Murphy, Patrick D. Literature, Nature, and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques. Albany: State U of New York P, 1995. Print.
Chapters Read:
- “Prolegomenon for an Ecofeminist Dialogics”
- “Ground, Pivot, Motion: Ecofeminist Theory, Dialogics, and Literary Practice”
- “Voicing Another Nature”
- “ Reconceiving the Relations of Woman and Nature, Nature and Culture: Contemporary Environmental Literature by Women”
- “Sex-Typing the Planet: Gaia Imagery and the Problem of Subverting Patriarchy”
First, let’s get a basic definition out of the way.
dialogic (adjective): of, pertaining to, or of the nature of dialogue; sharing in dialogue. (OED)
Also, I need to preface this reading response by saying I have little working knowledge of Mikhail Bakhtin—my only encounters with Bakhtin occurred in my theory survey course three years ago.
The first chapter, “Prolegomenon for an Ecofeminist Dialogics,” addressed the need Murphy sees for scholars (and ecological, ecofeminist activists) to use Bakhtin’s dialogical method to transform the fields of ecology and feminisms. The method, previously used only for “literature, language, and thought” can become a “livable critical theory” if used as a foundation for the intersection of ecology and feminisms (4). It is necessary to recognize the differences and use of things-in-themselves, things-for-us, and us-as-things-for-others as descriptors for the relationships of interdependence between humans, nonhumans, and the environment. Murphy states scholars must develop a criterion of ecological values based on three variables: interrelationship, maintenance, and sustainment (6). These variables would allow us to evaluate the health of the ecosystem as a foundational judgment, allowing actual nature and the environment to become a subject rather than object.
While Murphy urges us to embrace Bakhtin’s method of dialogics, he recognizes the limitations of the methodology and points towards corrections that must be made. For example, Bakhtin’s method makes it impossible for the nonhuman to become the speaking subject, which contradicts the goals of ecofeminist and ecocritical theory (12). Bakhtin also often erases the physical environment as an integral part of the self-formation. Scholars also need to recognize there will always be two voices: that of the nonhuman speaking subject, and that of the rendering human author. Theoretical traps that we should be wary of include becoming too attached to the centers that appear on the margins (ecofeminism is situated on the margins), and nostalgia (it is static idealization).
I really enjoyed the second chapter, “Ground, Pivot, Motion: Ecofeminist Theory, Dialogics, and Literary Practice” because it consistently reminded readers of the need for flexibility and change. Ecofeminist theory is a widely encompassing set of theories, ranging from spiritual, to radical, to socialist ecofeminists and therefore there is no one set standard of “rules,” so to speak. Murphy includes the idea of “emancipatory strategies” voiced by Patricia Yaeger in Honey-Mad Women, a method by which women writers have “challenge[d] the illusion of ‘norms’ that patriarchy persistently generates” while at the same time, giving “voice to the muted” (20). This could be a very helpful to my own project of locating ecofeminist characteristics in women’s writings from early America. Can I locate any “emancipatory strategies” that challenge patriarchal values in ecocritical narratives?
In this essay Murphy provides the readers with an alternative to “the other”: “anotherness.” Anotherness means being another for others (23). I want to include a rather large quote from Murphy because it connects the need for a dialogical method and a reconstruction of other into anotherness very succinctly:
A dialogical orientation reinforces the ecofeminist recognition of interdependence and the natural need for diversity. This recognition, then, requires a rethinking of the concepts of other and otherness, which have been dominated in contemporary critical theory by psychoanalytic rather than ecological constructs. If the recognition of otherness and that status of other is applied only to women and/or the unconscious, for example, and the corollary notion of anotherness, being another for others, is not recognized, then the ecological process of interanimation—the ways in which humans and other entities develop, change, and learn through mutually influencing each other day to day, age by age—will go unacknowledged, and notions of female autonomy that have been useful to women in thinking through the characteristics of their social oppression will end up complicitous with the traditional American, patriarchal beliefs in autonomy and individualism. (23)
As one can see, there is a lot at stake here. The use of the dialogical method can induce change but only if certain changes are made, including replacing the idea of the other/otherness with anotherness, which will allow scholars, critics, and activists to include the nonhuman and the physical environment. Relatedly, instead of centers (at both the “center” and at the margins”), Murphy envisions cultural and physical pivots, which along with the concept of Bakhtin’s centripetal/centrifugal tension, will help ensure no “unequal power relationships and structures” (23). Another idea that is helpful for budding ecofeminist scholars is the reminder that not all texts we label nature writing or environmental texts will encompass both feminist and ecological theories or outlooks. Rather, there might be an uneven mix or the presence of double-voicing in the text. Scholars must be flexible, and examine the relationship between the unconscious and the feminist or ecological (or both!) impulses located in texts (29). The most important ideas that I took from this chapter are flexibility, willingness to change and evolve, and the necessity of envisioning a new idea of otherness.
The third chapter, “Voicing Another Nature,” examines nature writing as a genre and the roadblocks it faces both in the present and the future (keeping in mind these essays were published in 1995). Murphy states that nature writing is itself a marginalized genre because of two factors: one, it does not fit into established genre categories, and two, nature has been position as a site of human endeavor rather than an entity in its own right (31). This marginalization did not magically occur or occur by accident; rather, male editors have attempted to codify nature writing as a dead rather than living genre, preserving the patriarchal and hierarchical ideas of the Enlightenment. This has been accomplished by emphasizing non-fiction, the essay, and prose, as evidenced in The Norton Book of Nature Writing (editors Robert Finch and John Elder, published 1990). The danger is clear, according to Murphy: “such codification will guarantee the reproduction of existing hierarchies of value, because it will preclude nature writing’s engagement with the present” (33). Additionally, “[c]riticism of existing social institutions and human behaviors toward the environment will be wrapped in nostalgia and the fatalistic regret that accompanies permanent exile from the Garden” (33). The result? Three exclusions: the insights and challenges of feminism, the possibility and recognition of feminist nature writing, and any other forms of otherness (34). As one can see, the stakes are indeed high, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that in the past twenty one years, The Norton Book of Nature Writing and other such anthologies have improved their selections.
All is not hopeless however. Murphy does provide possibilities, such as replacing alienation with relation, which is often the perceived focus of nature writing. If scholars recognize the need to break away from old, socially and culturally constructed genre boundaries that stifle the possibilities for nature writing, specifically women’s nature writing, then progress can be made. Murphy provides examples of women nature writers that have broken genre conventions and have been since recovered by feminist, ecocritical, and ecofeminist scholars: Mary Austin, Susan Griffin, and Native American women writers. A very informative method of critical analysis suggest by Murphy is to look at not only what the author writes about, but also how they write and why they write (39). For example, Murphy claims that Native American texts often challenge the attempt by male editors to codify the genre of nature writing in two manners. One, the Native American storytelling tradition sees no separation between fact and fiction (and oh boy, I bet that ruffles some editor’s feathers). Two, most Native American authors see no clear cut division between prose and poetry. You can see how these refusals to cling to separate and distinct writing styles would confuse and anger codifiers of patriarchy. After all, if you cannot easily name something, how can you yield power over it?
The fourth chapter, “Reconceiving the Relations of Woman and Nature, Nature and Culture: Contemporary Environmental Literature by Women” further develops an idea presented in a previous chapter: are all ecologists feminists, and are all feminists ecologists (as applied to writers and their texts). The previous chapter encouraged scholars to appreciate that texts might contain a mixture of ecological and feminist characteristics. This chapter argues persuasively that the fields of environmentalism and feminism are intertwined and inseparable: “And it might do some good to ask some people: can you really be an environmentalist without being a feminist; and others: can you really be a feminist without being an environmentalist?” (57). But first, I should back up a bit and offer you the proof that Murphy gives the readers.
Since the Greeks, Susan Griffin argues in her text Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, patriarchy has used scientific, philosophical and religious modes of thought to “render women objects of male attention, domination and conquest” (47). Ecocritical analysis by Griffin illuminates the relationship between women’s subjugation and the manner in which men have defined nature—they are connected, with both women and nature suffering at the hands of patriarchy (47). Nature, or entities defined as nonhuman, are objectified for “attention, domination, and conquest” the same as women (47). Fast forward through the seventies to the eighties, which apparently gave birth (pun intended) to gynocritics. I don’t think I’d ever heard of this term before, so I had to double check what it meant after reading Murphy’s essay. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, gynocritics is “a school of feminist criticism concerned with 'woman as writer…with the history, themes, genres, and structures of literature by women'" (EB). Okay, moving on.
Murphy reminds us that despite the progress of feminisms, “many theorists ignore the ‘places’ in which women find themselves and the relation of environment to selfhood” (48). By reevaluating and valuing the environment as an entity in itself, environmentalism and feminism are able to converge and intersect in complimentary ways. Hence Murphy is able to state,
the specifics that both environmentalism and feminism separately oppose stem from the same source: the patriarchal construction of modern Western civilization. Thus, to be a feminist one must also be an ecologist, because the domination and oppression of women and nature are inextricably intertwined. To be an ecologist, one must also be a feminist, since without addressing gender oppression and the patriarchal ideology that generates the sexual metaphors of masculine domination of nature, one cannot effectively challenge the world views that threaten the stable evolution of the biosphere, in which human beings participate or perish. (48)
Apologizes for the long quote, but I felt it was necessary to include because it really spoke to me. Ecofeminism means ignoring the artificial boundaries set into place between genres, between disciplines, between fiction and non-fiction and instead, finding connections based on, as Murphy states, “thematics and sympathies” (50). Lastly, I want to mention that there is a distinction between self-conscious feminist writing and works that are affectively feminist in themes, which is something I need to keep in mind while attempting to reach into the past for texts with ecofeminist or ecocritical characteristics (50).
The fifth and final chapter for this weekly reading response, “Sex-Typing the Planet: Gaia Imagery and the Problem of Subverting Patriarchy,” addressed the problematic use of Gaia imagery. Murphy asks an important question: can Gaia imagery be used without evoking patriarchal perceptions? The answer, simply put, is no. There is simply too much patriarchal baggage associated with the Greek mythology of Gaia, despite the attempts by scholars and critics to disavow such baggage. Apparently critics have the bad habit of reinscribing hierarchical gender valuation (meaning one gender is privileged over the other) in the critique intended to erase it. The problem with the Gaia imagery is the Earth is a gender-neutral or androgynous entity that we attempt to solely identify as female. Murphy states, “Sex-typing a gender-free entity invokes and reinscribes not a natural, heterarchical duality of bio-gender whose identity through integration ‘completes one’ but a cultural dualism that hierarchically divides” (67). In other words, it’s bad, don’t do it, especially because it results in an alienated Earth.
I really enjoyed reading through these five chapters in Literature, Nature, and Other. While reading through Sarah Kemble Knight’s journal, I will be keeping an eye out for instances of things-in-themselves, things-for-us, and us-as-things-for-others. I’m not quite sure if Knight identifies aspects of the environment according to these divisions, but I know she does for those who are not-white, not of her class, and not of her education. The journal is considered a travel narrative, which is generally considered a type of nature writing, depending I suppose on the topics involved. I still need to go through the text and mark out the manner in which Knight addresses nature and the environment, so look for those notes next time.
Works Cited:
"dialogic, adj.". OED Online. Oxford University Press. 28 June 2011. Web.
"gynocritics." Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica. Web. 28 Jun. 2011.
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