9. Perils of Ecofeminism(s), Energy Drink Poll
Didn’t have time to write the past few days. Stimulated in all directions, stress and tension of enjoying and building things, worries in multiple directions and excitement. Things should subside soon. Here are my notes on two articles I read for a paper i’m writing:
“Mother Earth, the Cyborg, and the Queer: Ecofeminism and (More) Questions of Identity”
Val plumwood says postmodernism has nothing to add to ecofeminism as it ‘denies the possibility of positive identity’ - “deconstructive trap”
Sandilands argues “ecofeminism must rethink- perhaps even deconstruct- some of its undiscussed assumptions about identity, politics, and the relations between the two if it is to continue as a viable social movement” (p.18)
Identity as “historically specific political myth” (p.19)
In the past, women were treated as nature was treated, perhaps still? These identities are merged
Equation of women with nature
“Symbolic construction of woman is always subject to a slippage of meaning” (21)
Haraway’s cyborg “thrives on its lack of closure, on its resistance to any form of categorical symbolization” (23)
‘Nature’ and ‘women’ both constructs, ecofeminism identifies with both
Greta gaard quote “one task of ecofeminists has been to expose these dualisms and the ways in which feminizing nature and naturalizing or animalizing women has served as justification for the domination of women, animals and the earth” (26)
Carlassare’s conclusion is that “the category ‘woman’ must be understood as a politically strategic invocation” (28) interesting dispute here…
Page 29-30 chaos theory!!! Destabilization of nature
Social ecology, nature as a “realm of freedom”
“Alaimo begins with the question: if the positions "woman" and "nature" have no predetermined meaning, then how can one assess the political value of two vastly different visions of their articulation, the one (ecofeminism) focused on building "woman" and "nature" as coherent and connected actors, and the other (Haraway) focused on destabilizing both?” (30)
“Not only does Griffin's text rely on a naive epistemological correspondence between women and animals (e.g., that any human can really imagine what it's like to be a horse), but its particular blurring of boundaries between women and nature occurs under the very monolithic conceptualization of "womanhood" and "victimhood"; this blurring "supports the historically ingrained position of women and animals as Other to a male subject, roles that easily fit misogynist narratives of oppression" (Alaimo 1994, 140)” (30)
Destabilizing the idea of nature
Strategic essentialism- knowing essentialism is ‘wrong’ but employing it anyway
Donna haraway talks about cyborg and coyote
In haraway “The displacement of the idea of nature as a ‘passive victim’ of the social is tied to the displacement of nature as a ‘solid ground’ to naturalize human activity” (31)
“This retrieval of nature from reductionist and determinist understandings is intentionally and intensely transgressive: nature and culture are not opposed as object and subject; nature is not a ‘realm of necessity’ to culture’s ‘realm of freedom’ in which crude and slavish cyclical repetition can be easily counterpoised to human creativity and ‘beginnings’; ties to nature are not a question of determination or inevitability. If nature is understood as an active and unpredictable character (or series of characters)–– as an agent cocreating the world with other, human agents–– it is difficult not only to justify its exploitation as passive and inert ‘resource’ for human activity but also the dualistic terms through which humanity has progressively come to understand itself as ‘separate’ from nature” (32)
“Playing in this gap is about not only creating ‘new’ ideas of women and nature (which are, in my understanding, already inadequate) but actively engaging with the old ones and disrupting notions of gender solidity, natural necessity, and reified identity in order to reveal their impossibility” (33)
Parody, irony, playfulness, perfomativity
Invoke the connection between women and nature in an ironic way that highlights the falseness of both
“The assumption that identities must remain solid for ecofeminist politics of remain solid is [...] extremely problematic” (36)
“Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-Placing Species in a Material Feminist Environmentalism”
Charges of gender essentialism against ecofeminists
Ecofeminism becomes unpopular by the late 90s
Greta gaard looks at criticisms of ecofeminism, argues that it should be recuperated/revised
Looks at accomplishments of ecofeminism
Work of susan griffin, carolyn merchant and mary daly “exposed the historical and cross-cultural persecution of women as legitimized by the various male-dominated institutions of religion, culture and medical science [...], linking the physical health of women and the environment with the recuperation of a woman-centred language and thought” (28)
Women and eco activism - ‘women for life on earth’
Ecofeminism HAS been intersectional
Gaard reviews the history of ecofeminism (actions and texts) and say that it seems “very promising” (31)
Poststructuralist feminisms “portrayed all ecofeminisms as an exclusively essentialist equation of women with nature, discrediting ecofeminisms diversity of arguments” (31)
Ecofeminists critique poststructuralist feminists as being anthropocentric
Gaard argues that “the charges against ecofeminists as essentialist, ethnocentric, anti-intellectual goddess-worshippers who mistakenly portray the earth as female or issue totalizing and ahistorical mandates for worldwide veganism–– these sweeping generalizations, often made without specific and supporting documentation, have been disproven again and again in the pages of academic and popular journals, at conferences and conversations, yet the contamination lingers” (32)
Mallory (cited) concludes that “fear of spirituality is at the root of academic feminism’s resistance to ecofeminism, since spirituality is seen as both apolitical (or regressively so) and essentialist” (39)
Quote from another paper “the more feminist theories distance themselves from ‘nature,’ the more that very nature is implicitly or explicitly reconfirmed as the treacherous quicksand of misogyny” (42)
Some ideas for you. Positive vibration by Bob Marley is suchhhhhhhhhh a good song. Its sad that he switched up on Lee Scratch Perry like that but I guess Scratch was really crazy. Fame and fortune, etc, prophecy, etc, cancer, politics, vibration. “Who the cap fit?” Maybe I’m gonna start drinking energy drinks. Now I’m gonna do more research and actually write my essay. Should I start drinking energy drinks? Vote in the comment.
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