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Frontiers of the Imagination: Women, History, and Nature

1990; Binghamton University; Volume: 1; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/jowh.2010.0116

1527-2036

Irene Diamond, Lisa Kuppler,

Environmental, Ecological, and Cultural Studies

Frontiers of the Imagination: Women, History, and Nature Irene Diamond and Lisa Kuppler I think it is time to put ecology back into feminism, to feel as our own the plight of the earth and shout it. Otherwise feminism and ecology will continue to win only partial gains, buying time. Otherwise the supremacist mentality that rules the affairs of our planet will continue its destructive course and annihilate us all in the name of health, happiness and progress. Andrée Collard, Rape of the Wild. Historical writing can be one of the more subtle propaganda mechanisms for promoting the kind of "health, happiness and progress" that Andrée Collard sees as suicidal. But societies where women are threatened daily with rape and other forms of random violence do not hold up to the promise of "health and happiness." Contemporary ecological catastrophes from Bhopal, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl, to beaches and waters polluted by medical waste and oil slicks also force us to question our notion of "progress". The understanding that both forms of violence are rooted in a world view that sees both women and nature as resources in a universe centering around white, western man is what inspires contemporary feminists and ecologists to reimagine our relationship to the natural world. Ecofeminism as an emergent politics and worldview challenges and ref rames dominant paradigms of "progress, health and happiness." From its position at the frontiers of the contemporary imagination it reclaims what patriarchal accounts have relegated to the dustbins of "prehistory" or "backwardness." The reclamation of goddess imagery and a matriarchal tradition in histories, as for example in the work of Starhawk and Heide Gttner-Abendroth^has been especially important for providing alternative images for visions of a more harmonious, ecologically balanced future. The recovery of discarded health care and healing practices by women in the wholistic health movement question the hierarchical dualisms of western medicine as they point to alternative readings of women and nature. Thus, the multifaceted efforts of many western feminists to create new stories and narratives of humans and the cosmos in the 1970s form a vital component of the complex constellation we now label ecofeminism. Scorned, trivialized, or ignored by many in the academy, the strength of ecofeminism is in the streets. Here we see that the supposed antagonism between active political resistance and spiritual passivity does not seem to hold. Indeed, individuals who have been inspired and motivated by their beliefs in Earth-based spirituality have often been some of the most active ©1990 Journal of Wqmen-s History, Vol. l No. 3 (Winter)__________________ 1990 DIALOGUE: DIAMOND AND KUPPLER 161 and vigilant defenders of the planet. Thus, it would seem that narratives that deny or ignore the spiritual threads of ecofeminism fail to acknowledge some of its most creative features. At the same time, the development of ecofeminism, and the very interest in goddess imagery, must also be situated within the larger shift within feminism, sometimes referred to as difference feminism, sometimes as cultural feminism, that in the late 1970s came to valorize and actively uphold the values and practices associated with women's culture. In the United States, the work of academic historians such as Joan Kelly and Carol Smith Rosenberg on the strength and vitality of women's culture can be viewed as part of this larger context, as can the more specific work revaluing motherhood by such different writers as Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, and Sara Ruddick.Mn movement politics, the focus on women's culture and the development of women's music and cultural institutions were also integral to this shift. The revaluation of the woman-nature connection in the late seventies and early eighties by theorists such as Mary Daly, Susan Griffin, Ynestra King, and Carolyn Merchant,3 who are more specifically identified with ecofeminism, needs to be viewed within this larger retelling of women's history and culture. Merchant, in her book The Death of Nature, offers a retelling of the history of the Scientific Revolution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that is especially important for ecofeminist thought. Her analysis of the shifting imagery of this period shows how the mechanistic world view of modern...