Weekly Reading Response # 8 (Examining Interspecies Knots)

This week Jay Jay and I read Donna Haraway’s When Species Meet.  When we planned our course readings, we hoped that this book would discuss human animal and non-human animal relations in a manner that we could apply to our individual projects.  

The book focuses on companion species; Haraway defines these as not simply cats, dogs and gold fish, but also lab rats, feral cats, and farmed chickens.  In fact, she says that she views companion species not as a definitive term but as “a pointer to an ‘ongoing with,’ to be a much richer web to inhabit than any of the posthumanisms on display after (or in reference to) the ever-deferred demise of man” (16-17).

 Her primary project in this text is to explore the ways in which humans and companion species intertwine to shape each other.  Each chapter is not only an exploration of these endless points of contact but Haraway also considers the impact of contemporary technology.  She describes how mice used in breast cancer research will one day be connected to the women whose lives are saved by the relationship between the technology, the mice and the woman; how both dogs and laptops belong in the human lap; and even how feral cats captured, neutered, barcoded, and released to be barn cats reflect our present complicated place in the history of these points of human-animal, animal, and technological entanglements. 

She says that true respect of our nonhuman counterparts is only fully possible when we look back at our history of how we are intermeshed with them and how they are entangled with us: “We are in a knot of species coshaping one another in layers of reciprocating complexity all the way down.  Response and respect are possible only in those knots, with actual animals and people looking back at each other, sticky with all their muddled histories” (42).     

 As the wild animals that Bartram encounters do not normally live in a companion relationship with humans, the main concern of Haraway’s book not seem directly relevant to my project.  Actually, on second thought, Bartram is a scientist and he does look at the animals.  I cannot recall if he stops to reflect on the animals looking at him and respond to them.  Could it be that Bartram gives the animals he sees human eyes because it his time only humans had the power to look at, examine?  Is he empowering them with the ability to look back when he gives them human faces?  

Though, I do think that Jay Jay could use Haraways’ theories from this book in her project.  If I remember correctly, horses are the main mode of transportation in Madame Knight’s Journal.  I remember being struck by the mechanical and abusive manner in which the horses are treated—like they are merely tools.  I wonder what the failure to recognize her entanglement with the horse means?

An interspecies-technological knot:

After leaving my lap and stepping on the laptop in his usual fashion Gary the house cat settles down in his favorite nap spot, the compartment over our cable box where the wood is warmed by the energy traveling into the device.  Gary also carries a small microchip under his skin, which can be scanned to identify him if he is ever lost.  I adopted Gary when I lived in Japan and he traveled half a world in a small dark box in the cargo area of an airplane to live with me now. Now, thanks to this blog, my digital camera, and love for photography, Gary and his cable box exist on the internet as another connection and assemblage of human, cat, and technology.

His company makes my work peaceful; he wakes me up at the same time every morning before my alarm; and he greets me at the door when I come home by rolling on the floor.  I hope that in turn I amuse him, comfort him, and clam him.  His purring, playful, romps and curious gentle pawing at my face when I do not want to get up in the morning and realize that cats don’t have snooze buttons, assure me that we are each other’s companions.  

But what about the other animals . . . the ones who enter our homes on our plates, as “pests,” and as our clothes?  Who will reflect upon and respect them?

As I type, my cat Gary is rubbing his chin on my laptop and my face.  He is marking it and me with his scent glands which makes us familiar and comfortable smelling to him.  He is licking my fingers as I type and also licking the keyboard because of its close proximity (it might also taste like the ham sandwich I ate while doing my homework the other day).  When I bring my computer to class, I inevitability carry Gary’s black hairs in between the keys of my keyboard.  Well, the typing noise as annoyed Gary as usual and he has left my lap.  

Haraway says that we need to not only appreciate the complexity of these relationships but we need to go further.  I think she is asking us not just to appreciate but to understand and meditate upon these “sticky” encounters; to not just look at but to learn to look back at animals.  I am sure better ways to interact with animals and technology (Haraway discusses animal experiments, dog breeding, and chicken farming among other topics) will be imagined if more people learn to see these relationships and respect animals as more than something Other but as inevitably intermeshed in our being.  

~Blake and Gary the cat

Weekly Reading Response #7

[Jay Jay]

Murphy, Patrick D.  Literature, Nature, and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques.  Albany: State U of New York P, 1995.  Print.

Chapters Read:

• “Let the Survivors of Contact Speak: In the Canon and in the Classroom”
• “The Present Is to Nature as the Past Is to Culture as the Future Is to Agency”
• “Simply Uncontrollable, Or Steaming Open the Envelope of Ideology”

I sincerely enjoyed reading the chapter “Let the Survivors of Contact Speak: In the Canon and in the Classroom” because of its call to action: include rather than exclude Native American voices in both the nature writing canon and the American literature canon, especially women Native American writers.  This call to action fits in perfectly with the transformation aspect of ecofeminism, as inclusion of Native American women’s voices could transform the canon in beneficial ways.  In an earlier chapter, Murphy examined the failure of the anthology The Norton Book of Nature Writing (1990) to capture a diversity of writers.  This chapter extends that criticism to two other anthologies: On Nature (1987) and This Incomperable Lande (1991), and also includes The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (1991).  I want to include a quote from Murphy that I found exhilarating:

The effect of The Idea of Wilderness and This Incomperable Lande is to create the impression that Indians have nothing to say on their own, except in ‘mythic narratives,’ and that they are saying and writing nothing today, literary or otherwise, and this I would label literary genocide. (127)

Exciting, right?  I thought so, because it’s true.  To systematically silence, degrade, and exclude an entire culture simply because the academy and its editors don’t agree with the culture’s approach to writing, style, genres, etc. is inexcusable.  It’s wrong, and frankly, it’s nausea inducing.  I expect better from the academy, and so should you all.

Murphy mentions The Native American Authors Distribution Project, which is available online here: nativeauthors.com.  On the front page of their site is an important idea: “Don’t just learn about Native Americans, learn from them!”  I have to admit I’ve been exposed to very little Native American poetry, fiction, non-fiction, etc. in the classroom as an undergraduate, but my graduate experience has been more positive.  Still, there is room for improvement.

Listening to the Nonhuman Voices

This morning, as I mix my used coffee grounds into the soil of my potted plants to serve as a fertilizer,I find that I am more conscience of my behavior in relation to the nonhuman world after thinking about this week’s reading.

Gary inspecting the broccolli on the porch.

 As I write this post, I am on my porch watching my cat, Gary, go through his morning ritual of inspecting the plants in my small vegetable garden.  He sniffs them, visually inspects each plant, listens to the bugs in the soil, and then chooses one to sit behind and watch the events in parking lot unfold.  His ears perk when birds fly overhead calling to each other, when the bullfrogs croak to announce the sunset, and when people walk by telling their dogs to “go potty”.  I realize that we can all learn from him, because Gary listens when “another” species speaks. 



Baby Basil that grew on its own amongst the other Basil plants.

I realize that even my small garden has spoken to me. The basil plants certainly enjoy the spot I have placed them because they have produced tiny offspring (a personal gardening victory), which I will soon move to their own pot. The broccoli plants emit a distinct sweet smell, informing me that they will flower; and the jalapeno plant lets me know that it enjoys the hot weather by producing equally “hot” peppers. Finally, the baby spiders now living on the heads of broccoli seem to be doing quite well eating the black flies and tiny white bugs that were munching on the broccoli. I am thankful for the spiders, and will relocate some of them to my habanero plant because aphids have moved into its leaves.  

As I imagine that the parking lot underneath my balcony is actually a community garden where I could plant the potted plants on my porch, I really do see how important it is to abandon the patriarchal ideology of domination over nature, and embrace a heterarchical view of nature and a bioregional cooperation with nature that allows local sustainability.  Because humans and nonhumans are all connected, I now understand that every step in the direction of volitional interdependence will have positive effects.  

~Blake and Gary =^.^=       

Weekly Reading Response #7 (Part 2): The Pieces Fall into Place

This week Jay Jay and I finished reading:

 Murphy, Patrick D. Literature, Nature, and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques. Albany: State U of New York P, 1995. Print.   

This book in particular has helped me conceptualize ecofeminism and understand how the theory opposes the current patriarchal ideology in favor of a heterarchical view of the world where all humans and nonhumans are acknowledged and treated respectfully according to their interdependent state.  

In the chapter “Let the Survivors of Contact Speak: in the Canon and in the Classroom,” Murphy declares that trying to codify and define nature writing leaves out women and minority voices (125).  This is especially unfortunate because Native American women writers, who are left out because they do not “fit” the category of nature writing, are a valuable resource  because they have experienced living outside of the current patriarchal structures (131-33).  Studying Native American women writers will help contemporary students see themselves as immigrants to America, and therefore, help them recognize the necessity to learn about how to live in/with the environment from the indigenous inhabitants (133).

“The Present is to nature as the Past is to Culture as the Future is to Agency”

This chapter explains how the American ideal of independence is merely a false construct that denies the actual interconnectedness of the human and nonhuman (143).  We ignore the natural past (changing environments, species, evolution) and pretend that nature is static and that culture is evolving toward some “advanced” state (144-45).  With Enlightenment came the firm belief in the mind/body dichotomy, which allowed nature to be used as a commodity.  Currently, we accept that the mind and body are separate, which allows us to be indifferent to the destruction of the physical world (145). 

This passage in particular helped me understand how people could sit by passively as farmers in Florida poured chemical rich fertilizer onto the land and not expect/or care about the environmental consequences.  In a (I believe it was Discovery Channel) special I saw how a decade of sludge farming changed the composition of the waters in one of Florida’s largest lakes, which resulted in scores of brain-damaged alligators that could not maintain their balance in the water and ultimately drowned.  Once the researchers discovered the cause of the gators’ deaths, they began a project to strip the harmful chemicals from the soil and the gators eventually stopped drowning.  The false belief that the mind is separate from the physical seems to partly explain why the farmers were alright with putting dangerous chemicals in the soil: in their minds it was the way to increase crops and profit; they must not have worried about the effects in the physical world. 

As a solution to the current human alienation from the nonhuman world, Murphy purposes “a human culture that functions on the basis of harmonizing human and nonhuman interaction, rather than on the basis of maximizing human action on the nonhuman” (150).  He describes the necessity of volitional interdependence, of seeing how the elements of our own bioregions need each other, and how all of our actions have consequences that will be felt one way or another because of the inherent interdependence of the web of all life (151).  He provides his definition of (an)otherness in relation to otherness, that I would like to quote:

“Anotherness proceeds from a heterarchical sense of difference, recognizing that we are not ever only one for ourselves but are also always another for others (in the U.S. being one for oneself remains an ideal for men, while being another for others, with no regard for self, remains the operative definition for mother).  Otherness isolated from anotherness  suppresses knowledge of the ecological processes of interdependency—the ways in which humans and other entities survive, change, and learn by continuously mutually influencing each other—and denies any ethics of reciprocity” (152).

Acknowledging anotherness and volitional interdependence are essential to the success of bioregional communities that foster human acceptance, education, and living with the local natural diversity in a relationship of “sustainable cohabitation” (155).    

 “Simply Uncontrollable, Or Steaming Open the Envelope of Ideology”

Murphy explains that destruction such as the colonization of the Americas and eradication of Native American civilizations was a product of ideology, which sold these events as fostering order.  He points out that similar ideology is at work today, “in altered but accelerated forms” (157).  After describing various women activists who fight against patriarchal domination to ensure the respect of women and nature, he says that men should learn to listen to women’s voices because their cause is one that concerns everyone because “as women recover the wilderness within” they will also “reinvent the nature of female-male relationships and the nature of human participation on the world” (159-160). 

Weekly Reading Response #7 (Part 1: Meditating on Interanimation)

Even though my response ran long last week, I still left out some important points from the reading that I wanted to record to clarify my understanding of ecofeminist theory.

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 

      

      

Weekly Reading Response #6

[Jay Jay]

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).  

Seeing Another Instead of Other: Weekly Reading Response # 6

This week Jay Jay and I are reading Literature, Nature and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques, by Patrick D. Murphy.

Here are some of my notes on the first chapter, “Prolegomenon for an Ecofeminist Dialogics”:

Sitting outside and trying to see my computer screen as I write this post reminds me of one of the dilemmas of our society: We need to find the point where nature and technology meet and exist without harming the planet. How many of our modern conveniences do we need to surrender before we can ensure the safety of our planet? How do we even get people to realize that the way we treat nature is a problem? I like ecofeminist theory because I think teaching people to ask questions such as these is the first step to a better way of life for humans and nonhumans. Though sometimes, I fall into that patriarchal hole; How far can I escape from the ideology that makes me “I”? 

This brings me to the reading from this week.  Now, I see that I am interdependent on the rest of the human and nonhuman world and that the indepent "I" is a destructive myth that must be abondoned to truly see the world as it is.  

Patrick D. Murphy proposes an Ecofeminist Dialogics in order to develop a praxis that encourages and reinforces new thinking (instead of the dominant patriarchal ideology) in a way that other theory has failed to do. What can be revealed through this combination of Bakhtin dialogics, ecology and feminisms is that “while human forces are always at work centralizing, quantifying, and coding phenomena, other human forces are always challenging and breaking up such reductions and constructions in order to sustain themselves” (4).

The basis of this theory also recognizes the fact that individual beings (human and nonhuman) are interdependent on each other in a heterarchical relationship.

Because hierarchy is an illusion and absolutes are an illusion the limited social categories of male/female are myths. Also, because nature balances itself we should value things for their ecological value instead of their capital exchange value. Therefore, biological and cultural diversity should be seen as necessary for survival. Ecology cannot reach this perspective without integrating feminisms because one of the reasons nature is devalued is because women are also devalued and linked to nature (7).

One of my favorite passages in the first chapter gives me a clear picture of what role ecofeminists serve as they attempt to dismantle patriarchy: “Given the cultural and ideological hegemony of capitalism in the United States, ecofeminists must necessarily comprise part of the margin, serving as centrifugal force which attempts to break up and fragment the totalizing discourse that perpetuates business as usual” (15).

Looking at this passage, I realize that my assumption, that examining early American texts is not productive, is incorrect. Change has to start from many different points and engage many different levels of society before it can be realized. Every step to destabilize the center of the dominant ideology is a productive step—even an ecofeminist exploration of an Early American text.

“Ground, Pivot, Motion: Ecofeminist Theory, Dialogics, and Literary Practice”

In this chapter, Murphy illuminates how, once the world is viewed from a dialogical paradigm, ecofeminist theory reveals that the “other,” as our society conceives it, is flawed because it cannot describe the diversity and interdependence that is necessary for human and nonhuman survival: “A dialogical orientation reinforces the ecofeminist recognition of interdependence and the natural need of diversity” (22).

Murphy then introduces the concept of “anotherness, being another for others,” and proposes that if anotherness is ignored “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” (23). He continues by explaining that “a theory of volitional interdependence among human and nonhuman” will work towards a productive realization of our true state of interanimation, and that theories of autonomy and independence are actually detrimental because they deny our true interconnectedness (23).

In terms of centers of power and margins, Murphy demonstrates how the dialogic “can expose the false dichotomy of center and margin that is utilized by oppositional groups notwithstanding that such use codifies the existing power structure’s claim to centrality, legitimacy, and authority . . . . There can be no real margins except as ideological constructs. Nor can there be any centers; rather, there exist cultural and physical pivots that may or may not resist the inevitability of a next step” (23).

 After reading this chapter, I understood clearly how the idea of worrying that I was working on the margins is nothing to be concerned about. I know see that the mere concept of a “marginal” position is only an ideological construct, which I do not have to acknowledge and give power to. When the world is see through the perspective that we are in an interdependent web, I can see how small ripples made in one corner of the sea of life can make large waves.

To be continued...

 ~Writing from one node in the web of life

Still Trying to Define Ecofeminism: Weekly Reading Response # 5

This week I posted my favorite highlights from our reading, Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy, and how I think some of these chapters will help me make a case for Bartram as an ecofriendly naturalist who was misrepresented in The American Tradition in Literature Anthology by the Alligator excerpt.

Some Chapters Highlights:

“A Root of Ecofeminism: Ecoféminisme,” by Barbara T. Gates

Gates discusses the origins of ecofeminism and explains that while there is no way to combine the different ecofeminisms into one all-encompassing definition, there are beliefs shared by almost all ecofeminists: “They include the necessity of social transformation by moving beyond power politics and an equivalent necessity for less “management” of the land . . . an appreciation of the intrinisic value of everything in nature—a biocentric rather than an anthropocentric viewpoint; an end to dualisms like male/female, thought/action, and spiritual/natural” (21).

“‘The Women Are Speaking’: Contemporary Literature as Theoretical Critique,” by Patrick D. Murphy

The most important passage to me was the one that explained that ecofeminists are currently tasked with finding a way to collapse patriarchy in a way that supports diversity instead of  reinforcing “cultural hierarchies” (36).

A passage that was relevant to my project is the one that discussed nature writing: “The tradition of American nature writing as it has been codified to date remains too much a monocultural monologue about the right ways tii relate to nature from an already alienated position.  Such alienation is reinforced particularly in its emphasis on going out to the wilderness areas to experience “nature” through recreational activities or on observing seasonal cycles rather than, say, working on a local farm or feeding oneself through organic gardening . . . this tradition has failed to enter into dialogue with natural diversity as manifested in the plurality of human cultures and represented in the art and literature of native writers and artists” (41-42).

“‘Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight”: A Call for Boundary-Crossing in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism,” by Karla Armbruster

In my quest to better understand ecofeminism and its cause, I found another passage resembling a definition and wanted to share it: “Central to the ecofeminist agenda is the goal of individual, social, and ideological change—specifically, change that will improve the cultural standing of women and nature” (101).  

 “Deep Response: An Ecofeminist, Dialogical Approach to Introductory Literature Classrooms” by John Paul Tassoni

Tassoni says that he wants his literature students to want to become ecofeminists of their own accord because they realize that it is better for humans and nonhumans (204).

Some strategies he discusses to use ecofeminist theory to encourage critical and counter-hegemonic discussion in the class are:

He uses a “dialogic pedagogy” to encourage students to break from black/white, right/wrong thinking.  He does not push students to find the one “right” answer in discussions. He openly discusses grading criteria and allows students to suggest how their work should be assessed (209). Students are allowed to choose one novel to read and develop the ideas they determine to be important culturally through dialogue. 

Tassini outlined ecofeminism for his class: Western civilization, which is opposed to nature, “interacts dialectically with and reinforces the subjugation of women” because they are thought of as linked with nature.  Nature is a web; therefore, hierarchies are unnatural and endorse domination of nature.  Diversity is needed for survival and reducing everyone culturally will only harm us, like it harms nature.  To survive we need to rethink our relationship with nature based on ecofeminist theory. (214-215).     

“Hiking without a Map: Reflections on Teaching Ecofeminist Literary Criticism” by Greta Gaard

Gaard discusses and reflects upon different issues of ecofeminist theory that her special topics class worked through.  One problem is that when relating to nature and trying to destroy the self/other boundary sometimes the unique identity of the “other” can be lost (236).  Also, when looking at the gendering of nature, the class decided that the “contexts of both culture and gender influence” determined if feminizing nature would be oppressive (236).  This was interesting because I had mistakenly assumed that a female gendering of nature is always oppressive.  Because Gaard refers to Women and Nature by Griffin often, I have decided that I must also read this text.  

Closing thought:

The closer I get to understanding the complexities of ecofeminist theory the more I feel our society really needs to hear the messages and address the questions posed by it.  I also wonder if I am moving in a productive direction with my Bartram project.  It seems the best way to make a change is to examine current texts :(

~Blake

Weekly Reading Response #4

[Jay Jay]

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

Chapters Read:

• “Introduction” by Greta Gaard and Patrick D. Murphy
• “A Root of Ecofeminism: Ecoféminisme” by Barbara T. Gates
• “‘The Women Are Speaking’: Contemporary Literature as Theoretical Critique” by Patrick D. Murphy
• “Toward an Ecofeminist Standpoint Theory: Bodies as Grounds” by Deborah Slicer
• “Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Reading the Orange” by Josephine Donovan

I think Blake and I are in agreement: we wish we had read this anthology of essays the first week of our independent study instead of Buell.  This collection is comprehensive, wide-ranging, and best of all, provides definition(s) of ecofeminism by the second page of the introduction.  What I did not realize is that ecofeminist literary criticism, or ecofeminist literary analysis, is a very recent branch off the ecofeminist tree, so to speak.

The introduction provides a clear definition of ecofeminism: “a practical movement for social change arising out of the struggles of women to sustain themselves, their families, and their communities” (2).  As the definition suggests, ecofeminism is based on “resistance and vision, critiques and heuristics” (2).  However, as I learned in my readings from this anthology, ecofeminism is not a static, all-encompassing theory.  Rather, there are different branches and approaches based on the individual applying ecofeminism.  Despite the fluid nature of ecofeminism, Gaard and Murphy have found what they believe to be a common thread in all ecofeminist theories: transformation (3).  Specifically they state:

ecofeminism is based not only on the recognition of connections between the exploitation of nature and the oppression of women across patriarchal societies.  It is also based on the recognition that these two forms of domination are bound up with class exploitation, racism, colonialism, and neocolonialism. (3) 

From my understanding, ecofeminism seeks to make visible these connections and then take action to fight against the domination of nature and oppression of women—to enable transformation on cultural, social, economic, and political levels.  What does this mean for my literary project?  It means I should look for literary instances of the domination and nature and the oppression of women and see if they are artificially linked; if so, what are the consequences of this link?  Is there any resistance to this artificial link in the literature?  Are there attempts to transform this link to the advantage of certain persons?  What types of women are being linked to the domination of nature and do any groups of women escape this forced relationship?  Is it lower class working white women?  African American slaves?  Indentured white servants?  Non-Christians?  Native Americans?  I’m incredibly fascinated to read through early American literature with this new filter of ecofeminism.

I’m going to provide you with what I thought were the highlights of chapters one through five, but I would strongly encourage anyone interested in ecofeminism and ecocritical theories to purchase and read all of the selections.  The combination of “ecofeminist literary theory, criticism, and pedagogy” provides for a wide range of material that showcases the fluidity of ecofeminism and its practitioners (2).

What is Ecofeminist Literary Criticism? (Weekly Reading Response #4)

This week we read the first half of Greta Gaard and Patrick D. Murphy’s book Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy. 

Before this reading, I did not completely understand that Ecofeminist literary criticism is a newer aspect of the Ecofeminist philosophical and activist movement.  Each essay serves as an example of or works to further explain Ecofeminist literary criticism, which is difficult to define by virtue of its diversity and lack of central unified theory.  Some critics think this a weak point of the theory; however, I think it is a sign that the theory truly avoids being reductionist.

In the introduction by Gaard and Murphy, they explain what ecofeminist literary criticism seeks to do instead of simply identifying texts as ecofeminist or not:

“it seemed ecofeminist literary criticism would involve reading literary texts through the lens of ecofeminist theory and practice and asking questions: What previously unnoticed elements of a literary text are made visible, or even foregrounded, when one reads from an ecofeminist perspective? Can this perspective tell literary critics anything new about a text in terms of the traditional elements of style and structure, metaphor and narrative, form and content? How might an ecofeminist perspective enhance explorations of connections and differences among “characters” in a text—between humans and animals, between culture and nature, and across human differences of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation?” (7).         

These questions give me an excellent starting point for my Bartram project; I also think they would help anyone new to ecofeminist literary criticism.

 I want to better understand Bartram’s relationship with nature, specifically the animals that he encounters.  What does an eco-feminist lens reveal about a male, Quaker, naturalist explore, in early America, who is bothered by killing animals and even vows never to kill another rattlesnake or crane (which he is served during his travels)?  It seems his compassion and respect for nature is illuminated.  If Bartram, who would have been writing from a minority religious standpoint, saw nature with greater respect than the dominant man the time, then does this show us that despite the prominent land-as-lady (something to be conquered and tilled) metaphor Bartram was resistant to the dominant masculine ideology in his respect for animal life and nature?  Also, in this context…the Bartram killing alligator passage in the Perkins Early American Literary anthology completely misconstrues Bartram’s real character because it is taken out of context.  In fact, selecting this short passage out of an over 300 page nature-appreciating text is actually reflective of the masculine ideology of the editors of the anthology and our culture’s persistent praise for nature dominating behavior.

Weekly Reading Response #3

[Jay Jay]

Kolodny, Annette.  The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters.  Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1975.  Print.

Chapters Read:

• “Unearthing Herstory”
• “Surveying the Virgin Land”
• “Laying Waste Her Fields of Plenty”
• “Singing Her Past and Signing Her Praises”

Annette Kolodny is amazing.  Amazing, and brilliant.  Her writing captured and held my attention the entire time I spent reading through her book.

In chapter one, “Unearthing Herstory,” Kolodny introduces her theory that not only did the New World landscape function as an object of domination and exploitation, but that it also represented land-as-woman.  Kolodny describes the consequence of such a metaphor as “the total female principle of gratification—enclosing the individual in an environment of receptivity, repose, and painless and integral satisfaction” (4).  This metaphor of land-as-woman contributes to “America’s oldest and most cherished fantasy: a daily reality of harmony between man and nature based on an experience of the land as essentially feminine” (4).  This fantasy is recorded in American history, via both our living memories and our literary products.  Kolodny goes on to describe what she thinks is unique about American pastoral—Americans look the pastoral metaphors as literal, not just literary truths.  In drawing together and then connecting literary and literal pastoral metaphors and experiences, Americans created an “uniquely American pastoral vocabulary” that captures and conveys the “American pastoral impulse” (8).  These two major concepts, that of the land-as-woman, and of the American pastoral connecting literary and literal reality, form the backbone of Kolodny’s book as she draws upon American men’s writings, both fiction and non-fiction of the eighteenth and nineteenth century.  (The fifth chapter, which Blake and I decided to skip for now, addresses the twentieth century.).

Chapter two, “Surveying the Virgin Land,” covers the years 1500—1740 and explores the language used by writers to describe the New World.  The language is highly sexualized but also split into a binary: filial homage/erotic desire.  Kolodny describes the distinction and creation of pastoral imagery in both the South and the North, touching briefly on the manner in which Southern writers managed to delete highly sexualized allusions from literature about the New World’s landscape.  New England attempted to “limit the scope of pastoral possibilities” in order to distinguish themselves from the dangerous “sensuously abundant ambience” of the South (19).  The writers believed that if their colony was painted as a perfect paradise in which no labor was necessary to flourish, they would only attract lazy, slothful immigrants.  In promotional publications from New England, a fine line is seen between recruiting immigrants with the promise of paradise and the reminder for the need for human labor.

Seeing the Lady in the Land, or Actually, Seeing Land as Lady (Weekly Reading Response #3)

I am fascinated with Annette Kolodny’s The Lay of the Land.  The premise of her book is that since the beginning of America’s colonization its settlers have viewed the land as a feminine figure.  Kolodny explores the implications and psychological impact that this view has had on Americans and on the environment that we call home.  The general problem that she finds with explores and settlers feminizing the landscape is that once they view it as a woman then it becomes something to conquer, dominate, and control—in the same way that a woman would have been courted, married, and then been under the dominion of her husband.  Basically with the land viewed as a woman it becomes a second class citizen like a woman.

Kolodny breaks up her chapters according to the evolution of the image of the feminized American landscape as presented in numerous travel journals, letters, documents, and pamphlets written to encourage the settlement of the “new” land.  The American environment has been thought of and written about as mother, lover, courtier, and damsel in distress; all of these are problematic images according to Kolodny because they have moved from being European metaphors to American reality. 

Fertile Virgin Land

From 1500-1740, Kolodny finds extensive written evidence that explorers and settlers viewed America as a fertile virgin land waiting to be seeded and cultivated (10-11).  Claims like Thomas Morton’s remark in 1632 that America is “a faire virgin, longing to be sped, And meete her lover in a Nuptiall bed” encouraged settlers to claim their plot of “untouched” land (qtd. in Kolodny 12).  As quickly as the sacred purity of America entered the American psyche, the idea that “she” needs to be protected did too.  Americans began to write that their fellow colonizers were not caring for the vulnerable feminine land properly revealing what Kolodny calls the “conflict locked in the heart of the American Pastoral: that which is contained within the matrix of the feminine, however attractive . . . or nurturing as a mother robin, must inevitably fall victim to masculine activity” (24).  Kolodny’s explanation helped me grasp the essential contradiction behind our “love of land” and inclination to violate it; I also see how we need ecofeminism to address this idea of a feminine land.  From the beginning, we expected and imagined a pastoral paradise.  Much like Buell proposed in his book, The Environmental Imagination, Kolodny also proposes that we did not see what was already there but instead imagined what we wanted to see—Kolodny’s textual evidence makes it clear that the colonizers wanted to see a lady in the land.   

Seeding the Soil

In the eighteenth century, America the pastoral desire to live in a pure natural environment manifested itself in agrarianism: “agriculture came to be seen as the primary and indispensable foundation both of national prosperity and of political democracy” (Kolodny 27).  Also, the need to defend the feminine American land against the British motivated revolutionaries to fight for independence.     

Kolodny finds that during the eighteenth century, two competing visions of the landscape prevail.  First, the uncultivated land is perceived as primitive, yet erotic; second, many Americans call for further “taming” and farming of the land as a patriotic duty.  The desires to live in a motherly wilderness and to plow the fields of the virgin land form what Kolodny calls the “pastoral paradox: man might, indeed, win mastery over the landscape, but only at the cost of emotional and psychological separation from it” (28).

Bartram’s Unfeminine Landscape    

What are the implications for the 1791 Bartram text that I am exploring?  Well, it was written during the transition from the view of American a bountiful virgin land to the agrarian, patriotic view that plowing the soil was equivalent to building a democracy.  Strangely enough, references to a feminine land are almost completely absent in Bartram’s massive text; for the most part nature is not personified. 

Strangely, where I do see a feminized nature I also find a masculine land:

“Dewey evening now comes on, the animating breezes, which cooled and tempered the meridian hours of this sultry season, now gently cease; the glorious sovereign of day calling in his bright beaming emanations, leaves us in his absence to the milder government and protection of the silver queen of night, attended by millions of bright luminaries” (Bartram 121).

Bartram views the land as masculine and when he sees it feminine he sees a powerful woman, a queen.  Could his elevated metaphors of nature, produce the greater respect that is present in his travel journal?  When compared with the texts of his peers, who saw the eighteenth century American frontier as an exotic woman, Bartram is much more respectful and attentive to the environment, the natives, and even in his introduction says that man, animals, and plants are equally valuable because men needs nature to live: “Man and manners undoubtedly hold the first rank—whatever may contribute to our existence is also of equal importance, whether it be found in the animal or vegetable kingdoms” (li).

It seems that in place of the land-as-lady view, Bartram uses land-as-paradise, a “glorious display of the Almighty,” instead.  The constant Elysian Fields references follow the trend of describing America as a bountiful rich nation; however, the corresponding call to claim the fertile, feminine land is missing. 

Instead, Bartram sees this paradise as already occupied and under the rule of “natural” kings and queens.  He even presents a gator presiding over a sink-hole formed by the eruption of a spring as a King: “A very large alligator at present is lord or chief; many have been killed here, but the throne is never long vacant, the vast neighboring ponds so abound with them” (150). 

So, does Bartram viewing nature as divine and as already possessing its own royalty and dominion account for why his text is revolutionary for its time in its respectful view of nature?

 Kolodny closes her book by asserting that we need a “radically new symbolic mode for relating to” nature (148).  She points out that metaphors lead to oversimplification of what we truly mean, and in the case of America, thinking the land is a woman.  If viewing the land as a woman is problematic and leads to the reduction of the environment, then what are the implications for Bartram’s metaphor the land is a kingdom filled with its own natural rulers?  Is this a better metaphor? Is his respectful attitude evidence that this is a healthier metaphor?  And why did the editors of the early American anthology that I read as an undergraduate think the gator beating passage was at all a representational passage of Bartram’s text?  Did he feel satisfaction “defeating” the gator because he sees it as a masculine equal?  Is this a problematic effect of Bartram’s “kingdom” metaphor? 

Phew, I am now breathless and full of more questions. 

Until next time, try and notice when you unconsciously feminize the land and be aware of how this affects your view of America “the beautiful.”

~Blake

What is Woman's Fiction in Early America? (Weekly Reading Response # 2)

Before reading Nina Baym’s book Woman’s Fiction I had hear of the concepts of Republican Motherhood and the Cult of Domesticity, but had a difficult time understanding them.  The basic premise—that women could shape America from their homes—was confusing from my contemporary perspective.  However, Baym clearly explained how the movement and the literature written by women at the time were actually empowering women with self confidence and self reliance.

Baym defines Woman’s fiction as “the many formulaic novels of contemporary life by and about American women published between 1820 and 1870” (ix).  She describes the basic plot structure of these popular early American novels as a woman losing her financial stability because her guardians can no longer care for her.  Through a series of trials this woman finds that she can live independently.  The authors wrote professionally when there were not many career options for women.  Baym stresses that these women did not see themselves as writing “literature” but that instead they wanted to teach their women readers about their potential value as an individual.  The novels often referenced “literature” in a way that would familiarize the reader with these works through their novels (xvii).

How does becoming an independent woman relate logically to developing the growing nation of America? Baym explains that independent citizens and a strong middle-class were considered essential for a democratic republic to succeed because they could provide for themselves and part with money to fund the government.  Hence the Woman’s fiction writers felt they were serving a patriotic calling by showing women how to be independent and good citizens by exposing their readers to American ideology (xxiii).  Baym says that in early America women conserved family wealth and on the whole they conserved republican values: “in a nation whose authorizing revolutionary past was rapidly receding from public awareness, it had become women’s job, literally, to conserve these once powerful values and to publicize them whenever possible. . . . It was a paradox, but not a particularly deep one, that they had to become individuals to perform these tasks” (xxviii).  I especially like that in these stories women did not need to marry and have children to be fulfilled.  They were also written in reaction to previous fiction that furthered “long-entrenched trivializing and contemptuous views of women” (29).

Women’s fiction and the concept of the Republican Mother was not revolutionary feminism, but they did support a woman gaining agency in the home through her responsibility over instilling republican values.  Baym clarifies that “although the idea of reforming a nation by correcting its manners my well seem naïve or ludicrous or snobbish now, many mid-century women saw this task as a mission allied, though secondary, to their mission of overturning the male money system as the law of American life” (47). I do see how this is empowering; every American is raised at home, and if this is the woman’s domain, then technically women are responsible for raising every citizen and shaping them; also, though women’s fiction the writers could instill independence in a future generation of women (49).          

How does all of this “domestic feminism” connect with ecofeminisim?  To be honest I am not sure yet.  In rejecting a money-centered American ideology, did any of these women promote an ecocentric America?  As I indicated in my post yesterday, Baym also mentions the different portrayals of nature in this genre.

Country: Unlike previous fiction genres, that idealized country life, woman’s fiction discussed the hardship and reality of living on small farms and the often impoverished conditions: “They saw women’s lot on the farm as particularly hard, and country men as particularly intransigent in their opposition to feminine self-development” (43).

City: These writers viewed the city as a place where women had more opportunity but “they mourned the loss of simplicity and the separation from natural rhythms” (44).

Utopia: Some women wrote about a blissful commuter life between the city and the country.  Other women imagined an urban-mannered way of life in the countryside.

Garden cities: I believe the concept that I discussed in my post last night—that some woman’s fiction featured a garden city where “urban” life included the greenery of the country—has the most potential to include early ecoconscience and ecofeminist attitudes.

Until next post,

~Blake

Weekly Reading Response #1

[Jay Jay]

Buell, Lawrence.  The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture.  Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1995.  Print.

Chapters read:

• “Introduction”
• “Pastoral Ideology”
• “New World Dreams and Environmental Actualities”
• “Representing the Environment”

In the introduction, Buell outlines three broad topics his book, The Environmental Imagination, will cover: environmental perception, the place of nature in the history of Western thought, and the consequences of imagining a more “ecocentric” way of being (1).  While we’re not reading the entire book, the sections that we’ve selected did an excellent job of covering a little bit of each of these three topics.  Rather than go through the chapters point by point, I’ll be pulling out the highlights that grabbed my attention.

Buell speaks about “environmental double-think” in America, illustrating the ways in which Americans and our culture is both nature-loving and resource-consuming at the same time (4).  We are able to enact these two contrasting ways of life because we compartmentalize our actions.  I’m sure each of us could provide examples of this environmental double-think from our own personal lives.  For example, my washer and dryer is certified energy efficient, but I’ll toss something in the dryer for 5 minutes to de-wrinkle instead of ironing it, which would be way more energy efficient.

What I loved about Buell’s book is the historical aspect; Buell provides a history of American literature in order to expose and explain the relationships that have been built between literature, theory, genre, and the environment.  The construction of American literature has actually occurred three times, something that to be honest, I had given very little thought about.  Buell describes the three constructions as follows: constructed in the image of old world desire, reconstructed in the image of American cultural nationalism, and finally, reconstructed in the image of American exceptionalism (5-6).  The idea of, and construction of American literature did not happen in a vacuum, and we must take into account influences from Europe.

Buell provides four criteria of an environmental text, describing it as a “rough” check list.  I’m including it here because I think it will be an invaluable tool for Blake and I throughout this course in identifying appropriate primary texts.

1. The nonhuman environment is present not merely as a framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history.
2. The human interest is not understood to be the only legitimate interest.
3. Human accountability to the environment is part of the text’s ethical orientation.
4. Some sense of the environment as a process rather than as a constant or a given is at least implicit in the text.

As you can see, the list is rather short and it also illustrates, as Buell points out, how inclusive or exclusive the idea of “environmental” as a category can be.  It would be a mistake to say that all of an author’s works automatically fall within the category of environmental text—instead, scholars must look at an author’s works one by one and decide on an individual basis whether or not it meets enough of the above criteria.

The double-edged sword of new world pastoral writing: How do we truly “see” nature? (Weekly Reading Response #1)

As I sit down to write my findings for this week, I had to fight the urge to walk two blocks down and take pictures of the Crane family that frequents the retention pond near my apartments.  I am pretty sure they are Snadhill Cranes, and the little brown baby that stands only half the height of his parents’ legs is adorable. 

After writing this post, I had to go out and snap a shot of the crane family (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/ says they form mated pairs).  I was excited to find that there are actually two babies.  I worry about them living so close to a busy street, but aparently they have a long fossil record.  The crane family was across the street from their normal pond looking for what might be bugs, roots, or worms to snack on. 

Does it matter what humans call the animals around us? Certainly not to the animals.  So, it is harmless then for humans to use the power of language to name, divide, and classify the natural worlds around us—well, not really.  Buell describes the genre of New World pastoral writing as prose that “promotes the idea of vast territories of the actual globs subsisting under the sign of nature” (54).  This again sounds like a harmless thought that might even inspire ecocritical thought.  We live in nature.  However Buell says New World pastoral writing also, “lays the groundwork for developing the myth of the land as properly unspoiled, a myth that can give shape and impetus to more recent environmental restoration projects” (54).  Buell goes on to say that “contemporary new world pastoralists,” or modern environmentalists are challenged by needing to overcome this myth, the “green world, a dream, a concept” (55).   Basically, the danger of new world pastoral is that the colonizers of early America used it to describe the American landscape as a form of cultural capital, and this lead to the writers not seeing the actual environment that was there but instead what they imagined was there; Buell calls this “the aesthetics of the not-there” (68). 

Laura commented on my post from last week that it seems like William Bartram never actually saw the gators that he sketched.  I think her instincts were right on.  Bartram, who Buell says was writing settler pastoral travel non-fiction, imposed his imagined green dream on the landscape and his dragon-like vision emerged. 

There is a doubled edged-sword that seems to characterize new world pastoral writing though.  The writers are appreciating nature and lauding its beauty, but because they are looking at the world through colonizers’ eyes they see new lands as “empty” and ready to be filled by their classifications and interpretations.  The world is non-existent until the colonizer looks upon it and names it. 

Photo of William Bartram's drawing “View of the Alegator [sic] Hole,” 1790. Bartram’s note:

“Location of this sink was near the ancient Indian village and trading station of Talahasochte”

Image from www.floridamemory.com

So, yes writers like Bartram appreciate nature, but they are trapped in the colonizer’s ideology.  Bartram thought he was doing a good thing by categorizing and naming the Florida fauna, flora, and animals, but wasn’t he just colonizing it with his words?  Buell says that Bartram’s Travels in Florida, “is conquest in the guise of passive observation” (62).  I am not sure I would describe killing alligators as passive.  I still need to read the full text to make my final judgment.  Does Bartram kill other animals because they were in his way?  Buell mentions a snake that he had to kill, but I get the feeling that scholars who view Bartram as a one of the more sensitive, eco-friendly early American travel writers have excused some of his behavior toward nature because he was writing trapped in the colonial ideology.  But why excuse him and make excuses?      

I have personally been sucked in by the modern pastoral myth of a sublime, pure, green world unspoiled by humans.  However, I am beginning to try to see the “real” nature beyond this modern environmental rhetoric—though if it convinces people to be more responsible I am not sure it is a bad thing like Buell seems to suggest.  Is the crane family any less “natural” or pure because they like to fish and nest in the local retention pond?  I don’t think so. 

The retention pond that the crane family frequents most often.  They also like the park across the street and another pond next to a Walgreens.

This brings me back to Bartram and his Alligators.  I was surprised as I read more of Buell that he uses Bartram’s text as an example of early American non-conquest oriented pastoral writing. He claims, “Bartram’s excitement by the sense that the country in which he finds himself really seems like a pastoral Eden (despite mosquitoes and alligators) converts his intellectual ambitiousness into a defense of the region’s integrity, not an apologia for conquest” (63).  Buell focuses on how Bartram describes the Creeks and Seminoles with the same respect as the while settlers.  Ok, I see that, but what about how he describes the land, the animals?  He seems to have that “man is greater than nature; so, I have a right to be master of it” attitude.  Buell offers Bartram’s non-conquest pastoral writing and ingenious pastoral writing (used “as a weapon against cultural dominance” as alternate examples to the colonizing potential of new world pastoral writing.  I am just not ready to accept this until I explore the text more.  I fell that Bartram has an instrumentalist attitude (nature is to be used as an instrument for man’s benefit) that needs to be acknowledged.  I am not sure what this means for the text as a whole, or how scholars should look at new world pastoral writing differently.

Oryx and Crake Tangent

While reading Buell, I could not help but think of Oryx and Crake.  I have a feeling this will happen often because I spent last semester writing three lengthy papers on the novel and giving two presentations on it.  Anyway, I am now convinced that Crake’s problem is that despite his mathematical, scientific mind he wholeheartedly believes in a green dream, of nature unspoiled by humans and that is why he is driven to do what he does (I won’t give spoilers).  Also, I think this is why he insisted that the “perfect” humans that he created should all have green eyes.  It is a symbolic gesture—a  message that he wants them to see the world with green sight.