Feminism at the Forefront: A Critical Approach to Exceptional Experiences

Abstract

Feminist theory today is now more relevant than ever. Reactionary cultural and political shifts have taken away long held rights of women and those that remain are under threat. Far from being divorced from scientific practice, the implications of this trend have a bearing on research, communities, and institutions. By returning to some key insights from feminist thinkers in parapsychology, most important herein is Rhea White (1990, 1994a, 1994b, 2002) but also Carl Williams (1996) and Beverly Rubik (1994), we can more reflectively consider such cultural changes as necesssarily implicated in parapsychological science. In this essay and opinion piece, I interface some of these insights gathered from the Women in Parapsychology conference (Coly & White, 1994) with selected feminist scholarship outside of parapsychology to argue for a revived feminist objectivity that counters the traditional androcentric view of science. In turn, I draw a connection between feminine embodiment and the paranormal that aids in disentangling both from political co-option. Finally, I suggest one critical strategy taken from the work of Félix Guattari (2015) called transversality that pushes interdisciplinary research further by demonstrating the political potential such collaboration entails. Critical approaches to exceptional experiences remain largely untapped by parapsychologists when their various concepts, interventive strategies, and reading tools could be put in the service of challenging unfair ideologies while also shifting psi studies toward a more transdisciplinary paradigm.