Publication details
Probuzené, nebo předepsané ženství? Disciplinace individuálních cest v prostředí alternativní spirituality.
| Title in English | Awake, or prescribed femininity? Disciplining of individual journeys in the alternative spirituality milieu. |
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The conference paper is based on ethnographic research in a center of spiritual seeking/ alternative spirituality in the Czech Republic. It focuses on the question how the "femininity" is constructed at the seminars and events of the centre and is based especially on participant observation at seminars called "Awakening of a woman". The proclaimed aim of these seminars was to awake "the inner female power", "an immense female potential which is sleeping inside of a woman". What does this "awakening" mean and consist of? What ambivalent features it bears and how are these ambivalences treated? On the one hand, it is a process of gaining one's own "inner freedom" and discovering of one's "inner power", on the other hand, this process cannot live and go on without instructions, examples to follow and practical demonstrations - through which the participants of the seminar are taught how the "femininity" should look like. However, this teaching is done in such a way not to violate the feeling of one's self-autonomy and the possibility to do the things in one's own way. I approach the relation between the "awake" and "prescribed" femininity not as a black-and-white-opposition but rather as a relationship which is much more complex and needs a detailed analysis to be understood. |
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