Mary, Quite Contrary

By Ann Powers

Published: November 7, 1999

MARY DALY RECLINED ON THE LAWN of her lakeside condominium and pondered what a tree might reveal about ”radical elemental feminism.” Professor Daly, a 70-year-old pioneer of the women’s movement, was explaining how that term, which appears in the subtitle of her seventh and most recent book, ”Quintessence,” differs from ”essentialism,” the label critics have long used to describe what they view as simple-minded woman worship.

”I know meanings for ‘essence’ from Aristotelian philosophy that are interesting to me,” said Professor Daly, who holds doctorates in philosophy and sacred theology. ”Like, what is the essence of a tree? But that’s not what they’re saying,” she said of radical feminism’s opponents. ”They’re saying, if you want to name anything specific about women, especially positive, then you’re falling into this mysterious thing that is bad.” Essentialism, she concluded, is an empty epithet denying the commonalities women feel with one another and with the organic world.

With that, she ended her consideration of the term, dismissing it as boring, as she often does with ideas that distract from hers. She would rather delve into her own elaborate cosmology, which stresses the life force she calls elemental.

”Elemental, to me, whoo! — it’s so wild and so transgressive of boundaries,” she continued. ”Like, that tree is elemental. It has a life of its own. It really has, it’s beautiful. And so is the sky, the water, grass. There are elemental sounds of the alphabet. Like, ‘Aaah!’ ”She sang robustly, a deep note. ”It’s rough, raw, natural. It is not fabricated, foreground. It’s about motion and emotion.”

Actually, Professor Daly said ”e-Motion,” a word of her own conjuring that means ”elemental passion which moves women out/away from the fixed/framed state of stagnation; pyrogenetic passion that fires deep knowing and willing, stirring metamemory, propelling wild women on the otherworld journey.” She coined the term in ”Pure Lust,” her 1984 treatise on elemental feminist philosophy, and defined it in ”Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language,” a feminist dictionary she started writing with Jane Caputi the same year.

Another word in Professor Daly’s lexicon is ”foreground,” which she defines as the illusory reality established over the centuries within a male-dominated, hierarchical culture bent on destroying women, animals and the earth. Its antonym, ”background,” is what she has spent her life trying to reach: a primeval, female-oriented consciousness that would replace conquest with interaction and the hunger to own with the lust to create.

Over the course of her nearly 40-year career, Professor Daly has had some good moments in the foreground. In the early 70’s, two of her books, ”Beyond God the Father” and ”Gyn/Ecology,” helped define the world view of cultural-radical feminists who called for a woman-led social and spiritual revolution. Even Professor Daly’s critics acknowledge her as a founding mother of contemporary feminism.

In the 90’s, however, the foreground has been cruel to Professor Daly. She is currently fighting for her right to continue teaching at Boston College, the private Jesuit university where she has taught for more than 30 years. The conflict stems from the college’s insistence that she admit men into her seminars. Professor Daly had exclusively taught women-only classes since 1973, because in her opinion women can only realize the truths of feminism among themselves. (Paradoxically, when the college was male-only, she taught feminism to men.) But in the fall of 1998, a student named Duane Naquin threatened a lawsuit when barred from her ”Feminist Ethics” class.

Mr. Naquin was hardly the first male to challenge Professor Daly’s policy. Her difficulties with the college had reached a boiling point at least once a decade, and usually she would take a leave, let things cool, and return. But Mr. Naquin was financed by the right-wing organization Center for Independent Research, and the crisis had come at a time when feminist spirit was at a remarkable low, on campus and off. Boston College administrators used his case to push Professor Daly toward retirement.

More… http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/07/education/mary-quite-contrary.html?scp= 13&sq=Mary%20Daly&pagewanted=1