Specters of Uranus: Sense of Alienation in Western Thinking

This paper examines the epistemology of the sense of “alienation” in Western thinking since early Greece through to modern day thinking up to Poststructuralism. The term is informed by a sense of insecurity assumed by Uranus to his power and an obsession to retain it. It led to the primordial creation of a binary opposition of “I/We” (Uranus, the power) and “they” (his offspring, the Giants and the Cyclopes, the possible threat to the power), or in short, a sense of alienation, a defense mechanism by Uranus to retain his power. This was the first social dichotomy consciously designed to retain power which soon translated into conflict like Gigantomachy (war between Uranus and the Giants) and later Titanomachy (the war between the Titans and the Olympians). The paper assumes that the idea first gets conceived in and executed by the first Greek God, Uranus, and since then it has found an active legacy in different transmutations. It uses analytical and interpretive methods to look into the transmutation through representative texts in different discourses-literature, politics, science, psychology, mathematics, history. The transmutation has a social impact and this paper is particular with conflict and war as examples. The paper also contends that most of the conflicts in the West, starting with the Trojan War until the Russian-Ukraine conflict, have germs in this idea. What Uranus did is often honestly re-orchestrated by his orphans in the West in new forms and platforms across time and hence an insight into it will certainly impact our perspective on the cause and consequence of conflict and war today.