PROJECT NEWS                    

NEW BOOK ABOUT WOMEN'S PARADIGMATIC CONTRIBUTIONS IN HISTORY

July 5, 2008. Madrid, Spain. Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE)

A recently released book in Costa Rica was presented today at the Women’s World Congress 2008 showcasing a Latin American experience regarding popularization of academic research to reach social movements. Women, Metamorphosis of the Butterfly Effect was presented by the author, María Suárez Toro, Puerto Rican and Costa Rican feminist activist in communication and education presently living in Costa Rica. It will be presented in Costa Rica on August 5th at the Instituto Mexicano in San José.

A theatre production based on the book will be launched in Costa Rica in November 2008 under the name “Wings to Fly”. It is being organized by the feminist collective Wings of the Butterfly in a joint endeavor with two theatre companies in the country: Teatro 50 al Sur and the Theatre Group Archipiélago..

The show will also be presented in regional and international events of the women’s movement such as Association for Women’s Rights and Development (AWID) Forum in South Africa on November 2008 about the Power of Movements and the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentro in Mexico City 2009.

Another strategy towards popularization has been the way in which its author has turned the book into a digital character under the literary pseudonym, “Soyla Mar de Cambios”, so that web bloggers and internet users can interact with the book and the women featured in it.

In the book, Maria claims that women’s transformative actions throughout history have remained largely unrecognized and misinterpreted. Yet they have challenged traditional forms of thinking and analysis.   Their contributions have led to important shifts in paradigms in the sciences, the arts and even in politics; shifts in the very ways we understand and make sense of the world.  The book includes narrations of some of their stories, connecting them to some of the challenges of today. These women offer new visions of collaboration and community building that are urgently sought by those concerned about the future of the planet. This life-affirming shift in paradigms might be just what we need for people to gain a deeper understanding of how knowledge is developed, challenged and applied across history, challenging current paradigms of power and domination, which is leading humans to near extinction through violence, greed, and environmental degradation.  It might help inspire people to act with a greater spirit of critical inquiry, solidarity and hope, encouraged by the fact that small gestures in one place can have profound impacts across society.

The book features women throughout time and from all corners of the globe, breaking new ground by making visible the contributions of scientists, artists, activists, and scholars to important transformations in how we think about the world.   Some of the women who appear are “Lucy”, one of the oldest skeletal remains found, who narrates the shift from matrilineal to patriarchal societies. She claims that there is a lost paradigm in history that exists in all of us, and stresses the urgency for humanity to reconnect to that Vital Re-emerging Paradigm. The Lucy chapter also focuses on the feminist movement challenging paradigms and challenging androcentrism and andopocentrism in the sciences. Another chapter features Mileva Maric, mathematician, physicist and Einstein’s first wife, who contributed to his Nobel prizewinning work, but was never recognized. It has been the feminist movement that has brought hr back to life. Also in the book, Rosa Parks, the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement" in the USA tells her own story regarding the potential of the butterfly effect applied to building of social movements. In the theatre production, African-American Rosa Parks reconceptualizes the butterfly effect when she refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man in the Southern USA , in violation of segregationist laws of that time.  With this action Rosa, together with the civil rights movement, unleashed a wave of nationwide protests that led to the abolishment of those racist laws. Both the current and past names of the theatre show honor the "Butterfly Effect" from Chaos Theory that says everything is so interconnected that the smallest action in any one place can have an immense effect elsewhere. Molly, a fictional character and microchip featured in the book, tells us what life is like for a homemaker who makes choices about open source technologies and the growing movement. Also in the book, Mayan Guatemalan Francisca Alvarez presents her feminist cosmovision.

The book is based on a variety of literary forms and thorough research, incorporating testimonies, interviews, and imaginary letters that combine fact with imagination to bring each woman and her wisdom to life. Most of the features come from interviews done by the author Suárez and staff of Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE) during its 17 years in international communications. 

Suárez was accompanied at her presentation in Madrid by Yarman Jimenez and Margaret Thompson, both part of the Alas de Mariposa Collective. One of the women in the Congress to receive a copy of the book was Elisabet Sahtouris who happens to be one of the characters in the book itself because of her contribution to the GAIA theory about a living planet. She told FIRE that she was very happy to have such a book. Elisabet is presently living in Barcelona where she is learning Spanish, thus the book will also become a tool in that sense. She requested an extra copy to send to friends in science in Argentina.

The book was presented at the IX Women’s World Congress held in Madrid, Spain under the theme “Equality is Not a Utopia” and organized by the International Women’s Studies Association.

The Project Wings of the Butterfly is an initiative by a group of feminists in Costa Rica and an international Advisory Group that seeks to make a contribution to women’s movement building through art, epistemology and popular education.

It is supported by HIVOS and Mama Cash in The Netherlands, the Global Fund for Women in the United States and he Central American Women’s Fund.

http://alasdemariposa.org
http://nuestrasmetamorfosis.net
www.radiofeminista.net