In "Earth Muse", Carol Bigwood describes what she sees as a suppression of the feminine in Western culture, technology, and philosophy and opens a feminist postmodern space from which new differences may emerge. Drawing on the work of the later Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, and significant alternative feminist thought (such as French feminism, maternal philosophy, and ecofeminism), she explores underdeveloped themes in American and Canadian feminism. Bigwood's style is self-questioning and descriptive; she (writes) plays on the margins between philosophy and literature, between serious analysis and humor. The author offers a deconstruction of the phallocentric dichotomies of nature and culture, self and other, and the concepts of power, action, and making. Affirming the deep relations between the oppression of women, the exploitation of the earth, and the oppression of people of color, Bigwood cautiously attempts to reconceptualize the natural cultural situation of human begins in a way that is not built on domination or essentialist structures. Between the chapters she describes and illustrates four monumental artworks that are 'written with the body and are pregnant with poetic-philosophic depths'. Author Carol Bigwood is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Toronto.
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Editorial Reviews
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"This book is a real contribution to contemporary feminist literature. The project is interesting and the author invites both her friends and her enemies to rethink the problem." --E.F. Kaelin, Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University "The principal merit of Carol Bigwood's Earth Muse is, precisely, its earthiness. Extremely detailed analyses of the western philosophical tradition and enculturated attitudes toward nature...are tied together by exquisitely sensual meditations on great artworks... The striking concreteness of Bigwood's writing--her love of the physical of the sensory, of what is fluid and generative--represent her antidote to 'the ontological exile of the feminine from western Being' and her cautious, yet profound first steps toward a 'nonsexist ontology.' Much like an accomplished set of musical variations upon a theme, this is an impressive achievement." --Michael Allen Fox, Professor of Philosophy, Queen's University "Earth Muse is a provocative, innovative, insightful and even witty investigation of the intersection of Heideggerian and post-Heideggerian critiques of the 'essence of technology' with the feminist critique of phallocentric thought and culture... It is a powerful synthesis of two contemporary postmodern views which are not readily associated with each other, and a convincing portrait of what things would look like were we somehow to break the spell of phallocentric and logocentric presuppositions." --John D. Caputo, David Cook Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University
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A philosopher denounces the suppression of the feminine in Western culture
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very different kind of academic writing.,
By "naday" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Earth Muse: Feminism, Nature, and Art (Paperback)
This is a remarkable book. I first read it for a seminar on religion and environmentalism in college. In it, Ms. Bigwood manages to successfully interweave several interesting and inter-related narratives about human sexuality and the environment: her own brand of ecofeminism, a more-or-less graspable interpretation of Martin Heidegger's philosophy (no mean feat, creating this) and its environmentalist ramifications, a critique of the rather technical Aristotelian framework that has grounded Western (patriarchal) thought about human relations with technology and the environment, and a meditation on her own pregnancy and the sculpture of Brancusi. Each of these would be worth reading on its own (and could be done, as the sections are fairly clearly demarcated), and her writing is sensitive and beautiful. However, the text is much more rich as she has arranged it, with the different threads interwoven. Some parts will be easier to read than others, but I'd be surprised to see writing on Heidegger or Aristotle that is as accessible as this while simultaneously *doing something* with the philosophy of each.
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