On Thu, 27 Oct 1994, LALONDE ROXANNE wrote:
> Here's a new subject only tangentially related to the list:
> Last June, a woman I met at a conference, after hearing
> about my intended doctoral research here at UofA, suggested I read
> "Celestine Prophecy." So I looked it up when I got out here only to
> find that I'd need to do an ILL search to find a copy. It just
> arrived this week from the Detroit Public Library! They have
> classified it as fiction and I'm trying to find out if any or all of
> it is a hoax. Do any of you know anything about it?
There was a review of that book and several others like it in the
September/October 1994 Utne Reader. The author does admit that "the
book's plot is just a story he created to make his message a better read"
although he also says "he's been to Peru, is able to see multi-colored
energy fields, and had a mystical experience similar to that of the
Celestine narrator..." The other books reviewed were: Mutant Message
Down Under, The Elder Brothers: A Lost South American People and Their
Wisdom, and to a lesser extent, The Art of Dreaming.
The common thread of these books seems to be a claim to have discovered a
lost "native" way of seeing the world -- or to have been chosen by some
indigenous group to bring a message to the world. It is not unrelated to
ecofeminism because the messages are about the need to change our ways
before we destroy the planet.
In my view, the most telling paragraph in the review is the following:
...So what is it that makes these modest volumes so popular? For readers
who spend the bulk of their lives working, it's clearly a draw that the
characters adventure through the wilderness with little or no
consideration of their lives back home. [NOTE: HERE COMES THE MOST
IMPORTANT POINT] Another part of their appeal may be attributed to how
directly they speak to people's alienation from nature. These prophetic
books envision a world free of the ecological devastation brought on by
industrialism, without soiling their hands with a critique of it.
Instead they wish it away with lush fantasies of the garden restored.
Finally, in every story a white protagonist is taken in an offered
redemption by native peoples -- a sure-fire guilt reducer."
I think the last two points are not unrelated. That domination of the
planet goes hand-in-hand with the domination of "marginalized" peoples
and that the *ultimate* form of domination comes when the dominator
*appropriates* the *voice* of the dominated for his/her own ends. I
think this has been done to women as well as to indigenous peoples and
that one of the primary tasks of ecofeminism as a tool of liberation is
to name that domination and *re-appropriate* our own voices in regard to
the way we should live within the bounds of the ecosystem. To do that I
would argue we have to stand with others who have had their voices
appropriated and be very careful that we do not participate in processes
by which their voices are taken from them...
I don't know if that makes any sense.... but it is my reason for not
purchasing these books and for raising concerns when they are discussed
by others....
Jayne
