IJFS - Interdisciplinary Journal of Family Studies

Centaurs are double beings. Not only are they joined together as man and horse, but they also possess a dual nature. They are figures of wisdom and healers, but are also violent men and rapists. Far more than the feminine identity, the masculine identity is split, along the lines of stud animalism and civic paternity. Far from being the fruit of prolonged evolution, this social polarity is the work of culture and recent development. Therefore it is relatively precarious. With the sinking of patriarchy on the postmodern plane, the “repressed” pole in this configuration emerges again, through an animal nature symbolized by the horse. As in the myth, pathology breaks in as gang rape, unknown in other animal species, as a testimony of an incapacity for relationship that resorts to violence.