Selected Memoirs:
The School of Ecofeminist Spirituality and Ethics
Publication of She Moves in Circles/Vital Links to the Archaic Mind
Early in the 21st century, women interested in ecofeminism and its value as a focus on spirituality and on ethics envisioned a school. In cooperation with the womens' collective, Con-spirando, the South American School would continue the investigations of feminist theologians summarized in Judith Ress' Without a Vision the People Perish.
During the launch of the School, psychologist Madonna Kohlbenschlag proposed using Jungian Toni Wolff's relational schema as a means of exploring diversity and relationality. Memoirs collects Fitzgerald's reflections on the continued use of Wolff's schema within the curriculum of the South American School of Ecofeminist Spirituality and Ethics as an opportunity to evaluate Wolff's contributions to developmental psychology. Essays published by Con-spirando validated and critiqued Wolff's feminine images in that they posed the question: were the forms sufficiently diverse and representative of social/commual integrity?
After two memoirs published by Con-spirando in 2009 and 2010, Memoirs includes commentary during a book launch of She Moves in Circles/Vital Links to the Archaic Mind, published by Con-spirando in Spanish. With the translation of She Moves in Circles into Spanish, a book launch became part of a bicultural project in November of 2011.
Sponsored by Con-spirando and following the custom of presenting a panel of the author and two respondent--Coca Trillini of Argentina and Marcia Moya of Ecuador--the panel focussed on gender issues and gender politics. The perspective of these women, leaders in forming the South American school, may be helpful to North Americans unfamiliar with an organized effort to integrate ethics, cultural diversity and community service while addressing women's theological concerns and inviting imaginative exploration of philosophical perspectives. Rachel Fitzgerald's remarks during the Chilean book launch question whether the freedom of the hetaira represents an energy field necessary to the realization of each relational form rather than to a distinct type. As a separate form, the hetaira of the Western culture may represent the ambivalence of the West in awarding freedom and youthful creativity to the other social roles and, therefore, a limitation for the fullness of the feminine in its entirety.
A fourth memoir is Fitzgerald's summary of her thirty year experience working with women and exploring a schema of addressing issues of relationship in adult development.
Memoirs also includes reference to the work of anthropologist Jeanine Davis-Kimball. In the historical review of powerful feminine images, the work of Jeanine Davis-Kimball restored the potential of the Amazonia woman as a relational concept in validating the historical presence of amazon figures. The absence of the hetaira from Davis-Kimball's reconstruction of early social groupings suggests that the form emerges with the nascent democratic structures of the Greek society which awarded citizenship to some qualifying male citizens and tolerated slavery.