25th August: Myths of Sacrifice - debt, questions of human sacrifice

Suzanne MacAlister

Rationale: Joseph Campbell, Walter Burkert - sacrificial ritual / hunting societies;

(i) inhibition about killing ritualised - given a social and economic rationale;

(ii) sacrifice and funerary ritual, death giving rise to birth, Patroklos' death, H. Il. 22.

(iii) exchange value of sacrificial gift.

(iv) Walter Burkert and renunciation of personal profit; George Bataillle and nonproductive expenditure, his concepts of "general economy" and "restricted economy" - Prometheus sacrifice myth (Hesiod Theogany) - conflict economies of abundance and productivity / conservation.

(v) human sacrifice - function - times of transition, preliminary to war, end to war;

(vi) sacrifice and the virgin - Hesione, Andromeda, Iphigenia, Polyxena; female initiation theory - termination of amidenhood; local cult to panhellenic myth; panhellenic myth utilising women as a vehicle for transformation: woman not as a sovereign subject, but as a vehicle for soversign subjects.

(vii) panhellenic myth and "primitive" nature of human sacrifice - atonement, appeasement, distancing to domain of the "other".

Mr Turner