This article is dedicated to the analysis of four hierarchical oppositions in the
Garden of Eden story: ‘good-bad’
(‘Good-‘Evil’), ‘male-female’,
‘human-animal’ (‘culture-nature’),
‘life-death’ (‘cosmos-chaos’). A
deconstructive reading of the story is proposed which subverts these oppositions.
Several double messages can be discovered in the story, including: eating from the
Tree of Knowledge is both ‘good’ and ‘bad’;
‘female’ both precedes ‘male’ and represents
a later ‘supplement’ to it; the source of (the corruption of)
culture lies in nature, but nature itself is represented as something late and
‘supplementary’, a kind of ‘culture’; the
world into which Adam and Eve were exiled reflects both Life and Death, Cosmos and a
(partial) return to Chaos.
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