The Mary Daly Reader

Mary Daly

Published by New York University Press 2017

The Mary Daly Reader

Mary Daly
Edited by: Jennifer Rycenga and Linda Barufaldi
With contributions by: Robin Morgan and Mary E. Hunt

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479840342.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

Makes key excerpts from Daly's work accessible to readers who are seeking to access the essence of her thought in a single volume.

Outrageous, humorous, inflammatory, Amazonian, intellectual, provocative, controversial, and a discoverer of Feminist word-magic, Mary Daly’s influence on Second Wave feminism was enormous. She burst through constraints to articulate new ways of being female and alive. This comprehensive reader offers a vital introduction to the core of Daly’s work and the complexities secreted away in the pages of her books. Her major theories—Bio-philia, Be-ing as Verb, and the life force within words—and major controversies—relating to race, transgender identity, and separatism—are all covered, and the editors have provided introductions to each selection for context.

The text has been crafted to be accessible to a broad readership, without diluting Daly’s witty but complicated vocabulary. Begun in collaboration with Daly while she was still alive, and completed after her death in 2010, the chapters in this book will surprise even those who thought they knew her work. They contain highlights from Mary Daly’s published works over a forty-year span, including her major books Beyond God the Father, Gyn/Ecology, and Pure Lust, as well as smaller articles and excerpts, with additional contributions from Robin Morgan and Mary E. Hunt.

Perfect for those seeking an introduction to this path-breaking feminist thinker, The Mary Daly Reader makes key excerpts from her work accessible to new readers as well as those already familiar with her work who are seeking to access the essence of her thought in a single volume.

Author / Editor information

Daly Mary :

Mary Daly (1928-2010) was an American radical feminist philosopher, academic, and theologian. She taught at Boston College for 33 years.Morgan Robin :

Robin Morgan is the editor of Sisterhood Is Powerful, named “One of the 100 most influential Books of the 20th Century” by the New York Public Library.Hunt Mary E. :

Mary E. Hunt is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER).Rycenga Jennifer :

Jennifer Rycenga is Professor of Comparative Religious Studies at San José State University. She has co-edited two books: Frontline Feminisms: Women, War, and Resistance, with Marguerite Waller; and Queering the Popular Pitch with Sheila Whiteley.Barufaldi Linda :

Linda Barufaldi is a lifelong radical feminist activist who has worked in the peace, civil rights, women’s, LGBT and environmental movements.

Reviews

Tide-like, social and cultural movements flow and ebb—as do the reputations of their founders. This reader puts Daly on display in all of her life-long radical transformations, personal, theological, philosophical, rhetorical.

Xochitl Alvizo,California State University, Northridge:

"Brings us face to face with the radical, groundbreaking work of a feminist philosopher whose expectations for women were only exceeded by her commitment to them. I still vividly remember my first encounter with Mary Daly's work, the exhilaration of her wordsmithery, the sense of freedom and clarity that came from having the evils of the world named and condemned, and the ensuing commitment sparked to do something with these insights - to work to dismantle structures of injustice at the root. We need these kinds of transformative encounters today and this book is up to the task... This painstakingly crafted reader invites our engagement (new or continuing) with one of the sharpest thinkers of our time, challenging us to leap into Mary Daly's originally brilliant work and to transcend beyond it."

Gloria Steinem:
She was a great trained philosopher, theologian, and poet, and she used all of those tools to demolish patriarchy -- or any idea that domination is natural -- in its most defended place, which is religion.

In sum, this anthology is an intellectual gift to feminists everywhere. It reminds us to be fearlessly feminist, to uphold our diverse feminist intellectual traditions, and to collaborate with each other in ways that encourage feminist resistance to the technocratic, necrophilic, and neo-fascist threats, laws, and practice harming those performing as women.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Robin Morgan Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Biographical sketch Mary E. Hunt Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xxi
Editors’ note Publicly Available Download PDF	xxiii
Introduction: A kick in the imagination Jennifer Rycenga and Linda Barufaldi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I. Winds of change (to 1971)
1. The case against the church Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
2. Christian history: A record of contradictions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	18
3. The pedestal peddlars Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
4. The second sex and the seeds of transcendence Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
Part II. From god to be-ing (1972– 1974)
5. The women’s movement: An exodus community Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
6. The problem, the purpose, the method Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
7. After the death of god the father Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
8. Beyond good and evil Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
9. The second coming of women and the antichrist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
10. The bonds of freedom: Sisterhood as antichurch Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
11. Antichurch and the sounds of silence Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	109
12. The final cause, the future, and the end of the looking glass war Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
Part III. The double- edged labrys of outrageous/outraged philosophy (1975– 1984)
13. Preface to gyn/ecology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	124
14. The metapatriarchal journey of exorcism and ecstasy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
15. Secular s and m Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
16. African genital mutilation: The unspeakable atrocities Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
17. Prelude to the third passage Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	190
18. Newspeak versus new words Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
19. Sparking: The fire of female friendship Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	202
20. The dissembly of exorcism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
21. Daly on Matilda Joslyn Gage Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	210
22. On lust and the lusty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	216
23. Metaphors of metabeing Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	228
24. Beyond the sado-sublime: exorcising archetypes, evoking the archimage Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
25. Restoration and the problem of memory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	246
26. Phallic power of absence Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	250
27. Realizing reason Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	256
28. The raging race Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	272
29. From “justice” to nemesis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	275
30. The “soul” as metaphor for telic principle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287
31. Be-friending: The lust to share happiness Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	291
Part IV. Spiraling onward (1985– 2010): Future and past piratical coursing
32. Early moments: my taboo-breaking quest—to be a philosopher Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	301
33. The dream of green Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	304
34. The anti-modernist oath Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	308
35. My doctoral dissertation in philosophy: Paradoxes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	311
36. The Time of the Tigers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
37. Re- Calling My Lesbian Identity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	324
38. Some Be- Musing Moments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	327
39. The Fathers’ Follies: Denial of Full Professorship Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	330
40. Classroom Teaching of Women and of Men Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	334
41. On How I Jumped over the Moon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	337
42. Magnetic Courage Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	344
43. Quintessence: The Music of the Spheres Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	352
44. A Heightened Experience of Losing and Finding (Response to Audre Lorde) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	355
45. What Terrific Shock Will Be Shocking Enough? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	360
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	371
Works by Mary Daly: A Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	415
Secondary Sources on Mary Daly Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	421
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	435
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	451
About the Editors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	453

Language: English
Publisher: New York University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: January 24, 2017
ISBN: 9781479840342