Weaving the Fabric of Our Lives

Abstract

In a recent issue of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Jewish feminist historian Miriam Peskowitz criticized the metaphor of weaving in feminist work in religion. According to Peskowitz, “Within feminist discourse on religion, and particularly within theological and theoretical writings, the trope of female weaving is spiritualized so that it can refer to [just about any] particularly female or feminist or feminine activities, religiosities, intellectual enterprises, modes of relation.” She notes that the popularity of the metaphor “comes, in part, from feminist desires to interrupt a masculine intellectual culture with ‘female’ imagery.”1 She argues further that we can learn a (negative) meaning of the image of weaving by studying the Roman literary image of Penelope: “Among Roman-period authors of written text, ‘Penelope’ and ‘the female weaver’ come to stand for women who are loyal to husbands, families, and to the idea of the Roman empire.”2KeywordsFeminist StudyRepetitive WorkFeminist DiscourseTraditional WomanFeminist WorkThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.