Introduction
Introduction
Was that how it worked? she brooded: you started out thinking you were doing
something for others, to find you were doing it for yourself - or the
reverse: And was that a good thing or
not?
This document
introduces performance-ritual as a genre, and the particular series Centre of the Storm as an example of
that genre. It is an examination of the
journey of a woman in search of an Australian feminist spirituality through
‘performance-ritual’. The journey had
its outcome in the series of performance-rituals, Centre of the Storm. As a
genre, performance-ritual is an extension of Theatre and Feminist traditions of
spiritual and political action. The
feminist content of the performance-rituals exemplified in this thesis
positions them as ‘feminist performance-rituals’. As events, performance-rituals are
many-layered expressions of personal, intuitive, political and religious
journeyings. They embody questions and comments which evolve from a need to
continually revisit and deconstruct the philosophical and religious paradigms
from which Western society has been, and continues to be, built. This revisiting is conducted in the light of
new images and ideas which spring from readings, experiences and a ‘need to
know’. The outcome is then performed
with conscious acknowledgment of ‘spirit’.
As an example of this process, Centre
of the Storm focuses on the implications of being a white Australian woman
at the beginning of the 21st century.
The research was
conducted for, and the results presented through events I have termed
‘performance-rituals’: events which
simultaneously function as performances and rituals. As ‘performance’, performance-ritual is
subjective and embodied text. It is the
enacted expression of a personal, inner and intuitive journey. As ‘ritual’, it is the ritualisation of that
journey and an enacted expression of an evolving spirituality. Because it is ritual, the completion of the
ritual process is more important than ‘high art’ performances, and the videoed
and photographic records are just that:
they are not presented as professional products. These, and other, differences between
‘performance’ and ‘ritual’ are examined in Chapters 3, 4 and 5.
The written
examination, which follows in this document, is illustrative of academically
privileged ‘written’ text. The written
text is an objective analysis of intuitive, embodied text.[2] It refers back to what had been already
accomplished through performance-ritual and, using feminist and ritual theory,
develops frameworks from which to discuss the results. The distinction between performed and written
text is important. From my perspective,
as a creator-performer, the performance-rituals are the text which gives shape
to the research being undertaken at the time.
They ‘say it all’, and they say many things simultaneously. They are ‘my voice’. From an academic perspective, however, the
actual enactment of the journey is not enough.
Academia prioritises written text.
Academia also
prioritises the selection of a narrow range of concepts around which to
argue; the fewer the better. It might be possible, therefore, to select
one of a number of concepts presented in this document, and develop a thesis
from there. It might also be possible to
develop a thesis around this one concept without the performance-rituals being
enacted in the first place - the concept would have sufficed. But that is not the way it happened. The intuitive journey of the
performance-rituals, what they say, and how that locates them in ritual theory
and feminist spirituality is what drives this thesis. This means that many interrelated aspects are
discussed. So there is a degree of
difficulty in locating this type of thesis in the academy.
This document
prioritises the performance-rituals as text.
It is the practice which is important.
The written text, or analysis, arises from there. In this way the performed and written
sections, when viewed as a whole, support the feminist project of continuums
and equality of, rather than hierarchical dualisms between, rational and
embodied knowledge. In Melissa Raphael’s
terms, it is part of the other movements in this historical epoch, which strive
for a ‘reunion of rationality and intuition’ (Raphael, 1996:228).[3]
Less Than Half the Story
My interest in
this particular way of performing grew from involvement in the Christian church
and an increasing need to search for ‘the truth’ underlying Christianity.[4] Growing up and being educated as a white
Australian woman during the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s was a process of being
introduced to Eurocentric and masculinist values. This was reinforced by my commitment to the
Christian faith. All foreground models
were the stories, actuality and authority of men doing and saying.[5] In my experience the only places where women
were a focus was in the home, which was ‘mother’s’ domain, and in the area of
dance, where the majority of my teachers were women. It was not until the 80’s that women’s ideas
began to filter into mainstream social institutions, including the Anglican
Christian church.[6]
At the same
time, there was an emerging awareness of other hidden stories: those of indigenous Australians. In suburban Australia, schooling in the
‘50’s’ and ‘60’s’, was contained by an insular white, Anglo community. The stories of early Aboriginal presence were
taught once in primary school, as part of early Australian history, and never
referred to again.[7] Other ‘exotic’ cultures were likewise rarely
mentioned. The underlying assumption was
that ‘Aborigines’ had lived a long time ago and were no more. Finally, in 1973, ‘the newly elected Labour
government developed and implemented...a policy of self-determination’ for
indigenous Australians and ‘government-funded Indigenous community controlled
organisations were established to deliver services’ (Moreton-Robinson,
2000:13).[8]
The National
Aboriginal and Islander Dance Association (NAISDA) was one of the organisations
established, under the direction of Carole Johnson, as a direct result of the
National Seminar On Aboriginal Arts, held in Canberra the same year. Following this, the Aboriginal Dance Centre
Redfern (ADTR) was founded in 1979 by indigenous Australian, Christine
Donnelly.[9] The change in governmental policy meant that
during the 70’s and 80’s the dominant culture’s lack of awareness of indigenous
presence began to change in some circles, including the Christian church. Institutions, like Pitt Street Uniting Church
and its minister, Dorothy McRea-McMahon, began to engage in political action
with, and on behalf of, indigenous Australians. As with the feminist awakening,
it took forty years before any public awareness of Aboriginal presence as real,
‘here and now’.
At the same time
there was a growing interest, in some Church circles, in developing an
Australian-specific expression of the Christian faith. The increasing awareness of Aboriginal
presence, the perceived relationship of indigenous spirituality to ‘the land’,
and the simultaneous publication of the writing of American Dominican scholar,
Matthew Fox, fuelled the growth of the ‘Creation Spirituality’ movement in
Australia.[10] Eminent Australian scholars, Veronica Brady
and Eugene Stockton were at the forefront of this work and are continuing to
address these issues in their writing, as are others, including anthropologist
Deborah Bird Rose.[11] Pitt Street Uniting Church and the Department
of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney, under Dr. Jim Tulip, were
among a number of Christian organisations beginning to incorporate an
Australian consciousness into their Christian expression.
Since the 80’s,
therefore, I have felt a need to ‘catch up’.[12] In relation to this thesis, my own ‘catching
up’ has been in three major areas. One
is in relation to ‘women’s’ story; the
quest to discover where women have been all this time. Another is to find an alternative spirituality
which expresses the reality of being an ex-Christian white woman living in
contemporary Australia. This feeds into
to the third quest to revisit the story of the colonisation of Australia and
discover some of the hidden story of indigenous Australians. Centre
of the Storm is the medium that integrates and expresses the outcomes of
these quests. In this way
performance-ritual takes the place of the written word. In performance-ritual the questions,
discussion and theories are embodied in the actions and words of the
performers, and performance-ritual becomes religious expression and political
action. Therefore, this thesis
prioritises performance-ritual as a medium for presenting information and
experience.
Performance as Religious Expression and
Political Action
Within the
Christian dance movement, modern dance, as well as other theatrical
performance, has been used to express ‘spirit’ and religious experience for a
number of years. These same media have
also been used to explore political and environmental concerns. Yet the quest
to find the ‘truth’ sometimes interferes.
In my case, after completing an introductory course in theology,
questions about the ‘facts’ underlying Christian doctrine, began to outweigh
belief. My trust in Church teaching as a
true and accurate record of once existing identities and sayings began to
erode, and along with it, my confidence in the honesty of the ministers/priests
and spiritual directors. Any sense that
their teaching might have relevance for the Australia of the 90’s, especially
for women, evaporated. This
disillusionment is common to other women engaged in spiritual feminism.
Simultaneously,
opportunities for contact with indigenous Australians brought to light unspoken
differences. This began with Worship in the Park (1988).[13] This event included segments of a danced
history of arrivals and conflicts, leading to a message of reconciliation and
‘working together for the future’. The
National Aboriginal and Islander Dance Company was invited to be part of the
performance as original inhabitants of Australia, and to be integrated into the
ensuing scenes as part of the Australian cultural mix. The music and direction of the scenes had
already been decided, so already it was a token invitation and illustrative of
Western privilege. NAISDA’s company
insisted on including a dance solo to the song, ‘Brown Skin Baby'. At the time the significance was not
realised, and there was a lack of understanding about their insistence. But, of course, it was the story of the
stolen generation. These events which
had a devastating impact on the indigenous community had not been included as
part of ‘our’ Australian story. We, that
is the Church organisers and me as a choreographer, thought we were being
inclusive. But we weren’t.
This story of
white ignorance was repeated in another Church context five years later: a high profile ecumenical service on ‘healing
for the nations’. Representatives of a
particular Aboriginal community were invited by the organisers ‘to carry their
flag and put it on the altar’ but were not invited to be part of the spoken
word or asked how they would like to represent themselves. Again, they were just being told what to do,
not asked, nor involved in the planning.[14] The promise of Revelation, which was one of
the readings for the service, was still a distant reality and it was time to
step outside the Church.[15]
The Emergence of Performance-Ritual
Even before
stepping out of the Christian church, the performances I had been creating were
already mirroring this search.[16] The performances became the outward
expression of an inner journey in which others were invited to take part as
coperformers or as members of an audience.
This kind of journey is reflected in the work of feminist writers, such
as Mary Daly and Susan Griffin in non fiction, and Robin Morgan and Eavan
Boland in poetry and fiction.[17] To summarise Elsbeth Probyn, it is a journey
to and through self in order to make comment on the world as ‘I’ experience it
in the hope of finding meeting points and commonalities with (an)other.[18]
By 1994 the
Christian paradigm was no longer acceptable to me and I decided to take sole
responsibility for my own spiritual life and journey. The journey parallels the one many other
spiritual feminists have travelled. It
is one of listening to ‘self’: to own
inner being/soul/heart. Rather than
relying on another’s spiritual, or religious, ‘truth’, ‘the self’ became its own model, its own ‘guru’ (Daly,
1985:73 ff.).[19] The search for alternatives began.
My own early
research into women’s story and ‘spirituality’ was expressed in three
performances: Dark Fire (1994), For Eve (1995), and Fallen Totems (1997).[20] Only gradually did I come to realise that the
performances had a ritual aspect and in some ways reflected the journey and
structure of the Christian liturgy. They
were all performed in recognition of ‘the sacred’ and Dark Fire ended up being a ‘rite-of-passage’ and a ‘rite of
initiation’. So, I began to call them
‘performance-rituals’. The dual term allows for the implications of both
performance and ritual; implications
which are addressed in the following chapters.
Performance-rituals are rituals, as well as performances, journeys,
stories, questions and challenges, and it is difficult to pinpoint one thing
that the performance-rituals are or do above all else for they work in many
dimensions simultaneously.[21] The allowance for continuums, rather than the
dualistic ‘either-or’, and for concepts, such as multidimensionality, is an
important part of feminist theory and practice.
What is Performance-Ritual?
So what are
these events termed, performance-ritual?
Performance-ritual can be used as an umbrella term to describe the genre
and as a descriptive term for each event.
It is a term I have coined to explain the genre in an attempt to
differentiate it from other theatrical performances performed in a ritualistic
style. The differentiations are discussed
further in Chapter 3. Therefore, it may
mean different things to different people. The following is an explanation of
the multidimensional aspects underlying my use of the term,
‘performance-ritual’.
Performance-rituals
are first and foremost performances.[22] From the perspective of performance-ritual,
performance is the medium through which thoughts about changing relationships
with the world are processed, integrated and expressed. They are embodied expressions of personal journeyings. They are many discrete journeys which when
added together parallel the journey of life. The overall journey is a journey
of question, a political journey, and a journey of the spirit. It is a journey which reacts to and is motivated
by readings, what is happening in the world and in the mind. It includes a re-mythologising of ‘self’ and
‘life’. It reforms identity by placing
‘self’ at the centre so that the mind and body can take in the information and
re-integrate, allowing a new outlook and understanding. In this way performance
functions as a form of embodied discourse, the writing on and through the body,
literally not just metaphorically. It is
the writing of a process, a movement towards ‘self’ and ‘soul’ which may or may
not be the same thing. As such, it is an
extension of 19th - 20th century women performers’ explorations of spiritual
expression through performance. This
early work is introduced in Chapter 2.
But it is the ritual aspect which is of particular
interest in this thesis. ‘Ritual’,
however, is a contested word. It has
been re-defined in theory to refer to a range of performed activities. The problem of definition due to the lack of
context specificity in discussions of ritual is examined in Chapter 3. In relation to performance-ritual, however,
ritual is context specific, and is used with ‘performance’ because the journey
on which the audience is invited to embark is the outcome of a search for
meaning. There is a need to acknowledge
‘Life Force’, ‘Elemental Be-ing’, or ‘the why’.[23] It is part of religious practice. Some performance-rituals also signify
specific moments of significant change and end up functioning as
rites-of-passage and rites of initiation, such as, Dark Fire (1994) and Leavetaking
(1997).[24] These structural and functional aspects of
ritual will be further examined in Chapters 3, 4, and 5.[25]
Unlike
traditional public ritual, performance-ritual is one individual’s religious
expression. Others taking part in or
viewing the event are not expected to experience it in the same way. It is not the aim to speak on behalf of the
audience or the other performers or to create a ritual for them. In presenting the work the assumption is,
‘This is where I am, this is my experience, this is my understanding, these are
my questions. Is there anything with
which you can identify?’ If anyone
identifies with any element in the performance-ritual, it is a bonus. It is enough for the piece to work as a
performance for others and as a ritual for me.
If the piece works as a ritual as well for some audience members and
coperformers it has more to do with their own questions and journey than
anything else.[26] But when it happens ‘community’ or ‘church’
is temporarily brought into being. The
ritual aspect is exemplified in a number of ways and will be discussed more
fully in the following chapters. This
current discussion serves as a summary.
As
performance-ritual is an expression of a personal sacred search, it continually
recreates an individual and independent religion,
theology, or cosmology. Feminists
engaged in this work tend to prefer the terms, spirituality or thealogy.
These women are examined in Chapter 1. Yet, there are problems with these
terms, as other spiritual feminists, such as Raphael, have illustrated
(Raphael, 1996:15 ff.). ‘Religion’ is
usually associated with institutionalised beliefs, which this thesis
critiques. ‘Theology’ has historically
been used for ‘the science treating of God, His nature & attributes, &
His relation to man & the universe’; an anathema to a woman centred
spirituality (Fowler & Fowler, 1955:869).[27] ‘Cosmology’ refers to beliefs about the
creation and development of the universe, which is only part of a spiritual
belief system. ‘Thealogy’ has been
coined by spiritual feminists in opposition to ‘theology’, but has strong links
with ‘goddess spirituality’ which performance-ritual attempts to move
beyond. Feminist spirituality may
include, but is not limited to ‘goddess spirituality’, as the work of Daly, Luce
Irigaray and performance-ritual exemplify.[28] Therefore, ‘thealogy’ is only used when the
writers examined define their work in this way.
‘Spirituality’ is a much more encompassing term. However, it errs in being too vague, without
the implied need for an accompanying tradition or ground, which Centre of the Storm begins to
establish. Without satisfactory
alternatives, all these terms are used in this thesis in specific reference to
particular writers, and ‘feminist spirituality’ is used for the work of
performance-ritual.
The performance-rituals
do the work of creating an alternative ground for spirituality by exploring
ways of viewing, metaphoring and expressing an experience of ‘god’, energy, ‘?’
or ‘the sacred’ in the light of the material reality of our world and its past
and present history. The difficulties
with terminology continue. ‘God’ is
historically gendered masculine.
‘Goddess’ is gendered female. The
practice of defining ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ expressions of divinity creates
a dualism. The experience of ‘divine’ is
part of and beyond gender and is unity, not dualism. It is ‘mystery’, the ‘?’ It is immanent and transcendent and
everywhere in between. It is part of,
and connecting, all that there is. This
is the view held by this writer. In this
thesis, therefore, the terms ‘energy’, ‘spirit’, ‘Be-ing’, ‘other’ and ‘life
force’ are variously used.
The implications
of accepting a ‘divine’ aspect in all of life, leads to a biophilic approach to
spirituality. This is in contrast to the
Western domination model enshrined in Christianity, where God is at the
pinnacle of the pyramid, man is under God, as His representative on earth, and
all else is underneath. This model has
been critiqued by a number of feminist theologians inside of the Church, such
as Elizabeth Dodson Gray and Rosemary Radford Ruether.[29] These reformists have offered alternative
eco-friendly interpretations of the Christian Bible, especially of the Old
Testament, and their work is examined in Chapter 1. This reinterpretation parallels other work emerging
from within the Christian church, with a similar aim, such as by Fox and, in
Australia, The Earth Bible Team, led by Norman Habel.[30]
Fox’s and
Habel’s work do acknowledge the feminist critique of Christianity’s patriarchal
history and content, but sidestep the issue by their focus on ecological
retrieval; a practice reflected in
Ruether and Dodson-Gray’s work. Fox and
Ruether address Christianity’s focal story;
that of the masculine hero, Jesus.
However, Ruether reinterprets this historically male figure and story,
and finds value in it from a feminist perspective, as does Australian
theologian, Elaine Wainwright.[31] Fox reinterprets Christ as a cosmic,
all-encompassing global symbol, without reflecting that this practice of
universalising Western thought is a continuation of the Western patriarchal,
colonialist habit of the white male voice defining, and speaking for, all. None of this work confronts the possibility
that it might be time to move on.
Rather, their purpose is retrieval.
In contrast,
performance-ritual struggles to define and express an evolving and changing,
ground for spirituality; one relevant to
this woman, time and place. Centre of the Storm, in particular,
begins to incorporate ecofeminist understandings. In addition, performance-ritual’s work of
viewing, metaphoring and expressing one individual’s spirituality challenges
the need for recognised, official, institutionalised group religions and their
focal stories and underlying philosophies or the need for designated and approved
‘truths, ‘gurus’, tradition, and ritual action.
Another part of
the ritual aspect is a willingness to be open to, allow for, and acknowledge synchronicities in the time/place
context and content as well as during the performance itself. This element is part of the listening to, and
opening up for, communication with ‘life force’. The interest is in the fact that it happens
when it does happen rather than trying to explain it or explain it away. Whether synchronicities occur because
‘energy’ becomes another player, or whether it is because they are looked for
and therefore in some way created, invented or brought into being is
irrelevant. It is a way of honouring
‘the mystery of life’; of acknowledging
that there are some things about life that can never be understood, contained
or controlled; to be content living with
that uncertainty; and to honour that
‘something’ which had to be/not be in the beginning, if in fact there was a
beginning.
The opening up
of a sacred time and place into which
the performance-ritual can exist is another outcome of the ritual aspect. The area into which the performance-ritual
moves becomes a sacred and safe place where experiences, stories and metaphors
can be presented with respect.[32] The concept of ‘sacred place’ moves beyond
the confines of a church or temple, insulated and set apart from the world
outside, to incorporate the body, nature and many varied places and spaces
which are engaged during the performance-rituals. Performance-ritual is the way in which I can
claim my own ‘sacred’ and ‘sacred space’ and explore the story of my own inner
(spiritual, emotional and physical) and outer (temporal, spatial and
historical) sacred places and see if there are meeting points with others.
The preference
is to focus on women’s stories in
relation to ‘sacred’ and not to try to accommodate or include men or men’s
stories, ideas or metaphors in any of the action unless it is absolutely
necessary, but even then it is only to assist the overall woman-focus of my
work.[33] From this perspective, performance-ritual is
open to criticism for being essentialist and this criticism is answered in
Chapter 1. The need for ‘woman’
specificity comes in reaction to a number of experiences. It has something to do with the ‘energy’ or ‘life
force’ and the way in which it is involved and experienced in individual
bodies. It is a very personal experience
and intimately associated with sexuality, union and the gender of the body
through which energy passes and in which it resides. It is also a reaction to the male-hero
centred religion of Christianity and the need to re-create a spirituality that
speaks to, and for, me. But beyond this,
the focus on ‘woman’ is because it is an individual journey, ‘my journey’, and
this individual is biologically female.
Part of this journey is the need to find my own voice.
On the other
hand, the individualised and personal nature of the journey should not preclude
other women and men identifying with part, or all, of the journey, or with the
evolving spiritual matrix, or with the performance-rituals. It was exciting for
me to discover that the journey of the performance-rituals from 1994 onwards
parallels Daly’s ‘spiralling journey of exorcism and ecstasy’. In addition,
women in institutionalised religions, like Christianity, do not seem to have a
problem identifying with the male hero’s journey, the belief system, or the
rituals: at least, I did not at the
time. So men should experience similar
ease. As anthropologist Drid Williams
points out, ‘the story of our growth and maturation as human beings can be seen
to be parallel with the growth of our knowledge(s) concerning the
ethnographical narrative of our ethnicity and its relation to others’
(Williams, 1991:254).[34]
But the ritual
aspect of the performance-ritual functions in other ways as well. The performance-rituals are a way of
imparting information and knowledge of
story and history as part of the process of exploring ‘the meaning of life’
and redefining what it means to be ‘human’.
This makes links with ancestral oral tradition, which was later mirrored
in the liturgy of the Christian church and the morality and miracle plays and
the pageants of the Middle Ages. This
aspect also reflects traditional and ritual practices of other cultures, including
indigenous Australian communities.[35] In performance-ritual the story of ‘now’ is
placed in conversation with the story of the past.
Since 1991, I
have consciously decided to centre this action around women in time and place,
for it is this story that was not part of my upbringing or education. It is
important to know this past and present story for the process of re-defining
what it means to be a woman, as well as ‘human’.[36] The content of the early performance-rituals
emerged from reading generic ‘history’ and ‘religion’ in relation to
‘woman’. The story had not been totally
personalised or related to particular women in specific times and places. That was the next step. By the time of Centre of the Storm there was a need to see the reality of
particular stories and situations and relate this to familial story, especially
how this story continues to impact on Australia.
The performance-rituals are also a way of
recreating meaning in response to change, a reordering
of reality. The social changes which
have occurred prior to and during the 20th century in the West, including in
‘the body of knowledge’, technology, and the globalisation of knowledge and
lifestyle, have led to the difficult process of birthing new ways of
mythologising, believing and expressing world view. The glass which obliterated the rest of the
world from ‘ourselves’ as white, middle class, or trying to be, has been
shattered and ‘we’ can no longer pretend to believe in our ‘specialness’, or
that we are ‘better than’ no matter who ‘we’ are; a point that Probyn also makes (Probyn,
1994:61). The life-and-soul destroying,
as well as life-enhancing, effects of change in relation to people and the environment
are becoming more apparent. The
performance-rituals allow this re-ordering to be ritually presented and
expressed.
The
performance-rituals allow time to ‘touch base’ with the so-called ‘eternal’ or
‘universal’ values and ideals such as truth, honesty, integrity, social
conscience, charity and love in light of the knowledge of what is, and is not,
valued in our own and others’ culture and experience, and in relation to the
impact of social change. The values
themselves are called into question, as is ‘hope’.[37] The performance-rituals function as a place
to explore the apparent or real contradiction between the ideal and the reality and re-define, or re-affirm, ‘belief’ and
‘Be-ing’ in life, in self, and in the present.[38] The action of holding together these contradictions is part of the ritual
process, and is an emerging concept in feminist theory. In the context of
performance-ritual ‘holding’ becomes part of the ritualised response to, and
expression of, the historical reality of social, cultural and ethical
changes. This concept will be discussed
further in Chapter 1.
As well as
‘holding’, the performance-rituals function as a time and place for healing and ‘letting go’. The process
of preparing for the performance-rituals as well as the events themselves are a
time for exploring and ‘holding’ the complexity of life on this planet. This includes the identification of personal
and global issues and their implications.
The identification is followed by a time of centring, or healing, and
allowing the issues and questions ‘to be’ as well as addressing them in the presence
of others. In the end the issues and
questions are ‘let go’ or ‘given over’ in a similar way to the way in which
prayer functions in the Christian church.
It does not mean that they will not be revisited at some stage. It is just for a time. At the right time, if change has not
occurred, appropriate issues will re-emerge in a different context. The ‘letting go’ allows movement and gives
the freedom to move on unencumbered so that the journey can continue. This extension of ‘holding’ builds on Sara
Ruddick’s and Ariel Salleh’s work and will be further explored in Chapter 1.[39]
In spite of
their changing identity and content the performance-rituals still dialogue with
tradition. They unite the traditions of the past,
including that of Christianity, with an evolving tradition of the present; a tradition which includes the history of
people, of religious belief systems, and ritual.[40] This dialogue is presented through the past
and present stories of women in relation to a more general history of the
world, as well as ritual actions, metaphors, images and journeys which have
both past and present significance. In
this way they help to illuminate and recreate a continuing cultural connection
that has relevance to a person who is increasingly experiencing a sense of
alienation in a rapidly changing world.
Like feminist
writing, performance-ritual is also political
action. It is a space, time and
place where those issues, stories, metaphors, symbols and images which need to
be seen and heard can be presented and highlighted. In this way, information and awareness can be
directly or indirectly transferred.
Performance-ritual opens a space to ask questions such as, ‘who are
we?’, ‘where did we come from?’, ‘what are we doing here?’, ‘what are we
doing?’, ‘what do we think we are doing?’, ‘what is happening in the world, in
our country, in our own community?’, ‘do we like what we see?’, ‘what needs to
change?’, ‘what can change?’ ‘how can we create a ‘better’
world/country/community?’, ‘what do we mean by ‘better’?’, ‘what do I see is
woman’s ‘place’?’, ‘what, as a woman, would I like to change?’...? The questions are explicit, taking
performance-ritual beyond just an expression of a woman’s spirituality. When it is part of the feminist project of
identification, and naming, of the patriarchal paradigm underlying Western
culture, and of searching for alternatives by re-naming and re-creating from a
woman’s perspective, it can be termed ‘feminist performance-ritual’. This is the journey Daly terms ‘the journey
of exorcism and ecstasy’ and the journey
of ‘a woman becoming’ (Daly, 1990:1).[41] This journey is examined in detail in Chapter
1 and, in relation to performance-ritual, in Chapters 4, 5 and 6.
‘Performance-ritual’
offers a space, time and place for questions and comments in the hope of
connecting with others and triggering, or motivating, other questions and
actions. To again summarise Probyn, it is the text that holds ontological and
epistemological ways of knowing together and supports the broader project of
challenging structures of power in an attempt to bring about holistic awareness
and radical change. It is a way of
speaking of real concerns about the world, its people and its future with the
aim, in Morgan’s (1996:8) words, of ‘saving the fragile blue and green
biosphere named Earth’, or, as Raphael’s says, ‘the...spiritual feminist is an
epistemologically unified subject in pursuit of a just, organicist
future’(Raphael, 1996:114, 115).[42]
The
performance-rituals, then, are multi-dimensional. They simultaneously function,
and can be expressed, in many ways. They
could be described as personal, embodied, gendered narratives of journeys and
politico-religious discourse...or, an evolving, personalised and therefore, in
this instance, woman-centred theology and tradition...or, part of the
reformation and signification of a changing physical and spiritual identity as
a white Australian woman in time and place as well as non-time and
non-place...or, a contemporary white Australian woman’s religious and feminist
practice. In whatever way they are
described, the performance-rituals have provided me with an alternative to the
socio-religious function that the Church once filled: a sacred time and space/place to reflect on
the ‘self-world’ interface in the presence of community/audience and
‘other’/’life force’/’energy’/’?’. In
this way, the performance-rituals in Centre
of the Storm become an expression of one moment in an individualised,
white, woman-centred and changing religion, that draws on tradition and also
reflects the Australian context.
This thesis
celebrates the multidimensional nature of performance-ritual within the broader
categories of feminist spirituality and ritual.
The written text discusses those areas the performance-rituals
exemplified in this document reveal:
body, nature, place including family, holding, letting go, and the
ritual structure and function of each event.
The allowance for multidimensionality is part of feminist theory, and
allowing multidimensionality challenges the academic preference for linearity
and minimalism.
Background to Centre of the Storm
Most writing on
women’s spirituality has come out of the United States, and does not completely
answer the needs of this Australian woman.
The increasing public presence of Indigenous Australians challenges
Australia’s ‘whiteness’ and history of colonisation. At the same time, seeing the way in which
many in the indigenous community take pride in ‘family’, and in reclaiming
their unique traditions and traditional expression, highlights the lack of
knowledge Christians and ex-Christians have about their pre-Christian cultural
and familial history, especially in relation to religion. These observations
are given weight by an awareness of the growing numbers of ‘whities’ in the
Sydney of the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and 2000 who are searching for alternative
spiritualities, artistic expression, and societal functioning, by searching in
the East or in indigenous cultures. This
is especially intriguing in relation to those women who have found the
Christian religion lacking and have embraced other religions authored by men,
such as Sufism, Hinduism or Buddhism, which have little to do with our own
cultural background and experience. It
is as if the ‘Western’ culture has failed in some way.
Often, there
seems to be the expectation that somehow ‘the answer’ is in ‘being’ these
‘others’ or following the philosophy of life, art and religion of other
cultures. This observation is reinforced
in the writing coming from Europe and America at the end of the of 19th and
beginning of the 20th centuries from those Western spiritual and artistic
forebears who had rejected or at least were questioning Christianity. They had followed the same path to the
Orient. A number of these writers are
examined in Chapter 2. What have ‘we
whities’ lost or felt we have lost, and what do we expect from life?
On the other
hand a number of members from other cultures, whom I met when travelling
through Fiji, Bali, Thailand and Ghana, seem to want to get out of their own
culture and poverty, become ‘Western’ and come to Australia. Some have become Christian, even if they have
kept their traditional beliefs and practices.
During these travels there was always somebody wanting to adopt an
‘auntie’ or who wanted addresses, money for family or sickness, or... Each on their own side seeing ‘other’ as
having ‘what is needed’: for the West
the spiritual, artistic and a romanticised ‘time of perfection and harmony’,
and for indigenous, the Western spiritual and its associated material benefits,
and ‘ideal life’. At the same time,
there were others who viewed the Western culture in a less than favourable
light.
There seems to
be a romanticism which emerges when ‘other’ cultures, especially those which
seem to differ radically from ‘our own’, are spoken, or written, or thought
about. Other cultures always seem
‘exotic’, more exciting, more interesting and more meaningful. It is as if ‘they’ know the answer and have
the secret to life. This attitude is
also reflected in popular Western reclamations of ‘goddess worship’,
‘witchcraft’, ‘druidism’ and other ‘ancient’ religions. One of the quests in Centre of the Storm was to revisit these
‘ancient times’ through the eyes of ‘respected’ archaeologists, historians and
researchers into early religion. The
hope was that the process of knowing the reality, or as close to it as
available material allows, of my own changing tradition and history, would give
a base from which to develop an individualised and relevant spirituality. This means that the project is also
deliberately and consciously Eurocentric.[43] At the same time, it is acknowledged that
this subject position is just one of many other subject positions. So, it is hoped that the process of learning
my changing story and tradition, and how this story places me in this land,
will allow me to accept and understand the traditions of others.[44]
Centre of the Storm
This is the way
in which Centre of the Storm (1998-2000)
came into being. The initial video, Centre of the Storm: the videoed hypothesis (1998), expresses the spiritual alienation of
a contemporary suburban Australian white woman who had been raised in, and had
left, the Christian faith. It begins
from a statement of alienation, asks ‘why?’, and hypothesises that an
understanding of the family-religion-Australia intersection may engender a
‘sense of place’. The research and
performance journey that followed was directed by this hypothesis. The video consequently gave birth to four
seasonal performance-rituals which attempt to answer the questions posed in the
video. The seasonal performance-rituals
are:
Beginnings
Sense Of Place, Sacred Space:
Arrival
The Fire Of The Sun
Passage
This series is a
continuation of previous performance-rituals in that, individually, they fulfil
the previously described elements of performance-ritual. They are multidimensional performances and
rituals which are intuitive, embodied, gendered journeys and politico-religious
discourse. As well, they have all relied
on synchronicity in timing, place and theme for their actualisation. None were planned in advance but evolved during
the research around the ‘next idea’, which was related to the next season, and
were performed where and when the opportunity was offered at the ‘right
time’. Because of the time pressure that
this way of working engendered, each performance-ritual was also partly
improvised, and this assisted their ritual aspect. As well as individual rituals the series of
five, when viewed as a whole, form a rite-of-passage, a rite of passage into
the ‘centre of the storm’ and into the beginnings of a new ground for
spirituality. The ground is a multidimensional
woven matrix which includes the series titles, ‘centre of the storm’,
‘beginnings’, ‘arrival’, ‘survival’ and ‘passage’; the associated metaphors of ‘conception’,
‘birth’, ‘maturation’, ‘aging’; the
material reality and specificity of this ‘body’, ‘nature’, and specificity of
‘place’, where ‘place’ includes ‘family’;
and the ritual actions of ‘holding’ and ‘letting go’. The performance-rituals in Centre of the Storm begin Daly’s
‘journey of ecstasy’.
The written
thesis interprets early performance-rituals Dark
Fire, For Eve, Fallen Totems, and Leavetaking and the more recent series, Centre of the Storm, from the standpoint
of feminist theology, ecofeminist theory, Western ritual discourse, and the
19-20th century history of women performing spirit. The early performance-rituals are included to
establish a ritual and theoretical ground for Centre of the Storm. The
discussion begins, in Chapter 1, with an introduction to 20th century radical
and ecofeminist spirituality, which Daly terms ‘the spiralling journey of
exorcism and ecstasy’, ‘the journey of a woman becoming’. Feminist writing supports spiritualities and
rituals which are subjective, embodied, contextualised and process
oriented. Centre of the Storm extends this theory to include concepts of
‘place’ and ‘family’, especially in the development of an Australian
spirituality.
Chapter 2
examines the emergence of spiritual naturalism in Western women’s performance
at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries.
The examples given are embodied, subjective and process-oriented expressions
of spirituality, and the precursor of performance-ritual. It continues with an examination of the
beginnings of the loss of conscious spiritual expression in 20th century
secular performance.
Chapter 3
engages with ritual theory. It examines
the loss of ‘spirit’ in current theoretical debates on ritual, beginning in
20th century, where ritual becomes objectified, disembodied and
decontextualised; a loss that this
thesis and spiritual feminist’s usage of the term challenges. It argues against the universalising of
‘ritual’ to include many types of action, and uses performance-ritual to
highlight the similarities and differences between performance and ritual.
Chapters 4
revisits and analyses earlier performance-rituals, Dark Fire, For Eve, Fallen Totems, and Leavetaking in the light of this theoretical base. They are included to illustrate the overall
‘spiralling journey of exorcism and ecstasy’ and to introduce the analytical
framework. The analysis takes two major
approaches. The first is an analysis of
the structural and functional aspects, from the perspective of ritual. The second is an examination of the content
from a feminist and ecofeminist perspective.
This chapter lays the groundwork for the establishment of a feminist
spirituality through performance-ritual.
Chapters 5 and 6
apply this analysis to Centre of the
Storm to establish a matrix for an Australian feminist spirituality around
the concepts of body, nature, place, which includes family, and the ritual
actions of ‘holding’ and ‘letting go’. Centre of the Storm is the beginning of
‘the journey of ecstasy’. Where Centre of the Storm differs from
previous performance-rituals is its focus on the Australian context of seasonal
change, and white history of colonisation.
Centre of the Storm begins to
address how this history affected, and continues to affect, the traditional
landholders, the nonhuman environment, and the colonisers themselves. In this way Centre of the Storm moves from the more radical feminist standpoint
of the earlier work to an ecofeminist perspective, and begins to form a new
spirituality. This progression will be
illustrated in Chapters 4, 5 and 6.
Appendix A
contains the scripts of the performance-rituals in Centre of the Storm. The complete scripts of the earlier works are
not available. Appendix B contains additional information on Elizabeth Pulley.
Appendix C contains a videotape with short selected excerpts from the
performance-rituals in Centre of the
Storm. It is to be used to
illustrate the written analysis in Chapters 5 and 6. Appendix D contains videotapes of the
complete performance-rituals in Centre of
the Storm. Visual records of earlier
performance-rituals are not available, apart from photographs used in Chapter
4.
Notes
[1]
Morgan, R. Dry Your Smile. London, The
Womens Press, 1988.
[2]
The high value given to Pure Knowledge in the West and the hierarchical
dualisms inherent in this positioning are challenged by Donna Wilshire in ‘The
Uses of Myth, Image, and the Female Body in Re-visioning Knowledge’ in Jaggar,
A. Gender/body/knowledge: feminist reconstructions of being and
knowing. NJ, Rutgers University
Press, 1989. Susan Griffin had already challenged this
assumption in 1982 (Griffin, S. Made from This Earth, London, The
Women’s Press, 1982, Part III: Poetry as a Way of Knowledge).
[3]
Raphael, M. Thealogy and Embodiment: The
Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality. Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 1996.
[4]
In Protestant Christianity, the teaching presents the Christian Bible as the
actual ‘word of God’, and the stories contained in the Bible, as historically
accurate. I wanted to find if there was
historical evidence for these events.
This was ‘the truth’ I was searching for.
[5]
Even Jesus Christ was a sanitised version, presented as a white man, son of a
white God, even though he was from the Middle East. His ethnicity was somehow ignored or not
stressed.
[6] Women’s writing was not seen to be serious writing. Even if women-authored books were read and
enjoyed they were quickly dismissed or it was assumed that they were written by
men (see also Spender, D. Women of Ideas and what men have done to
them. London, Pandora, 1982/1988 and
Writing a New World, Two Centuries of
Australian Women Writers. London,
Pandora, 1988). Also the focus was on
English, that is, British-written, texts. I remember being riveted by Coonardoo by Katherine Susannah
Pritchard as a teenager but did not really note that it was written by an
Australian woman about Australia and that this was unusual. Nor was I aware that its publication had
caused so much controversy. My dad was a
partner in a bookstore at the time and brought it home, among others, for my
literary education. It was only
recently, while reading Spender, that I realised the significance of the fact
that it was probably one of the few books I had read that was authored by a
woman, in spite of the many women writing and being published at the time. It’s significance also lay in it thematically
being focussed in Australia with an Aboriginal woman as the central character
in an attempt to explore black-white relationships.
[7]
This may not be the truth. The fact that
it is remembered this way illustrates how much and what kind of an impact the
story had.
[8]
Moreton-Robinson, A. Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Aboriginal Women and Feminism. St. Lucia, Qld, University of Queensland,
2000.
[9]
Information taken from NAISDA’s 1994 Student Handbook and an email from ADTR,
dated 8th April, 2002.
[10]
Fox, M. Original Blessing: A Primer in
Creation Spirituality. Santa Fe, NM,
Bear, 1983.
[11]
Refer to Brady, V. Caught in the Draught.
Pymble, NSW, Angus & Robertson, 1994. Hammond, C.
(ed.) Creation Spirituality & the Dreamtime. Newtown, NSW, Millennium, 1991. Bird Rose,
D. ‘Indigenous Ecology and an Ethic of
Hope’, Paper prepared for the Conference ‘Environmental Justice: Global Ethics for the 21st Century,
Melbourne, Oct 1-3, 1997 and Nourishing
Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of
Landscape and Wilderness. Canberra,
ACT, Australian Heritage Commission, 1996.
Stockton, E. The Aboriginal Gift:
Spirituality for a Nation.
Alexandria, NSW, Millennium, 1995;
‘Coming Home to Our Land’, Tjurunga. Vol 35, Sept. 1988, pp. 29-40; and ‘This Land, Our Mother’, CCJP
Occasional Paper No. 9, Surry Hills,
NSW, 1986.
[12] The catching up is time
consuming. The unavailability of women’s
studies in educational institutions, and my consequent late discovery of a long
and forgotten tradition of women’s philosophy and writing, has meant that women
can spend a lot of ‘wasted’ time re-inventing, re-thinking, re-discovering and
re-writing ideas that have been around for centuries. It also requires a concerted effort to search
out both women-authored as well as male-authored material, a practice men may
not find as necessary. It is a slow
process without a guide. On the other
hand the time is not wasted for it is necessary to keep re-discovering and
re-presenting the past to keep women’s writing and heritage alive. In relation to the ‘real’ Australian story
both white women and men are equally disadvantaged.
[13]
The Festival of Sydney, Worship in the
Park, The Domain, Sydney. An outdoor
ecumenical service as part of Bicentennial celebrations.
[14]
By this time I was becoming more aware because of events at an Australian
Creation Spirituality conference I had attended the year before. So I decided to perform a protest piece to
the readings: Isaiah’s and Revelation’s
prophecy of the coming of ‘a new heaven and a new earth’. By the time of the service one of the female
ministers, who had been on leave, returned, also realised what was happening
and made some last minute changes. I
doubt if anyone else, except the organisers, knew. After it was over one of the members of the
congregation came up after the service to say she enjoyed the performance but
felt I should have left the tape off my mouth at the end, not put it back
on. I don’t remember what I said but I
knew that we, that is the Christian church as a whole and the members of its
congregation, were not yet ready to hear the voice of ‘others’, that ‘they’
were still being spoken for and therefore silenced.
[15] Revelation 21:1-5, 22-24a and
22:1-2. The other reading was Isaiah
61:1-4.
[16]
For example, Song in a Strange Land,
Eastside Uniting Church Hall, 1987, Memories and other Matters, Eastside
Uniting Church Hall, 1992, Into the Dark, Eastside Uniting Church 1993 and A Cup of Tea, The Art Gallery of NSW, 1993 and Religion, Literature
and the Arts Conference, 1994, ‘Hold On’
Schools Program, 1993, 1994.
[17]
Boland, E. In Her Own Image. Dublin,
Arlen, 1980; Daly, M. Beyond
God the Father. Boston, Beacon,
1985a, Gyn/Ecology. Boston, Beacon, 1990, Outercourse. Australia,
Spinifex, 1993, Pure Lust., Elemental Feminist Philosophy. U.K.
The Woman’s Press, 1984, Quintessence...Realizing
the Archaic Future. Boston, Beacon,
1998, The Church and the Second Sex. Boston, Beacon, 1985b; Griffin, S. Made From This Earth.
London, Womens Press, 1982, Woman and Nature:
The Roaring Inside Her.
London, Womens Press, 1984;
Morgan, R. Dry Your Smile. London, The
Womens Press, 1988.
[18]
Probyn, E. Sexing the Self, Gendered Positions in Cultural Studies. London, Routledge, 1994.
[19]
Daly, M. Beyond God the Father.
Boston, Beacon, 1985a.
[20]
Dark Fire was an outdoor performance
trilogy funded by Newtown Festival in 1994.
Part 1, Descent, was performed
at Victoria Park Pool; part 2, Initiation, was performed in Newtown
Square, part 3, Dark Fire, was
performed in Sydney Park. For Eve was performed as part of the School of Women Artists Network
exhibition in 1995. Fallen Totems was performed at Sydney Fringe Festival, Belvoir St.
Theatre, Sydney and as part of the Songs of the Wind Festival in Katoomba in
1997. The installations for each of
these were created by Irene Kindness.
[21]
The temptation is to say ‘levels’ but this suggests a hierarchy of
functions. Rather, the functions work
simultaneously and democratically;
co-operating and communicating.
This way of functioning is also supported by feminist theological and
ecofeminist writing.
[22]
‘Performance’ is used in this thesis in the theatrical sense: as an event specifically created for time and
place, and in ‘heightened’ form for a potential, if not actual, audience. It
does not refer to ‘the everyday’, ordinary, or mundane, as used for example in
Cultural Studies and Management.
‘Performance’ or ‘theatre’ are both used to indicate the combined use of
dance, movement, drama, enactment, text, music, sound and song, otherwise the
specific term is used to define the particular form of performance or theatre
being discussed.
[23] In Mary Daly’s terms, Elemental is
‘of, relating to, or caused by great forces of nature’ (Daly, M. Pure
Lust., Elemental Feminist Philosophy.
London, The Woman's Press, 1984, p. 4) or ‘characterized by stark
simplicity, naturalness...’ and Be-ing is ‘Ultimate/Intimate Reality’ (Daly,
M. Websters
First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language. London, The Women's Press, 1988, pp. 64, 72).
[24]
Leavetaking was performed in 1997 as
part of The Performance Space’s Open Program.
[25]
In the context of this document, ‘structural’ refers to the analysis of ritual
in terms of the rites it contains, and ‘functional’ refers to the analysis of
the purpose of each rite.
[26]
This contradicts Polyani’s assertion that the viewer experiences an emergence
into the mind of the artist (Polyani, 1983:16, 17). ‘Emergence’ cannot be assumed or expected and
probably is not the case. Who can ‘know’
another’s mind? Whatever is triggered in
the viewer’s mind and emotions probably has more to do with the viewer’s own
‘mental state’, needs, desires, experience, motivation or purpose.
[27]
Fowler, F. G. & Fowler, H. W. The Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current
English. Oxford, OUP, 1955. A similar definition, ‘study of God and his
relations with man and the universe’, is found in Barnhardt, R. K. (ed.) The
Barnhardt Dictionary and Etymology.
US: H W Wilson, 1988.
[28]
Although Daly addresses the ‘Gates of the Goddess’ and ‘Goddess murder’ in Gyn/Ecology her theology moves beyond
women-centred metaphors and vocabulary, a point which will be discussed further
in Chapter 3. In Divine Women Irigaray does use women-centred vocabulary for
‘divinity’, but does not go as far as naming the ‘divine’ in women, ‘goddess’.
[29]
Dodson-Gray, E. Green Paradise Lost.
Massachusetts, Roundtable, 1981 and Patriarchy
as a Conceptual Trap. Wellesley,
Massachusetts, Roundtable, 1982.
Ruether, R. R. Gaia
& God, An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing. London, HarperCollins,
1992 and New Woman, New Earth, Sexist
Ideologies and Human Liberation.
Boston, Beacon, 1995.
[30]
Habel, N. C. (ed.) The Earth Bible, Vols. 1-4.
Sheffield, England, Sheffield
Academic Press, 2000, 2001 and Fox, M. The
Coming of the Cosmic Christ. San
Francisco, Harper & Row, 1988 and Original
Blessing: A Primer in Creation
Spirituality. Santa Fe, NM, Bear,
1983. Fox also falls into the trap of using ‘feminine’ archetypes, such as
‘mother’ and ‘compassion’ as female aspects of God and Cosmic Christ. From an ecological perspective, not all
writers in The Earth Bible series
found that the scriptures they selected supported the concept of
ecojustice. The first volume also
included Heather Eaton and Elaine M. Wainwright, who critiqued the ecojustice
principles and scripture from an ecofeminist standpoint. Not all of the articles were
‘scripture-friendly’.
[31]
Ruether, R. R. Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a
Feminist Theology. Boston, Beacon,
1983 and Wainwright, E. ‘Wisdom is
Justified by her Deeds: Claiming the
Jesus-Myth’ in Joy, M. & Magee P. (eds.)
Claiming our Rites: Studies in Religion by Australian Women
Scholars. Wollstonecraft, NSW, The
Australian Association for the Study of Religions, 1994, pp. 57-75. Yet Pamela Foulkes warns that those
attempting feminist retrieval of biblical text by exemplifying Sophia as Lady
Wisdom, tend to ignore the implications of her use by the patriarchs, from the
time of her beginnings in the Israelite ‘Mother of Heaven’ goddess, her
transformation into Sophia, and later metamorphosis into Jesus. (Foulkes, P.
‘¢Wisdom
Cries Out in the Street’: The
Exploration of a Biblical Symbol’ in Haskell, D. (ed.) Tilting at Matilda. Sth.
Fremantle, Western Australia, Fremantle Arts Centre, 1994, pp. 97-109).
[32]
This is important, especially for women.
In 1994 I had the unfortunate experience of facilitating very personal
workshops for women and having the male owner of the space in which we were
working, and which was booked for the weekend, come in over night to see what
we were doing. His comment was something
along the lines of ‘...I couldn’t help myself...I just wanted to see what was
going on...and when I saw all the casts of women drying on the floor I wanted
to put my own cast there as well...’.
Why wasn’t he comfortable with the concept of a ‘women only’ space,
community and process? Why couldn’t he
honour it and us and just let it and us be?
Why did he have to see and want to ‘spray’/claim territory/ invade and
de-sacralise/defile it? Needless to say
I felt betrayed on behalf of myself as well as on behalf of the other women.
[33]
This mirrors the needs of other contemporary women for their own ‘sacred space’
in their attempts to define their own spirituality. A number of cultures have separate women-only
rituals for specific purposes, including in some indigenous Australian and
African tradition and this will be discussed in Chapter 1.
[34]
Williams, D. Ten Lectures on the Theories of the Dance. Metuchen, N. J., Scarecrow, 1991. Part of my hope, of course, in performing and
writing about this work is that others may be inspired to begin, or continue,
to author their own spirituality and/or perform their own spiritual journeys.
[35] Bell, D. Daughters of the Dreaming. Melbourne, McPhee, 1993.
[36]
For further discussion about the assumed neutrality of ‘human’ and the
consequences for women see Irigaray, L. Thinking the Difference. London, Athlone, 1994.
[37]
Whether they ever were in fact ‘universal’ or ‘eternal’ is debatable and
probably as incorrect as it is now. In
Western society any illusion we had about the significance and importance of
these ‘values’ has been squashed. The
current crop of television series, such as ‘Shipwreck’, ‘Greed’, ‘The Weakest
Link’ and ‘Temptation Island’ works consistently to show how easily people can
be persuaded to ignore them all. In
addition, the examples we are given of corporate and political practices, by
the media and other communication networks, illustrate clearly that these
‘values’ are not, and probably never have been, a reality of those in power.
[38]
This creates another question in relation to ‘whose ideal and whose
reality?’. The answer is, that it is
this writers; the ideal is that which is
held in the psyche, created and promoted by the Church’s and Society’s
teachings through its various institutions,
as well as youthful imaginings.
The reality is the writer’s interpretation of ‘the real’ way people function
and interact, and ‘the real’ way nonhuman nature functions and interacts, drawn
from experiences, the messages promoted by the media and the written word,
including the Internet. The ‘reality’ debate is not entered into in this
thesis.
[39]
Ruddick, S. Maternal Thinking: Towards a
Politics of Peace. London, Women’s
Press, 1989, p.78 ff. and Salleh, A. Ecofeminism as Politics: nature, Marx and
the postmodern. London, Zed Books,
1997, p. 144 ff.
[40]
It is important for me to acknowledge the enormous influence Christianity has
had on the West in general, and my life in particular: from awakening in me an understanding and
acceptance of a ‘divine realm’, to opening up in me ways of experiencing and
expressing ‘other’, and to the way I perceive and use ritual in the form of
‘performance-ritual’. Hence, I include a
number of texts from Christian nuns in the text of the performance-rituals, and
constantly refer to the Christian experience in the written text. I have moved beyond, but the ‘beyond’ is
still influenced by the past.
[41]
Daly, M. Gyn/Ecology. Boston, Beacon,
1990.
[42]
Morgan, R. in Bell, D. & Klein, R. Radically Speaking, Feminism Reclaimed. Nth. Melbourne, Spinifex, 1996.
[43]
The Eurocentrism is unavoidable. A
number of indigenous writers have severely critiqued Western appropriation of
indigenous material and Western bias in discussing it (Moreton-Robinson,
A. Talkin’
Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women
and Feminism. Australia, University
of Queensland, 2000). While attempts
were made to gain as much understanding as possible about Australian indigenous
presence and tradition, it was conducted mainly by book research, so it is only
partial. The partiality is emphasised by
the fact that most books written on indigenous Australian traditions are
written by white Westerners. This
current project, therefore, must remain within the Western tradition.
[44]
Here I identify with Probyn where she writes of the need to know ‘who I am’ in
the process of being ready to know who ‘they’ are so that I can find a way of
moving from a secure centre to the edge of myself and see if it is possible to
‘be with’, acknowledging differences without priority of position . The Christian outlook of my upbringing was,
and in many cases still is, one of seeing itself as the one and only true
religion in which all the world should believe.
The performance-rituals in this project were the first step in a longer
and continuing process in what Probyn describes as the forward-backward
movement towards difference/other.
Whereas Probyn is exploring ways of writing about ‘self’ and ‘other’ I
am interested to see if this process of knowing who I am and where I am
historically, traditionally and culturally will eventuate, in the future, in a
ease of communication across ‘difference’, or whether it will further highlight
or accentuate the differences and cause greater division.
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