Feminism's New Age

Karlyn Crowley

Description

Finalist for the 2011 ForeWord Book of the Year in the Women's Issues Category

Crystals, Reiki, Tarot, Goddess worship—why do these New Age tokens and practices capture the imagination of so many women? How has New Age culture become even more appealing than feminism? And are the two mutually exclusive? By examining New Age practices from macrobiotics to goddess worship to Native rituals, Feminism's New Age: Gender, Appropriation, and the Afterlife of Essentialism seeks to answer these questions by examining white women's participation in this hugely popular spiritual movement. While most feminist approaches to the New Age phenomenon have simply dismissed its adherents for their politically problematic racial appropriation practices, Karyln Crowley looks honestly at the political shortcomings of New Age beliefs and practices while simultaneously reckoning with the affective, political, and cultural motivations which have prompted New Age women's individual and collective spiritualities. New Age spirituality is in fact the dynamic outgrowth of a long-standing tradition of women's social and political power expressed through religious writings, art, and public discourse, and is key to understanding contemporary women's history and religion's role in modern American culture alike. Crowley offers a new and provocative assessment of the significance of the New Age movement, seen through a feminist and critical race studies lens.
Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: “It’s Power without the Anger”: Spirituality, Gender, and Race in the New Age

1. “Touched by an Angel”: The Feminization of the New Age in American Culture

2. “The Indian Way Is What’s Inside”: Gender and the Appropriation of American Indian Religion in New Age Culture

3. Gender on a Plate: The Calibration of Identity in American Macrobiotics

4. The Structure of Prehistorical Memory in the American Goddess Movement

5. New Age Soul: The Gendered Coding of New Age Spirituality on The Oprah Winfrey Show

Conclusion: Is New Age Culture the New Feminism?

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Mind
• Body

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781438436272
• Langue: English

Extrait

Feminism's
New Age
Gender, Appropriation,
and the Afterlife
of Essentialism
KARLYN CROWLEY

Cover art of Water Skiing Witches courtesy of Gilly Reeves-Hardcastle
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2011 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crowley, Karlyn, 1968–
Feminism's new age : gender, appropriation, and the afterlife of essentialism / Karlyn Crowley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3625-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-3626-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Feminism—United States—History—21st century. 2. New Age movement—United States—History—21st century. I. Title.
HQ1421.C76 2011
305.420973'0905—dc22
2010032065
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my parents, Ann Varnon and Ronald Crowley

Illustrations Figure 2.1 Cover image from Lynn Andrews, Teachings around the Sacred Wheel: Finding the Soul of Dreamtime . San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990. Figure 2.2 Back photograph of Lynn Andrews from Teachings around the Sacred Wheel: Finding the Soul of Dreamtime . San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990. Figure 2.3 Cover image from Mary Summer Rain, Soul Sounds: Mourning the Tears of Truth . Norfolk, VA: Hampton, 1992. Figure 4.1 “Bird-Headed Snake Goddess, Africa, c. 4,000 B.C.E.” from Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess: Art, Myth and Meditations of the World's Sacred Feminine . Berkeley: Wingbow P, 1990.

Acknowledgments
S o many people along the way believed in this project and helped me think it through even when others thought—New Age culture, really? My parents, to whom this book is dedicated, have been my first champions and encouraged every wild idea and intellectual longing even when they should have squashed them. I am me because of you.
This project began at the University of Virginia (UVA), where I had great support from professors and peers. Thanks to Eric Lott and Rita Felski, in particular, whose intellectual influence is all over this book; your unwavering engagement and enthusiasm have humbled me consistently. I also appreciate the years of camaraderie from the UVA American studies group—you know who you are—including Bryan Wagner, whose encouragement and initial ideas about race in this subculture were indispensable. Even earlier, I want to acknowledge my wonderful professors at Earlham College, especially Paul Lacey and Barbara Ann Caruso, who started me down the path of critical thinking and feminist criticism.
A shout-out to “Lady Professor,” my women's studies scholar posse, who made my thinking life a joy and gave me oodles of support. Catherine Orr, Ann Braithwaite, Astrid Henry, Alison Piepmeier, Diane Lichtenstein, and Annalee Lepp, I turn to you for renegade thinking about the field and for late nights at the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) conferences. I also want to thank my editor at State University of New York (SUNY) Press, Larin McLaughlin, for nurturing the book along the way—your faith increased mine at every turn.
My colleagues and friends at St. Norbert College gave me a home to complete this work. Thank-you to the English Department (Ryan Cordell, Deirdre Egan, Laurie MacDiarmid, John Neary, John Pennington, and Ed Risden) and especially to the women's and gender studies program. Kudos to all who attended faculty libation night at Nicky's bar—those many conversations kept a soul going. My appreciation goes to the library staff and to all those interlibrary loaned books. I also relied heavily on Stacey Wanta and Kelly Krummel to hammer out production details that would have driven other less patient souls crazy. Equally, a number of undergraduate teaching assistants (TAs) helped me with parts of this manuscript: Paige Caulum, Meghan Engsberg, Christine Garten, Kellie Herson, Gretchen Panzer, Kristen Susienka, Cassandra Voss, and Sasha Zwiefelhofer, you have made my work and teaching life a delight; Shane Rocheleau helped in the final hour with images; and Amy Macdonald was my buddy. Gratitude goes to my dear friend Bridget Burke Ravizza for cheering emails and long walks.
Thanks to my YaYas (Helen Lodge, Danielle Pelfrey Duryea, and Kim Roberts), a group of friends who bolstered me more than I could have dreamed. You are sisters and a smarty-pants women's community all rolled into one. Helena, you read every line of it, just like you've known everything about me from before the moment I met you. Misty, your cakes, wisdom, and faith in all of us have guided me through every turn. Kimba, I wouldn't have written this project without you, since we wrote sitting next to one another in carrels—I aspire to be the “shero” that you are.
A particular thank-you to the artist Gilly Reeves-Hardcastle ( http://www.properpaintings.com ) who generously shared her wonderful painting Water Skiing Witches for the book's cover art. I also would like to thank several presses for permission to reprint some portions of this book that were previously published. An abbreviated early version of chapter 3 appeared as “Gender on a Plate: The Calibration of Identity in American Macrobiotics,” in Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). Portions of chapter 1 appear in “New Age Feminism? Reading the Woman's ‘New Age’ Non-fiction Bestseller in the United States,” in Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America , ed. Charles L. Cohen and Paul S. Boyer (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008); “New Age Soul: The Gendered Translation of New Age Spirituality on The Oprah Winfrey Show ,” in Stories of Oprah: The Oprahfication of American Culture , ed. Trystan T. Cotten and Kimberly Springer (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010).
Thanks also to John Pennington for all of his jokes, voices, songs to the cats, intellectual sparring, and deep loyalty and love. And, finally, thanks to Ada Mae Varnon Crowley-Pennington: welcome to the world and to the wonkiest and goofiest of households. A blessed new chapter begins.
Introduction
“It's Power without the Anger”: Spirituality, Gender, and Race in the New Age
I went to what I thought was a fairly innocent women's weekend at a commune outside of Charlottesville, Virginia, because I needed a break from graduate school and thought it would be a lark. But the mud baths and spirit circles had far more in store for me than I could have anticipated. What I discovered was more informed by a conglomeration of spiritual practices that could be called “New Age” than anything feminist, yet many of the women that weekend found it fortifying in feminist fashion. The fireside dance and drumming rituals were as empowering to them as were the mud baths and health food. Wasn't this what feminists longed for? Women healed their bodies, bonded, rebelled, expressed themselves, and communed, frequently in various states of disrobe around a fire. For me, this was the first of many such experiences in which the crossing of cultures—feminist and spiritual, academic and popular, public and private—proved fascinating, disturbing, and intriguing. It made me ask: why were New Age bookstores popping up everywhere I turned? Why did I always seem to know someone who was into crystals or Reiki or Goddess worship? And what was the appeal of these practices for white women, especially, and why were they turning to crystals when they could just as easily enact public forms of feminist protest? Where does a crystal get you?

The Gender of American New Age Culture: Critics Meet the Public Sphere
Some say that for the past thirty years the United States has been in the midst of a “spiritual revival” or another “Great Awakening,” as religious historians call periods of extensive spiritual crisis and reorientation. 1 In every period of religious revival, there have been movements, credos, and rituals that are seen as bizarre by some critics but in retrospect can be recognized as generating important elements of American religious and cultural life. In the present instance, these various movements are often known by the umbrella term “New Age culture,” a term that names diverse spiritual, social, and political beliefs and practices that promote personal and societal change through spiritual transformation. Once relegated to the cultural fringe, the New Age movement is now at the cultural center in the United States: with a billion-dollar book industry, popular shows ranging from Medium to Oprah , and personal growth seminars in businesses and schools, New Age has become a synonym for a surprisingly popular form of spirituality that includes crystals, aliens, and angels. This explosion of New Age spirituality has baffled critics on both the Left and the Right who see the New Age as infantile, regressive, and superstitious. On the Right, many traditional religious thinkers scoff at the New Age as “spir