introduction

The popularity of self-help programs, various forms of therapy and counseling, anti-depressant drugs, and new-age religions suggests a widespread search for meaning, acceptance, self-esteem, and, ultimately, love. Analysis of the contradictions will indicate some of the reasons why we do not feel loved and deconstruct the association between mother and nature and the association between father and culture. The paradoxical position of the mother is the result of the imagined opposition between nature and culture. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book discusses the ways in which the body, especially the paternal body, is absent from culture. Analyzing texts from biology, medicine, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, it explains inconsistencies in the ways that these discourses have constructed the natural body. Looking at eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political theory, the book shows how the association between father or man and culture is based in an argument from nature.