The venerable roots of fanon

[branchandroot]

It's common for textual purists to disparage fanon, and I have certainly done that before. But it struck me, today, that fanon is, in it's own way, a venerable institution and deserves recognition for its tenacity, if not its precision.

Consider, for example, Gensis. Specifically, consider Eden, and the go-round with the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The serpent incites rebellion (by, I might note, telling nothing but the truth) and all parties get a really raw deal out of it, including labor pains, limblessness, and species enmity. There is not a scrap of textual indication that Satan or Lucifer, or any incarnation of the Devil at all, is present in any way.

The idea that the serpent was the Devil is fanon.

It's an extrapolation with no direct textual basis, running, I suspect, via Milton and the Romantics, and their various promethean reading of the Devil and a misconstrual of the name Lucifer (lightbringer being, as best I recall, a psalmic reference to Lucifer being as to Christ as Venus the Morning Star is to the Sun--herald or forerunner of light) whereby the fruit of knowledge is elided with the light of fire.

Not even going into the difference between the figures of Satan and Lucifer, though Satan's original role of Jehovah's Prosecutor General does connect to the idea of temptation and form another cross connection to the actions of the serpent.

The thing is, this is what people do. This is what people do with any text at all. They read it and take from it bits that make the most sense and extrapolate those bits into whatever form has the most meaning and accessibility to them. There's nothing heinously evil about this activity.

It's only when fanon becomes the basis for attempted textual explication that the perpetrator needs to be whacked one.

Comments

[naanima.livejournal.com]

See, the thing is I like some of the basic concepts that Milton had. They were grandoise and while Milton obviously was all about Satan being bad, bad, bad for rebelling I was all 'but he's so cool'. It was the whole fighting against fate, etc. It was an bizzare experience 'cos I was doing philosophy at the same time, and Nietzche and Milton together made a strange sort of sense though I was much more SATRE! I swear the man never grew out of his teenage angst.

But yes, need to do more resaerch. I have always been fascinated the Jews perspective of Lucifer.

[kenllama.livejournal.com]

::I have always been fascinated the Jews perspective of Lucifer.::

Could you elaborate on that? I'm not sure I've ever seen a Jewish perspective on Lucifer? (Satan yes, Lucifer no) I'd love to see what they'd have to say.

[naanima.livejournal.com]

See, this is when translation and interpretation of the Bible comes into play. The problem with 'Lucifer' is that it is not so much as a term used for Satan as much as it is a rank. The Socino defined Lucifer as 'Light-bearer' and in the same passage there is an implication of the rank of the Light-bearer passing on to the next person, or son of God. And here is where I get confused because Morning Star is also rank or function, yet is different from Lucifer, however, the two terms is interchangeable in most texts, and it is all very confusing because the Talmud talk of the Morning Star and the Day Star (Lucifer) at the same yet is obvious that they are not the same thing.

So, yeah. Hope this helped ^^;;;

[kenllama.livejournal.com]

::So, yeah. Hope this helped::

sort of ;) i do remember the Morning Star bit now, but I don't remember the whole situation. I should remind myself of some of this...

thanks!
k

[branchandroot]

though I was much more SATRE! I swear the man never grew out of his teenage angst.

*grinning* Nope, never.

*gazes into distance* Nietzche and Milton, hm? Wow, talk about two texts that deconstruct each other.

[naanima.livejournal.com]

And yet he was strangely endearing.

Exactly. But reading Nietzche's Superman ideal and Milton's Paradise at the same time... it was an interesting experience, their contradicting ideals helped me in understanding what the hell Nietzche was going on about. And Nietzche was hard to understand (at least for me).

[ladycrysiana.livejournal.com]

One of the most fascinating cooincidences in my studies has been studying Marx simultaneously from a philosophical and an historical point of view between a Conscience and a general history course. (And having professors who had opposite opinions of Marx, for that matter.)

[naanima.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

How did you survive?

Marx as whole bored me, his ideals were too naive, and it is only made worse when it is studied at a historical POV. The problem, as my philosophy lecturer use to us, is that the philosophies are usually perfect (most of the time), and is based on the assumption that humanity as a whole is intelligent enough to do what is benefitial for all. However, that is a load of crap because people are selfish and dumb.

I so loved his lectures.

[ladycrysiana.livejournal.com]

It was a fascinating semester. The philosophy professor who, for the record, loved Marx, basically said that Marx had the best ideas ever, ignoring the fact that even if one assumes that people are basically good, people could probably never pull it off. The history professor just said, "Marx = wrong. Especially in his model of history." Which was mostly just a discussion of Marx's way of seeing history as being too simplistic.