The Emperor Has a Body: Body-Politics in the Between

Male/female, human/environment, mind/body, white/black... Western culture is built on the assumption that these either/or splits are real - and that one of each pair is better than its so-called opposite. Elise Peeples exposes the artificiality of these divisions, using her own version of the Emperor's New Clothes fairytale as a starting point. Peeples then advocates "bewholing" the world with a new approach called the Between model. The Between is the shared space between us, between mind and body and humans and their environment. "The Between is where we overflow the boundaries of either/or. It is all that has fallen into the chasm created by splitting the whole. It is vital and alive with creativity and possibility... This model provides a way to envision what, in our linear mindset, we might call paradox. We are together and separate at the same time." -- from The Emperor Has a Body The Between model gives us a new perspective on diverse issues including the women's movement, abortion/adoption, motherhood, ethics, language, and environmental issues. We become the mirrors for the emperor, the pranksters playing with language, and the weavers of "new clothes" fit for all of us.

Politics & Social Sciences

Peeples, S. Elise

Philosophy

Javelina Books

Male/female, human/environment, mind/body, white/black...Western culture is built on the assumption that these either/or splits are real - and that one of each pair is better than its so-called opposite. Elise Peeples exposes the artificiality of these divisions, using her own version of the Emperor's New Clothes fairytale as a starting point. Peeples then advocates "bewholing" the world with a new approach called the Between model. The Between is the shared space between us, between mind and body and humans and their environment. "The Between is where we overflow the boundaries of either/or. It is all that has fallen into the chasm created by splitting the whole. It is vital and alive with creativity and possibility... This model provides a way to envision what, in our linear mindset, we might call paradox. We are together and separate at the same time." -- from The Emperor Has a Body The Between model gives us a new perspective on diverse issues including the women's movement, abortion/adoption, motherhood, ethics, language, and environmental issues. We become the mirrors for the emperor, the pranksters playing with language, and the weavers of "new clothes" fit for all of us.

Emma, a 70-year-old minister's wife, is led on a quest to uncover long-lost strands of her identity. This story is about resolution of the age-old conflict (particularly for women) between living a life for oneself and living a life for others. The story begins just after Emma's surprise 70th birthday party, when she suddenly confronts a childhood self she has spent decades repressing. Her cousin Diana, the last living relative in Emma's generation from her biological family (Emma was adopted at age 6) comes to the U.S. from Ireland to attend. On Diana's invitation, Emma suddenly leaves behind her husband of 47 years, her home and her carefully manicured sense of who she is to attend a one-month weaving course in Ireland. The course, unforeseen visits by the spirits of her biological mother and grandmother, and her daughter Lucy's visit, all give Emma a chance to untangle layers of conflict and misunderstanding and re-weave these strands into a wholly different material that transforms her life and by extension, the world. Readers witness what happens when the heroine does not impose her will on the world, but is open enough to allow the stories of women ancestors to change and reveal her. This heroine's journey ends not in polarization, conquering, and establishing superiority but in collaboration, connectedness and peaceful coexistence of differences. This multi-layered story is at once the story of a particular woman and her family, their conflicts and secrets, and a story of Women in patriarchal society. And lastly, Strands is a story about the absolute necessity of women's wisdom to the possibility of weaving a peaceful world. If we can answer the questions that women ask, we will revolutionize the world.

Strands

Literature & Fiction

Women's Fiction

Eshu House Publishing

This book documents my personal journey before, during, and after I had a mastectomy on September 4, 2009. This account is not meant to be a “How-to-Turn-Negative-into-Positive-in-Nine-Easy-Steps” kind of book. Rather, it is a “how-to” book only in that it demonstrates how to, while on a difficult journey and in life in general, cultivate an attitude of receptivity and openness to guidance from both the seen and unseen and to involve community. I can only speak to the first steps, that of receptivity and community. The next steps must be discovered/unveiled by each person on such a journey, only after the first are taken, not just once but before every step. I began the book so that I could publish a series of e-mails that I sent out to my community and the responses I received back from them. A strong theme in the book is how crucial community was to me all along the way. The community brought with it a larger lens, changing the focus of my attention from what was “me” and “mine” to a wider awareness of peace-making and healing, not just in my life, but in my communities and beyond. I compare this change of focus to a film I once saw called Cosmic Voyage where the lens of the camera looked at reality from different distances. First, it zoomed in to the microscopic level, and then it zoomed out in stages all the way to outer space. At the microscopic level, atoms looked chaotic until the camera zoomed out a little, and the pattern became clear. Then it zoomed a little further out and everything looked chaotic for a while until it zoomed far enough out to allow one to once again recognize patterns. You will see that at one point in the story I was asked if I could be the vehicle for a miracle for the community, and I answered, yes. To me, a miracle occurs when we can let go of judgment, cause and effect, reward and punishment—in fact, all dualisms—and keep the focus spacious, allowing for a glimpse into a different level of reality where miracles happen. With this different focus, events and what seem like isolated incidents and individuals show themselves to be deeply connected, forming a new sort of pattern. Seeing or sensing that other level of reality required that I disengage from the details of my daily life long enough to experience chaos, “not knowing,” and non-judging. Events happened on this journey that are unexplainable in this day-to-day reality but which made intuitive sense when I zoomed out. These glimpses into a larger reality came in the form of synchronicities, dreams, messages from ancestors or animals, lessons from unlikely sources, and intuitions that I could not attribute to any likely source. Neither good nor bad, this journey, but a reminder to us all of the possibilities of climbing beyond a one-dimensional life, to dwell more fully in the healing field, alive in its myriad dimensions, seen and unseen, still and full of vibration, always and forever connected to each other and to all creation.

When Things Happen to People: The Field Beyond Good and Bad

Self-Help

Spiritual

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Books by Peeples, S. Elise

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Peeples, S. Elise. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Emperor Has a Body: Body-Politics in the Between

The Emperor Has a Body: Body-Politics in the Between

Strands

When Things Happen to People: The Field Beyond Good and Bad