#greta gaard

[hexag-ne]

That is my dilemma in the forest. It is also my dilemma in the classrooms, conference rooms, hearing rooms, and courtrooms where the future of the forest- or the oceans, or animals, or the rivers, or the mountains - gets debated and discussed. Although the actual work of agitating for change is disproportionately done by women, the conceptualization of environmentalism is male-dominated because men are disproportionately valued as spokespersons, theorists, and leaders. As a result, even when environmentalist rhetoric appears feminist-friendly, its underlying assumptions of experience are likely to be male.

Linda Vance, Ecofeminism and the Politics of Reality., pg 124

[orpheusdrinkinga40inadeathbasket]

“Using animals as food has been critiqued most notably through Adams’s concepts of the 'absent referent' and the 'mass term,' and Deane Curtin’s theory of 'contextual moral vegetarianism.' According to Adams, when living animals are made into meat and other commodities, the language itself contributes to the animal’s absence. 'Live animals are thus the absent referents in the concept of meat,' Adams argues. 'The absent referent permits us to forget about the animal as an independent entity; it also enables us to resist efforts to make animals present.' When living animals are turned into meat or other commodities, Adams continues, 'someone who has a very particular, situated life, a unique being, is converted into something that has no distinctiveness, no uniqueness, no individuality.' Thus, 'meat' is a mass term because no matter how great the quantity, meat is still meat. It is the concept of the mass term that allows people to think that they can eat a hamburger steak and that cows still exist. ‘But if you have a living cow in front of you,' as Adams explains, 'and you kill that cow, and butcher that cow, and grind up her flesh, you have not added a mass term to a mass term and ended up with more of the same.’ The phenomenon of the mass term allows people to generalize that concept to apply to an entire species or group while simultaneously overlooking the needs and interests of individual members of that species.”

Greta Gaard, “Vegetarian Ecofeminism: A Review Essay”

[orpheusdrinkinga40inadeathbasket]

the ability to sympathize, like all emotions, is influenced by our social and political contexts. As Carol Adams explains, "How one has dealt with one’s own pain influences one’s ability to care about and respond to another’s suffering." Because Western culture has defined ongoing suffering as “unmanly,” many men learn to repress or deny their own suffering and are unable to sympathize with others’ suffering. In a culture based on the denial of feelings and the denigration of suffering, people of all genders may respond by denying their own emotions, by making those who suffer invisible, by dissociating themselves from the suffering by rationalizations, or by identifying with the aggressor. The outcome is that in the effort "to protect oneself from feeling one’s own pain," writes Adams, "one cannot feel anyone else’s pain either." As a way of dealing with suffering people in such cultural and political contexts may refuse to identify with those who suffered or continue to suffer and instead identify with those causing the suffering, with those in power. For those who are able to break through the barriers to sympathy, a contextual political analysis of animal suffering is the next step in developing a vegetarian ecofeminist critique. As Donovan explains, because "no ethic... exists in a political vacuum," effective activism and theory require both sympathy and political analysis. "People exercising attentive love see the tree; but they also see the logging industry," she writes. "They see the downed cow in the slaughter-house pen; but they also see the farming and dairy industry. They see the Silver Spring monkey; but they also see the drug corporations and university collaboration.” While the political analysis is essential for formulating an effective response, “The motivation for that response remains the primary experience of sympathy.”

Greta Gaard, “Vegetarian Ecofeminism: A Review Essay”

[j-----------r]

the way in which women and nature have been conceptualized historically in the Western intellectual tradition has resulted in devaluing whatever is associated with women, emotion, animals, nature, and the body, while imultaneously elevating in value those things associated with men, reason, humans, culture, and the mind.

Greta Gaard, Ecofeminism

[apocalypsepark]

A Note on Binaries

Greta Gaard outlines a list of binaries in her work “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism.” These binaries are used throughout the reading to address the issue of feminism and how it interacts with ecological factors to produce an entirely different side of the feminist agenda. We can extract these binaries to use in other situations, such as our exploration of a liminal space we have deemed “Apocalypse Park” here on the USF campus. It was incredible to take a step back and view everything we came across with this binary lens. Pretty much everything can be summed up as “this or that.” Now that we have constructed these binaries around everything, we also have the ability to tear them down, allowing things to be more than one thing or another. Now that we have taken the step back, we can take a step forward, and blur the lines society has constructed around everything.

[apocalypsepark]

It is odd how such simple objects can evoke such an emotional response, especially in a place like the apocalypse park. While these chairs were generally creepy during the day, a sense of eeriness was laid over them after the sun set. But why? It follows the same logic as the stairwell issue. Nighttime is when the monstrosities come about, and we allow them to consume our thoughts. Laura and I had a long conversation about the possibility of someone living in that area while we were there at night. Fear struck me before I was reminded that other signs of life would have to be found before a conclusion was made. The interesting point here is that these thoughts did not cross my mind during the day. Sure, I found it strange that two office chairs were just sitting out there, but I was soon caught up in the photo opportunity. It was only at night that my irrational thoughts crept in. For centuries, humans have feared the night because of the uncertainty it held. Things are most certainly not different now. We assume the worst when the sun is gone because light is our safety net. It is light that makes these chairs harmless, but darkness injects into them some sort of evil plot. Combine that with the change in their position, and you have a horror story that is contained within our very own apocalypse park.

[apocalypsepark]

We briefly talked about how different the apocalypse park looked at night as compared to during the day. One of the most noticeable differences was the creepiness level of the stairwell in the main part of the park. This staircase leads down into the murky depths of the ground level. When the water level is high, you can not see ground and if you continued down this staircase, you would be submerged up to the knees very quickly. Both times we visited, the water level was low enough so that we could walk down it completely before encountering water. During the daytime, this staircase didn’t seem too out of the ordinary. We considered it an odd placement for stairs, but there was no odd vibe being given off. When we went back that night, though, the air had definitely changed. Looking down those stairs at nighttime is such a creepy experience, as shown by the picture. You can barely see the bottom and the odd placement suddenly seems like an omen of ill will. Who knows what might happen if you were to traverse these stairs? This is a good representation of a culture/nature binary. Humans tend to think of daytime as more civilized because it is the time where most things happen. But nighttime is a whole other game. Bad things happen after dark. That’s why we set curfews for our children and walk home with friends rather than by ourselves. This just adds to the stigmatization of the nighttime, which ultimately lead to our labeling of the stairs at night as “creepy.” Nighttime is when wild things can occur, ones that seem animalistic and uncivilized. And that’s why we attribute it to “nature,” because it is something we cannot quite comprehend.

[apocalypsepark]

    During our nighttime excursion at the apocalypse park, we noticed that everything had changed. Nothing that we had seen that morning had remained in the same place. So is it logical to assume that we, too, had been changed by this liminal space? Had we become a part of this space, consumed by the energy that resides there? In this series of images, multiple binaries are captured as we explore the possibility of surrendering ourselves to the apocalypse park.

    When we die, our bodies are returned to the dirt, to be reclaimed by that from which we came. Some believe that our souls continue on, untouched and unperturbed by the ending that is death. Can this also happen when we find a place that exhibits such a strong hold on both nature and humanity? It seems to be a choice between the mind or the body. Do we allow our bodies to be taken by this space? Or do we retain our mindfulness, aware of what we can become? And if our bodies are reclaimed and our souls live on, are we still a part of ourselves, or have we become a part of nature? Gaard would, I believe, say that we can be both. She strongly agrees with the dualism of such binaries. Both choices are possible if we examine them deeply. I’d also like to present the idea that liminal spaces such as apocalypse park claim our souls rather than our bodies. If we form an emotional attachment to this place, we leave a piece of ourselves here in a nonphysical form. We retain our physical being, but our spirit is tied to those places that have an effect on us.