Hail Hera, Mother of Monsters! Monstrosity as Emblem of Sexual Sovereignty

This chapter explores the strange borderland between bios (life) and techne in the symbolic constellations of Ancient Greek myth. Through analysis of the figure of Hera, I demonstrate that monstrosity represents feminine sexual sovereignty and the feminine agency of creation that is repressed by androcentric imagination. Through an exploration of Freud’s notion of the uncanny in its relation to the maternal body, I argue that this category of the uncanny reveals androcentric fantasies about the maternal body as monstrous. In Freudian theory, this powerful mother is often described as the “phallic mother” since the only form of power that androcentric fantasy can imagine must be understood as “phallic.” Androcentric fantasy cannot fathom feminine agency, so any feminine agency that is nevertheless perceived is dismissed as accidental—and thus takes on the character of the uncanny. The strange and irrational belief in the phenomenon of ‘maternal imagination’ reveals that the feminine power of creation that is repressed by androcentric fantasy is not only the power to create life through birth but also a radical power of imagination.