Ways of Knowing Record Type: Review   ID: 720
Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion Berry, Philippa, & Wernick, Andrew (Eds.)
The postmodern abolishment of the underpinnings of reality has shifted attention to what was repressed, forgotten, or marginalized—the dark, hidden, shadow aspect of the unconscious—the opposites. Interest has revived "in those once-tabooed aspects of ‘otherness’ which can broadly be termed spiritual or religious" (p. 3). Berry notes that "a frequent theme ... presents a new understanding of spirit, not as the opposite term of a binary couple, but rather as facilitating a wholly new mode of awareness, which not only invites the thinker to abandon their residual attachment to dualistic thinking, but also offers a potent challenge to their desire for subjective mastery and knowledge. Interest in the implications of such a non-dual perspective is apparent in some recent feminist investigations" in which there is "an insistence upon the bodily dimension of this knowledge" (p. 5). Finally, this "bricolage of multiple religious and philosophical perspectives is a distinctly non-dogmatic mode of intellectual inquiry" (p. 5). This shadowy territory of the divine "other" is the subject of this anthology, which is in three parts: I. Maps and Positions (7 chapters), II. Ethics and Politics (6 chapters), and Gender and Psyche (6 essays). None of these essays is easy to read. For the most part the subject matter is by definition murky and ungraspable by any who are constrained to think they are separate. These essays help us to see that our sameness lies in that in which we differ.
Publisher Information:	New York: Routledge, 1992. 274p. Chap. bibl; 6 figs; Index: 265-274

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