Re-Envisioning Female Power

Wildness as a Transformative Re-Source in Contemporary Women's Spirituality

Carine Plancke

Bricolage, the mixing of diverse religious resources, has been highlighted as a key process in contemporary spiritualities. Since, in this process, historically or culturally distant and foreign traditions are self-referentially drawn upon as representatives of a true spirituality deemed lost in the materialistic West, exoticism has further been identified as its core feature. In this article, through an in-depth ethnographic study, I examine operations of bricolage and exoticism in spiritual women workshops in North Western Europe that focused on the trope of the “wild woman.” In particular, I highlight the transformational power of these retreats in reference to Michael Taussig’s notion of mimesis as a sensuous embodiment of imagined otherness. I argue that, through enacting wildness in their bodies, the participants were overtaken by their own—historically determined—imaginations of primitiveness and naturalness, which not only created new visions of the feminine and female power, but also led to important life changes.