THE INTEGRAL DREAM

Germaine Dulac's Cinematic Philosophy

philology
WHAT IS "INTEGRAL" PHILOSOPHY?  Clearly it (whatever it is) plays some significant role in the emerging, overlapping and transformational field of praxis but -- who are thinking of as Integral?  Are we assuming Ken Wilber?  Jean Gebser?  Sri Aurobindo?  All these guys used that word to describe their vision.  And they are all guys

The French avant-garde filmmaker and theorist Germaine Dulac also used the word in the early 1920s to describe her vision of a culture in which interior, exterior, material, subtle, mental, physical & emotional facets of reality were all presented, circulated and treated as integral aspects of reality. 

Our communities are certainly much better on inclusion, gender & sexuality than most but we do still tend to promote male technological philosophers over feminine and artistic approaches to transformational change, depth and new living.   

It is also worth noting that Germaine is considered to be the first true "surrealist" filmmaker and we may also be underserving the unconscious dimensions of human intelligence in the particular ways that we have hitherto approached social and personal transformation.

So the first point here (obvi) is to stop narrowly associating "integral" with Ken Wilber.  He is only one of many important thinkers in this realm.  The second point, made explicit above, is that we should be actively including the feminine, artistic and subconscious modes of evolutionary progress. 

Why?  Because our default position, whether we like it or not, tends to revolve around prominent, rational male theorists. 


* BONUS *

Check out Mark Allan Kaplan's essay on Germain Dulac and Integral Cinema at researchgate.net.  

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