20 - A Deliciously Troubling Duo: Gender and Esotericism

Summary

The definitions, boundaries and constituents signified by the terms “gender” and “esotericism” are necessarily troubling and dynamic. As is evidenced throughout this volume, the academic study of esotericism has included rigorous and ongoing debates about the field and its “objects” of study. Similarly – but with amplification – the academic study of gender is an ever-expanding labyrinth of contested definitions, discourses and practices. To draw these two lively areas together can only create more trouble; trouble for conceptual categories, for binary logics, and for dominant discursive practices. Such trouble is both inspiring and imperative.

This chapter aims to canvas not only some of the valuable work already achieved in the study of contemporary esotericism and gender, but also to identify enduring tribulations and places of silence. No doubt some of these are over-ripe for analysis; however, not every dilemma is in need of resolution. In fact, withholding the desire to resolve and represent in favour of teasing out difficulties and sitting with the politics their difference engenders is often as academically valuable as the proposition of a synthesized logic or resolution. The aim therefore is not a definitive or exhaustive overview, but an opening out of discussion, a re-evaluation of relations and a celebration of the problematic. How could it be otherwise when both key terms remain contested and nebulous?

In order to commence, the “necessary evil” of providing some definitional ground remains requisite. The accounts of terminology detailed below are necessarily provisional and most valuable for the way in which they incorporate and accommodate conceptual change and multiplicity.