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Utopian imaginaries and faerie practice: a mapping of relational agency

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Content UTOPIAN IMAGINARIES AND FAERIE PRACTICE:
A MAPPING OF RELATIONAL AGENCY
by
Jay Hasbrouck
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(Visual Anthropology)
May 2000
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UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N CA LIFO R N IA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA S 0 0 0 7
This thesis, written by
_________
under the direction of hSs. Thesis Committee,
and approved by all its members, has been pre
sented to and accepted by the Dean of The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
K la g ^ e x : ..Q J L .A r .t s J . la. .Visual ..A a tJ tic Q B g la g y
T tn tf October 11, 1999
THESIS COMMITTEE
I C km rmm a
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The generosity and openness of the Radical Faeries I have worked with over
the past four years have been the mainstay of this project since its inception. In fact,
the warm reception and support extended by Faeries at Zuni Mountain Sanctuary
make a mere acknowledgement seem diminutive. Nevertheless, thank you Arcturus,
Buffy, Dipper, Eden, Granite, Maqui, and Owl for opening up your lives to me. I am
especially indebted to Buffy for his ongoing interest and role as primary contact.
Granite for making me feel at home when I first arrived, and Eden for his
observations and optimism. Other Faeries also deserve recognition for their interest,
encouragement and support. Thank you Jeff Helson, all the Faeries who attended
the Zuni Mountain Sanctuary Summer Solstice Gathering of 1997 who graciously
agreed to be filmed, and especially Littlefoot.
My thesis committee has also proven invaluable in my attempts to shape my
ideas and develop the visual components of this thesis. Challenges, thought-
provoking questions, references, and numerous hours were provided by Professors
Nancy Lutkehaus (Chair), Soo-Young Chin and Deirdre Evans-Pritchard. As my
local ‘consultant’ on matters Faerie, as well as open and friendly colleague, Stuart
Timmons was kind enough to share his knowledge with me and provide feedback
on my work from time to time. Funding from Littlefoot and the University of
Southern California’s Center for Feminist Research and Department of
Anthropology was greatly appreciated and has been instrumental in completing the
visual portions of the thesis. Also essential were equipment and technical support
ii
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
from the University of Southern California’s Center for Visual Anthropology and
Dennis Miranda.
Sound consulting, foley art, and well-timed humor were provided by
Monique Reymond. Foley recording was performed by Zoe Platek. The moral
support and open minds of my partner, Brett Piper, and colleagues Sharon Berman,
Manuel Fernandez-Alemany, and Christy Snyder also provided much needed
sustenance throughout this process. Thanks also to Jesse Bonderman, Judith Grant,
Janet Hoskins, Alexander Moore, and Walter Williams, for their time and
knowledge and to Karen Aragon, Rita Rene Jones, and Debbie Williams for their
help in jumping administrative hurdles.
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...........................................................................................................II
ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................................V
PART I: PRELIMINARIES.................................................................................................... I
T h e P l a c e a n d t h e Pe o p l e ................................................................................................................................... 1
F a e r ie ‘F ie l d w o r k ’ ................................................................................................................................................4
F a e r ie s a n d t h e N o r t h A m e r ic a n C o u n t e r c u l t u r e ............................................................................7
F a e r ie s in S o c io -H is t o r ic a l C o n t e x t ........................................................................................................17
Im a g in a t io n a n d Im a g in a r ie s .......................................................................................................................21
P r a c t ic e , P o w e r , a n d A g e n c y ..................................................................................................................... 29
PART II: FAERIE TRANSGRESSIONS..........................................................................35
C r e a t in g S a n c t u a r y .......................................................................................................................................... 35
B l u r r in g S e l f a n d O t h e r ................................................................................................................................. 39
C o m m u n i t y ............................................................................................................................................................... 4 4
M a r g in a l S p a c e a n d D a il y R e s is t a n c e .................................................................................................. 47
F a e r ie R i t u a l ......................................................................................................................................................... 50
F a e r ie H e a l i n g ...................................................................................................................................................... 57
Fl e x ib il it y a n d O n e n e s s...................................................................................................................................66
PART III: MAPPING AGENCY......................................................................................... 68
Id e n t if y in g R o u t e s ............................................................................................................................................. 68
In f u s in g A l t e r n a t iv e s a n d C h a l len g in g D o x a .................................................................................73
Po e t ic S t r a t e g ie s a n d t h e ir Id e o lo g ic a l C o n t e x t s ...................................................................... 78
AFTERWORD: ANTHROPOLOGICAL FICTIONALIZING......................................84
‘P r o d u c in g ’ a F a e r ie E t h n o g r a p h y .......................................................................................................... 84
V is u a l C o m p o n e n t s o f t h e T h e s is................................................................................................................89
BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................................................... 94
APPEN D IX ............................................................................................................................. 101
iv
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
ABSTRACT
In this work, I explore how Radical Faerie routine and ritual practice might
affect shifts in subsequent practices to the point where they have the potential to
reshape both dominant social imaginaries and the social institutions they shape. In
the course of this exploration, I provide a cultural mapping of the marginal spaces
where Faerie practices originate and examine how they function. I begin by
contextualizing the dispersed nature of the Faerie community, using my experiences
at Zuni Mountain Sanctuary (a Radical Faerie collective) as a base. This is followed
by a positioning of Faerie practice within contemporary theories of imagining,
practice, power, and agency. Descriptions of Faerie transgressions (drawn from
interviews, online mailing lists, my own field experiences, and other sources) are
then used to outline some of the routes that this process of interplay and its
subsequent reverberations might take. In the end, I argue that the continual interplay
between Faerie practice and a set of utopian imaginaries gradually influences other
practices that can open new possibilities for ‘mainstream’ reconfigurations of
identity, community, kinship, sexuality, spirituality, and the environment through
poetic, transgressive strategies attached to broader social rhythms. It is the romantic
and seductive associations of utopian imaginaries in particular (‘other-worldly’
idealism, hopefulness, progression, well-being, etc.) that may lend Faerie practice a
broad appeal that could ultimately be the source of their ability to affect social
change.
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
The status quo reigns supreme for as long as we refuse our utopian
capacity to imagine things being other than they are.
— Richard Kearney, Poetics o f Imagining
PART I: PRELIMINARIES
The Place and the People
Miles from the nearest town, at the far north end of a sweeping valley of
cacti and juniper trees, lies a newly formed intentional community called Zuni
Mountain Sanctuary. Situated in the middle of a 3 IS acre tract are a dozen or so
buildings and tents scattered around two ponds, collectively evoking the feel of
something like a summer camp or retreat with southwestern, new-age influences.
The community’s main structure, an adobe and glass building designed for
maximum solar gain, faces south over an expansive plain contrasted at its far end by
a grand mesa with sides of towering red and orange rock formations. At 7000 feet in
elevation, winter brings subzero temperatures and plenty of snow. Spring and
summer are highlighted by vast fields of wildflowers that bloom in waves of color
across the valley floor. Late summer is punctuated by powerful lightening strikes
amid clusters of thunderstorms that chum through otherwise clear afternoon skies.
The Sanctuary was established in early 1996 and is one of a handful of
permanently settled Radical Faerie collectives in the United States. Although
difficult to define as a cohesive group or movement, Faeries generally agree that they
are people who seek an anarchistic departure from sexual identity politics and the
North American ‘mainstream.’ While the Radical Faerie phenomena shares a
1
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
common ancestry with today’s gay rights movement1 , most Faeries break from the
gay liberationist focus on lesbian/gay identity as a means of affecting social change.
In fact, many Faeries view gay identity as a false Western construct that is at least
partially based in, and dependent on, the Western dichotomy established between
non-conforming and ‘normal’ sexualities. These false constructs, they argue, label
and ghettoize lesbians and gay men, thereby forcing those who assume ‘gay’ or
‘lesbian’ as their primary identity to interpret their life experiences under the
watchful gaze of dominant ‘normalcy.’
The result, many Faeries posit, is an inescapable integration with an
oppressive mainstream—an ‘alternative’ imitation of the very social system that
condemns their non-conforming sexualities. Some Faeries point to the development
of an urban-centered ‘gay establishment’ (whose efforts they see as concentrated on
tolerance by the Euro-American ‘mainstream’ rather than challenging its
understandings of sexuality or its other basic tenants), as one of the unfortunate
results of contemporary sexual identity politics. From their perspective, the battle for
same-gender marriage is a good example of how this ‘gay establishment’ often
strives towards conformity rather creatively resisting dominant mainstream
paradigms of sexuality and gender. The Faerie response has been to create and
explore their own interpretations of sexuality and identity, often through self
marginalization and explorations of spirituality. Some early Faeries fled urban gay
ghettos and settled in rural areas in the early 1970’s. Many others now organize and
attend gatherings that focus on individual and cultural “healing.” These usually
involve neopagan-inspired celebrations, rituals, and performances that provide
1 See The Trouble with Harry' Hay (Timmons 1990).
2
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
participants with the opportunity to focus on interpreting the relationship between
their spirituality and sexuality (Thompson 1987; Timmons 1990).
Zuni Mountain Sanctuary in particular began to take shape in Taos, New
Mexico, when a small group of men first recognized their common interest in
forming a permanent Faerie-centered collective. With the financial support of one
member of this founding group, they eventually purchased a large tract of land and
proceeded to settle there. A number of members of this founding group had already
been conducting their own research into “off-the-grid” living (solar/wind energy,
environmentally-sound housing, waste management and agriculture, etc.), which
allowed them to more easily begin their efforts to make the former ranch land
habitable. In addition, most residents (or, stewards, as they refer to themselves)
contribute approximately $100 a month from their own resources for food and
supplies. Their income sources vary from inheritances, disability payments, and off-
site jobs in nearby communities. Donations from supporters also supplement their
income and stock of supplies.
Today, the number of people residing permanently on the land fluctuates
between eight and 15. This thesis includes interview excerpts from a group of
Faeries who were most often present during my visits: Arcturus, Buffy, Dipper,
Eden, Granite, Maqui, and Owl. In its present physical state, the beginnings of
sustainable farming have begun to take shape at the Sanctuary, and in addition to the
main building, the number of permanent structures now includes two residences, a
phone ‘hut’, shower facilities, pit toilet, and a firing kiln (the community operates a
pottery business called Oso Notch Pottery, from which it derives a small income).
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
Faerie ‘Fieldwork*
The idea for this project came out of my interests in alternative conceptions
of sexuality that move outside of, or test the fixity of, the sexual identity politic
categories in use today. I first found out about the Sanctuary through the Internet
and by talking to Faeries who knew Sanctuary stewards or had attended the first
gathering there in the summer of 1996. After a number of e:mail exchanges, the
stewards asked me to visit in person so that they could better determine their level of
interest in working with me. My first trip took place over the months of December
of 1996 and January 1997, and I was warmly received. Their decision (reached by
consensus) was in favor of working with me, with the caveat that any film and
recording work would be terminated at any point where one or more of the stewards
felt it to be intrusive or disruptive. It was clear to me at the time that there would be
no problem with anyone speaking their mind with regard to this issue since one of
the stewards openly expressed some apprehension about being filmed during that
first visit.
My second trip to the Sanctuary took place in March of 1997.1 spent most
of my time adjusting to the pace and assisting with daily activities at the Sanctuary
(such as working on gardens, preparing meals, helping with construction projects,
etc.), conducting interviews with each of the stewards, and taking still photographs.
In June of 1997,1 returned again to attend and videotape the Summer Solstice
gathering, a two to three week long celebration. Footage shot at the gathering
focused primarily on preparations for the gathering as well as various gathering
events and rituals. Additional one-on-one audio interviews were also conducted with
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
some of the stewards at that time. In August of 1997,1 returned to the Sanctuary for
a visit and to work with the stewards using 16mm and Super-8 film.
Although my methodology has varied over the course of this project, my
primary interests have focused on gaining an understanding of the stewards' lives
within the context of their sense of community and socio-political agency as I have
interpreted them in this thesis. I began gathering personal histories of the stewards
by getting to know them as friends and by conducting one-on-one audio-taped
interviews. These interviews focused primarily on what brought the stewards to the
Sanctuary, what their lives were like before they came to live there, and what they got
out of continuing to live there. Once I felt I had enough background in the way of
personal histories, my work tended more toward general participant observation as I
began to explore the interpersonal relationships among the stewards. This included
everything from attending community meetings, to trips to the laundromat and
learning to throw clay on the potter’s wheel. My observations from these
interactions were recorded at the end of each day in field notes.
I also followed a general participant observation methodology during the
Summer Solstice Gathering. This included a rather frantic combination of
attempting to capture as many of the events as I could on video tape, while also
participating in various rituals. It was sometimes possible to do both simultaneously.
During my final trip to the Sanctuary, I focused much more directly on issues of
space and place at the Sanctuary and how I interpreted the stewards’ relationship
with both in the context of community and socio-political agency. Among other
things, this included spending time with each of the stewards at various locations at
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the Sanctuary that they had indicated were of interest to them, or held some
significance for them in terms of their relationship with the Sanctuary itself.
In addition to my visits to the Sanctuary, I maintained contact with the
stewards, and Faerie culture at large, through the Internet from my home in Los
Angeles. There is a significant Internet presence among Faeries including many
informative web pages and at least one listserv, to which I subscribed. This latter
source proved quite valuable to me as I began to consider how I might conceptualize
the Sanctuary and the larger network of Faeries scattered across the United States
and Europe. This kind of range in various manifestations of the Faerie community is
quite common, whether it occurs through the Internet, written correspondence, Faerie
publications (like RFD or Zuni Mountain News), gatherings, permanent
communities, or other forms. Furthermore, some Faeries might even be described as
nomadic as they regularly move between urban Faerie enclaves (particularly in San
Francisco) and rural Faerie collectives and other rural Faerie properties not
permanently settled.
A particularly telling example of how I originally began to conceptualize this
dispersed and inter-evolving network of Faerie culture (which includes the
Sanctuary) comes from one of my early struggles during my fieldwork there. In my
first (and rather naive) attempts to grasp Faerie culture and to understand the
community at the Sanctuary, I would inquire about the status of various people who
were residing there. I suppose my unspoken goal was to make some sort of
distinction between those holding steward status and those who were just visiting. It
became readily apparent, however, that the Sanctuary was, and is, a community in a
continual state of flux, with permeable borders and many transfused boundaries. Of
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
course, this could be said of many communities (i.e., Anderson's Imagined
Communities, 1991), but the physically isolated location of the Sanctuary apparently
led me to believe that there would be some sort of marked distinction between
insiders and others. What I found is that there is often a different configuration of
people at the Sanctuary each day. Stewards come and go, take extended trips to
other communities and cities, and change their status with the community often.
Some move away and then return months later. In addition, there are often visitors
making extended stays on the land who participate fully in all functions of the
community, further blurring the distinction between what I tried to define as
‘permanent’ stewards and others. Phone and e:mail contact with other Faeries is
frequent at the Sanctuary, and messages, gossip, and other interpersonal information
are passed on regularly via these routes as well as word of mouth itself. All of these
factors eventually led me to reconsider my interest in clearly delineating the social
boundaries of the Sanctuary. Therefore, in terms of this thesis, there are a number of
instances where participants on the listserv, or Faeries who were not stewards but
with whom I interacted in some way, have been treated as equally valid field subjects
as those choosing to define themselves as stewards of the Sanctuary.
Faeries and the North American Counterculture
On one level, the Faerie departure from the North American establishment
(both gay and mainstream) shares a great deal with the history of the counterculture
of the I960’s. Theodore Roszak, in his seminal work. The Making o f a Counter
Culture, positions the counterculture phenomena as a social “defection” from what
he calls technocracy:
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By technocracy, I mean that social form in which an industrial society
reaches the peak of its organizational integration. It is the ideal men
usually have in mind when they speak of modernizing, up-dating,
rationalizing, planning. Drawing upon such unquestionable imperatives as
the demand for efficiency, for social security, for large-scale co-ordination
of men and resources, for ever higher levels of affluence and ever more
impressive manifestations of collective human power, the technocracy
works to knit together the anachronistic gaps and fissures of the industrial
society. (Roszak 1969: 5)
Within this framework, Roszak identifies three interlocking premises that together
sustain technocracy:
1. That the vital needs of man are (contrary to everything the great souls of
history have told us) purely technical in character...
2. That this formal (and highly esoteric) analysis of our needs has now
achieved 99 percent completion. Thus, with minor hitches and snags on the
part of irrational elements in our midst, the prerequisites of human
fulfillment have all but been satisfied...
3. That the experts who have fathomed our heart’s desires and who alone
can continue providing for our needs, the experts who really know what
they’re talking about, all happen to be on the official payroll of the state
and/or corporate structure... (Roszak 1969: 11)
These experts, Roszak claims, participate in a perpetual struggle between one
another (Democrats versus Republicans, left versus right, etc.) that unquestioningly
privileges a scientific world-view and renders the technocracy itself invisible, further
consecrating a ‘'grand cultural imperative which is beyond question, beyond
discussion” (Roszak 1969: 9). Most Faeries share this perspective in terms of the
North American mainstream, and more specifically, North American sexual identity
politics. They see the dichotomous battles various gay rights organizations continue
to fight with right wing groups as largely a struggle that inadvertently condones a
larger socio-political system that inherently elides (or, at best, co-opts) difference
and subjugates those not in control. In Roszak’s words, the technocracy and its
dominant social institutions, can only benefit from identity politic and other battles
8
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
that deflect attention from its subjugating presence—from a form of repression that
is not always easily recognized. Roszak states:
The distinctive feature of the regime of the experts lies in the fact that,
while possessing ample power to coerce, it prefers to charm conformity
from us by exploiting our deep-seated commitment to the scientific world
view and by manipulating the securities and creature comforts of the
industrial affluence which science has given us. (Roszak 1969: 9)
For many Faeries, identity politic categories are a manifestation of this
phenomena, where gay “pride” and activism are conflated with gay consumerism,
in a context that inherently reinforces the technocracy rather than challenging its
basic premises or attempting to work outside of it. This critique, where consumerism
becomes a means of identity construction in a late-capitalist setting, is similar to
those forwarded by Ewen (1988), Miller (1995), Friedman (1994), and Appadurai
(1986). From this perspective, consumption becomes both a confirmation of
perceived identity and an active means of participation in its construction, where the
act of buying is imbued with multiple meanings for identity and its expression.
Roszak and others have argued that this form of participation is actually deceptive in
that it can contain all the trappings of a ‘movement’ while never being truly
revolutionary. The impact and reach of the late-capitalist regime remains
unquestioned since participation in this form remains subsumed under a system of
consumption.
“Participation” could easily become the god-word of our official politics
within the next decade; but its reference will be to the sort of
“responsible” collaboration that keeps the technocracy growing...It is for
this reason that the counter culture, which draws upon a profoundly
personalist sense of community rather than upon technical and industrial
values, comes closer to being a radical critique of the technocracy than any
of the traditional ideologies. (Roszak 1969: 206)
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
His analysis then focuses on the development of a cultural phenomena
(rather than a political movement) where this emphasis on a personalist sense of
community “strikes beyond ideology to the level of consciousness, seeking to
transform our deepest sense of the self, the other, the environment” (Roszak 1969:
49). This is done, according to Roszak, through subversion, in an anarchic and often
chaotic revolution of community, spirituality, poetics, perception, imagination, self
and other that is continually in flux.
It is something in the nature of a medieval crusade: a variegated procession
constantly in flux, acquiring and losing members all along the route of the
march. Often enough it finds its own identity in a nebulous symbol or
song that seems to proclaim little more than “we are special.. .we are
different... we are outward-bound from the old corruptions of the world.”
(Roszak 1969: 48)
In this subversive revolution, Roszak recognizes two components that keep it from
being absorbed by the technocracy: decentralization, and a privileging of the
visionary imagination over the scientific world view.
.. .only a social order built to the human scale permits the free play and
variety out of which the unpredictable beauties of men emerge. But
conversely (and here is the anarchist insight so frequently ignored) it is
only a society possessing the elasticity of decentralized communities that
can absorb the inevitable fallibilities of men. For where we have big
systems run from the muscle-bound center, the blunders of the custodians
will surely reverberate into total calamity...
.. .if there is to be an alternative to the technocracy, there must be an appeal
from this reductive rationality which objective consciousness dictates. This,
so I have argued, is the primary project of our counter culture: to proclaim
a new heaven and a new earth so vast, so marvelous that the inordinate
claims of technical expertise must of necessity withdraw in the presence of
such splendor to a subordinate and marginal status in the lives of men. To
create and broadcast such a consciousness of life entails nothing less than
the willingness to open ourselves to the visionary imagination on its own
demanding terms. (Roszak 1969: 200, 240)
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
One could interpret the personal and collective explorations of spirituality
and sexuality that are loosely aligned with neopaganism among Faeries as a form of
practice that reflects the kind of subversion to which Roszak refers. Faeries often
take pride in welcoming chaos and embracing decentralized modes of relation that
privilege creativity and open expression over rational thought or reason. At a Faerie
gathering I attended in 1997, a ritual conducted to welcome those who hadn’t
attended a gathering before included the following monologue. It was read aloud by
a Faerie circling the newcomers who were standing in an outward facing ring,
elbows inter-locked, surrounded by a larger ring of circling Faeries who had
attended previous gatherings.
To all the new Faeries,
I welcome you here...
... We are the dissidents, we are the freaks
An outcast society labeled as weak.
Marginal from the dominant culture are we
We create a space to be open and free.
So we’re dropping our egos, we’re dropping our shame
We’re trying to stop fighting the fact we’re all gay.
We’re healing our wounds and we’re soothing our pain.
So open your spirits for what you can gain.
In a place of acceptance, a place to be free,
A place we celebrate that we are a we.
A place to be genderless, open and wild,
Crazy and primitive, and dance like a child.
A place to explore and a place to create,
A place in which chaos and disorder are great...
.. .Dance by the fire,
Beat on the drum,
Take off your clothes and scream when you cum.
Eat some good food,
Share with us your art,
Fuck inhibition, just go with your heart.
Read us your poem,
Play us your song,
Confide in your body, you couldn’t go wrong.
So give a massage,
And put on some drag,
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
Consider yourself lucky for being a fag...
...A Faerie to me.
In the pure sense,
Is nothing more than to be.
To be who you are,
To be how you feel,
To be it and love it,
And express what is real.
So that’s us in a nutshell,
For the most part I guess,
So thank you all for joining our fabulousness.
This poem’s references to “we” and the formation of “an outcast
society...marginal from the dominant culture” establish a unity that is similar to
what Roszak prescribes for a subversive cultural revolution that begins with the
proclamation that “we are special...we are different...we are outward bound from
the old corruptions of the world” (Roszak 1969: 48). Later in the poem, references
to building “a place to be free.. .crazy and primitive.. .a place in which chaos and
disorder are great” convey an appreciation for decentralization and free play. This,
followed by phrases like “share with us your art, fuck inhibition, just go with your
heart...confide in your body, you couldn’t go wrong,” are consistent with Roszak’s
call for a movement that privileges visionary imagination over rationality and a
scientific world view.
While these consistencies between Roszak’s subversive revolution and
Faerie culture are clear, negotiating a decentralized, elastic and fluctuating
community has been both an important and difficult process for Faeries. In fact,
there has been an ongoing struggle among Faeries between the rejection of social
structures and attempts to determine what makes Faeries unique. For some, this
issue has become a task that involves understanding what it means to be a Faerie
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without buying into North American mainstream notions of identity, community,
sexuality, etc. Others question whether or not this is even a worthwhile endeavor,
especially in light of the critique of sexual identity politics that most Faeries share.
To this end, it is perhaps easier to understand Faeries by looking at what they are
not, than attempting to define what they presumably are. Nevertheless, there do seem
to be some recurring patterns worth noting in Faerie culture. Some of these patterns
are recognizably essentialistic in ideology, but many also represent attempts to work
outside of the assumed normalcies of the mainstream, and are often combined with
perspectives that value chaos, multiplicity, difference, fluctuation, and adaptation.
Given these latter characteristics, in combination with their adversity toward
hierarchy and formal leadership, their desire to reach decisions by consensus, and a
general sense of evolutionary human organization free of structural impositions and
regulations, one could describe their basic approach as anarchistic. The excerpts that
follow were taken from a Faerie listserv.
The Faeries are both gay men, and men who prefer to use any other
moniker that might describe them as well as women who wish to be a part
of the group, and people who choose not to be called men or women and
beings who choose not to be called people. Faeries are organized as a
group attempting to create community out of ritual and cooperation, except
for Faeries who are attempting to create community out of subversion of
process and structure, as well as some Faeries who wish to create chaos,
often celebrating it, often not admitting it.
Many Faeries are spiritual, lifting whole or part of their spirituality from
any one of the worlds religions or spiritualities, some make up their own,
some make a mix. Some react against spirituality and religion as it's own
evil, some find a spiritual path in reacting against spirituality. Some Faeries
just want to dress up in drag and perform in the woods, some want to
dress up and not perform, some Faeries want to dress up anywhere they
can, some Faeries don't dress particularly different than they would in any
other environment.
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Some Faeries combine their spirituality with sex, some don't, some are part
of the Faeries just to get laid. Some resent that, some just want to drum by
a campfire, and some want to camp far away from the drumming and get
some sleep.
This is what Faeries are, except for Faeries for which none of this applies.
(Sleepyhead 1996)
Another Faerie writes:
When I try to describe what draws me to the Faeries, I usually talk about
gay men exploring what being gay means, Harry Hay’s idea of figuring
out what particular viewpoint or gift we may have to offer the world. That
exploration has a spiritual component, to be sure, but it also touches all
kinds of other facets of life from social organization to mental outlook.
And as far as I can tell, we haven’t found any undisputed universals
among the Faeries yet. If you want to talk tendencies, we tend to be gay
men (though at least on the east coast there are Faerie-identified women
who assert their right to be a part of who we are; I also know Faeries who
consider their pets to be Faerie-identified...), tend to feel like we are misfits
in the everyday world, tend to believe that life should offer more than the
drab, rigid patterns of “normal” life...
But...I’m not even sure I could agree that it is a spiritual path. I see the
Faeries more as a culture. Within that culture are many potential spiritual
directions and possibilities, some of them joyfully contradictory.
As for what we do, yes, we develop rituals, we create vehicles for
entertaining and inspiring each other. We put on gatherings, we cook, we
sing, we laugh, we play, we try to do a little business to keep things from
falling apart, we bitch about our lives, we share, we dress up, we put our
hands in the dirt, we organize urban public interventions, we make friends,
we send e:mail, we struggle, we dream, we remember our dead... I would
also say that we create our own holidays, occasionally drawing on the
power of existing holidays, be they Christian, pagan or secular. If the
moon happens to be full, all the better— but in the 1 1 years that I’ ve been
going to gatherings, I would have to say that the celebrations, the rituals,
the holidays I've celebrated with the Faeries have been the culmination of
whatever traditions happened to be there that night— whatever was
convenient, significant or urgent. (Couillard 1996a)
And another adds:
A central tenet of Faerie lore is that there is no single definition of Faerie.
Faerie is a self-assumed identity—permeable, mutable, contradictory.
Unfixed. Individual. So, no strict definitions here. Just an out-line, much
transgressed, sketched in my own, very idiosyncratic hand.
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Some would place the starting of the Faerie movement as a Labor Day
weekend gathering in 1979 in Arizona. But I would say this was just one
event, a festive blip, in a line going infinitely back, infinitely forward...
The radical Faeries lay claim to the role of sacred boundary crosser in this
place and in this time. To be sure, Faeries have their own boundaries,
which are continually questioned and crossed. To be blunt, Faeries are
mostly gay men. The other boundary is geographic: North America. As
such, Faeries draw from the cultural traditions that come together on that
part of the planet: euro-pa, diaspora black, native american, hispanic, asian.
The Faeries are rife with contradictions and tensions, and can be
exasperating. But there is a spirit in the Faeries of withholding judgment
and going on with the show. The intent is magical—transforming
ourselves and the world through spirit. And that's how we re radical in the
root sense of the word...
Since I believe that Faerie-ness is fundamentally a matter of remaking
culture, the best way to understand Faeries is to look at the patterns we
play with.
Circles: Fundamentally, Faeries are a group of people who have agreed to
listen to each other. This listening, this talking, occurs in the most
elemental of Faerie forms-the circle. People sit around. A talisman is
passed. Whoever holds the talisman is listened to.
Gatherings: A lived experience of communal Faerie culture: usually over
several days; usually in the country. Faeries conceptualize gatherings in
many different ways. Some see them as performance, or a healing rite, or a
tribal meeting, or a vacation. Aside from contributing to the pool for
running the gathering, money is not used: food, clothing, shelter is freely
given and taken: abundance reigns. Time becomes a matter of riding the
rhythm of the day. Faeries relax, and smile more. They touch each other a
lot.
Sanctuary: Faeries are far from real estate mavens. Land cannot be
owned, really. However, land can become a focused repository of Faerie
culture and energy. As of this writing, there are four Faerie sanctuaries:
Short Mountain in Tennessee, Kawashaway in Minnesota, Amber Fox in
Ontario and Wolf Creek in Oregon. But then, there are many other Faerie
sanctuaries: city apartments, small farms, a knoll in the park. It's all in the
living.
Ritual: There is no single Faerie spirituality. I have been at gatherings
with Catholic priests, staunch agnostics, and pagan witches. However, there
is a Faerie spiritual urge, which is to unite queemess with the sacred.
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That is, we are sacred because we are queer.
Most gatherings include at least one group ritual. Not every Faerie believes
rituals to be central to the gathering experience; many Faeries don't even
go. It is true that Faerie rituals usually follow a neopagan formula: a circle
is cast, energy is raised through chanting and dancing, excess energy is
"earthed," the circle is reopened. But no matter how many ceremonial
magick queens get together, Faerie rituals always get gate crashed by the
trickster spirits of Anar-she and X-hileration. A chant is spontaneously
changed; a dance breaks out; a new goddess is named.
Every Faerie communes with the sacred as an ontological fact. We don't
need a recognized priesthood or a tradition to guide us.
Drag: You can call "yoo-hoo" and "hey girl" to death, but the surest way
to get a group of Faeries together is to empty out a big plastic garbage bag
of fabulous thrift store finds. Changing drag, changing self presentation,
changing self: a Faerie putting together a new outfit-paisley scarf, metallic
blouse, prized skirt—is not demonstrating conformity, not dressing for the
office. She is exploring a new dimension to herself, dancing the edge
between male and female, the alleged sacred and supposed profane, the
lavender fantastic and the lavender present. She is being fabulous.
Hissing: Snakes shed their skin like Faeries shed their drag. Snakes crawl
on the ground, close to the mother, like Faeries value the state of being
grounded, close to the mother. Snakes hiss like Faeries hiss: to say we re
near. Sssssssssss.
A Spell
The Faeries are a coming together within a queer context of other strands
of oppositional North American culture. Within the patterns of Faerie
culture, all these strands get woven, cut, sewn and accessorized. Since I am
a witch, and think in terms of spells, I would like to name those
strands, and braid them together into a sacred lavender cord:
Anarchism. For a movement toward decentralism and small communities
where the individual is prized. Non-dogmatic, leaderless.
Feminism. For a value of women and womanly qualities and stance against
the patriarchy.
Anti-racism. For an appreciation of the value of diversity and the
excitement of many cultural traditions.
Gay Liberation. For an exploration of the radical potential of gay identity.
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Hippies. For spontaneous mass cultural transformation, communalism,
and good drag.
Neopaganism. For new forms of ritual and a realization of the immanent
spirit.
Ecology. For a respect for nature.
Mens Movement. For men coming together and examining the conditions
of their lives.
At the end of this cord I would tie a bead. The bead would be stone bead,
ancient, sacred, and heavy. Very heavy. The bead would be the weight of a
pendulum swinging across time, connecting me to the sissie priests and
shamans of the past and the future. The bead would be my marking
amulet, so others may know me. The bead would be a condensation of
energy, a source of knowledge and power.
The bead would be a Faerie bead. (Trixie 1996)
Faeries in Socio-Historical Context
The particulars of living at Zuni Mountain Sanctuary have forced the
stewards to negotiate a mode of existence that makes them nearly always cognizant
of its subversive contexts. In general, this has turned out to mean that collective
interests at the Sanctuary revolve around building a community that serves as a safe
haven for people who wish to distance themselves from what they see as the
inevitable products of Western capitalist society: bureaucracy, competition,
consumerism, alienated work, careerism, pollution, suburban sprawl, oppressive
hierarchies, corporate control, isolation and dissolution of a sense of community,
sexual oppression and possessiveness, and heterosexism. Sanctuary stewards share
a communal building with kitchen, dining, living, and office spaces. Private
residences (tents, adobes, straw bail structures, etc.) are personally tailored and
usually shared by friends and/or significant others. Most have an interest in
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permaculture (environmentally sound agriculture) and help farm as much of the land
as possible. All energy is generated via solar and wind technologies. The only
formal creed or rule is that all community decisions be reached by consensus.
This type of communal living (a self-reliant, close-knit collective removed
from the mainstream) has a long history in the West. In fact, counterculture
communes of the 1960’s were preceded by many approaches to communal living,
most of them affiliated with religious movements of one sort or another. Among the
more noteworthy in this history are the Essenes (a group of pious men observed by
Philo during the first century A. D.), the St. Benedictine monasteries of the sixth
century, Protestant-inspired communities like the Hutterites (the largest and oldest
of all communal societies in North America who rejected baptism, abolished private
property and formed “communities of love” based on Christian pacifism), the New
Harmonists (German immigrants led by Father Rapp in the early 1800’s to prepare
for the second coming of Christ), and the Oneida community (a religious sect led by
John Humphrey devoted to “Perfectionism” known for their system of complex
marriage), (Popenoe 1984).
In his work on the history of American cooperative communities from 1820-
1920, Edward Spann argues that the doctrines held by many early American
collectives indicate that their motivations were influenced heavily by what he
identifies as a broader social trend at the time: radical social idealism—a belief that
“cooperation could replace competition as the governing influence over human
social behavior” (Spann 1989: xiii). According to Spann, this principle was the
guiding force for a number of communities that sought to create a “just and
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prosperous social life” that was attainable through cooperative living and the
rejection of “wasteful and brutal conflict” (Spann 1989: 2).
Many American groups formed in order to commit themselves to new
systems of faith that combined both traditional religion and the emerging principles
of social science. Spann positions these two systems in terms of millenarianism
(“the belief that God, as part of his plan for Humankind, would Himself soon
institute a heaven on earth to be enjoyed by those who had been his faithful
followers”) and rationalism (the Enlightenment-inspired “secular faith that through
the exercise of human reason Man could eventually construct for himself a heaven
on earth; that the truly good life and society was possible once humanity had
cleansed itself of the errors that had corrupted the past”), (Spann 1989: 2).
Together, these principles shaped communities in which individuals sacrificed
personal interests in favor of collective ones, which included everything from daily
routines to restructuring conceptions of sexuality and marriage (an area of particular
interest to most of these groups). Through this combination of social critique and
collective community, they sought personal and collective transformation: “In the
existing culture lay the roots of evil; in some new rationalist faith were the seeds of
earthly salvation” (Spann 1989: 279). Spann concludes that, in the end these
collectives “failed” since they did not transform the larger North American culture.
This, he argues, was primarily due to the fact that, “the world seemed to demonstrate
that conflict was more natural than cooperation and hatred more powerful than
love,” where “the most compelling influences were fear and force” (Spann 1989:
282).
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Although many Faeries at the Sanctuary also share a critique of the North
American ‘mainstream,’ their motivations for forming their community do not seem
to include the Modernist sense of idealism and rationalism held by the early
collectives Spann examines. In part, this is because the Sanctuary stewards seem to
have conceptualized change and resistance differently, perhaps more in line with the
notions proposed by Roszak, where each person’s own conception of what is
culturally and personally ‘central,’ and therefore most important, takes precedence
over broad conceptions of identity categories or group agendas based entirely on
opposition to the ‘mainstream.’ And, while spirituality is central to many Faeries at
the Sanctuary, the disparate, varied, and appropriated forms it takes are quite
different from the largely Judeo-Christian-inspired doctrines of the groups Spann
examines.
Nevertheless, what the Sanctuary seems to share with this long tradition of
American collective communities is an affiliation with utopian imaginaries often tied
to what some have called the frontier mentality, environmentalism, and survivalism.
In his ethnographic work on a community called “The Ranch,” Bennett Berger
examines “the radical tradition,” and identifies some continuities in the history of
U.S. radical movements, namely “(pastoralism, anarchism, romantic bohemianism,
apocalypse, Asian religion or mysticism, American Indian lore) synthesized in
eclectic and syncretic ways with radical political and personal experiments in
equality, sexuality, effusive ‘expressiveness,’ and other ‘liberations’” (Berger
1981: 195). This history, he adds, has mixed oddly in rural communes with the
American tradition of pioneers and rugged survivalists who were part of a consistent
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stream of rebellion against the North American ‘mainstream’ for generation after
generation.
Other authors such as Brudenell (1983), Bouvard (1975), Kanter (1972),
and Zablocki (1980), have argued similarly about the general parallels among the
various ideologies of North American intentional communities and how they are tied
to the history of the United States at large. While most include thorough
examinations of commonalities and differences among and between a wide range of
intentional communities, many do not investigate the connections between radical
communities, or further still, the connections that are made between radical
communities, those who visit them, and those outside of the counterculture
altogether. Brudenell—borrowing from Bateson (1979)—does call for research into
“not only the “patterns” (i.e., the distinctive nature of each communal group) but
also the “patterns that connect” those patterns (i.e., the networking),” but this aim
still neglects any attempt to understand how these patterns might impact those not
directly affiliated with the communities or the counterculture in some manner
(Brudenell 1983: 253). That is one of the main tasks of this thesis, and is one of the
reasons that I have chosen to integrate an analytical perspective that acknowledges
the potential for agency as it relates to imagination and imaginaries.
Imagination and Imaginaries
The word imagination has a number of connotations that problematize its
use in cultural analysis. Although many of these connotations originated at specific
historical points, they often continue to influence the general perception of the term.
For example, in the context of Enlightenment-era privileging of ‘rational’ thought
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and behavior, imagination carried with it a set of associations that implied that it had
no bearing on daily existence or practice. Imagining, from this view, was seen as
escapist, frivolous, even wasteful or overly indulgent. More recently, it is often
assumed (as is often the case in Iiberationist identity politics movements), that "true’
social change can come about only from ‘rational’ acts based in ‘reality.’ Other
general associations with the word imagination have tended to lean in the opposite
direction. Romantic and Renaissance connotations were often exultant, such as
Baudelaire’s decree “Imagination created the world.” (Baudelaire 1962: 139).
However, theorists working specifically with the concept of imagination have
offered a more carefully considered framework. This is not to say that imagining
itself has been fixed and defined within theories of imagination. In fact, its appeal as
a topic of analysis may in fact lie in the phenomena’s ambiguity. In any case,
theories of imagination in Western philosophical history can be traced back at least
as far as works by Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, who wrote about
‘phantasia’ as a “false” state of being. Later, Modem theorists such as Kant,
Coleridge, and Baudelaire each developed their own theories of imagination, most of
which are now classified as romantic perspectives that concentrate mainly on the
human capacity “to convert absence into presence, actuality into possibility, what-is
into something-other-than-what-is.. .to transform the time and space of our
environment into a specifically human mode of existence” (Kearney 1991: 4).
Following the groundwork laid by these theorists, a number of philosophers
working in phenomenology (Husserl and Heidegger chief among them) contributed
significantly to theories of imagination through a reconsideration of the
methodological approach to the subject. Their projects were concerned with
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questioning the origins of various phenomena, thereby “enabling us to ask what
things mean—as if we were asking for the first time.. .[in] an attitude of methodic
unknowing” (Kearney 1991: 5). This work further inspired existentialist
contributions from Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, as well as poetic treatments from
Bachelard, more recent post-structuralist approaches by Derrida and Lyotard, and
hermeneutic interpretations from Ricoeur and Vattimo.
In terms of the views this thesis supports, early phenomenological
approaches provide a useful interpretation of imagination that values it as “a
productive act of consciousness, not a mental reproduction in the mind” or “a
luxury of idle fancy” (Kearney 1991: 6). Such theories position imagination as “an
original synthesis which precedes the age-old opposition between the sensible and
the intelligible” (Kearney 1991: 6). With this emphasis on original synthesis,
however, the phenomenological imagination often tends to focus on and essentialize
the individual imagination, sometimes borrowing from psychology to trace its
‘origins’ within a methodology that assumes it is possible to find the ‘core’ of
imagination without regard for the influence of cultural contexts. The objective of
this thesis is not to analyze individual imagination in these terms, but to see Faerie
imaginings as continually fluctuating, undetermined, yet important components
within a larger process of social change, and to identify the role that these
imaginings have within that process of change. This perspective does not share the
phenomenological goal of digging for the supposed origins of imagining. Instead, it
attempts to integrate the ever-changing cultural contexts of imagining through the
inclusion of the concept of shared, or social, imaginaries.
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In Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, Ricoeur defines the social imaginary as
“a whole set of collective stories and histories which need not bear the signature of
any individual author, and which exercise a formative influence on our modes of
action and behaviour in society” (Kearney 1991: 157). Kearney contextualizes this
broader scope of imagining in a summary of Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of the
relationship between individual imagination and shared/social imaginaries:
The world is full with the imaginary. Not, as Sartre maintained, because the
imaginary is its negation, but because it is its expression. Even society
itself is, in a fundamental sense, an incarnation of human imagining. Each
institution, Merleau-Ponty affirms, is a symbolic system that human
subjects incorporate into their behaviour as a certain style of conduct. And
every individual imagination is charged accordingly by the symbols of
society which surround it — as it in turn recharges these symbols with its
own creativity... (Kearney 1991: 128)
Cornelius Castoriadis contributes similarly through his concept of the
radical imaginary. He argues that imaginings (both individual and shared), are never
fully defined, and that social institutions are the products of shared (or “socio-
historical”) imaginaries. He states:
The imaginary of which I am speaking is not an image of. It is the
unceasing and essentially undetermined (socio-historical and psychical)
creation of figures/forms/images, on the basis of which alone there can
ever be a question o f ‘something.’ What we call ‘reality’ and ‘rationality’
are its works.
Beyond the conscious activity of institutionalization, institutions have
drawn their source from the social imaginary. (Castoriadis 1987: 3, 131)
Utopian imaginaries can help bring this process into focus. It has always
been clear that the specifics of living in ‘utopia’ are often radically different
amongst those advancing the concept. This is especially the case when considering
the wide range of manifestations of ‘utopia’ in North American intentional
communities throughout history. However, as Spann argues, many of these
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communities actually share a collective set of utopian ideals that are less clearly
defined than their living practices or purported doctrines. For example, as different
as the Sanctuary may be from religious intentional communities of the late 18lh and
early IQ "1 centuries, the stewards do share a collective set of utopian imaginaries that
are similar. While never clearly defined, these imaginaries include idealistic
associations with living in a close knit community, combined with a frontier
mentality, environmentalism, survivalism, and some shared sense of spirituality.
Practices inspired by these utopian imaginaries, however, vary radically from
community to community. Utopian imaginaries, like many other social imaginaries,
are not tangible or demonstrable, but undetermined and fluctuating realms of
thought that are instrumental in shaping things like social institutions (in this case
the organization and function of intentional communities).
The undetermined nature of imaginaries is a conceptual challenge, of course,
especially in terms of social analysis. However, it is not imaginaries per se on which
I intend to focus here, but the role they play within the process of social change.
Wolfgang Iser offers a useful analytical rubric that establishes an interrelated triad
between imaginaries, the fictive, and empirical experience (constructed ‘reality’). He
argues that “.. .the act of fictionalizing is a crossing of boundaries.. .an act of
transgression” (Iser 1993: 3). In this context, fictionalizing (not to be confused with
the imaginary or imagining) is a guided act that “.. .aims at something that in turn
endows the imaginary with an articulate gestalt—a gestalt that differs from the
fantasies, projections, daydreams, and other reveries that ordinarily give the
imaginary expression in our day-to-day experience (Iser 1993: 3).” In short,
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fictionalizing is a transgressive act that provides a kind of determinancy that
references an imaginary. He continues:
Just as the fictionalizing act outstrips the determinancy of the real, so it
provides the imaginary with the determinancy that it would not otherwise
possess...We can now see two distinct processes, which are set in motion
by the act of fictionalizing. Reproduced reality is made to point to a
‘reality’ beyond itself, while the imaginary is lured into form. In each case
there is a crossing of boundaries: the determinancy of reality is exceeded
at the same time that the diffuseness of the imaginary is controlled and
called into form.. .The text, then, functions to bring into view the interplay
among the fictive, the real, and the imaginary. Although each component of
the triad fulfills a significant function, the act of fictionalizing is of
paramount importance: it crosses the boundaries both of what it organizes
(external reality) and of what it converts into a gestalt (the diffuseness of
the imaginary). It leads the real to the imaginary and the imaginary to the
real, and it thus conditions the extent to which a given world is to be
transcoded, a nongiven world is to be conceived, and the reshuffled worlds
are made accessible to the reader’s experience. (Iser 1993: 3-4)
Of course, Iser is operating in the realm of literary criticism here. However, I
would assert that the triad he describes can be used in ethnographic analyses as well.
In particular, the practices on which I chose to focus during my fieldwork can be
interpreted as fictionalizing acts (life histories, storytelling, poetry. Faerie rituals,
etc.). In Iser’s terms they are the means through which Faerie imaginaries attain
determinancy, or are ^actualized’. Their ‘texts’ are spoken word, body language,
objects such as shrines, and other expressions that are presented in order to outstrip
empirical experience and to tap imaginaries for those who ‘read’ them. Iser refers to
these texts as ‘activators’ and proposes that imaginaries reveal themselves to the
‘reader’ through an interplay between the imaginaries and the various activators that
reference them. He states: “...play may be seen as a product of activation as well as
a condition for the productivity brought about by the interaction it stimulates. It is
this dual process that gives the imaginary its presence” (Iser 1993: 223).
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Within Iser’s construct, both the act of fictionalizing and the act of ‘reading’
are crucial in the function of this triad. They are both active sites of agency within
the interplay he describes; points at which new “worlds” are constructed, and then
interpreted, within a continual interplay between imaginaries and empirical
experience. For the Faerie practices I examine in this thesis, their execution (as
fictionalizing acts) brings a set of utopian imaginaries into view, resulting in texts
that are read by those present in an interplay with the referenced imaginaries. Those
who ‘read’ these acts in tum engage in their own processes of fictionalizing. The
entire cycle (fictionalizing and reading and again fictionalizing, etc.) is in continual
flux; where individuals are influenced by shared imaginaries while they also reshape
them through their practice, thereby influencing the read others take away, who, in
tum, construct more practices within this ongoing interplay.
Iser extends this process further to social imaginaries and their relationship
to social institutions. Through Castoriadis’ work, Iser argues that social institutions
are actually ‘fictional texts’ of a sort, which are drawn from social imaginaries. He
states that “for Castoriadis, change is an integral element of society, the imaginary
replaces myth as the foundation, not only in order to emphasize the fact that society
is a product but also in order to make the actual stage of this production available to
analysis” (Iser 1993: 208). He continues:
Social life has no original content of its own that is independent of
imaginary significations and their resultant institutions.. .Imaginary social
significations—at any rate, those that are truly primary—denote nothing at
all, and they connote just about everything... And precisely because they
do not denote an existing world of objects, the things they connote lack
determinacy, and such a lack cannot ultimately disguise the fact that their
‘being’ is a mere positing which can be undone or replaced by something
else.” (Iser 1993: 217)
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This position, when considered in light of the influence that practice can have
over social imaginaries as described above, suggests that the interplay between some
practices and social imaginaries also has the potential to restructure or “undo”
social institutions as well. This is because, as Iser argues, social change actually
takes place at the level of social imaginaries, which are continually reshaped by
individual practices (fictionalized acts) and the subsequent ‘readings’ of their
‘texts’. Iser’s use of the term play, then, becomes the loci for agency:
.. .play may be seen as a product of activation as well as the condition for
the productivity brought about by the interaction it stimulates. It is this
dual process that gives the imaginary its presence...
As this playing never ends, its results—the phantasms of the psyche, the
socially instituted individual, the configurations of imaginary
significations.. .can always be undone. (Iser 1993: 223, 221)
This is perhaps the direction in which Appadurai aims when he argues that
the expansion of mass media and new technologies has created a world where,
“fantasy is now a social practice” (Appadurai 1991: 198). His conception of
“global ethnoscapes” seems to identify external influences on shared imaginaries
within smaller groups (such as television-watching for the poverty-stricken populace
of many non-Westem countries, for example) that can then later have political
ramifications in the form of collective expressions and practices formed within an
interplay with imaginaries introduced by Western mass media. If we integrate Iser’s
perspective here, these new practices and their readings have the potential to affect
social change within larger social institutions as well, since they are integrated into
an interplay with social imaginaries that eventually shape dominant social
institutions.
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In the end, the question I am posing for this thesis is how practices that are
caught up in an interplay with a set of shared imaginaries (like the kinds of utopian
imaginaries shared at the Sanctuary) can affect a wave of shifts in subsequent
practices that relate to broader social imaginaries to the point where they have the
potential to reshape dominant social institutions. And, more specifically, where are
the reverberations of practice that head in this direction located and how do they
operate? What I intend to argue in this thesis is that the answer lies in part in
practices that use strategic transgressions within this process.
Practice. Power, and Agency
Because imaginaries are so elusive, and interplay in a state of continual flux,
practice, or more accurately, the ‘texts’ it produces, are the only tangible or fixed
points available for analysis in this process. This is not to say that these more
undetermined concepts will not be integrated into this work, but that practice and its
products are the anchors (albeit, constructed ones) from which we must begin.
Furthermore, in any consideration of practice that offers insight into its impact on
cultural interactions and eventual socio-political ramifications (i.e. potential changes
in social imaginaries and, consequently, dominant social institutions), a series of
arguments should be considered with regard to the power dynamics operating both
within—and in relationship to—Bourdieu’s notions of practice (what people do),
habitus (the “system of internalized structures, schemes of perception, conception,
and action common to all members of the same group”), and doxa (“the natural and
social world [that] appears as self-evident”). In particular, I intend to reconsider the
boundaries and limitations of these categories (and the configuration of agency
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locked within them) so that practice might be reinterpreted for its potential to
eventually increase the possibility for reconfigurations of ‘mainstream’
understandings of identity, community, kinship, spirituality, sexuality, and the
environment.
Although Bourdieu clearly recognizes the strength of a focus on practice in
anthropological analyses, his Outline of a Theory o f Practice largely neglects the
complexity of the power dynamics inherent within it as well as the reverberating
influence that practice can have outside of a subject’s habitus. He positions the
production of practice as the active set of behaviors between any given habitus (“the
durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisations”) and its
“cognitive and motivating structures” (Bourdieu 1977: 78). This enclosed
relationship between practice, habitus and structure assumes that habitus, while
constantly changing due to practice and continually influencing practice as well, is
largely an isolated social unit encased by another social realm called doxa, in which
“the natural and social world appears as self-evident” (Bourdieu 1977: 164). In
short, Bourdieu sees agency as constrained by practice that is, in tum, constrained
by habitus, which is contained within doxa.
While his approach successfully incorporates a sensitivity to temporal
influences in cultural analyses and creates a greater space for individual agency
(through practice) and its influence on the habitus, its isolated view of any given
group locks it within the very approach Bourdieu critiques: structuralism. In a sense,
he has created a form of analysis that merely ‘enlivens’ structural analyses without
recognizing that groups and cultures interact and are rarely isolated entities.
Furthermore, Bourdieu’s sense of agency in this context is limited to an individual’s
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ability to affect her/his habitus, thereby disregarding any influence that agency may
have on another habitus, how one habitus might relate to another, and still further,
how agency might affect that part of “the natural and social world [that] appears as
self-evident” (Bourdieu 1977: 164). This, of course, brings into question
Bourdieu’s notion of doxa. For whom is doxa self-evident and might not this self
evidence vary from person to person; or could any given doxa be alternately—or
even simultaneously—disclosed and shrouded, or continually fluctuating (as social
imaginaries are)?
These critiques of Bourdieu’s work expose the isolated conceptions of
culture in his analysis, as well as his attempts to divide the cultural into realms such
as habitus, structure, and doxa that ignore their interconnectedness with one another
and with other cultures as well. In terms of the analysis of practice at the Sanctuary
and its potential for broader socio-political impact, it is necessary to break through
some of the boundaries drawn by Bourdieu between one habitus and another,
habitus and doxa, and to fill the gap between practice and doxa. Part of this
boundary breaking includes a reconsideration of agency that moves beyond the role
attributed to it by Bourdieu. For example, how might various practices transgress
cultural boundaries and draw attention to their constructed nature? And, furthermore,
how might agency have repercussions beyond those of the agent’s own habitus and
into the realm Bourdieu defines as “self-evident?” A consideration of Foucault’s
notion of power can help us conceptualize some possible routes.
The use of the term ‘power’ in this section is meant to be interpreted in its
Foucaultian sense: an omnipresent set of force relations that are “always-already
present” (Foucault 1978: 82-83,92-93). This understanding of power, as Foucault
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states, should not be interpreted as an attempt to deny the impact of “juridico-
discursive” manifestations that these power relations can have (Foucault 1978: 82-
83,92-93). In fact, it is likely that some very specific manifestations of power
relations (bureaucracy, war, consumerism, careerism, alienated work, suburbia,
emotional repression, hierarchy, authority, corporate capitalism, sexual
possessiveness, and the isolated nuclear family) motivated many of the Sanctuary
stewards to leave ‘mainstream’ North America and develop a community that is ‘off
the grid’ both in terms of consumption and, to a lesser extent, contemporary Euro-
American culture and its gay subculture. But, in the context of this analysis, these
manifestations, and the stewards’ response, are merely the “terminal forms that
power takes” (Foucault 1978: 92). Although some Faeries may disagree with my
approach, I am not positioning Faeries as a group of non-conformists who are
oppressed by the dominant ‘mainstream,’ but rather as non-conformists who have a
valuable alternative voice within a larger power discourse—a voice that is a minority
within “a multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various
strategies” (Foucault 1978: 100). Within this framework, then, it is less interesting
for me to ask why the stewards came to the Sanctuary (although that is important) or
what they hope to ‘accomplish,’ but what kind of practices they have developed, and
how those practices determine the shape of their lives and eventually the lives of
others.
Given this view of power, it should be clear that the stewards (who are likely
to be considered ‘deviant’ by many North Americans) are not trapped by “seeking
the promise of ‘liberation’,” since their goals do not include assimilation into the
‘mainstream’ or an identity politics-based liberationist war waged against various
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manifestations of the North American juridico-discursive system (Foucault 1978:
83). Yet, some form of resistance to ‘mainstream’ social constructions is taking
place at the Sanctuary, a resistance that I have argued is made up of strategic
transgressions routed through imaginaries—via a complex field of interplay.
Although Foucault does open up a space for resistance in his work, his emphasis is
more often focused on the subject and actions as products reflecting the power
paradigm he outlines. In The History o f Sexuality, he states: “The mind is a surface
of inscription for power, with semiology as its tool” (Foucault 1978: 102).
Furthermore, what both Foucault and Bourdieu do not examine is how an individual
might skillfully negotiate a path of transgressions within a “multiplicity of
discursive elements” that both break through the limitations and boundaries of
habitus and expose or possibly alter the social structures that often subsume
difference under models of Western morality.
This thesis represents an attempt to map how the stewards at the Sanctuary
might be enacting practices in ways that eventually transform the ‘doxa’ of the
North American juridico-discursive system; a system so steeped in modernist
notions of power, law and Christian morality that it pervades conceptions of not only
sexuality and gender, but even basic patterns of living such as community, kinship,
spirituality, uses of space, and modes of daily subsistence. In other words, how
might the stewards’ set of practices impact subsequent practices in an ongoing set
of reverberations that continually alter still other interactions between practice and
imaginaries to the point where this process eventually shifts broader social
imaginaries, thereby providing those immersed within the ‘mainstream’ with some
impetus to reconceptualize their way of life?
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It is important to note that this exploration is not rooted in a belief that
transgressions are conceived outside the realm of cultural influences from some
inner space within individuals who then import this revelation to their culture.
Instead, my argument is more in line with an interpretation of agency that Kenneth
Gergen has termed “relational engagement.” He states:
Rather than viewing individuals as originary sources of their own
actions..., let us abandon the entire voluntarism-determinism binary. To
speak of either of these symbiotic languages is optional, and we are not
obliged either to chose between them or to sustain one pole at the expense
of the other. Rather, let us consider individual action as always already
embedded within patterns of relationship. One acquires impetus (indexed
as a sense of motive, consciousness of value, or desire) by virtue of the
manner in which one is enmeshed in relationship...We possess telos or
direction in life not because of some inner possession of motive, calling, or
biological proclivity, but by virtue of the forms of relationship of which we
are a part. Agency, then, may be more usefully conceptualized as a form of
relational engagement. (To want is to “want with,” to “chose” is to
reflect the condition of one’s relatedness.). (Gergen 1999: 9)
This relational view of agency integrates cultural contexts in a way that broadens not
only the influence of imaginaries on individual acts (as Foucault would have it), but
also the potential for individual acts to shape imaginaries. It is the fabric that
conducts Iser’s conception of interplay.
The following sections are concerned primarily with mapping some of the
routes that this process of interplay might take. In particular, I offer a set of texts
drawn from interviews with the stewards, online mailing lists, and my own field
observations at the Sanctuary, as the bases for examining Faerie practice as
fictionalizing acts that bring Faerie utopian imaginaries into view. I have divided the
practices I examine into two general areas: domestic transgressions and ritual
transgressions. After each, I consider the reverberations of these practices in terms
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of paths and/or routes of agency they have taken. More specifically, I examine how
the texts produced as a result of these practices (through an interplay with
imaginaries) are ‘read’ by those present, and further, how these readers might then
contribute new practices in subsequent interplays with those imaginaries in a
process that continually reshapes subsequent practices, broader social imaginaries,
and eventually the social institutions formed under their influence.
PART II: FAERIE TRANSGRESSIONS
Creating Sanctuary
Granite: What keeps me here is that the dreams are real.
At the Sanctuary, imagination and imaginaries have guided the development
of the community from its inception. In fact, much of the routine or domestic
practice of living at the Sanctuary is a process reflective of an interplay with shared
utopian imaginaries. For Arcturus, Frog, Littlefoot, and Owl (the initial founders of
the Sanctuary) this included creating an environment where stewards could eschew
what they saw as the limitations of the American mainstream through a collective,
‘natural’ way of living that is integrated with the earth, their sense of community
(‘off-grid’, close-knit, self-sustaining, etc.), their spiritualities (largely neopagan),
and their sexualities (a range tending toward same-sex eroticism). As the community
has grown and developed over the past few years, the stewards have begun to
recognize that imagining, creating, and living in a sanctuary for both stewards and
visitors is an evolving and fluctuating process.
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The following poem was written at the Sanctuary (one line per resident) in
an effort to begin textualizing a group vision for the community.
VISION POEM, Zuni Mountain Sanctuary, Winter 1996
Believe in the space between solitude and commonality
Suspended between the right now and forever.
Celestial-earthly miraculous home and sanctuary
Dancing out into spirals across the land
Queers dancing now and forever
As one being
Delight in the love and evil Goddess has to offer
Winter soul dreaming of springing free
Free to be and know who we are in love
Flowing into new levels of knowing
Can't is the enemy of CAN, CAN is the key to success
You can feel it in every cell of her body
This compilation of visions, with its references to the “right now and
forever,” and the “Celestial-earthly miraculous home,” convey the space in which
the stewards position themselves, one in which imagined community is pragmatized
through practice. For the stewards, imaginings like “forever,” “miraculous” and
“Celestial” are part of an “earthly...home.” Like Appadurai’s grinding “gears
between unfolding lives and their imagined counterparts,” the stewards of the
Sanctuary have made this process of engaging utopian imaginaries a way of life
(Appadurai 1991: 198). The community, the land itself, the buildings on it, the
bodies of the stewards, the “Goddess,” the “Celestial,” all interact within a set of
complex and interrelated processes. Through routine or domestic practice, imagined
conceptions of sanctuary and the practice of sanctuary are intertwined, in a co
modification of one another. Practice can be conceived of as a living experiment for
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the execution or realization of imaginaries, where the results of the experiment are
reincorporated back into the ever-changing vision for the community.
As originally conceived, the term sanctuary seems to have been interpreted
by the stewards as an alternative community, a refuge, that exists (as much as
possible) outside of the structure and influence of what the stewards identify as
dysfunctional, and ‘unnatural’ North American ‘mainstream,’ where difference and
interdependent cooperation are often not rewarded. Maqui states:
...reading like... ZuniMan-Woman, um, and seeing that we’re two-
spirited, that we possess the masculine and the feminine Self, and, not
being able to express that in this society, um.. .1 believe drove a lot of
people to another lifetime. With the vex of alcoholism and drugs, we all
went out looking for that...ways to make an effect, and couldn’t, and
wasn’t being heard. So, I believe that giving a place for that, a person to
come and discover that, to try doing something else, is.. .is important.
In a similar vein, Eden has commented:
I described it.. .first as Zuni Mountain Sanctuary, a tract of land in New
Mexico where the people living there are living an alternative lifestyle
based on spiritual growth, environmental awareness, and self-sustaining
farming and agriculture. It’s a sanctuary for people to come to with
comfort and support...and a solid base.
In routine practices at the Sanctuary, this vision has played itself out in ways that
have come to demonstrate a strong mutual commitment to each other for daily
subsistence (sharing responsibilities for firewood collection, meal preparation,
building construction, property maintenance, etc.), and for each steward’s emotional,
psychological, and spiritual well-being (assumed participation in community
meetings, openly expressing emotions, demonstrating concern for others, etc.).
Therefore, within this interdependent, self-marginalized collective, household chores
are interpreted as contributions to the community, and ‘heart circles’ a
demonstration of emotional commitment to others in the group.
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Creating a sanctuary from the North American ‘mainstream’ has also meant
building a set of practices that exist as much as possible outside of hierarchic social
structures. Most decisions at the Sanctuary are made through a process of
consensus, with the exception of committees that are occasionally formed to perform
a specific task. Owl describes the approach in terms of workplace practice:
Like when I first came here I thought I’d be learning more on, how to live
away from a city, but that, that’s the easy part. It’s learning to live with
other people, learning how to interact with different personalities. Always
before, you know, when you work at, when you work in a workplace,
there’s a set structure, where somebody’s in charge, and basically that, you
have to follow the chain of command. Whereas here, there is no, one
leader, so you have to be able to work out something that’s acceptable to
everyone. So, it’s a little different than, other types of work where either
you’re in charge or somebody else is in charge. Here it’s, everyone’s in
charge, so you have to learn how to work with everyone.
In terms of transgressions, the stewards have created a set of routine
practices that clearly reflect an interplay with utopian and counterculture imaginaries.
Their privileging of cooperative acts over individual interests, as well as their non-
conforming conceptions of spirituality, gender and sexuality, are all positioned well
outside of North American establishment understandings of community (where
individualism and competition are rewarded), spirituality (majority Christian), and
gender and sexuality (identity politic categories coupled with a moral privileging of
gender conformity and heterosexuality). The stewards—all same-sex erotically-
inclined (some of whom are coupled or in multiple-partner relationships)—also
transgress the North American ‘norms’ of kinship (nuclear families and/or the
mother-children family unit),‘mainstream’ divisions of labor, hierarchic social
structures, and assumptions regarding the level of involvement one has with others
within a community (financial, emotional, subsistence, etc.). All of these
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transgressions challenge commonly accepted boundaries that are often constructed
between people in the broader North American cultural environment that frequently
privileges individualism, hierarchy, and the specialization of labor.
Blurring Self and Other
The poem from the previous section also expresses a vision for the
Sanctuary that includes creating a space where the stewards are suspended between
“solitude and commonality;” a space where their practices actualize an imaginary of
self and other that is blurred within a collective. An excerpt from my field notes
illustrates how these imaginaries that blur self and other have met with practices that
were inconsistent with them.
March 12, 1997
the Sanctuary main community building
Today’s discussion over breakfast centered around Wind’s stay and
subsequent departure, lasting roughly from December to mid-February
when he was basically asked to leave. From the conversation, it seemed as
if Dipper in particular was especially annoyed by Wind’s inability or
refusal to communicate with the other stewards. According to him, Wind
would behave in a hostile manner (body language, lack of communication)
and then, when he did vocalize his feelings, would claim that he harbored
no resentment or feelings of hostility toward anyone there. Apparently, this
was somehow related to Wind’s claims that the stewards were prying into
his personal life. It was also observed by the stewards that he would
purposefully exclude Owl from certain group settings, especially when he
was preparing food for, and distributing food to, the stewards...[T]his
exclusion obviously disturbed both Owl and Dipper, as they are a couple.
Wind also expressed dissatisfaction with heart circles, claiming that they
are really unnecessary if everyone is in fact honest with the others all of
the time anyway. Eventually, Dipper confronted him in a community
meeting and the level of communication seemed to increase from Wind,
but apparently not to the satisfaction of the group. To give Wind the
benefit of the doubt, Dipper did speculate that his problem with him may
have been at least partly related to his own [Dipper’s] relationship with his
former lover, who didn’t communicate with him very well. Throughout this
explanation of Wind’s stay, mainly narrated by Dipper and supplemented
by Owl, Arcturus remained exceptionally quiet.
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Near the end of the discussion, Arcturus asked Dipper, “But what did you
learn from him?” which seemed to catch Dipper a bit off-guard. After
reflecting a moment, Dipper replied that he learned that other people's
problems are not his own and that Wind’s baggage or troubles or
whatever he was finding difficult to communicate were not something he
could ‘solve.’ After hearing this response, I turned the question back on
Arcturus and asked him what he learned from Wind. Apparently he had a
much closer relationship with Wind than the others and he stated that
among the things he learned from him (besides how to bake bread,
experiment in the kitchen without worrying how other might receive the
food, and doing other people’s dishes without being resentful) were the
roots of some of the reasons that he himself had come to the Sanctuary in
the first place. He saw Wind as a mirror to others and a gift to the
community.
Mikee then mentioned that this experience with Wind was a good
opportunity to examine and determine exactly what ‘sanctuary’ means in
terms of what is expected of guests (as well as potential stewards) and
their level of sharing.
Clearly, Wind’s routine practice was not consistent with the
imagined/practiced conceptions of sanctuary held by the stewards. His inability to
share and meld his sense of self with others conflicted with the interplay that the
stewards had established between their own routine/domestic practices and their
imagined sense of sanctuary— which apparently must include (among other things)
some demonstration of open, honest, and regular communication with the other
stewards. The assumptions the stewards had been making about the shared nature of
imagined/practiced community become even more apparent when considered in light
of the fact that Wind’s inconsistent behaviors were unexpected and the community
had not established any form of ‘screening’ process that might have determined
whether or not a visitor’s perception of sanctuary (in its imagined and practiced
forms) was consistent with those of the stewards. In fact, imagined/practiced
community at the Sanctuary may have been so integral for the stewards that it was
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simply never questioned by either themselves or visitors until this incident. It seems
clear now that imaginaries of sanctuary that elicit behaviors that could be interpreted
as escapist or reclusive are not consistent with the stewards’ interpretations.
Furthermore, assuming that a visitor does share the imagined sense of sanctuary
consistent with those of the stewards, it seems likely that their practice must be
thoroughly engaged in an interplay with an imaginary that blurs self and other in
order to gain full acceptance.
Another illustration of this blurring between self and other is illustrated by
Arcturus’ response to my question regarding Wind (above), and his idea that
(regardless of their level of ‘commitment’ to the community) all visitors are linked
to everyone else at the Sanctuary in common shared experiences, shared space, and
spiritual interrelationships where each person is reflected in the other. In a later
discussion I had with Arcturus, he elaborated on this imagined/practiced realm
where conceptions of self and other collapse:
One of the things that has really surfaced for me is realizing that a lot of
the things that bother me about other people are things within me that I
haven’t dealt with. So, once I got that straight in my head, I quit being
angry at other people, started not being angry at myself, but being
fascinated with by how little I know myself... I feel like I’m doing spiritual
refinement. Like I’ve got the basic crude gems of myself laid out, but I’ve
never picked them up, looked at them, or you know, do I like it natural, do I
want it polished, you know...do I want it? That’s what’s fascinating to me.
So, whenever I see some one new coming into the community, I say here is
a new part of myself I get to explore.
Here, Arcturus has blurred the psychological and discursive boundaries
between himself and others, including visitors at the Sanctuary. This conception has
allowed him to dissolve interpersonal divisions in a way that reconfigures difference
and deflates the potential for antagonistic interactions. It should come as no surprise
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then, that Arcturus was the resident that seemed to ‘connect' best with Wind during
his stay, and in retrospect, the only resident who seemed to apply this approach in a
way that allowed him to more fully integrate and appreciate Wind’s difference.
Granite has described the overall perspective of interpersonal relationships at
the Sanctuary in this way:
Creating a relationship with nine or twelve people at one time.. .is.. .you
know, they’re int, they’re intimate relationships, it’s the same amount of
work as having a boyfriend. And so, so to have twelve boyfriends and
working on them all at one time is...is a difficult thing. I’ve been in a
relationship with two other people in the community.. .um, Mike, and Ajita,
and now Eden...and somewhat, Brandon. So, I think we’re learning about
what relationships are, in community. And that’s, that’s really great. Its
very different than having a relationship in an apartment in the city, or two
guys living alone on a farm. Its, its really about the relationship of all of
the people in the community living together. Um, just because we’re
sleeping together, in the same bed, I don’t see our relationship as any
different as, as Dipper, who I’ve never slept in the same bed with.
In a manner similar to the blurring of self and other in interpersonal
relationships, a number of stewards have developed routine or domestic practices
that actively engage imaginaries that blur boundaries between self and the earth or
environment. Buffy comments on the relationship the stewards have with the
environment:
Everybody’s vision is unique and yet there’s something common about it
and I think its.. .probably something to do with a connection to the earth,
and maintaining that, and building that, um, and providing a place for
others to come and do the same...
I really feel like we are on some verge of an evolutionary change, and that
um, this is really one of the keys to it, is reconnecting with the earth. And
that’s what this whole project is about, its about people inhabiting a land
that needs recovery...
Dipper has termed this blurring as a form of “engagement:”
I’m looking for a certain state of being, a certain way of using my mind
and my body, that, um, that feels right, that works well. It’s sort of, its a
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kind of, it’s a way of engagement. Um.. .the basic quality of it, is uh, I call
it this relaxed attentiveness, where ah, if I’m relaxed and paying attention
to things around me, I can often accomplish things that are incredible.
I have dreams, I constantly dream about building these terraces. I just
dream and dream and dream about it. I mean, especially in the spring. And
I dreamt about when the rains would come and what it would look like and
how the water would flow. And in the dream, it was like, I was constantly
processing all this information, and... when your dream life and your
waking life become that intertwined.. .have you ever read the book Birdie?
.. .the beauty of the book is that he describes this boy’s dream life and his
relationship with these birds that he’s keeping, and um.. .its astounding.
And the moment I read the book, it smacked of truth to me. I mean it was
so real to me... I knew that that was an imminent possibility. And I, and I,
kind of. I’ve always sort of felt like, that there’s something in me that cries
out for that kind of life, that kind of engagement.
Many of the stewards also regularly visit places on the property that hold special
meaning for them. During a conversation I had with Arcturus, he stated: “This
space right here, that we are in, in the tent...this place resonates to me.”
These imaginaries and practices at the Sanctuary that blur divisions
between self and other, and between self and the environment, transgress
traditional assumptions regarding body boundaries and ‘norms’ regarding the
union and separation of individuals (i.e., traditional marriage, divorce, etc.) and
the relationship people are assumed to have with the environment (the man
versus nature Western tradition). They often tap eastern, Native American, and
neopagan perspectives that cast all forms of life within an interdependent,
interconnected, and continually evolving ‘biome.’ These ideas stand counter to
those that most often proliferate in Western cultures, where ‘manifest destiny’
and ‘development’ have shaped most recent relationships between people and
the earth, and where competition has often shaped relationships between
individuals.
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Community
This blurring between self and other is also evident in discussions I've had
with stewards regarding the links between different realms of the Faerie community.
For example, in our discussion regarding the constant flow of visitors that come to
the Sanctuary and their role there, Arcturus commented:
We’re [the Sanctuary] like a separate little world of our own, but there are
other worlds that wiU be coming, each person I see as a world, will be
coming and bringing their own subtleties with them, or personalities and
whatever. And its wonderful to see how the dynamics change as people
start coming in. Because there were times during this winter when we got
down to 2 or 3 people and its a completely different dynamic than when
there are 10, 12,20 people here. And you would think it would become
more chaotic, but it becomes more self-organizing, almost as if we’re
becoming an organism ourselves.
Here, Arcturus’ perspective illustrates not only an imagined blurring
between self and other in terms of interpersonal relationships described above, but
also blurring from a macroscopic perspective when he speaks of different “worlds”
merging and interacting within one “organism.” By seeing each person “as a
world,” Arcturus is incorporating the broader cultural influences and sense of
community of visitors into those of the stewards at the Sanctuary. The Sanctuary
community, then, is the visitor’s community and vice versa. This move expands
outwardly from perspectives of blurred body boundaries to one that integrates
representations of culture and cultural realms through an individual's bodily
representation, or persona. From this perspective, a visitor’s ‘body’ at the Sanctuary
brings with it not only the basic needs for food and water, and the potential to
interact interpersonally with others (emotionally, physically, etc.), but also those
cultural elements that are attached to, and part of that body. Thus, those interpersonal
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interactions, and the practice of getting to know a visitor take on new meaning, cross
old boundaries in new ways, and open new avenues of agency for everyone
participating within this whole “organism.”
In a further outward expansion of blurred body boundaries, the Sanctuary is
linked, fused, and integrated with the broader Radical Faerie community in its
various manifestations on a worldwide scope through the practice of Internet
communications. From web pages, to on-line newsletters, to listserv mailing lists, the
sense of community at the Sanctuary regularly expands beyond the physical
boundaries of the property as the stewards interact with Faeries and others on-line.
Conversely, the cultural realms of those who connect with and contribute to Internet
communications that involve the Sanctuary fold their cultural influence and sense of
community into the “organism.”
The history of the Radical Faerie phenomena and its associations with rural
life make this set of interactions and connections particularly significant. In fact, the
Internet has emerged as one of the major vehicles for establishing a sense of
community among many Faeries, especially among rural Faeries. It is perhaps not
coincidental that the anarchistic and dispersed nature of the Internet (intentionally
designed as such by the United States Department of Defense) seems to mesh so
well with both the sense of Faerie anarchy and the interpretation of community at the
Sanctuary (no ordained leaders, decisions reached by consensus or by faith in
chaos, no enforced doctrine, etc.). Imagined community and practice interact here
when the Sanctuary stewards bring the community laptop down to the phone hut (a
wooden structure located at the edge of one of the property boundaries), when
people find out about the Sanctuary on-line and inquire about visiting, when the
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Faerie mailing list functions as a Faerie gathering circle, or when stewards of the
Sanctuary publish information about their summer solstice gatherings and other
information on their web site (www.zms.org). One Faerie writes:
i have spent some time thinking about how the e-list is or isn't like a
gathering circle, nothing can compare, of course, to the physical presence
that circhng offers us: a chance to breathe together, to read the weather of
each changing face, to revel in the seductions and repulsions of sounds,
sights, smells, tastes and touches, to share parallel tracks of time and space
with each other and with the energies, minerals, plants and animals around
us. we miss that here on the list, and for me it sometimes makes love
harder to unfold.
on the other hand, i love the ways in which a list like this offers
opportunities to subvert our attachment to linear time and space — a
response may come days, weeks, even months after the ostensible
stimulus—because who knows when what you wrote will be read or
remembered? i love the way our e-list circle can defy the neat lines of
euclidean geometry, crossing the borders imposed on our physical
existence, borders of political boundaries, geography, climate, gender, race,
religion, age and so on. (Couillard 1997)
The view of visitors at the Sanctuary can be interpreted as a transgression
similar to those that dissolve distinctions between self and other or self and the
environment. Understanding guests as people who carry with them a whole world of
understandings, perspectives, and cultural histories that blend with others at the
Sanctuary in the form of a whole organism is outside of commonly accepted
perspectives of what it means to be a visitor in most North America communities or
households. This inclusive approach to visitors at the Sanctuary integrates them in a
way that diminishes their outsider status and blurs conceptual distinctions between
individuals as they are folded into a broader sense of community that attempts to
build commonality by embracing individual difference. Many of the stewards have
described this as providing a home for everyone who visits. It also provides a
particularly effective route for agency when visitors leave the Sanctuary having been
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integrated into the Faerie “organism.” Furthermore, transgressions of time and
space are frequently found in the practice of Internet communications, where the
Faerie organism branches worldwide, through the very phone lines and other
connections that carry ‘mainstream’ content.
Marginal Space and Daily Resistance
We can elucidate the possibilities of agency from what I have termed routine
practices and transgressions above, by considering some works that make a
particularly strong case for agency and the individual’s ability to foster
reverberations of change through ways of living. Of particular note are formative
works by hooks and Butler, which establish a space and offer some strategies for
this conception of agency.
In bell hooks’ work Yearning, she addresses the issues of agency and
practice within a critique of identity politics and a reclamation of the margins as a
site of political resistance. For her, the margins of society are sites where the
construction of new subjectivities are rooted in the multiple perspectives of the
marginal themselves; perspectives that are decidedly not restricted by, or
preoccupied with, their relationship to the dominant. She argues for a politics of
location that facilitates a shift from oppositional political struggles, to “counter-
hegemonic cultural practice” (hooks 1990; 145). She asks:
Within complex and ever shifting realms of power relations, do we
position ourselves on the side of colonizing mentality? Or do we continue
to stand in political resistance with the oppressed, ready to offer our ways
of seeing and theorizing, of making culture, towards that revolutionary
effort which seeks to create space where there is unlimited access to the
pleasure and power of knowing, where transformation is possible? This
choice is crucial, (hooks 1990: 145)
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Here, hooks calls for a challenge to the very genesis of domination itself, not
a fight waged directly against, and therefore in the terms of, oppressive structures or
social institutions currently in place. Instead of seeking acceptance, she is placing
herself in what the ‘mainstream’ might see as the ‘margins’—a site of resistance
that inherently works against the momentum of the entire hegemonic empire. She
sees the margins as “a site one stays in, clings to even, because it nourishes one’s
capacity to resist. It offers to one the possibility of radical perspective from which to
see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds” (hooks 1990: 150).
Judith Butler examines the oppositional construct of identity categories
based on sexuality and how repositioning conceptions of sexuality ‘against’ those
of identity and gender can possibly erode and continue to disrupt the dominant
conception of ‘normalcy’ through a kind of socio-political subterfuge. She argues
that this repositioning offers a loose set of sexual inclinations or groupings that are
permanently unclear and free from the false categorical restrictions imposed on them
by dominant Western culture.
She bases her argument on the position that gender is an imitation of a non
existent heterosexual original construct; an unachievable, ideal goal that produces a
kind of self-perpetuating performance of approximations to a ‘normal’ set of
gendered behaviors and sexualities. Thus, for those caught up in this performance of
approximations to ideal gender roles, there is an innate dependency on (and desire to
eradicate) the presence of conceptions of gender that do not strive to achieve those
false ideal categories. In short, Butler is identifying a sort of ‘mainstream’
resentment of androgyny, and other non-conforming expressions that work against
the false construct of ideal gender roles, because of their innate and persistent
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resistance. In terms of sexuality, her claim is that, although categories such as
lesbian, gay, or straight are useful as practical/political labels, they are, in fact,
misleading because they have been defined in opposition to the false 'normal’
categories created through the imitation of non-existent original conceptions of what
sexuality 'should be.’ Butler’s politics open new routes for agency when
individuals with non-conforming orientations or genders reclaim and utilize what
she suggests is their most valuable social and political asset: disruption and a
propensity for resistance to classification and identification.
From hooks and Butler it is possible to gain some insight into the kinds of
cultural spaces and modes of transgression that have the potential for exposing
dominant power structures and opening new possibilities, hooks lays important
groundwork for maximizing the political strength of ‘marginality’ as a fertile
cultural space for the generation of transgressions through a critique of identity
politics and a radical look at how reclaiming the margins and operating from a self-
determined center can cultivate creative new alternatives through a “counter-
hegemonic cultural practice” (hooks 1990: 145). Butler’s critique of identity
politics offers a subversive strategy that suggests there is strength in routine
resistance against dominant conceptions of 'normalcy’ by evading categorization
and classification. Both suggest that strategic practice can be used to move beyond
adjustments of an individual’s “habitus” to some form of impact on the larger
Western hegemonic ‘mainstream.’
What these strategies seem to lack, however, is a route for connecting these
transgressions through a means of practice that not only frees or transforms the
agent but also enables the transgression to reach those that have not yet questioned
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their own cultural constructions. More precisely, how do such transgressions
deconstruct ‘mainstream’ assumptions, create new alternatives, and broaden
appreciation for difference and alternative interpretations of human experience for
those not part of the transgressive acts? As Butler suggests in her argument for
subversive transgressions, perhaps the most effective approach here is one that is
perpetually resistant. Strategies that take form in routine practice that are both
personally transformative, while also active beyond an individual’s “habitus,” seem
most likely to offer a means of change through repeated and lived/re-lived acts.
Faerie Ritual
In addition to the transgressions that occur within routine practices at the
Sanctuary, there are a set of transgressions that occur within the context of Faerie
rituals. These practices engage a subset of utopian imaginaries that concentrate more
specifically on spirituality. As was previously mentioned, North American
intentional communities have had a long history of closely associating ‘alternative’
spiritual practices and beliefs with the development and organization of their
collectives. In fact, for many intentional communities, spirituality was the central
component and primary catalyst for their formation.
While this is not the case for the Sanctuary, spirituality often plays an
important role in the lives of Faeries there. Faerie spirituality, like all things Faerie, is
a complex mix of often conflicting imaginaries and practices. One Faerie has
offered the following about spirituality:
The Radical Faerie Fellowship is a diverse and unorganized group of Gay
men who center their spiritual lives around various and sundry pagan
doctrines. While no particular doctrine predominates, the movement is
deeply rooted in the precepts of Native American spirituality. Nonetheless,
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there are druids, wiccans, taoists, shamans, Hindus, and any number of
other recognized or unrecognized beliefs present among Radical Faeries.
We embrace life in its entirety, yin and yang, drag and mufti. We create
rituals meaningful to us in our lives, pagan rituals that validate and
celebrate our lives as Gay men. (Elfstone 1996)
Yet, another adds:
... let’ s face it, honey, for every Faerie who comes to a gathering to get in
touch with his spirituality, there's another who’ s come to get sex, and
another who's come for a vacation, another who's come to be with friends,
another who's come to feel glamorous, and on it goes. I'd venture to say
that the Radical Faeries offer an opportunity for a particular strata of
misfits to find each other and to discover that they are not alone. But
centering our lives around pagan doctrines? Not necessarily. I'm not even
sure I could agree that it is a spiritual path. (Couillard 1996a)
In line with Couillard’s skepticism, others have levied critiques of Faerie
ritual that raise issues concerning cultural appropriation. These critics, some of them
Faerie-identified themselves, question the ethical nature of transferring ritual
practices from one cultural context to another, without a full appreciation of their
historical and cultural settings and/or a complete understanding of their current use.
They claim that some Faerie ritual borrowing is actually a post-colonial exploitation
of the other that romanticizes non-Westem cultures without fully recognizing and
appreciating the unique purpose they have served for those who have developed
them. For these critics, Faerie appropriations are ideological ‘digs’ where often
Native American cultural treasures are carted off by primarily Euro-American men
to be drained of their complexity and cultural value as they are reconfigured under
admiring yet reductionist Western eyes. (This issue came up during the 1997
Summer Solstice Gathering when some argued that including a Native American
sweat among the events was “like bringing another religion onto the land.”) The
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responses to this critique have been many. Some simply hold that imitation is the
sincerest form of flattery, and that these appropriations are integrated into Faerie
practice with only the best intentions. Others argue that cross-cultural ‘pollination'
is now quite common in our postmodern world and that Faerie appropriations are
simply one point at which new hybrid practices are surfacing across the globe.
Although conflicted. Faerie spirituality is worth examining in terms of how
imaginaries of spirituality are caught up in an interplay with ritual practice and the
potential this process has for opening routes of agency. At the Sanctuary in
particular, most of the stewards identify as neopagan or have developed their own
personal sense of spirituality that often includes practices similar to neopagan
rituals. For example, all of the stewards at the Sanctuary celebrate the four seasonal
Solstices. And Owl, one of the stewards at the Sanctuary states: “We call ourselves
pagans because we are associating with the earth and that’s what we feel is good for
us...but I don’t see it as a religion.”
This perspective can be observed in the kinds of rituals created at the
Sanctuary. These wide-ranging practices are conducted in recognition of a nearly
endless variety of entities, events and experiences, including the celebration of
solstices, honoring pagan goddesses, tributes to chaos, commemorations of air,
water, fire, earth, and more. Many involve a whole set of incredibly elaborate
performances, events, shrines, and other creations. Although most rituals are
neopagan inspired, many vary in their accordance with pagan traditions, depending
on the event or persons involved. Often Faerie rituals change in some way each time
they are performed, but most seem to provide a means of realizing imaginaries of
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spirituality where body, spirit, the community, and the earth are elements within a
biomic whole.
One set of rituals in particular is focused on exploring this convergence
through personal practice. The following ritual was posted to the Faerie listserv as a
suggested means of affirming the spiritual as part of the material body:
Preparation: Buy oranges, chocolate, and bottled spring water. A single
piece of costume jewelry. Go to a department store, and ask for samples of
fragrances you have never smelled before.
Find a local televangelist station that you find annoying. Turn it on and
watch it for an hour. The numb feeling is normal.
Go to a closet of your choice. Take a clock radio with a sleep timer. Find a
radio station you identify as one that was "adult" music when you were
young. Set the timer to one hour. Sit on the floor of the closet and close
the door. Comfort is not an issue. Boredom is not an issue. As the
numbness wears off the cramped and uncomfortable quarters are more
dominant in your perceptions. If there is a little light under the door, your
eyes adjust to seeing dimly. The smell is dusty, the floor is hard. Any
sound is muffled, so you strain to hear anything, and can only hear the
sound of the televangelist outside. You look at the timer's setting and only
15 minutes have passed.
As your senses start to power down, you will find that this has taken you
into an altered state. Make a conscious effort to remember how terrified
you were to think that anyone might know...the effort you spent in
pretending to be someone you were not. This is powerful and may be
overwhelming. Remember how this felt.
Meditate and work on how constricting and cramped and uncomfonable
and muffled and dim and diminished your life is in the closet. Focus on
this. Look at the clock again and think how much time elongates into
lengths of meaninglessness.
When the hour is finally over, open the door of the closet and realize that
you have to blink at the light. Sounds are louder, and you want nothing
more than to shut off the TV. Your legs are stiff, and maybe sore. Your
butt tingles as it gets some blood flow going again.
Put your favorite music on (preferably something you will want to sing to)
and run a tub of hot water. Squirt some liquid soap in for bubbles. Soak a
while and soften up. Use your fingers to explore between your toes, the
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soles of your feet and places on your body you seldom even think about.
Use your hands to massage your calves, feel your thighs and up to your
genitals. Feel your balls moving in the scrotum, under the scrotum and
around your asshole. Up your belly, tits, pits, massage the tension in the
back of your neck. Massage the tension you hide in your scalp.
Towel yourself briskly, concentrating on re-acquainting yourself with your
body in an intimate way. Become sensual with yourself and the world
around you. Put on too much of a new perfume. Shave or comb or brush
whatever you need to do, but do it in an unhurried and focused way. Dress
in what you feel most comfortable in. Put on the piece of costume jewelry.
Throw the oranges, chocolate and spring water in a backpack and take off.
Go to a park, the woods, the back yard. Find some flowers and feel what it
is like to be growing in the sun. Find a tree and feel it up close, feel the
energy in slow deliberate motion, tapping deep into earth energy and
reaching for the sky. Find a spot of sunshine and sit on the ground. Eat
your chocolate and oranges, focus on the tastes and the juiciness of the
orange and the smell of the orange oil when you peel it. Smell the
chocolate and when you chew it hold it in your mouth and let it melt.
Envision yourself like the new flowers, and the green grass, new in the
spring and reaching toward summer. Spread your ethereal wings like a
new butterfly and let them become dry and limber in the sun. Radiate your
bright colors into the world around you. Smile at the sun and embrace the
world. (Pilgrim 1997)
This kind of personal ritual practice is quite common at the Sanctuary as
well. There are numerous shrines scattered across the property that are used by the
stewards and visitors as sites of meditation. Four of these have been constructed as
sites designed to evoke imaginaries associated with the primary directions: north,
south, east and west. On many mornings while I was visiting the Sanctuary, Scottie,
one of the stewards, could be heard drumming in the distance while the sun rose.
And, Granite’s sunrise walks were a regular homage to the local rock formations
and way for him to “connect with the spirit of the land.”
Another kind of Faerie ritual practice is performed at gatherings and in small
groups. These include events like parades, cross-dressing and costume
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performances, drumming circles, sexual interaction, fire rings, storytelling, heart
circles, sweat lodges, poetry readings, feasts, and other rituals. The following
description of a “Queer God Ritual” at a gathering in the Midwest offers some
insight into the nature of such rituals (although they vary tremendously, and some
would argue that the nature of Faerie circles and other collective rituals are generally
more spontaneous, anarchistic, and chaotic that what is described here).
The priestesses (leaders) did a good job of preparation-planning and
spiritual readiness. At the time of our ascension (climbing the bluff to the
meadow atop, where a huge bonfire was blazing), we gathered to rehearse a
song or two and to receive other preparatory words— like, “This is an
experience open to all queer-identified men who wish to meet the Queer
God in ritual and intimate encounter.” They also gave further words of
preparation and introduction. We sang “Queer God, Purple God, Faerie
God, Golden God, Green God, Faggot God; Come, Be with us” later in
the ritual, so we rehearsed it prior to our beginning climb. We climbed in
silent anticipation. The path was lighted (luminarias)...
Atop the bluff, we formed three lines as we approached the “aisle of
luminarias” leading to the fire. At the front of each line stood a leader who
whispered in our ear, “Do you like to suck cock.” On hearing our
response, we were told, “Welcome to the circle.” We gathered around the
fire, spreading our towels, blankets, etc. to give us personal space and to
anticipate the beginning of the event. All was in silence. The leading
priestess (attire was pre-arranged) opened the event with words of
welcome and introduction to the experience. Then four others called the
Spirits of the Four Directions to come, be with us. Following that, we sang
“Queer God”. Next, a leader led us in a long guided imagery focus, using
a meadow with a path thru a rainbow selection of separate flower gardens,
red, orange (poppies), yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. We paused in
each patch to smell the flower, feel the flower, taste the flower, touch the
flower, before being invited to walk further on. After the violet patch we
were met by the Queer God. There we spent an extended time in commune
with him, whatever that meant to us. After some time we were invited to
return thru the varied parts of the flowered areas, back to the gate at the
beginning of the meadow, and back to our spot around the fire. We were
invited to share aloud our experiences. After some sharing, we sang the
“Queer God” song, with the last line being “We love you” (rather than,
“Come, be with us”). Then the guardians of the directions thanked, in
turn, the Spirit of each direction for being with us. Our ritual was ended
(Sctirag 1996).
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Another Faerie offers a description of a more spontaneous group ritual:
When we did our Full Moon Ritual, for example, we had a little fire
outside in the back parking lot so that we could do giveaways, burning
pieces of paper (tom off a paper skirt worn by one of the Faeries) with our
unwanted burdens written on them in nail polish. The fire was on a large
metal circle we’d found lying outside, and after doing the giveaways we
decided to pick up the circle (I guess we were going to extinguish the
flame) and suddenly discovered that we could dance with the fire (and each
other) as partner, leading to an extended riff of dancing in a circle, bringing
the fire up over our heads and back down, all the while singing a mish
mash of wiccan and Faerie chants about the elements, the goddess, death,
rebirth and healing. It was a deep expression of our humanity and our
connection to everything around us -- the earth, each other, spirit, self.
(Couillard 1996)
As is the case with personal Faerie rituals, these group practices bring to
focus an imaginary of spirituality that transgresses many ‘mainstream’ Western
beliefs and assumptions regarding the boundaries between individuals, their bodies,
their ‘spirits,’ their community, and the environment. And, although ‘mainstream’
ecologists and other natural scientists have more recently begun to recognize the
interdependence of various life-systems. Faerie rituals still run counter to the
scientific and rational world-view through their integration of spirit and community
into a biomic understanding of self and environment. This, accompanied by their
general resistance against Western privileging of empiricist and positivist thinking,
is a key point of transgression found in the interplay between Faerie ritual practices
and the spiritual imaginaries they realize. One Faerie states:
I would suggest that one of the things that happens at gatherings is that we
all just agree to have a different reality...We help ourselves switch realities
by various rituals of talking, wearing different clothes, acting differently
toward “strangers,” etc. (Earthbeam 1997)
Similarly, another states:
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In my decade plus experience of doing ritual with the Faeries, I’ve
discovered that the best rituals usually walk a tightrope between form and
chaos, providing a vessel that is expansive enough to excite and contain the
spontaneity of our imaginations. Formal actions -- like smudging, circling,
chanting, walking in procession, burning representations of the negative
things in our lives that we are ready to shed — seem to allow
communication between our conscious selves and all the stuff we either
don’t have ready access to or don’t accept as part of our everyday linear
reality. But a ritual that included only these things would probably be as
dry and dusty and sedative as a catholic mass. What I love about Faerie
rituals are the surprises in the choreography, the opportunities for the
infinitely rich landscape of the unconscious to talk back to us, to show us
unexpected images, to remind of us of the forgotten music and the
underlying dance of possibilities. (Couillard 1996)
Like Butler’s subversive transgressions that evade categorization, these Faerie rituals
provide a means of reshaping a sense of self/community/environment that lies
outside the male/female, rational/irrational, self/other, man/nature oppositional
dichotomies of the West, while simultaneously opening a space for personally-
tailored and often random or chaotic individual expressions. They tie imaginaries of
Faerie spirituality to multiple subjectivities that transgress and resist normalizing
Western doxa (which often privileges fixed standards of identity, morality,
community, spirituality, gender and sexuality).
Faerie Healing
An interesting subset of Faerie ritual includes those practices associated with
healing. Although some might argue that all Faerie ritual is therapeutic, it seems that
certain rituals are more specifically focused on change through some kind of
therapeutic process than others. In these rituals, practice is directed in an effort to
achieve some goal—which is frequently to repair what is often seen by Faeries as
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emotional and/or psychological damage done through the normalization efforts of
Western enculturation.
While this view of Western enculturation and Faerie healing practices does
not necessarily imply that its practitioners assume that there is some ‘original’ or
‘true’ self, some Faeries critical of healing practices claim that these rituals operate
from an essentialist perspective. For them, this form of ritual brings into question a
whole set of issues regarding the nature of identity and whether or not it is
appropriate to assume that there is a ‘pure’ gay or queer nature that Western culture
corrupts. Many Faeries have been accused of essentiaiizing same-sex eroticism for
this reason, including Harry Hay, one of the founders of the Faerie phenomena.
In a 1979 gathering, Hay expressed his vision of healing in the following
terms:
Humanity must expand its experience from people thinking
objectively—thinking subject-to-object; that is, in terms of opportunism,
competitiveness and self-advantage—to thinking subject-to-subject, in
terms of equal sharing, loving, healing...
And then went on to add:
We must also remember that the social world we inherit, the total hetero
male-oriented and -dominated world of tradition and daily
environment—the sum total of our history, philosophy, psychology,
culture, our very languages—are all totally subject-object in concept,
definitions and evolution.
To all of this we Faeries should be essentially alien. The hetero male,
incapable of conceiving the possibility of a window on the world other
than his own, is equally incapable of perceiving that gay people might not
fit in either of his man-woman categories, that we might turn out to be
classified as something very else.
If we, as people, will but grasp this, flesh it out and exercise this
affirmatively, we will discover the lovely gay conscious ‘not-man’ shining
underneath our disguises... (Thompson, 1987: 273)
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Today, Hay continues to espouse his views through workshops and
writings. He offers spiritual/healing retreats called Daisy Chain Workshops for
‘The Wounded Healing the Wounded.” However, regardless of philosophical
differences that some Faeries may have with what they see as Hay’s and other
Faeries’ essentialist perspectives, most seem to share the view that it is both a
possible, and valuable, endeavor to change consciousness in accordance with will.
Another Faerie states:
Faeries Often:
believe in a soul
believe in spirits
are concerned about the environment
believe they can heal with the power of their mind
have rejected traditional Christianity
practice genderfuck and sex as ritual
use drugs
feel alienated from “the gay scene”
re-create ritual and belief from Pagan and Wiccan traditions
have experienced the recovery or self-help movements
(Gatheringwater 1996)
Some of the most obvious examples of Faerie healing rituals can be found in
personal practices designed to affect change in a person’s emotional or
psychological state. For example, bloobird writes:
I have begun doing ritual more often of late to affect some overdue
changes in my life and I guess you could call it magick. Yesterday, for
example, I did some magick regarding my relationship with my
emotionally inaccessible (biological) father. First, I sat down and wrote a
four page letter about what I was feeling, how I wanted to let go control
and attachment to our relationship, etc., lots of stuff I won't kvetch about
here; the usual father/gay son bullshit which has gotten even more beyond
the pale as a result of my HIV seroconversion. I then took the letter and
folded it neatly, then in a prayerful way placed the letter in a ceremonial
turquoise clay pot filled with water (which for me, represents giving the
situation over to the power of love, and giving it over to the universe). I
then put all of my special crystals and rocks into the water on top of the
letter (just adding their power to the enterprise, though I don't know that
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much about crystals per se), then I put the pot on my altar in my bedroom.
I lit two candles, a red and a green (red is love, green is life, in my personal
iconography), some incense, then I spoke aloud and prayed about what I
wanted in this situation, which is basically a sense of release and
acceptance and serenity regardless of his attitude. I played my flute a bit,
meditated some more, then went and ran some errands. Later that day 1
went out to my backyard with the pot and a photograph of my father. I
tried to look at the photo with a feeling of love, acceptance, forgiveness,
and release, then placed the wet letter under a special rock I keep in my
backyard amongst the wildflowers for such purposes (giving the situation
over to the earth, and to time). Then I poured the water from the pot over
the rock, again symbolizing love and life. Then I watered the wildflowers. I
feel better already... (bloobird 1997)
Thomas Csordas’ interpretation of “imaginal performance” is helpful here
(Csordas 1996). His analysis of healing rituals in which sequences of imagery are
used as healing performances—with results that move beyond metaphor and into
actual change in a subject’s emotional, and thereby physical, state—meshes well
with bloobird’s description of his healing practice as well as his satisfaction with the
desired effect, “I feel better already.”
Collective healing rituals usually take place at Faerie gatherings. Often, these
rituals affirm the Faerie sense of community as a collective phenomena similar to
hooks’ radical postmodern conception of the margins as the center from which
creative new alternatives can be cultivated in “counter-hegemonic cultural practice”
(hooks 1990: 145). This position is articulated in terms of gatherings here:
...the Faerie gathering, as the deliberate construction of a moral utopia, can
be seen to have a certain effectiveness— it allows us to experience ourselves
a certain sort of moral agent that would otherwise be impossible in the
dominant reality, and I suggested that this therapeutic affect had
implications for the way we live our lives, etc. (Seigel 1996)
One example of this kind of collective healing ritual is the Faerie heart circle
in which the talisman is passed and people share their feelings with one another,
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usually about one another, in turn. Arcturus describes what he sees as the healing
value he has begun to recognize in this practice:
As I understand it, heart circle has developed to a new leveL.it has evolved
to where people are just talking about their feelings rather than the person.
They’re talking about what the effect the person had rather than, say, you
know, oh you’re an awful person because you did this. I can come to a
heart circle and say, what you did the other day really made me feel bad
and its been burning in me and I just need to release it...and it really is
[sic] started to heal now.
While this healing practice fits well with other Faerie rituals that attempt to
realize a set of imaginaries that blur self and other, another group of healing
practices attempts to broaden the scope of the Faerie spiritual imaginaries they
reference even further. For example, healing rituals that stewards perform in
relationship to both themselves, the community, and the environment represent
attempts to ‘factualize’ the ‘biomic’ spiritual imaginary referenced in the previous
section. This can be seen at the Sanctuary in terms of how some of the stewards
conceptualize their interest in permaculture as it relates to their physical health.
On numerous occasions, both Dipper and Owl have referred to gardening,
tree-planting, and other ‘earthwork’ such as shrine-building on the property as
“healing the land.” While this effort is at one level an attempt to revive the parched
earth that was poorly managed for years (heavily logged and then overgrazed by
cattle), it also functions as a set of healing rituals that revive and sustain the lives of
the stewards. The healing itself functions within a conception of the earth and the
stewards as one, where healing rituals provide a therapeutic effect for both
physical/material as well as emotional/spiritual resuscitation. It is seen as the spirit
of the land as transfused with the spirituality of the stewards; the recovery of the life
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on the land as transfused with the recovery of the lives of the stewards that are being
addressed through these healing rituals. Owl states:
I see that a lot of people come here, after they’re here a while, they do get
really attached to the land here. And so, I think a lot of stuff is going to
come out of that. We’ll see a lot more attention to healing the land.
The ritual practices that facilitate this healing at the Sanctuary are many. The
first one was a small ritual conducted early on by the stewards to ask the land if it
was the “right” for them to settle there. This involved a small ground fire (on the
only place where there wasn’t snow at the time) and a group meditation. Later, the
stewards invited an expert to lead a permaculture workshop and help them plan the
construction of the buildings, gardens, and other projects so that they were in
synchronicity with the geographic, geologic, weather, spiritual and other conditions
present on the land. This workshop involved a week-long series of meetings,
discussions, surveys, analyses, and rituals. Since then, the stewards have developed
other healing practices that integrate the land in some way. Buffy offers his take on
a rain dance:
I don’t know if you talked to Owl about his experiences with the earth-
spirits here, recently, since you were here last year I think this happened.
When the spring came along, we were all here.. .and I felt their presence
too.. .saying that they are here to help us, and you know, just do what
you’re doing. And, um, that’s what these four alters are about, they said to
build an alter and visit it and we will, um, help you do what you’re doing
here because we’re behind it. And then the day that the trees arrived I felt
was day that they were arriving and everyone else knew that too, that the
spirits were coming here, and we welcomed them along with the trees. And,
um, that was when we sort of called in the rainstorm, and this huge cloud
just came over, and we were all out by where the fire circle is now, and
circled there banging on drums and shaking rattles and this rain came over
and this thunderstorm.. .it was amazing. And we needed it too, we just
planted trees, you know, it was like water for the trees.
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In these practices that tap the imaginary of the land/steward “ biome,’ the
goals for the healing process are multiple, overlaid, integrated and interactive. On the
physical/material level, these healing rituals focus on reclaiming the land, and the
sustenance the land provides through gardening, permaculture, and an environment
free of urban pollutants for the stewards themselves (many of whom are living with
compromised immune systems due to HIV or AIDS). On the emotional/spiritual
level, these healing rituals target the recovery of a respect for a human relationship
with the land, as well as the recuperation of the stewards from stress and other
negative associations they have with urban life.
Another example of Faerie healing ritual extends the breadth of Faerie
spiritual imaginaries even further. A Faerie named Jason has initiated what he calls
the “Lavender Healing Network,” a practice patterned after Reiki in which “ healing
energy’ is sent out from practitioners to assist those requesting it as part of some
form of recovery. In a message to the Faerie listserv, he describes its purpose this
way:
I would like to initiate an eclectic healing network composed of gays
and lesbians who would be available to send healing energy to brothers
and sisters who request it. While I'm initiated in Reiki, I am not into
exclusivity.
My vision right now is to manage this with a co-coordinator. This
would theoretically enable the circle to always get messages and function
should one of the coordinators be out of town or experiencing computer
maladies. (A back-up co-coordinator would also be welcome; would form
a coordinator triangle, which relates to the Essene tradition of healing).
I am sending this posting...to everyone on the Faerie, Billy, and Gay
Spirit Visions lists. I am also sending it to the New Mexico Foundation
for Human Enrichment, hoping that they can spread the word at their
gathering or through their newsletter.
If you would like to be part of this network, please contact me. I want to
do all our communication on-line; phone calling, especially long distance,
is out. I will compose a list of respondees, and then put the word out that
we’re available. When we get requests, I’ll forward them to everyone on
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the list. If you would be available to serve as a co-coordinator, please let
me know.
I simply want to say that there will be no judgments or criteria involved
in who can request and who merits what. Whether you’re taking an exam,
suffering with a disease, freaked out because you're going back home to
visit “the parents,” or whatever, your request will get passed on to the
network and whoever can send you energy without judgment will do so.
In the Reiki system in which I'm initiated, we send the energy up to 15
minutes per day for 3 days. It would be nice if we could all do our best to
do the same. And if you miss a day, well, my darling, join the club. You
ain't the first.
Jerry Mitchell/Dancing Dolphin has requested that we send energy his
way when he leads a big healing workshop for people with AIDS August
9-11. I’ll get more details from him and forward them to everyone who
responds to this posting. (Serinus 1996)
This healing ritual references a whole set of Faerie imaginaries of
community and spirituality, where a wide range of cultural, geographic, spatial and
temporal realms collapse into one unit. Using the Internet (and its ability to open
new spaces for the integration of a wide range of disparate cultures, opinions, and
ways of living), the Lavender Healing Network provides a vehicle for Faeries who
share common imaginaries of spirituality and community to “send their healing
energy” to others (whom they may have never met) in a group practice (that may
take place at widely varying times, anywhere in the world). Since each of the
participants in this network is operating from a different set of “durably installed
generative principles of regulated improvisations” due to the various cultural,
geographic, and spatial circumstances that determine their specific ways of living,
this practice opens up ways that break past the limits of the “habitus” that
surrounds each participant. And, in order to feel that this practice has an impact, the
Lavender Healing Network demands that participants entrust the Faerie network (via
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the Internet and their shared imaginaries of community and spirituality) to carry the
“healing energy” past each individual “habitus” to impact those of others.
While there do seem to be some parallels between the Lavender Healing
Network and some forms of Christian prayer, this, and most other Faerie healing
rituals typically transgress a number of commonly accepted norms of North
American ‘mainstream’ spirituality, primarily Christian values and practices. These
transgressions are due to the neo-pagan influences on Faerie spiritual imaginaries
and the rituals that bring them into practice (some of which might be interpreted as
amoral or blasphemous within the ‘mainstream’). Faerie monism, or the belief that
self, other, ‘god,’ the earth, the universe, etc. are all integrated into one organic
whole, is at the center of these transgressions. For example, Faeries often refer to an
abstract, pagan “goddess,” while also referring to themselves and each other as
gods and godesses. Yet, while these concepts of deity are often shared, most Faeries
have developed or are developing their own personal spirituality. It is a complex and
contradictory mix that defies both traditional reason and Western Christian beliefs
in many ways. Arcturus has contrasted his experiences of spirituality in the
‘mainstream’ with Faerie spiritual imaginaries:
When you get out here you begin to realize that, wow, people are so
controlled [in the ‘mainstream’], you know. Its just amazing. And not only
with that control, but there is a stifling of the individual spirit, you know.
People become nothing, you know, they become just another face in the
crowd. Whereas out here, everybody is a god...
Like other Faerie rituals, Faerie healing practices also resist the scientific and
rational Western world-view with their integration of self, other, spirit,
community, and the earth into a biomic whole, where it is believed that healing
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can and does take place via means outside of the standard Western medical or
psychological model.
Flexibility and Oneness
We can conceptualize the potential for agency in the contexts of the Faerie
ritual transgressions described above by considering some works from a number of
theorists who have offered interpretations that place various social phenomena
within larger spheres that contain inter-related operatives. Foucault’s conceptions of
power and multiple discursive subjectivities are one example. Additionally, a whole
set of new age and environmental theorists have been arguing similarly in terms of a
global ecological system, and the role of humans within it. Hazel Henderson’s well-
known dictum “Think globally, act locally” is illustrative of these positions
(Popenoe 1984: 277).
Emily Martin also uses this approach in her work with doctors,
immunologists, and the issues of embodiment with which they struggle. She cites
schools of thought in contemporary immunology led by Niels Jeme that reject “as
inadequate the warfare/defended self model of the body” in favor of one based on
flexible specialization (Martin 1994: 109). This perspective does not interpret the
immune system in the traditional “self’ fighting “non-self’ biomedical paradigm,
but as a system that maintains the organization of itself in a manner that does not
distinguish self from foreign. In fact, Martin argues that the immune system,
through “somatic mutation...has already anticipated, inside “self,” every variety of
the “nonself’ that it could ever meet” (Martin 1994: 110). Furthermore, this
system is constantly changing in an array of flexible adaptations.
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Haraway argues similarly in her work on immunology and cyborgs. On a
slightly larger scale, she asks:
What is constituted as an individual within postmodern biotechnical,
biomedical discourse? There is no easy answer to this question, for even
the most reliable Western individuated bodies, the mice and men of a well-
equipped laboratory, neither stop nor start at the skin, which is itself
something of a teeming jungle threatening illicit fusions, especially from
the perspective of a scanning electron microscope... You or I (whatever
problematic address these pronouns have) might be an individual for some
purposes but not for others. (Haraway 1993: 381-382)
These authors share an approach to embodiment and cultural phenomena that is set
within a continually inter-ielated, constantly changing, often chaotic, yet patterned
system. Blurring the traditional divisions between the self and non-self creates a
conceptual space that reconfigures difference in a much less antagonistic mode than
previous paradigms (such as biomedicine) have allowed. The task remains, however,
to explore and understand applications for these new conceptions not only in the
microscopic, but the macroscopic, microsensory, and macrosensory. If these
theories of embodiment are to apply beyond the world of immunology or
biomedicine, an attempt to position them within the realm of culture is necessary.
More specifically, if w'e assume that every person is part of every other person (in
both ‘biosocial’ and cultural terms), and further that all people are part of the both
the microscopic life that surrounds us as well as the larger ecology of our planet,
and even our universe, then what strategies might be integrated with the rhythms and
reverberations of life and communications that travel through these ‘connections?’
And, how might transgressions of the boundaries we may have assumed are
‘natural’ actually affect cultural change within the continually fluctuating flexible
adaptations of life?
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PART in : MAPPING AGENCY
Identifying Routes
Although there is a considerable body of writing regarding the absorption of
cultural practices of the ‘margins’ by the ‘mainstream’ (Ferguson, et al. 1990,
Fisher 1982, Hartmann 1989, Herbst 1994, Shils 1975, Sullivan and Turner 1996),
little of it has included attempts to integrate complex systems theory (with the
exception of Chela Sandoval’s oppositional consciousness, 1991), or develop a
cultural mapping of relational agency and its workings from the ‘margins’ to the
‘mainstream’ within such a system. For example, in Lectures on Ideology and
Utopia, Ricoeur argues that ideology is something aligned with a collective, shared
sense of identity most often oriented toward an integration that is preserved and
embraced by a social establishment or ‘mainstream.’ His concept of utopia is one
that works against ideology in the manner of rupture, difference and discontinuity.
In this configuration, these conceptions are both important functions of the larger
Western social imaginary. Yet, unlike the arguments I have articulated with regard to
relational agency, complex systems, the blurring of subject-subject and subject-
object boundaries, and practices that have the potential to open spaces for alternative
narratives and perspectives, Ricoeur establishes an opposition between ideology and
utopian thinking. While he does acknowledge an interplay between the two, he
concludes that they are “complementary” without fully exploring the kinds of
social practices that take place in the space between and within the two constructs.
He describes that space only as a sort of tension, “An urgent task is to preserve the
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tension between tradition and utopia. The challenge is to reanimate tradition and
bring utopia closer’' (Ricoeur 1986). While I am in agreement with Ricoeur when
he states that “it is precisely the not-yet-realized horizon of this promise [utopia]
which binds men together as a community, [and] prevents utopia [from] detaching
itself as an empty dream,” the need for an examination of the practice and space
between and within his notions of utopia and ideology demands much more
attention. The following is an attempt to construct a cultural mapping of that space
that is supported by ethnographic experiences, but does not fix boundaries or
establish a determinant model for such a process.
In the cases examined in the previous section, Faerie routine and ritual
transgressions (of what are assumed to be North American cultural ‘norms’) are
where routes of agency begin. Transgressive acts cross assumed boundaries of
‘reality’ in ways that deconstruct ‘norms’ while also providing a determinancy to
imaginaries. For the Faerie practices I described earlier, their transgressions are
instrumental in realizing Faerie utopian imaginaries in ways that make them both
tangible and transferable In order to locate routes of transference in terms of this
thesis, it is necessary to do two things. First, we need to understand the relationship
between imagination and imaginaries and how it plays out in terms of Faerie
transgressions. And second, we need to conceptualize the operative nature of both
the Faerie community and its relationship with broader North American culture.
The groundwork for the first of these tasks has already been laid in the
section on imagination and imaginaries in part I of this thesis. In it, I outline the
relationship between individual imagination (what Castoriadis calls psychical) and
shared or social imaginaries (what he calls socio-historical), where the first (an
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individual act of creativity that outstrips the subject’s empirical experience)
continually references and influences the second (a shared set of ever-changing,
undetermined realms of thinking that exceed empirical experience) in an ongoing
interplay. Again, Kearney states: “...every individual imagination is charged
accordingly by the symbols of society which surround it [which are products of
social imaginaries]—as it in turn recharges these symbols with its own creativity”
(Kearney 1991: 128). In terms of Faerie transgressions, this relationship means that
the process of engaging Faerie utopian imaginaries is an interplay that unfolds
differently for each participant in such practices. Faerie utopian imaginaries are
reshaped each time they are engaged by those who reference them, and the
participants’ practice, in turn, is shaped by the ever-changing shared imaginaries. It
is through practice, then, that individuals witness manifestations of each other’s
utopian imaginaries, and through practice as well, that they collectively and
individually modify them. Practice becomes the conduit for understanding,
communicating, and changing the imaginaries they share.
But defining the “they” for any group that engages in this interplay is not a
simple task. As mentioned earlier, many Faeries are ‘nomadic’ and often move from
one counterculture community to another, or between these communities and the
‘mainstream.’ For example, visitors continually arrive and depart from the
Sanctuary in stays that range between a day and several months. And while the
stewards stay longer on average, only two of the seven I have referenced in this
thesis currently reside at the Sanctuary today.2 While this means that clearly
2 T h e fiv e s te w a rd s w ith w h o m I w o rk e d w h o le ft th e S a n c tu a ry h a v e s in ce be en re p la c e d b y
o th e rs . I t se e m s th a t s o m e s o rt o f stasis is re a c h e d a t th e S a n c tu a ry a t b e tw e e n s ix a n d 12 s te w a rd s .
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delineating any structure of the Faerie community is impossible, it also means that it
is a social collective that benefits from the advantages of rapid adaptation and
flexibility, a collective inherently resistant to being quantified and qualified. By
evading categorization and classification, Faeries transgress the fixity of being
forcibly marginalized by the ‘mainstream’—often only to reclaim the margins as
their cultural center from which they radiate. By physically relocating,
communicating through the Internet, interacting with ‘mainstream’ culture via
traditional biological kinship networks and urban living in general, these ‘nomads’
carry with them the Faerie utopian imaginaries they helped to shape. And because
they sometimes carry them into the broader North American culture, they, in turn,
engage in the same interplay with, and modification of, dominant imaginaries as
well.
It is important to recognize here that this mapping from Faerie margins to
dominant ‘mainstream’ does not imply the use of a static or fixed model of the
‘mainstream.’ There are, of course, numerous sets of imaginaries (which are not
considered resistant to North American ‘standards’ of living) that are engaged in the
same kind of interplay with cultural practices that I describe in terms of utopian
imaginaries and transgressive Faerie practices. Furthermore, some of these
‘mainstream’ imaginaries conflict with one another. In fact, it is essential to my
argument that this multiplicity of, and interplay between, ‘mainstream’ or non-
resistant imaginaries and culturally sanctioned practices exists so that new
possibilities for change might be introduced from the margins as they ‘play out’
and evolve.
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This mode of influencing the mainstream from the margins is clearly
different from the traditional battles we’ve seen in identity politic wars. Again,
Martin states: “complex systems can be resilient in the face of change” due to their
flexible nature, and can incorporate discord and contradiction to the point where
conflict becomes nearly irrelevant and new, creative routes of resolving issues and
appreciating difference are discovered (Martin 1994: 125). The ‘connections’
between individuals within such a complex system open up vehicles for persuasion
that remove the need for ideological force, since it is merely up to the instigating
agent to identify those ‘connections,’ find the best timed and most appropriate
social rhythm or reverberation, and attach her/his message to it. In this scenario,
creating social change is no longer conceived of as an attempt to ‘change some
one’s mind’ but to find points or waves of relation between two subjects and to use
them to convey a given perspective. Since, at the very least, the beginnings of a
paradigmatic or consciousness shift are assumed to be already present in the mind
of the ‘Other’ subject within this whole, complex system, it’s simply a matter of
finding these waves at the right time and place. It is within these ‘connections’ that
imaginaries reside.
This is, I would argue, a poetic practice in the Bachelardian sense, where
attention to his notion of transsubjectivity is essential in any attempt to share in a
practice that has the ability to reshape a dominant social imaginary for the
participants within a cooperative practice that does not alienate. Writing from the
perspective of the ‘reader,’ caught up in such a practice, Bachelard states:
The image offered to us by reading a poem now becomes really our own.
It takes root in us. It has been given us by another, but we begin to have
the impression that we could have created it, that we should have created it.
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It becomes a new being in our language, expressing us by making us what
it expresses; in other words, it is at once a becoming of expression, and a
becoming of our being. Here expression creates being...
With poetry, the imagination takes its place on the margin, exactly where
the function of unreality comes to charm or to disturb—always to
awaken—the sleeping being lost in its automatisms. (Bachelard 19S8: xix,
xxxi)
Infusing Alternatives and Challenging Doxa
In terms of Faerie practice, and its potential to infuse ‘mainstream’
imaginaries with alternative conceptions of community, desire, sexuality, spirituality,
etc., the strategy I have oudined above seems especially appropriate for a collective
as variant and physically dispersed as Radical Faeries. Assuming that ‘mainstream’
participants within any given practice that integrates this strategy are willing to
conceive of social institutions as products of social imaginaries, and that they are
willing to deconstruct their own assumptions and understandings, reconfigurations
and new possibilities can be introduced through practices that evoke an interplay
with the imaginaries that shape their current perspectives. In this way, socio-political
change can flow with the rhythm of a particular practice (rather than an oppositional,
political, or ideological battle rooted in boundary creation and defense). This is
essentially a seed-planting process that uses interplay with imaginaries as a vehicle
for reconfiguring what was assumed to be social ‘reality.’
Iser calls this strategy a “doubling structure,’’ in which “an artificial,
deliberately concocted world” (a ‘fiction’) is linked “with a socio-historical one”
in a way that makes “the imaginary accessible to experience outside its pragmatic
function without allowing it to swamp the mind in the manner of dream or
hallucinations” (Iser 1993: 225). This opens a space for those ‘reading’ the text of
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such a practice to dissolve their assumptions about ‘reality’ and to entertain new
possibilities. Iser states:
. ..possibility is an analogue for conditioning conceivability; where there is
a possibility there is a conceivable reality.. .But if realities are in
themselves constructs, then they cannot have proceeded from themselves.
The interplay between the fictive and the imaginary therefore shows that
the referential realities of the text having proceeded from possibilities,
revert to possibilities in order to allow (and condition) the emergence of
other worlds. (Iser 1993: 234)
It could be argued that Faerie gatherings are one venue for this strategy,
given the fact that they are often attended by many people who have never been to
one before, and that the practices and events have the potential to open new
possibilities within those attendees’ interplay with imaginaries of community,
spirituality, sexuality, etc. From the perspective of many of the stewards at the
Sanctuary, the gatherings are also a means of demonstrating the personal sense of
community they have created there and contrasting it to what they see as individual
isolation of urban Western living. The gathering becomes their means of infusing
alternatives through new conceptions of community and challenging dominant doxa
through both routine and ritual practice. Arcturus once offered:
A lot of people coming to the gatherings are coming from other
communities themselves like Wolf Creek or Short Mountain, in
Tennessee. But some people will be coming along who’ve only tasted just
gatherings. They don’t realize that this is a way of life. They usually go
for two weeks, live in a tent, and then go back to the city. They don’t
realize that some people do this all the time. And that it’s, it’s just like the
gathering. The intensity doesn’t fade. Like, every morning I get up, its like
being at rainbow again, rainbow festival. You know, you’re in loving
surroundings, you feel love toward the naturalness for things...I feel whole
out here. I feel like we need to share that with other people...
Owl has commented similarly:
We’re here to share what we have...I’m here to show people that there is
an alternative to the corporate world. I mean the best way to counter that
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corporate mentality is just showing people that there is a viable
option...I’m here for everyone else. To me, I feel like I’m doing a service
to people by being here. I’m not in this for me, I’m in this for everyone.
Of course, Sanctuary gatherings represent only one strategy. Although the
stewards clearly see it as a means of resistance, this approach has a distinct history
associated with it that limits their ability to reach large segments of the mainstream
(i.e., the “failure” of hippie communes, an association with drug use, cult figures,
dangerous charismatic leaders, etc.). This problem of limited reach is complicated
further by the fact that the American mainstream’s ability to expand and contract
‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups,’ can easily absorb the margins, thereby muting and
diluting their cultural impact. However, part of my argument here is that this
tendency toward margin absorption can actually be employed in the interest of
socio-political change if the strategists are cognizant of the cultural rhythms and
reverberations that can reach their audience(s) most effectively.
Some of the work created by Couillard seems to respond to this challenge.
In addition to the rituals he has organized at Faerie gatherings, Couillard organized
an installation/performance piece in Toronto in an attempt to bring Faerie practice
and resistance to the broader ‘mainstream.’ He describes the
installation/performance this way:
...I jumped into my next project, a month-long series of performance
actions called ASKANCE. I’ ve set up a giant playroom in a performance
space called Symptom Hall... To enter, you have to pass through a ‘stiletto
curtain’ of high heels, pumps, cowboy boots and tiger slippers that have
been treated with glitter where the scuff marks were. Inside, you find a 6 X
8 foot floating pond, a blue bubble-wrapped ‘stairway to know-where’, the
beautiful rock I dug from six feet under this summer when I was making a
new outhouse hole at the farm where we do our Faerie gatherings, a
quilting loom where my friend Jules is set up every day for ‘stitch and
bitch’ sessions (the quilt will be auctioned off at the end of the month to
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raise funds for DRAGHEAD, the Faerie magazette [that's zette, not 'zine]
he edits), a comfortable living room set on the stage that graces one end of
the space, lots of pink and purple tulle, and, of course, the tent with the
computer (set up with e-list material from the Faerie list — and an
adventurous hacker would quickly find Frank's e-list as well...) from
which I'm writing this. There’s also a Faerie library in a suitcase that
includes some pretty tangential info (like Annie Sprinkle's Post Pom
Modernist book, and Frank Moore’ s the Cherotic [Revolutionary zine as
well as various Faerie zines, gathering calls, etc.). I’ve even colonized the
side rooms. The full kitchen is a big centre of activity, but there’s also a
large well-stocked drag room (what fun to get the straight boys dressed up
at the opening night party), an altar room with peat moss and wood chip
floor, a hallway of ‘Faerie sounds’ that includes extensive bits of my
writing about the Faeries in prep for this show in graffiti style on the wall
and a broken-down piano board that can be used for jamming, a goddess
bath room, and occasional temporal objects/spaces like the spice painting I
made at my first twelve-hour ritual (whirling snakes, burning faggots, and
a lusty face), now just a mound on a plate that rests by the pond — it
smelled amazing in here-- or the ‘campfire’ of rocks and stemo candles
that we used for last weekend’s slumber party (A Story Story Night). The
space has many doorways that are adorned with fetish objects - rubber
gloves, a whistle, a necklace, a tiny holy water fount, an animal skull,
sunglasses, rubber snakes, a hockey jock (with sock snaps like a garter
belt) — and the tech room has been posted over with a ‘police line do not
cross’ ribbon that turns to reveal one of the many wiccan chants the
Faeries use: the earth the water the fire the rain returns returns returns
returns...
The ‘performance schedule’ is a little demanding - Saturday Night
slumber parties from 9 p.m. to 9 am (first weekend was an opening party
followed by ‘bedtime reading’; last weekend was ‘a story story night’ --
our final slumber party this weekend is ‘pillow talk’), Sunday Teas (first
weekend ‘ceremonial tea’, last weekend ‘high tea’ [we're still eating the
leftover veggie pates, humus and baba ganouj I made for it, plus, of course,
Jules' gingerbread penises] — this weekend, the final one, will be a wild
Mad Hatter Tea, hats required), Tuesday all-day performance rituals (the
first one I made the spice painting; yesterday's was focused on sound, and
I played a lot of accordion music, jangled bells, weaved the building
sounds into the sounds I created, tried to integrate it all into a whole as a
way of healing Jules' exasperation with the car alarm that kept going off
outside all the day before...
This month of performance activities is based around my experiences with
the radical Faeries. I didn’t want to do a ‘theatre’ piece where I would
entertain an audience with my stories about the Faeries ~ I wanted the
audience to feel more like participants, so I developed this piece that is
more like an environment that people come into and that I animate as a
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performer. No fourth wall separation, no performer-audience dynamic to
force the nature of the interaction. A piece about building community
(since that is what the Faeries have taught me), one in which my ‘sissy’
side is on display (with its politics, spiritual awareness, sense of fashion,
gentleness, etc.) without excluding anyone for their own identifications,
and not limiting my own identity to any one label, even one as fluid and
ambiguous as ‘Faerie’... (Couillard 1996b)
In this description, Couillard also addresses the issue of agency as it relates to the
performance:
For me, it took a lot of courage to create this playhouse atmosphere and
call it ‘art’ -- but so far the reaction has been unexpectedly positive...
Everyone is completely charmed by the focus around food -- where else
do you get tea and fresh-baked goods when you come into a show? And
all the while I’m in a subtle performance mode, shaping their experience
just enough to push them a little bit, inteijecting bits of Faeriedom, getting
them to do simple things like play with the costumes, or sit down and quilt
with Jules, or leave something in the altar room. It's been great to have a
place to come to every day and just be creative, and have people come by to
play. It's also been fun to slowly take over, first the initial rush of having
something ready for the opening, but then living in the space (I don't sleep
here most nights, but Jules is actually resident here, since he normally lives
on the farm where we do our gatherings) and making little adjustments,
adding our touch, taking it over inch by inch and transforming it...
(Couillard 1996b)
Most Faerie practice does not address agency as directly as Couillard’s and
his attempt to reach people from broader North American culture, or more precisely
the North American art subculture with an interest in his work. However, it would
seem that Faeries are particularly well-suited to use the transgressive practices they
have developed as a means of deconstructing broader social imaginaries and
institutions while simultaneously offering the ‘mainstream’ a venue for engaging
with, and providing determinancy to, a set of utopian imaginaries (albeit Faerie
utopian imaginaries). Through their open sense of community, gatherings, internet
communications, contact with biological kinship networks and ‘mainstream’ friends,
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or other means, Faeries seem to be exploring a unique set of channels for moving
agency beyond the limits with which it has been traditionally associated in identity
politics.
Poetic Strategies and their Ideological Contexts
The strategies and examples outlined in the previous sections share a few
components that appear to have particular promise as means of influencing
‘mainstream’ social imaginaries and the institutions they shape. In addition to their
ability to deconstruct assumed realities through transgressions and the social
boundaries they break, most Faerie practices are focused on opening up spaces for
new possibilities. They are practices that broaden the conceptions of self, other,
interpersonal relationships, community, sexuality, spirituality, etc., of those who are
new to Faerie culture by providing a setting for reconfigurations of ‘realities’
through an active interplay between practice and utopian imaginaries. It is this
interplay with utopian imaginaries in particular that is fundamental here.
Utopian imaginaries, while not entirely determined, can be said to encompass
a set of associations that have a number of strategic advantages conducive to the
form of agency I have outlined in this thesis. These would seem to include a sense
of optimism, idealism, hopefulness, enthusiasm, and conscientiousness that has an
initial appeal for those drawn to Faeries as well as many others who might be
dissatisfied in one way or another with ‘mainstream’ social institutions and the
social imaginaries that shape them. Additionally, utopian imaginaries offer a flexible,
adaptive, and ever-changing realm of associations that remain positive (at least partly
because they are flexible) for those that engage in an interplay with them. The initial
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appeal of these imaginaries seems to lie in their ability to provide an alternative to
both ‘mainstream’ social institutions and to the ‘realities’ they have produced. Their
continued attraction seems to lie in their ability to integrate or in some ways enchant
those caught up in an interplay with them through an adaptive engagement that
validates and values their participation (often in recognizable manifestations that are
the result of a participant’s own influence on the ‘realities’ that arise from their
influence on utopian imaginaries).
In addition to the ability these imaginaries have to offer alternatives to
dominant social regimes, and to provide an interactive engagement within a larger
project or process of continual ‘improvement,’ these realms of utopian associations
are often romantic and seductive; and the forms that follow from their influence,
poetic. While interplay with any imaginary is a creative process, interplay with
utopian imaginaries often produces ‘texts’ that reflect sensual associations with
notions of progression and well-being. From a phenomenological perspective,
Bachelard labels this romantic or seductive interplay with utopian imaginaries
reverie:
Poetic reverie is a cosmic reverie. It is an opening to a beautiful world, to
beautiful worlds. It gives the I a non-I which belongs to the I: my non-I. It
is this “my non-I” which enchants the I of the dreamer and which poets
can help us share. For my “I-dreamer,” it is this “my non-r which lets
me live my secret of being in the world. (Bachelard 1960: 13)
He then later adds that “.. .where there is malleability, there is reverie” and
that “...reverie is a consciousness of well-being” (Bachelard 1960: 167, 177-178).
It seems apparent that these seductive qualities can easily integrate those prone to
engage utopian imaginaries in the first place, but I would argue that in the right
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context, they also have the ability to transfer (perhaps less potently) outside the
circles of those directly drawn to them, among those who are not necessarily
dissatisfied with dominant social imaginaries and institutions. While some may not
initially accept a critique of ‘mainstream’ imaginaries and the deconstruction of the
institutions they embrace, poetics in ‘positive’ and optimistic forms do seem to have
a wide draw for the majority of North Americans (i.e., idealized notions of romance
and happy endings in Hollywood cinema, the preamble to the United States
constitution, etc.)
This is where I locate the importance and communicative strengths of what
Iser has called “staging.” In order for the utopian imaginaries that Faeries embrace
to be relevant for those outside of Faerie culture or the counterculture at large, they
should play out in poetic practices that are attached to ‘mainstream’ doxa in a
manner that positions them within initially familiar contexts. In other words,
subversive Faerie transgressions can only be subversive if individuals connected to
the Faerie community network introduce the practices and texts produced in an
interplay with their utopian imaginaries within the context of the dominant
imaginaries that make the larger social world and its institutions appear “self-
evident.” The order is first to find relationships and connections and then introduce
well-timed and relevant transgressions. This is not to say that subversive strategies
should be watered down or subjugated, but that their relevance will resonate much
deeper when their social contexts are taken into consideration and when points of
relation are privileged over those of conflict. In the end, influencing dominant social
imaginaries through subversive transgressions depends largely on networks of
communication and practice where an individual imagination that produces
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‘readings’ of, and ‘texts’ from, practices caught up in an interplay with utopian
imaginaries also has access to, and influence on, dominant ‘mainstream’ social
imaginaries from which social institutions are drawn. It is a process of introducing
new words and concepts, and redefining what were assumed to be familiar ones,
within Foucault’s multiplicity of discursive elements.
Of course, this position could be interpreted as one that places a rather heavy
burden on those surfing the margins of the ‘mainstream.’ It also introduces a set of
considerations with regard to the nature of individual responsibility and agency, as
well as the lengths to which relativism might be permitted ethically to extend. In
Lyotard’s work on narrative imagination, he posits a multiplicity of interactive
narratives that continually co-influence one another in place of any total theory or
grand narrative of imagination.
Lyotard appeals for the cultivation of ‘impious fables.’ Such fables refuse
the tyranny of state blessings. Their non-piety is an affirmative token of
their disrespect for the homogenizing consensus of power. It signals an
insistence that the little stories of the narrative imagination also find a
voice, an audience, a world. (Kearney 1991: 199)
He “envisages an open culture based on the plurality of narratives. ..a post-modem
model of paganism” (Kearney 1991: 200). Although such a position may be seen
as too relativistic, thereby eliding ethical concerns that should perhaps factor into
any socio-political project, it does open up a space for a better understanding of
social interactions and inter-relationships. Lyotard’s multiple narratives inherently
recognize an imperative to engage, to tell, and most importantly, to listen. They direct
an examination of imagination toward transsubjectivity and relational agency.
Yet, while Lyotard’s conception of multiple narratives opens up possibilities
for the cross-influence of social imaginaries through an interplay with practices that
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produce multiple narratives, Kearney raises the issue of ethics that it uncovers with
regards to relativism and the extent to which we can or should value some narratives
over others. In response, he argues that imaginative practice can foster new “civic
solidarities” within the post-modern contexts that Lyotard operates. He states:
But if imagining others’ needs is the first task of a political
imagination—transforming abstract ideas into felt ones— its ultimate task
is reconciling the ostensibly conflicting needs for freedom, on the one
hand, and solidarity, on the other. In fact the two tasks are inseparable; for
the conflict of needs cannot be resolved in principle alone, it requires the
empathic experience of imaginative practice. Thus may the old cliches of
fraternity, belonging and community be revivified, empty slogans
transmuted into lived convictions. And, if it is true that post-modem
society has altered the possibilities of civic solidarity, it is equally true that
imagination can re-create a new language of poetry, painting, television and
cinema—forging new images of belonging adequate to our times.
(Kearney 1991: 226)
Here, Kearney implies that it is the empathic relations between individuals
that can empower imagining as a potential socio-political force, and that poetic
imagining in particular has the ability to align interests and create new collectives not
unlike the new political coalitions of difference that hooks envisions in her work.
Through poetic imagining, he sees the creation of alliances that blur self and other in
ways that lay outside of dichotomous battles or the liberationist identity politics that
the counterculture and others have criticized for being reductionist and alienating.
He continues:
If it is indeed the business of imagination to make politics distrust
itself—reminding it that its principles are not literal facts but constructs of
imagination— it is also its business to encourage politics to remake itself
by remaking its images of the good life.
Poetic imagining, I am arguing, is the most redemptive power of mind.
Yet, as Ihab Hassan who first launched the term post-modernism in the
sixties, rightly concedes in The Postmodern Turn (1971), ‘The
imagination of postmodern criticism is a disestablished imagination.’ It
lacks authority and belief. This can lead to a certain confusion, or even
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disillusion. It can also lead to a salutary humility. The challenge is to work
from the basis of such humility to revive imagination: to re-establish its
former poetic prowess without reinstating its egotistical role as sovereign
subjectivity. If there exists one poetic impulse to set up imagination as
master and possessor of all things other than itself, there is another which
renounces such a claim for the sake of the other. Hassan proposes, for his
part, that we ‘remythify the imagination, at least locally, and bring back the
reign of wonder into our lives.’ (Kearney 1991: 226-227)
Kearney’s method for this remythification is one where “self-effacement of
the authorial imagination invites the auditory imagination to come into its own., .[to
solicit] a re-creative response from the listener” (Kearney 1991: 227). This is where
I position individual practice and its interplay with, and influence on, social
imaginaries. What I have described in this thesis is indeed a political agenda of sorts
(or perhaps more accurately an adaptive strategy), that takes as its foundation a
system of sharing through poetic practice and imagining, rather than socio-political
domination, manipulation, and control. It is centered around an opening of
possibilities through new routes of agency that interact with imaginaries. In the case
of Faeries in particular, it is a strategy that focuses on “the power to unrealize
repressive realities in favour of emancipatory possibilities” (Kearney 1991: 220). I
hope that this thesis, the routes of agency I have mapped, and the accompanying
visual components, together serve as a revealing portrait that demonstrates the Faerie
community’s relevance in the context of sexual identity issues, conceptions of
community, and theories of imagination today.
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AFTERWORD: ANTHROPOLOGICAL FICTIONALIZING
‘Producing* a Faerie Ethnography
In many ways, this work is a personal response to what I see as the
limitations of identity politics in contemporary U.S. culture. In line with relatively
recent critiques of western sexual identity politics in feminism, queer studies and
other disciplines (Abelove, et.al. 1993, Bleys 1995, Flax 1990, Herdt 1994, Herdt
and Boxer 1995, etc.), some of which call for building new political coalitions of
difference (hooks 1990, Butler 1990, 1993), I believe that we must also begin paying
more particular attention to cultures of queemess and identifying vehicles for
broader social change that go beyond traditionally recognized paths of action. There
is a vast range of unrecognized potential for increasing appreciation for difference
through forms of cultural expression and reception that have often not been
recognized as anything more than isolated creative acts or mere cultural difference.
When I began to edit the visual portion of this thesis shortly after my last
visit to the Sanctuary, I started to reconsider what may be interpreted as my own
inadvertent privileging of ‘mainstream’ conceptions of sexuality, community and
agency in my early analyses, which was most easily recognized in a tendency to
focus only on the sociopolitical effects that the Faerie community has outside of
itself. While an important objective of the thesis has been to explicate an
appreciation for Faerie imaginative practice and its potential for agency, I hope that it
also reflects an in-depth examination of the basis from which these practices
originate. In particular, I feel it is important to recognize that Faeries at the Sanctuary
as well as the larger Faerie community engage sets of social imaginaries tied to
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utopian notions of communal living by surrounding themselves with physical,
enacted or performed references to those imaginaries. Without necessarily making
the full realization of some ‘utopia’ their goal, these references provide the impetus
for a focus on the process of living. This focus on process allows them to use an
interplay with utopian imaginaries (not dominant modes of sexuality or community,
or Marxist-inspired notions of realizing a utopia) as the basis from which they live
their lives, so that agency as I have defined it in this thesis can affect social change
from within a living, evolving, and often chaotic process—not just as specific actions
situated within, and perhaps sometimes assumed to be addressing, the dominant
socio-political realm, or as mere repercussions of practices that happen to impact or
deconstruct mainstream doxa.
In any case, the role that I have assumed in this work is to offer yet another
narrative that may or may not have repercussions and reverberations for those who
either read this thesis or view its visual components. In fact, there is no question that
this work is complicit in forwarding the kind of poetic strategies of relational agency
that I attribute to Faerie perspectives and practices. This thesis and its visual
components are ‘fictionalizing’ acts, or narratives, I advance that work in an
interplay with both Faerie utopian imaginaries and larger social imaginaries (such as
those associated with anthropology and film) in a manner that has the potential to
reconfigure perspectives of community, sexuality, spirituality, etc. Its reach and
impact are rooted in alliances and shared interests of those motivated to interact with
the work, in either its written or visual form.
There is, of course, no cohesive Faerie perspective of the socio-political
implications that Faerie practice could have. Some of the Faeries I cite in this work
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hold staunchly apolitical perspectives of Faerie practices and see them as purely
spiritual or internal. Others recognize socio-political relevance in what they do. I
hope to have integrated a variety of perspectives in this thesis in a way that illustrates
my own view while also recognizing the range of subjectivities I have tapped to
construct it.
It should be clear here that I share a view of ethnography not unlike that of
Kamala Viswewaran’s in her work Fictions of Feminist Ethnography (1994), which
“plays on the idea that there are demonstrable fictions of ethnography in the
constitution of knowledge, power, and authority in anthropological texts”
(Visweswaran 1994: 16). The ‘fiction’ or narrative I have constructed here is a
weaving of notes, statements, interview texts, visual imagery, e:mails, observations,
theory, and other elements that collectively express my perspective. This perspective
is rooted in both these sources as well as my own history of experiences and
influences, and is not meant to be reflective of any singular perspective held by the
Faerie community or the stewards residing at the Sanctuary.
With regard to my own history of experiences and influences, the
development of this thesis has also included a struggle with some of the
complications of what Visweswaran calls ‘native ethnography.’ While I do not
identify as Faerie, I often used the term ‘queer’ to best reflect my sexual orientation
during my field experiences. On one hand, this meant that I was awarded a
resemblance of insider status at the Sanctuary. I often felt ‘at home’ there and was
nearly always treated accordingly. In addition, I share some aspects of the
counterculture critique that many Faeries embrace, and have a love for the outdoors
that integrated well with the living conditions there.
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However, not identifying as Faerie meant that I was not entirely “one of
them.” For example, I was once excluded from a steward meeting that was of a
particularly sensitive nature for those in attendance. It was a meeting held to discuss
the interpersonal relationships at the Sanctuary and how they came to lead one of the
stewards to a decision to leave the community. While my attendance at any other
meetings or gatherings had never been questioned before (including those that often
included discussions of an interpersonal nature), two of the stewards were
uncomfortable with my attendance at this meeting, thereby blocking what would
have been a consensus in favor of my being there. This exclusion may not have been
directly related to my non-Faerie status, but it appears to have contributed to the
outcome of events. My use of a camera also kept me from being fully accepted as an
insider at times. There were rarely others on the property who used cameras,
especially film cameras or professional video recorders. In fact, while filming an
event at the 1997 Summer Solstice Gathering, I was approached by a visiting Faerie
with the question, “So are you queer or what?” This balancing act between
insider/outsider status clearly complicated my experiences there. While my ‘insider’
status allowed me to interact comfortably in discussions regarding nearly any topic,
especially sexuality, the fact that I did not identify as Faerie put me in the position of
objectifying observer at times. It also caused me to reflect more deeply on the Faerie
critique of identity politics, since it sometimes appeared as if a Faerie identity was
being constructed and used as a point of differentiation among people at the
Sanctuary.
In any case, what is evident from this experience is that ‘field’ and ‘home’
have often blended for me to varying extents. In addition to feeling at home at the
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Sanctuary, I have often brought the Sanctuary to my home in Los Angeles—through
the Internet, by working on various components of the thesis, reading the Sanctuary
newsletter, etc. While I don’t feel that this has been an entirely integrated experience,
it does seem to have diffused some of the “othering” that often accompanies
traditional ethnographic work. It has also encouraged me to question the practice of
ethnography itself and to adjust my perspective accordingly as I prepared this thesis
and its visual components. At the Sanctuary, this meant avoiding a methodology
centered around formal interviews or other practices that positioned me as ‘expert’
as much as possible, while also allowing events and circumstances to shape my
method and analyses as they occurred. For this thesis, it has included attempts to
integrate a dispersed conception of Faerie community, to incorporate a dialog of
multiple and disparate voices within the contexts of the arguments I construct and
the visual components I have edited, and to recognize the circumstances under which
I have obtained the components used to construct the thesis.
In addition to the complications of producing a semi-‘native’ ethnography,
there are some questions that this thesis proposes that remain unanswered. For
example, other than the impact that my experiences with the Faerie community have
had on me, and the forms of practice I have developed since then (including this
thesis), what are the shifts in social imaginaries and institutions that have taken place
for others outside the Faerie community? While I realize that this kind of
information would compliment this thesis, my goal was not to track the extent of
reverberations of Faerie practice, or the utopian imaginaries with which they interact.
It was instead to fully explicate the workings of relational agency at the edges of
Faerie and ‘mainstream’ culture. In short, my interests centered much more around
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inquiries of “how” or “where” rather than those asking “what.” This is not to say
that I would not welcome explorations of the extended effects and reverberations
that may or may not demonstrate the influence of Faerie practice, but that I felt my
skills were better used in an effort to develop a social ‘cartography’ of Faerie
practice with respect to relational agency.
Visual Components of the Thesis
I originally conceived the visual component of this thesis as a film. However,
as the project progressed, 1 began to realize that the linear and relatively static
viewing environment of conventional film was inconsistent with the kinds of ideas 1
want to convey. Therefore, I feel that it is more effective to present the imagery and
sound I collected during my work with the stewards in the form of a video
installation. In addition to the possibilities for non-linear and active viewing that an
installation can provide, my reasons for choosing this format are also tied directly to
some of the objectives of this thesis. First, I want to bring people into a cultural
mapping of Faerie practices at the Sanctuary so that they might gain a sense of the
cultural and physical boundaries that are transgressed through these practices.
Second, I’d like viewers to experience visual and audio elements that convey the
process of living at the Sanctuary where the stewards and visitors at the Sanctuary
are engaged in a continual interplay between practice and utopian imaginaries. And
finally, I want viewers to move physically through and within this mapping so that
they are actively involved in determining their reception as they place themselves in
different locations and consider various perspectives within the installation. In some
ways, this is an attempt to reflect a visit to the Sanctuary while also integrating the
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room’s own cultural rhythms and reverberations as viewers enter, shift perspectives,
interact, and disperse.
The installation is divided into three general parts, each of which represents a
different realm of Faerie practice at the Sanctuary. As the viewer walks into the
installation, the first images they see are directly in front of them, projected onto a
video screen. This footage consists of depictions of ritual practices from the 1997
Summer Solstice Gathering at the Sanctuary, and includes both stewards and many
visitors who attended this event. It is made up of five sequences lasting a total of
approximately 24 minutes, continuously looped. These sequences are meant to
reflect the first set of practices that many people encounter when they visit the
Sanctuary during gatherings. They include: A Mid-day Meal (meal preparation for
approximately one hundred people in and around the Sanctuary kitchen), March and
Initiation (a march—in ‘Faerie’ drag—leading to an initiation ceremony conducted
for those who had not attended a gathering before), Ohming (a vocal exercise held in
the Sanctuary’s tee pee), Sweat (an adaptation of a Native American ritual in which
participants are enclosed in a small hut with hot rocks and led through a series of
chants), and Drumming (a rhythmic commemoration of the summer solstice around
a fire). This footage was shot in video in an effort to link a visual sense of
immediacy with these practices.
As viewers move around this projection to the other side of the installation
space, a set of seven small video monitors are positioned along the walls and a
second projection is displayed on the opposite side of the screen encountered upon
entering the installation. Each of the seven small monitors displays a continuous
loop of a 2-3 minute video portrait of one of the stewards performing various
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routine practices (cooking, watering gardens, showering, sculpting clay, etc.). The
audio for these sequences consists of voice-over3 from interviews in which stewards
describe their lives before living at the Sanctuary, or reflect on their current
experiences there and how they see their lives in relationship to the imaginaries of
community with which they interact. Viewers can visit the monitors in any order to
become ‘acquainted’ with each steward and understand the range of subjectivities
expressed among them and within each. Most of the footage for these sequences
was shot in Super-8 film (a medium often used in home movies before the wide
spread use of video cameras) in order to visually convey a self-reflective position
from the stewards.
Facing the seven individual monitors, the second video projection is divided
into four continuously looped segments (about 3 minutes per segment), each of
which portrays the stewards engaged in a set of interactions (working together to
pour the foundation of a house, constructing a ceramic kiln, erecting a wall, and
hanging out in and near the community building). Voice over from audio interviews
contains segments from each of the stewards in which they describe the
interpersonal relationships as they see them at the Sanctuary, as well as the ‘ideals’
of the community, and the larger relevance of their experiences for people outside of
the community. Like the sequences on the small monitors, this footage was shot
primarily in Super-8 and 16mm film in order to provide a visual reference to the
stewards’ reflections on their lives and relationships. Together, the components of
this projection are meant to reflect the domestic practices (and transgressions) that
are present within this growing and evolving collective.
3 S ee A p p e n d ix f o r tra n s c rip tio n s o f v o ic e - o v e r fr o m th e in s ta lla tio n .
91
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
The following figure illustrates the layout of the installation. It does not
depict seating areas that will be available for viewing both video projections.
E n te r / E x it
M o n ito r s w ith
stew a rd
p o rtra its .
S cre e n w it h v id e o
p r o je c tio n s o n
b o th s id e s .
This layout determines the route viewers take in a manner that is intended to
reflect a typical passage that visitors make into, through, and from the Sanctuary.
Many visitors come to the Sanctuary only during gatherings and are drawn initially
by the neo-pagan, transgressive rituals that take place during these events. However,
in the process of living with the stewards for a week or more, the space and time
between ritual practices exposes them to a range of domestic practices that are
depicted (in part) in the ‘interior’ of the installation. Overall, the ‘interior’ side of
the installation (where the large projection divided into four segments can be seen
and heard simultaneously with the smaller monitors depicting portraits of each
92
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
steward) is meant to convey a sense of the steward’s domestic practices and their
transgressions of ’mainstream norms.’ As viewers leave the installation, they must
pass by the projection they first encountered depicting ritual practices on the
opposite side of the large screen.
This is not to suggest a separation between domestic and ritual practices,
which is why the ritual practice footage and the 4-part community footage are
projected onto opposite sides of the same screen. Visitors to the Sanctuary are
received as members of the communities they occupy within the ‘mainstream’ (San
Franciscans, Angelenos, etc.), the Faerie community at large, and the community that
has formed at the Sanctuary. Likewise, the stewards, and the geographically isolated
Sanctuary they have created, are linked to the ‘outside’ world through their
connections with visitors as well as many other interactions. The two-sided screen
itself, then, is representative of both boundary and link. It is a point of transfusion
that Sanctuary visitors and installation viewers make their way through as they
encounter Sanctuary transgressions, first through ritual, and then domestic,
practices. It is also a vehicle through which visitors and viewers can form
understandings of the interplay between utopian imaginaries and practice that take
place there. From a broader perspective, the installation is intended to dissolve
viewer’s assumptions about the range of perspectives and means available to both
Faeries and themselves for affecting social change through a mapping of relational
agency that they may not have previously recognized as such.
93
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Utopian Imaginaries and Faerie Practice
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Asset Metadata

Creator Hasbrouck, Jay (author)

Core Title Utopian imaginaries and faerie practice: a mapping of relational agency

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Visual Anthropology

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag anthropology, cultural,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-288312

Unique identifier UC11342118

Identifier 1409633.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-288312 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 1409633-0.pdf

Dmrecord 288312

Document Type Thesis

Rights Hasbrouck, Jay

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA