Arachnean Wisdom

I read Catherine Keller’s 1986 book, From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism and Self a couple of months back, and it made my heart sing. (A big thank you to Glenys Livingstone for mentioning it to me, and to Esmée Streachailt for asking me to write it.) It’s so much what we need right now when there is a reactionary conservative push to reinstate harmful gender roles—as if that’s the cure for all our ills—when what we really should do is keep defying them.

It’s a complex and difficult book, however, so I’ve written a short review which distils the essence of its arguments, and it has just been published on Medusa Rising, a new radical materialist feminist project. It’s a subscription-only publication (though subscriptions remain free until April), so in time I will share the review here so it can be read freely also.

In the meantime here are some inspiring quotes from the book.

Not Knowing

Considering the complexity of the situation we find ourselves in, it’s hard to say anything because I know that what I write can only ever be provisional. And yet there’s still so much I’d like to be able to express, if only to explore uncertainty and reach towards what cannot be grasped. Expanding further into the not-knowing beyond knowing is a way to find both solace and new vitality.

Civilisation is a trap we walked into several thousand years ago, and it clanged shut behind us. None of us is actually free in the way that humans are meant to be free, sustained by kith (land) and kin (humans and nonhumans). (Take note: freedom ≠ doing whatever you want.)

I agree with Iain McGilchrist when he says that the world is not a problem with a solution; it’s a predicament that cannot be solved. (This is not the same as saying that there is nothing we can do, but it does mean that many, if not most, things are out of our control.)

I think often of what Derrick Jensen has said: “Unquestioned beliefs are the real authorities of any culture.”

And what Susan Griffin has said: “A rebellion ultimately imitates that which it rebels against, until the rebel comes to understand himself.”

Many of the “answers” that we are finding have emerged from the wrong questions, which have come from the wrong foundational beliefs. Many of the ways we have chosen to “rebel” against the system have in fact taken us full circle back to the same unfreedom and harm.

I have biases and blindspots just like everyone else. I don’t have the answers, and I’m hardly a rebel. I do know, however, that sitting patiently with not-knowing, whilst also pursuing greater provisional understanding—especially self-understanding—is crucial.

After the collapse, and in a thousand years or so, when the wild has returned (fingers crossed) and we’ve earthed ourselves back into reality, perhaps we’ll know and not-know better. Until then, we humans really need to remember that we’re still in the trap, our thinking is shaped by that, and we can’t truly understand who we are until we escape it.