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The Heroine's Journey

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The Heroine's Journey In the footsteps of the heroine The journey to Integral Feminism Figure 1: ‘Queen of the Night’, © Trustees of the British Museum A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy at the University of Western Sydney 2008 Sarah Nicholson To the women, known and unknown, who have forged the way, and those still to come. Acknowledgements I would like to thank: My first supervisors, Anne Marshall and Susan Murphy, and my co-supervisor Brenda Dobia, for sharing their expertise, critique and inspiration. The Writing and Society group at UWS for their support and assistance, particularly in funding editorial assistance. The School of Social Ecology and the School of Humanities for providing me with Student Project funding to make invaluable contacts, conduct crucial research and attend conferences overseas. The Visiting Scholar scheme of the Centre for Feminist Research, York University, Toronto for hosting me as a visiting postgraduate scholar. The international Integral community – particularly the inspirational Willow Pearson and fellow traveller Vanessa Fisher, for their inspiration, support and encouragement. The Sydney Integral group – particularly Simon Mundy, Tim Mansfield, Vivian Baruch, Helen Titchen-Beeth, and Luke Fullagar - who read and insightfully commented on chapters of this thesis. My parents, Eli, my aunty Joy, my grandparents, and my extended family, for offering me unfailing love, support and assistance. My friends, for supporting me being me, by being you. Rachel Hammond, Martin Robertson, Sarah Roberts, and Sarah Harmelink, Cartia Wollen and Edward Birt, for their assistance with child care in the final stages of this thesis. Particular thanks to Allison Salmon, who is always there when, and indeed before I realise, I need her. Thanks also to Saam-Michael Renton for introducing me to the work of Ken Wilber, and to Jean Byrne for inspiring collegial discussions on women and spirituality in the formative stages of this thesis. Luke, for meeting me, and bringing such heart, to the complicated task of spiritual marriage. Most potently, for her unerring support, deep insight and compassionate commitment to supporting me in the completion of this thesis, my supervisor Dr Kathleen McPhillips. Statement of Authentication The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original except as acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this material, in full or in part, for a degree at this or any other institution. _____________________________(Signature) Contents List of Tables and Illustrations v Abstract vi Introduction 1 One Hearing the call: The heroine’s journey 4 Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey 5 Mysticism and mythic symbol 6 The hero’s journey as perennial philosophy 7 The hero as ‘everyman’ 10 Feminist critique of the hero 14 Two Crossing the threshold: Confronting the question of Woman 17 Feminist approaches to the question of Woman 18 The First wave of feminism 19 The Second wave 20 Sex versus gender 21 Psychoanalytic and poststructural feminism 23 Woman, mythology and the religious symbolic 26 Feminist theology 29 Mary Daly: Reweaving the journey 30 Carol Christ: Thealogy 32 Goddess spirituality and the Great Mother 34 The God problem 35 Jungian archetypes 37 The archetype of the Self for women 39 Towards the Third wave and beyond 40 Three Who is Woman? The Third wave and beyond 41 Time and the evolution of feminist thought 41 The discourses of the Third wave 42 Subjectivities of inter-relation: corporeal feminism 44 Process philosophy and the Nomadic Feminist subject 46 i Third wave religion: Buddhism’s nondual philosophy 47 Non-dual philosophy: Transontology 50 Definition: The Name of Woman 52 Integral theory: New tools 53 Towards an Integral feminism 55 Woman - through the quadrants 57 Evolutionary consciousness 60 Four The Road of Trials: Evolutionary pathways 62 The limits of evolutionary theory 63 Wilber’s evolutionary theory 64 Holonic theory 65 Developmental eras of consciousness 67 From Origin to Integral: The work of Gebser 67 Wilber’s Integral Theory of development 69 The Archaic Stage 71 The Magical Stage 71 Habermas: Social Labor and the father 72 Bacofen: Mother right – Father right 74 Pre-modern Gender: Wilber’s suppositions 75 Man the hunter 77 Foraging: woman the gatherer 78 Evolutionary continuity: sociobiology and sharing 80 Sexual dimorphism 82 The collective hunt 83 The sedentary woman 84 The father and the question of work 85 Feminist archaeology: Re-capitulating the evidence 87 Five Meeting the Goddess: The Mythic Plains 90 The Question of Venus 91 Symbolism of the Magical stage 91 The Mythic stage 94 Stages of consciousness: From Magic to Mythic 95 Gimbutas and the Great Goddess 96 Critique of the Goddess hypothesis 98 Remembering and inventing the Goddess 100 Re-reading the Mythic evidence 101 Epochal mutation: From Mythic to Mythic-Agrarian 104 The Metamorphosis of Myth: The Tales of Inanna 105 Inanna: The Great Death 107 ii Mythic-Imperial Stage 109 The Hero and the Warrior 110 Mythic-Agrarian: The Iron Age 112 Six The Rise of the Rational 115 The Mental Rational Stage 115 Formal Operational Cognition 116 From Monotheism to Globalism 117 Feminism: Emergence vs. Oppression 117 Gender Stratification: Coercion and Voluntarism 119 A rebuttal to Co-creative theory 121 Capacity Development 122 Woman and the cultural symbolic 124 From mythos to religion 126 The separative self 130 Pathological dominance 132 The rise of feminist consciousness 134 Integral answers 137 Towards the horizon 139 Seven Divine Horizons: The Heroine’s path to the Unitive 140 Self abnegation: Women’s estrangement from the divine 140 Women’s divine horizons 141 Adult development theory 143 Critique of developmental theory 145 The first stages of development 146 Women in the conventional 147 Critique of gendered theories of development 150 Girls development and adolescence 151 The developmental journey of the hero/ine 152 A developmental junction: Achiever or Affiliate 153 Differentiation and the separative self 154 The Post-conventional tier 155 Integrated vs. Construct Aware 156 The Post-Postconventional tier 157 The transcendent stage 157 The Unitive stage 158 Practising the sensible transcendental 159 Horizontal and vertical, terrestrial and heavenly 160 To be incarnated? Archi-ancient and forever future 161 iii Conclusion 163 References 166 Permissions 193 iv List of Tables & Figures Tables 1 The quadrants of Integral theory 54 2: Woman through the lens of Integral theory 59 3: Wilber’s evolutionary stages of consciousness 70 4: Tiers and Stages of Development – as proposed by Piaget, Cook-Greuter and Wade 145 Figures 1: ‘Queen of the night’ title page 2: ‘Mobius Strip’ 45 3: ‘Maslow’s hierarchy of needs’ 67 4: The ‘Venus von Willendorf’ 90 5: ‘Uruk vase’ 105 v Abstract ‘Who am I?’ is the central question of the hero’s journey. This thesis takes the hero’s journey as motif and metaphor for the exploration of subjectivity, and explores the manner in which woman’s journey as hero has been marginalised. For woman, the question ‘Who am I’ has been obscured by the more pressing question, ‘Who is woman?’ This thesis sets out to find and follow woman as hero and in so doing, to explore woman’s evolving socio-cultural and psychological relationship with what it is to be human. To begin this journey, I turn to feminist theory as a principle space for the examination of the question of Woman. I trace feminism’s development of, and increasingly complex engagement with, the definition of Woman as subject. Arriving at the juncture of contemporary feminist discourse I introduce the unique tools and sophisticated philosophy of Wilber’s Integral theory in order to examine the possibilities that an Integral feminism may offer for the (re)construction of the female subject. Reciprocally, feminist theory is brought to bear upon Integral theory. Following the proposition that the emergence of post-conventional feminist subjectivity represents an evolutionary unfolding of consciousness, this thesis follows and investigates the stages of consciousness as posed in Wilber’s evolutionary spiritual philosophy. As Wilber utilises perspectives from multiple disciplines to construct his theory, I utilise interdisciplinary feminist evidence to interrogate his theory of consciousness and to thus trace woman as hero through these stages. Finally, I return to examine the manner in which classic models of the hero have posed the separative (male) self as the omega point of human development. I contextualise the limits of this model by introducing the more expansive horizons of contemporary Adult Developmental theory. By applying this expanded spectrum of development with a specific eye to gender I illustrate the heroine’s journey to the embodiment of the Unitive horizon of the divine. Further I demonstrate the necessity of establishing a genealogy of the female divine as complement to this path, from which a figure of the female divine horizon (after Irigaray), who is both guide and goal for the heroine on her journey may emerge. Defined in her own name, plotted as a subject in the evolutionary stages of consciousness, and with a gender specific pathway of development towards the divine horizon, this thesis looks towards rendering a neo-perennial mythology of the journey of woman as hero that places her in the context of the dawning Integral stage. vi Introduction Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
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