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3
Sarah Caldwell, another member of RISA, won the prestigious
Robert Stoller Award for her scholarship on the Hindu Goddess. Below is a long excerpt from her research paper, ‘The
Bloodthirsty Tongue and the Self-Feeding Breast: Homosexual Fellatio Fantasy in
a South Indian Ritual Tradition’, for which she was given an
award by her largely Western peers.
This essay demonstrates that in Kerala, symbolism of the fierce goddess
[Kali] does not represent abreactions of the primal scene fantasies of a
Kleinian ‘phallic mother’ or introjection of the father’s penis; rather, we
will show that themes of eroticism and aggression in the mythology are male
transsexual fantasies reflecting intense preoedipal fixation on the mother’s
body and expressing conflicts over primary feminine identity.
The essential rituals of the Bhagavati cult all point to the
aggressive and fatal erotic drinking of the male by the female, the infamous orgy
of blood sacrifice of male ‘cocks’ at the Kodungallur Bhagavati temple; the
male veliccappatu’s cutting of his head in a symbolic act of self castration .
. . [Kali] is herself, first of all,
a phallic being, the mother with a penis . . . she is the bloodied image of the
castrating and menstruating (thus castrating) female . . . In
this type of analysis the phallic abilities of the goddess disguise castration
anxieties ultimately directed toward the father as well as homosexual desire for
the father’s penis. Following Freud, such analyses
stress the father-son polarity of the oedipal conflict as the central trauma seeking expression.
As Alter and O’Flaherty amply demonstrate, milk and breastfeeding are also symbolically
transformed in the male imagination into semen and phallus . . . The
ascetic male who retains the semen becomes like a pregnant female with breasts
and swollen belly; the
semen rises like cream to his head and produces
extraordinary psychic powers .
. . Not only are the fluids of milk
and semen, symbolic equivalents, but the act of ‘milking’ or breastfeeding becomes
a symbolic equivalent to the draining of semen from the phallus in intercourse. [Emphasis added]
Caldwell uses the English word ‘cock’ for the rooster, so as to link
the ritual with the phallus. Since the Keralites were not mentally imagining
this English word with its double meaning for both rooster and penis
during their ritual, this translation by Caldwell is a clear example of how her
psychological predispositions enter into a supposedly ‘scholarly’
interpretation. She goes so far as to put
quotation marks around the word ‘cock’ in order to emphasize the double meaning that she is aware of, but not the Keralites. In other words this
is a projection of the scholar.
In the example cited above, the Goddess becomes shorn of all her
numerous, traditionally accepted meanings and a new primary meaning
is authoritatively adduced by the privileged Western scholar. Thus Kali becomes,
without argument, “first of all, a phallic being, the mother
with a penis . . . she is the bloodied image of the castrating
and menstruating (thus castrating) female.” [Emphasis added] This genre of
essentializing, which precludes all other meanings, is a symptom of Wendy’s
Child Syndrome as explained in a later chapter.
Fortunately, criticisms from within the scholarly community of
the methods used by scholars such as Caldwell are not entirely lacking. But they
do not go far enough in uncovering the problems that lie within these
free-floating kinds of analyses. In 1999, Caldwell published another book, Oh Terrifying Mother: Sexuality, Violence and Worship of the
Mother Kali.79 In her review of the book, Cynthia Humes wrote,
Caldwell documents numerous themes of sexuality, abuse, and vengeance
in Keralite religion and culture. She concludes, ‘Mutiyettu actors who are
particularly talented at playing the role of Kali might be traumatized
individuals whose particular psychological propensities and histories compel
them towards this form of performance’ I find this unconvincing. As
she herself notes, Caldwell did not conduct a detailed study of or even
collect the life histories of the individual Mutiyettu actors playing the role
of Kali; so there is no direct evidence of even one individual fitting this
typology. The implications she sees, while tantalizing and truly fascinating,
are based on extended digging into and assembling a dispersed array of sensationalist
and homoerotic mythological themes, combined with rumored sexual activity. The
unlikelihood of the thesis is underscored by the fact that the role of Kali is
only open to a handful of individuals, who must wait until the age of over
fifty to even assume this coveted starring role, and further, they would need
to evidence ‘particular talent’.
But how seriously does Caldwell have to take such criticism? Is
such criticism serious enough to question the quality of the scholar’s work so
as to insist that such work be simply disregarded? Or, in the absence of that,
should at least some safeguards be put in place to ensure more rigorous quality
control over work like this in the future? Unfortunately,
Humes is not willing to go that far. In spite of her acknowledging the lack of
evidence in Caldwell’s sweeping claims, Humes is still able to imagine how
Keralite society is indeed highly charged with homosexuality, sexual trauma,
and abuse, without citing any credible scholarship. In fact, later in her
review, Humes agrees with certain aspects of Caldwell’s sexual interpretation
of the ritual. She superimposes an entirely different sexual psychosis on the
Keralites than does Caldwell, and thus the peer-review becomes merely an argument between
different kinds of pathologies of Keralite Hindus.
It certainly gives the impression that criticism by RISA
insiders is encouraged to remain within certain boundaries, in order to give
this kind of lackluster analysis the appearance of peer reviewed integrity. On
the other hand, as we shall see in later chapters, when Indians talk in a
similar fashion about White scholars and their culture, they are denounced by
the academic establishment as ‘attackers’. The right to criticize is a
carefully protected privilege.
Autobiography as Scholarship
Cynthia Humes mentions that Caldwell’s work (like Kripal’s) is
largely autobiographical in nature. In the end, they may only amount to creative
psychodramas that expose personal pathologies, often hidden deep beneath wounds
of past trauma. Humes writes,
I do not doubt the sincerity of Caldwell’s belief that the goddess
was somehow ‘running my show’ or that her personal tragedies had ‘meaning and
significance beyond my personal lusts, fears, neuroses, and confusions.’ Abundant
examples of Caldwell’s lingering resentment are given free reign, deservedly in
some ways toward her now ex-husband but less so toward her disapproving
academic guide. This guide (despite his assistance in interviews, and arrangements
to have one of his students aid her in settling in, and provision of some
obviously helpful advice) she grills for his attempt to influence her research
program. She further suspects him of avariciousness toward her grant and,
ironically, belittles his suspicion of her possible infidelity (a suspicion
that turns out to be justified). These become examples of Obeyesekere’s
theories of ‘progressive orientation’, underscoring how Caldwell’s personal confession authorizes her broad
psychoanalytic theories about a remarkably
similar projected rage and resentment in the person of Bhadrakali. In so doing,
Caldwell preserves and in important ways, I believe, even enlarges the power
differential between author and reader that authorizes her participant-observer
projections onto her subjects. [Emphasis added]
No single form of the Goddess represents all of her forms, and
any view of the Goddess is incomplete if it is not seen as a part of a wider and
more comprehensive portrayal of her. Therefore, the Westernized over-emphasis
on her sensational, sexual and violent aspects is reductionism of the worst kind.
Scholars often contend that their works are meant exclusively
for fellow residents of the Ivory Tower and therefore have few real-world implications
for ‘outsiders’. However, such works filter into
school textbooks, popular culture, media and journalism, thus becoming the accepted
lenses through which many aspects of Indian culture are viewed.
Many of these scholars have an interesting love-hate
relationship with India. They appropriate the practices,
symbols, vocabulary and awareness that may make them seem distinct in their own
culture. The enhancement of the scholar’s status is often done at the
devastating expense of India’s native culture, which nurtured them and gave
them dignified lives in their own vulnerable years. This raises ethical and moral questions about
whether the scholars provide full disclosure to, and obtain informed consent
from, their Indian subjects and collaborators about the potential negative
stereotyping of their cultures in America.
Psychoanalyzing Popular Hindu
Culture
Scholars build upon each other’s
work, and often expand the intended scope of such works. Thus, Caldwell
supported Kripal’s work on Sri Ramakrishna, and adds another intriguing
dimension. She interprets all complaints from Hindus about Kripal as signs of psychological
disorders within the Hindu community, and she strongly recommends psychoanalyzing Hindu society to find out its
pathologies. (For more on this, please read page 46
and 47, chapter 4)
The kind of theorizing described on pages 46 and 47 has deeply troubling implications. Academic exercises
to psychoanalyze a public culture could serve as a cover for ‘ethnic profiling’
of the Indian-American diaspora, and be used to foster campaigns of hatred
against Indians.
One has to note that Caldwell in the theorizing separates out the ‘personal
domain as is common in Europe and America,’ and offers Euro-Americans individuality
and agency; whereas, on the other hand, she denies Indians, and especially
Hindus, that same individual agency.
In contrast to her approach towards the ‘good white people’, whom she grants
a personal domain, in the case of Indians she suggests psychoanalyzing their
culture to expose the ‘distorted masculinity’ of Hindus, and the ‘confused
sexuality’ of the Hindu male, as symptoms of abusive social orientations and dangerous nationalism. She culminates with a
warning regarding today’s Indian/Hindu male threat—invoking tragedy, trauma and
fear of the ‘other’.
By reversing the gaze, one can look at the source of this genre
of scholarship as emanating from individuals who are in psychological need of a
‘Hindu Other’. Malhotra surmises that their inner-directed psychological and
cultural conditioning drives them to the following allegations:
1. Sexual ‘madness’ in Hindu saints and in the Goddess is common
and expected.
2. To hide this pathology from the West, Vivekananda (who was Ramakrishna’s
‘passive homosexual object’) had to repackage Hinduism into a ‘presentable’
masculine image.
3. The alleged sexual deviance and hyper-masculinity applies not
only to particular Hindu individuals but also to the social culture of Hinduism
in general.
4. Hence, there is urgency to study contemporary Hindu culture
in a sexually explicit, psychopathological fashion. This approach is particularly
‘timely and essential’ because it enables US foreign policy the option to
intervene against such ‘human rights abuses’ inherent in the ‘other’. This ties in well to the demented religious paranoia
calls for fundamentalist Christian thought to drive US International Relations.
Hindus sometimes find the conclusions of psychoanalysis . . .
offensive to their own self-perceptions and cultural understandings; given the
psychoanalytical attempt to crack the codes of the social and intra-psychic
censors and its explicit desire to reveal secrets and uncover hidden truths, it
would be very surprising indeed if they reacted in any other way. In short, psychoanalysis
is a method that expects to be rejected. Psychoanalysis, then, goes well beyond
the anthropologist’s field study and the Sanskritist’s text and the historian
of religions’ phenomenological study to answer questions that no interview,
text, or phenomenological study is willing to ask, much less answer.
Thus Kripal paints his critics as being emotionally and
intellectually incapable of self-reflection, thereby evading the real issues
that they have raised. The primary reason Hindu intellectuals question psychoanalysis
is not because they fear the codes it may crack, but because the basic building
blocks and suppositions of psychoanalysis are incongruent with the foundational
concepts of dharma. Aurobindo isn’t the only Indian intellectual who found
psychoanalysis to be infantile. In The Analyst and the Mystic: Psychoanalytic Reflections on
Religion and Mysticism, Sudhir
Kakar reflected on the inapplicability of psychoanalysis in interpreting Hindu
ethos, writing about ‘the existence of a deep gulf between psychoanalysis and
the Indian mystical tradition’. (For more
on what Sudhir Kakar states and how this explains Kripal’s statements, please
read pages 49 and 50, chapter 4)
(Please read the poignant comic
strips on pages 51 and 52, chapter 4)
Read the entire chapter from page 42 to 52
Go to chapter 5
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