THE ECOFEMINIST DESIRE FOR NATURE
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major role in shaping radical ecological politics both in the U.S. and abroad by
pushing ecological discussion in a social anarchist direction to include critiques
of capitalism, the state, and all forms of social and political hierarchy.
Beginning in the early 1960s, Murray Bookchin,
the theorist primarily
associated with the theory, began to examine the social and political origins of
ecological problems from a leftist perspective. While offering a philosophical
and historical analysis of the relationship between society and nature, social
ecology is praxis-based,
calling not only for direct action, but for a
reconstructive vision of a confederation of communities engaged in direct
democracy and municipalized economics.
While an ecological sensibility emerged within the body politics of
radical feminism in the 1960s and 70s, a nascent feminist sensibility surfaced
within social ecology. The common denominator that led both radical feminists
and social ecology to make the connection between ecology and feminism can
be traced back to the anarchist impulse within both theories. While early
feminist analysis of hierarchy led to a critique of the ‘patriarchal’ project to
dominate nature, the social and ecological analysis of hierarchy led to a
critique of systems of male domination.
Inspired by the newly emerging radical feminist movement, Bookchin
too, saw in feminism, as he saw in ecology, the potential for a movement that
was general enough to include, yet not be limited to, economic concerns. like
others, Bookchin saw feminism as potentially one of the “great issues” that, like
ecology, democracy, and urbanization, could bring to the revolutionary
struggle those who faced hierarchical as well as class oppression.19 He
recognized in feminism the potential for a trans-class movement that could lead
to an anti-hierarchicaf position that, could ultimately challenge capitalism.
In
1978,
the Institute for Social Ecology
(ISE),
which Bookchin
co-founded in 1974, invited Ynestra King to develop what would become the
first curriculum in a feminist approach to ecology, thus coining the term
ecofeminism 20 As there were not yet any explicitly ecofeminist writings, King
created the first ecofeminist curriculum which reviewed essays written by
theorists including liberal, socialist, radical feminist, and anti-militarist thinkers,
as well as feminist anthropologists and feminist philosophers of science.
Through a critical reading of these essays, King explored the evolution of
feminist drinking from the first to the second wave, looking at moments of
liberalism, rationalism, and essentialism within file different strands of feminist
theory, examining their implications for ecological theory and feminist peace
politics.
Bringing together insights gleaned from both social ecology and feminist
epistemology, King developed a way to rethink the self/other relationship
central to bodi ecology and feminism. In particular, King drew from feminist