Woman-Nature Connections - Part 2.

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As review of the literature overview given in Part 1. reveals, the fouressays included in this section provide only a glimpse of thepositions advocated by ecofeminists. Still, together they raiseissues across all eight categories of woman-nature connectionsthat were identified above. Their inclusion here provides a sample ofthe philosophically relevant contributions ecofeminist historians, sociologists, and philosophers have made to ecofeminist andenvironmental philosophy.

Historian of environmental science Carolyn Merchant published herhighly influential book The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology andthe Scientific Revolution in 1980. In it she argues that priorto the seventeenth century, nature was conceived on an organic modelas a benevolent female and a nurturing mother; after the scientificrevolution, nature was conceived on a mechanistic model as (mere)machine, inert, dead. On both models, nature was female. Merchantargues that the move from the organic to the mechanistic modelpermitted the justified exploitation of the (female) earth, byremoving the sorts of barriers to such treatment that the metaphor ofnature as alive previously prevented; the mechanistic worldview ofmodern science sanctioned the exploitation of nature, unrestrainedcommercial expansion, and socioeconomic conditions that perpetuatedthe subordination of women. The Death of Nature wovetogether scholarly material from politics, art, literature, physics,technology, philosophy and popular culture to show how thismechanistic worldvlew replaced an older, organic worldview, whichprovided gendered moral restraints on how one treated nature.

The essay by Merchant which appears in this section, "The Death ofNature," is culled from The Death of Nature. This essayrepresents an edited version of the philosophically significantaspects of Merchant's main argument in The Death of Nature; it sidesteps some of the more technical, literary, orscientific specifics that receive extensive attention in the book.Inclusion of the Merchant essay in this section ensuresrepresentation of an early and classic, although not universallyaccepted (see Plumwood 1986), historical ecofeminist position on thepatriarchal source of the domination of nature.

In "Nature, Self, and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy,and the Critique of Rationalism," Val Plumwood argues that the key towoman-nature connections in the Western world is found in"rationalism," that long-standing philosophical tradition thataffirms the human/nature dichotomy and a network of other relateddualisms (e.g., masculine/femiine, reason/emotion, spirit/body) andoffers an account of the human self as masculine and centered aroundrationality to the exclusion of its contrasts (especiallycharacteristics regarded as feminine, animal, or natural). Plumwoodcriticizes both deep ecology and environmental philosophy generallyfor missing entirely the ecofeminist critique that "anthropocentrismand androcentrism are linked." She claims,

The failure to observe such connections is the resultof an inadequate historical analysis and understanding of the way inwhich the inferiorization of both women and nature is grounded inrationalism, and the connections of both to the inferiorizing of thebody, hierarchical concepts of labor, and disembedded andindividualist accounts of the self.

Plumwood concludes that "the effect of ecofeminism is not toabsorb or sacrifice the critique of anthropocentrism, but to deepenand enrich it."

In "Working with Nature: Reciprocity or Control?" Ariel Sallehdocuments empirically women's involvement in the environmentalmovement and argues that it is a "patriachal belief system" thatmaintains and justifies both the invisibility of both what women doand the continued destruction of the natural environment. Accordingto Salleh, the rationale of the exploitation of women and of nature"has been uncovered by the ecofeminist analysis of patriarchy." Whatis needed, she argues, is that "the unconscious connection betweenwomen and nature needs to be made conscious, and the hierarchicalfallacies of the Great Chain of Being acknowledged, before there canbe any real growth toward a sane, humane, ecological future. "Feminists, environmentalists, and philosophers must see thatstruggles for equality of women and ecological sustainability areinterlinked.

In "The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism," Karen J.Warren, like Plumwood, focuses on the conceptual connections betweenthe dominations of women and nature. She argues that because theconceptual connections are located in an oppressive patriarchalconceptual framework characterized by a logic of domination, first,the logic of traditional feminism requires the expansion of feminismto include ecological femimsm, and, second, ecological feminismprovides a distinctively feminist environmental ethic. Appealing tothe argumentative significance of first-person narrative and emergingecofeminist ethics of care, kinship, and appropriate reciprocity,Warren concludes that any feminism, environmentalism, orenvironmental philosophy that fails to recognize importantwoman-nature connections is simply inadequate.