In the chapter “Reconceiving the Relations Women and Nature, Nature and Culture,” Patrick D. Murphy explains how the ecologists’ and feminists’ causes are linked because they are both opposed to the same dominant patriarchal ideology (48). He also states that one of the basic tenets of ecofeminism is to understand that seeing other humans and nonhumans as “non-alien” is vital to “perceiving and conceptualizing of interanimation, the mutual co-creation of selves and others” (48-50). The danger of viewing women and nature as below men in a hierarchal relationship is that it denies the mutually interdependent relationship between all human and nonhumans that is essential for our survival (50).
In the next chapter, “Sex-typing the Planet: Gaia Imagery and the Problem of Subverting Patriarchy,” Murphy examines whether or not Gaia imagery reinforces the patriarchal ideology that various philosophers want to subvert (59). Murphy concludes that Gaia imagery “does the planet no good. 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).
This chapter was of particular interest to me because in the text I am exploring for my project the author, William Bartram, does not sex-type the entire planet but instead imagines both male and female metaphors for various nonhuman life forms. Though Bartram’s metaphors reinforce an anthropocentric world view—by imagining nature in human terms—he uses them in a manner that recognizes a kinship with and an interdependence between human and nonhuman nature. His variety of metaphors also points to his recognition of the need for bio-diversity.
I believe the manner in which he describes nature, as different men and women, was to stress that he sees nonhuman forms as having an interanimation that manifests differently but is equal to that of humans. Essentially, the metaphors seem to raise non-human nature so that it is equal with humans. I am also currently looking into the Quaker relationships between men and women, which I believe is more heterarchical than hierarchal. If this is true, then I will have a more solid foundation to claim that the metaphors present in Bartram’s text are not meant to reinforce the man/nature hierarchy but are actually designed to explain the equal importance of humans and nonhumans.
Basically, if Bartram viewed women and men as equal and women and nature as equal, then these metaphors do not function in a reductive fashion. However, this still does not solve the problem that the metaphors are anthropocentric in nature, but this does not prevent the text from expressing a heterarchical relationship between humans and non-humans, which would mean that it contains what today we would consider ecofeminist characteristics.
Because my initial project proposal was too ambitious, I have narrowed my focus down to discuss how Bartram’s anthropocentric metaphors function in the text. I believe that with Bartram’s introduction, where he describes his nature philosophy by saying that nature and man are equally important because they are interdependent, I can demonstrate that the metaphors are not completely detrimental (in the way that the woman-as-land, or Gaia as earth metaphors harm the perception of women and nature) but that the metaphors actually articulate an interanimation in nature and man because they are employed to show that all beings are enlivened with the same spark and have the same origin.
On a side note, I have found that the technique of meditating by observing nonhuman beings (discussed in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism) and trying to imagine the way they see the world is relaxing. I have yet to have any epiphanies staring into the eyes of my large black cat but it is relaxing to imagine communicating without human words. I also found that the lizards on the sidewalk outside of my apartment take notice when I walk by and the bold ones even rise up on their legs and execute swift push-up like movements as if to tell me that this is their home.
Still pondering interanimation . . .
~Blake
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