Feminist cultural historian Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum caps her previous work with The Future has an Ancient Heart, a scholarly study of the transformative legacy of African origins and values of caring, sharing, healing, and vision carried by African migrants throughout the world. Birnbaum focuses on the long endurance of these values from the first human communities in south and central Africa, ones that Africans manifested in the region of the African mediterranean landmass that later separated Africa from Europe and Asia when the ice melted and waters rose. These migrants reached every continent and later became spiritual as well as geograpical migrations back to Africa, from ancient times to the transformative present. Using the same methods as her teaching, Birnbaum employs a mutual learning process in her work to help us think about our own ancestral story, adding to the wisdom we need to surmount contemporary crises and give us the energy to help bring a more equal and just world into being. Her methodologies are grounded on empirical techniques of science and the social sciences and yet leave openings for the liminal knowledge that resides underneath and beyond boundaries of established religions, secular ideologies, and conventional science. A true work of transformation, The Future has an Ancient Heart opens the door to new possibilities within our world.
THE FUTURE HAS AN ANCIENT HEART
LEGACY OF CARING, SHARING, HEALING, AND VISION FROM THE PRIMORDIAL AFRICAN MEDITERRANEAN TO OCCUPY EVERYWHEREBy LUCIA CHIAVOLA BIRNBAUM iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4759-3260-7Contents
prologue......................................................................................................................................................................................xinote on style.................................................................................................................................................................................xxiiidedications...................................................................................................................................................................................xxviikudos.........................................................................................................................................................................................xxxiiichapter one story. methodologies of many ways of knowing, scholarly integrity and world justice and peace....................................................................................1chapter two biography and genealogy..........................................................................................................................................................33chapter three african wisdom. views of diverse others........................................................................................................................................74chapter four greek/european suppression of african origins; surfacing of submerged beliefs...................................................................................................90chapter five Spain. primordial dark mothers and killing dark others..........................................................................................................................119chapter six France: primordial african signs of dark mothers in cave art, healing water rituals, heresies, and an unfinished revolution. enduring legacy of the cathars......................130chapter seven mediterranean migrant women's conference, Rome, Italy..........................................................................................................................148chapter eight the gift economy...............................................................................................................................................................161chapter nine "Another world is Possible" world Social Forum, January 20-25, 2007, Nairobi, Kenya.............................................................................................172chapter ten cells, stories, time, forgiveness and healing. feminist conference, 2008, Palermo, Sicily........................................................................................184chapter eleven Sicily and the south of Italy in the african mediterranean mothers of all lands...............................................................................................192chapter twelve shores of god the mother. mothers of all lands................................................................................................................................207appendix......................................................................................................................................................................................239select bibliography...........................................................................................................................................................................275
Chapter One
story. methodologies of many ways of knowing, scholarly integrity and world justice and peace.
liminal insights, scientific evidence, personal standpoint, and gifts.
In the period 2001 to 2011, the chronological span of this book, a tempest gathered of natural and man-made catastrophes converging with mounting scientific evidence of african origins of the human species but of possibilities for a better civilization. An intensifying debate in the academy on ways of knowing is the backdrop of my story structured on my participation in international conferences and teaching in the US while trying to figure out who I am and what I am doing as a feminist cultural historian. An image arises of a woman trying to ride a torrential wave emerging from the depths of my unconscious and preconscious.
A sicilian american woman, my story begins in a childhood and youth in a south italian neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri, followed by marriage to a soldier from New York. While bringing up three sons, both of us went to graduate school, receiving doctorates from the University of California in Berkeley, his in physics (1954), mine in the cultural history of the United States and Europe (1964). I have written books on sicilian women (1981), italian feminists (1986), black madonnas (1993), dark african mothers of everyone (2001), and this one (2012) on the transformative legacy of african origins and values of caring, sharing, healing, and vision carried by african migrants throughout the world. These values have surfaced, in my hypothesis, in today's world uprisings in the primordial region of the african mediterranean sea and in occupy movements of the west.
In this book I emphasize the long endurance of values from first human communities in south and central Africa, values that africans manifested in the region of the african mediterranean, landmass later separating Africa from Europe and Asia when the ice melted and waters rose. Migrants out of Africa reached every continent of the world by 60,000 BCE bringing values of caring, sharing, healing, and vision with them. Geographical migrations out of Africa later became spiritual as well as geograpical migrations back to Africa, from ancient times to the transformative present.
A feminist teaching in the women's spirituality program of California Institute of Integral Studies from the 1990s to 2011, I am concerned about truthful history. That is to say, my story tries to be holistic, including my personal as well as professional values, trying to be transparent as to how I know I know, open to many ways of knowing, and spiraling beyond established ethnocentric western assumptions and hierarchical ways of knowing toward an egalitarian, green, and just future.
In this introductory chapter, I emphasize what I believe needs foregrounding in 2012, starting with stories and including the liminal, or all the ways we know that go beyond conventional rationality—cellular memory, intuition, the collective unconscious, dreams, visions, the mutuality of knowing in gifts, and so on. Liminal knowing in the humanities may evoke a glimpse of truth increasingly confirmed in science. To liminal knowing, I have added my personal standpoint referring to my life experience and my spiral view of story wherein steps backward can hearten us to go forward.
liminal experiences
Preceding and during my research and writing on sicilian women, italian feminists, black madonnas, african dark mothers, and their gifts of caring, sharing, healing, and vision, I have had liminal experiences circling women who are called grandmothers or mothers in the south of the world, and goddesses or priestesses in the west. The word liminal, as I am using it, refers to a threshold to a deeper way of knowing. My work is based on empirical methods of science and the social sciences, yet like...
