RESCUING LADY NATURE
37
motherhood, and subjugation: It contains the history of what it has meant to be
both a woman and a mother within this society.
Because we are social creatures, our understandings of nature will never
be pure or free of social meaning or contingencies. Nature is not a thing from
which we can separate ourselves and know completely, no matter how
liberatory our culture or language may be. Instead of trying to grasp a romantic
knowledge of a people-less ‘nature’ through abstract love, protection, and
contemplation, we must begin to know and reconstruct the social and political
institutions that determine both social and ecological practices. By engaging in
a life long process of politicized critical self-reflection and action, we may
become a society conscious of the historical origins of its own desire for
‘nature’; a socialized desire that begs to be developed in a truly radical
direction.
Notes
1. Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1983), pp. 106.7.
2. Roger Sherman Loomis, Trans. The Romance of Tiistan and Ysolt by Thomas of Britain.
(New York: Boyer Books, 1931).
3. Ibid., p. 64..
4. For a discussion of the relationship between sabotage and agency, see Sarah Lucia
Hoagland, Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value (Palo Alto: Institute for Lesbian Studies, 1988).
pp. 46-49.
5. Murray Bookchin, personal communication, 18 July 1984.
6. There have been a number of truly intelligent discussions of reproduction issues by
feminists such as Betsy Hartman that, address social and political considerations. See Betsy
Hartman, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control and
Reproductive Choice (New York: Harper and Row, 1987).
7. World Bank. 1993. World Development Report 1993. New York: Oxford University Press.
8. Murray Bookchin, "The Power to Create, the Power to Destroy” in Toward an Ecological
Society (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1980), p. 37.
9. Bill Devall and George Sessions, "Why Wilderness in the Nuclear Age?" in Deep Ecology:
Living As If Nature Mattered (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1985), p. 127.
10. For a good discussion of structural adjustment programs, see Bruce Rich, Mojigaging the
Earth: The World Bank , Environment, Impoverishment, and the Crisis of Development.
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).
11. For an in-depth discussion of the historical relationship between ecological discourse and
reactionary thinking, particularly within the German context, see Janet Biehl and Peter
Staudenmaier, Ecofascism. (London: AK Press. 1995).
12. Raymond Williams, The Countiy and the City (New York: Oxford University Press), pp.
35-13. For more on the dialectics of town and country, see Murray Bookchin, Urbanization
Without Cities: The Rise and Decline of Citizenship (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1992).
14. Earth First! Bumper sticker as advertised in their catalogue.
15. Stonyfield Fam Planet Protectors Earth Action Moosletter. Winter 1997.
16. The question of whether the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is a satirical or
sincere expression of anti-humanist views is debatable. The subtitle for their manifesto is "A
Mbdest Proposal," a clear allusion to Swift's famous pamphlet which satirically proposed
eating babies as a means of relieving Irish famine. However, whether they are exaggerating