Page 4 RAIN April/May 1983 THE ANATOMY OF FREEDOM Years ago I read a book picturing the universe in 40 jumps, through a series of drawings, beginning with the picture of a child in a chair. Each of the following pictures is a magnification ten times of the previous drawing, and the series examines life from both micro and macrocosmic points of view. To read Robin Morgan’s new book is to take that same journey — a dizzying, exhilarating trip between the micro- cosmic self and the macrocosmic universe. The Anatomy of Freedom: Feminism, Physics and Global Politics postulates that like contemporary feminism, quantum physics has altered our perception of reality. New theories in physics — whose edges blur with traditional Easter mystical thought — tell us that the universe is a dynamic, continuously moving wave of light and energy, and that matter is only its manifestation in space and time. No longer can we call ourselves mere observers, says Morgan; "the New Physics requires utterly new thinking, demanding our participation as much or more than our observation.” Because we are part of a whole which is continuously moving, to participate in that movement — even as observers — shapes what it becomes. "Such a tool,” Morgan adds, "just might be powerful enough to help us reimagine men and women, and to conceive of freedom.” Rather than seeing freedom as a goal, albeit one that might be attainable, Morgan tells us that freedom, too, is analogous to the New Physics as both a state of being and "a process, a continually fluid, dynamic, surprising movement.” In her search to conceive of freedom, Morgan indeed dissects its anatomy, using feminism, physics and global poliby Nancy Cosper tics as her surgical tools to cut to its heart. She writes in coded messages, dialogues with her Dream Self, prose maps, charts, poems, imagery, allegory and metaphor. She asks as many questions as she gives answers, and her best answers turn back into questions. "Whatever gives you the idea that you’re awake when you have the idea that you’re awake?” asks her Dream Self of her Real Self. Morgan draws from classic literature, math, science, politics and religion, stringing her ideas like the shimmering beads in her own analogy of Indra’s Net, a concept from Mahayana Buddhism in which time and space are woven endlessly across the universe and where all things interpenetrate. "Women tend to see the connections, to notice, to estimate gains and losses,” Morgan tells us. In Anatomy of Freedom, Morgan herself deftly makes connections. She moves through what she calls the holographic nature of feminism — a range of interrelated issues including technology, economics, racism, the environment, marriage and family, power and control, aging and death, violence and pornography, and the complexities of sexuality. Morgan explores all of these issues in light of her own very personal experiences, because to her not only is the personal political, but the political has become deeply personal. Yet at the same time Morgan realizes that there are no personal solutions. We are all in this together; freedom, therefore, is something we must all achieve together. Nonetheless, her Dream Self admonishes, "Just because there aren’t personal solutions doesn’t mean there can’t be personal attempts, changes, affirmations.” Morgan returns time and again to the vision of feminism as central to imagining freedom: "...the real task offeminism is for each of us to understand her own human authenticity...feminism is inherent in Third World struggles...feminism is, at this moment and on this planet, the DNA/RNA call for survival and for the next step in evolution...feminism is the key to our survival and transformation...” Like the proverbial blind men’s elephant, feminism is all this and more. "The time has come to give up dreaming of liberty and to make up one’s mind to conceive of it,” says Morgan quoting Simone Weil. Morgan has conceived of liberty, and she encourages us to do the same by consciously participating in our own evolution. But, if Morgan’s book has any weakness, it lies in the fact that probably most of her readers are already participating in their own evolution to a greater or lesser degree. And unfortunately, they aren’t always the ones who could benefit the most from hearing what she has to say. Not withstanding. The Anatomy ofFreedom is an important book. As she has done for two decades, Morgan chronicles the Women’s Movement from where she herself observes and participates. She does so for her own benefit and for ours: "to forget...experience can be to remain in its thrall forever; to remember may be the only way of surviving it, exorcising it...” Indeed, and to which I might add, evolving beyond it.an The Anatomy ofFreedom: Feminism, Physics and Global Politics, Robin Morgan, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 501 Franklin Ave., Garden City, NY 11530, $16.95,1982, 365 pp.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz