Mundane’s World Ecofeminism

Ecofeminism Ecofeminism is a feminist approach to environmental ethics. Feminist theorists ask the question, "What is the source of the oppression of women, and how do we get rid of it?" Ecofeminists believe there are interconnections between the oppression of women (sexism), the oppression of other human Others (racism, classism, ageism, colonialism, etc.) and the domination of nature (naturism).

Ecofeminism Instead of thinking about ourselves as superior to and separate from nature, ecofeminists urge us to recognize our connection: Our intelligence is a special, intense form of . . . radial energy, but it is not without continuity with other forms; it is the self-conscious or “thinking dimension” of the radial energy of matter. We must respond to a “thou-ness” in all beings. . . We respond not just as “I to it,” but as “I to thou,” to the spirit, the life energy that lies in every being in its own form of existence.” Rosemary Radford Ruether

Ecofeminism In The Sacred Hoop, Paula Gunn Allen suggests that we turn to Native American traditions for conceptualizations about nature that are different from the alienation and dominance approaches inherent in Western epistemologies. God and the Spirit are not seen as transcendent from life, but rather as immanent in all life-forms. “When I was small,” says Allen, “my mother often told me that animals, insects, and plants are to be treated with the kind of respect one customarily accords to high-status adults.” Nature is seen “not as blind and mechanical, but as aware and organic.” There is a seamless web between human and non human life.

Ecofeminism Some deep ecologists go so far as to assert a “biotic right.” They believe that the earth has a right to exist in and of itself, apart from human interests. Aldo Leopold, in A Sand Country Almanac, claims that nature is a “biotic community, where the interests of individual creatures, including humans, are subsumed to the survival and integrity of the whole community.

Ecofeminism The ecofeminist manifesto, labeled “A Declaration of Interdependence,” begins and ends this way: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to create a new bond among peoples of the earth, connecting each to the other, undertaking equal responsibilities under the laws of nature, a decent respect for the welfare of human kind and all life on earth requires us to Declare our Interdependence. . . . We recognize that humankind has not woven the web of life; we are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. Whatever befalls the earth befalls also the family of the earth.”

Ecofeminism Ecofeminists want to eradicate all oppressive conceptual frameworks and create a world in which differences do not lead to domination. "The goal of ecofeminist environmental ethics is to develop theories and practices concerning humans and the natural environment that are not male-biased and that provide a guide to action in the prefeminist present." Karen Warren Ecofeminst Philosophy, 2000

Ecofeminism The main tenet of ecofeminist theory is that the domination of women and the domination of nature are integral. Hierarchical, dualistic thinking is the aspect of the “masculine world view” that ecofeminists have especially targeted. “Patriarchal value-hierarchical thinking gives rise to a logic of domination, . . . A way of thinking which explains, justifies, and maintains the subordination of an ‘inferior’ group by a ‘superior’ group.” Karen Warren

The Logic of Domination The logic of domination assumes that superiority justifies subordination. The logic of domination was used to justify slavery. The masters considered themselves superior to the African slaves, and used a logic of domination to justify slavery. This logic of domination is also used to justify men's domination over women, human's domination over nature, and the wealthy's domination over the poor.

Toward an Ecofeminist Ethic and Culture We need to reshape our dualistic concept of reality as split between souless matter and transcendent male consciousness. We need to discover our actual reality as latecomers to the planet. The world of nature existed for billions of years before we arrived. We are parasites on the food chain, consuming more and more and putting too little back to restore and maintain the life system. We need to recognize our utter dependence on the great life-producing matrix of the planet in order to earn to reintegrate our human systems of production, consumption and waste into the ecological patterns by which nature sustains life.

Mind/Nature Duality Mind or consciousness is not something that originates in some transcendent world outside of nature, but instead is the place where nature itself becomes conscious. We need to think of human consciousness not as separating us as a higher species from the rest of nature, but rather as a gift to enable us to learn how to harmonize our needs with the natural system around us, of which we are a dependent part.

Ecofeminism and God Instead of modeling God after alienated male consciousness, outside of and ruling over nature, God in ecofeminist spirituality is the immanent source of life that sustains the planetary community. God is neither male, nor anthropomorphic. God is the font, from which the variety of planets and animals well up in each new generation, the matrix that sustains their life-giving interdependency. Instead of salvation sought either in the disembodied soul or the immortalized body, in a flight to heaven or to the end of history, salvation should be seen as a continual conversion to the center, to the concrete basis by which we sustain our relation to nature and to one another.

Interdependency In ecofeminist culture and ethic, mutual interdependency replaced the hierarchies of domination as the model relationship between men and women, between human groups and between humans and other beings. In every day and every new generation we need to remake our relation to each other, finding anew the true nexus of relationality that sustains, rather than exploits and destroys, life.

Revised Sense of Self in Relation to the Life Cycle The sustaining of an organic community of plant and animal life is a continual cycle of growth and disintegration. The western flight from immortality is a flight from the disintegration side of the life cycle, from accepting ourselves as part of that process. By pretending that we can immortalize ourselves, souls and bodies, we are immortalizing our garbage and polluting the earth. In order to learn to recycle our garbage as fertilizer for new life, as matter for new artifacts we need to accept our selfhood as participating in the same process.

Life-Cycle We must recognize that we, too, are part of the greater life cycle, that we must disintegrate back into the nexus of life and arise again in new forms. The preceding 6 slides present information lifted from Rosemary Radford Ruether’s essay on ecofeminism which you can find at <http://www.spunk.org/library/pubs/openeye/sp000943.txt>

Key Features of Ecofeminist Ethics 1. A theory-in-process that will change over time. 2. Does not promote any "isms of dominations." 3. Contextualist 4. Inclusivist 5. Biased, but a better bias than biases that are not inclusivist or that promote "isms of domination." 6. Gives a place for currently underrepresented values, such as values of care, trust, and friendship.