Academic literature on the topic 'Feminist spirituality'

This article considers the issue of racial difference in the Goddess movement, using the mythological figure of Arachne, a skilful weaver whom the goddess Athena transformed into a spider, to explore the unequal relational dynamics between white Goddess feminists and women of colour. Bringing Goddess spirituality and thealogical metaphors of webs and weaving into dialogue with postcolonial and black feminist perspectives on the politics of voice, marginality and representation, the article points to some of the ways in which colonial narratives weave through Goddess feminism, including practices of silencing and the romanticization of racial difference. Ultimately, I argue that feminist spirituality must recognize and address structural inequality between white women and women of colour, or in other words, listen to Arachne’s voice.

After a turbulent period during which feminist studies disavowed ecofeminism, the field is finding new popularity with strains that have made their way into gender and sustainable development studies and new material feminisms. To do so, they have had to evacuate all traces of spirituality. This essay reviews the circumstances under which spiritual ecofeminisms fell from favor before turning to theologians, religious studies scholars, and Chicana feminist theorists and artists for whom spirituality plays a central role. It asks: how can we take spirituality and religion seriously again in ecofeminism? Is there room to respect spirituality even in feminist environmental safe houses, whether socialist and development oriented or science-infused new material approaches? This essay concludes with artist Amalia Mesa-Bains’s installations as a case study to illustrate what Chicana environmentalisms could teach us about materiality and spirituality within a decolonial framework.

Feminist historiography indicates that spirituality has historically been one of the instruments whereby women could “speak”. This “voice” implied recognition and authority, to a certain degree, in a patriarchal-oriented reality. In this regard, feminist spirituality became a vehicle for women to authorise their own religious and spiritual contributions and insights. Feminist spirituality became a countermovement – countering perceptions and ingrained convictions that a woman could not be a mediator between God and humanity. Feminist spirituality contributed to the creation of spaces for women to study and participate in the creation of religious-spiritual texts. Women’s contexts are diverse and intersectional, and so is feminist spirituality, to the extent that it is more appropriate to speak of feminist spiritualities in the plural. This article explores the possibilities of feminist spirituality as countermovement that contributes to the realisation of gender equality, in the way that gender equality finds expression in the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. It is situatedwithin a growing field of work that explores how faith communities’ religion and spirituality contribute to their being agents of sustainable development, and within the contextual urgency of the sustainable development agenda.

Abstract This article analyses the circulation of feminist ideas and practices in women’s circles and connected workshops geared to urban middle-class heterosexual cisgender women, and the presence of spiritual elements in massive feminist mobilisations in contemporary Argentina. It uses a qualitative methodology based on ethnographic observations, interviews and analyses of digital content carried out between 2014 and October 2019. In a national and international context of feminist visibility and broad availability of spiritual goods and services, I explore the relations between secularisation and sexual politics, and spirituality and feminisms. The outcomes show a secular-based feminism permeable to spiritual practices and an increasing participation of women who define themselves as spiritual in feminist demonstrations. They also suggest that this convergence assists in the dissemination of sexual and reproductive rights in a definition that integrates notions of bodily knowledge, self-management, empowerment and spiritual wellness.

This paper offers an ontological and literary review of Muslim women’s religious practices across the Muslim ummah, in considering the development of an epistemology of faith and feminism within the Islamic schema. Our aim is to explore the diverse constructions of autopoiesis in reference to feminism, faith and spirituality in relation to Islam as both a religious and a cultural phenomenon. To this end, global examples of faith-based practice are reviewed, where issues of dominant and minority cultures and values refer to how Muslim faith practices are enacted within the local context. The authors use a dyadic, auto-ethnographic methodology to explore their own personal, political and spiritual positioning as feminists from a Muslim, immigrant and secular British background. The significance of women’s spiritual and feminist dimensions in the context of faith, nationhood and embodiment of ideological positions are analysed. Additionally, religious, cultural and geo-political implications of feminism and Islam are considered regarding identity, culture and tradition, and religious resurgence, together with forms of feminist resistance to religious doctrine. Finally, the search by women for spiritual authority and authenticity is discussed.

This research study investigates self-identified feminist social workers??? conceptualizations of spirituality, how spirituality influences their practices, and their ideas about the effects of spiritually influenced practice. There is increasing interest in exploring and considering spirituality across social work approaches, accompanied by a strong demand for empirical research and the development of knowledge in this area. The past few years in particular have witnessed an expanding social work literature that discusses the incorporation of spirituality into practice. In this thesis spirituality refers to a complex construct that can be deeply personal and/or communal, and that can encompass a sense of connection with something bigger that transcends ordinary life experience. In order to examine spirituality in the context of feminist social work practice, the goals of this study needed to be exploratory and demanded the use of a qualitative methodology. In-depth individual interviews were conducted with twenty experienced direct practice social workers. Grounded theory analysis of the interview data uncovered surprising and significant convergences amongst research participants??? beliefs, values and practices. These unexpected commonalities invited a further analysis of the data that produced a set of practice principles. These practice principles reflected the participants??? understandings of spirituality and basic values, their ideas about processes of spiritual development and beliefs about the spiritual essence of human life, and their spiritually influenced practice methods and relationships. The process of developing practice principles included further data collection through the written feedback of participants and the use of three focus groups. This second round of data collection and analysis extended and refined the practice principles. The practice principles are particularly relevant for social work because they are based in the participants??? collective practice wisdom and represent an important step towards helping to legitimize spiritual knowledge. The practice principles also have important implications for social work practice, education and research in that they can promote discussions about spirituality, guide practice, provide a base for the future development of spiritually influenced models and frameworks, and direct curriculum development.

This thesis interrogates the interaction between feminist utopianism and altered states of consciousness in fiction from 1970 onwards. The thesis develops further both Lyman Tower Sargent's definition of utopianism as "social dreaming" and Tom Moylan's understanding of critical utopia. It also develops and expands Lucy Sargisson's definition of feminist utopianism as subversive, fluid, ambiguous and committed to ongoing personal and social transformation. Utopianism must challenge society's norms and values, offering both social critique and social vision. I argue throughout this work that transforming individual consciousness is a vital step towards social change. The thesis focuses on four altered states of consciousness: madness, dreaming, spirituality and telepathy. These states are situated within a theoretical context, and are then explicated further through close literary analysis of feminist utopian literature. Altered states offer a metaphor for the need to think differently, and highlight the importance of looking at society in new and alternative ways. In a significant number of feminist utopian texts, utopia is accessed through a dream or a vision, through spiritual meditation, telepathy, or a state of "madness". Within these texts, altered states are not only used as a means of accessing utopia but are also represented within the narrative as a means of maintaining or sustaining the utopian vision. Additionally, I show that altered states refers to the place of utopia, which is altered, or different to, contemporary society. The reader may also enter into an altered state through the process of reading the text, as their beliefs and assumptions about "the way things are" are challenged, denaturalised and subverted.

There is a problem with western patriarchal capitalist narratives of love and connected models of subjectivity which some feminisms, in particular, neoliberal (post)feminism, continue rather than criticise. This is a problem, not only because these feminisms uphold existing patriarchal structures and values, but because models of patriarchal subjectivity are founded on a repression and devaluation of love that contributes to what I am naming a ‘crisis of love’ in neoliberal societies. While some solutions to this problem have been offered, including by feminist love studies scholars, none of the solutions address the whole issue – for example, feminisms that ignore issues of spirituality and the female subject’s relationship to the divine, and the impact of myth on the psyche. Until these aspects are included in a rethinking of both female subjectivity and narratives of love, the problem will not be solved. There are many kinds of love but Eros in particular, which is such a charged narrative in western patriarchal capitalist society, is the kind of love that most urgently needs to be rethought and re(dis)covered. Through examination of the major founding myth of female subjectivity for western patriarchy – the Madonna/whore binary – a pathway to addressing this problem of love becomes possible. Rethinking this binary according to reinterpretations of the myths of Aphrodite and Demeter offers a rethinking of Eros as a creative, life-affirming power. This renewed narrative of Eros creates new models of female subjectivity – and the potentiality for new models of ethics – that challenge the contemporary neoliberal paradigm.
Doctor of Philosophy

The outward form of the text in which the spiritual search is housed is 'performance-ritual', that is, performed 'ritual'. This genre has its 'performance' roots in the dance pioneers and its 'ritual' roots in the Christian church. The contents of this performed text is influenced by an emerging ecofeminist consciousness. In this way, the thesis has a grassroots inspiration as well as crossing academic areas of performance studies, ritual studies, and feminist spirituality. The project begins by an examination of 20th Century feminist and ecofeminist writing on spirituality, which evokes the subjective, embodied and historically contextualised, with particular focus on body and nature. Additional concepts of place, holding and letting go are introduced. Particular performance-rituals are introduced under the overall heading 'the spiralling journey of exorcism and ecstacy'. They include earlier work, as well as work performed specifically for this thesis, Centre of the Storm. The study re-situates 'ritual' as a subjective, embodied and contextualised performed event. It challenges ritual discourse to incorporate 'spirit', and feminist spirituality to incorporate the material world, through 'place', 'family', and the ritual actions of 'holding' and 'letting go'.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The presentation examines the return of the religion of the Goddess (in Western cultures) as one of the most unexpected developments of the late twentieth century. Contemporary awareness and attention to gender difference theory have opened up new dimensions for spiritual expressions and spiritual practises, encouraging the development of new forms of female spirituality and the formation of new religious representations from a feminine perspective. Traditional forms of spirituality are clearly dualistic at their core, with the material world, physicality, and femininity on one side and transcendence, spirituality, and masculinity on the other. However, the tendency of modern forms of spirituality is to seek the sacred through and in solidarity, interdependence and holistic integrity. From this perspective, the Goddess movement, the revival of lost women’s folk religiosity and female pagan cults, thealogy and various other movements of women’s spirituality are analysed as a tool for reconstructing the past from a feminist perspective and in the process of transforming collective memory and current religious conceptualization. For the symbols and rituals of the Goddess religions bring the paradigm of the deep interconnectedness of all people and all beings in the web of life.

Необходимость внедрения природоподобных технологий в психотерапии и психологическом консультировании находит все больше сторонников. Появилось зонтичное понятие – «экотерапия» для всех форм включения природы или каких-либо природных элементов в работу специалиста. В исследовании С. К. Нартовой-Бочавер (2020) показана взаимосвязь позитивного самоотношения и любви к растениям. М. В. Рагулина (2010) распределила экотерапию к индивидуальному квадранту «Я», в этом контексте понимая под природной средой продолжение личности человека, в ней находящегося. В методе позитивной динамической психотерапии личность понимается как система отношений по В. Н. Мясищеву. Все многообразие отношений распределяется на три кластера – отношение к себе, отношение к значимому другому и отношение к миру в целом. В методе разработано более 50 авторских методик, направленных на реституцию, реконструкцию и гармонизацию всех кластеров отношений личности. Одной из этих методик является позитивная экотерапия В. Ю. Слабинского, А. А. Преображенской, Н. М. Воищевой. В 2022 году А. А. Преображенская провела тренинг по позитивной экотерапии в группе из 14 женщин. Средний возраст 41,57±7,51 года. Тренинг состоял из 4 встреч с эпизодичностью один раз в неделю. В дизайне психотерапии использовалась модель «Идентификации», позволяющая описать и исследовать кластер самоотношения. В начале и в конце цикла участники проходили тестирование в методе Позитивной динамической психотерапии.Методики. 1. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS) – Госпитальная шкала тревоги и депрессии (Zigmond A. S., Snaith R. P., 1983). 2. Опросник «БАК-конфликт» В. Ю. Слабинского – позволяет исследовать три кластера системы отношений по В. Н. Мясищеву. 3. Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) – изучение системы отношений личности к временному континууму (Зимбардо, Бойд, 2010). Вся выборка была поделена на 2 группы по показателю «Я-женское» теста «БАК-конфликт». Группа 1 (6 человек) – женщины с базовым конфликтом и показателями по шкале «Я-женское» от 3 до 5 баллов (отвержение женского), группа 2 (8 человек) – женщины с показателями по шкале «Я-женское» от 6 баллов (норма). Проведенный анализ по критерию МаннаУитни показал, что эти группы помимо различий по шкале «Я-женское» (р=0,002), характеризуются достоверным отличием следующих показателей: чистоплотность (р=0,021), искренность (р=0,048), общительность (р=0,030), вера/мировоззрение (р=0,003). То есть низкая женская самооценка влияет на характер и проявляется в снижении чистоплотности, искренности, общительности и устойчивости мировоззрения. Для выявления значимых изменений применялся критерий Уилкоксона (р≤0,05). Анализ динамики Группы 1 показал достоверное улучшение показателя в сторону укрепления женской самооценки (Z=-2,060, р=0,039), что позволяет сделать вывод о том, что методика «Позитивная экотерапия» в описанном выше варианте, может применяться для работы с низкой самооценкой, улучшения отношения к себе и терапии базового конфликта в сфере «Я-женское». Так же в Группе 1 выявляются достоверное снижение показателя по шкале «Духовность», что можно проинтерпретировать как перераспределение жизненной энергии по другим сферам. В процессе прохождения методики женщины были сосредоточены на выполнении заданий (сфера «Результативность»), их мысли были заняты конкретными вопросами и размышлениями о себе и о близких (сфера «Социальность»), при этом женщины гуляли, дышали свежим воздухом, слушали птиц и другие звуки природы (сфера «Индивидуальность / Телесность»). Одна из гипотез – некоторые их мечты наполнились конкретными символическими смыслами природных образов и таким образом стали более осязаемыми и реальными. Вероятно, по тем же самым причинам в Группе 2 у женщин с нормальной самооценкой после тренинга наблюдалось значимое снижение показателей тревожности, значимое усиление перспективы будущего и увеличение аккуратности. The necessity of nature-based psychotherapy techniques integration into psychological consulting finds more and more proponents. An umbrella concept – "ecotherapy" – has appeared for all forms of inclusion of nature or any natural elements in the work of the specialist. In S. K. Nartova-Bochaver's (2020) study, the interrelation of positive self-attitude and fondness for plants was shown. М. V. Ragulina (2010) distributed ecotherapy to the individual quadrant of the "Me", in this context understanding the natural environment as an extension of the personality of the person who is in it. In the method of positive dynamic psychotherapy personality is understood as a system of relations according to V.N. Myasishchev. The entire variety of attitudes is divided into three clusters - attitude to oneself, attitude toward the significant other and attitude toward the world as a whole. The method has developed more than 50 author's techniques aimed at restitution, reconstruction and harmonization of all clusters of personality relations. One of these techniques is positive ecotherapy by V. Y. Slabinsky, A. A. Preobrazhenskaya and N. M. Voishcheva. In 2022, A.A. Preobrazhenskaya conducted positive ecotherapy training in a group of 14 women. The average age was 41.57±7.51 years. The training consisted of 4 meetings with episodic frequency once a week. The psychotherapy design used the Identity Model to describe and explore the self-concept cluster. At the beginning and at the end of the cycle, participants were tested in the Positive Dynamic Psychotherapy method. Methods. 1. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS) (Zigmond A. S., Snaith R. P., 1983). 2.The BAC-conflict questionnaire by V. Y. Slabinsky – allows to investigate three clusters of the system of relationships according to V. N. Myasishchev. 3. Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) – examines the system of personality relations to the time continuum (Zimbardo, Boyd, 2010). The entire sample was divided into 2 groups according to the " I-Feminine" indicator of the BAC-Conflict test. Group 1 (6 people) were women with a basic conflict and scores from 3 to 5 on the self-feminine scale (feminine rejection), Group 2 (8 people) were women with scores from 6 on the "I-Feminine" scale (normal). Mann-Whitney test analysis showed that these groups, in addition to differences on the "I-Feminine" scale (p=0.002), are characterized by a significant difference in the following indicators: cleanliness (p=0.021), sincerity (p=0.048), sociability (p=0.030), faith/worldview (p=0.003). That is, low female self-esteem affects character and manifests itself in a decrease in cleanliness, sincerity, sociability, and stability of worldview. Wilcoxon criterion (p≤0.05) was used to identify significant changes. Analysis of Group 1 dynamics showed a significant improvement in the direction of strengthening female self-esteem (Z=-2,060, p=0,039) which allows to conclude that the Positive Ecotherapy method in the variant described above, can be used to work with low self-esteem, improve self-concept and therapy of the basic conflict in the " I-Feminine". Also in Group 1, a significant decrease in the "Spirituality" scale was detected, which can be interpreted as a redistribution of life energy to other spheres. In the course of the methodology, the women were focused on completing tasks (the "Performance" sphere), their thoughts were occupied with specific questions and thoughts about themselves and their loved ones (the "Sociality" sphere), and the women were out walking, breathing fresh air, listening to birds and other sounds of nature (the "Individuality/Body" sphere). One hypothesis is that some of their dreams were filled with concrete symbolic meanings of natural images and thus became more tangible and real. Probably for the same reasons, in Group 2, women with normal self-esteem showed a significant decrease in anxiety scores, a significant increase in future perspective, and an increase in neatness after the training.