Feminist Ecologies

Changing Environments in the Anthropocene

Lara Stevens, Peta Tait, Denise Varney, Lara Stevens, Peta Tait, Denise Varney

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783319643854
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

This edited volume critically engages with ecofeminist scholarship. It tracks the ongoing dialogue between women's issues and environmental change by republishing the work of pioneering scholars and activists in the field. Together with new essays by contemporary ecofeminist scholars, the book uncovers the dialectical relationship between environmental and feminist causes, the relational identities of feminists and ecofeminists, and the concept of ecofeminism as a rallying point for environmental feminism. The volume defines ecofeminism as a multidisciplinary project and will appeal to readers working within the field of Environmental Humanities.

© The Author(s) 2018

Lara Stevens, Peta Tait and Denise Varney (eds.)Feminist Ecologieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64385-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: ‘Street-Fighters and Philosophers’: Traversing Ecofeminisms

Lara Stevens¹ , Peta Tait² and Denise Varney¹

(1)

The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

(2)

La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Lara Stevens (Corresponding author)

Peta Tait

Denise Varney

Lara Stevens

holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Melbourne. She is the author of Anti-War Theatre After Brecht: Dialectical Aesthetics in the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), and editor and translator of Politics, Ethics and Performance: Hélène Cixous and the Théâtre du Soleil (Re.press 2016), essays by French feminist philosopher Hélène Cixous. In 2014 she was the Hugh Williamson Postdoctoral Fellow in the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne.

Peta Tait

is a professor at La Trobe University, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a visiting Professorial Fellow at the University of Wollongong. She has written 60 scholarly articles, chapters, 10 plays and performance texts, and her recent books include Fighting Nature: Travelling Menageries, Animal Acts and War Shows (2016); the co-edited The Routledge Circus Studies Reader (2016), Wild and Dangerous Performances (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), Circus Bodies (2005), and Performing Emotions (2002). She is editor of Great Stage Directors volume one: Stanislavsky, Antoine and St Denis (Bloomsbury under contract) and author of ‘Emotion’ (Bloomsbury under contract). Her most recent play, Eleanor and Mary Alice, about Eleanor Roosevelt meeting with Mary Alice Evatt and human rights, art and war, was restaged in Perth in 2016.

Denise Varney

is Professor of Theatre Studies in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, and co-director of the Australian Centre. She was co-convenor of the Feminist Research Working Group (IFTR) from 2011 to 2015. She publishes on Australian Theatre, Brechtian and contemporary German theatre, feminist criticism and performance . Her latest book is Performance Feminism and Affect in Neoliberal Times (Palgrave Macmillan 2017), co-edited with Elin Diamond and Candice Amich. She is co-author of Theatre in the Asia Pacific: Regional Modernities in the Global Era (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), and is currently working on an Australian Research Council project, ‘Patrick White and Australian Theatrical Modernism’.

End Abstract

Feminist Ecologies: Changing Environments in the Anthropocene emerges at the intersection of two progressive twentieth-century political movements: one concerned with the fight for women’s rights and the other with ecological sustainability within the environment. The book celebrates the ongoing philosophical and activist advocacy of feminist ecologies as it traces the ecofeminist movement’s roots and alignment with recent social, cultural and artistic developments. It proposes the broad term ‘feminist ecologies’ to capture the diversity of the movement over the last 45 years and the range of possible ways in which feminist and ecological concerns can speak to one another in the era of the Anthropocene .

The capacity of feminist ecologies to reveal the interconnectedness of environmental and social injustices makes it an urgent and timely field of inquiry for the current moment. This collection arises out of the need to address the challenges of climate change , land degradation, species extinction and the disproportionate effects of these changes upon particular communities of women and their livelihoods. Feminist Ecologies shows why ecofeminist thought, as it has become known, remains pertinent today by demonstrating how its key actions, writings and thinking underpin twenty-first-century feminist perspectives on ecological debates. The book demonstrates the progressive development of this thinking and it s activism.

This collection grounds its historical moment in the Anthropocene . Atmospheric scientist P aul J. Crutzen theorized the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch shaped by the actions of humankind (2002: 23). The concept has been taken up and responded to by numerous environmental philosophers, humanities scholars as well as activists and it provides a useful starting point for the ecofeminist critiques that appear in Feminist Ecologies. It neatly evokes the contradiction between the human causes of environmental destruction and the human capacity to protect and care for the biosphere. For Cr utzen, the Anthropocene marks a historical period that can be linked to the atmospheric effects of the industrial revolution after the eighteenth century.¹ The expansion of capitalism with the industrial revolution connects: technological advancement; the attendant change in political economy; the realization of many of the ambitions of Enlightenm ent science; and the enabling of unprecedented exploitation of the natural world. Accordingly ecofeminism critiques global capitalism, because of its accompanying exploitation of the ‘others’: women, the poor, the colonized and the no nhuman.

But even with this advancement in naming the Anthropocene, the inherent social inequity of such drastic and rapid environmental change is not illuminated and the idea of the Anthropocene might even imply that all humanity is equally responsible. Feminist Ecologies reminds readers of the established field of ecofeminist knowledge: about how environmental injustice is linked to social injustice, particularly gendered social injustice. The overarching question of the book is: how do contemporary feminist and ecological scholarship, activism and artistic practice progress ecofeminist thinking in response to environmental problems?

Ecofeminism, like femin ism, has always been concerned with challenging and changing the oppressive structures that imbue the lives of women and men. The predominance of female scholars in this field and in this book is a historical legacy. Feminist thought is vital if we are to redress the near universal neglect of women by cultures around the world, including academic ones. This book shows how feminism and ecofeminism continue to evolve in social practice.²

Despite the escalating challenges of climate and rapid environmental change, and the persistence of widespread abuse and exploitation of women all over the world, ecofeminism is rarely discussed in public debate and is overlooked in much recent academic discourse. From the early 1980s, subjects on ecofeminism were offered in Western universities. Yet it cannot be taken for granted what exactly ecofeminism is or does, either historically or today. This book offers a range of perspectives on what ecofeminism is, does or can do. For example, Ariel Salleh calls ecofeminism ‘a strategy for social action’, stressing that it is not a static ontological claim about ‘the nature of women’ (1993: 231). Freya M athews writes that: ‘ecofeminism is by no means a position or a theory, but simply a wide open field of enquiry’ (1994: 62). Misconceptions about ecofeminism also pose challenges to its varied movements as, like many women-led causes, it sometimes has to fight to be recognized and treated seriously by other environmental, political and social activists. As Kate Rigby notes, ecofeminism has to work hard to show it is more than ‘simply a naïve form of feminine nature worship’ (1998: 168).

By the 1990s there were multiple feminisms, which accordingly impacted ecofeminism and expanded it in new and varied directions. As with most feminist movements or waves, there remains no singular and agreed upon definition of ecofeminism. Carolyn Mercha nt lists some of the different types of ecofeminism: liberal ecofeminism, radical ecofeminism, cultural ecofeminism, social ecofeminism, socialist ecofeminism, ecological ecofeminism, deep-ecol ogy ecofeminism, transformative ecofeminism, aboriginal ecofeminism and developing world ecofeminism (1996: 207). This book follows in this interdisciplinary tradition with contributors from a broad range of scholarly backgrounds—from philosophy to theatre and performance studies, political economy to gender studies, history to religious studies. These diverse perspectives mean that it addresses the junctures between masculinist political and cultural attitudes and behaviours, and their effects on the natural world in a variety of contexts.

Ecofeminism continues to be important because of its interdisciplinarity and therefore its usefulness in addressing the complexity of environmental and social crises today. As Salleh notes:

Ecofeminism is the only political framework I know of that can spell out the historical links between neoliberal capital, militarism , corporate science, worker alienation, domestic violence , reproductive technologies, sex tourism, child molestation, neocolonialism, Islamophobia, extractivism, nuclear weapons, industrial toxics, land and water grabs, deforestation , genetic engineering , climate change and the myth of modern progress. (2014: ix)

The chapters in this collection address pertinent public questions around misogyny, gender equality, justice, democratic ethics, environmental protection and sustainability . The ecofeminism coming out of the northern hemisphere today is particularly focused on exploring the silences around race, species and sexuality. Feminist Ecologies recognizes these areas and directly considers the question of race with regards to Indigeneity and Indigenous women. There is, however, more work to be done in investigating the work of southern hemisphere ecofeminists and their engagement with issues of animal and plant life as well as human sexuality in the era of the posthuman (Braidotti 2013).

In the wider context of this field, Feminist Ecologies raises a number of questions: why have women environmental activists and thinkers played such a pioneering role in expanding ecological thought? And how has their work influenced global ecological and feminist activist movements? What is productive about bringing the terms femin ism and ecology together? Our collection does not exhaustively or definitively answer these questions. Instead, it considers the dialectical relationship between environmental and feminist causes; the relational identities of feminists and ecofeminists; the possibility of framing ecofeminism as another wave of femin...