Synopses & Reviews
"Since I first read
Beyond God the Father, and in many subsequent encounters with the philosopher herself and with the growing influence of her work, I have found myself challenged and invigorated as a woman writer, and as a feminist."
Adrienne Rich, The New York Times Book Review
It is 2048; the Anonyma Network, represented by a young philosopher known affectionately as Annie, offers this fiftieth-anniversary edition of Mary Daly's groundbreaking 1998 work of radical feminism, Quintessence...Realizing the Archaic Future. In order to better understand Mary's complex but extremely joyful and affirming view of women, Annie conjures the author's spirit to engage in a series of conversations about women in the 1990s and to introduce her to the marvels of the twenty-first century. Together, Annie and Mary confront the sorrowful condition of women, particularly those living in the late 1990s, "striving to survive and thrive" in the face of disastrous misogynist phenomena: the rhetoric of the Promise Keepers; brutality in Rwanda, Bosnia, and other war zones; and cloning experiments that threaten women's biological futures.
Quintessence...Realizing the Archaic Future, in Mary's words, "is a challenge hurled Out to Daring women everywhere, anywhere, who are struggling to break free of the cages and prisons of patriarchal deadspace. Its purpose is to en-Courage us all to Spiral on. It is a Passionate invitation to whirl into the work of expanding our Magnetic Courage, reclaiming our own Space, reconnecting with ourSelves."
Synopsis
"Suffused with her inimitable word play and stunning intelligence, and embodying a balance of mysticism and critical theory, Daly's clarion call to uncover the quintessence of the universe is quite an intriguing tune." -On the Issues
About the Author
Mary Daly is the passionately acclaimed, sometimes denounced, and always controversial radical feminist "philosopher, theologian, mythologist, explorer, pirate, warrior, witch, fairy and leprechaun" (The New York Times Book Review), whose writing is "alive with creative energy, impelled by an urgency of vision and infused with the 'outlandish reality that is present in everyday occurrences'" (Mary Jo Weaver, The New York Times Book Review). Her "feminist fire and brimstone . . . shocks and angers us to a new edge of feminism" (Valerie Miner, San Francisco Chronicle). Daly is professor of theology at Boston College.