"Later in her book, Davis speaks of the wisdom of the 'valorous woman' of Proverbs 31 as a 'kind of intelligence bred through generations of work done in particular places, with particular materials, in response to concrete and immediate problems.' This articulate, humble, practical local intelligence is antithetical to imperial rule, and it is the only effective way of resistance:
The logic of empire is the centralization of information and social control; its essential processes are acculturation of local populations and appropriation of goods. Local knowledge, however, is difficult to control, since it is by definition dispersed and relatively autonomous. Nor can it be appropriated from without; [it] can be learned only from inside the community."
What really grabbed me, and I think my friend, was the truth that women, who have traditionally stayed at home and been kept at bay from academia and the wisdom of the professional world, held within them all this time a 'practical and local intelligence'. While society has deemed this state of home-bound living a pitiable weakness and vulnerability, we have the opportunity to reclaim its value, not within the bounds of empire, but as a counter imperium of autonomous rule!
In our ambitions of forming an intentional community, many of our friends have exchanged formal education and master's degrees for hours of personal study trying to reclaim that knowledge that responds to concrete and immediate needs: food, water, shelter, and health. That journey has led many of us to greater intimacy with the world, the seasons, the streams, the plants and predators and prey, new-found brothers and sisters of equal worth and countless wisdom. We seek out the wild places. We study plants and herbs for their healing and nutritional properties. And that's when it hit me: the image of Joy chanting in a tiny little home in the middle of nowhere, or Luke talking to himself or performing ceremonies alone in the woods, or Kate throwing different plants into a pot brewing up some cure for aches and pains...suddenly I saw my group of friends as a coven of witches!
While in the past I have dismissed witches as satanic and scary, I am now drawn to them as symbols of anti-empirical knowledge and feminine power. I am not talking about the religious movement Wicca, though I would not dismiss its aspects of Pantheism. I am talking about a story I have been told since I was a little girl. Look at the definitions of a witch in dictionaries: someone with supernatural powers; an ugly old woman; a seductive young woman; an herbalist. I am talking about a campaign against the greatest threat to the empire: local knowledge. This campaign slanders feminine/local power and wisdom. I am talking about the occult, or knowledge of the 'hidden', as opposed to knowledge of the measurable, or science. I am talking about that which society condemns. It's weird to live in the middle of no where. It's weird to throw plants into a pot and make your own potions. It's weird to join with nature in ceremony. It's weird to live independently of the empire.
And I like it.
No comments:
Post a Comment