raven_acres's review
4.0
Excellent overview on working together, the Goddess movement and eco-feminism.
bistelle's review
3.0
THANK GOD i’ve finished this book.
la manière dont je me suis ennuyée ptn.
terrible.
le pire c’est que je je sais que le livre est probablement bien, qu’on apprend énormément de choses. mais désolée de ne plus avoir le cerveau, the attention span to handle « intellectual » books???
c’est meme pas intellectuel c’est genre spirituel et magie etc et juste non je peux pas me concentrer, au final ça m’intéresse pas tant que ça.
Don’t get me wrong, j’ai appris des choses et tout mais en soit c’est pas comme si je CHERCHAIS à les apprendre !
je pense juste que ce n’est pas un livre qui m’est destiné dans ma vie actuelle
faudrait que je le relise dans quelques années mais genre avec attention limite note taking.
mais ouais
la manière dont je me suis ennuyée ptn.
terrible.
le pire c’est que je je sais que le livre est probablement bien, qu’on apprend énormément de choses. mais désolée de ne plus avoir le cerveau, the attention span to handle « intellectual » books???
c’est meme pas intellectuel c’est genre spirituel et magie etc et juste non je peux pas me concentrer, au final ça m’intéresse pas tant que ça.
Don’t get me wrong, j’ai appris des choses et tout mais en soit c’est pas comme si je CHERCHAIS à les apprendre !
je pense juste que ce n’est pas un livre qui m’est destiné dans ma vie actuelle
faudrait que je le relise dans quelques années mais genre avec attention limite note taking.
mais ouais
morebedsidebooks's review
slow-paced
Starhawk, is one US Neopagan, activist and author that has had a large influence since the 1970s. Particularly in meshing the Goddess Movement with the (eco)feminist and political. “The personal is political” as the slogan goes, and here is exactly an appeal to transform both the private and public, with reminders of interconnectedness. The spiritual and the political come together. A politicized Craft.
Originally published in 1982, Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics was shaped amidst battles that can still ring true today. Insert what you will in this sentence for example “____ has revealed the frightening extent to which the dominant culture is willing to write off the lives and interests of those groups of people it considers of low value.” Examining dominant culture, (patriarchy, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, racial superiority etc.) and effects is a staple of much feminist thought. Yet, as many copies Dreaming the Dark has sold and despite updates and new editions at points, (even translations) unsurprisingly it’s an example too that still can reflect some older (troubling) concepts.
An analysis of power, key principles Starhawk writes about in Dreaming the Dark are “power-over” (domination and control) and “power-from-within”, (creative and ability). “Power-over” (as well as “power with” Starhawk writes about in yet another book Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery) was coined by a social theorist Mary Parker Thollett and likewise features along with a term broadened and borrowed from Marx “estrangement”. Must be interesting if we’re still talking about these all this later. Except where Starhawk mulling this over when it comes to sexuality, matters start to get viscid. For one she fails in fully conceptualizing BDSM. By not imagining a collaborative “power-with” (influence or social) or empowering eroticism “power-from-within”. (Or just dismissing such experience as being confused or not looking deep enough as similar things are said in her also bestselling The Spiral Dance.)
Nor is such a view on aspects of sexuality surprising, as Radical feminism principles helped found Reclaiming witchcraft, the chief tradition, with co-founder Diane Baker, Starhawk is credited with. Radical feminism has spawned a complicated legacy today. While not exclusive to, for one it can take ideas about sexuality, power, and violence to a prescriptive kind of extreme. Attributing “power-over” (i.e., male domination, oppression, and trauma from it) for producing every response, desire, and expression of kink, ect., leads into perilous territory of heavy suspicions towards consent, mistrusting autonomy, and denying agency. Paradoxically also in danger of repeating supposedly what is opposed. Ironically, Starhawk recognizes a variety of movements “too often tried to mold their sexual feeling to serve the current political theory […] Too many generations have asked: What do my politics tell me I should feel? The better question is: What do I, at my root, at my core, desire?” A reader might also point instead to what sounds like a pretty sex-positive line from The Charge of the Goddess “all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals.” (Which, unlike Starhawk first claimed does have an origin—from Doreen Valiente likewise revised and the Gardnerian Wicca tradition amalgamated it.)
Naturally too Dreaming in the Dark is about fostering certain group dynamics. Maybe it’s no surprise then I wonder if this philosophy and confidence in community Starhawk expresses has fully tempered either. How mental health is stigmatized and addressed, like other areas of the health system, are worthy of critique. Yet, it seems very unwise for someone, especially with a master’s degree in psychology, in an appeal about reclaiming the power to heal to argue “Community is the ultimate healer”. People (especially like dealing with schizophrenia or psychosis Starhawk mentions) can have very real situations going on in their bodies that require medication, in some cases for a lifetime. Society for all the parts it plays, is unfortunately not the source of all ills.
Similar to how people can change over the years, theory, traditions, movements often do the same. In practice living is a lot more complicated. Starhawk acknowledges some shifts as well as various struggles in rendering from the smaller scale to wide. But if certain parts of what is written stands the test of time, more or less of it still evolving, some also hurts.
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