Special issue

Fragments from a myth-carriage

Hayley Singer

Abstract

This work charts dis-figurements of ‘the flesh’ as it is objectified, denigrated and negated in the process of desiring-and consuming-mythic ideals of beauty and unity achieved through enforced corporeal docility. The thematic myth-carriage finds embodiment in the narrative’s miscarriage that leads this work to its dissolution, while it also jettisons the narrative back to its origins in a ‘world of repetitious dreams.’ The structure of this work alludes to an endless roundelay of destruction and production as a necessary condition for consumerism’s obsessive, and seductive, drive towards happiness, wholeness, and hierarchical status. In addition to engaging with critical ideas of production and destruction, as a dynamic flux within consumerism, this work engages the motif of ‘Death and the Maiden’ through a critical re-vision of the Sleeping Beauty tale-type sutured to a deadened domestic Australian landscape.

Keywords

Fairy tale re-vision; Consumerism; Flesh; Gender; Miscarriage

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License.

ISSN: 2202-2546

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