Episode 10 // International Women's Day

Looking at the troubled religious landscape of today, one of the most significant religious tasks faith communities urgently face, in my opinion, is the eradication of gender oppression and a push for gender justice. In a religious context, gender oppression often seems to function within insulated religious logic that is carefully guarded and reinforced in interpretive frameworks of sacred texts, liturgy and religious practice. In these situations, I think, to some extent, social change can only come about when an individual or group has the courage to step into these little universes of insulated religious logic, and work with and from religious assumptions to communicate notions of 'social change' to spiritual/religious communities in a necessarily 'prophetic' way. That is why something like Feminist Theology seems so significant to me, and why I feel a denial and withdrawal from religion for the sake of 'progress' can be a problematic way to approach gender equality. [3]

This week's episode was in celebration of International Women's Day -- featuring a playlist full of brilliant women-identified artists and their musical work -- including some Top 40 Ghanian gospel, old-timey bluegrass, Korean geomungo improvisation, riot grrrl punk, theremin performance, Latin American folk, holy minimalism, devotional Thumrī, and a heavy serving of experimental / electroacoustic compositions.

Below is a sculpture entitled 'Expanded Expansion' by Eva Hesse -- an American Jewish artist mostly associated with movements like 'post-minimalism' and 'anti-form'. This particular piece is composed of cheesecloth, latex, and rope -- materials that degrade rather quickly -- a quality Hesse loved as it underscored not only the temporality of art, but also the way works of art not were not static materials devoid of physical context, but themselves 'processes' -- a notion very reminiscent of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy. The supporting rods beneath are composed of somewhat eternally durable fibre glass, a counterpoint Hesse took great joy in.

episode download: [forthcoming]

0:01:32 - station id: Jack Layton

0:01:43 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:01:55 - Esther Smith - 'Yesu Kristo Asore'
0:06:33 - Motion Sickness of Time Travel - 'Clairvoyance'
'":"":51 - talking: Brian Shimkovitz on Ghanian Gospel, clairvoyance, Johanna Beyer's legacy, Faust, [1], [2]
0:16:07 - Inga Copeland - 'faith'
0:20:28 - Johanna Beyer - 'Music of the Spheres'
0:26:24 - Else Marie Pade - 'Faust Og Mefisto'
0:33:25 - Clara Rockmore - 'Hebrew Melody (Achron)'
0:38:53 - promo: democracy now!
0:39:24 - psa: loving spoonful 
0:40:09 - Sofia Gubaidulina - 'Glorification of Death'
'":"0:48 - talking: Achron, Clara Rockmore, holy minimalism, activism of Hazel Dickens and Suni Paz, mythical figure of La Llorona
0:47:12 - Kim Jin-Hi - 'Dance of Meditation'
0:51:49 - Hazel Dickens - 'Here Today, Gone Tomorrow'
0:54:38 - Suni Paz - 'La Llorona (The Weeping Woman)'
0:58:43 - Sleater-Kinney - 'God is a Number'
1:02:30 - station id: Amy Goodman
1:02:45 - psa: vegetarianism
1:03:04 - promo: below the decks (radio show)
1:03:38 - talking: riot grrrl movement, Kesarbai Kerkar, Thumri, oracle bones, agincourt hymn 
1:08:18 - Kesarbai Kerkar - 'Bhairavi Thumri'
1:11:43 - Fifth Column - 'Ghost of a Buffalo'
0:17:39 - Pauline Oliveros - 'Oracle of Bones Mirror Dreams'
0:25:08 - Elizabeth Veldon - 'The Agincourt Carol 1'


“Women, not having recourse to a divinized feminine, have had their identities dictated to them by the rule of man, God as other/Other…as virgin mother, or as property of the male, women have played a part in the proceedings, but have not been able to claim a fully autonomous identity or subjectivity.”
- Luce Irigaray (Divine Women)

"This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification. Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously. I know no better stance to adopt from within the secular-religious, evangelical traditions of United States politics, including the politics of socialist feminism. Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community. Blasphemy is not apostasy. Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. At the centre of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg."
- Donna Haraway (A Cyborg Manifesto)


Further Info:
[1] Brian Shimkovitz Profile on RWM
[2] Esther Smith feature on Awesome Tapes of Africa
[3] Practical Feminist Theology Panel at Boston University (Video)