This article engages with the care ethics of Laudato Si’ through the lens of postcolonial ecofeminism. Laudato Si’ speaks of the family of creation where nature is both a nurturing mother and a vulnerable sister, reflecting patriarchal associations of women with nature, fragility, and the virtue of care. This indirectly undermines the need for men to engage in care/social reproduction work as well as the strengthening of women’s agency. While this kin-centric ecology acknowledges the interdependence of creatures, it maintains the (...) hierarchy of humans over nature and underlines this family’s headship by an all-powerful Father. Laudato Si’s family ecology and God language inadvertently reifies women–nature–care connection and reinforces the logic of male domination. This study recommends exploring gender inclusive images of the Trinity and the family of creation in mutual relations to foster care that promotes both the agency of women and nature. (shrink)

Posthumanist feminist theory has been instrumental in demonstrating the salience of gender and sexism in structuring human–animal relationships and in revealing the connections between the oppression of women and of nonhuman animals. Despite the richness of feminist posthumanist theorizations it has been suggested that their influence in contemporary animal ethics has been muted. This marginalization of feminist work—here, in its posthumanist version—is a systemic issue within theory and needs to be remedied. At the same time, the limits of posthumanist feminist (...) theory must also be addressed. Although posthumanist feminist theory has generated a sophisticated body of work analyzing how gendered and sexist discourses and practices subordinate women and animals alike, its imprint in producing intersectional analyses of animal issues is considerably weaker. This leaves theorists vulnerable to charges of essentialism, ethnocentrism, and elitism despite best intentions to avoid such effects and despite commitments to uproot all forms of oppression. Gender-focused accounts also preclude understanding of the importance of race and culture in structuring species-based oppression. To counter these undesirable pragmatic and conceptual developments, posthumanist feminist theory needs to engender feminist accounts that centralize the structural axes of race and culture. (shrink)

This paper argues that ecofeminism can consolidate its tradition of elucidating the interconnections between different oppressions by expanding upon its philosophy of the body. By looking at the ways in which particular bodies become 'marked', and so devalued, ecofeminism can point towards various unexpected and creative coalitions. Here I concentrate especially upon two intertwined sets of markings, namely those related to aesthetic discourses and those related to discourses of Western reason. I argue that both of these ultimately revolve around notions (...) of control of the body as being constitutive of Western ideas of human identity. Moreover, I want to affirm that those ideas which encourage us to devalue certain bodies stem from discourses related to nature and animality. Through considering how ecofeminism might re-think embodiment, I argue for an alternative conception which stresses the inherent vulnerability and agency of human embodiment. (shrink)

This article explores the ways in which naturism articulates a set of relationships between the body and nature. We begin by sketching the histories of some Western naturist movements, tracing their lineage back to 19th-century life reform movements and through into inter-war reorientations of citizenship and morality. We consider the problematic of the naked body's relationship to the erotic (and specifically to the erotics of nature), drawing on some materials on outdoor sex; set alongside this is a discussion of the (...) regenerative use of wilderness in the mythopoetic men's movement. These strands are finally drawn together in order to consider the complex negotiation of discourses of nature, human nature, the natural body and the natural landscape - a negotiation embodied in naturism. (shrink)

I consider Christine Overall’s proposal that counteracting the ecological threats born from overconsumption and overpopulation morally obligates Westerners to limit their procreative output to one child per person. I scrutinize what Overall finds valuable about the genetic link in the parent-child relationship through the complementary lenses of Shelley M. Park’s project of “queering motherhood” and the ecofeminist concept of “earth mothering.” What comes of this theoretical mix is a procreative outlook I define as queer earth mothering : an interrogative attitude (...) for identifying the ways in which anti-ecological and heteronormative ideologies seep into maternal praxis. I argue that QEM has potential to relocate the value of the putative parent-child relationship, change attitudes toward adoptive motherhood for the better, and shed light on the reality that procreative decisions in affluent contexts can and will rebound with devastating environmental consequences on both present and future populations if left unabated. My hope is that with QEM as our guide for thinking through the biological paradigm of motherhood we will be in a much better position to appreciate why affluent prospective parents should favour adoption over biological reproduction. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 59, Issue 3, Page 270-308, September 2021.

An ecological focus is not simply an additional perspective to add to a multidimensional approach to feminist theologies. Ecological thinking requires a fundamental shift of perspective, so that the focus of feminism, traditionally a human focus, is rethought within the frame of the materiality that constitutes not only humans but Earth and cosmos. As a way of situating feminist theological discourses and experiences ecologically, this article focuses on a shared materiality as a basis for reframing human being, dwelling, agency and (...) labour, in terms of co-being, habitat, co-agency and more-than-human labour. This reframing implies a rethinking of human freedom that has implications for how we engage with feminist theologies in relation to the future of Earth and humankind. (shrink)

The theory and practise of care is defined and enacted differently in different national as well as cultural contexts, illuminating how differently constructed the personal and societal structures in Europe are. A common trait is however that care work paid or non-paid, private or public is identified with women. To navigate in the landscape of care and ethics requires taking into account the constitutive relation between one’s identity, embodiment and position. The author suggests conceiving care as an existential condition of (...) life demanded from all human beings. This will free care from the identification with women and pave a way towards a more gender equal and just society with less gender segregation in the labour market and at the arena of education. (shrink)

This article considers the effectiveness of queer environmental ethics in the Anthropocene, a word increasingly used to describe the anthropogenic destruction of ecosystems that marks our current geological era. Taking as my subject the contemporary ecosexuality movement popularised by performance artists Annie Sprinkle and her co-collaborator and partner Elizabeth Stephens, I explore the ethics behind ecosexuals’ encounters with the natural environment. Stephens and Sprinkle's performances, captured in their documentary Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story (2013), make clear ecosexuality's concurrent (...) urgency and playfulness, which is embodied in a theatrical environmental sensibility that I call eco-camp. Eco-camp is a mode of florid performance, spectacle and ostentatious sex-positivity that champions new forms of relationality between humans and other earthly inhabitants. Drawing from diverse theoretical perspectives, including Mikhail Bakhtin's (1968) carnivalesque, Chris Cuomo's (1998) ethics of flourishing and Cynthia Willett's (Willett et al., 2012; Willett, 2014) theorisation of feminist humour, I argue that ecosexuality's campy ecological ethics provide an alternative to the didacticism and moralism that characterise much contemporary environmentalism. In the spirit of carnival, the tragi-comic and, at times, parodic tone of ecosexuality generates an affective dissonance that spurs us to feel the full effects of our discordance with nature. (shrink)

L’écoféminisme repose sur l’idée qu’il existe d’étroites « connexions » entre la domination des femmes et la domination de la nature : malgré leur apparente hétérogénéité, ces deux phénomènes convergeraient en une seule et même « matrice de domination ». C’est une telle thèse que nous souhaitons explorer ici : quel peut bien être ce « système » qui les relie en un tout? Comment penser les liens entre les différents axes de domination, sans pour autant les confondre en une (...) unité indistincte? Notre lecture de l’écoféminisme s’articulera autour du concept de « carno-phallogocentrisme » forgé par Derrida, qui semble approprié pour nommer synthétiquement cette thèse. Quels sont le sens et la pertinence de ce concept? Que vise-t-il : un travers particulier à la civilisation occidentale ou une structure commune à toute culture, voire inhérente à la conscience humaine? En quoi éclaire-t-il non seulement les rapports de domination dénoncés, mais toute la tradition philosophique occidentale? L’enjeu sera d’évaluer l’ambition constamment affichée par l’écoféminisme de constituer un nouveau paradigme, susceptible de dépasser enfin le fond misogyne et écocide de la civilisation occidentale. Peut-on vraiment lire l’écoféminisme non pas comme un courant particulier au sein de la pensée occidentale, mais comme son renversement? (shrink)