‘What Western patriarchy has given us, in God’s name, is a world emptied of spirit.’ Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother (1987) p. 410.
I decided that I would reward myself when my book Vortex: The Crisis of Patriarchy had been sent to the printer by reading Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor’s book. If I had read it earlier I would have included the above quote in the book.
An important element in Vortex is breaking the spirit; indeed that phrase appears in several chapter titles. I have long thought about how to combine politics and spirit. Here are four examples of chapter titles:
Chapter Five: Deterritoriality and Breaking the Spirit: Land, Refugees and Trauma
Chapter Seven: Breaking the Spirit of the Women’s Liberation Movement: The War against Biology
Chapter Eight: Breaking the Spirit of the Planet: Climate Catastrophe
Chapter Nine: Sovereignty and the Spirit of Nature
I notice writing these out that they are the later chapters, the earlier chapters deal with the violence of economics, violence against people with disabilities against women, against lesbians, against the land and colonisation of all these groups, of lands and peoples around the world.
My concern in this book is to draw the connections between the different ways in which patriarchy violates us all and to attempt to suggest ways out of this impasse, how we might find ways to overcome patriarchy. When I use a word like spirit, I mean many things: the spirit of rebellion, the spirit of connection with the earth and the spirit of a movement like women’s liberation that enables us to see the raw violence of patriarchy and how it plays out in the world.
Imperialism, slavery and every kind of domination relies on breaking the spirit of the oppressed and patriarchy has specialised in doing this in many different ways. Resistance is only possible when there is hope, when there is a sense that life could be different. Experiencing oppression, understanding trauma is integral to radical feminism and to any resistance movement whether it be against racism or ableism, against ageism or hatred of lesbians, against misogyny and colonialism.
Another element is the story of Cassandra, her ability to predict the future but not be believed because the patriarchal god Apollo put a curse on her when she refused his sexual advances (#MeToo has a long history). A recurring theme in the book is that of the Trojan horse. This is a term that has entered political vocabulary in recent years; it refers to the trickery of the Greeks whose soldiers entered Troy inside the Trojan horse and whose fleet of ships pretended to leave Troy. Patriarchal capitalism has been engaging in similar tricks, offering much but giving nothing.
The vortex is the spiralling downwards movement of water or air or emotion and represents the impossible-to-escape motion that the whole world finds itself in during these times. I write with the wish that we can find ways out of this. Here’s hoping for better times ahead.
Barbara Mor and Monica Sjöö’s book has been sitting on my shelves for a long time. I hope you get a chance to read it alongside my Vortex.
Vortex is available from the following places as a direct order or get it online or through your independent bookshop. It is also available as an ebook.
For orders form IPG (USA, Canada and Mexico) frontdesk@ipgbook.com www.ipgbook.com
For orders from Gazelle Book Services (UK and Europe) sales@gazellebookservices.co.uk www.gazellebookservices.co.uk
For orders from Spinifex Press (Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the world) women@spinifexpress.com.au www.spinifexpress.com.au
