Weekly Reading Response #5

[Jay Jay]

Gaard, Greta, and Patrick D. Murphy, eds. Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1998. Print.

Chapters Read:

• “‘Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight”: A Call for Boundary-Crossing in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism” by Karla Armbruster
• “‘Skin Dreaming’: The Bodily Transgressions of Fielding Burke, Octavia Butler, and Linda Hogan” by Stacy Alaimo
• “Ecocritical Chicana Literature: Ana Castillo’s ‘Virtual Realism’” by Kamala Platt
• “Rethinking Dichotomies in Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge” by Cassandra Kircher
• “In Search of Common Ground: An Ecofeminist Inquiry into Christa Wolf’s Work” by Deborah Janson
• “Grass-Roots Ecofeminism: Activating Utopia” by Cathleen McGuire and Colleen McGuire
• “Deep Response: An Ecofeminist, Dialogical Approach to Introductory Literature Classrooms” by John Paul Tassoni
• “Hiking without a Map: Reflections on Teaching Ecofeminist Literary Criticism” by Greta Caard

Despite never having read Ursula Le Guin’s “Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight,” Karla Armbruster’s essay provided me with an excellent framework that could help with my own project.  Before Armbruster explores Le Guin’s story, she reminds readers of the importance of transformation within ecofeminism: “it is politically essential to explore and emphasize these connections of the dominations of women and nature are to be substantively challenged” (97).  The political call to action and to induce transformation help form the backbone of ecofeminism.  Armbruster reinforces the warning from Val Plumwood that “there is a tendency within ecofeminist theory to emphasize the connections or continuity between women and nature at the expense of recognizing important differences between the group” (98).  This might seem obvious, but as a budding ecofeminist scholar, I am worried that I might fall into the same trap.  Luckily, I am not one of those who believes that women have a deeper and more heartfelt connection with nature simply by being a woman, so I’m hoping that misinformed bias will not appear in my own academic writing.

Another section of Armbruster’s essay that I think will help in my own project is her admonishment that sometimes women are guilty of environmental degradation—not just men.  She finds fault in some scholars who “fail to explore the extent to which many women benefit from and participate in the ideological, political, and economic forces that sanction the domination and abuse of nonhuman nature” (102).  I think it will be fruitful for me to keep an eye out for instances where women are complicit in this dominating and abusing relationship rather than only seek out examples of women writers challenging domination and abuse.  To do so will retain the complexity and subtlety demanded of academic analysis, as well as avoiding the trap of dualistic or binary thinking.

I would like to quote wholly Armbruster’s list of questions from her essay because I think they are valuable for all types of ecofeminist or ecocritical analysis.

—Does the text convey a sense of the human subject as socially and discursively constructed, multiply organized, and constantly shifting?
—Does the text also account for the influence of nonhuman nature on the subject (and of the subject on nonhuman nature) without resorting to essentialism?
—Does the text avoid reinscribing dualisms and hierarchical notions of difference? (106)

These are the questions I will be keeping in mind while reading through my not-yet-selected primary text.  What could be really interesting is texts that partially or wholly deny items on this list because it would allow for commentary on the cultural state or expectations of a human-nonhuman relationship.  Of course, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I find an early American text that gives me a “yes” for all three of the above questions.

Stacy Alaimo’s essay focuses on the body as a site of transformation and of the body’s relationship with ideologies of nature and racism.  The two ideologies of nature that Alaimo describes are Social Darwinism and the Romantic conception of nature (124).  The abusive relationship between white women and women of color and nature are described as such: “white women have fled from corporeal connections with a debased nature by displacing nature onto the bodies of African Americans and others” (124).  What I appreciate about Alaimo’s essay is that she succinctly describes the contrasts between social Darwinism and the romantic view of nature—social Darwinism involves a hierarchical scale that privileges the bodies of some over others, whereas romantics view nature as a “disembodied space” that allows for “mental or spiritual connection with nature” (125).