The brilliance of feminism has been its capacity to turn the knowledge that emerges from women’s NAMING and analysis of their own experiences into an epistemological  foundation, thus revealing the nature of domination as an ontological and political issue. From this perspective, feminism identifies the way that both the Newtonian Paradigm and its counterpart, the “Holistic Paradigm”, are based on patterns, dynamics and structures of domination.

 

But the dissertation formulates a challenge to feminism also. María argues that feminist struggles to achieve spaces of equality in diversity will not lead to transformation if they remain embedded in the framework of the Newtonian Paradigm because they run the risk of remaining trapped in a logic that reproduces more of the same: fragmentation, specialization, domination and control.


María is convinced that if feminism wants to make a contribution with and for all humanity and all other forms of life on the planet, it has to reorient its struggles to critically examine the power of subjectivity hidden in the paradigms. Feminism needs to seek, not only its struggle for rights, but to develop and use its vital powers that emphasize the construction of knowledge and interactions that stem from:

• An ethics of caring;

• Economies based on the centrality of harmony in the regeneration of all life’s cycles;

• Political and social relations that affirm equal and diverse participation in the construction of interactive livelihoods on the planet;

• An ecology that recognizes that as humans we are barely a recent grain of sand on a planet that has the capacity to expel those who are violent against its vital  self organization. Thus, rather than seeking to “save it”, the human species needs to modify its ways of relating with each other and with our common and shared vital niche.

• Science that challenges hegemony as such, so that complexity and subjectivity can be expressed without the need to dominate, fragment, over-simplify or render invisible.

In short, what is needed are sciences of life to be lived.  Or as María and her doctoral group have called it: an Emerging Vital Paradigm. 

In that sense, this research is an open invitation to a renewed dialogue based on different premises from those that have dominated:  making explicit the powers and desires, etc.; as well as echoing and interacting with our vital nitche as a reference, etc.