CONSCIOUSNESS

6. Culture and the Humanities 207
This paper explores the role of Buddhist mindfulness in developing a feminist conception
of self-consciousness. I will open with a discussion of the role and function of selfconsciousness
within feminist consciousness. Although largely unrecognized in the literature,
feminist self-consciousness is an essential component of feminist consciousness and, as such,
the political activity of feminist consciousness-raising is dependent on the development of a
distinctively feminist self-consciousness. Mindfulness is understood in terms of certain meditative
practices to attain an altered consciousness that provides a better awareness of one’s
bare subjectivity. In Buddhism successful mindfulness results in a cessation of suffering and
pain and finally of the self itself as ordinarily understood (anatman). I will argue that similar
meditative practices can play a role in articulating feminist self-consciousness. Techniques
used to cultivate mindfulness can help us articulate and attain a feminist self-consciousness
that takes into account the particular situations, contexts, and positions of individual women
and does not homogenize them in one group in an essentialist fashion. What makes the comparative
relevance of Buddhist thinking on self-consciousness to feminism interesting is their
shared suspicion of essentialism and shared interest in finding ways to liberation. One of the
central points of this paper is that meditative practices associated with attaining mindfulness
could provide a perspective to attain self-consciousness in many feminist contexts. At first
glance, this comparative engagement may seem far-fetched and at best forced. One might
argue that while the Buddhist engagement with liberation is motivated by an other-worldly
concern, feminist conception of liberation is fundamentally this-worldly. Even with this difference,
however, it seems worthwhile to explore how understanding mindfulness and its associated
meditative practices can illuminate our understanding of feminist self-consciousness.
Especially if meditative practices are understood not as a means to withdraw from the world
but to engage with it with a better understanding of reality, then that kind of self-knowledge
can certainly be useful to understanding and raising feminist consciousness. C14
315 The Consciousness of Movement Karen Studd (George Mason
University Center for Consciousness and Transformation, Fairfax)
In learning mode we are somewhat conscious of our movement but once actions are
learned they fall out of our conscious awareness .... P5
6. Culture and Humanities
316 Twelve Beds for the Dreamer: A Poetry Performance Máighréad Medbh
(Swords, CO. DUBLIN Ireland)
Many poets are, and have been, interested in astrology. Louis MacNeice wrote a book
on the subject; W. B. Yeats was chairman of the Irish Astrological Association during the
1920s. Having studied it for a few years and dabbled for several more, I find the natal chart
remarkably accurate, even in the hands of this amateur, on personality traits, innate skills
and propensities. As the moon is said to affect the subconscious, I decided to take note of my
dreams for a month and check whether there might be any discernible connection between
them and the passage of the moon through the zodiacal constellations. This was not a scientific
experiment and couldn’t lead to conclusions, though sometimes themes and moods seemed
to coincide. What I did achieve, I think, was a sort of brief history of a subconscious. I wrote
the dreams as poems, added other recurring or striking dreams, and found that they could
be allocated thematic places within the twelve astrological divisions. I also noticed that the
dreams could be read as reflections of the times, influenced as they were by the prevailing
social environment. The performance presents twenty dream-poems in recitation, using the
signs of the zodiac as a loose narrative structure. The journey is from Cancer (home, children,
tradition) to Gemini (information, communication, restlessness), a road that has been walked
by my generation. Dreams and poetry share metaphor and the tendency to resonate with a
multiplicity of sense impressions and experiences. So the poems spread out in different directions,
propelled by the dreams, their own impetus, and their birth in the night’s melting pot. I
hope that the presentation of these very immediate emissaries of subconscious thought might