The Goddess and/as the Cyborg

Nature and Technology in Feminist Witchcraft

Authors

  • Chris Klassen York University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v7i2.173

Keywords:

goddess spirituality, Donna Haraway, feminist witchcraft

Abstract

Feminist Witchcraft is a nature religion that posits a holism based on the immanence of the Goddess. This article outlines how these concepts—’nature’ and ‘holism’—are understood by feminist Witches and then explores the implications of these concepts in the context of two novels. A holism based on the inclusion of humanity and the rest of the natural world in the body of the Goddess implies that humans, and their cultural and mechanical constructions, are also part of nature. Thus a dismissal of mechanistic technology as inherently unnatural does not fit with the declared holism. Yet both of these novels show suspicion, to varying degrees, of mechanistic technology. A conversation with Donna Haraway and her cyborg theory provides a way to rethink the divide between natural and
technological sometimes found in these novels and in feminist Witchcraft in general.

Author Biography

  • Chris Klassen, York University
    Chris Klassen is a PhD candidate in the Women’s Studies program at York University in Toronto, Ontario. Her dissertation is titled Storied Selves: Technologies of Opposition and Speculation in Feminist Witchcraft. She also teaches in the Religion and Culture department at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario

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Published

2007-03-08

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Klassen, C. (2007). The Goddess and/as the Cyborg: Nature and Technology in Feminist Witchcraft. Pomegranate, 7(2), 1730193. https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v7i2.173