A culture-sensitive and non-heteronormative examination of the Oedipus complex at the junction of anthropology and psychoanalysis

While anthropology has intensely been occupied with the cross-cultural meanings attributed to family and kinship relations from the beginning of its emergence as a separate field, its involvement with the Oedipus debate began with the publication of Freud's Totem and Taboo. Further examinations of the Freudian claims by the ethnographers of the time incited a debate about the universality of the Oedipus complex, which marks the beginning of the volatile encounter between psychoanalysis and anthropology. In this thesis, presenting a chronological account of the arguments around the Oedipus complex within the frameworks of psychoanalysis and anthropology, it is proposed that (i) the western and androcentric formulations of the Oedipus complex are not adequate to reflect the myriad manifestations of our sexualities and our family configurations, hence cannot be contemplated as a universal phenomenon, (ii) one of the basic mechanism of the Oedipus complex is to mediate and repress our polymorphous desires, which is argued to be a direct result of the projection of the personal fear of annihilation onto the societal level, where the generational and cultural survival is ensured through the imperative maintenance of the exogamous and heteronormative social order, and (iii) recognizing that the Oedipus complex is here to stay; we need to formulate culture-sensitive and non-heteronormative accounts, considering the different family configurations in non-western cultures, where semiotic is not necessarily maternal, and those family configurations in our contemporary societies, where non-binary and non-heteronormative realms of 'symbolic' are being created. In line with the last hypothesis, I finally try to present one of the possible culture-sensitive and non-heteronormative accounts of the Oedipus complex, calling for future endeavors in the same path