I am a book called: Women, Metamorphosis of the Butterfly Effect by Maria Suarez Toro, published in Spanish in Costa Rica by Editorial Farben/Norma, 2008 - ISBN 978-9968-15-397-3.

I am comprised of 19 chapters that make visible women’s paradigmatic contributions throughout history. The women featured are from all regions of the world, of different ethnicities, and of various ages within the human life cycle.

Highlighted in me is their resistance in all fields to adopting the current hegemonic paradigm responsible for dichotomizing gender, and subordinating, excluding and de-valuing women and their experiences in the construction of knowledge. This dominant paradigm views both women and nature as “others”, thus objects to be dominated and controlled, and the women featured in the book affirm that they have hardly been willing to participate in such a paradigm.

I underline some of their significant contributions to emerging alternative paradigms in the world today, such as those stemming from quantum physics. The author’s thesis is that theories of quantum physics “discovered” at the turn of the last century provided scientific validation to what feminism had already identified: that all knowledge is relative to the subject who constructs it. Suárez claims that many scientists, including quantum scientists who promote holistic approaches, fail to make explicit their own subjectivity in their construction of knowledge when they hide their interests and experiences.

Building knowledge from women’s perspectives and experiences, and validating an inclusive and multidimensional feminist epistemology is important so as to break the hegemony of old schemes of knowledge and power that are the basis of mechanistic science and fundamentalist thought of today. Women’s contributions can help reshape the very foundations of “objective” knowledge that hides power issues behind scientific, political and social interactions.

A challenge for emerging alternative paradigms is confronting the “regime” of power in discourse and knowledge that lacks consistency with recent discoveries regarding epistemology. Feminism suggests that humans must modify the dynamics of power relations of domination and control so that everyone’s perspectives and lives can have a dignified place on the planet. This would require negotiating capacities not yet envisioned by humanity. The author of the book intends to expose the sciences, experiences, and cultures of women, and trace the negative impact of their blockage in past centuries.

The basis of the major epistemological critique of patriarchy in feminism is the relation between knowledge and power expressed in the hidden agendas of all scientific disciplines when they fail to recognize that knowledge is subjective.

Yet I also distance myself from post-modern approaches that claim subjectivity as the only human way of knowing. I show that in order to shift paradigms, social groups need to recognize and validate historical actors who have lived in a different mindset and have emerged from their collective experiences. To do this, we must promote such leadership towards change, not only in mindsets, but in the social transformations needed to shift current destructive trends.

My literary style integrates women's testimonials with literary fiction, new journalism, stories, reports, narrations, and the author’s own subjectivity, all documented and argued scientifically within the framework of efforts to deconstruct the present limitations of the “Holistic Paradigm” proposals when they ignore feminist epistemology.

Suárez also challenges feminism by arguing that feminist struggles to achieve equality in diversity will not lead to transformation if they remain embedded in the framework of hegemonic paradigms because they run the risk of being trapped in a logic that reproduces more of the same: dichotomization, fragmentation, specialization, domination and control. Feminism needs to persist in its struggle for rights, but also to develop and use its vital powers that emphasize knowledge and interactions stemming from:

An ethics of caring:

  • Economies based on the centrality of harmony in the regeneration of all of life cycles;
  • Political and social relations that affirm equal and diverse participation in the construction of interactive livelihoods on the planet;
  • An ecology that recognizes that humans are barely a recent grain of sand on a planet with the capacity to expel those who oppose its self organization. Thus, rather than seeking to “save it” the human species must modify its ways of relating with each other and with our common and shared vital niche;
  • Knowledge frameworks that challenge hegemony as such, so that complexity and subjectivity can be expressed without the need to dominate, fragment, over-simplify or render invisible other forms of knowledge.

In short, what the author and other feminists suggest is an Emerging Vital Paradigm. Suárez is convinced that if feminism wants to make a contribution with and for all humanity and all other forms of life, it must reorient its struggles to critically examine power issues expressed in the structures, dynamics and institutions that humans have created, but also those expressed in our subjectivities that remain hidden in the paradigms with which we construct knowledge.

Thus, I am an open invitation to a renewed dialogue about this interaction.