http://www.duke.edu/womstud/ecofeminsm.html
A New Eco-Feminism?
As many may know, a discourse emerged in the mid-1970's that aimed to investigate the connection between feminism and earth and animals. These women called themselves Eco-Feminists and generated many ideas about the nature of women, the plight of animals, and the need for conservation. Due to a whole host of theoretical and practical conflicts, this project was never seriously embraced by academic feminists. Duke Women's Studies New Eco-feminism project hopes to revisit these questions, and develop theories and methodologies that will resonate within academic feminism today. We learned from E2T that there is a great need for further study of conservation, land use, and animal advocacy, not just from the perspective of science but from the humanities and interpretive sciences as well. We believe that contemporary feminist theory has much to offer such an engagement. Despite the fact that our eco-feminist foremothers may have been entrenched in essentialist ideology in their formulations, we believe their questions were the right ones. What can feminist thinking offer in response to the many global crises we face today including massive development, deforestation, animal torture, extinction, habitat loss, pollution, and global warming? A lot, we think. Won't you join us in forging a new approach to earth and animals and an updated agenda for a New Eco-feminism?
(rkhanna@duke.edu ).
February 15 The Real Dirt on Farmer John. Richard White Auditorium, 7 pm. With Special Guests: The Common Woman Chorus and local farmers: Ben Bergman
and Noah Ranells of Fickle Creek Farm, and Portia McKnight of Chapel Hill Creamery.
March 22 Invisible. Richard White Auditorium, 7 pm.
April 19 The Gleaners and I. Richard White Auditorium, 7 pm.
I think this topic is very timely and takes a unique perspective on environmentalism. One of the core principles of feminist theory that has resonated with me in the past is that world systems--whether they be political or domestic or interpersonal--have been historically set up so that males hold traditional positions of power. Whether or not this is true in any given circumstance today, the common perception that males are "supposed" to retain leadership positions while females are "supposed" to exert a more coercive, soft power really affects the nature of our interactions. If we tie the Earth to the socialized notion of a female (and we do this simply through our word choice: Mother Earth), then we are binding the environment to all of the dynamics that come with gender relations. And THAT is an interesting concept.
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