Reflexive Intuition Towards Taboo: Our Tragic Failure to Think in Relation to Taboos

The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? by Edward Albee, illustrates a scenario in which a man named Martin is exposed by his friend Ross, to his own family, that he is having sexual relations with a goat. It is not explicitly mentioned in the play, but it is intuitively clear that this exposure of a taboo will lead to the downfall of Martin -as we see the downfall begin but we do not see where it ends up. Such a downfall is the epitome of what we call a “tragedy”; it is, therefore, appropriate to subtitle the play “Notes toward a definition of tragedy”; the entire play more or less follows all elements of what is normally defined as a “tragedy” — particularly in a similar story structure as that of Ancient Greek tragedies such as Oedipus Rex by Sophocles — , which always ends with the inevitable downfall of a once praised “hero” figure. The tragedy is onset by the goat — likely without it meaning to do so — as it is the center of the taboo which has been exposed by Ross. Sylvia has been caught in the middle of a multitude of human phenomena that she probably A: has no conception of and B: has no way of consenting to; this leads one to conclude that Sylvia is the main victim of this tragedy. Such a tragedy is not unrealistic, however, as it is based upon a real and explicit — and justifiable — taboo against bestiality. This taboo — however…