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A review by iamjuliay
Postcolonial Astrology: Reading the Planets Through Capital, Power, and Labor by Alice Sparkly Kat
2.0
I really wanted to like this book, but after a few months of trudging through it, I had to give up halfway through.
My issue with the book is the author’s correlations of ideas through logical fallacies, often in the form: “A is related to B. B is related to C. Therefore A is the same thing as C.” Here is an example copied directly from the book, page 63-
“Plotemy describes the Moon as a sinister planet. The word sinister means left-handed. On a natal chart, which is the way most early civilizations oriented themselves, left is east. Another word for "eastern" is Oriental. If the Moon is sinister, then it is also Oriental. Silver, as the Moon's metal, became associated with the global market but also with the Orient. If Orientalism is not only an institutional orientation but also an economic one, then the Orient stands for the global market for the European imagination, and silver becomes its mediator.”
So moon= sinister = left handed= eastern = Oriental, so moon= Oriental, specifically Oriental as the global market for Europeans?
If this was an occasional jump between symbolic ideas I could get past it, but it’s how the majority of the book is constructed. It reads more like a freeform word association than a discourse, and it makes all of the points harder to accept as valid. And unless they’re tucked away at the end of the book, there are no actionable steps to actually decolonizing these ideas as indicated by the description.
Astrology is a symbolic language, and doesn’t necessarily have to be logically sound. If this sort of connection of ideas supports your understanding, you might enjoy the book. But if you aren’t prepared for ~300 pages similar to the excerpt above, this is probably not the book for you.
Don’t believe me yet? Here is another excerpt from the book just a few pages before the last example. It is preceded by some disturbing descriptions of human cannibalism of black slaves.
Pages 60-61
“In many modern astrology books, the Moon is linked to hunger, needs, and consumption. However, consumption that is associated with the Moon is not an apolitical eating but the consumption of the social other. It is ethnic consumption—what Maria Thereza Alves and other postmodern scholars call the anthropological feast.”
So the moon = white cannibalism of black slaves? Seriously? I can’t get past this.
It’s really unfortunate. Some of the ideas within the book are brilliant and gave me new insights on astrological concepts. With some more editing and restructuring it could have been one of those rare paradigm-shifting books. But I can’t wade through the muck of messy arguments and falsehoods for the few gems of insight.
My issue with the book is the author’s correlations of ideas through logical fallacies, often in the form: “A is related to B. B is related to C. Therefore A is the same thing as C.” Here is an example copied directly from the book, page 63-
“Plotemy describes the Moon as a sinister planet. The word sinister means left-handed. On a natal chart, which is the way most early civilizations oriented themselves, left is east. Another word for "eastern" is Oriental. If the Moon is sinister, then it is also Oriental. Silver, as the Moon's metal, became associated with the global market but also with the Orient. If Orientalism is not only an institutional orientation but also an economic one, then the Orient stands for the global market for the European imagination, and silver becomes its mediator.”
So moon= sinister = left handed= eastern = Oriental, so moon= Oriental, specifically Oriental as the global market for Europeans?
If this was an occasional jump between symbolic ideas I could get past it, but it’s how the majority of the book is constructed. It reads more like a freeform word association than a discourse, and it makes all of the points harder to accept as valid. And unless they’re tucked away at the end of the book, there are no actionable steps to actually decolonizing these ideas as indicated by the description.
Astrology is a symbolic language, and doesn’t necessarily have to be logically sound. If this sort of connection of ideas supports your understanding, you might enjoy the book. But if you aren’t prepared for ~300 pages similar to the excerpt above, this is probably not the book for you.
Don’t believe me yet? Here is another excerpt from the book just a few pages before the last example. It is preceded by some disturbing descriptions of human cannibalism of black slaves.
Pages 60-61
“In many modern astrology books, the Moon is linked to hunger, needs, and consumption. However, consumption that is associated with the Moon is not an apolitical eating but the consumption of the social other. It is ethnic consumption—what Maria Thereza Alves and other postmodern scholars call the anthropological feast.”
So the moon = white cannibalism of black slaves? Seriously? I can’t get past this.
It’s really unfortunate. Some of the ideas within the book are brilliant and gave me new insights on astrological concepts. With some more editing and restructuring it could have been one of those rare paradigm-shifting books. But I can’t wade through the muck of messy arguments and falsehoods for the few gems of insight.