7. THE FEMINIST IMAGINATION: Prime Mover

For millennia, women accepted life as they knew it as a given. They had little or no independent models as reference through which to articulate their vision and establish their own narrative. Nor did they have the social and cultural wherewithal. Confronting entrenched beliefs was done in a vacuum and individual contemplation produced imaginings such as The Woman’s Bible – a rewrite of The Holy Bible by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1895/1898) – criticizing biblical interpretation that denigrated women and women's role.

Eventually, and only in recent times, the dialectics of women’s discontent penetrated the female community and was discussed in public. This led to the development of the feminist consciousness which created a different structure of reasoning – not grounded in male priorities and certainties but in what it is like to live on this planet female, i.e., in relation to women’s existence, not men’s. Between its early awakenings and now, the feminist imagination established itself as the prime mover of change and the creation of knowledge which has had an impact on the entire world. The goal of my work is to keep this creative imagination and its origination of language alive and vital for the future.