ABSTRACT
The Yayati myth poses the possibility of a reverse-oedipality not only in terms of the son’s giving up his youth for his father’s sexual gratification—as generally presumed—but also in terms of queering and reversing the very heteronormative basis of socialisation that Oedipus presumes. Spratt and Ramanujan recognise that some Indian myths do contain “positive oedipal” content, and Ramanujan in his article collects quite a few narratives, both folk and classical, that are somewhat oedipal. Goldman analyses in his article numerous classical Indian stories, and shows how they have material that is oedipal. In fact, on his reading, the story of Yayati is also “positive oedipal”, rather than “negative oedipal”, “reverse oedipal”, or “contra-oedipal”, as we have otherwise interpreted it. The Yayati complex, though, is indeed queer, and its reversal of the oedipal universal, of heteronormative commonsense, of the commonly and unquestioningly accepted principles of strife, competition, acquisition, violence, is potentially radical.
