CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Navickaite, Rasa |
|---|---|
| Title | The Prehistoric Goddess of the Late Twentieth Century: Transnational Feminist Reception, Construction and Appropriation of Marija Gimbutas |
| Summary | This dissertation presents a transnational biography and reception history of Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994) – a renowned Lithuanian-American archaeologist, and an advocate of the theory of the peaceful, egalitarian, gynocentric and Goddess-centered prehistoric civilization of “Old Europe”. Gimbutas’ utopian antimodernist vision became a source of inspiration for a variety of socio-political movements (environmentalist, feminist, neo-pagan, among others) in diverse geographical contexts, on both sides of and transgressing the “Iron Curtain”, starting with the 1970s and reaching a peak during the 1990s. This dissertation analyzes how Gimbutas’ work and persona were received, constructed and appropriated, and sometimes rejected, in diverse contexts, namely, archaeology and feminist archaeology, the feminist spirituality movement in the United States and post-socialist Lithuanian feminism. The dissertation combines historical methods with theoretical perspectives developed in feminist and postcolonial/postsocialist studies to produce a critical account of Gimbutas’ life and work, as well as to discuss how various actors have related to and made use of her ideas. In doing so, it sheds light on some questions of broader theoretical and historiographical significance for feminism and critical gender scholarship transnationally. Examining feminist activist and scholarly engagement with Gimbutas’ controversial vision of Old Europe, this dissertation reveals some of the “political ambivalence” inherent to feminism, considered as simultaneously a product and a critique of modernity. In particular, this dissertation interrogates questions of scientific objectivity, gender essentialism, and Eurocentrism, as they appear in the feminist debates and gender politics, centered around Gimbutas’ work and persona. Focusing on the figure of Gimbutas this dissertation challenges the narrative of Western feminism as “the norm”, and Eastern Europe as only a recipient of feminist ideas and politics. Instead, it proposes an alternative history, where women’s politics both in “the East” and “the West” have been shaped by the Cold War division of the world, and continue to be affected by other transnational hierarchies, divisions and encounters. Much of the interest in Gimbutas’ theory of Old Europe can be understood as a symptom of the general disappointment with the traditional ideologies of the Left and Right around the time of the fall of the “Iron Curtain”, and a search for alternative moral frameworks in the period, often characterized as “postmodern” and/or “postsocialist” – the 1980s and the 1990s. |
| Supervisor | Zimmermann, Susan |
| Department | Gender Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/navickaite_rasa.pdf |
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