Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Missing the Goddess

To be perfectly honest, I struggled to get to the meat of what Evelyn Fox Keller was trying to communicate in her article entitled “Making Gender Visible in the Pursuit of Nature’s Secret’s.” However, despite my difficulties, I came to some interesting conclusions or realizations based on what the reading offered. Firstly, I’d like to point to a specific quote found in the reading which states, “the invisibility of nature’s interiority, like the invisibility of women’s interiority is threatening precisely because it threatens the balance of power between man and nature and between men and women.” She states this as a reason modern science has moved in the direction that it has. That is, modern science being used as a tool to uncover mysteries about “mother” nature.
While I have a general understanding of the concepts of gender, masculinity and femininity as socially constructed I was not quite sure of Keller’s intent. However, this article brought to mind the long forgotten concept of the goddess, to balance that of a male god. There was a serious backlash against the goddess with the advent of modern monotheistic religions because the goddess, or the female part of spirituality, threatened the supreme power of a god, and therefore of men as master. Similarly, “the secrets” of womanhood threaten the supreme knowledge and understanding of men.

1 comment:

Cydnee B said...

Like you I also had a difficult time trying figure out just I was supposed to get out of the readings. I think your connection to the Goddess' and God's is very interesting and I would actually like to know more about that. It's baffling how in some societies gender is almost non existant. Goddess' during the Roman empires stood on high pedistols just like Gods, sometimes even higher. In our society however, that is sadly far from the case. Equality amongst the sexes seems at this point like an impossible task.