Abstract

‘Who am I?’ is the central question of the hero’s journey. This thesis takes the hero’s journey as motif and metaphor for the exploration of subjectivity, and explores the manner in which woman’s journey as hero has been marginalised. For woman, the question ‘Who am I’ has been obscured by the more pressing question, ‘Who is woman?’ This thesis sets out to find and follow woman as hero and in so doing, to explore woman’s evolving socio-cultural and psychological relationship with what it is to be human. 

To begin this journey, I turn to feminist theory as a principle space for the examination of the question of Woman. I trace feminism’s development of, and increasingly complex engagement with, the definition of Woman as subject. Arriving at the juncture of contemporary feminist discourse I introduce the unique tools and sophisticated philosophy of Wilber’s Integral theory in order to examine the possibilities that an Integral feminism may offer for the (re)construction of the female subject.

Reciprocally, feminist theory is brought to bear upon Integral theory. Following the proposition that the emergence of post-conventional feminist subjectivity represents an evolutionary unfolding of consciousness, this thesis follows and investigates the stages of consciousness as posed in Wilber’s evolutionary spiritual philosophy. As Wilber utilises perspectives from multiple disciplines to construct his theory, I utilise interdisciplinary feminist evidence to interrogate his theory of consciousness and to thus trace woman as hero through these stages.

Finally, I return to examine the manner in which classic models of the hero have posed the separative (male) self as the omega point of human development. I contextualise the limits of this model by introducing the more expansive horizons of contemporary Adult Developmental theory. By applying this expanded spectrum of development with a specific eye to gender I illustrate the heroine’s journey to the embodiment of the Unitive horizon of the divine.  Further I demonstrate the necessity of establishing a genealogy of the female divine as complement to this path, from which a figure of the female divine horizon (after Irigaray), who is both guide and goal for the heroine on her journey may emerge.