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Environmental philosophy is the branch of philosophy that is concerned with the natural environment and humans' place within it. It asks crucial questions about human environmental relations such as "What do we mean when we talk about nature?" "What is the value of the natural, that is non-human environment to us, or in itself?" "How should we respond to environmental challenges such as environmental degradation, pollution and climate change?" "How can we best understand the relationship between the natural world and human technology and development?" and "What is our place in the natural world?" Environmental philosophy includes environmental ethics, environmental aesthetics, ecofeminism, environmental hermeneutics, and environmental theology. Some of the main areas of interest for environmental philosophers are:
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Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyse the relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (1974). Ecofeminist theory asserts a feminist perspective of Green politics that calls for an egalitarian, collaborative society in which there is no one dominant group. Today, there are several branches of ecofeminism, with varying approaches and analyses, including liberal ecofeminism, spiritual/cultural ecofeminism, and social/socialist ecofeminism. Interpretations of ecofeminism and how it might be applied to social thought include ecofeminist art, social justice and political philosophy, religion, contemporary feminism, and poetry.
Ecofeminist art emerged in the 1970s in response to ecofeminist philosophy, that was particularly articulated by writers such as Carolyn Merchant, Val Plumwood, Donna Haraway, Starhawk, Greta Gaard, Karen J. Warren, and Rebecca Solnit. Those writers emphasized the significance of relationships of cultural dominance and ethics expressed as sexism (Haraway), spirituality (Starhawk), speciesism, capitalist values that privilege objectification and the importance of vegetarianism in these contexts (Gaard). The main issues Ecofeminism aims to address revolve around the effects of a "Eurocentric capitalist patriarchal culture built on the domination of nature, and the domination of woman 'as nature'. The writer Luke Martell in the Ecology and Society journal writes that 'women' and 'nature' are both victims of patriarchal abuse and "ideological products of the Enlightenment culture of control." Ecofeminism argues that we must become a part of nature, living with and among it. We must recognize that nature is alive and breathing and work against the passivity surrounding it that is synonymous with the passive roles enforced upon women by patriarchal culture, politics, and capitalism. Ecofeminist art is an art form that showcases the intersectionality that is present among gender, environmentalism, and social justice. It grabs ideas and concepts from the original term "ecofeminism" which was created to highlight the parallels between the historic oppression and exploitation of both women and the environment. This style of art can be presented in many different mediums including performance art, original literature pieces, and visual art displays. In simpler terms, ecofeminist artwork is environmental art that has been created by a woman who values gender equality and stronger representation of nature.
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Fern Shaffer is an American painter, performance artist, lecturer and environmental advocate. Her work arose in conjunction with an emerging Ecofeminism movement that brought together environmentalism, feminist values and spirituality to address shared concern for the Earth and all forms of life. She first gained widespread recognition for a four-part, shamanistic performance cycle, created in collaboration with photographer Othello Anderson in 1985. Writer and critic Suzi Gablik praised their work for its rejection of the technocratic, rationalizing mindset of modernity, in favor of communion with magic, the mysterious and primordial, and the soul. Gablik featured Shaffer's Winter Solstice (1985) as the cover art for her influential book, The Reenchantment of Art, and wrote that the ritual opened "a lost sense of oneness with nature and an acute awareness of ecosystem" that offered "a possible basis for reharmonizing our out-of-balance relationship with nature."
Catriona Sandilands is a Canadian writer and scholar in the environmental humanities. She is most well known for her conception of queer ecology. She is currently a Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. She was a Canada Research Chair in Sustainability and Culture between 2004 and 2014. She was a Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation in 2016. Sandilands served as president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment in 2015. She is also a past President of the Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada (ALECC) and the American Society for Literature and the Environment (ASLE).
The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution is a 1980 book by historian Carolyn Merchant. It is one of the first books to explore the Scientific Revolution through the lenses of feminism and ecology. It can be seen as an example of feminist utopian literature of the late 1970s. The author investigates how a historic shift away from seeing Earth as a living organism, and towards seeing it as a machine, was consequently used to justify the domination of both nature and women. Through the exploration of images and metaphors directly linking nature and women, and changing attitudes towards science and technology, the book purports that what was once a need to exercise constraint transformed into a permission for control and exploitation.
References
- ↑ The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art : Art History Reconsidered, 1800 to the Present
- ↑ Charlene Spretnak, "Ecofeminism: Our Roots and Flowering", Reweaving the World, ed. by Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990
- ↑ Charlene Spretnak, "Critical and Constructive Contributions of Ecofeminism", Worldviews and Ecology, ed. by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim, Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1993
- ↑ Montardet, Pascale; Tragardh, Lars (June 3, 1993). "Tillbaka till kroppen: For ekofeministen Charlene Spretnak ar kvinnans fysik borjan till det goda". Dagens Nyheter. Stockholm, Sweden.
- ↑ Spretnak, Charlene (October 25–26, 2014). "talk on Recent Discoveries in Dynamic Interrelatedness, Techno-Utopianism and the Fate of the Earth". YouTube . conference at The Great Hall of Cooper Union, New York City.
- ↑ John Rensenbrink, Early History of the United States Green Party, 1984-2001
- ↑ A View from the Chute
Secondary sources
- Interviewed in Our Lady, a film for Canadian television, Vision network (2012)
- Moon, Michael Green Ideology and Its Relation to Modernity, Studies in Human Ecology (Lund, Sweden: Lund Studies in Human Ecology, 2008)
- Interviewed for “Behind the Cult of Mary,” Women of the Bible, a Special Collector's Edition published by US News & World Report (January/February 2006)
- “Jag ar beroende, alltsa finns jag,” a profile of Charlene Spretnak by Anita Goldman, Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, 16 August 2002
- Nini Zhang, “Body, Nature, and Place,” Philosophical Trends, Beijing, no. 7 (2001)
- Zhihe Wang, “Spretnak and Ecological Postmodernism,” Journal of Social Sciences Abroad, Beijing, no. 6 (1997)
- Kassman, Kenn Envisioning Utopia: The U.S. Green Movement and the Politics of Radical Social Change. Praeger Publishers (1997)
- Interviewed by Derrick Jensen in Listening to the Land: Nature, Culture, and Eros. Sierra Club Books (1995)
- Vardey, Lucinda God in All Worlds: An Anthology of Contemporary Spiritual Writing. New York: Random House (1995)
- Televised interview by John Parrot, Frontiers, a radio and television program produced by the Christian Science Monitor (November 1991)
- "Spretnak on Meditation, Economics, and Resistance," by Diane Sherwood and Susan Butler, National Catholic Reporter (22 November 1991)
- Albanese, Catherine Nature Religion in America. University of Chicago Press (1990)
