“Space-Age Goddess: The Overview Effect as a Feminine Archetype, Evolving Myth and Participatory Transpersonal Practice” by Lila Moore (original) (raw)
Related papers
S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, 2022
The Overview Effect is a shift in consciousness that occurs upon seeing Earth from space. It was reported by astronauts as a state of awe involving a profound comprehension of life on Earth. The Overview Effect is discussed as an emerging feminine archetype and an evolving myth of the Earth Goddess Gaia, which commenced with the iconic photos of Earthrise and the Blue Marble. These images and the Overview Effect as described by astronauts are critically discussed in relation to their impact on religious, feminist and environmental trends and worldviews. Women astronauts' responses to the Overview Effect are firstly observed through themes depicted in sci-fi films, which is followed by a critical discussion of the Overview Effect through the female gaze of women astronauts. Secondly, the discussion centers on feminist transpersonal, psycho-spiritual, and mythic approaches to the Overview Effect. The demonstrations disclose women astronauts’ unique artistry and creative projects alongside embodied and participatory knowledge and agendas aimed at deepening humanity’s relationship with the Earth as the cosmic cradle of humanity.
Divine Objectification: The Representation of Goddesses and Women in Feminist Spirituality
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 2000
One of the outstanding features of the feminist spirituality movement is its pronounced visual orientation. Drawing heavily on feminist art of the 1970s and beyond, feminist spirituality is especially interested in representations of goddesses and women, which are used for ritual and meditation, among other purposes. After describing the visual materials of feminist spirituality and discussing how they work to symbolize the movement’s thealogy, I argue that this use of female images is problematic in feminist terms for two reasons: first, because it tends to perpetuate the objectification and specularization of women familiar in sexist western culture, as well as women’s often self-defeating preoccupation with bodily appearance; and second, because religiously it limits goddesses (and through them, women) in a way that the male deities of Western religion—who are almost always considered to be beyond representation—are not limited.
1994
This dissertation examines one aspect of how new cultural meanings have developed among some contemporary American women. This particular development concerns a shift in their meaning system away from male-centered symbols towards a meaning system that includes and even emphasizes feminine symbolic forms. From an outsider's point of view, the contemporary "goddess movement" might be seen as a fad, but what does it mean from an insider's perspective? This dissertation presents an ethnographic exploration in depth from the insider's point of view, into the lives of eight women for whom goddess symbols have become an integral part of their meaning systems, their consciousness, and their social worlds. This study explores the emergence of goddess forms in the experience of these informants. It examines what images appear in their consciousness, how they interpret these patterns, and how their interpretations of these patterns affect their daily lives within their s...
Goddess: Feminist Art and Spirituality in the 1970s
Feminist Studies, 2009
IN 1977. MARY BETH EDEISON, an artist and feminist activist, set out with her traveling companion, Anne Healy, to visit the Neolithic Coddess Cave at Grapceva on Hvar island, Yugoslavia. Edeison was armed with the archaeological maps in Marija Gimbutas"s The Gods atid Goddess.es of Old Europe, 7000-3500 B.C.: Myths. Legends, and Cult Images as a reference source. Edeison managed to find an elderly tourist guide in the nearby town of Jelsa, who arranged for his son to take them up the mountain to the Neolithic site. The following day, carrying two Yugoslav tlashlights and a number of candles, Edeison returned to the cave, where she engaged in a ritual designed to connect her to the power and female energ) of the Neolithic Goddess worshippers. In an article about the experience that she published the next year in "The Great Goddess" issue of Heresies, Edeison documented both her journey and the indescribable feelings that she encountered while practicing her rituals in such an ancient and sacred setting. "I felt one long hand extending across time, sending a jolt of energy into my body. I began my rituals-The energy from the rituals seemed to pulsate from the vaulted ceiling to me and back again.'" The photo documentation of Edelson's ritual (fig. I), enacted with no artificial light other than the candles that Edeison had brought, show a nude figure that seems to glow from a spiritual fire that burns from within, seated in
Female Aliens in Solaris (1972) and Are We Going Crazy? (1994): Mediating Identity Crisis
2019
Source at https://www.ckz.si/en/. The article discusses how depictions of female aliens in cinema can be interpreted as signifiers of deeply existentialist discussions of humanity and identity amidst two defining moments of crisis in Soviet and post-Soviet society, namely the US Moon landing in 1969 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The analysis focuses on the female aliens in the films Solaris (1972) and Are We Going Crazy? (1994), using theories of gender performativity, spatial metaphors and the concept of the Divine Sophia. In contrast to the female cyborg typically encountered in Western/Hollywood sci-fi cinema, the (post-)Soviet female alien downplays the binarism of biology vs. technology and is not concerned with or defined by motherhood. Instead, the function of the female alien is to spur existentialist discussions of (gender) identity, ideal societies and morality
“Is there a Woman in this Space Opera?” A Gender Analysis of the Aliens of Orion
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), 2021
This article provides a textual analysis of The Sentients of Orion, a space-opera series by Australian feminist SF author Marianne de Pierres, with a view to investigating the series's depiction of aliens as a reflection of contemporary views of human gender. This highlights the question of whether aliens are still used to reflect on the state of human gender roles now that society is moving past the simple black and white of the male/female binary. We undertake a qualitative exploration of selected aliens through the theoretical lenses of Judith Butler's theory of gender as performative and queer theory. By drawing on these interpretive paradigms, we suggest that de Pierres's aliens both register and reflect a significant broadening of the gender spectrum.
Inscribing Bodies, Inscribing the Future: Gender, Sex, and Reproduction in Outer Space
Sociological Perspectives, 1995
This paper examines the ways in which gender, sex, and reproduction in the U.S. space program are represented as social, cultural, and scientific problems. In 1992, a married couple served on the crew of a U.S. space shuttle, prompting a flurry of public curiosity and controversy over the possibility of "celestial intimacy" between these astronauts. Ironically, countless missions prior to this historic flight had not raised similar issues of human desire and fecundity, attesting to the "legitimacy" of the heterosexual paradigm. Drawing on a range of data sources and theoretical perspectives, we analyze discourses and practices through which female bodies in particular are constructed as problematic, a gendered process which, in turn, renders sexuality and reproduction in space as controversial. We argue that contemporary institutional, cultural, and scientific accounts of gender, sex, and reproduction in space inscribe both contemporary and future scenarios, with potentially negative implications.
Lost in Space?: The Maternal Preoccupations of Women in Sci-Fi
2019
An analysis of representations of women in science-fiction cinema and an investigation into the hindering and liberating maternal preoccupations of the characters in Aliens (1986), Gravity (2013), and Arrival (2016). Essay written for an assignment for Screen Emotions: Affect and Cinema.
Women as Space/Women in Space: Relocating our Bodies and Rewriting Gender in Space
Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research, 2015
This paper examines gendered urban spaces that are shaped under/by the capitalist patriarchal system. Architectural standards recreate gender, racial and class hierarchies, just as local cultural productions reinforce specific notions of women-as-space. As a result, we are left with an unchallenged reproduction of gender binaries, and a reinforcement of what women are “supposed” to be and do. In the end, this paper attempts to disrupt these binaries and hierarchies through relocating our bodies and rewriting gender in space.