The Negotiation of Alterity

The Introduction of the Cult of Cybele at Rome, Andrea Mantegna 1506 CE

Abstract

The Negotiation of Alterity
The Phrygian Goddess Cybele in Greece and Rome

This research explores the evolution of the gender binary and its effect on the development of social structures affecting self-actualization in gender non-conforming communities. The research employs methodologies from post-processual and cognitive archaeology to access bigenderism's impact upon the social status of gender-variant communities in pre-classical and classical Aegean and Anatolian societies from 1200 to 200 BCE.

The worship of the Phrygian Goddess Cybele, as a personification of the Neolithic Magna Mater has had a long-term and profound influence on the classical antiquity of the Greco-Roman world. The worship of Cybele is of significant interest to social scientists for two primary reasons. First, Cybele as a “Mother of the Gods” is strongly associated with Neolithic antecedents thus testifying to the widespread deification of a feminine createrix. Secondly, the male officiates of the cult demonstrated a seemingly dichotomous devotion to the deity by castrating themselves thereafter inhabiting the liminal state between men and woman.

Cultic worship, in violating the integrity of the borders of gender, provided gender-variant officiates with a socially comprehensible framework in which to ground their individual aspirations for gender transition. Social legitimacy for gender-variant communities derives from the broader culture’s re-conceptualization of gender identity and hetero/homosexuality as the direct result of interaction with marginalized communities. Society’s social interaction with the minority community reflects a dynamic indicative of its own anxieties with respect to the supposed immutability of gender identity and sexual orientation. These social roles are negotiated against the backdrop of consensus by the dominant cisgendered culture. The durability of this consensus is significantly impacted by whether the majority culture expresses itself in predominately gylanic or androcratic terms.

This research employs a multidisciplinary approach drawing from the disciplines of cognitive archaeology, cultural anthropology, archaeomythology and evolutionary psychology to explore the evolution of constructed meaning and effect in fundamentally shaping social relationships between cisgendered society and gender non-conforming communities.





© 2009 Renée Thomas all rights reserved