Ariadne’s Thread Is Umbilical: Woven Together, Growing Untamed

So many threads to be woven together: Ariadne’s thread, the umbilical, the string in playing “Fort-Da!,” Arachne’s multiple weavings of the rapes of women by male gods, Penelope’s use of metis in weaving and unweaving the shroud as a ruse to defer the suitors until Odysseus’ return. This final chapter will be the most hysterical of all, winding multiple ways through narratives and charting new directions. Linear composition is unimaginative and lacks depth and texture: one snip and whoops, there goes the whole thing! Weavers and poets know the strategy of multiplicity, as does the unconscious wish: only through the weavings of so many others does any fabric come to fruition. This concluding chapter traces multiple paths through imaginative structures in order to express the multiplicity of meaning that is accessible when the imagination is not rigidly tamed by binary structures and androcentric fantasy.