In every period of religious revival, there have been movements, credos, and rituals that are seen as bizarre by some critics but, in retrospect, can be recognized as generating essential elements of American religious and cultural life (Crowley 2). The New Age movement in North America, for example, has existed since 1920 and promotes the fusion of different spiritual traditions from all around the world adapted to a modern lifestyle; yoga, tarot, astrology and pseudoscience therapies coming from cultures from all over the world are included in the New Age adept routine. Currently, when the big cities are opening for the day,
in the world's great metropolises, women and men run through the streets, enter gyms, yoga or meditation rooms. Adhering to the mandate of late capitalism, which demands to keep healthy bodies clean, these women and men, following their workouts, shower, eat avocado toast and drink a detox juice before proceeding with their activities. (Verges 11)[1]
The modern spirituality adept influenced by the Western Feminism current are pictured by Françoise Verges with a tendency to, through their search for a balanced life, dismiss the political problematics and avoid discussions regarding gender, race, appropriation, and critical reasoning towards colonial thought. This essay will explain how the New Age movement began and explore why their followers often tend to lack critical thinking, contributing to maintaining a colonial belief system.
Intercontinental travel, the advent of world wars, the advancement of communication technology and the globalization of knowledge provided human beings with an expansion of consciousness. Fans of alternative culture, lovers of freedom and seekers of happiness have always searched for personal and professional success, and the dynamics of the twentieth century contributed to that embodiment. New Age adepts are, since 1920, balancing life inside a capitalist society while they search for spiritual enlightenment. Professor Karlyn Crowley explains:
Once relegated to the cultural fringe, the New Age movement is now at the cultural center in the United States: with a billion-dollar book industry, popular shows ranging from Medium to Oprah, and personal growth seminars in businesses and schools, New Age has become a synonym for a surprisingly popular form of spirituality that includes crystals, aliens, and angels. This explosion of New Age spirituality has baffled critics on both the Left and the Right, who see the New Age as infantile, regressive, and superstitious. (2)
The first diplomatic visit of a leading Indian yogi Swami Vivekananda to Canada and the United States in 1893, contributed to the robust exchange of cultures that would shape the basis of New Age spirituality in America. New Agers “tend to refer to as personal transformation and spiritual growth” (Aldred 330). Americans and Canadians of European Christian ancestry started coming into contact with meditation, seeking sexual freedom and free political choice. “Indeed, for those bemoaning the end of 1960s activism, it seems that “true” politics has turned into rampant individualism, and reason has turned into New Age quackery. (Crowley 2) Professor Crowley also explains that, even extremely popular, New Age receives critiques and is also ridiculed from all sides.
The European white feminist movement also merged and quickly strengthened the New Age in the United States and Canada since the twentieth century, mainly by claiming rights between white men and white women. As Covino and McGee explain, "this empowerment discourse is common to self-help literature" (Covino and McGee, qtd. in Marwick 253), which is the basis of the theoretical construction of the fundaments for the new age belief system. Tools such as meditation, yoga, tarot, women's circles, and spiritual retreats are used to bring awareness to the dynamics of families seeking to live more happily and successfully. “Western feminists have certainly analyzed how the "good motherhood", the "good mother" and the "good father" of heteronormative families are constructed, but they never take into account the "return shock" of slavery and colonialism” (Verges 38)[2]. The end of slavery and the permission for immigrants to other countries to join the current workforce meant that the colonial system did not break down but remained the way of thinking, including sustaining the status quo for feminists in the West.
According to the Social Scientist and educator of decolonial thought Rodinei William, shopping society and capitalism are closely linked to maintaining the exploitation system. He explains that each culture creates a desire in the shopping society. Therefore, within capitalism, it is ideal that the consumer culture remains to continue founding "the assumptions of balance between supply and demand and free circulation of capital, products and people, plus the non-intervention of the State" (William 61)[3], eventually leading to neoliberalism.
I agree with William when he explains that "the economic exploitation of the peoples and lands of the South is the foundation of the entire capitalist process, from its inception, and also of consumerism" (William 60)[4]. Magliocco contributes to the discussion when she warns that "when two cultures come into contact, there is a process called cultural diffusion. In which cultural elements of one group pass to another. Furthermore, there are different ways that diffusion can take place, sometimes just through cultural contact (Magliocco). What often happens is that the capitalist system buys, appropriates or exchanges every profitable product - whether it is categorized as exotic, rare or valuable -, and often ends up diffusing it, or as William indicates, "altering the original meaning of some cultures according to their diffuse interests" (William 67)[5].
Regarding the ability to perceive the colonial system permeating all capitalist and Wester Feminist ideals, Bel Hooks contributes to the discussion, saying that often humans educated by a specific type of belief system either resist critical thinking or prefer to be in their privileged comfort zone. Hooks, in her book ‘Teaching About Critical Thinking’, explains that:
We are bombarded daily by a colonizing mentality - few of us manage to escape the messages coming from all areas of our lives - a mentality that not only shapes consciousness and actions but also provides material rewards for submission and compliance that far outweigh any material gains from resistance, so we need to be constantly engaged in new ways of thinking and being (Hooks 47)[6].
Currently, global communication flows of culture, spread through literature, travel, global travel, media, and the internet, allow culture to migrate in ways that do not involve personal contact between people (Magliocco). However, professor Magliocco also explains that culture had the tendency to always spread through contact with other people, however, nowadays, you can learn a lot of things through internet, sometimes incorrect, and build the sensation that you are familiar with that specific topic, even you've never had any contact with that culture in person at all.
When referring to the New Age, it is possible to see the correlation between a person in a Yoga Studio in California practicing different techniques without ever having had an Indian teacher or travelling to India. Alternatively, else, the person develops tarot reading skills with decks of gypsy origin and incorporates them into their range of spiritual services as a holistic therapist without necessarily understanding the gypsy spiritual lineages. This understanding is explained by Verges when she talks about the city that opens in the morning for its services to begin because she brings up the concept of slices of the racialization of people. She says that as the empowered woman sips her green smoothie and goes to the meditation center. However, before they take the elevator up to the sunrise rooftop practice, "every day, everywhere, thousands of black, racialized women "open up" the city spaces that patriarchy and neoliberal capitalism need to function” (Verges 11)[7]. Patriarchy is apparent in the Western feminist's quest to constantly equate herself with the white man, not necessarily with the indigenous and poor woman of the southern hemisphere. Therefore, worshiping goddesses will consistently reinforce seductive warriors who have enough to become queens of that same hierarchy system.
Karlyn Crowley, in her book ‘Feminism’s New Age: Gender, Appropriation, and the Afterlife of Essentialism’ explains that the fundamental values of the New Age belief system are:
(1) Women and men are essentially different from one another and act out of these cultural/biological differences (as in "difference feminism," where women are held up as superior because of innate spiritual and emotional sensibilities); (2) Women and men need to integrate their masculine and feminine sides to be whole or to reach the goal of "divine androgyny"; and (3) Women and men should move "beyond gender" to inhabit a spiritual plane devoid of these "earthly" distinctions.
Central to the discussion of white Western feminism is the empowerment of the body to serve as a catapult for the success and well-being of modern women. As Lau clarifies, “New Age practices such as macrobiotics, aromatherapy, yoga, and t’ai chi push women into the modes of consumption required to sustain New Age capitalism. Essentially, she makes the case that New Age culture is entirely commodified and thus entirely inauthentic; the final commodity is the self, or, as she says, in New Age cultures, "identities become commodities to buy". (Lau ctd. in Crowley 3) Therefore, that is fundamental to explain why a woman undergoes plastic surgery, eats well, travels and explores her mind to improve her performance in today's society.
The emphasis on personal satisfaction ''leaves unchallenged the social structures of inequality responsible for women's dissatisfaction with their bodies'' (Negrin qt. in Marwick 253). Victimized by the patriarchal system that they belong, they do not necessarily see that "their desire for equality with these men rests on the exclusion of women and men who do not even belong to their class, nor their race in a situation of inequality in fact and law" (Verges 41)[8]. The natural female body, stated as inferior and problematic by man, contributes to the consumerism culture rooted within patriarchal capitalist and colonial values. "It is not a question here of skin colour, nor racialization, but of admitting that the long history of racialization in Europe (which took shape through anti-Semitism, through the invention of the "black race, "Asian race" or the East) was not exempt from consequences concerning the conception of the human, sexuality, natural rights, beauty and ugliness” (Verges 39)[9]. I agree with Hooks that the core of critical thinking is the yearning to know – “to understand the workings of life" (Hooks 20). She explains what to me as a student of decolonial feminism makes perfect sense… thinking critically is to see what, when, how and why of each situation. It has confidence that the learning and thinking-expanding environment is safe for asking questions and exchanging perspectives.
Every environment that educates and cares is an environment of contrition and maintenance of culture. Whether in a circle or a classroom, "when we get mindfulness and awareness to work (...), our experience is often ecstatic. Everything flows wonderfully, and learning happens for everyone" (Hooks 20)[10]. Spirituality is the culture and values maintained by communities. It can be multiple and open, as in the New Age, incorporating numerous practices for over 100 years through cultural syncretism and acculturation, or sometimes, unfortunately, appropriation. Crowley cites Wendy Simonds and Elayne Rapping in her book, Denying the discourse.
Women consume self-help ideologies uncritically and believe that self-help aids women in making nascent feminist claims—even if, ultimately, they are contained by individualistic rhetoric. Simonds and Rapping see women as not simply passive consumers and read New Age culture as neither entirely hegemonic nor entirely liberatory (Crowley 3). As an immigrant from south America living in Canada, and a practitioner of many of the New Age techniques cited above, I realize that this topic raises several questions regarding the capacity of the adepts of the New Age to perceive when its practices contribute to the maintenance of their status quo.
I consider myself a decolonial activist, and I observe that new Age adepts are not hegemonic and, at the same time, are highly subject to maintaining the capitalist system with all our actions. My argument is limited to the fact that this essay must be exploratory and raise questions to be deepened in other research. Future studies on this topic could potentially explore New Age adept's perspective on cultural appropriation and consumerism inside spirituality. Even though I used this space to analyze the New Age movement and its form of acculturation on other worldviews, I believe I will be understood as someone who critically observes the community that belongs to evolve and improve it. I place my faith in the power of the horizontal exchange of information inside the communities to contribute to a less racist and even more equal society, including indigenous, black, and all the racialized and once (or still) exploited communities around the globe. I believe in a spirituality that is pursuing sacred justice and solid education, just like Hooks explains, through a practical spirituality that profoundly alters how we deal with each other. When in all spaces, we are among collectives, in full attention, being able to think critically and exchange knowledge, then, in moments like this, just like Bell Hooks, I feel in the presence of the sacred.
Works Cited
Aldred, Lisa. “Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New Age Commercialization
of Native American Spirituality.” American Indian Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 3, 2000, JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1185908
Harvard Divinity School. “Cultural Appropriation in Neopagan and New Age Religions:
A Conversation with Sabina Magliocco” YouTube.com, 14 Dec. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDJUTUAJvsE. Accessed
Hooks, Bell. Ensinando pensamento crítico: sabedoria prática. Tradução Bhuvi Libanio,
Elefante, 2020, São Paulo.
Crowley, Karlyn. Feminism’s New Age : Gender, Appropriation, and the Afterlife of
Essentialism. SUNY P, 2011.
Marwick, Alice. There is a Beautiful Girl Under All of This: Performing Hegemonic
Femininity in Reality Television. Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol 27, Ed. 3, DOI, 2010. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15295030903583515
Req, Jala, et al. “An Examination of the Underlying Dimensional Structure of Three
Domains of Contaminated Mindware: Paranormal Beliefs, Conspiracy Beliefs,
and Anti-Science Attitudes.” Thinking & Reasoning, vol. 27, no. 2, May 2021,
pp. 187–211. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2020.1759688
Vergès, Françoise. Um feminismo decolonial. Trranslated by Jamille Pinheiro Dias and
Raquel Camargo. Original title: Um féminisme décolonial. Ubu Editora, 2020.
William, Rodney. Apropriação cultural. Feminismos Plurais/Coordenação de Djamila
Ribeiro. Pólen, 2019, São Paulo.
[1] Original text in Portuguese. Translation is my own. [2] Original text in Portuguese. Translation is my own. [3] Original text in Portuguese. Translation is my own. [4] Original text in Portuguese. Translation is my own. [5] Original text in Portuguese. Translation is my own. [6] Original text in Portuguese. Translation is my own. [7] Original text in Portuguese. Translation is my own. [8] Original text in Portuguese. Translation is my own. [9] Original text in Portuguese. Translation is my own. [10] Original text in Portuguese. Translation is my own.
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