%0 Journal Article
%T She Climbs Toward the Light: Karen Armstrong¡¯s The Spiral Staircase in a World of Displaced Women
%A Maxine Walker
%J Feminist Theology
%@ 1745-5189
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0966735018814677
%X The Spiral Staircase, Karen Armstrong¡¯s self-narrative, shows the limitations of theological or religious reflections within a specific religious community. Leaving the Sisters of Charity for a tumultuous academic life, historian of religion Karen Armstrong lives a wrenching ontological dislocation that originates in her undiagnosed epilepsy and negative body experiences. Using semiotician Algirdas Greimas¡¯s ¡®Semiotic Square¡¯ as an interpretive strategy, the unresolved tensions and contradictions exposed in the deep narrative structure of this non-traditional conversion memoir are resolved by ¡®compassion¡¯ at the manifest level. Armstrong¡¯s experiences, both in and out of the convent, will inform her academic study and lead her to compassionate solidarity with the marginalized. Armstrong¡¯s memoir reveals various internal and external forces that shape an individual woman¡¯s way of being in the world, and that inform her investigation of multiple faith practices and beliefs. In a time of mass refugee migration and ¡®homelessness¡¯, the one woman, the one ¡®other¡¯, matters in how one thinks about the body and about God
%K Convent
%K semiotic path
%K compassion
%K epilepsy
%K displaced persons
%K dislocation
%K power
%K resistance
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0966735018814677