Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T07:43:01.121Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the Lap of Necessity: A Mythic Reading of Teresa Brennan's Energetics Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Jane Caputi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In several works Teresa Brennan examines how, contrary to social notions of the separate and contained self, all that exists in the natural world is connected energetically. She identifies a “foundational fantasy” whereby the ego comes into existence and is maintained by the notion that it controls the mother. The effects of this fantasy are socially oppressive and, in the technological era, environmentally disastrous. M;y examination of narratives and images in ancient myth, popular culture, literature, and art suggest ways to counteract the destructive fantasy through re-symbolization of the relation to what Brennan understands as the original/living nature, which is correlated to the mother's body.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , Spring 2001 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, Paula Gunn. 1986. The sacred hoop: Recovering the feminine in American Indian traditions. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Ann, Martha, and Imel, Dorothy Myers. 1993. Goddesses in world mythology. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC‐CLIO, Inc.Google Scholar
Anzaldua, Gloria. 1987. Borderhndslla frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.Google Scholar
Austen, Hallie Iglehart. 1990. The heart of the goddess: Art, myth and meditations on the world's sacred feminine. Berkeley: Wingbow Press.Google Scholar
Baring, Anne, and Cashford, Jules. 1991. The myth of the goddess: Evolution of an image. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Baudrillard, Jean. 1981. Simulations. Trans. Foss, PaulPatton, Paul, and Beitchman, Philip. New York: Semiotext(e).Google Scholar
Becker, Ernest. 1975. Escape from evil. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Begg, Ean. 1986. The cult of the Bhck Virgin. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Birnbaum, Lucia Chiavola. 1993. Black madonnas. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Birnbaum, Lucia Chiavola 2000. The dark mother, metaphor of the new millennium: African origins and godmothers. Lecture presented 21 March, at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida.Google Scholar
Brennan, Teresa. 1993. History a/ter Lacan. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brennan, Teresa 1997. Social pressure. American Imago 54 (3): 257–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brennan, Teresa 2000. Exhausting modernity: Grounds for a new economy. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
British Airways. 1996. Print advertisement.Google Scholar
Brown, C. MacKenzie. 1987. Kali, the mad mother. In The book of the Goddess past and present, ed. Olson, Carl. New York: Crossroad.Google Scholar
Caputi, Jane. 1987. The age of sex crime. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.Google Scholar
Caputi, Jane 1993. Gossips, gorgons, and crones: The fates of the Earth. Santa Fe: Bear and Go.Google Scholar
Caputi, Jane 1998. The 21st century sex love and death Goddess. Blue Mesa Review, 10: 3–14.Google Scholar
Carrasco, David. 1999. Ciry of sacrifice: The Aztec empire and the role of violence in civilization. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Christian, Barbara. 1997. The highs and lows of black feminist criticism. In Feminisms: An andiology of literary theory and criticism, ed. Warhol, Robyn R. and Herndl, Diane Price. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Cisneros, Sandra. 1996. Guadalupe the sex goddess. In Goddess of the Americas La Diosa de las Americas: Writings on the Virgin of Guadalupe, ed. Castillo, Ana. New York: Riverhead Books.Google Scholar
Conner, Randy P. 1993. Blossom of bone. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.Google Scholar
Dalmiya, Vrinda. 2000. Loving paradoxes: A feminist reclamation of the goddess Kali. Hypatia 15 (1): 125–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daly, Mary. 1973. Beyond God the Father: Toward a philosophy of women's liberation. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Daly, Mary 1978. Gynecology: The metaethics of radical feminism. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Daly, Mary 1984. Pure lust: Elemental feminist philosophy. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Daly, Mary 1998. Quintessence … realizing the archaic future: A radical elemental feminist manifesto. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Dinnerstein, Dorothy. 1976. The mermaid and the minotaur: Sexual arrangements and human mafoise. New York: HarperPerennial.Google Scholar
Easlea, Brian. 1983. Fathering the unthinkable: Masculinity, scientists, and the nuclear arms race. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Gleason, Judith. 1987. Oya: In praise of the goddess. Boston: Shambhala.Google Scholar
Graham, Lanier. 1997. Goddesses in art. New York: Artabras.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1999. Is science multicultural? Lecture presented November 9, at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida.Google Scholar
Hillman, James. 1996. The soul's code: In search of character and calling. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Hogan, Linda. 1995. Dwellings: A spiritual history of the living world. New York: Touchstone.Google Scholar
Hooks, Bell. 1989. Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking black. Boston: South End Press.Google Scholar
Hooks, Bell 1992. Black looks: Race and representation. Boston: South End Press.Google Scholar
Houlberg, Marilyn. 1995. Magioue Marasa: The ritual cosmos of twins and other sacred children. In Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, ed. Cosentino, Donald J.Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1985. This sex which is not one, trans. Porter, Catherine. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce 1993. Divine women. In Sexes and genealogies, trans. Gill, Gillian C.New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Klein, Melanie. 1980. Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. In Envy and gratitude and other works 1946‐1963. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.Google Scholar
Kurzweil, Ray. 1999. The age of spiritual machines. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Lawrence, D.H. 1996. Women in love. New York: Bantam Books.Google Scholar
Lederer, Wolfgang. 1968. The fear of women. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Levi, Jan Heller, ed. 1994. A Muriel Rukeyser reader. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Lurker, Manfred. 1980. The gods and symbols of ancient Egypt: An illustrated dictionary. Trans. Cummings, Barbara. New York: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Martin, Emily. 1991. The egg and the sperm: How science has constructed a romance based on stereotypical male‐female roles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 16 (31): 485–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McFadden, Robert. 1999. Angry man attacks painting in a disputed Brooklyn show. The New York Times, 17 December.Google Scholar
McLuhan, Marshall. 1953. The mechanical bride: Folklore of industrial man. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Merchant, Caroline. 1980. The death of Nature: Women, ecology, and the scientific revolution. San Francisco: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Monaghan, Patricia. 1999. The goddess companion: Daily meditations on the feminine spirit. St. Paul, Minnesota.Google Scholar
Moravec, Hans. 1988. Mind children: The future of robot and human intelligence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Morrison, Toni. 1981. Tar baby. New York: New American Library, Signet Books.Google Scholar
Mumford, Lewis. 1970. The myth of the machine: The pentagon of power. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Neumann, Erich. 1963. The great mother: An analysis of the archetype. Trans. Manheim, Ralph. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. 1988. Other people's myths: The cave of echoes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Plato, . 1992. Republic. Trans. Grube, G. M. A., revised Reeve, C. D. C.Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Plumwood, Val. 1993. Feminism and the mastery of nature. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Psycho. 1960. Hollywood: Universal Studios.Google Scholar
Radio Shack. November 2000. Television advertisement.Google Scholar
Ruddick, Sara. 1989. Maternal thinking: Toward a politics of peace. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Rukeyser, Muriel. 1994. A Muriel Rukeyser reader. Ed. Levi, Jan Heller. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Sanchez, Carol Lee. 1989. New world tribal communities: An alternative approach for recreating egalitarian societies.In Weaving the visions, ed. Plaskow, Judith and Christ, Carol P.San Francisco: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Sanchez, Carol Lee 1993. Animal, vegetable, mineral. In Eco/eminism and the sacred, ed. Carol, J. Adams. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Shiva, Vandana. 1988. Staying alive: Women, ecology, and survival in India. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Sjöö, Monica, and Mor, Barbara. 1987. The great cosmic mother: Recovering the religion of the earth. San Francisco: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Sofia, Zoe. 1984. Exterminating fetuses: Abortion, disarmament, and the sexo‐semiotics of extraterrestrialism. Diacritics 14 (2): 47–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuana, Nancy. 1993. The less noble sex: Scientific, religious, and philosophical conceptions of woman's nature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Alice. 1983. In search of our mothers' gardens. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Walker, Alice 1997. Anything we hve can be saved: A writer's activism. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Williams, Patricia. 1991. Teleology on the rocks. In The alchemy of race andrights: Diary of a law professor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wilshire, Donna. 1989. The uses of myth, image, and the female body in re‐visioning knowledge. In Gender/body/knowledge: Feminist reconstructions of being and knowing, ed. Jaggar, Alison M. and Bordo, Susan R.New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Zohar, Danah. 1985. Quantum physics and motherhood. In About Time, ed. Rawlence, Christopher. London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar
Zohar, Danah 1990. The quantum self: Human nature and consciousness defined by the new physics. New York: William Morrow.Google Scholar