The Mythology of Transgression: Homosexuality as Metaphor

by Jamake Highwater

Jamake Highwater is a master storyteller and one of our most visionary writers, hailed as "an eloquent bard, whose words are fire and glory" (Studs Terkel) and "a writer of exceptional vision and power" (Anaïs Nin). Author of more than thirty volumes of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry,
Highwater--considered by many to be the intellectual heir of Joseph Campbell--has long been intrigued by how our mythological legacies have served as a foundation of modern civilization. Now, in The Mythology of Transgression , he uses his remarkable narrative powers to offer a personal and
extraordinarily far-ranging examination of how people who stand outside of society--by dint of their sexual orientation, physical appearance, ideas, artistic inclinations, or ethnic heritage--often achieve lasting, even profound influence upon the culture at large.
Drawing from a stunningly rich variety of sources ranging from the arts and literature to biology, physics, psychology, and anthropology, Highwater looks at his own outsider status--as a gay man, an artist, and an orphaned Native American--in an attempt to explore how mythologies from ancient
times to the present have shaped the ways we think about social "abnormality" and alienation. Throughout, he points to a paradox at the center of Western values--the competing notions that the outsider is at once sinful and wise, that in everyday life the transgressor is ostracized, while in our
most durable folklore and religious legends, heroes must break the rules to achieve greatness. Focusing in particular on homosexuality as a modern metaphor of transgression, Highwater brilliantly mixes personal anecdotes with wide ranging research, leading us on a tour through the history of social
conformity and rejection, citing examples that span from Judeo-Christian-Islamic doctrines of good and evil, to the Navajo Nation's ambivalence toward the nature of sexuality, to Carson McCullers's treatment of physical deformity in the novella Member of the Wedding , to Descartes's theories of
dualism. He also pays special attention to the debates currently raging in science regarding the biology of homosexuality and provides an engaging discussion of why we are motivated to seek a genetic basis of sexual orientation in the first place.
Jamake Highwater has long been celebrated as a writer uniquely suited to give voice to the social outsider. Often provocative, always fascinating, The Mythology of Transgression is a tour de force of eloquent scholarship, a book that will prompt discussion and debate on the subject for years to
come.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 16, 1997

About the author

Jamake Highwater, born as Jackie Marks, and also known as Jay or J Marks (14 February 1931–June 3, 2001), was an American writer and journalist of eastern European Jewish ancestry.[1] From the late 1960s he claimed to be of Native American ancestry, specifically Cherokee. In that period, he published extensively under the name of Jamake Highwater. One version of his shifting story was that he had been adopted as a child and taken from his Indian home in Montana to grow up in a Greek or Armenian family in Los Angeles, California.

Reviews

[D-Rock · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy the book, but it seemed a little too personalized (even if that was the point). That being said I felt it was purporting some idea of morality though awareness or ignorance.

[Anthony VENN-BROWN OAM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jamake Highwater understands what it is like to be an outsider. North American Indian, adopted and gay. That is three strikes against him. But these experiences have given him profound insight. I think this quote from the book says it all. Read it and get more.

“People who exist at the margins of society are very much like Alice in Wonderland. They are not required to make the tough decision to risk their lives by embarking on an adventure of self-discovery. They have already been thrust beyond the city’s walls that keep ordinary people at a safe distance from the unknown. For at least some outsiders, “alienation” has destroyed traditional presumptions of identity and opened up the mythic hero’s path to the possibility of discovery. What outsiders discover in their adventures on the other side of the looking glass is the courage to repudiate self-contempt and recognise their “alienation” as a precious gift of freedom from arbitrary norms that they did not make and did not sanction. At the moment a person questions the validity of the rules, the victim is no longer a victim.”