Greta Gaard

Australian feminist philosopher Val Plumwood coined the term “critical ecofeminism” to “situate humans in ecological terms and non-humans in ethical terms,” for “the two tasks are interconnected, and cannot be addressed properly in isolation from each other.” Variously using the terms “critical ecological feminism,” “critical anti-dualist ecological feminism,” and “critical ecofeminism,” Plumwood’s work developed amid a range of perspectives describing feminist intersections with ecopolitical issues—i.e., toxic production and toxic wastes, indigenous sovereignty, global economic justice, species justice, colonialism and dominant masculinity. Well over a decade before the emergence of posthumanist theory and the new materialisms, Plumwood’s critical ecofeminist framework articulates an implicit posthumanism and respect for the animacy of all earthothers, exposing the linkages among diverse forms of oppression, and providing a theoretical basis for further activist coalitions and interdisciplinary scholarship. Had Plumwood lived another ten years, she might have described her work as “Anthropocene Ecofeminism,” “Critical Material Ecofeminism,” “Posthumanist Anticolonial Ecofeminism”—all of these inflections are present in her work. Here, Critical Ecofeminism advances upon Plumwood’s intellectual, activist, and scholarly work by exploring its implications for a range of contemporary perspectives and issues--critical animal studies, plant studies, sustainability studies, environmental justice, climate change and climate justice, masculinities and sexualities. With the insights available through a critical ecofeminism, these diverse eco-justice perspectives become more robust.

Australian feminist philosopher Val Plumwood coined the term “critical ecofeminism” to “situate humans in ecological terms and non-humans in ethical terms,” for “the two tasks are interconnected, and cannot be addressed properly in isolation from each other.” Variously using the terms “critical ecological feminism,” “critical anti-dualist ecological feminism,” and “critical ecofeminism,” Plumwood’s work developed amid a range of perspectives describing feminist intersections with ecopolitical issues—i.e., toxic production and toxic wastes, indigenous sovereignty, global economic justice, species justice, colonialism and dominant masculinity. Well over a decade before the emergence of posthumanist theory and the new materialisms, Plumwood’s critical ecofeminist framework articulates an implicit posthumanism and respect for the animacy of all earthothers, exposing the linkages among diverse forms of oppression, and providing a theoretical basis for further activist coalitions and interdisciplinary scholarship. Had Plumwood lived another ten years, she might have described her work as “Anthropocene Ecofeminism,” “Critical Material Ecofeminism,” “Posthumanist Anticolonial Ecofeminism”—all of these inflections are present in her work. Here, Critical Ecofeminism advances upon Plumwood’s intellectual, activist, and scholarly work by exploring its implications for a range of contemporary perspectives and issues--critical animal studies, plant studies, sustainability studies, environmental justice, climate change and climate justice, masculinities and sexualities. With the insights available through a critical ecofeminism, these diverse eco-justice perspectives become more robust.

With twelve original essays that characterize truly international ecocriticisms, New International Voices in Ecocriticism presents a compendium of ecocritical approaches, including ecocritical theory, ecopoetics, ecocritical analyses of literary, cultural, and musical texts (especially those not commonly studied in mainstream ecocriticism), and new critical vistas on human-nonhuman relations, postcolonial subjects, material selves, gender, and queer ecologies. It develops new perspectives on literature, culture, and the environment. The essays, written by contributors from the United States, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Spain, China, India, and South Africa, cover novels, drama, autobiography, music, and poetry, mixing traditional and popular forms. Popular culture and the production and circulation of cultural imaginaries feature prominently in this volume—how people view their world and the manner in which they share their perspectives, including the way these perspectives challenge each other globally and locally. In this sense the book also probes borders, border transgression, and border permeability. By offering diverse ecocritical approaches, the essays affirm the significance and necessity of international perspectives in environmental humanities, and thus offer unique responses to environmental problems and that, in some sense, affect many beginning and established scholars.

With twelve original essays that characterize truly international ecocriticisms, New International Voices in Ecocriticism presents a compendium of ecocritical approaches, including ecocritical theory, ecopoetics, ecocritical analyses of literary, cultural, and musical texts (especially those not commonly studied in mainstream ecocriticism), and new critical vistas on human-nonhuman relations, postcolonial subjects, material selves, gender, and queer ecologies. It develops new perspectives on literature, culture, and the environment. The essays, written by contributors from the United States, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Spain, China, India, and South Africa, cover novels, drama, autobiography, music, and poetry, mixing traditional and popular forms. Popular culture and the production and circulation of cultural imaginaries feature prominently in this volume—how people view their world and the manner in which they share their perspectives, including the way these perspectives challenge each other globally and locally. In this sense the book also probes borders, border transgression, and border permeability. By offering diverse ecocritical approaches, the essays affirm the significance and necessity of international perspectives in environmental humanities, and thus offer unique responses to environmental problems and that, in some sense, affect many beginning and established scholars.

“As long as humans have been around, we’ve had to move in order to survive.” So arises that most universal and elemental human longing for home, and so begins Greta Gaard’s exploration of just precisely what it means to be at home in the world. Gaard journeys through the deserts of southern California, through the High Sierras, the Wind River Mountains, and the Northern Cascades, through the wildlands and waterways of Washington and Minnesota, through snow season, rain season, mud season, and lilac season, yet her essays transcend mere description of natural beauty to investigate the interplay between place and identity. Gaard examines the earliest environments of childhood and the relocations of adulthood, expanding the feminist insight that identity is formed through relationships to include relationships to place. “Home” becomes not a static noun, but an active verb: the process of cultivating the connections with place and people that shape who we become. Striving to create a sense of home, Gaard involves herself socially, culturally, and ecologically within her communities, discovering that as she works to change her environment, her environment changes her. As Gaard investigates environmental concerns such as water quality, oil spills, or logging, she touches on their parallels to community issues such as racism, classism, and sexism, uncovering the dynamic interaction by which “humans, like other life on earth, both shape and are shaped by our environments.” While maintaining an understanding of the complex systems and structures that govern communities and environments, Gaard’s writing delves deeper to reveal the experiences and realities we displace through euphemisms or stereotypes, presenting issues such as homelessness or hunger with compelling honesty and sensitivity. Gaard’s essays form a quest narrative, expressing the process of letting go that is an inherent part of an impermanent life. And when a person is broken, in the aftermath of that letting go, it is a place that holds the pieces together. As long as we are forced to move—by economics, by war, by colonialism—the strategies we possess to make and redefine home are imperative to our survival, and vital in the shaping of our very identities.

In the 1980s, ecofeminism and the U. S. Green movement seemed to offer some of this country's most powerful and promising solutions to problems of social and environmental justice. A decade later, ecofeminism has become more a perspective than a movement, and divisions within the Greens have deepened as its national focus has shifted from issue-based politics to party building. Why have these movements faltered? A member of both movements, Greta Gaard bases her analysis on her personal experience as well as extensive secondary sources and interviews with key theorists, activists, and speakers across the United States. By allowing each movement's members to speak for themselves, she traces the separate origins and development of each movement, explains their connections, and reveals the light that each can cast upon the other and on the difficulties facing social action in general. Beginning with the ecofeminists, Gaard describes the paths -- environmental causes, the feminist peace movement, the feminist spirituality movement, the animal liberation movement, and the anti-toxics movements, as well as experiences of interconnectedness -- that have led women (and a few men) to articulate an ecofeminist perspective. Tracing the movement from the 1980s to the present, she defines its present strands as liberal ecofeminism, radical ecofeminism, socialist ecofeminism, and social ecofeminism. Gaard illustrates the development of the U. S. Greens from a national movement into a political party. She defines the various factions -- the Left Greens, the Youth Greens, and the Green Politics Network -- that influenced the movement's direction and underlay the debates during Ralph Nadar's 1996 presidential campaign. She shows how the history of these three groups can be seen as stages in the transition from a leftist and sometimes anarchist action that places the Green movement squarely within the pattern of other social movements around the world. Despite the significant influence that ecofeminists have had in shaping the Greens as a national movement, many have chosen to withdraw from the Greens. Gaard looks at the reasons for member disaffection and draws disturbing conclusions about the compatibility between liberal feminism and cultural ecofeminism and patriarchal politics. She also presents the divisions within the Greens as ongoing battles within the new left, the radical ecology movement, and various social justice movements. She focuses on three general areas -- conflicts over philosophy, conflicts over representation, and conflicts over strategy -- to make suggestions for how to bring about the kind of social transformation envisioned by both the Greens and the ecofeminists. Arguing that the Concord Principles represent a populist form of liberal democracy that fundamentally betrays both ecofeminism and Green philosophy, she uses the 1996 Nadar campaign as a departure point to developing an ecofeminist theory of radical democracy and to speculate on future directions for Green politics and for ecofeminism. Her analysis illuminates the nature and direction of each of these important movements and the pressures and conflicts experienced by all social movements at the end of the twentieth century.

Drawing on the insights of ecology, feminism, and socialism, ecofeminism's basic premise is that the ideology that authorizes oppression based on race, class, gender, sexuality, physical abilities, and species is the same ideology that sanctions the oppression of nature. In this collection of essays, feminist scholars and activists discuss the relationships among human begins, the natural environment, and nonhuman animals. They reject the nature/culture dualism of patriarchal thought and locate animals and humans within nature. The goal of these twelve articles is to contribute to the evolving dialogue among feminists, ecofeminists, animal liberationists, deep ecologists, and social ecologists in an effort to create a sustainable lifestyle for all inhabitants of the earth. Among the issues addressed are the conflicts between Green politics and ecofeminism, various applications of ecofeminist theory, the relationship of animal liberation to ecofeminism, harmful implications of the romanticized woman-nature association in Western culture, and cultural limitations of ecofeminism. In the series Ethics and Action, edited by Tom Regan.