fairy tales – Philosophics

I’ve been working on an essay and perhaps more, but rather than reduplicate my efforts, I share the podcast and two seminal links to the Substack contents.

Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast of this topic.

Note that this remains decidedly a work in progress; experience it as it unfolds.

Working thesis and abstract

This essay examines three mechanisms of institutional silence: the inhibition of inquiry under sacral authority, the inhibition of avowal under social consensus, and the inhibition of uptake under structural non-reception. Through the paired metaphors of the Grail (via The Fisher King), the Emperor’s New Clothes, and Cassandra, I argue that modern power often survives not by establishing truth but by organising silence across the social life of diagnosis. The result is a normatively managed gap between what subjects can perceive, what they are permitted to ask, what they are permitted to say, and what institutions are structured to hear.

Outline and thoughts

Neil Gaiman, an articulate, imaginatory writer. He makes a claim:

Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
Neil Gaiman

To me, this is a problem with correlating imagination with truth. Moreover, many a war was lost on the story that it could be won.

Of course, we can still play the metaphor game. I’ve been a fan of metaphor since Joseph Campbell. Metaphor is strength. There was a time when I read Jung and had a stronger interest in Depth and Archetypal Psychology. And fairy tales per Marie-Louise von Franz or her more contemporary cantadora, Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Archetypes are metaphor, but this doesn’t render them real. Still, we can operate as if they are. The trick is to remember that they are not.

Tag: fairy tales

Whom Do You Serve? WIP

Working thesis and abstract

Outline and thoughts

Thinking Truth