Honors College Theses
Publication Date
2025
Major
Philosophy (B.A.)
Release Option
Open Access
Faculty Mentor
Dr. Elizabeth Butterfield
Abstract
Gender is often described as a social construct. This description usually contrasts social construction with other unchanging, unambiguous concepts. Through Chiara Bottici's analysis, I argue the concept of myth breaks us from this dichotomy. By understanding myth as the persistent creation of significance through narratives, we no longer leave myth to the ambit of untruth and unreality. Instead, we see myths as a way to direct people’s actions by giving them a way to see the world. By integrating Bottici with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, I argue the significance of myth occurs through embodiment by organizing gestures. These gestures form a system of significance that gives us a world and places our bodies in it. Connecting to gender performance, this system of gestures produces gender scripts. In our present context, we can see the gender binary as a myth that directs people to act their bodies and genders within particular boundaries in restrictive ways. The question is not how we reject gender scripts and their received meanings. The question becomes: What constitutes a creative gender act, and how can we act our gender to produce a more open mythology?
Recommended Citation
Lacap, Isaac A., "Embodied Mythology of Rhetoric: The Dialectic of the Gender Binary Logos" (2025). Honors College Theses. 1032.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/honors-theses/1032
