On the Lap of Necessity: A Mythic Reading of Teresa Brennan's Energetics Philosophy

In several works Teresa Brennan examines how, contrary to social notions of the separate and contained self, all that exists in the natural world is connected energetically. She identifies a "foundational fantasy" whereby the ego comes into existence and is maintained by the notion that it controls the mother. The effects of this fantasy are socially oppressive and, in the technological era, environmentally disastrous. My examination of narratives and images in ancient myth, popular culture, literature, and art suggest ways to counteract the destructive fantasy through re-symbolization of the relation to what Brennan understands as the original/living nature, which is correlated to the mother's body.