This page is meant to serve as an ongoing table of contents of the cultural shadow work pieces that I’m writing. I’ve made notes of the places where I am currently working and intend to do more work.
Shadow Work
My posts on the topic:
- What is Cultural Shadow Work?
- How do you DO shadow work?
- (Plus steps for personal shadow work)
- Sitting with and rather than or
Other people’s writings on the topic:
Books for Further Reading:
- Meeting the Shadow edited by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams
- Imaginal Figures In Everyday Life
Who Am I To Say This Stuff?
My posts on the topic
- Archetypal Activism
- What Will be Asked of the Poets
- Sacrificing my Silence
- Not up to this task
- Imposter Syndrome
Other people’s writings on the topic:
- Brenna Layne’s post “Voice”
- An overview of Archetypal Activism
- Resistance: The Mythos and the Logos
- Calling All Reluctant Heroes
Books for Further Reading:
- I Thought It was Just Me (But it’s not) – Brené Brown
Privilege in the US (What’s not in the Shadow)
Privilege is what you have when your self-description is the surrounding culture’s “default” setting. When the systems and structures surrounding you are set up in your favor, this is largely invisible to you unless you actively look for it.
In Shadow terms, this is the opposite of the shadow. It’s what’s in the light.
Posts I’ve written on the topic:
- The Default Settings of American Culture
- Unpacking my Privilege
- Empathy
- Political Inertia
- Listening – not taking – other people’s words
- On Being Politically Correct
Other people’s writings on the topic:
- White People: I Don’t Want You To Understand Me Better, I Want You To Understand Yourselves
- The original 1989 article by Peggy McIntosh “White Privilege: Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack” that started the idea of “unpacking” privilege
- Blonde Privilege
- “What my Bike has Taught me About White Privilege”
Books for Further Reading:
Faulty Logic – Black and White Thinking
Posts on the topic
- What is the Nature of Man
- The Puritan Need for Hierarchy
- An old Post of mine about “us vs them” thinking and my personal thoughts on snowflakes
- A Tyranny of Averages
- (many many more to come, including in-groups and out-groups, and Otherness)
Other people’s writings on the topic:
Books for Further Reading:
Race and the Shadow
Posts on the topic
- Native Americans
- Lynchings
- My own Whiteness
- (many many more to come, Slavery, “thugs” and Urban stereotypes, race and class, internment camps, asian stereotypes)
Other people’s writings on the topic:
- Decolonializing a University in Africa
- Researchers have found strong evidence that racism helps the GOP win
From “Researchers…”:
“Recently, researchers working around the world have been discovering that a society’s fears, anxieties and hatreds have remarkable longevity.
In Africa, the descendants of those tribes who suffered most under the slave trade are more likely to be mistrustful today. In Germany, the Nazi Party won a larger share of the vote in cities where Christians had blamed Jews for the Black Death and massacred them six centuries earlier, researchers found.
Together, these results suggests that societies can be scarred and traumatized, like people. For psychologists, political scientists and pundits who hope to understand why voters do what they do, these findings argue for paying a little more attention to history.
After all, slavery’s enduring legacy is evident not only in statistics on black poverty and education. The institution continues to influence how white Southerners think and feel about race — and how they vote. Slavery still divides the American people.”
Books for Further Reading:
Gender, Sex, and the Shadow
Posts on the topic
- Triggered Abuse Survivors
- Puritans and inheritance laws
- Really interesting ties to this modern Chinese study and traits of modern witches. (hint: they are the same as puritanical ones)
- Puritans and witch trials
- Eve’s Quandary – Are Women Good or Evil
- Fatherhood in the Shadows
- (many many more to come – men and the shadow, QUILTBAG, etc)
Other people’s writings on the topic:
- The Unmanning of Trump
- a Cartoon about the Mental Load of the home (pairs well with the father hood post above)
- The Polarized Feminine
- America Hates Older Women
“…even if some of the gendered double standards about sex were eroding, there would always be this difference: women had to plan their love lives with an eye to having children before it was “too late”.
It doesn’t talk about the damage this did to dating & marriage pressures for both men & women. It doesn’t talk about how relationships erode because of these assumptions. Or how the ingrained cultural assumption that all women want children can be incredibly damaging to those who don’t. I am amazed that the article doesn’t mention the wage gap as another offshoot of this myth.
But – though it is incomplete – this article is still interesting. Biological Clock was a metaphor made up for the circadian rhythm.
Books for Further Reading:
- Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England by Carol F. Karlsen
Disabled Bodies and the Shadow
Posts on Topic
Other people’s writings on this topic:
-
Material Witnesses: A Feminist Disability Theory of Testimonial Voices
- Healing Spas and Ugly Clubs: How Victorians Taught Us to Treat People With Disabilities
- Disability History exhibit
Books for Further Reading:
- The Disability Studies Reader, 2nd ed. edited by Lennard J. Davis
- Encounters with Strangers: Feminism and Disability edited by Jenny Morris
Age vs Childhood vs Youth – The three-edged coin
I have not yet written about the “heads” side of this coin (childhood) or the “tails” side of this coin (aging) or the impossible, thin edge that balances between them where all of the privilege lies (youth / young adulthood).
However, my friend Brenna wrote an amazing post about this, and it’s a good starting point.
Obesity
This article on fat shaming and thin privilege was really interesting.
Intellectualism
I have a lot more to say about this. Why intelligence is confused with dishonesty, Where science falls into the shadow. But while we’re here – check out this article on the Death of Expertise.
Topics Still To Come
- Class and Poverty
- Disability
- Why the 1950s won’t go away
- nature
- intuition vs. Logic
- … and more