This was initially posted on Sept 23, 2011
“The motive force…falls again like a racing charioteer on the barrier, and with a nonetheless extra violent backward pull jerks the bit from between the tooth of the lustful horse, drenches his abusive tongue and jaws with blood, and forcing his legs and haunches in opposition to the bottom reduces him to torment. Lastly, after a number of repetitions of this remedy, the depraved horse abandons his lustful methods; meekly now he executes the desires of his driver, and when he catches sight of the cherished one [i.e. his master] is able to die of concern.”
I can’t appear to get this picture from Plato’s Phaedrus quoted in Val Plumwood’s Feminism and the Mastery of Nature out of my thoughts or my physique as of late. The opposite day I attempted to learn the above passage to a good friend and my physique turned so tense that I by accident reduce off the telephone connection—twice. Now whereas I’m writing my muscle tissue are tight, and I’m starting to get a headache. I can’t get the picture of the black horse out of my thoughts as a result of “she” (I do know that Plato’s horse was a “he”) has lived in my physique for so long as I bear in mind. She most likely first took root in my physique once I started to concern my father’s self-discipline. She turned larger and stronger each time somebody or one thing in tradition instructed me that my physique and the emotions of my physique have been unhealthy, that I as a woman or girl was unworthy, that the issues I cared about weren’t necessary, that my ideas have been fallacious.
I ask you to learn this passage aloud and to register the way it makes you’re feeling. Does the black horse reside in you too?
Plato meant this picture as an allegory for the relation of thoughts or soul to physique and nature. Feminists and ecofeminists are properly conscious that the hierarchical dualism enshrined on this picture is likely one of the principal roots of sexism, racism, colonialism, and the environmental disaster. Plumwood asks us to note the violence inherent within the relationship between thoughts or soul and physique or nature as posited by Plato. She tells us that that is mannequin of “radical exclusion” through which the “different” is violently subdued and its powers to do something aside from undergo and be utilized by the “grasp” are “negated.”
The charioteer symbolizes motive which should overpower nature. Plato doesn’t image this relationship as “pure” however as one that may solely be achieved by power, violence, and concern which can be typically coded as “love.” The horse and charioteer additionally characterize that wrestle inside “man” to regulate his personal physique and the emotions and passions that come up from it. Plato tells us that this too is just not a pure state of affairs: the thoughts should beat and subdue the physique into submission. Plumwood asserts that on this picture Plato is alluding to the procedures of “navy self-discipline” which by means of concern and humiliation root out a younger man’s pure wishes for “life” and “love” together with intercourse and substitute them with a need to “serve” and to ‘kill.” As many people know all too properly, navy self-discipline turns into a mannequin for child-rearing practices that scare or beat youngsters into submission. Ascetic traditions which Plato admired idealize violence in opposition to the physique (self-flagellation) as a strategy to ‘beat” the physique into submission. The horse and charioteer additionally characterize the connection between man and girl in patriarchy and the ever-present risk that ladies who resist their roles will be overwhelmed and raped into submission. Lastly the horse and charioteer additionally characterize the connection between grasp and slave. Slaves in Greece typically got here from Asia Minor or Africa and have been darker-skinned. On this picture we see the demonization of all the pieces black or darkish, of blackness itself. The bruised and bleeding black horse represents all that may and should be managed by the thoughts of the dominant man.
I’ve typically requested myself how western philosophy acquired it so fallacious, and why these concepts proceed to perpetuate themselves. Plumwood means that “The good accomplishment of Plato and the important thing to the big affect his system exerted was the creation of an mental framework for an otherworldly identification which claimed to cancel loss of life.” I might increase this profound perception and say that Platonism supplied an otherworldly identification which claimed to cancel finitude or limitation, dependence or interdependence, and loss of life. Platonism supplied the phantasm of full management over life.
Feminists, ecologists, and other people of colour typically quarrel over who was the primary oppressed and who turned the mannequin for the oppression of others. As I wrestle to consolation and to free the battered and bruised black horse in my very own physique, I start to understand that the primary oppressed was not the opposite however the self. Platonism supplied dominant males the satan’s cut price: subdue, repress, and root out your individual emotions and you’ll management something, you possibly can even beat loss of life. The kicker is that after getting misplaced your capability to really feel, the facility to dominate others looks as if deal.
