Journey to Integral Feminism
- PhD: In the footsteps of the heroine: the journey to Integral Feminism. Dr Sarah Nicholson
Introduction and Summary
"This thesis begins with one of the very oldest myths, the deeply profound Sumerian story of Inanna. I first encountered Inanna’s story as an undergraduate. Years later when I returned to it, informed by my own spiritual experiences, that I was able to understand her journey as a classic hero’s tale. For two years her story was the topic of this thesis, but the need to establish an Integral feminist philosophical and methodological position that could adequately contextualise her story in terms of stages of consciousness, the evolution of gender dynamics, and changing representations of the female divine, became increasingly clear to me. Thus this thesis is focused on the greater schema. Yet, no matter how much I put Inanna’s story aside it continued to return to the text. It is an important recurring motif in this thesis, and a story that continues to call me to the path.
Through the story of Inanna, Chapter One introduces Joseph Campbell’s theory of the hero as spiritual subject'. Campbell writes that the hero may be equally man or woman yet symbolically at the central point of his narration of the journey woman as hero disappears. The ‘human’ hero is unmasked as man alone.
The hero’s journey is taken as motif and metaphor for the question ‘Who am I?’, and the heroine as the motif for the exploration of woman’s subjectivity. I examine woman as a socio-cultural, psychological and spiritual subject, and particularly examine the manner in which the marginalisation of woman as subject has meant that the question of woman sits in front of the question, ‘What is it to be human?’. Thus, this thesis examines how this question might be resolved as it follows the journey of woman through her various guises. Chapters Two and Three turn to feminism and explore the ever-increasing complexity with which this discourse has examined woman, maintaining particular reference to feminist discourses on spirituality and religion.
Starting from the premise that the emergence of post-conventional feminist subjectivity is an evolutionary development of human consciousness, Chapters Four, Five and Six take Integral theory as a methodological position from which to trace woman as subject, and the emergence of feminism, through the developments of human consciousness. Interjecting into Wilber’s evolutionary map of the development of consciousness from a feminist perspective, I question the manner in which man is constructed as the central figure of history and through applying feminist evidence in an interdisciplinary manner, I construct and follow woman as a central figure from the initial Archaic through to the emergent Integral stage.
Finally, Chapter Seven enjoins feminist philosophy with Adult Developmental theory. I depose the classic (Mythic-Agrarian) hero as the exemplar of human development by framing development in an expanded transpersonal spectrum. With gender-specific focus I map a path of development for woman to the Unitive divine horizon, where the answer to the dual question ‘who am I?’ and ‘what is woman?’ may be resolved.
Throughout this thesis the Integral methodology and philosophy I use is consciously expanded by feminist thought. I have employed the work of male theorists such as Campbell and Wilber in the knowledge and avowal of the patriarchal heritage from which their work arises. I hope to have met this heritage in a clear-sighted way by attempting to filter the chaff of androcentric thinking from the wheat of their unique ideas. In doing so I have neither hesitated to part company from them where necessary, nor have I failed to utilise their key thoughts or contributions to scholarship.
As a key Integral theorist Wilber’s work has been particularly placed in dialogue with a wide and rich array of feminist thinkers throughout this thesis. These include Catherine Keller, Carol Christ, Mary Daly, Elizabeth Grosz, Rosi Braidotti, Luce Irigaray, Carol Lee Flinders, Grace Jantzen and Julia Kristeva, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Anne Klein and Elizabeth Debold. With an eye to the horizon that is cognisant of development and evolution, the process of bringing Integral and (a bricolage of) feminist theories into dialogue, to operate methodologically upon one another, is designed to enable the emergence of Integral feminism. The three primary pathways of inquiry that this thesis has followed - defining woman, placing her as a central subject in the evolutionary stages of consciousness, and plotting a gender specific pathway of development towards the Unitive horizon – seeks to create a neoperennial mythology of the journey of woman as hero, one that draws on and contributes to the promise of Integral feminist consciousness in the dawning of the Integral stage."