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Assyria
Published in Michael J. O’Dowd, The History of Medications for Women, 2020
Opopanax (derived from Opopanax chironium), an umbellifer native to Asia Minor. When wounded a milky sap flows from the plant and hardens with time. The main constituents of opopanax are gum, resin, and a volatile oil. Also known as ‘surgeon’s opopanax’, the drug was said to have antispasmodic and emmenagogue effects (Graves, 1834 p. 112; Grieve, 1992 p. 600).
Becoming lesbian: Monique Wittig's queer-trans-feminism
Published in Journal of Lesbian Studies, 2018
Butler cites how Claude Simon wrote of his identification with the main character (a little girl) of Wittig's The Opoponax: “I see, I breathe, I chew… I become childhood” (524). Butler states that this universalization of the little girl as allegorical for the human itself is scandalous: The generalizablility of the little girl portrayed by Wittig is specified as this transferability, if not transitivity, between the postulated “I” and the reader. It is confirmed as well by the synecdochal link between the little girl and childhood itself. “I became childhood” means precisely that the “I” ascends to the universality of childhood through the figure of the little girl. This is a scandal, since the generalized and universal story cannot be told through the figure of the little girl as long as we understand the masculine to function as the presumption of universality itself. If the masculine still holds that powerful place, then it will always be the young boy, the initiate, the apprentice, the prodigal son, who will allegorize the human in its universalizability. When the universal story circulates without the presumptive figure of masculinity, the story of universality reveals it contingency on that figure, and we see that universalization can take place through a figure that unsettles both presumptive notions of masculinity and femininity (524).