Text taken from La Lettre du Collège de France n° 34, Paris, Collège de France, p. 24, ISSN 1628-2329
The second lecture ("Body parts: severed head, frontal eye and genitalia as apotropaic devices in ancient Greece") focused on the use of severed heads (in particular the gorgoneion), frontal eyes and genitalia (in particular phalluses) to protect ships, ovens, temples and other buildings from damage. Prof. Faraone defended the idea that phalluses generally do not represent positive fertility traits (as modern scholars often think), but rather an aggressive threat of rape addressed to those, human or demonic, who might attack the building or object on which they appear. The severed heads and frontal eye, on the other hand, present a more complicated problem. Most of the time they seem to depict a potentially evil agent, and operate on the principle of like chasing like (e.g. the gorgoneion or the silenus), but in some cases they seem to represent the gods Hephaestus, Dionysus and Hermes in their dangerous form, i.e. respectively the destructive fire, the excess of wine or the prince of thieves: a danger that must be circumscribed within the limits assigned to them by human culture. As with the apotropaic use of eyes (single or double) on ships' prows, soldiers' shields and city walls - a use which, according to specialists, may be at the origin of the myth of Medusa - we are confronted with two opposing ideas: the figure of the guardian or protector and that of the demon repelled according to the principle of like chasing like. The latter, once again, is preferred by Prof. Faraone, who argues, in summary, that all these images, which mobilize the hybrid, the displaced and the ugly, aim to produce the same emotion: fear. At the same time, their arrangement on the edges and periphery clearly indicates an apotropaic or protective intention.
