THE ANATOMY OF FREEDOM: A Quantum Metaphysics of Sex

What Einstein's theory of relativity was to physics, says Morgan, feminism is to society: a quantum leap into new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Thus, borrowing from science, she presents a ""hollow ground,"" a multi-dimensional image--""interweaving parables, dramatic format, and meditative structure with journalistic reportage and theoretical hypothesis."" What results is a mishmash of crudely applied scientific concepts (quantum mechanics, quarks, unified field theory), stock characters of feminist folklore (the old woman, the handmaiden), and lengthy descriptions of Morgan's personal affairs (her body, her lover, her marriage). Morgan discovers science as metaphor, but uses it as explanation; she neither attempts to follow the scientific method itself, nor to recognize the work of the social sciences in bridging the distance between the physical and the social world. Just as the New Physics now appears both implicit and inevitable, she boldly asserts, so too the success of feminism will be undeniable. ""No more begging for 'rights' . . . No more 'fear of offending': does the strand of DNA worry about 'alienating' other strands in their mutual spiral for life?"" As metafeminism becomes the bridge to the new metapolitics, ""ail fundamental laws, categories and categorizing . . . are discovered to be illusionary. Fundamentalism vanishes along with fundamentals."" There is a great deal more in this fanciful, celebratory vein--equating people with particles, elevating the dream self over the waking self--but no sign of disciplined thinking at all.