Spiritual Transformation & Non-Violent Feminist Practice, pt. 1
This is a review of Leela Fernandes’ Transforming Feminist Practice: Non-Violence, Social Justice, & the Possibilities of a Spiritualized Feminism. The title of the book was the basis of an interesting personal challenge: as a friend put it to me, why apply women’s spirituality to feminism or issues of social justice? For that matter, why any spirituality whatsoever? Before reading the book I had a few ready answers, but the book itself offered another entirely. I’ll delineate mine after the book review, just because I think the comparison is interesting. Since I’m short on writing time, here are some of the interesting thoughts from the book:
We’ve sainted Gandhi & Martin Luther King, Jr., but we’ve also sort of de-spiritualized their teachings — as well as de-spiritualizing social justice. Worse, while we have excellent linguistic tools to deconstruct/tear down/destroy the “overwhelming structures of power in which we are all implicated” (50)… we don’t have equally excellent tools for reconstruction/creation of a new or alternative practice or social system which, rather than simply replicating the old exclusions and privileges, instead moves us past them to new growth. That lack paralyzes the well-meaning, freezing us into a cynical anomie when faced with the apparently impassable conflict between the desired change and what currently actually is.
In order to accomplish this desired, lasting social transformation, Fernandes accepts the spiritual/mystical as real, reclaiming it for feminism as a means to both decolonize the divine, and to break free of the classic cycles of retribution which help perpetuate oppressions based on conventional understandings of identity, power, and justice — which then are unwittingly and continuously re-inscribed into the social movements attempting to resist them. In her hands, spirituality is not a tool for social change; instead movements for social justice become themselves radical and sacred, “fundamentally opposed to any hierarchical, patriarchal or violent representations of religious teaching … which are at the root of all forms of oppression in this world” (15).
Fernandes critiques the politics of identity as a means for lasting social change, noting that while it is essential for collecting members of a particular oppressed social group together to agitate for change, its structure is based in demand rather than also giving back. It is therefore not a good long-term social strategy, and she suggests instead a process she refers to as disidentification: a releasing of the standard external forms of identity (as in nationality, race, sex, class, gender, religion, etc.) and their associated, often unwitting, deep ego attachments to privilege and controlling power. As noted earlier, students are also not taught how to create from what is left of deconstruction, or that this re-creation is the true heart of social transformation. Fernandes believes such a tremendously demanding stripping away of non-essentials, in order to create a radically egalitarian new society, is most feasible from a spiritual basis — especially if it is to successfully dismantle the enormous and pervasive social structures of power which currently shape our lives.
Spirituality can serve as a tremendous source of power that can enable us to challenge some of our deepest practices of identification, and can lead us to understand our self as an infinite, unbounded source of divinity, spiritual strength, and empowerment. It leads us to question our ingrained assumptions regarding the boundaries of individual autonomy, agency, and rationality . . . [and] the often hidden distinctions we make between mind, matter, and spirit. It dares us to disrupt the careful lines which thinkers and activists, both modern and postmodern, both religious and secular, have carved out between the realms of the human and divine. (37)
Fernandes further develops this thought, deconstructing the current separation between spirituality and social justice in order to reveal an artificial social construct. This immensely powerful cultural belief is so subtly ingrained that we often no longer realize true external social change cannot occur without simultaneous self-transformation. In effect, our internalized petty jealousies, ambitions, and fears are simply smaller versions of the current structures of power.
I find her definitions of both spirituality and ethical action (quoted from the Dalai Lama) to be helpful and clarifying. Spirituality is related to “qualities of the human spirit — such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony … [qualities] defined by an implicit concern for others’ well-being,” while ethical action is related to “avoiding acts of harm and injury against others” (53). She also puts forth a concept I’ve always thought undervalued in US culture: leadership as laboring in service to others, rather than as a personal achievement. I strongly agree with her that a return to this concept would be a necessary first step in re-linking social activism and justice with compassion, humility, and love (59).
Yeah, that one kinda confuses me too. I turned off my TV, canceled magazine subscriptions, and try not to shop based on advertising. Despite folks knowing the media is actively deceiving us, though, I know folks who practically hunger for it. Why is that?
To be fair, the term ‘conservative’ has gotten the same treatment as well. But we can point that to the media as well.
You know, one thing that I’ve found consistently between right and left, liberal and conservative and libertarian and anarchist and statist, etc. etc. etc…. is that the modern Western media is all considered to be at the root or close to the root of much of the lack of rational political discourse in society. And yet the media corporations chug right along….
My personal suspicion is that all those phrases you report as being effectively devalued have had it done with a sort of deliberateness — not that there’s some Circle of Doom[TM] somewhere who decides these things, so much as people often mock that which annoys or confuses or frightens them. The words “liberal” and “feminism” have received the same treatment, for example. It’s a shame that the power of the media is often behind these efforts to ignore or refuse such important ideas. As far as I know, the only way to oppose this sort of thing is to quietly and doggedly continue to do your work and to use the terms in the way they were meant to be used. I truly believe power comes from below, after all.
A second thought in addition to the one I had mentioned to you earlier…. President Obama, while (IMHO) being problematic in many of his policies, established much of his credibility on his community organization work in Chicago. I don’t know the extent of that work, or what it entailed, or even how effective it was; that’s for a different discussion. But I’ve noticed that since 2007, ‘community organization’ has become a ‘dirty word’ in some circles. I find this sad and ironic; those same circles decry government that’s not small enough to drown in a bathtub, which one would think would be the fertile ground for good, up-and-coming community organizers. And yet, ‘community organization’ has been tossed into the same dumpster as concepts like ‘social justice,’ ‘compassion,’ ’empathy,’ and ‘equanimity.’ All things that are vital, are *critical* for exactly the kind of communities that need to be formed in lieu of government (at least, when government has ceased to be an effective tool of the governed.) “Liberation theology” has also been thrown in that same dumpster, which ties into the spirituality you mention above.
How do you oppose this sort of memetic gymnastics, when the things you hold up as virtues have their definitions twisted by Orwellian doubletalk into vices; while vapid and virulent consumerism, greed, kyriarchy, and scorn for the less-well-off are all raised into virtues?