance to this structure of de jure racism was perceived as unlawful and chaotic.

Presently, white identity is tied to white supremacy in which whites hold a structural position of superiority over non-whites (Matthews, 2015: 113). White supremacy can be defined as a “power structure of formal or informal rule, socioeconomic privilege, and norms for the differential distribution of material wealth and opportunities, benefits and burdens, rights and duties” (Matthews, 2015: 117). While de jure white supremacy in which white privilege is written into legislation might be a thing of the past, de facto white supremacy in which racism remains alive in everyday economic and social realities remains largely in the form of the prioritisation of white epistemologies (Mills, 2015: 98). This structural position combined with the habit of viewing social phenomena through the lens of whiteness is not conducive to being an effective and dedicated ally in the struggle people of colour face against white supremacy. The structural position of whiteness makes for a subject who stands within the oppressive structure that subjugates and represses non-whites, and the epistemic position of whiteness makes for a subject who inevitably thinks “whitely”. These positions held by whites in their whiteness make for an environment where collaboration and solidarity between non-whites and white allies is thus not possible or desirable.

The pitfalls of solidarity

Upon analysing the core characteristics of historically contingent blackness and whiteness, differences in the socio-political construction of different racial groups becomes apparent. I argue that main pitfall of solidarity between white allies and people of colour in the fight against racism and white supremacy stems from white people’s lack of experience with racism. Due to the structural position accompanying whiteness (Matthews, 2015: 113), whites are not subjected to the forms of racism faced by non-whites. White South Africans are not on the receiving end of racism in the form of disregard or the withholding of respect (Taylor, 2013: 80); structural, material, and economic oppression; structurally violent assimilation into a dominating culture at the hands of colonialists; and they are not implicated in a discourse which frames them as essentially and irreversibly inferior (Van Der Westhuizen, 2016: 223). Instead, white South Africans exist in a structure designed for their benefit and exist within a discourse which paints them as superior (Matthews, 2015: 113).

White South Africans’ inability to understand or relate to being the recipient of racism in any form has implications for their beliefs regarding race and racism. Many white South Africans try to downplay the severity and seriousness of racism, painting race relations as a mere secondary concern amongst the majority of the population (Msimang, 2022: 1). This can especially be seen in the Institute of Race Relation’s use of quantitative data from surveys that were designed with the intention to downplay the importance of racial issues in the minds of the South African public (Msimang, 2022: 1). However, even whites who acknowledge racism as an important issue and consider themselves allies in the struggle against racism may view racial oppression as being of secondary concern to class oppression. This can especially be seen in the positions held by white Marxist activists (Macqueen, 2018: 5). Biko notes how even whites who saw fault with the Apartheid system used class struggle as a “red herring” to distract black South Africans from the pursuit of racial liberation (Biko, 2005: 89).

Not only do many whites deny or downplay the structures of oppression based on race, but many white liberals have also garnered the reputation of displaying a sense of paternalism and condescension towards black South Africans engaged in liberation struggles (More, 2017: 11). White liberals during Apartheid were known for their paternalistic attitude towards black South Africans – a colonial attitude stemming from the notion of black people needing the assistance of whites due to their perceived incapability of doing anything for themselves (More, 2017: 11). Biko (2005: 89) describes how even well-intentioned white liberals display prejudice in their disbelief in black South Africans being able to think for themselves. This leads white liberals to impose their own methods for black South Africans to achieve liberation from white supremacy, and even vastly different visions of liberation (Biko, 2005: 89).

In terms of method, white liberals have tended to strongly enforce the values of non-racialism upon black South African liberation movements, claiming that a just society is one without racial categories (Biko, 2005: 64). In terms of vision, Biko describes white liberals as seeking to preserve rather than dismantle the structures held together by white supremacy (Biko, 2005: 63). Biko thus claims that it would be a mistake to “assume that whoever opposed Apartheid was an ally” (Biko, 2005: 63). The white liberal vision of a democratic South Africa did not entail the complete reformation of oppressive colonial structures, but rather the assimilation and allowance of black South Africans into these structures (Biko, 2005: 64). Thus, from a Bikoist critical philosophy of race perspective, it can be said that solidarity between black South Africans and white allies is not possible or desirable.

Objection: white eliminativism and the possibilities of solidarity

Some may object to the notion that white allies cannot be beneficial to the struggle against racism by arguing that whites can remove themselves from the structure or institution of whiteness and claim an African identity in order to contribute towards black liberation. It may be argued that, if white individuals and their whiteness are tied up with white supremacy, then whites should renounce their whiteness in order to stand in opposition with white supremacy. This position is known as “white eliminativism”, which applies racial eliminativism only to whiteness (Matthews, 2015: 118). Eliminativism is the belief that race does not or should not exist, either as a biological reality or a socially constructed one (Matthews, 2015: 118). The idea behind racial eliminativism in general is that eliminating racial thinking and racial categories would eliminate racism, as thinking along racial lines is a prerequisite for racism (Matthews, 2015: 118). Popular proponents of racial eliminativism include Kwame Appiah and Naomi Zack, who believe that racial designations are inherently racist (Matthews, 2015: 119). When applied specifically to whiteness, white eliminativism is the belief that whites can or should “cease to be white” (Matthews, 2015: 118). White eliminativists do not necessarily seek to do away with all racial categories, but solely the category of whiteness, as the white race has historically operated as an oppressive identity (Matthews, 2015: 119). This elimination of whiteness would entail individual whites no longer (falsely) identifying as white, but rather simply as South Africans, or even as Africans (Matthews, 2015: 118). Perhaps, after stripping oneself of one’s whiteness, one is able to contribute productively and earnestly to the struggle against white supremacy upon which one’s white privilege formerly rested.

To reply to this objection, it may be useful to point out that dismantling and erasing white identity will not undo and erase the deep-seated colonial and Apartheid discourse shaping the epistemic positions of whites (Van Der Westhuizen, 2016: 225). Regardless of whether whites actively welcome the label of whiteness or not, the “othering function” of white discourse has been ingrained within them (Van Der Westhuizen, 2016: 226). One’s whiteness is not something one can simply abandon, as one can never cease to be influenced by the whiteness one was socialised in, white ways of seeing the world, and the habits that come with whiteness (Matthews, 2015: 124). Rather, I argue that whiteness and the acknowledgment of the structural and epistemic features of whiteness is something whites need to grapple with before productively and positively contributing to the fight against white supremacy.

When will solidarity be possible?

Thus far, the opinion expressed in this paper has been one of scepticism of the possibilities of solidarity between whites and oppressed racial groups. The claim that such solidarity is neither possible nor desirable is based on the current features of whiteness and the seemingly unbreakable link between whiteness and white supremacy. While simply claiming to shed oneself of one’s whiteness may not be a particularly productive solution, I argue that a foundational change in whiteness through inwardly directed action and rehabilitation will bring white allies a step closer to being allies in the fight against white supremacy (Vice, 2010: 324). Because racism is perpetuated and upheld through white epistemologies, recognising oneself as white and subsequently investigating the nature and effects of this whiteness is essential in dismantling white structures. In order to be productive contributors to the fight for liberation, whites should actively resist the reproduction of the discourse of white supremacy and welcome the feelings of shame that come with being white (Van Der Westhuizen, 2016: 230). Shame encompasses a range of emotions such as feelings of failure, inadequacy, and embarrassment (Van Der Westhuizen, 2016: 230). The acknowledgement of this shame has transformative potential (Van Der Westhuizen, 2016: 230) in that it serves as a catalyst for a fundamental transformation in the essence of individual whites and their relationship to whiteness. Shame may arise out of an awareness of one’s position in the racial hierarchy or one’s awareness of one’s implication in an oppressive system, and is directed towards the self (Vice, 2010: 329). I argue that it is only through sitting contemplatively in one’s whiteness, acknowledging the shame that arises therein, and using this shame in active resistance against dominant white discourse that one gains the potential to truly be an ally to people of colour.

Conclusion

Steve Biko believed anyone with Black Consciousness being oppressed under the white supremacist structure of Apartheid to be black. Solidarity amongst Africans, coloureds, and Indians is possible, despite the challenges that come with white supremacy and the aspiration to whiteness. However, solidarity amongst black South Africans and white allies is a more complicated goal, one which for many reasons appears to be impossible and not in the best interests of non-whites. The impossibility of solidarity lies in the features of whiteness. As the beneficiaries of oppressive structures, whites lack experiential knowledge of racism, and thus have conflicting approaches to achieving racial justice, and often even have visions of justice which are directly opposed to that of the oppressed racial groups. Some may argue that denying one’s whiteness could be a step towards allyship between whites and people of colour, however, this view does not accurately encapsulate the deeply ingrained epistemologies, habits, and discourses of whiteness. As such, rather than attempting to shake off or rid oneself of one’s whiteness, one should sit with it, dissect it, and actively oppose the structures that throughout history have sought to benefit it. It is only through the acknowledgement of and active resistance to the features of whiteness that whites can hope to form part of the struggle against white supremacy.

Bibliography

Veranes, L. E. A. (2021) The University in The Genesis of Black Conscience In South Africa. Revista Brasileira de Estudos Africanos Brazilian Journal of African Studies, 6(12): 227-242.

Magaziner, D. (2009) "Black Man, You Are on Your Own!": Making Race Consciousness in South African Thought, 1968-1972. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 42(2): 221-240.

Msimang, P. M. (2022) The IRR as False Witness: How the Institute of Race Relations Strategically Misinforms Us about Racism and Policy (as a Threat to Deliberative Democracy). Theoria, 69(172): 1-31.

Matthews, S. (2015) Shifting White Identities in South Africa: White Africanness and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Phronimon, 16(2): 112-129.

Van der Westhuizen, C. (2016) Race, Intersectionality, And Affect in Postapartheid Productions of the “Afrikaans White Woman”. Critical Philosophy of Race, 4(2): 221-238.

Dooms, T. & Chutel, L. E. (2023) Coloured: How Classification Became Culture. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers.

Delgado, R. & Stefancic, J. (2023) Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (Vol. 87). New York: New York University Press.

Biko, S. (2005) I Write What I Like: Steve Biko. A Selection of His Writings. Cambridge: ProQuest LLC.

More, P. M. (2017) Biko – Philosophy, Identity, and Liberation. HSRC Press.

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Mills, C.W. (2015) Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race. Cornell University Press.

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Green, A. I. (2010) Remembering Foucault: Queer Theory and Disciplinary Power. Sexualities, 13(3): 316-337.

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In their 2024 election manifesto, the Economic Freedom Fighters expressed the need to redistribute land and nationalise strategic sectors of the economy such as mines and banks. The potential effects of the adoption of such socialist policies, and the current capitalist alternative, should be contemplated and investigated in order to judge whether this nationalisation and abolition of private property would be distributively just. According to Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka, private property is productive property in that it entails the ownership of the means of production (Oruka, 1997: 122). For this reason, private property can be considered socially and economically significant (Oruka, 1997: 122). Examples of private property include factories, land, infrastructure, natural resources, mines, or capital (Oruka, 1997: 122). Personal property, on the other hand, does not entail the ownership of the means of production, and thus does not come with any inherent economic or social power (Oruka, 1997: 122). Examples of personal property would be items such as clothes, furniture, or books (Oruka, 1997: 122).  The question of whether or not to allow private property differs from that of how to allocate or distribute personal property. As socialist values do not explicitly argue against the accumulation of personal property (Sunkara, 2024), debates pertaining to the allocation of personal property need not necessarily revolve around debates over socialism and capitalism. The question of whether or not private property should be permitted, however, necessarily entails debates surrounding economic systems, as capitalism and socialism differ on matters of privatisation and nationalisation (Sunkara, 2024). The allowance of private property is one of the main characteristics of a capitalist economy (Oruka, 1997: 121). Socialist thinkers, however, maintain that such an economic system is distributively unjust for a number of reasons. One of these reasons, as stated by thinkers such as Karl Marx (2016), Rosa Luxemburg (1970), and Julius Nyerere (1962), is the exploitation of workers under conditions of private ownership of the means of production. Another reason is one most famously articulated by Marx (2016): alienation. Because of the alienating effects of labour in privately-owned industries, it can be said that the nationalisation of these would be a distributively just solution, as it would return a sense of humanness to labourers.

The nationalisation of industry

One plausible view regarding the question of whether or not private property should be permitted is the idea that the means of production should be owned and controlled by the state. This idea of the abolition of private property and the nationalisation of the means of production aligns with the ideas of socialist thinkers such as Marx (2016), Nyerere (1962), and Luxemburg (1970). Each of these thinkers had their own motivations for advocating a socialist organisation of the economy, and their own ideas of the roles and responsibilities of the people and the state in their control of the means of production.

In his description of his conceptualisation of an African form of socialism, called Ujamaa, Nyerere concerns himself mostly with the way in which resources are distributed in a society (Nyerere, 1962: 2). Basing his view largely on an African conception of hospitality, community, and collective labour, he held the opinion that a society should be organised in such a manner that a man who has contributed his labour should not have to worry about his economic situation in the near future simply because he has not hoarded wealth (Nyerere, 1962: 2). It is the job of the state to ensure that the security and wellbeing of every member of their society is looked after, and that human dignity is not predicated on one's personal wealth (Nyerere, 1962: 3). Any member of society should, in Nyerere’s mind, be able to depend on the wealth held by his society as a whole, and it is the role of the state to see to it that distribution occurs in such a way that “those who sow reap a fair share of what they sow” (Nyerere, 1962: 3). Nyerere touches on the issue of individual ownership of land, arguing that the notion of privately-owned land stems from a colonial attitude, and that it is the African way to communally own land  (Nyerere, 1962: 5). Nyerere holds that every individual has a right to make use of the land for the sake of his livelihood (Nyerere, 1962: 5). Nyerere describes the role of the state in terms of land ownership as one in which they are to be in control of the land, determine who may make use of it, and ensure that they do, in fact, make good use of it  (Nyerere, 1962: 5). 

In an article on the future of socialism, Luxemburg calls for the reallocation of control of the means of production from private and exploitative owners to the people (Luxemburg, 1970: 1). She calls for the total economic reorganisation of society, arguing that there should no longer be private employers, and that production should no longer be aimed at profits for private individuals, but rather at ensuring the wellbeing of the public at large (Luxemburg, 1970: 1). In order to ensure that the wealth generated from production is enough for everyone, Luxemburg argues that “the productivity of labour must be a great deal higher than it is now”, and that this will be achieved by making certain that everybody works (Luxemburg, 1970: 2).  

In a chapter of Capital Vol III, Marx (1993) argues that the excess efforts of labourers is accompanied by the idleness of the bourgeoisie. He states that the wealth of a society is entirely dependent on this surplus-labour and the productivity of workers (Marx, 1993). In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx elaborates on the alienating effect of this kind of labour on the workers themselves (Marx, 2016). For this reason, in his Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx advocates for the uprising of the proletariat and their complete takeover of the means of production (Engels & Marx, 2004).

A view of the most distributively just version of an economic system, especially as it pertains to the ownership of industry and the means of production, should look to each of these thinkers and combine elements of their prescriptions. The means of production, and other forms of industry, are to be owned not by private individuals, as in capitalism, but by the state, and the people of the nation, for the sake of the collective wellbeing of all. The most distributively just economic system does not entail the nationalisation of just a few industries, but the total abolition of private property. The state is to take control and ownership of mines, energy, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, telecommunications, transport and logistics, infrastructure, agriculture, retail, and other sectors in which privatisation has been allowed. The state is to do so, not only to ensure fair and equal access to such goods and services, but also to ensure that these sectors are run in such a way that production aligns with national goals and public welfare, as opposed to the generation of profit. 

There is, however, another very important reason for the nationalisation of private sectors which has to do with labour. If the government were to own and control all industries, and use them for the benefit of the nation, the conditions under which labourers are currently forced to work in a capitalist society would be eradicated. This labour-focused argument in favour of nationalisation draws on Marx’s theory of alienation.

Alienated labour

As indicated earlier, Marx is concerned with more than simply the economic aspects of privatisation and capitalism. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx touches on a more phenomenological effect of this capitalist exploitation: the alienation of labour. In his theory of alienation, he outlines four different forms of alienation: alienation of the worker from the product of his labour, alienation from the labour process itself, alienation from others, and alienation from the self (Marx, 2016). Because of this alienation, it may be argued that the nationalisation of private industries would be a more just form of economic organisation, as the government would have full control of both the conditions external to the working environment, as well as the working environment itself.

The first form of alienation Marx speaks of in his theory of alienation is an alienation from the product of one’s labour (Marx, 2016: 39). In a capitalist system, the object produced by a labourer is something alien to its producer, and the worker’s efforts become commodified and objectified, in that the labour and the product of that labour are for the sole purpose of a profit that is not their own (Marx, 2016: 39). In addition to receiving little to no benefit from his labour, the worker has played no role in the invention of the product, his needs are not taken into consideration in the design of the product, and his wages from his own productivity will likely not be enough to allow him to buy the product (Marx, 2016: 39). The nationalisation of industry and the means of production would eradicate this form of alienation, as the government could ensure that everyone receives a fair share of the products of their labour. Nyerere (1962) and Luxemburg (1970) each argue that anyone who has laboured and contributed should be able to reap the benefits of their efforts. The state could employ such a system to ensure that every worker receives the full value of their labour. In this way, worker would be able to form part of the target market for which the products are designed, and would inadvertently influence the design of the product, which would be suited to his own needs. 

The second form of alienation Marx addresses is an alienation from the process of production (Marx, 2016: 41). Workers are not only alienated from the end-product of their labour, but from the process of producing the product (Marx, 2016: 41). The process of labour, according to Marx, “does not belong to his essential being” and as such, he “does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserable and not happy” (Marx, 2016: 41). The process of production is of such a nature that it “mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind”, meaning that the lack of freedom in choosing how and when to work has dehumanising and physically detrimental effects (Marx, 2016: 41). In this way, the process of labour is external to himself. The abolition of private property would remedy this because the nationalisation of the means of production would ensure an equal and fair distribution of resources and wealth, meaning that workers would no longer be forced into certain labour out of necessity. Luxemburg notes how labour under capitalism is exploitative because one has to work in order to survive, stripping workers of their freedom of choice out of sheer desperation (Luxemburg, 1970: 2). While labour under capitalism is not forced in the same way that labour under the system of slavery is forced, there is an element of pressure and necessity in capitalism which does, in a sense, force one to perform labour against one’s will (Luxemburg, 1970: 2). Nationalisation would prevent this exploitative nature of work, and would allow for more freedom on the part of workers regarding where to work, how to perform their labour, and when. 

A third kind of alienation takes the form of alienation of the labourer from his fellow workers (Marx, 2016: 41). Marx refers to this as the “estrangement of man from man”, as opposed to the estrangement of the labourer from his product, or of the labourer from the process of his work (Marx, 2016: 42). Because of the precarious nature of work, and the necessity of work for survival, labourers exist in constant competition with one another (Marx, 2016: 43). Instead of developing a collective class consciousness, workers are concerned with their own wages (Marx, 2016: 43). Nationalisation would be a solution to this type of alienation because it would give the state full control over hiring processes and decision-making in the workplace, ensuring that job opportunities are fairly accessible, leaving a possibility for better employment rates, and no precarity of work. Without the fear of losing a job opportunity to a fellow labourer, there would be no alienation amongst workers on the basis of competition.

The last form of alienation Marx touches on is more psychological and metaphysical than material in nature: the alienation of the worker from his own human nature (Marx, 2016: 44). Because of the exploitative, repetitive, and disconnected nature of labour, the labourer is only able to feel connected to himself and his true essence when he is not performing labour (Marx, 2016: 44). The labourer, unable to decide the nature of his work, forced into exploitative labour, and estranged from his fellow man, lives a life reduced to his bare, animalistic functioning (Marx, 2016: 44). His humanness is not manifested in his labour, and he is doomed to live a life of simply performing activities that ensure his mere survival (Marx, 2016: 44). Philosopher John O’Neill (1964: 68 - 84) notes how this alienation takes the form of a loss of personhood due to one’s essence being reduced to one’s situatedness within the hierarchical system of capitalism. Under capitalism, the labourer is painfully aware of his role as a mere “appendage of the machine”, both the literal machine which has taken over much of his labour, and the metaphorical capitalist machine (Marx, 2016: 16). This alienated nature of labour dictates his entire being, and the worker becomes estranged from “his own body, from nature as it exists outside him, from his spiritual essence, and his human existence” (Marx, 2016: 45). 

The eradication of this alienation amongst the working class relies on several elements of change, each of which would be made possible through the abolition of private property. Firstly, the collectivisation of the means of production would stabilise and secure the economic position of the worker. Because of the just distribution of resources and the inability of a private entity to hoard them, the worker would, in theory, be above the poverty line. This would allow the worker to seek employment in something he is passionate about, and which will not hinder his ability to produce and create freely, engage in culture, and find fulfilment. Additionally, this collective ownership would enable a democratically decided upon nature of working conditions, meaning that aspects of production, such as what to produce, how to produce it, for whom to produce it, and how many hours a day labourers should be expected to work, are democratically agreed upon in the workplace. In these ways, workers are able to indulge in creativity, culture, and leisurely activities, either in a fulfilling work environment, or outside of the workplace thanks to shorter working days.

Perhaps most important to ridding workers of this sense of self-estrangement is the abolition of the hierarchical and inherently exploitative dichotomy between the private owner and the labourer who is forced to work for him. With the nationalisation of the means of production, private ownership and control of industry is rendered impossible, immediately getting rid of capital-owners and private corporations who employ labour as cheaply as possible, so as to maximise profits. As such, workers will no longer face the psychological effects of being subordinate to private employers, and can feel a sense of dignity and control over their own lives. In these ways, nationalisation would allow the return of human essence to labourers.

Objection: workplace changes under capitalism

Even if one accepts that certain working conditions are not conducive to the realisation of one’s humanness and selfhood, and that the structure and nature of labour must be altered to accommodate this human desire, one might argue that this change need not necessarily take place in a strictly socialist or communist economic system. One might object to the idea that the abolition of private property is a necessary step in the alleviation of alienation, and argue instead for a more democratic workplace under a capitalist economic structure. Social democrats, for example, may argue to allow the private ownership of industries, but to ensure elements of welfare capitalism and economic interventionism appear alongside this private ownership (Lane, 2023). They might hold that there is no reason that the state should not set firmer labour laws regarding minimum wage, workers’ compensation, employee healthcare, trade unions, retirement, and working hours. An argument using this line of thinking would suggest, for example, that private corporations be legally required to shorten the working day by four hours, in addition to implementing a four-day work week. In addition, a social democrat might suggest doubling minimum wage so as to ensure the fair pay of workers under a capitalist system.

In response to social democrats, a socialist would argue that, while altering the working conditions of labourers in this manner may aid in the realisation of their human essence by giving them more time away from work, or by paying them well, there are several issues with this suggestion that should be pointed out. Firstly, as private corporations are largely driven by profit through the minimisation of cost and the maximisation of output, it is highly unlikely that they would voluntarily pay their workers more than the minimum wage, or allow working hours to be cut drastically. The implementation of these changes would thus have to be legally mandated by the state. While official laws and acts may aid in bringing about these changes, there is no doubt that business owners would find loopholes or means of evading what is legally required of them, much like the current evasion of tax in capitalist societies. A second issue is minimum wage laws leading to higher rates of unemployment and an even more stressful working environment. With the minimisation of production costs being top on the list of business owners’ priorities, it is unlikely that corporations would opt to keep the same amount of staff and pay each worker more. The likely outcome of significantly increasing minimum wage is that employers will have to cut down on hiring, leaving many more people unemployed. Additionally, those who are employed by companies will likely be forced to take on even more labour in the absence of more staff. A third problem is the idea that simply shortening work days and work weeks would necessarily lead to every worker’s ability to realise their essence. While more time away from work would certainly aid in the alleviation of alienation, it would likely not be enough to allow workers to realise their human essence. What is needed is a total shift in the nature of their work, not the mere avoidance of their current work situation. This can only be actualised with the abolition of private property. As such, a complete change in economic systems is necessary, not simply the restructuring of the current one.

Objection: neutrality of the state

Many might object to the nationalisation of the means of production using Marx’s idea of alienation as motivation on the grounds that, while it may be beneficial for the alienation of workers to be prevented in favour of a truly human life, it is not the job of the state to promote this vision. Philosophers John Rawls and Robert Nozick have expressed this idea, stating that the state’s role is to create conditions which facilitate the actualisation of their own conception of a good life, whatever it may be (Murray, 2007). One may argue that the state’s promotion of their conception of “the good” leaves room for potential paternalism, and denies individuals the ability to autonomously and independently decide and act on their own conception of a good life (Murray, 2007). For this reason, some may argue that the state should remain neutral in such ideals. 

It could be pointed out, however, that leisure time could be considered a social primary good. Rawls defines social primary goods as “things that every rational man is presumed to want” (Rawls, 1999: 54). If the role of the state is to fairly distribute social primary goods so that individuals may use them to pursue their own idea of the “good life” (Rawls, 1999: 348), and if leisure time counts as a social primary good, then it is the state’s job to provide this. In this way, the state is not enforcing a specific idea of “the good life”, but rather ensuring that everyone has the means by which to achieve their own version of it. As shown above, this could only be done through the abolition of private property.

Conclusion

The manifesto of the Economic Freedom Fighters touches on a crucial aspect of distributive justice: the question of who should own the means of production and industry. Their manifesto suggests a socialist form of ownership which entails the nationalisation of land, mines, banks, and other strategic sectors. The justness of the abolition of private property (as opposed to personal property) can be proven by looking at precisely what should be done with the nationalised industries and for whose benefit, and how this changes the current situation under capitalism. After the nationalisation of the means of production, it should be the job of the state to ensure that the wealth generated by production is distributed fairly, and that the conditions in which this production takes place is conducive to the preservation of the true human essence of the labourers. The conditions faced by workers in a capitalistic, profit-driven work environment are such that they are susceptible to what Karl Marx calls alienation. The collective ownership of the means of production would alleviate this alienation in the following ways: by equipping labourers with the necessary wealth to be able to indulge in the products of their labour; by ensuring a fair distribution of wealth and eliminating the survival-driven necessity to perform low-paying and unsatisfactory labour; by ensuring that labourers do not feel the need to compete with each other by offering an abundance of work opportunities; and by removing the hierarchical order amongst private capitalists and the workers whose labour they exploit. Some may argue that this kind of change is possible under capitalism, and that there is no need for the complete abolition of private property. As a reply, it should be pointed out that attempts to reform capitalist workplaces may have negative consequences for workers such as higher unemployment rates and a more stressful workplace. It could also be argued it is not the role of the state to promote an ideal life of connection to one’s human essence, but this objection may be countered with the notion of leisure time as a social primary good. Overall, ridding workers of alienation and bringing back a sense of self and humanness is something that can only be achieved under a socialist system of the nationalisation of the means of production. As such, it can be said that this nationalisation would be distributively just.

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Bibliography

Engels, F. and Marx, K., 2004. The communist manifesto. Penguin UK.

Lane, D., 2023. Global Neoliberal Capitalism and the Alternatives: From Social Democracy to State Capitalisms. Policy Press.

Luxemburg, R., 1970. ‘The Socialisation of Society’, Die junge Garde, 2(4), pp. 431-434. 

Marx, K., 1993. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 3 (Vol. 3). Penguin UK.

Marx, K., 2016. Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. In Social Theory Re-Wired (pp. 152-158). Routledge.

Murray, D., 2007. Robert Nozick: Political Philosophy. Available at: https://iep.utm.edu/noz-poli/#:~:text=Instead%2C%20for%20liberals%20in%20political,others%20to%20do%20the%20same (Accessed 1 June 2024).

Nyerere, J.K., 1962. " Ujamaa": The Basis of African Socialism. Dar-es-Salaam: Tanganyika Standard Limited.

O'Neill, J., 1964. The concept of estrangement in the early and later writings of Karl Marx. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 25(1), pp.64-84.

Oruka, H. O., 1997. Practical philosophy: In search of an ethical minimum. East African Publishers.

Rawls, J., 1999 A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 

Sunkara, B., 2024. End Private Property, Not Kenny Loggins. Available at: https://jacobin.com/2016/02/socialism-marxism-private-property-person-lennon-imagine-kenny-loggins (Accessed 1 June 2024).

This essay defends historian Wouter Hanegraaff’s “rejected knowledge” model of esotericism, specifically the inflated version of this model. Defining esotericism as any knowledge that has been rejected, the inflated version poses esotericism and its proponents as the subjects of persistent structural repression and rejection, which Hanegraaff believes to be at the heart of Western culture. This model of esotericism will be defended by addressing and countering Egil Aprem’s critiques of this model, specifically his issue with its portrayal of esotericists as having been “othered” in relation to dominant Western discourses. Asprem raises many concerns regarding the inflated model, but particular attention is paid to Hanegraaff’s rhetoric of esotericism and its heterodox thinkers as marginalised dissenters at perpetual odds with an overarching oppressive structure, and his comparison of such treatment with the traditional oppression of other subaltern groups. This essay will pinpoint several historical instances in Europe (before, during, and after the historical moment specified by Hanegraaff’s strict model) that demonstrate the enduring repressive and often even violent marginalisation of proponents of traditional, cultural, and religious knowledge that has at some point been rejected. Ultimately, this essay argues that esotericism is rejected knowledge whose rejection is a structural component of Western hegemony and not confined to any specific era, and that the very act of rejection constitutes a type of oppression that overlaps with traditional modes of oppression.

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Introduction

Many contributions have been made within the scholarly field of esotericism towards a definition of esotericism. Antoine Faivre, for example, famously described esotericism as a “form of thought” with distinct characteristics (Faivre & Voss, 1995: 60), while Leo Strauss argued that esotericism is a specific form of writing “between the lines'' as a means of avoiding persecution (Strauss, 1941: 488). Historian Wouter Hanegraaff’s contribution to the ongoing “definition debate” is a definition of esotericism as knowledge that has been rejected (Hanegraaff: 2013: 13). Defining esotericism as essentially a wastebasket of rejected knowledge, Hannegraaff’s model of esotericism has been highly criticised amongst other scholars of esotericism. Historians have particularly criticised the inflated version of this model, which holds that the rejection of knowledge is a structural characteristic of Western culture rather than a singular moment in history. Professor of history of religions, Egil Asprem, rejects this notion of a persistently repressive Western hegemony, citing the modern-day acceptance of formerly rejected currents; the incomparability of the rejection of knowledge and traditional forms of oppression; the supposed voluntary nature of association with esotericism and the marginalisation that comes with it; and the alleged historical inaccuracy of the claim that esotericists have faced constant persecution by dominant Western structures. To counter these objections and defend the inflated version of the model of esotericism as rejected knowledge, several examples of discredited wisdom and persecuted esotericists throughout history will be analysed. When applied to these historical examples, Patrick Wolfe’s notion of structural genocide will show how the act of rejection itself constitutes a form of oppression, confirming the assertions made in the inflated model of rejected knowledge.

The “rejected knowledge” model of esotericism

 Wouter Hanegraaff argues that his definition of esotericism takes a historiographical approach, defining esotericism as knowledge which has been rejected (Hanegraaff: 2013: 13), rather than a “common philosophical or religious world-view, a specific approach to knowledge, or a form of thought” (Pasi, 2013: 209). There are two differing versions of Hanegraaff’s model of esotericism as rejected knowledge: the strict version and the inflated version.

The strict model provides a historiographical description of a very specific moment in the West - a moment which provides the historical context in which certain knowledge was rejected (Asprem, 2021: 129). Egil Asprem notes that in Hanegraaff’s book, Esotericism and the Academy, the strict version of the “rejected knowledge” model describes the processes of rejection in the Enlightenment period, roughly from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth century (Asprem, 2021: 130). During this period, several intellectual projects were undertaken that involved sifting through knowledge and discarding or rejecting knowledge that did not fit a certain criteria, or that was not compatible with the dominant Western ideas embodied in science and religion (Hanegraaff, 2013: 13).1 Such moments of rejection and separation created the conditions under which scholars were able to conceptualise different currents in relation to one another, in a specific historical context (Asprem, 2021: 130).

While the strict version of the model views the rejection and repression of esoteric currents as being contained within the Enlightenment period, the inflated version has a more broad and general view of the rejection of knowledge. The inflated model, also called the grand polemical narrative, conceives of a much wider structural issue that transcends eras and institutions (Asprem, 2021: 130). Studying esotericism from this perspective consists of viewing esotericists in general as existing in constant opposition with the dominant culture of the West (Asprem, 2021: 130). Hanegraaff argues that this tension and dynamics of repression, rejection, exclusion, and silencing can be traced all the way back to the beginning of monotheism (Asprem, 2021: 130). Hanegraaff even goes to far as to compare the repression faced by esotericists to the injustices faced by other subalterns throughout history, such as people of colour, women, and colonised populations (Asprem, 2021: 131). In this way, Hanegraaff argues that, rather than viewing esoteric currents as having faced rejection and persecution within a singular time period, esoteric identities and their knowledge may be viewed as the constant victims of rejection by the cultural mainstream (Hanegraaff, 2019: 45). Asprem takes particular issue with the inflated version, for a number of reasons.2

The reinforcement of counter-canonical narratives

One of the problems Asprem has with the inflated model is its depiction of esotericists as “heterodox thinkers” and “heretics” whose wisdom is continuously rejected by the establishment (Asprem, 2021: 134). He argues against this claim made by Hanegraaff’s model, maintaining that the currents rejected during the Enlightenment era have since been accepted into mainstream discourses (Asprem, 2021: 134). He claims that the notion of legitimacy changes in different periods and contexts, and that one thus cannot generalise and paint esoteric currents as being broadly rejected, especially as they have since been legitimised (Asprem, 2021: 135). Asprem uses alchemy as an example of a formerly rejected tradition that has since “entered the scholarly mainstream” due to its applications to science (Asprem, 2021: 134).

This particular argument appears to overlook some crucial points. Firstly, the eventual normalisation of a formerly rejected esoteric current, tradition, or form of knowledge does not erase centuries of (often violent) persecution, and the rejection it may still face in certain modern contexts. To deny a tradition or knowledge system the label of having been repressed by a dominant structure because it is now somewhat accepted can be compared with claiming that sexual and gender minorities do not face enduring disempowerment because same-sex relationships have been decriminalised and normalised in many parts of the West.3

Secondly, legalisation or partial social normalisation does not always imply full social acceptance.4 An example familiar to most South Africans is the treatment of sangomas or traditional healers in many South African communities. While traditional health practitioners were legalised in South Africa through the Traditional Health Practitioners Act of 2007 (Tshehla, 2015: 42), sangomas continue to face extreme persecution at the hands of members of their communities. When accused of witchcraft, the persecution faced by sangomas often takes the form of stoning, burning, and other violent forms of execution carried out by “mob-justice” (Baloyi, 2014: 1). Eventual recognition by a dominant structure (in this case, the South African government) thus cannot be equated with full societal acceptance. This particular example of the continued rejection and persecution of a tradition or system of knowledge demonstrates that “entering the mainstream”, as Asprem puts it, does not always entail the avoidance of rejection and persecution, and proves that rejection and suppression is at the heart of Western culture5 and dominant institutions.

Perhaps most important to counter is Asprem’s use of alchemy as an example of a now-normalised tradition to prove that formerly rejected currents often make their way into mainstream scholarship (Asprem, 2021: 135). Asprem notes how alchemy entered scientific discourse in Sweden in the 1940s “without ridicule or judgement” (Asprem, 2021: 135) Chemist Lawrence Principe provides a history of the acceptance of alchemy into the field of chemistry, leading to its relative acceptance as a tradition with valid applications to science, and ending its status as a pseudo-science (Principe, 2011: 305). However, it should be noted that this acceptance was not of alchemy as an esoteric and arcane tradition, but as an asset to science, which is a well-established and widely accepted form of knowledge. It is questionable whether alchemy’s status as a rejected pseudo-science would have been reversed without its newfound proximity to science and its subsequent hegemonic value.6

Elected marginality

Asprem argues that any oppression or persecution faced by individuals associated with esoteric traditions is a direct result of their willing affiliation with esotericism (Asprem, 2021: 141). Asprem even suggests that association with esoteric currents such as theosophy, paganism, and the New Age movement of spirituality is intentionally sought out in an attempt to enter the realm of deviance and “anti-establishment” non-conformity (Asprem, 2021: 141). This is what Asprem calls “elected marginality”, and it is because of this that he objects to Hanegraaff’s comparison of esotericists with other subalterns (Asprem, 2021: 141).

To counter Asprem’s claim that the persecution of proponents of esotericism is elected rather than imposed, and thus cannot be compared with traditional forms of marginalisation, it may be useful to consider the overlap between colonised groups and groups whose knowledge has been rejected, while employing Patrick Wolfe’s notion of structural genocide. Originating in his seminal works on settler colonialism,7 Wolfe defines structural genocide as the destruction of native societies, cultures, and epistemologies (Wolfe, 2006: 402). According to Wolfe, colonialists strive for the dissolution of these societies in order to erect a new, colonial structure (Wolfe, 2006: 388). The methods by which this is done is not always through overtly violent means such as forceful removal or genocide. Assimilation, defined in this case as the forced adoption of the coloniser’s culture, is a method by which colonists are able to impose their colonial structures onto an already established native structure (Wolfe, 2006: 401). This process of the rejection of indigenous knowledge systems can involve religious conversion, re-education, and re-socialisation into strictly Western institutions (Wolfe, 2006: 388). It can thus be said that, through structural genocide by assimilation, the rejection of knowledge forms part of the more traditional modes of oppression faced by subaltern populations. In this way, the marginality faced by members of groups associated with esotericism is not elected, but imposed. 

The affirmation of insider self-understandings

Asprem is wary of Hanegraaff’s representation of dominant discourses as dogmatic and repressive towards the oppressed esoteric “underdogs”, arguing that this creates a historically inaccurate “us-them” binary (Asprem, 2021: 136). Asprem argues that the image of esotericism as facing structural subjugation stems from a self-understanding within esoteric circles, and has no basis in reality (Asprem, 2021: 136).

To deny the long-lasting persecution faced by proponents of esoteric knowledge in an attempt to confine it within a specific timeframe is the true historical inaccuracy. As discussed, the rejection of the knowledge of a conquered or colonised population through assimilation and structural genocide itself constitutes a form of marginalisation and oppression - a phenomenon which is certainly not limited to the timeframe proposed by the strict model. One of the best examples of this is seen in the treatment of pagans and pagan knowledge by dominant Western structures. In Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries, historian Ramsay MacMullen explores the transition from paganism to Christianity in Europe in the fourth to the eighth centuries, concluding that, although Christian hegemony faced tenacious resistance, the eventual assimilation of pagans into Christianity involved a long history of persecution, crucifixion, and conversion (Macmullen, 1998: 103). Ultimately, Christianity emerged victorious, with pagan knowledge, practices, and traditions being subsumed into the new dominant religion (Macmullen, 1998: 150). 

These processes constitute structural genocide as conceived by Wolfe, meaning that, even if pagans had not faced violent persecution (which they did), the epistemicide and assimilation their knowledge and traditions faced would still constitute a form of oppression by this rejection and assimilation alone. The period in which this oppression occurred falls into an era long before that of the Enlightenment, confirming that the rejection faced by esotericists is a result of the canonical structure of the West, as suggested by Hanegraaff’s inflated model. 

The issue of definition

While the main aim of this essay has been to defend the inflated model’s portrayal of esotericism as a victim of oppression, an important aspect of this debate must be mentioned: the issue of definition.8 A question that may be asked is whether something has to be persecuted to be rejected, and thus count as esotericism. So far I have defended Hanegraaff’s definition of esotericism as rejected knowledge using examples of particularly oppressive processes of rejection. But would these bodies of knowledge still count as having been rejected and fall into the category of esotericism if their rejection was not oppressive?

Through Wolfe’s idea of structural genocide, I have shown how the rejection of knowledge itself constitutes a form of oppression, regardless of whether or not it is rejected through violent or traditionally oppressive means. To single out a particular realm of wisdom and reject it - whether on the basis of its supposed falsehood,9 its presumed irrelevance, or its perceived inferiority - is to oppress it, and its proponents. In this way, rejection itself can be seen as a form of persecution. And as such, any knowledge that has been rejected falls under the label of “esotericism”, and can be considered to exist in perpetual opposition to dominant narratives. 

Conclusion

The inflated version of Wouter Hanegraaff’s model of esotericism as rejected knowledge, which portrays esotericism as existing in continued opposition to dominant and oppressive Western hegemony, has been widely contested in the scholarly quest to define esotericism. The main ideas contained within Egil Asprem’s critique of the idea of esotericism facing persistent structural oppression can be summarised into three interconnected arguments: it is incorrect to consider esoteric knowledge as being marginalised, since its legitimacy is no longer questioned; any marginality faced by proponents of knowledge that has been rejected is self-imposed by voluntary association, and thus cannot be compared to more traditional forms of oppression; and the view of esotericists as persecuted heterodox outsiders is historically inaccurate. These particular objections to the inflated model can be countered by examining different forms of rejected knowledge in periods spanning from well before the Enlightenment era to the present day. The contemporary persecution of sangomas in South Africa despite their legality and the rejection of alchemy before its association with science illustrate how supposed normalisation and legitimisation do not necessarily imply universal societal approval and an absence of victimisation (past or present). The application of Patrick Wolfe’s idea of structural genocide and logic of elimination shows how the rejection of knowledge itself constitutes a form of oppression, and that the populations facing said rejection are often also the populations facing more traditional forms of oppression. This can especially be seen in the rejection of pagan knowledge throughout European history. The assimilation of pagans into Christianity also demonstrates how this rejection is not limited to one historical moment, but is, in fact, an everlasting part of the West’s hegemonic DNA. If esotericism is defined as knowledge that has been rejected, and this rejection has proven to be a persistent component of history, and rejection itself is considered oppressive, then it is necessarily true that esotericists have faced enduring oppression.

Bibliography

Asprem, E. (2021) “Rejected Knowledge Reconsidered: Some Methodological Notes on Esotericism and Marginality” In E. Asprem and J. Strube (eds.) New Approaches to the Study of Esotericism. Brill, pp. 127-146.

Baloyi, M.E. (2014) “A pastoral examination of the Christian Church's response to fears of and reactions to witchcraft amongst African people in the Limpopo province of South Africa” HTS: Theological Studies, 70(2), pp.1-9.

Boele-Woelki, K. and Fuchs, A. (2012) Legal recognition of same-sex relationships in Europe, Cambridge: Intersentia.

Faivre, A. & Voss, K.C. (1995) “Western esotericism and the science of religions” Numen, pp. 48-77.

Fanon, F. (2023) “Black skin, white masks” Social Theory Re-Wired, pp. 355-361. 

Hanegraaff, W. J. (2019). “Rejected Knowledge: So You Mean That Esotericists Are the Losers of History?” In W. J. Hanegraaff et al (eds.) Hermes Explains: Thirty Questions about Western Esotericism. Amsterdam University Press, pp. 145–52. 

Hanegraaff, W.J. (1995) “Empirical method in the study of esotericism” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 7(2), pp.99-129.

Hanegraaff, W.J. (2013) Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

MacMullen, R. (1999) Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries. New Haven: Yale University Press.

McFarlane, C. (2015) “South Africa: The rise of traditional medicine” Insight on Africa, 7(1), pp.60-70.

Pasi, M. (2013) “The problems of rejected knowledge: thoughts on Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy”, Religion, 43(2), pp. 201-212.

Principe, L.M. (2011) “Alchemy restored” Isis, 102(2), pp. 305-312.

Strauss, L. (1941) “Persecution and the Art of Writing” Social Research, pp.488-504.

Tshehla, B. (2015) “The Traditional Health Practitioners Act 22 of 2007: a perspective on some of the statute's strengths and weaknesses” Indilinga African Journal of Indigenous Knowledge Systems, 14(1), pp.42-51.

Wolfe, P. (2006) “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native” Journal of genocide research, 8(4), pp.387-409.

This essay offers an esoteric interpretation of “The Fall” in the Book of Genesis, exploring alternative meanings and symbolism using a Luciferian framework. With its core principles revolving around wisdom and sovereignty, Luciferianism enables an interpretation of the so-called fall of man that departs from the more literal interpretation of the original sin as a transgression against a divine creator. Through a Lucifer-centred allegoresis of the third chapter of the Book of Genesis, this essay examines the actions of the serpent, Adam, Eve, and God, and their significance in understanding the complexities of the human condition. It is the aim of this essay to encourage deeper and more meaningful engagement with religious doctrine, as the understanding thereof has implications for how we conceive of moral concepts such as obedience, rebellion, good, and evil. 

Introduction

While the theologian might view biblical scripture and myth strictly in relation to the study of religion, the philosopher may view it as an essential component of meaning-making and understanding the reality in which we live. The biblical tale of the fall of man is a myth which hides a plethora of potential meaning. Depicting man’s original sin, “The Fall” is generally considered a cautionary tale about the consequences of disobedience. However, to uncover meanings beyond the generally accepted literal interpretation, an alternative, more subversive mode of exegesis is necessary. One manner in which to interpret the so-called fall of man is through the lens of Luciferianism - a counter-hegemonic esoteric tradition which emphasises the pursuit of knowledge as a liberating force. This essay will recount the third chapter of Genesis as part of Christian mythology, argue against the literal interpretation thereof, introduce the main principles of Luciferian, and finally, reinterpret “The Fall” in the Book of Genesis using these principles.

The myth of The Fall

The Book of Genesis is the first book in the Christian Holy Bible, with the first three chapters detailing what is believed by Christians to be the creation of the world (Genesis 1: 2-31), the creation of the first two people - Adam and Eve (Genesis 2: 15-25), and the first sin - the eating of the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3: 1-24). While the creation story titled “The Beginning” could be considered a cosmogonic myth1, and the story of the creation of Adam and Eve an anthropogenic myth2, the story entitled “The Fall” could be considered a transformation myth. Transformation myths describe “the rupture between the paradisiac state and the present time”, which is usually caused by the fault of man  (Baumgartner et al, 1974: 196). 

In “The Fall”, Adam and Eve were visited by a serpent who convinced Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3: 1-5). This act had been strictly forbidden by God, their creator, who warned them that the fruit from this tree, which stood in the middle of the garden of Eden, would surely kill them (Genesis 3: 2). After succumbing to the influence of the serpent and the allure of prospective wisdom, Adam and Eve ate the fruit, and at once “the eyes of both of them were opened” (Genesis 3: 7). Upon eating the fruit, Adam and Eve were suddenly made aware of the fact that they were nude and felt ashamed (Genesis 3: 7). In his shame, Adam attempted to hide from God, only to be caught and have his sins revealed (Genesis 3: 11). God declared that Adam, Eve, and the serpent would be punished: Adam and all of mankind would be forced to perform labour (Genesis 3: 19), Eve and all of womankind would be punished with painful childbirth and subordination to men (Genesis 3: 16), and the serpent would be cursed to forever crawl on its belly and eat dust (Genesis 3:14). In addition, Adam and Eve were banished from Eden (Genesis 3: 23).

The need for an alternative exegesis

While a large portion of Christians believe every word of the Bible to be the literal and direct words of God (Firestone, 2014: 4), alternative methods of exegesis of the book of Genesis (and the Bible as a whole) may provide valuable new insights. As the interpreting of this chapter in the Bible has far-reaching implications for our conceptions of “the good life, autonomy and relatedness, assertion and submission, will and surrender, obedience and rebellion, independence and interdependence, subjectivity and intersubjectivity” (Aron, 2005: 681), it is of utmost importance to ensure that a variety of differing interpretations are offered. This very sentiment is expressed in the oldest surviving Greek manuscript, the Derveni papyrus, whose author argued that followers of religious doctrines interpret religious texts too literally when they are meant to be examined allegorically (Janko, 2001: 2). 

Theognost Pushkov notes that the general interpretation of “The Fall” amongst theologians views the story as a literal retelling of the story of man’s first sin, which involved giving into temptation, and consequently being made aware of bodily satisfaction and experiential knowledge of good and evil (Pushkov, 2005: 93). To draw more out of this text, and to enable alternative understandings of myth of the fall of man, it is necessary to analyse it as allegory rather than a literal account of history. 

Although many believe the author of the book of Genesis to be Moses (Postell, 2022: 437), there is very little convincing evidence regarding its author, and as such, knowledge of authorial intent is impossible. It is for this reason that it is necessary to perform an allegoresis of biblical scripture. Allegoresis, as defined by Peter Berek, involves the interpretation of a text whose authorial intent cannot be proven (Berek, 1978: 118). Allegoresis allows the reader to view the text as “an illustration of a system of ideas existing independently of the author’s probable intentions (Berek, 1978: 118). Allegoresis is especially useful in the case of interpreting the Book of Genesis because it allows us to apply ancient biblical text to a different context, perhaps even to the contemporary political, economic, social, educational, scientific, and ethical climate we find ourselves in. Thus, through allegoresis and alternative exegeses, “The Fall” gains a new relevance - one which differs to that of religious Christians, and one which is not limited by their framework. One of the lenses through which scripture and the myth of the original sin could be interpreted is that of the Luciferian.

Luciferianism 

Luciferianism is a tradition which has no single founder and cannot be attributed to any specific time period (Gregorius, 2024). Rather, it can be described as a heterodox spiritual phenomenon that arose over time in the context of Christian hegemony (Gregorius, 2024). As a rejected tradition and counter-culture (Faxneld, 2012: 1), Luciferianism may be classified as an esoteric current using Wouter Hanegraaff’s model of esotericism as “rejected knowledge” (Hanegraaff: 2013: 13). According to Hanegraaff’s inflated model of rejected knowledge, esotericism can be defined as knowledge which has consistently faced rejection, marginalisation, exclusion, and repression at the hands of the cultural mainstream (Asprem, 2021: 130). 

The rejection of Luciferianism can be traced to 1231, in which the term “Luciferian” was used as an accusation of heresy by the church in Germany (Gregorius, 2024). From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, several heretical groups were accused of Luciferianism (Gregorius, 2024). This rejection only intensified with the connection of Luciferianism with the Theosophical society and unpopular political movements (Gregorius, 2024). Religious scholar Per Faxneld holds that the esoteric tradition of Luciferianism cannot be viewed in isolation from politics, as its rise was inextricably linked with that of other rejected ideas such as socialism, anarchism, and feminism (Faxneld, 2012: 1). 

Author Michael Ford notes that Luciferian philosophy arises out of the Satanic principles of liberation and illumination (Ford, 2019: 42). Ford describes Luciferian philosophy as one of the individual who “seeks self-excellence while indulging in the pleasures of this world” (Ford, 2019: 43). An idea central to this belief system is the notion that there exists no deity who is responsible for the actions of the individual, and that it is one's own responsibility to attain wisdom (Ford, 2019: 43). Lucifer, according to Ford, represents “the light of intellect, wisdom, and power unique to the individual”.  

A Luciferian interpretation of The Fall

With its strong emphasis on wisdom, autonomy, and self-reliance, and the decentralisation of deities and authoritative figures, a Luciferian reading of the Bible brings forth interpretations that are vastly different than that of most other modes of exegesis. Viewed from a Christian framework, “The Fall” in the book of Genesis can be viewed as describing a cunning, treacherous, and malicious serpent who tricks a “foolish woman” into sinning with the intention of “corrupting man” (Fodor, 1954: 203). Interpreted through a Luciferian lens, however, it is not the serpent, Adam, or Eve who is viewed as the antagonist in this chapter. 

As one of the core principles of Luciferianism is the belief that one’s actions and decisions are one’s own responsibility, in the eyes of a Luciferian, the serpent would not be to blame for Adam and Eve’s decision to disobey their creator. Furthermore, the serpent would not be viewed as the symbol of an evil supernatural being. Rather, the serpent symbolises and embodies the virtues of Lucifer: light, intellect, wisdom, liberation, rebellion, and critical thinking (Ford, 2019: 45). As such, rather than viewing the serpent as a manipulative figure who plots the moral downfall of man, the serpent would be viewed by Luciferians as a liberatory figure whose aim was to free Adam and Eve from the oppressive forces of their creator, and encourage them to embody the Luciferian values of sovereignty and intellectual excellence (Ford, 2019: 45).

While dominant narratives surrounding Adam and Eve paint them as foolish sinners who fell for the serpent’s supposed manipulation (Fodor, 1954: 203), a Luciferian would view their actions as following man’s inherent human nature which seeks excellence and wisdom (Ford, 2019: 45). In addition, their act of defiance would not be viewed as a transgression, but rather an act of independence and autonomy. 

A Luciferian interpretation of “The Fall” may go so far as to view God as the villain. Attempting to prevent Adam and Eve not only from gaining knowledge but from exercising their free will could be seen as an inherently oppressive act. Viewing knowledge and enlightenment as a force of light (Ford, 2019: 128), a Luciferian might interpret God’s efforts to keep knowledge from mankind as an act of darkness and evil. Luciferians hold that knowledge leads to personal power (Ford, 2019: 25). As such, a Luciferian may speculate that God’s motives for withholding were to subjugate mankind to his will, as knowledge would prevent them from blindly following the commands of their creator. 

Overall, a Luciferian would not view “The Fall” in Genesis as the downfall of mankind due to their disobedience, but rather the liberation of man out of a simulated perfection, contentment, and ignorance. After defying God, Adam and Eve, and subsequently all of mankind are no longer destined to be shielded from reality, and are equipped with the necessary knowledge to navigate it. Some may wish to view such an interpretation as containing a normative prescription: one should have the courage, even in the face of impending punishment, to exercise one’s free will and strive for the attainment of knowledge, so as to enable one’s own liberation from oppressive and carefully-constructed ignorance.

Objections to a Luciferian interpretation of scripture

Some may argue that endorsing the reinterpretation of religious texts is sacrilegious or disrespectful and undermines the authority of God (Pauly, 2017). This may especially be the case with a lens of analysis that appeals to a figure who is believed by Christians to exist in constant opposition to their God (Goetz, 2016: 221), and paints God as the true villain. 

To respond, it may be pointed out that, even when opting out of a religionist perspective which would assume the validity of the religious text in question, one need not analyse religious texts from a purely reductionist perspective, which would analyse religious texts with the already-established understanding that they are merely historical artefacts and not proof of the truth of the religious claims being made (Hanegraaff, 1995: 99). Rather, it is possible to take a stance that is what Hanegraaff would call methodologically agnostic (Hanegraaff, 1995: 99). Using methodological agnosticism, the reader or historian remains neutral between religious disbelief and belief, and instead allows empirical evidence to guide the study (Hanegraaff, 1995: 99). In this way, the reader performing a reinterpretation or allegoresis is not bound by religious convention, and is thus not obliged to ensure that their interpretations do not constitute blasphemy. At the same time, however, they are not allowing their own beliefs (or lack thereof) to influence their understanding. 

Conclusion

The transformation myth in the Book of Genesis, and religious texts in general, hold potential meanings that dogmatic and conventional modes of exegesis have overlooked. Through an allegoresis using traditionally rejected esoteric currents we are able to reconceptualise the story of the fall of man, and the ethical concepts it contains. A Luciferian interpretation of the myth of the original sin challenges the notion that Adam and Eve were led down the path of evil by the serpent, and instead holds that the serpent sought to aid in the liberation of man. Man’s disobedience, in the eyes of a Luciferian, is simply man’s assertion of autonomy and the refusal to be dictated to and kept in metaphorical darkness. While many may be hesitant to reinterpret sacred text, it is necessary to point out the possibility of remaining methodologically agnostic in one’s analysis. Additionally, the significance of new methods of interpretation justifies the risk of producing potentially heterodox ideas. As the interpretation of scripture has profound effects on conceptualisations of moral concepts, it would be beneficial for future scholarship in both theology and esotericism to question and reinterpret religious dogma, rather than accepting religious texts as literal and final. In daring to reject the dominant Christian interpretation of “The Fall”, we as readers display the same courage and innate desire for knowledge, autonomy, and liberation believed by Luciferians to be displayed by Adam and Eve in their defiance of God. 

Bibliography

Aron, L. (2005) The tree of knowledge: Good and evil: Conflicting interpretations. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 15(5), pp.681-707.

Asprem, E. (2021) “Rejected Knowledge Reconsidered: Some Methodological Notes on Esotericism and Marginality” In E. Asprem and J. Strube (eds.) New Approaches to the Study of Esotericism. Brill, pp. 127-146.

Baumgartner, J., Lanczowski, G. and Fries, H., 1974. Myth and Mythology. Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, 2(4), pp.195-200.

Berek, P. (1978) Interpretation, Allegory, and Allegoresis. College English, 40(2), pp. 117-132.

Faxneld, P. (2012) Blavatsky the Satanist: Luciferianism in Theosophy, and its feminist implications. Temenos-Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion, 48(2).

Firestone, R. S. (2014) Why the Bible cannot and should not be taken literally. Open Journal of Philosophy, pp. 303-318.

Fodor, A. (1954) The fall of man in the book of Genesis. American Imago, 11(2), pp. 203-231.

Ford, M. (2019) Apotheosis: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Luciferianism and the Left-Hand Path. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Succubus Productions Publishing. 

Goetz, H. (2016). “God and the world. Religious Concepts of the Early and High Middle Ages. Part I, Volume 3: IV. The Creatures: Angels, Devils, Human”. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Gregorius, F. (2024) Luciferianism timeline. Available at https://wrldrels.org/2024/03/22/luciferianism/ (Accessed 25 April 2024). 

Hanegraaff, W. J. (1995) “Empirical method in the study of esotericism” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 7(2), pp.99-129.

Hanegraaff, W. J. (2013) Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Janko, R. (2001) The Derveni Papyrus (" Diagoras of Melos, Apopyrgizontes Logoi?"): A

New Translation. Classical philology, 96(1), pp.1-32.

Pauly, R. (2017) Is it wrong to reinterpret Scripture? Available at https://think-well.org/2017/04/04/is-it-wrong-to-reinterpret-scripture/ (Accessed 2 May 2024). 

Postell, S.D. (2022) Reading Genesis, Seeing Moses: Narrative Analogies with Moses in the Book of Genesis. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 65(3), pp.437-455.

Pushkov, T.G. (2005) The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: An Attempt to Differentiate Theologems. Богословські роздуми: Східноєвропейський журнал богослов'я, (5), pp.91-105.

The Holy Bible. Genesis. New International Version (1980). Cape Town: Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 

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Working with the pedagogical motive for esoteric writing, this essay provides an interpretation of Plato’s myth of Er as one of many myths through which readers are provided with a philosophical education. Following a soldier’s journey through the afterlife, readers are taken through what at first seems to be a lesson in justice and morality. However, upon further inspection of the contradictions, paradoxes, and elements of irony in the myth, readers are pushed to look beyond the plot for answers. These seemingly incongruous features appear to point to a methodological practice on the part of Plato: rhetorical indirection. This indirection serves as a stimulant of critical thought, forcing readers into a state of radical doubt and a dialectical struggle. With an emphasis on Plato’s pedagogical motive in writing myths, this essay investigates instances of rhetorical indirection in the myth of Er for their educational significance, showing how readers are meant to look beyond the content and engage actively and philosophically with the structure and content of the story they are presented with. In so doing, readers may discover a new way of conceptualising the salvation of the soul in more than mere religious terms. Rather than focusing purely on moral righteousness, Plato’s myths can be shown to perceive a love of wisdom as the ultimate means by which to elevate the soul.

Introduction

The potentially infinite gap between what Plato has said and what he meant has plagued philosophers and historians for ages. Both the structure and content of Plato’s dialogues and the myths within them make for an interesting esoteric study due to the way potential meanings and lessons are hidden within them. Plato’s power to puzzle and confuse readers through contradiction, paradox, and irony should be viewed as part of a larger pedagogical project. These forms of rhetorical indirection can especially be found in his Republic, particularly in the eschatological myth of Er, which describes the cycle of the metempsychosis or reincarnation of the soul in a seemingly contradictory, paradoxical, and ironic way. To uncover the meaning behind this, it is necessary to perform an allegoresis of the myth with the pedagogical motive for esoteric writing in mind. While some may analyse this myth through a purely religious or spiritual lens due to the influence of ancient mystery cults on Plato’s philosophy, an analysis of Er’s tale from a pedagogical lens may better contextualise and explain the myth’s baffling obfuscation and convolution than a purely religious one. As such, Er’s account of the afterlife, as presented in the Republic, will be analysed for its philosophical educational value, focusing particularly on the contradictory relationship between the myth of Er and other myths in the Republic, its paradoxical depiction of the afterlife, and the ironic way in which souls are judged before the process of reincarnation. Thereafter, Plato’s motives for using these instruments of aporia will be the subject of speculation to determine what end he may have had in mind.

The Myth of Er

Appearing at the end of Plato’s Republic, the myth of Er, as narrated by the fictional Socrates, details the story of a soldier, Er, who dies in battle, goes to the underworld, and returns to the living to describe his experience of death and the afterlife (Plato, 2021: 379). Acting as a messenger, Er tells the story of his soul’s journey to a “mysterious place” (Plato, 2021: 379). He describes an afterlife consisting of judges who lead those they deem just through a heavenly ascent, and those deemed unjust through a lower descent (Plato, 2021: 379). Those sent below endure great hardship, while those sent to heaven experience “visions of inconceivable beauty (Plato, 2021: 380). Those who had acted maliciously during their lives suffered the consequences of these actions in the afterlife, and those who tried to escape these punishments were prevented as they had not yet been sufficiently punished (Plato, 2021: 381). 

Er journeys with the souls for several days and eventually reaches the Spindle of Necessity which holds together the cosmos (Plato, 2021: 382). They are then taken to the daughter of Necessity, Lachesis, and begin to decide on the direction of their next lives with infinite possibilities to choose from, including an animalistic life, a life of tyranny, a life of fame, and a life of poverty (Plato, 2021: 384). Acting as the climax of the myth, this moment of decision holds great significance, as it is this action which determines the rewards or punishments the souls will receive in their next reincarnated life (Keping, 2007: 284). One soul, for example, chooses a life of tyranny and power, and is thereafter doomed to a life of horror and loss (Plato, 2021: 386). In this way, the souls are not only judged on their past actions, but on their present decisions. 

Allegoresis as a tool for interpretation

If allegorical texts are defined as texts that “say one thing and mean another” (Berek, 1978: 118), then Plato’s myth of Er can be interpreted allegorically, looking at its elements as a representation of unspoken messages and hidden meanings rather than a literal account of history. Several allegorical interpretations of the myth of Er have been offered. Some interpretations of this myth involve viewing the myth as one aspect of a larger cosmological system in which the transcendence of the soul features (Vorwerk, 2002), seeing the myth as a guide for life and through the afterlife (Keping, 2009: 282), and theorising that Plato’s intentions in writing the myth was to restore the reputation of the gods (Fahey, 2018). However, due to the enigmatic and infinitely productive nature of Plato’s works, it may be necessary to perform an allegoresis of his myths.

Peter Berek defines allegoresis as a process by which texts are analysed without being limited to considerations of authorial intent (Berek, 1978: 118). This process differs from that of interpreting allegory the traditional way, in that the reader does not need to look to extra-textual information for an indication of how the text should be interpreted (Berek, 1978: 120). Allegoresis is especially useful when there is limited evidence of possible authorial intent, but can be applied even when an author’s intention has been clearly stated (Berek, 1978: 118). Because allegoresis is not bound by authorial intent, the reader is able to extract meanings and truths from the text that the author might not have been aware of (Berek, 1978: 118). Although there is very little explicit indication of Plato’s motives in writing the myth of Er, several of its features may be analysed through the lens of the pedagogical motive for esoteric writing. 

Esoteric writing with a pedagogical motive

In his article detailing the pedagogical motive for esoteric writing, Arthur Melzer argues that there have historically been more purposes for the esoteric style of writing “between the lines” than to avoid persecution or to protect society from harm (Melzer, 2007: 1015). Another reason authors may write esoterically, concealing their message in a tangle of rhetoric, paradox, contradiction, and riddles is for the purpose of pedagogical effectiveness (Melzer, 2007: 1015). With a pedagogical motive for esoteric writing, the writer employs elements of concealment and obscurity for the purpose of a philosophical education (Melzer, 2007: 1017). Here, rather than taking on a strictly political or religious purpose, obscurity is favoured over a more literal and explicit means of communication, due to the “ineffectiveness of open statements” and the “superficiality of direct communication” (Melzer, 2007: 1017). Melzer describes the modern tendency for literalness and clarity as “too narrow and dogmatic”, and additionally warns of the dangers of reading (Melzer, 2007: 1018). 

As books are the thoughts and already-established beliefs of others, Melzer argues that reading allows one to indulge in ignorance (Melzer, 2007: 1018). He adds that, in consuming the thoughts of another, one is too easily given what one has not earned (Melzer, 2007: 1018). Reading allows one to reach the destination of supposed knowledge without having to struggle through the journey of dialectic, and as such, is a shortcut in proper intellectual development (Melzer, 2007: 1018). With this opinion, Melzer seems to imply that knowledge is not meant to be the product of absorption but rather the result of our own generative thought processes. It can thus be said that it is the task of a true philosopher to ensure that knowledge is not simply handed to the reader  (Melzer, 2007: 1019). 

Borrowing the idea from Plato’s Protagoras, Melzer argues that “wisdom and virtue cannot be taught”, but they can be learned (Melzer, 2007: 1017).  For this reason, Melzer holds that the aim of a philosophical education should not be to pass on a system of knowledge, but to imbue the student with a passion for wisdom (Melzer, 2007: 1018). This is what Plato referred to as the “turning around of the soul” (Melzer, 2007: 1018). 

Elements of pedagogy in the Myth of Er

Plato’s Myth of Er and his potential motives for its placement in the Republic leaves room for much interpretation due to its baffling nature (Keum, 2020: 4). When viewed purely for its religious, political, or ethical significance, the myth poses somewhat of what author Tae-Yeoun Keum calls an “interpretive challenge” (Keum, 2020: 4).  Keum suggests viewing the myth as a “systematic account of an education and a test in cosmic justice” (Keum, 2020: 5). When viewed from this lens, one possible interpretation of the myth of Er and the transcendence of souls is the idea that the transcendence of the souls into heaven is not a result of their morally good nature, but their dedication to a love of wisdom and a commitment to a journey of searching for knowledge. In this view, souls who are prevented from transcendence are not necessarily evil or morally bad, but have not engaged themselves in the quest for wisdom. In addition, the choices the souls make about their next life is not necessarily of a moral nature, but one of choosing between idleness and education. In this way, one could interpret Plato as believing that a truly noble life is one in which one’s philosophical education is a continuous feature, rather than blindly accepting or following religious or political doctrine. The journey of the soul can be viewed as the process of receiving an education whose end is likened to a spiritual form of salvation, illustrating Plato’s potential belief in the transformative nature of education. As such, the myth retains its eschatological and soteriological elements, but they are combined with an element of pedagogy.

While the content of such myths may point to a pedagogical motive, one should not be so concerned with the actual plot of a given myth that one overlooks precisely how the myth is presented. The structure of Plato’s myths and dialogues may hold a greater, more hidden significance that only the most careful reader would pick up on. 

Jason Ingram argues that the reason Plato’s work has had such enduring generativity, in that we are still able to extract more from it over two-thousand years after his death, is his use of rhetorical indirection through what might be termed “aporetic devices”, which are intended to cause radical doubt, or aporia, in the reader (Ingram, 2007: 293) Some of these aporetic devices include contradiction, paradox, and irony as a means of rhetorical indirection (Ingram, 2007: 293). Rhetorical indirection, as described by Ingram, is a method adopted in Plato’s work to serve as a catalyst for critical thought (Ingram, 2007: 293). Ingram notes how Plato uses rhetoric, the art of persuasion, as a means of indirection which pushes the reader to engage in dialectics, which subsequently has a transformative and self-developmental effect (Ingram, 2007: 298). Several Platonic texts can be examined for their rhetorical indirection through the use of aporetic devices. Plato’s Phaedrus, for example, sees the character of Socrates condemn and denounce rhetoric and writing, in a rhetorical piece of written work (Ingram, 2007: 293). Ingram holds that this is not an indication of thoughtlessness on the part of Plato, or hypocrisy on the part of Socrates, but rather an intentional contradiction (Ingram, 2007: 299). 

Both the content and form of Plato’s dialogues should be analysed with their pedagogical significance in mind. Pedagogical elements can be found in the actual structure of the myths in the form of rhetorical indirection and aporetic devices, both in their relation to one another, and individually. The myth of Er, for example, contradicts arguments made about mimesis which were made earlier on in the Republic, and subverts the understanding one may have drawn about the afterlife from earlier myths in the book (Beck, 2013: 2). Additionally, Keum notes how it is not clear whether the myth of Er “supports or subverts the Republic’s central argument” that justice is unconditionally worthy of pursuit, and even contemplates whether its perplexing nature is a feature specifically intended to contradict this depiction of justice (Keum, 2020: 7). 

Paradox appears in the myth’s depiction of the afterlife, which is surprisingly earthly and familiar (Beck, 2013: 2). Plato paradoxically describes something ineffable, unfamiliar, and otherworldly in strikingly familiar and “this-worldly” terms (Beck, 2013: 2). The spiritual existence in the afterlife is described in such a way that it resonates with our own experiences in our corporeal and physical existence (Beck, 2013: 2). The souls in the myth are supposedly disembodied, yet are described as having material and fleshly characteristics: hands, feet, names, identities, and appetites” (Beck, 2013: 2). This deliberate paradox serves as a pedagogical tool in the way it frames a seemingly unthinkable and unrelatable experience in a way that feels similar to our own lives, allowing us to engage not only philosophically, but psychologically and personally with the content.  

An element of irony in this myth is seen in the way a righteous earthly life is simply not enough to secure one’s pleasure in the afterlife. Souls, even when judged as having been morally good in their past life, can be doomed to a life of suffering in the next phase of their reincarnation if they choose a life of vices or tyranny (Keping, 2007: 286). The purpose of this irony may be to engage readers in critical thought instead of simply reading the myth and ascribing straight-forward moral value to it.  One might argue that it is enough to be judged on one’s actions in life alone and that souls should not be judged on their choices in the present. In contrast, one might argue that the past actions of an individual mean nothing if their current actions reflect greed. One might question why souls are put through so many layers of testing to determine their morality. Perhaps the moral testing of the souls metaphorically reflects the many layers of testing the reader goes through in reading these myths, and takes us through a rigorous process of critical engagement. Perhaps the wisdom needed by the soul to choose a good next life (Keping, 2007: 288) is the same wisdom required by the reader to choose to engage themselves philosophically. 

Objection to a pedagogical interpretation of Platonic myths

Some may object to the interpretation of the myth of Er through a pedagogical lens on the grounds that they should rather be interpreted religiously. Many would prefer an interpretation through the lens of ancient Greek mystery cults, especially as Plato took great inspiration from the Pythagorean brotherhood and Eleusinian communities (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2022: 6). With their strong focus on initiation, hiddenness and revelation, a joyful existence, and a readiness for death (Ustinova, 2013: 105), placing ancient mystery cults at the forefront of interpretations of Platonic myths may reveal esoteric messages and meanings in the myth of Er. Taking into account Plato’s ties to mystery cults, Stephen Halliwell describes the myth of Er as an eschatological myth, in that it relates to death, judgement, and the subsequent transcendence or ascent of the soul (Halliwell, 2007: 447). He also notes how the myth weaves in ideas of cosmological necessity and reincarnation, which were no doubt inspired by the content of the rites of mystery cults (Halliwell, 2007: 447). 

To reply, it may be pointed out that religious and pedagogical interpretations are not incommensurable. While interpreting Platonic myths solely with ancient mystery cults in mind is plausible, it may be more fruitful to analyse such myths using mystery cults as the backdrop against which they were written, focusing additionally on their contextual influence rather than just their manifestations within the contents of the myths. Halliwell argues that the myth of Er forms part of Plato’s larger project of “reappropriating the medium of the myth for his own philosophical purposes”, and that his myths were neither a complete replication of religious ideas, nor solely his own invention (Halliwell, 2007: 447). With this argument, Hallilwell alludes to the belief that the cultic and soteriological aspects of his myths should not necessarily be viewed as an indication of a religious normative prescription by Plato. Rather, it can be argued that the Orphic, Eleusinian, Dionysiac, and Pythagorean elements in Plato’s dialogues simply occurred as a result of their being popular at the time, and that Plato was simply borrowing material that would be familiar to his readers and students. Additionally, Plato’s strong focus on death in the myth of Er could have been the result of how widely relevant the topic of death was at the time of its writing (Ustinova, 2013: 105). Yulia Ustinova notes how ancient mystery cults welcomed thousands of new initiates after the disastrous Peloponnesian War, which had caused a preoccupation with death amongst the population (Ustinova, 2013: 105). What attracted people to these mystery religions was the unique gift of a “joyful existence, peace of mind, and a readiness to accept death” which they provided (Ustinova, 2013: 105). As such, it is entirely likely that Plato’s strong religious focus coincides with his pedagogical motive for writing esoterically. 

For the love of wisdom

Now that it has been determined that Plato engaged in rhetorical indirection in his dialogues with a pedagogical motive, it may be useful to question the possible motives and goals in mind in using these pedagogical tools. After an analysis of the use of indirection in Plato’s work, it is clear that readers are not meant to extract an independent and self-sufficient system of thought from his dialogues (Ingram, 2007: 299). Rather, the dialectical struggle readers engage in serves as a necessary step in a philosophical education and self-development (Ingram, 2007: 302). Instead of providing readers with explicit directions or answers, Plato equips readers with the tools with which to transform the soul through living philosophically (Coniglione, 2019: 36). He does so by structuring his dialogues in such a way that, instead of passively consuming knowledge put forth by him, readers are immersed in a “dynamic, personalised interaction” (Ingram, 2007: 299) with the power to awaken them out of their “dogmatic slumber” (Ingram, 2007: 301) through active participation. 

Platonic myths seem to serve an educational function, and should perhaps not be looked at as lessons in morality and virtue in the traditional sense, but rather lessons in philosophical engagement. Perhaps the ultimate “good” one can do is embark on a philosophical education, and perhaps Plato’s intention is to show that the salvation of the soul is achieved only through a love of wisdom. John Russon argues that a Platonic education is of such a nature that one does not simply accumulate or stumble upon knowledge (Russon, 2000: 113). Rather, an education is a transformation of one’s soul through a commitment to the pursuit of knowledge fuelled by a passionate love of wisdom (Russon, 2000: 114). Perhaps, then, the good life the souls in the myth of Er are rewarded with after a life of righteousness and the just and noble decision they make about their next life is symbolic of the lives readers could lead after making the choice to live a life of the pursuit of wisdom. 

Conclusion

When analysing both the form and content of the eschatological myth of Er, numerous elements of indirection appear in the form of contradiction, paradox, and irony. These aporetic devices may point to a pedagogical and educational motive on the part of Plato. In questioning instances of epistemic disorientation, one might come to realise that our experience while reading the myth is of far greater significance than an understanding of the plot itself, as the process of radically doubting what we read throws us into a dialectical struggle. This is an essential experiential aspect of a philosophical education. While a reading of Platonic myths should not be purely religious, we may combine soteriological and pedagogical features to come to the conclusion that the transcendence of the soul relies on a love of wisdom and a never-ending journey of philosophical engagement. Future scholarship on religion, esotericism, ethics, and even philosophy should follow in Plato’s footsteps and add elements of pedagogy into their work. Much like Plato sets up a text for us to actively and productively engage with, professors, teachers, authors, religious leaders, political leaders, and other figures of authority ought to structure their lessons, articles, rites, and formal proceedings in such a way that a critical and dynamic participation is required on the part of students, readers, congregations, and citizens. Instead of being presented with complete and unquestionable doctrine, each member of society should be given the opportunity to question and pick apart truth claims, especially in the face of power. In this way, a Platonic education could empower everyone to dare to think for themselves, and live well with a passionate love of wisdom.

Bibliography

Beck, B., 2013, September. ὁμοίους ἡμῖν: PROVOCATIVE CONTRADICTIONS IN PLATO’S MYTH OF ER. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient Literature.

Berek, P., 1978. Interpretation, Allegory, and Allegoresis. College English, 40(2), pp.117-132.

Coniglione, F. (2019) Some Remarks on the Meaning of Esotericism and Plato’s Unwritten Doctrines. Mondi: Movimenti simbolici e sociali dell’uomo, 1(1), pp.5-51.

Encyclopaedia Britannica (2022) Mystery Religions. Available at https://www.britannica.comhttps://www.britannica.com/topic/mystery-religion (Accessed on 14 February 2024).

Fahey, C., 2018. A Defense of the Gods: Interpreting Plato's Myth of Er. Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College.

Halliwell, F. S., 2007. The life-and-death journey of the soul: Interpreting the myth of Er. Cambridge University Press.

Ingram, J., 2007. Plato's rhetoric of indirection: Paradox as site and agency of transformation. Philosophy & rhetoric, 40(3), pp.293-310.

Keping, W., 2009. Plato’s poetic wisdom in the myth of Er. Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 4(2), pp.282-293.

Keum, T.Y., 2020. Plato’s Myth of Er and the Reconfiguration of Nature. American Political Science Review, 114(1), pp.54-67.

Melzer, A., 2007. On the pedagogical motive for esoteric writing. The Journal of Politics, 69(4), pp.1015-1031.

Plato., 2021. Republic. Dublin: HarperCollins Publishers.

Russon, J., 2000. Erōs and Education: Plato's Transformative Epistemology. Laval théologique et philosophique, 56(1), pp.113-125.

Ustinova, Y., 2013. To live in joy and die with hope: experiential aspects of ancient Greek mystery rites. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 56(2), pp.105-123.

Vorwerk, M., 2002. Mythos Und Kosmos: Zur Topographie des Jenseits im Er-Mythos des Platonischen Staates (614b2-616b1). Philologus, 146(1), pp.46-64.

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