(sr)/ textual analisis – Ecofeminist Natures. Race, Gender, Feminist Theory and Political Action
I am very interested in the emergence of different theories related to environmentalism and ecology to help the fashion industry develop into a more sustainable future.
What is ecofeminism? Is it a movement which promotes patriarchal stereotypes of nurturing Earth Mothers? Is it a movement only for white women? Is it the best hope for addressing global environmental problems? Ecofeminist theories are influential in several disciplines with a focus on “applied” scholarship, such as development studies and natural resource sciences. Feminist artist creating environmental art are reading ecofeminist theories. And young women, who frequents are deeply concerned about environmental questions, are often introduced to feminist arguments through exposure to ecofeminist theory.
Ecofeminism is a movement that makes connections between environmentalism and Feminisms; more precisely, it articulates the theory that the ideologies that authorize injustices based on gender, race, and class are related to the ideologies that sanction the exploitation and degradation of the environment.
Ecofeminism has roots in both feminism and environmentalism. Environmentalism is one of the most popular and significant locations for radical politics today; it attracts people because of the seemingly apocalyptic nature of our ecological crises and the many ways in which environmental problems affect people’s daily lives, as well as the sense of its global relevance. As a feminist movement, ecofeminism reworks as a political status for women so as to include the effects on the environment of feminizing nature.
The Ecofeminist Perspectives: Culture, Nature, Theory Conference in March 1987 was an embodiment of the sharp conflict between theorists of ecofeminism and deep ecology that had proceeded the conference and continued after it, as well as of the conflicts over sexism within radical environmentalist groups inspired by deep ecology. Deep ecology is a radical environmentalist philosophy formulated primarily by Arne Naess, Bill Devall, George Sessions, and Warwick Fox. Its central point is that environmental problems stem from anthropocentricity, a human-centred ideological position. Thus, environmental problems can only be solved by takin a biocentric or ecocentric approach, one that puts the needs of nature first, or at least on a parallel with human needs. Though deep ecology has had an abiding influence on a number of activist-oriented movements, it remains primarily an intellectual movement.
Deep ecology’s desire to rid society of the need for the “domination and control of nature” would seem to ally it with ecofeminist concerns, but, as Jim Cheney argues, “deep ecological attempts to overcome human (really masculine) alienation from nature fail In the end because they are unable to overcome a masculine sense of self and the kinds of ethical theory that go along with this sense of self”. The “oceanic feeling of fusion” with nature promoted by deep ecologists is just the flip side of a dualism that allows only two choices in out relationship with nature (and with other human beings): “either we ‘respond to nature as part of ourselves’ or we treat it ‘as a stranger or alien available for exploitation’… We have either atomistically defined selfs who are strangers to one another or one gigantic self”.
