MARY DALY Author(S): Marilyn Frye, Sarah Lucia Hoagland and Mary Daly Source: Off Our Backs, Vol
MARY DALY Author(s): Marilyn Frye, Sarah Lucia Hoagland and Mary Daly Source: Off Our Backs, Vol. 30, No. 2, Mary Daly (february 2000), pp. 1, 5-9, 12-15 Published by: off our backs, inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20836543 Accessed: 13-05-2015 10:59 UTC
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This content downloaded from 130.209.6.61 on Wed, 13 May 2015 10:59:23 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions our off * backs the feminist newsjournal
cen Mary Daly is one of the most important American feminist thinkers and writers of the 20th
our a on The tury. We are pleased to dedicate this issue of off backs to retrospective her work
to a new on following excerpt, reprinted with permission, is the introduction work Mary Daly
entitledFeminist Interpretations ofMary Daly. The book, edited by Sarah Lucia Hoagland and
Marilyn Frye, is scheduled for publication byPenn State Press inJuly of2000. This work is
Tuana. part of a series entitled Re-reading the Canon under the general editorship of Nancy
a by contempt. This idea that there are no great women herself has argued is branch of volume, by publishing thinkers, but the document record of patriarchal religion grounded in the serious and women's thoughts is sparse and only dismemberment of the Goddess, and not-uncharitable exegesis, gets more so the further back one goes, which her work is dedicated to under means critical interpretation and and one therefore runs the risk of mining by of animating women's are U extension ofMary Daly's succeeding mainly in giving the impres possibilities. We certainly not trying works, not only sion that there are only very few women to "elevate" Mary Daly to canonical deauthorizes the official thinkers. Furthermore, is the canon "equality" and thereby authorize her by canon ofWestern changeable by thiswillful insertion of her association with that august com no canon can philosophy, but also women's work, or will reading it into pany. And there is way the a disrupts a related story the canon instead change the work and assimilate Mary Daly. It is kind of told by some influential change us? Or both? And to whose playful and ironic conspiracy of feminist feminists, according to benefit? Perhaps we should adopt editors and writers that places this which Mary Daly's work JeffnerAllen's suggestion about Simone volume in this series, twisting the series is unworthy of re-reading de Beauvoir and her relation toward our goal of perverting philoso because it contains errors to existentialism: itwould phy into and within a practice of women represented as egregious, >t%:-'M be better to focus on addressing themselves primarily to and conversing primarily with women. This volume is the result of five years of those conversations and is dedicated to expanding them. The complexities pile up: the investment by the authors here, reading and re-reading Mary Daly's works in earnest woman-to-woman conversa tions, also yields the understanding that MARY Mary Daly is located in theWestern
indeed fatal. As with Our volume on Mary Daly is a these other complex multilayered act of "re-reading volumes the canon." We are of course re-reading the declared boundaries of theWestern about women philosophical canon. Like the editors of the Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt thinkers, and Mary Wollstonecraft volumes in this our project is series, we are reading women into a fraughtDALY canon which has been crafted to with exclude women. As Peg Simons writes: political towomen's her relation to thewomen forwhom she intellectual tradition. Re-read in the "The contemptuous dismissal of ambiguity analogous to in exclusive wrote than to the "existentialism" of her feminist Beauvoir from the philosophical canon aspiring membership history acknowledged male clubs and and lesbians' devised men who debt to Woolf was so complete that the most radical gays' by selectively appro genealogy?her Virginia ambitions to would her and ex and Matilda can be disruption caused by feminist interpreta legally marry. Why priated original insights Joslyn Gage?she of us want to read women into a disdain for of her as a sister-insider in relation tions of Simone de Beauvoir may be in any pressed any thoughts recognized tradition dedicated to the denial of could not understand or to sister-outsiders constructed her reading her work at all." European and they exploit. by American elite intellectual canon-makers women's subjectivity, agency, intellec Itmight seem particularly problem work and methods. As Amber Katherine tual and transcen atic to be a radical writes: "The I is to have failed to acknowledge Mary Daly power, competence reading Mary Daly, trick, think, (re)read dence? One want to the into the canon which she continued on 5 without even theminimal notice implied might challenge feminist, very page
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MARY DALY
continued from page 1 Daly's Gyn/Ecology in a way that isMary Daly's root metaphor for understood through the metaphor of for self-actualization. Exploring Simone reveals both the feminist Outsider and feminist method, and theVerb isMary New Being. de Beauvoir's influence onMary Daly, the Eurocentric insider." Daly's rootmetaphor for ultimate reality Mary Daly attends towomen's Anne-Marie Korte argues thatMary Daly Mary Daly does explicitly situate (notably non-gendered). oppression in patriarchy. The "shock of extended Simone de Beauvoir's negative herself in relation to the tradition of The metaphor of the verb gives a non-being" (Tillich's term) thatMary view of the Catholic church to the Western philosophy and theology. She way of thinking about ultimate reality as Daly responds to is, Laurel Schneider conclusion that patriarchy is a planetary situates herself as a pirate. As Laurel a process rather than an unchanging argues, a woman waking up to the religion destructive of women's selves. Schneider argues, Mary Daly's radical substance. It is not "transcendent" in the "awful reality of her mutilated life, the But Simone de Beauvoir's reading of ness lies not in rejecting Western old sense of "outside" or "beyond" the depth of her non-being in patriarchy." religion is ambiguous: she sees itboth as epistemological and theological tradi world of our lives, but transcendent in a Rejecting the idea that christ-images promoting devastating bad faith and as tions, but in her creative and critical new sense?a way of be-ing thatwe offer anything positive to women, Mary providing a context or an opening for appropriation of themes and artifacts participate in and that is constantly Daly develops Be-ing not as a matter of women to move by extraordinary from these traditions?taken quite transformative. Wanda Warren Berry confronting a fear of nothingness, but as religious experience out of subordination deliberately "out of context"?for the argues that transformation of people, a matter of the courage to be in the face to and dependence on the spiritual and building of her own systematic philoso thought and of annihilation. intellectual authority of mortal men. . phy. Her relation to the canon is also social This courage Agreeing with Simone de Beauvoir's interestingly complicated by the fact that structures is is the courage claim that (in patriarchy) women have one of the first inklings of the women's not possible to see and no history or symbols and thus are symbolic she both seeks and constructs without courage to sin: dependent on the authority of a male is gained by understanding the reversals shiftingthe to see the full symbolic, Mary Daly went on to create on which the dominant and of horror of and of spiritual ground U (nonlinear) herstory symbols political order is constructed (e.g., ontological patriarchy's ultimate reality or Be-ing which might b<; substituting themythic metaphor? structural evil adequate towomen's passion for depth woman-born-of-man [Eve and Adam] using new and to do and transcendence, symbols which for the material man-born-of-woman). metaphors what ismost would support women's self-realization. As Laurel Schneider says below in for being, for "sinful" for Mary Daly goes beyond Simone de arguing against the charge thatMary ultimate women in Beauvoir's exploration of women's " a Daly is Utopian, "for beneficiaries of reality. patriarchy, victimization and bad faith to strategies the 'sado-state' and 'sado-spirituality' to The namely to self of resistance and world-making. as a confrontMary Daly true daughter metaphor of name, to be Anne-Marie Korte argues thatMary of the mean to a traditionmay accept naming, for the verb, to Daly's feminist faith is about establishing threat to patriarchy that ismuch closer women's engage inBe a female subject position to counter the to more home, and ultimately damning." active ing, an objectification of women. She reinvents To understand all we must this, first processes of ongoing this faith that can ground a moving-out visit the Mary Daly theologian. We begin self- and process of of dependence by deconstructing this collection with theologians who social liberation. patriarchal religion, myth, and imagery, orient us. Much of the philosophical and construction, The and reclaiming/making women's lost or of political critique Mary Daly ignores relocates Tillichean suppressed religious heritage in a her intellectual women on grounding in theology concept of gynocentric context. This is not a and its distinctive conceptual terrain? themap of New Being is reversion to any static and "given" ontology, teleology, transcendence, being, from transformed female essence, but an invention (which, to to process subjectivity?all important objects byMary Daly with themetaphor of the Verb, she in what grasp understanding Mary Daly living world-making subjects transcend into the rich and complex Metabeing. understands as always ongoing). not is and is doing. ing the dichotomous construction of Laurel Schneider explains that the four Anne-Marie Korte goes on to argue Wanda Warren Berry introduces "immanence/transcendence." etymological roots of the prefix meta are thatMary Daly conceives of a subjectiv as the Mary Daly inventor of feminist Laurel Schneider traces Paul mixed and combined in the notion of itywhich does not constitute itself in and that the theology argues grasping Tillich's influence inMary Daly's Metabeing. Metabeing is a concept of opposition to an other. Departing from or sociology of knowledge, social ontological work, her explorations of nonlinear history, of participation in the fragmentation and absence of self in a not constructionism, Mary Daly does ultimate meaning. She argues thatMary Powers of being that are available to patriarchal symbolic, Mary Daly draws turn to relativism epistemological but Daly, likeTillich, correlates existential women after they have recognized that on Thomistic, pre-modern notions of takes an constructive actively ontologi questions with ontological/theological patriarchal blockage of their powers is subjectivity and develops a subject cal herself with a new concerns. turn, concerning But what begins inMary insufferable, of transformation and which has varying degrees of fullness or of ultimate that can as a more or conception reality Daly's philosophy less reweaving, and of transcendence. Mary intensity of being?a subjectivity which liberatewomen's Wanda direct more potential. critique of Tillich's promis Daly's Powers of be-ing are both is never given, but must always be Warren that Berry argues Mary Daly, ing concepts (being/non-being, courage biophilic and immanent. Ultimate actualized. Borrowing from Virginia with feminist a along other theologians, and New Being) develops into pro meaning ismanifest in the process of Woolf, Mary Daly argues that the recognizes that theology ismetaphor foundly different understanding of being be-coming, and transcendence requires fragmentation can be healed inmoments which when reified enforces and and existence. immanence, resisting oppression of being. The main problem is not a reinforces the social structures that gave Tillich attends toMan's existential through engaging in elemental reality. question of unity and identity,but a lack rise to it. She the explains very impor dread of non-being. His Man is fixated Addressing the complex role of of re-membering and an absence of tant own place of metaphor inMary Daly's on his finitude in the abstract religious faith inMary Daly's works focus. Like Laurel Schneider, Anne and of so revolutionary strategy.Making possibility there being nothing, and Anne-Marie Korte interprets her Marie Korte establishes that the question new mobilizing metaphors changes the needs something to provide hope and seemingly contradictory combination of of the subject arises not from fear of logic, thereby changing perception and meaning. Talking about the courage antiessentialism and gynocentrism in non-being but from a quest for (more) new imagination and provoking action; it needed to confront non-being, Tillich terms of her ambiguous stance toward being. is a a way of changing the world. Naming offers the consolation of christ the role of religion inwomen's struggle
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yty Reminding us thatMary Daly is concept of species involves an attitude work for reading Margaret Atwood's across thresholds from one realm of horrified thatChristianity opposes the toward life, and Marja Suhonen argues "futuristic" novel, The Handmaid's Tale, being to another (carrying with her pain and suffering of murder and thatMary Daly's thinking resembles that while simultaneously reading that future pirated wealth thatwould support her in victimization in the center of itsmyth of Levinas, Simone de Beauvoir and into our present. this next realm). and ritual but ignores this evil systemati Luce Irigaray where ethics precedes The Handmaid's Tale is about North Various authors in this anthology case cally in the of women, Anne-Marie ontology, or choice precedes value, or America being taken over by religious situateMary Daly in relation to other Korte sees Mary Daly's response to this existence precedes essence. Thus fundamentalists following a military philosophers, theologians and theorists. as evil every bit as theological as it is essences depend on choices and are coup in the late twentieth century. Mary Daly situates herself in the ethical. Documenting how Mary Daly is open to change; indeed, the future is Sheilagh Mogford argues thatMargaret tradition of Hagography. Her own seen a in myriad of ways, "a polysemic always open. Atwood chose the late twentieth century Hagography, which she presents at ambiguity,"Anne-Marie Korte argues that Biophilic being is "Female," ina to explore precisely because women many points as a series of Be-Leavings, Mary Daly reinterprets classical theology metapatriarchal sense, but it is not have achieved some level of indepen and through which she explores her a with distinctively postmodern signa necessarily chosen and adopted by all dence and those in power are reacting multiple Selves, is instructivewith ture. and only females, in the scientific with fear in a backlash against the gains respect to the art of creative Self Of the essays in this anthology, anatomical sense of the word. Marja the feminist movement has made. As transformation, the art of be-ing. Marja Suhonen's most directly ad Suhonen suggests that themisreading of Marja Suhonen reminds us, forMary For there to be biophilic be-ing, dresses the charge (often repeated, if Mary Daly as Daly the theremust be Be/Leaving. Debra not often defended in some schools of essentialist future is Campbell argues that inMary Daly's feminist theory) thatMary Daly's views arises from open, wide cosmology, be-ing and Be/Leaving are are essential ist. She documents the reading her open. The inseparable. Not a single event, Be/ obvious point thatMary Daly's first two through the desire to Leaving is a never ending process, and books are explicitly antiessentialist about lens of "sex/ control involves feminist faith, ifyou will, the women sex and difference, indeed that gender theory" women and unconditional faith inwomen's possibili antiessentialism is one of theirmain which, updat keep us in ties of transformation and self-actualiza theses, and goes on to argue thatwhile ing theAristo line is both tion thatAnne-Marie Korte refers to, a are in her laterwork there obvious telian essence/ overt and faith that lets us leap into spaces only no changes in her thinking, there is accident covert in vaguely imagined, wherein we can spin reversal about essentialism. She argues ontology makes VP North webs of meaning fast enough to sustain that forMary DaJy, acting and doing sex a natural America. us as we fly into an abyss. The future is precede essence?Mary Daly ismore an given (essence) Both in open. an existentialist than essentialist. But her and gender a spite of and Be/Leaving also involves looking laterwork is focused on metamorphosis social con because of back, the courage to see, to be disillu IK and transformation, Marja Suhonen struction liAZZIJNt; Vi>\.\?;i; our gains, sioned, which is "not optional, not tidy, argues, and her concept of self goes (accident). we are and never finished." Looking back is beyond existentialism, in part by appro Such a reading under siege. how Mary Daly avoids the coerced priating elements pirated from Aristotle. coerces Mary choice between erasure and assimilation Aristotle's notion of being is Daly's thought
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This content downloaded from 130.209.6.61 on Wed, 13 May 2015 10:59:23 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Books by Mary Daly The Churchand theSecond Sex (1968; reissued with an "AutobiographicalPreface to the 1975 Edition" and a "FeministPostchristian Introduction,"1975; reissued with "New Archaic Boston: Beacon atMary Daly's new Namings, consider because it is "merely" subverting Afterwords," Press, 1985). ing them insignificant as a mode of isolated signs rather than subverting This powerfulbook was Mary Daly's firstanalysis ofwomen and radical symbolic and political change. In discourse. Molly Dragiewicz illustrates religion. In itsoriginal edition (1968) the book was a searing expose of herpaper, Molly Dragiewicz implicitly and Frances Gray theorizes that there is Christianmisogyny?especially within theCatholic Church. Reissued poses the question: If a simple naming is no such thing as subverting isolated with her 1985 New Archaic Afterwords,as well as her brilliant1975 insignificant, why is there such a huge signsand thatMary Daly isobviously Autobiographical Preface and Feminist Postchristian Introduction,The backlashwhen we do it?The magnitude aware of this?such a notion is as Church and theSecond Sex, now more than ever, represents one of of thepolitical power of naming is foreignto her as it is criticallyrejected themost importantcritiques of sexism inthe Christian tradition. clearly demonstrated in her tracking and by poststructuralists. Mary Daly's analysis of feminists' introduction of the strategy is not one of subverting isolated Qod theFather; Toward a ofWomen's name Beyond Philosophy "acquaintance rape" and the signs,but of displacingsupposedly liberation backlash discourse mobilized in theU.S. neutral discourse in order to (but men's) (1973: reissued with an "OriginalReintroduction by theAuthor," Boston: mass media within a few of the a women's discourse whose years produce Beacon Press, 1985). term's first public appearance (and function is to articulate women's Be-ing: general acceptance by themedia)?an "[Mary Daly's] emphasis on process /believe Mary Daly has struck themain nerve of thewoman's example of one element of the sado underscores her approach to language as movement... There is a cryingneed ofwomen foridentification with ritual (i.e., erasure of responsibility) that an oceanic whole: vast, interrelated and any sort of embodiment of theFirst Cause, theFemale Principle, and SheilaghMogford articulates.Such everchanging." Daly's book, Beyond God theFather, will be a landmark in thatgreat are as analyses crucial because, Debra Frances Gray explains the relations event which she so perceptively characterizes as the second coming? Campbell argues, being disillusioned and Mary Daly sees between language and of women. seeing inthe mode of dis/illusionmentis ontology, particularly women as consti Elizabeth Gould Davis, author of The FirstSex theway to become a Pirate. tuted through language practice, and Molly Dragiewicz argues thatMary how Mary Daly's writing is an Qyn/Ecology;The Metaethicsof Radical Feminism Daly's exploration of language provides ontologically creative performance that (1978; reissued with "New IntergalacticIntroduction by theAuthor," a vocabulary with which to speak from opens up possibilities forwomen's Boston: Beacon Press, 1990). subjugated positions. Language is naming themselves and theirworlds for is a forwardin feminist ...It defines important to a woman who has been themselves. Frances Gray organizes her Gyn/Ecology great leap theory. of of or raped because she needs to name that exposition around three crucial intercon simplisticcategorizations political theory,philosophy religion, even The book is all of these because it experience in a way that encodes its nected elements which elaborate Mary poetry. yet none, goes beyond them. significance and makes it intelligible to Daly's notion of the language/ontology Janice New Women's Times FeministReview her and to others. Names which name it connection: (1) She discusses the Raymond, assault and locate her as a victim of an strange alchemy of using language Pure lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy assault do not, as some have argued, against itself,undermining extant Boston: Beacon Press San Francisco reduce her to her erases ( 1984; HarperSanFrancisco, victimization; such "neutral" language (that women's . names 1992) enable her to be a subject naming possibilities) tomake women's language her experience, and they correctly locate possible. (2) She describes therole of Rich in ideas, imagery, and Daly's characteristic wordplay, Pure List not for harm done. in the sense of active responsibility Molly "Naming," only explores and analyzes thepatriarchy's abuse of lust... but [affirms] Dragiewicz's of the of process, as a for the whole exploration logic metonymy feministlife-lust' and vision. This is a witty,original work? and one popular discourse on rape and the power active appropriation and Invention of which is A-mazing Elemental Daly. of naming illustrates how language is a language. And, complementing Wanda site of power and hence of contest. She Warren Berry's and Marja Suhonen's Websters' First New IntergalacticWicKedary of the English develops her analysis of the backlash arguments, (3) she describes metaphor language Conjured inCahoots with Jane Qaputi, discourse as through analytic categories of the central creative process of Be-ing, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, mindbindingarticulated by Mary Daly? leading to an open-ended understanding 1993) . erasure, reversal, false-polarization and of women. Thus, for example, "God divide-and-conquer. With this investiga dess" is not the name of a superbeing This brilliant,wild, and humor-filledWeb-Work ofwords frees the tionMolly Dragiewicz shows that but isa metaphorby which Daly English language from itspatriarchal and confiningpatterns by "dominant discourses are established animates possibilities forwomen. We Weaving a fascinating,feminist, linguistic revolution. [andmaintained] in part by the inclusion, see that inMary Daly's hands language and exclusion, of specific words in the is performance/active/animate. Outercourse; The Be-Dgzzijng Voyage Recollections from of a Radical Feminist cultural vocabulary." Mary Daly's use of metaphor seems Containing My Logbook an Account of Travels and Ideas? Pointing out that "naming," inMary to confound some of her readers. Her Philosopher (Be-ing My Time/Space Then, Now, and Francisco: Daly's work, must be read as me metaphorical naming of women with re Again, How) (San HarperSanFrancisco, tonymy,Frances Gray takes on the figured terms such as "Gossips,"and of 1992). difficultjob of explainingMary Daly' s journeyers' ethics in such terms as This extraordinarybook?the resplendent philosophical autobiography politics of language and ontology, how it "Virgin Virtues," and her use of Goddess of theworld's foremostRadical Feminist philosopher?offers an isarticulated and how it is performed. images, tempt some readers to interpret imaginative chronicle of Momentous Moments inMary Daly's A-mazing Language is the vehicle for our potenti her as essentialist. Frances Gray our Voyage. alities, becoming. There has been explains thatMary Daly's metaphors misunderstanding ofMary Daly's appeal to the idea of women as consti WORK INPROGRESS notoriously extreme and lively inventions tuted through their own language I am research and next in of words, her giving new meanings to practices, which are not themselves doing writing my book, Quintessence, which I further Elemental Feminist This words, her play with spelling, and her neutral. Mary Daly (not alone among develop my Philosophy. work is in some a successor to auto often flamboyant metaphors. One claim feminists)believes thatthere can be no respects my philosophical and in other it is a thathas had some currency is that her sex-neutral subject or language, and if biography, Outercourse, ways logical/ontologi wordplayis limitedin itseffectiveness women are to have language itwill be
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women's language. Critics have thought negotiated, Maria Lugones argues that a context for women travelers, Maria Open Letter toMary Daly" (1979) that because Mary Daly rejects neutrality sense of linguistic interaction, the Lugones questions the sociality and historically, politically, and inAmber and engages in producing a radically dialogical political history, is absent from spatiality of this linguistic contestation/ Katherine's own life and her developing creative and subversive Woman's most dictionaries. For example, the adventure. The Wickedary's anticipation radical feminist politics. She forms the discourse, her work is essentialist. editors of the Oxford English Dictionary of the arrival of others includes no sense project around the question of why Frances Gray argues that this is a liken the lexicographer to the naturalist. of the relations of power with other Mary Daly never answered the letter "in a nonsequitur facilitated by imposing a Significantly before about 1500 English weavers or webs, and no move to kind." (She believes that there is modernist reading on the text and by did not exist as a single language but evaluate itsoverall relation toAnglicity. response inMary Daly's work after missing entirelyMary Daly's critique of only as a variety of dialects, and words Its territoriality remains at the concep Gyn/Ecology?but not the kind that neutrality (a critique which with its own belonging to those various dialects are tual level, and as a result, its sociality emerges from dialogue). The four use playfulness, exposes postmodern included in themodern OED. However does too. "stories" are (1) the of Audre Asking the question, What ifone Lorde's letterby white academic recognized theworld outside domina feminist theorists, (2) the events which CO C KA LO R UM: n: a self-importantlittle tion to be more complex than a sister led toAmber Katherine's own serious world? Maria next El with the letter, (3) the cock. Fiorello La Lugones explores engagement Examples: Napoleon, Andy Warhol, Libro de Calo. Each alphabet section common ground of Audre Lorde and with a us before the of Guardia, Mickey Mouse begins placa, thereby telling Mary Daly just publication where thismeaning ismade?on the Gyn/Ecology, and (4) radical movement streets of L.A. El Libro s method politics of the 1960s and 1970s?Civil seriousness). from 1500 on the OED. includes only contests territory,and documents the Rights, Black Power, theNew Left and Thus Mary Daly's ontological work, words of the dialect thatwas becoming disruption of Anglicity in a world it Radical Feminism. a her otherworld journeying, the journey a national language, and subsequent introduces you to, showing its disregard Building up sort of cognitive of women becoming, does not conform dialogic development and contestation is for how reality is conceived Anglo structure out of elements of these to the boundaries of either modern or erased in favor of a naturalized portrait centeredly. Although formatted like a contexts, Amber Katherine demonstrates a a postmodern thinking. She does not of English. The dictionary, then, reca dictionary, Cald is not translation tool; "logic of themoment" which would invoke a substance/attribute and es pitulates the correlation of linguistic and upon entering Cald, one becomes have made itvery unlikely thatMary sence/accident ontology, nor would she unification and establishment of the self-conscious: resistance to colonization Daly would be able to hear "the multi as accept feminist critiques of the category nation state. "The question of politics necessitates problematizing the arrival of plicity inAudre Lorde's voice," Audre come women under the banner of a supposedly and the question of mastery over words others. Who you are and why you Lorde both acknowledges thatwomen's antiessentialist postmodernism which are not separate." Both dictionaries matter in the words you take up. oppression knows no racial, ethnic or reinscribe a patriarchal "neutrality" that religious boundaries and simultaneously is really the erasure of women. But the demands recognition of difference and of women's i across them. In always-ongoing processes C. RO N E n. Great Hag ofHistory, long-lasting dialogue particular, be-ing, as meaning-making, are and can Amber Katherine articulates the "root Survivor of the witchcraze of only be social, communal processes. one; perpetual thinking" thatwas widely accepted in This raises the for radical of the late 1960s and question journeyers patriarchy politics of how to meet and connect with other 1970s that required commitment to one women, how to recognize other women root cause of oppression and saw journeying, and geographically, where Maria Lugones discusses challenge our Confronting those who approach the demands for recognition of other forms we anticipate such meetings. A neutral relationship to conventional dictionaries, dictionary, these words deride and of oppression as a betrayal. The recog izing antiessentialism which erases which most of us enter looking for destabilize colonial relations at every nition thatwe can be strengthened by women does not promote or theorize authoritative guidance in proper use. turn. our differences is new, and has only such meetings and connections, and The Wickedary, an explicitly political Having explored the logic of both developed as a result of this and related even though it is sometimes presented as performance of linguistic resistance and these transgressive performances, Maria struggles. a an aside a Katherine that intrinsically antiracist and transgression, is counter-dictionary: Lugones puts bilingual's tempta Arjiber speculates a anti-colonialist, itdoes not recognize the undoing of propriety and rules. Its tion to translate, tomediate. Seeking Mary Daly heard the letteras signaling radicalness of the women of color who strategies dismantle the being that is held unmediated communication conversation fundamental shift in perspective that engage Mary Daly with these questions. linguistically captive. Reading through speakers must struggle for, fashioned would have seemed like a betrayal, and Raising questions of language, theWickedary, women become con through lived connections, she laments thatMary Daly did not hear the shift in territorialityand sociality, Maria scious of their own relation to the the impossibility of a "wicked calo." The orientation from "sisterhood through Lugones explores dictionaries that are contradiction between the values of the Wickedary doesn't take to the streets but commonality of oppression and resis stakes itsdomain in the Background, tance" to "sisterhood wherein our and thus it cannot meet with differences are strengths." Perhaps as a marimachas while to result of this she did not see as Audre HAG n. aWitch, who haunts the who, needing Fury,Harpy contest the limits of Cald, nevertheless Lorde did the significance of the fact must take its And thatwomen of non-Western cultures are Hedges/Boundaries of patriarchy, frightening fools and up spatial emphasis. so she reaches for an everyday vocabu not only victims but (like women of Weird women into theWild summoning Wandering lary that contests patriarchies and western cultures) are survivors with colonialism simultaneously, a territory their own indigenous sources of female where marimachas and gossips meet power. political, contestatory. She offers us a foreground and the Background. and converse. As Frances Gray notes, language discussion of two dictionaries of Engaging in practices of transgression Maria Lugones laments that certain and ontology are intertwined. So political contestation: Wickedary and El and metamorphosis, Mary Daly and Jane conversations are not happening. metaphors functioning only in the Libro de Cald, a dictionary of Pachuco Caputi problematize who is themaster Amber Katherine presents a collection semantic field of the English language slang. of words as only tricksters can. How of "stories of context" which place will generate meaning and being that Noting thatmeanings are always ever, while the Wickedary constructs a Audre Lorde's immensely influential "An remains white/Anglo-bound. Maria
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This content downloaded from 130.209.6.61 on Wed, 13 May 2015 10:59:23 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions a Lugones suggests that theWickedary's the beneficiaries of patriarchy. However, multiply constituted (rather than being torture in particular contexts. As lack of a critical consciousness of its if the Crone-ology of European-Ameri unitary) and points out that those of us result, the absence of women's agency own white/Anglo locatedness supports a can radical feminists goes back through located as insiders to a dominant is taken as evidence of patriarchy's certain vacancy of imagination about the Virginia Woolf, Matilda JoslynGage, and structuremay be able to detect our totalizing destruction, and Mary Daly locations and languages of the "other the European witches, where does that multiplicityonly by means of the fails to suggest how itwould be possible gossips" its participants may expect to leave radical feminists who trace their reflections of other Others who are to reinscribe women's subjectivity and encounter and converse with. Amber Background tradition through Africa, erased by those structures. This is one agency. Katherine suggests Audre Lorde was China, India, but as Sister Outsiders to reason that the value of interdependence, Caught between resurgent religious pointing out that the very fact that (European-American) radical feminism? not just independence, is so important fundamentalism and themodern trend of patriarchy is indeed global means that One response to this awareness is to for radical feminists. re-writing autonomy in terms of women in various locations experience advocate inclusion of women of other Citing Mary Daly's use of "suttee," ungendered individual agency, Indian different practices of male domination traditions. But such a solution ignores and access different repertoires of the patterns of relation between women gynocentric meanings, myths and as well as the values enacted in those POSITIVELY REVOLTING HAG:?.a of Amber Katherine that, powers?different Backgrounds patterns. argues beauteous one who female creativity and be-ing. However, however inadvertently,Mary Daly stunning, Crone; inspires positive the context for of all historical of deep understanding replicates patterns relating revulsion from phallic institutions and morality, incit this did not exist in 1979. It as to women of non-Western cultures emerged Others to Acts of Pure Lust a result of heated and painful dialogue characteristic of Western women and ing (which often was not interactive) among men. For example, as portrayed by radical feminists. Amber Katherine Mary Daly, sat?\s a matter of helpless instead of "satT" and arguing that to see feminists simultaneously resist not only argues that themeaning of Audre victims with no independent gynocentric women's subjectivity and agency we male dominance but also Western Lorde's lettermay seem obvious now, resources thatmight explain the patriar need to contextualize it,Renuka colonialism. While making itclear that a but in 1979 Audre Lorde was one of the chal forces pitted against them. As a Sharma and Purushottama Bilimoria Western woman trying to defend the first to begin articulating a perspective result, in constructing the independence address complex postcolonial questions oppressed in another part of the world which was not fully formed until the of wild women, Mary Daly simulta of resistance. Debra Campbell talks of does not necessarily commit the fallacy publication two years later of This neously constructs the outsider (and the power of presence, and Renuka of Orientalism, they resist the construc BridgeCalled My Back, and to thisday victim-only) status to radical feminism Sharma and Purushottama Bilimoria tion of satias an object of outsider may not be as fully grasped as the of women not of the European tradition. raise questions of how U.S. and Indian speculation in the process of colonial ubiquity of the academic jargon of formation: we need to see the resis "difference" may imply. tances that take place in oppositional She concludes with the suggestion CAT/EGORICAL IMPERATIVE:*^ discourse. Their point is not to that themore important question may be reductively classify satf as suicide nor why other radical white feminists have Call of theWild; theSummons of theWeird, to allow the opposite category of crime, not toAudre Lorde's letter conveyed but to focus on "erased and responded the of a Feline Familiar possibilities first by really engaging itand analyzing it through Mediumship potentials in an alternative discourse." and subsequently by developing a There is significant resistant pluralist and radical white feminism. She subjectivity within the regime of sacred points out (following Maria Lugones) While the tradition of outsider women can be present to each other. making, even though Indian women are that the demand from Audre Lorde was women Mary Daly draws on enacts the also subject to oppressive practice. not a demand for a change in theory as value of independence, the value more Agreeing with Mary Daly that satlxs Renuka Sharma and Purushottama postmodernists have treated it, itwas an prominently enacted by women of color a particularly troubling phenomenon and Bilimoria illustrate how the process of interactive demand. Such a politic is not is one of interdependence. Further, needs a radical feminist response, patriarchal oppression reveals contradic born out of a particular theoretical drawing on Maria Lugones's challenge Renuka Sharma and Purushottama tions and countermovements. They framework but rather through interac to individualist notions of responsibility, Bilimoria question her success. For offer a brief history of satT and two tion fueled by a desire to make connec Amber Katherine argues thatMary example, while Mary Daly rightly examples of female potency, among tions under complex systems of oppres Daly's commitment to being a respon criticizes Western Orientalist other things, contrasting the very sion. It is the possibility of such connec sible decision-maker and naming scholarship's erasure of Indian women's present and active Kali with the "cool tions thatmotivates Maria Lugones's patriarchal oppression at all its sites subjectivity and agency, they argue that image of theVirgin Mary." refusal to translate for gossips and invokes a conception of the responsible Mary Daly doesn't provide a means for Part of Audre Lorde's criticism is marimachas. agent as both independent (not depen retrieving the erased subjectivity and thatwhile Mary Daly draws on many In a second paper, Amber dent on patriarchal authority or swayed Katherine articulates an insider/outsider by deceptive revolutionary rhetoric) and distinction to explore how European unitary. This, Amber Katherine suggests, BORED, CHAIRMAN American radical feminists can develop a blocks Mary Daly's ability to see that OFTHE:n:any double or consciousness her actions have and a plural recogniz multiple meanings bore-ocratically appointed bore who occupies chair?a a of effects. She have been ing ourselves, through re-reading multiple may which enables him to bore others all themore Gyn/Ecology, as both insiders and right to speak out about satF, but her position outsiders: outsiders to patriarchy and speaking did not give voice to Indian insiders toAnglo-European dominant women. tradition.Exploring Virginia Woolf s Debra Campbell focuses on Mary agency of Indian women. They argue traditions to show that patriarchy and influence on Mary Daly, Amber Daly's invocation of her many selves, that she conflates two projects: (a) women's victimization are global Katherine traces a tradition of outsid looking back to understand how she searching for evidence of the global phenomena, she only summons Euro ers?women living/thinking outside of was caught in patriarchy, trying to avoid reach of patriarchal religion's oppression pean goddess images when envisioning male/patriarchal authority and control. It new coercions. Amber Katherine draws of women and (b) locating the agency power and resistance. This then leaves a is their independence which threatens on Maria Lugones' idea thatwe are and subjectivity of women in sado-ritual continued on page 12
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message that European tradition is the has been missed in part because Mary process of normalization?not just identified inMary Daly's work and only source of strength for women. Daly has been read primarily as a adopting but internalizing representations grounded in political analysis, which link Advancing the discussion of the impor philosopher and evaluated according to of the human subject. Mary Daly the personal and the political, involve a tance of ontology and themetaphor of conventional academic standards that transcribes these means of knowing in developmental process of radical change goddesses developed in other papers in rigidly bracket out the creative gender-specific yet highly generalized in consciousness, and result in taking the anthology, AnaLouise Keating performative dimensions of her revision terms such as "ancient Racial memo action to bring about change. takes on the question of the value for ary mythmaking, and fail to engage with ries." She doesn't entirely ignore Evoking a tradition of women who feminists and feminism of prepatriarchal their visionary, ethical dimensions. But differences among women, but for have been resisting oppression for origin stories, projection of mythic she also sees elements of Mary Daly's instance she uses "witch" as an un hundreds of years, Geraldine Moane female heroic or sacred figures, work thatmay encourage thismisread marked category to unify all women into uses Mary Daly's foreground/Back prepatriarchal woman-centered commu ing and contribute to the notion that she a single elemental race. Mary Daly's ground distinction to explore the Irish nities and other forms of revisionist is projecting a normative, homogenizing universal offers readers a single subject context of colonialism and mythmaking, all of which are necessar mythic image ofWoman that erects position, downplaying difference; thus postcoloniality. In the foreground is a ily culturally located. barriers tomany women's participation. gender alone offers women grounds for legacy of patriarchal institutions, Amber Katherine lays out the Discussions of themythmaking of authentic female existence. AnaLouise including the catholic church which commonality between Audre Lorde and Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldua and Keating suggests that thework of Paula stepped into the power vacuum created Mary Daly of both understanding the Audre Lorde demonstrate that likeMary Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldua and Audre in the postcolonial context. In the Goddess as a symbol of female power Daly, these theorists place themythic Lorde indicates new concepts of Background are strong women's and wanting tomove beyond lives images and narratives in nonlinear time, universal?open-ended and potentially traditions of today and dating back governed by a father god, and Laurel which contributes to their functioning to dialogic. As she understands these through Celtic and Gaelic cultures to Schneider reminds us thatMary Daly's support a sense writings, they Neolithic culture, evidenced by thou journey beyond God the father noun of continuation don't universal sands of stone structures all over passed through a verb, Be-ing, meta rather than ize the particular, Ireland. The best known isNewgrange, phorically inscribed as Goddess. nostalgia. they pluralize the part of Brugh na Bonnie, where at AnaLouise Keating brings togetherMary However, universal, Winter Solstice the rising sun lights the Daly, Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldua echoing a allowing a inner chamber, coming to rest on 14 and Audre Lorde in a significant discus concern of variety of boulders inscribed with goddess sym sion of their efforts to destabilize, or Maria Lugones, culturally bols. destroy, dominant metaphors, rituals and AnaLouise specific forms to Geraldine Moane's double-edged epvstemology. As do other contributors Keating argues coexist in desire is to re-member the earth to this volume, AnaLouise Keating thatMary Daly's dynamic interac centered gynocentric existence of suggests thatmisunderstandings of mythmaking is tion. They use ancient Ireland and to dismantle patriar Mary Daly have arisen because she is unlike that of the difference to chal destruction of women through read literally and not performatively; the the others in that redefine the forced motherhood, violence and readings are oblivious to theworkings of she associates existing univer poverty. Drawing on interviews and her transforming metaphors. All four of the "Other sal. conversations with Irish women, she thewriters AnaLouise Keating discusses centered con Finally, sketches women's practices which help use metaphor and myth, activating text" with an AnaLouise us realize our own power, or as Marja language's performative ability to bring ethnically Keating under Suhonen might say, reinscribe the divine about change, and all work in the belief unmarked scores the open inourselves and facilitate biophilic thatmaintaining/constructing a relation prepatriarchal (or ended possibili choices. Confronting the foreground by ship to a prepatriarchal past can trans metapatriarchal) ties of the demystifying patriarchal institutions form our lives in the present. This is the tradition, and project of using such as catholicity and Anglicity (in this activity of what Mary Daly calls re because of this MARY DALY this "feminine" case, in contrast to the Irish language), membering. Disagreeing with those abstractness the as an imaginative joining the race of women by joining postmodernists who debunk origin oral performative dimensions of her universal. "Because the 'discovery' of other women in solidarity, particularly in myths on the grounds that they writings do not work as interactively, as Woman as an ethical standard occurs the IrishWomen's Camp, towhich reinscribe existing patriarchal definitions invitingly, formany readers as they do in within mythic metaphors, itdefies literal, women from both North and South of woman, she shows that all four break these others' works. monologic interpretation, thereby come as well as from England, and theWestern dualism between male Paradoxically, AnaLouise Keating's making possible a proliferation of journeying into the Background by transcendent and female immanent. discussion suggests that one can be meanings, meanings thatmust be creating new consciousness, all contrib AnaLouise Keating argues that more inclusive and universal by being invented and lived out by each reader." ute to women's creative engagement and transcultural models of feminist more particular. Mary Daly's images AnaLouise Keating thus suggests resistance. And so she ends with an mythmaking demonstrate the possibility seem to require those who would thatwe attend to cultural specificities to account of Sistership, a splendid story of writing the "feminine" in open-ended, participate in them to abstract them fully comprehend and enact transforma of women's collective action. nonexclusionary ways that revise selves and restrict themselves to that tional possibilities. Drawing on Irish Finally, as we address themillen previous notions of the universal. She which is "common," whereas, the sources which have informedMary nium, a Christian marking of time, argues thatPaula Gunn Allen, Gloria others' images, being overtly ethnically Daly's own ethnic tradition,Geraldine Anne-Marie Korte reminds us of Mary Anzaldua and Audre Lorde develop marked, represent themselves as Moane addresses herself to the possi Daly's postchristian theoretical metaphoric representations of Woman particular, and invite a kind of relating to bilities of transforming psychic damage, situatedness by taking us on a brief erase that neither their own cultural them that involves relating one's own discussing women's psychic liberation journey to her 1998 book specificities nor require those who ethnicity, one's own particularity, to and resistance in the Irish context. As a Quintessence... Realizing theArchaic would connect with the images abstract them. Mary Daly's focus on commonal feminist psychologist she seconds Mary Future and exploring her work/play with themselves from their own specificities. itymay be exclusionary (though that is Daly's arguments against therapy and temporality.While Sheilagh Mogford She suggests that the similarity between certainly not her intention) for it com adds some of her own; but she believes reads Margaret Atwood's future into our the latter threewriters and Mary Daly pels readers to undergo a restrictive there are worthy practices which can be present, Anne-Marie Korte shows us
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This content downloaded from 130.209.6.61 on Wed, 13 May 2015 10:59:23 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions how resists the feminists of colonial nations to speak out and sacred-making Mary Daly vigorously memory and vision. In "flashbacks, women how to the rather threat of that future/present by madly about violence against in other pluralize universal, foresight, and temporal contractions," a story of a parts of theworld while that speaking than universalizing the particular, making spinning/conjuring/spelling boundaries thought to be absolute, such different future.While AnaLouise carries with it traces, if not the stamp, itopen-ended dialogic, conjuring as time, place and species, are trans of a colonial location dynamic interaction and engagement as how naming atrocities against the practice of philosophy/theory AC A D ME EN TI A: n. normal stateof women can inscribe women's victim performing, conjuring, animating, status and foreclose women's possibili casting spells, entering the play can re And more. And thiswork calls not persons in academia, marked by varying and ties, and how it provide for the of women's resistance and for distanced academic irreversible deterioration of cognition proclamations progressive degrees; name a ground of action but for a continuing, engaged feminist faculties of intellectuals the territorialityof lesbian and practice. There are so many sparking women's space and sparkling ideas to play with. the power of conceptually moving We want to encourage you to play For Mary Daly's ways of to the Background and the power of with Mary Daly's works. example, Keating explores gressed, while boundaries of individuals, the past, Anne-Marie taking to the streets to re-cognize by getting students engaged inMary Daly's re-membering practices of rape, transgressed through can Korte considers Mary Daly's ways of contextualizing other women's subjec language/ontology be enormously remain intact.Opportunities are created the future. tivity, resistance, agency; the sociality of biophilic. One of the editors, Sarah re-membering for encounters among different beings a course many different depictions of both of these strategies Hoagland, taught language Visiting of different eras which spark creativity students write time,Anne-Marie Korte explains that the complex explorations of radical during which she had the and change. Time, forMary Daly, is a fundamental element in white feminist focus on a of an old woman and read Mary Daly's dimension of extension and realization. independence description were to time is expecting/conjuring frommen and men's conceptualizing, it in class. There fine discussions, approach Existing in time takes more than endur thatmanifests itself in a new era. and radical women of color's focus on amid grasping of limits of language, of change ance, it requires an agency: to be present women women When thatQuintessence does not the interdependence of and old age and ageism. Noting and do more justice, one must reinter was how the world got from this the logic of exploring boundary that done, she had them rewrite explain pret the past and shape the future. to that "Lost and Found" Future, violation as rape with a focus on their descriptions using at least fifteen present "Quintessence" is a new way of ex Anne-Marie Korte suggest3 thatQuintes integrityof self, in relation to the logic words from the Wickedary. The result pressing what Mary Daly earlier called sence is not about from of was While the first continuity (steps "Verb" and "Goddess" and involves boundary crossing (colonial, astounding. writing here to there, a but racialized, class, ethnic) that requires left the students more thoughtful about political program) "throwing her life as far as itwill go." rather constructs the Future as a way of entering other women's contexts, seeing old women, the second took the stu And indeed, "going far" is some setting up a significantly discontinuous the self as plural or multiple and oppres dents into conversation with the old thing all the contributors to this volume of view from which to the sions as interlocked saw the old women as point critique do. Aside from the enormous contribu women; they (more or less simultaneous) evils of the complexing rather than neutralizing agents capable of talking back to them, tion theymake to re-reading theworks present and past. And, as she has done challenging them. "I had to picture her of Mary Daly and to radical feminism, identitypolitics own throughout her philosophical develop exploring ways we are multiply as a subject, a protagonist in her they offer many suggestions for con ment, inQuintessence Mary Daly constituted: themany selves through destiny," wrote Rpsibel Cruz, "The tinuing re-search. me a expresses the qualitative time involved in the process of be words took to place where I profound turning the conversations to women difference between phallocratic reality coming thatMary Daly develops as well couldn't speak for her, she had to speak while understanding the relevant "spe and the "otherworld" of Be-ing in terms as the co-temporaneous plural selves for herself." cies" category as biophilic, not biological a of a metaphor of different eras. "New" suggested by Maria Lugones's work, Mary Daly is spinner and weaver, the question of subjectivity under awareness is located in a different time: both in contrast to postmodern frag a performer, a wicced player throwing stood as an ongoing process of be women's own time. coming "Women's own time" or "Life contrasting time," Anne-Marie Korte explains, is not postmodern play with n. the time of dailiness, bodily functions COCK-AN D-BULL $TO RY: patriarchalhistory Mary Daly's playfulness and cycles that other feminists have how/why constructed. Mary Daly is not talking postmoderns are suscep about time as a limiting factor at the merited selves her life into the creation of new time. tible to a(n exclusively) modernist or a a level of the individual (mortality, busy continuing to develop a pluralist She works, to a great extent, as literal rather than a performative reading and she sees moves toward radical feminism of words ness), ofMary Daly magician meanings?breaking cyclicity as constructing closed systems the struggle for conversations not into syllables which release their ety strategies of Mary Daly's such as that stamp out difference?the endless facilitatedor mediated by bilingual mologies or pun them into parody, re Be/Leaving, reversing reversals and repetition of the same. Instead, Mary translators, exploring the different logics "spelling" them to give them new pirating through a patriarchal symbolic, Daly's radical feminism calls for a and sociality of approaching others with powers in new environments, displacing by which separation is a practice of from a and without a translator words into new contexts, departure dangerous, perverted, disruptingthe logicof thatsymbolic bilingual renaming patriarchal present, achieved through the as colonial racial patriarchy meta patriarchal events and constructs to exploring Mary Daly's concept of development of a critical distance from morphoses into yet another shape, how reveal their hidden connections and transcendence as the capacity to be an which to look back at obstacles to to resist and how to find and re-cognize patterns, naming women's Selves, lives, agent by shaping our conceptual women's transformation. For re-sisters and other Mary Daly framework knowledge, Naming?in time is a dimension of transformation language as contested territoryand words, re-metaphoring?the world. themultiple focus involved in seeing and renewal, a dimension women need meanings as negotiated, often through Since one can only begin such work women's resistance/subjectivity within a more fully to occupy with history and with the words and meanings at hand, situation, detecting patterns of violence politicalstruggle new future of our own making. the theological dimensions of she is often "using old words with against women normalized by the Anne-Marie Korte argues that in twentieth centuryWestern philosophy meanings"?literally doing so, for context of those situations, and imagin Mary Daly's work, temporal discontinu the facing of evil as exploring not example, when she uses "female" in a ing otherworld possibilities ityand play with time also connect just ethical values but the realm of rituals way that detaches itfrom the discourse the ambiguity of the need for
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of biology and places it in a metaethical assimilated into the professional aca feminists can swallow to get on with discourse of biophilia/necrophilia, and demic class and her uncouth anger is things. Radical Feminism is a continual also metaphorically, when she uses old available to her analysis and her vision. work in progress. And the possibility of In Defense ideas, categories, analytic strategies and Perhaps the other most significant movement we have all inherited as a organizing frameworks (e.g., from motivator ofMary Daly's philosophy is result of Mary Daly's work is awesome. Aquinas), information and another very un-cool, low-class passion: We offer this volume in the hopes that disinformation, cultural artifacts of hope. In spite of, or because of (or women seeking to do dissertation work on Mary Daly's many sorts to craft new collages, new both) Mary Daly's unremittingly clear Mary Daly's works and the criti Boston College has attempted to new gadgets, new vehicles, new powers that and courageous perception of evil, she cisms and territory it inspires will force Mary Daly into retirement due to give meaning to and get meaning from has never followed that evil to its logical be encouraged, and thatwomen com her refusal to teach men with women in radically Other places, times and conclusion of nihilism?a conclusion to mitted to the embodiment of theory and her Feminist Ethics class. She has said more possibilities. which much postmodern practice will easily benefit from that she will teach men separately from When a reader encounters texts poststructuralist feminist theory comes the fertile ground we have towalk on. women and has done so in the past. which say something new, she has to be perilously close. We read the dynamic Since usually far fewer men sign up to able to hear the new in spite of and between the a-mazing analyses of Marilyn Frye and Sarah Lucia Hoagland, take her classes, this results in her male through the concrete form of the old atrocity and the blatantly Futuristic Lansing, Michigan, and Chicago, Illinois students receiving more individual that is presented to her senses. If one fiction inQuintessence to be the latest December, 1998 attention. "I enjoy teaching young cannot do that, such texts seem simply performance of the dynamic sparking men," Daly wrote in her book full of mistakes and "misuses." Thus interplay of rage and hope so character Outercourse, "... but women need a creative, sometimes cross-linguistic, istic ofMary Daly's life and work. We Notes space uncolonized....I want there to be street sounds to the are familiar with such a in our women's where there can be slang just ignorant dynamic 1. "Introduction," Margaret A. Simon, space, hearer who cannot follow the creators' own lives and even in themotiva of work, inFeminist Interpretation of Simone explosions thought." into new The authors in tion and of this anthol Senior Duane demanded to play meanings. process editing de Beauvoir (University Park: Naquin this to a woman, have at be admitted to her class and when she anthology, ogy?our weary anger dismissive, Pennsylvania State University Press, hearkened to the new in inaccurate and refused to teach him with the Mary Daly's superficial, astoundingly 1995), p.6. women, new/old words and thus can play along unimaginative readings ofMary Daly he threatened to sue Boston College for with her as she breaks the that are almost discrimination. The Center for Individual through peppered ritually through 2. "a response to a letter from Peg and a deal of academic feminist a apparently supposedly impenetrable great theory, Simons, December 1993," Jeffner Rights, right-wing anti-feminist and total structures of the and our that this that led attacks on affirma patriarchal energizing hope Allen, inFeminist Interpretations of organization in celebration and has and tive action at the universities of Texas symbolics rage, anthology given space respect Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Margaret cosmic a to theorists academics, of and backed is creativity (i.e., creating (Other A. Simon (University Park: Pennsyl Michigan, Naquin. Naquin cosmos, or, if whose work will issues also affiliated with a conservative you please, socially course) re-open vania State University Press, 1995), an other And as the others have and restimu constructing reality). foreclosed, pp. 132-3. campus group. players along, they can recognize the late angry, hopeful, mythic, poetic, In response to the threatened formative role has had in creative feminist Mary Daly ontologically philoso ? Copyright2000 bySarah Lucia lawsuit, Boston College canceled Daly's the and and courses for the academic Boston creating space possibilities phy theory?not mimicking Mary Hoagland and Marilyn Frye year. feminists have been occupying and Daly, but authorized by the liberties she College offered Daly, now 70, a retire expanding in the last three decades. brashly takes. ment package. Daly rejected the offer These authors are encouraged, not The project before us?women's and chose instead to take a leave of or con frightened offended, by the rage continued be-coming, women's absence. Since that time, Boston College one move which is of the motivating forces of frontation with oppression and maintains thatDaly has resigned volun ment a Mary Daly's work. Offense at women's toward transcendence?is tarily and is no longer a faculty member. a anger is partly matter of the etiquette collective process. Itwill not be pro They have also denied her access to the to of the academic class?women's anger moted by dismissing each other university's grievance procedure. Daly, is unseemly and "inappropriate." But distance ourselves from criticisms, and who denies she has retired, is fighting are also, members of oppressed groups itwill not be promoted by retreating to Boston College's actions and has filed to their own both abstract severed taught fear anger theory from everyday complaints of breach-of-contract and because its expression is routinely practice and activism. Itwill be pro violation of tenure rights. punished and because it is, supposedly, moted by the tricksterwho mirrors us, The following is an excerpt from women in in case cosmically destructive. Many the of radical feminists of the Outercourse (p.326-328) where Mary our and nonaca (the editors') academic European-American tradition, perhaps Daly explains some of the reasons she we demic communities say that if they let by the play of the challenge of who has chosen to separate the sexes for their anger "go" theywould become are when trying to enter the geography some of her classes: monsters of rampaging destruction, and of such as El Libro de Calo, with all the a a theirways of expressing this reveal mistakes entwined of entering "for In Pure Lust I developed my Third sort sense that their not as an of superstitious rage eign" territory abstract colonial Galactic philosophical analysis which not some as a re would destroy just dishes, conqueror but sister seeking serves as theoretical underpinning and domestic or a male but peace, ego, the sister travelers. legitimation for the Creative Resolution To access is world. Mary Daly's work, This anthology open-ended. Mary which isWomen's Space on theBound one to not has grasp that it is women's Daly is hardly through producing work, ary of patriarchal institutions. A basic so can anger that fuels the planetary destruction and this anthology hardly aspire premise of this analysis is thefact that on around us. We be to a successful of going may grateful give summary picture patriarchy is a State of Separation. As I and And the that, notwithstanding her erudition it. questions raised by those explained this inPure Lust there is a to scholarly skill, and the detriment of feminists engaging with Mary Daly in disorder at the core of patriarchal answers or her reputation among academic feminist her projects hardly have pat consciousness which is engendered by has not been or theorists,Mary Daly easy solutions pills subsequent phallocentric myths, ideologies, and institutions. This disorder implies a state
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Books Mary Daly's
a letter of The followingis writtenby Mary Daly to FeministBookstore News. Separatist Space:
Iam writingto you to spread word about the recent fate and current Forced Retirement availabilityof my threemost recentbooks. These are Pure Lust,Websters' of disconnection from Biophilic pur schemata of "adult," i.e., male FirstNew IntergalacticWickedary of theEnglish Language, and posefulness, exemplified in such atroci authored, memories. They can provide Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage. ties as theworldwide rape and massacre contexts for Remembering beyond These which half of life's were ofwomen and of theThird World and civilization, for Metapatterning. books, represent my work, "disappeared" from San Francisco, That before Iknew what was the destruction of theplanet itself Therefore, theymust be undermined. The Harper is, going on, they were remaindered. In late 1996 Iwas informedthat the This disorder, which I have Named radicalpotential offreely thinking September copies thatwere still leftof Pure Lust and of the would be sold to the phallic separatism, separates women women is a threat to the very meaning of Wickedary our own bidder October 18 ifI did not them before that from ourSelves, from powers of a patriarchal university. highest by purchase date, and and each and that the extant copies of Outercourse thatwere still the Knowing Naming, from This analysis was inspired, in large possessed by other. In order to communicate with publisher would be...shredded after that time. measure, by my own experience of ourSelves and with each other many Women's Studies courses in a of teaching As one who is somewhat sensitive to Ishuddered at word us have that it is to words, the found necessary verypatriarchal university. It was also shredded. Since Outercourse ismy philosophical autobiography, itwas separate ourSelves inRadical ways from and conversa inspired, reinforced, by difficultnot to take this,uh, Ienvisioned in narrow the State To it tions with personally. myself long phallic of Separation. put professors ofWomen's Studies laidout on the floor. I in strips neatly regrettedthat Ihad not added theword another way, given theprevailing inmany and universities in the colleges shreddermy listof Wickedary words. But therewas no time forsuch self conditions, some are 1970's and 1980 's. has forms of separation My experience and Run! our and indulgentimaginings regrets.Run, Mary, necessary for regaining integrity been that thepresence of male students our autonomous powers communica with women in such classes of together WickedlyI managed to rescue the remainingcopies of the books. They are tion. As I wrote in Pure Lust: slows in down and fact blunts the being distributedby: Women in the State confined phallic learning process for thewomen. This is .. are characterized/ Unitarian Universalist Association Bookstore of Separation of course inpart an effect of learned to the 25 Beacon Street crippled by inability identify responses to thepresence ofmales?even Boston, MA 02108, USA agents of Self-blocking separation. They of one male?in the class. Eventually I are victimized by the strategy of discussed with with the students and reversal. Just as the label "man-hater" The directorof theUUA Bookstore isSteve More. Books can be ordered began holding separate sessions for by a FAX at 367 or 215 E-mail address is: in Woman-Hating Society functions to women and men. (617) 3237, by phone (800 9076). so also the [email protected]. stop thought, negatively Everyone has the same reading list use the label charged of "separatist" and course requirements. Since there They are selling the books ( all paperbacks) at listprice to individualsand within the State hinders of Separation have been far fewer men than women in at 40% discount to bookstores. The listprice ofPure Lust is $16,50; women from Be-Friending. these classes, theformer have received Wickedary, $17.00; Outercourse, $13.00. I chose to use theword separatism more attention. The result, of course, has as a earlier books Church and Labrys: been extra work for me. However, I My {The theSecond Sex, Beyond God the On the one itNames and are with Beacon Press. hand, phallic enjoy teaching young men as well as Father, Gyn/Ecology) My forthcomingbook is separatism, which blocks and bars Life women students, and course evaluations Quintessence: Re-Calling theOutrageous Contagious Courage ofWomen. Lust?the desire commu The 2048 AF Feminarum Edition of this a for ontological have indicated general appreciation of {Anno ) work, containing Preface nication. On the other itNames and Comments on each an hand, this intellectually challenging Canny chapter by inhabitantof the Future,will the choice women to break the be Beacon in 1998. This Future a member of from experience. published Originallyby Feminist, artificial context of phallic separatism of theAnonyma Networkof the twenty-firstcentury, is known informallyas in order to affirm and live our radical "Annie." A defense fund forMary Daly has connectedness inBiophilic be-ing. been created to support her in her Annie me for a By the use of this Labrys, then, I Conjures up conversations all theTime Now. She is keen lawsuit against Boston College. If you studentof twentieth Feminism. So who knows? was able toprovide the needed philo century Probably she will be wish to donate money, make rational Women's Studies as please interested inBe-Speaking with other participants inthe Women's sophical for checks to "The payable Mary Daly and Future. The a locus for Women's in Movement, Past, Present, moronizing millennial Space patriarchal Defense Fund" and send to the follow universities. megamonsters cannot stop the flowof informationand Original/Deviant/ address: I wrote in Pure Lust: ing FeministGenius. Ask Annie! The women's to POBox381176 history of struggles MA Mary Daly and maintain diverse Cambridge, 02238 provide " forms of "Women's Space has been a vivid Letters to Boston College in defense testimony to thefact thatmen recognize of can be sent to: this to be a crucial issue in the war to Mary Daly President William P. Leahy, SJ control women's minds.... Particularly Boston instructive has been the virulent and College Botolph House often vicious undermining by university ChestnutHill, MA 02467-3934 administrators of the efforts of Feminists to reverse some Women's For more information on The Mary Studies classes for women only. Such Daly Defense Fund, contact: classes can provide the occasion for true phone: 781-433-7309 encounters withMetamemory, for email: [email protected] perceiving and reasoning beyond the
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