This week's readings were fantastic; no surprise, as ecofeminism is one of my favorite feminist genres. Marti Kheel summed up the premise of ecofeminism like this:
—“Ecofeminists have argued that the domination of women and nature has gone hand in hand in Western patriarchal society. Furthermore they argue that the devaluation of women and nature is connected to other forms of oppression, such as racism, classism, heterosexism, and speciesism. Underlying these forms of domination are a series of dualisms: rational/irrational, good/evil, sacred/profane, conscious/unconscious, autonomous/dependent, active/passive, culture/nature, positive/negative and male/female.”
I liked that this week's readings represented several different strains of thought within ecofeminism. The Starhawk readings represented a historical spirituality approach to ecofeminism, which seeks to reclaim goddess-worship and earth-centered ritual and overturns the patriarchal cosmovision. And the Vandana Shiva and Heather Eaton readings (among others) contained a socioeconomic analysis that explains the links between globalization, corporate rule, environmental degradation, and white supremacist patriarchy--and details how real people's lives are affected by invisible power structures that operate based on this classic patriarchal hierarchy:
God
Man
Women
Children
Animals
Nature
Ecofeminism has been heavily critiqued for several things: for purportedly essentializing women, indigenous people, and other groups; for participating in luxury spirituality, cultural appropriation, and escapism; and for overgeneralizing gender and nature in ways that don't apply to all cultural contexts. I think there is something to these critiques, but keeping them in mind I still think that ecofeminism is one of the most appealing schools of feminist thought for me. I think it is a powerful frame that is capable of using both cultural-symbolic and practical-socioeconomic levels of analysis to approach a wide range of social and environmental problems.
Yes I think it's a difficult line to walk between respecting the sacred, liberating ourselves from that imperialist white power capitalist structure you mention in your other post (i know i didn't get the words all right, but that's the way i remember it) anyway, btw liberating ourselves from that versus appropriating cultures that have already been so nearly destroyed and thereby perpetuating the harmful effects of that same exact structure from which we attempt to extricate ourselves!
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