Double Toil and Gender Trouble? Performativity and Femininity in the Cauldron of Esotericism Research

by Manon Hedenborg White

Pre-print open access ebook of article to be published in New Approaches to the Study of Esotericism

16 pages, ebook

Published February 16, 2020

About the author

Manon Hedenborg White, Ph.D. (History of Religions, Uppsala University, 2019), is a post-doctoral researcher at Södertörn University and a visiting scholar at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam, 2018–2020. In 2019, she became Review Editor for the International Journal for the Study of New Religions.

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This served as the first of several appetizers as I gear up to shift the focus of my study from the Yoga of Aleister Crowley (particularly within and around the work of Djurdjevic) to the dissertation of "Dr. Scarlet Woman." This served as a perfect fulcrum for shifting from questions of authenticity in regard to traditions of spiritual practice to similar questions of authenticity in regard to the very concepts of gender and gender identity, which (so far) seem to me susceptible to related problematizations. This essay does an excellent job of presenting the intersecting questions and issues involved, steeped in the perspectives of Hanegraaff (esotericism & paganism) and Butler (feminism & queer theory).