2. Note on the feminine.

Feminist theorists will recognise the theoretical turn towards the body as a necessary part of materialist critique taken in order to be in a position to positively re-evaluate that which we have historically been taught to think of as “the feminine”. The “feminine” in this sense is that mode of awareness which has been repressed by modes of thinking that are determined by the patriarchal mores of industrial culture as definitively “rational” -- thus it has become "rational" to coerce one's body into conformity with industrial mores by the use of pharmaceutical drugs. The primary division of self into ‘bodily’ and ‘mental’ components is culturally and historically specific, just as our notion of rationality is narrowly defined on the basis of this conceptual distinction. The use of the body for divining intellectual truths may seem far removed from our ways of experiencing the world. Nonetheless, contemporary shamanism reads the world through the body as a finely honed instrument of knowledge.