104 RET}IINKING ECOFEMINIST POLMICS clearly are, we wiII pay dearly for the loss of rational poli activity. A mystical tendency that indulges our fantasiesand st renders us captive to a commodified society may eventually, spite its good intentions, help to deprive us of our freedom individuals and to diminish our activism as social beings' Chapter 5 Historically, the Left has always tried to appeal to the best people, to their highest moral and intellectual selves'Mind, cri initttittg, and intellectuality are precious human attributes cannot be surrendered without leading to easily manipulated ceral reactions evoked by magic, rituals, and ultimately " Dialectics in the Ethics sive leaders" for ends other than freedom. As the Senecawriter Mohawk has forthrightly put it, "[t seems like every time say they'll do the thinking for you, they fuck you over"'I w of Social Ecology responsible people, doing the best thinking, not somebody v dreamed something."" As the forms of our domination increasinglysophisticated, it behoovesus to boldly "dare to know, in Kant's phrase, rather than to play childish games of "truth As a dialectical philosophy, social ecology arguesthat hu- dare." manity must be understood os the history of humanity, and that nature must be understood as the history of nature. ]ust so, it also arguesthat sciencemust be understood as tle history of science.It advancesthe view that there is much to be gained from examining the role that previous cosmologistsplayed in the developmentof our own in considering the problem of nature and humanity's relationship to each other, and that earlier peoples in Western culture have asked important questions tlat our present-day sci- enceignores. In particular, earlier cosmologistsaddressed and tried to explain-to the best of their ability-at least one very important question that modern science, to its detriment, fails to confront. This is the fact that, on the one hand, there is order in the natural world, and, on the other hand, that human beings have a rational faculty that is capable of comprehending it in varying degrees.Indeed, the human mind sometimesseems as if it were magnificently developed for understanding the order in the natural world. ]ust as the world is, at least in part, ordered in a certain way, the human mind is so organized as to be able to comprehend it at various levels of adequacy.

105 POLMCS 106 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST Ethics of SocialEcology 707

This fact must have struck people in early periods of social in the world," without attempdng to justify it metaphysically, development as a remarkable "correspondence."For millennia, philosophically, or cosmologically,let alone scientificalv.' human reason and Despite they explained the "correspondence" between science's efficacy in bringing some understanding of The the inteltigible order in nature by at organismic analogy' nature'soperations, "science, in effect,has been permitted to iive rational human mind could understand the world because the a lie," writes Murray Bookchin. Science cosmic macrocosm-Iike the individual microcosm-had a human kind of mind. The various meanings of the Greek word logos has presupposed,with astonishingsuccess, tlat nature is encompassboth the mind's power of comprehension and the fact orderly, and that this order lends itself to rational interpretation of the cosmos' comprehensibility. Logosreferred both to the imma- by the human mind, but that reasonis exclusively the nent intelligibility that is discoverable in nature, as well as to the subjectiveattribute of the h observer,not of the phenomena mind that could discover it. This congruency between the rational 'man observed....science,in effect, hal becomea mind and the rational cosmosexplained how thinking can compre- temple built on the foundation of seemingly hend the world. Hence, the origin of the word "logic" from logos. .,ruins,', animistic and metaphysical without implied the ability to discuss in a rational way, as in Logos also which it would sink into the watery morassof its dialogues (from the Greek dia-logos),how ideas undergo develop- own contradictions.3 ment. Far from defining reason ot Iogos as opposed to nature, mind or nous that "was Mind was Socrates,Plato, and Aristotle studied a "erected into a second type of substancethat served as R. G. Colling- always first and foremost mind in nature," writes a ready dumping-ground for everything in experiencewhich phys_ notes, the fact ics did wood. For Aristotle, as fohn Herman Randall, fr., not read in mechanical naturej, as Randall obserues.lThe not a problem, but the most qualities "that men can know their world [was] of things, like the wetness of water and the coldness of world."' ice, were significant fact, both about us and about the shoved into this "dumping-ground," as Griffin and other through the ancient and ecofeminists This tradition of /ogoswas continued argue.Butit was not simply the qualities of things that it was transformedinto a rigid were so medieval periods.On the one hand, dispensed with. so was the deveripmenfal causality so and immutable natural law by the Stoics and Christians. On the typical of organismic life. serf-directiveness and tenden"v-th"r" developmental and dialectical too were other hand, it was perpetuated in its relegated to the merely subjective, by virtue of their association form by mystics. With the emergenceof modern science,the order with the "final causes"of medieval scholasticism. human mind in a new form: mathe- Indeed, of nature seemedopen to the modern sciencedefined itself most expricitly not by comprehensibleand irrr open book in trying to matics. The cosmos was dominate women and nature but by its attack on the But mathematics preserved logos in only its Scholastics' matlematical terms. "final causes,,,an issue that perhaps the from the mathe- major "orrriitrrt"d most rigid hypothetico-deductive form. Missing battleground between science and schorastic thlorogjr. ..To to explain Aristotle's "most signifi- the extent .paradijm, matical /ogos was any ability that mechanism became the prevalent of was Renaissance cant fact," or why it was that the now-mathematical cosmos and Enlightenment science,i writes Bookchin, ..the It becamea merely "metaphysical" notion intelligible to the human mind' of 'final cause' became the gristmiil on which science sharpened question, and the successorsof Descartes"abandoned the attempt its scalpel of 'obleciivity,' sc"ientistic.disinterestedness,, to prove this conespondence," as Randall observes.Ratler, they total rejection of $,,e". values in the scientific organon.,, The that "the order of men's scientifrc oacklash simply made the assumption against scholasticism was accompanied by a backrash ideas was, in the nature of things, the same as the order of obiects 108 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS Ethics of SocialEcology 109 against organicism generally, in "an exaggeratedrejection of nature was cast in largely antagonistic tems, and progress was organicism."u identified as the technical ability to use nonhuman nature to serve In delivering its "sustained polemic," to use Collingwood's the ends of the marketplace. Human destiny was conceived as the phrase, againstthe Scholastic theory of final causeswith its immu- redemption of society from a "demonic" natural world. Writes table, predetermined teleological ends, early science eliminated Bookchin, "The subjugationof human by human...was now cele- any notion that there was any potentiality or nisus in nature to brated asa common human enterpriseto bring nature under human realize implicit forms that have not been fully actualized. In short, control."' mechanistic science, Iike the putatively organismic approach many ecofeminists, spilled out the baby with the bathwater' In course of fighting one extreme, Scholasticism, it moved to anol The Problem of Instuumentalism extreme, mechanism. When the laws of physics, so suitable for understanding The mind had become a dumping ground of sorts inorganic nature, were applied to human society in various scien- mechanism established no intelligible place for mind in the tistic branches of knowledge, the result was to fuel the rise of an world that it was describing. The mechanistic worldview and instrumental social ethos. Human society doesnot operate accord- mathematical /ogoscould explain everything, it seemed,except ing to physicalist laws; to try to induce it to do so meansrendering human mind that perceived it, Descartes' res cogitans. The humanity homogeneous,lifeless, passive, and malleable.This was mind in its Newtonian aspect could not explain organisms organi not simply a matter of ideology. Forceswere at work in Western ismically; developments, developmentally; history, historically; society that stood to make great use of the instrumental ethos that society in ways appropriate to human social development' In explained people in terms of collections of isolated bodies in with the mathematical logos,the human mind and human eternally lawful motion. For one, the ethos of instrumentalism could not be explained intelligibly at all, let alone explain perfectly suited the emerging nation-state and its unrelenting cen- human ability to comprehend mathematical order. The tralization, bureaucratization,and domination. If people could be between nature and mind, writes Bookchin, was "replaced by reduced to units, they could be manageableand susceptibleto unbridgeable dualismbetween mentality and the external world. administration.If they could be instrumentalizedas workers, they Despite the social aim of "mastery overnature," humanbeiq could be administered by gigantic corporate entities. The attempt had lost their cosmological place in the mechanistic worldview to standardize, instrumentalize, and homogenize the human being Human existence in the scheme of things came to be regarded as asa worker-whether in the bureaucratic state,in the factory, or in brute accident, and it seemedperfectly sensible for Bertrand R the domestic realm-facilitated massive economic exploitation seII in the 20th century to conclude that human Iife and conscio and political domination, despite the attempts of many people to ness are a mere accident in the cosmos, a chance spark in resistthis unsavory dehumanizingprocess. meaningless world. The instrumental ethos was particularly suited to the needs This epistemological dualism was accompanied by an ul of capitalism. Capitalism tried to instrumentalize nonhuman matelyfutile attemptto subiugatenonhuman nature by na- ture into raw materials, even as it tried to instrumentalize people and technical forces. Even as Western culture engagedin its as a mere source of labor. As old ethical svstemswere eroded. the activato "master" nature and industrial capitalism was new Jromo oeconomicus who benefited frfm the exploitation and apace, philosophy remained ensconced in this epistemol domination of others blindlv followed an establishedcourse of dualism. The relationship between nonhuman nature and hu Ethics of SocialEcology 110 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS LL7 self-interest, according to the new "natural laws" that expla we haveon the one hand the self, the abstractego economic competition. No longer were individuals integrated emptied of all substanceexcept its attempt to that existed to serve a higher purpose. while individ. communities transformeverything in heavenand on earthinto from the oppressive "interconnectedness" uals were liberated meensfor its preservation,and on the other ha-ud undet capitalism they were traditional and patricentric society, an empty nature degradedto merematerial, mere to obliged either to submit to economic "natutal laws" or attempt stuff to be dominated,without any otherpurpose **i", them. Again, this is not merely a matter of ideology; in a than that of this very domination.u market society, it is everyday reality. If the instrumental reduced moral purpose to self-interest in order to survive, capi Most important for the purposes of the present discussion, ism made competition a social imperative. Only mastery of reason itself fell victim to the very instrumental ethos that it had economic processcould assurethe self-preservationof the individ- helpedfoster. "Gone is the cosmoswith whoseimmanent logosmy ual capitalist and his enterprise in the all-consuming competiti own can feel kinship , gone the order of the whole in which [humans marketplace. have their] place," writes Hans Jonas.nNo longer was the logos of Ultimately, women in the domestic realm were also to the world embeddedin an ethical cosmos.No longer addressing largely homogenized. As the domestic realm becameincreasingl ends, reason was reduced to an instrumental means. Neither per- reduced to the isolated nuclear family, women's household dutie sonalnorsocial freedomhasrootsany longerin the obiectiveworld, came to be analyzed and prescribedin increasingdetail' Desp but merely exist in the eyesof the beholder, a function of public 19th-centurv women's cultural "mission" as bearersof morality opinion rather than objective reality. What we think of as reason the "cult of true womanhood," home economics in the today is reason reduced to a mere "skill" or instrument, to a mere realm was integral to the competitive economics of the means to attain self-interested ends. For instrumental reason, it place, producing and educating children and administering makesno difference whether its statementsare designed to justify household along increasinglyrationalized lines. Women's pa: women's claims to reproductive freedom or validate racist neo- pation in the "caring" professions-of nursing, social wotk, Nazi claims. Its sole job is to determinewhether theseclaims-or otlers-was necessary to the system for "cleaning up after any claim-are logically consistent, not whether they are morally men," just as women's childbearing and childrearing were right or wrong. "Rightness" and "wrongness" themselves are sary to produce workers for capitalism. merely values or even social constructions that each person may But capitalism did not simply try to transform human accept or reject, depending upon his or her opinion or needs. In nonhuman nature into raw materials. It also tried to themselves,they have no standing in presumably morally neutral nearly every aspect of human existence,to ensure the depent logical operations. It is this kind of thinking that the 1960s coun- of both the public and the domestic spheres on tle market' terculture-long before ecofeminists appeared on rhe scene-re- process ruptured any organic integtation between human gardedas "linear." nonhuman communities. In this century, everything from tran Guided by operational standards of logical consistency and tation and communication, to courtship and reproduction pragmatic success,reason was "validated exclusively by its effec- been subject to comrnodification. As such, commodification tiveness in satisfying the ego's pursuits and responsibilities. It Iowed out" whatever senseof ethical purpose and meaning of makesno appealto values,ideals, andgoals." Inpolitics and ethics, had been inherited from the past. The recently liberated reasonwas "denatured," asBookchin haspointed out, "into a mere ual" became a mere shell of a self. As Max Horkheimer wrote, rnethodology for calculating sentiments-with the same opera- 1.12 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS Ethics of Social Ecology 113 tional techniques that bankers and industrialists use to administer development, style seems to reject science itself. Like many theirenterprises."'0Itbecame an instrument for advancingpersonal theories, ecofeminist this too amounts to pouring out the baby with interests to achieve individual ends-and not for delrnrng those bathwater. the That sciencehas made imperialisiic claims do"s,rot ends. Worse, it became an instrument for administering human that we reject require science as such. Rather, it places ,rporr r* th" beings-not for defining and formulating an ethically meaningful challengingresponsibliry of putting sciencein its proper context existence.Science's "'value-free,' presumably ethically'neutral' (as an explanation of the subject matter with which lt can ade_ methodology" allows instrumentalism to remain ideologically se- quately deal), to understand that it is inadequate to explain every_ cure. "If we mistrust reasontodav." writes Bookchin. thing, and to seekmore encompassingmodes of expla_iration. By confusing scien-cewith the imperialistic ideology called it is becausereason has enhancedour technical scientism, ecofeminists like d'souza dismiss the extent to which powers to alter the world drastically without physical-scienceis quite simply true in its own providing us with the goalsand values that give sphereof compe_ tence. That physics does not supply these powers direction and meaning. Like adequate explanations of biological development,let alone CaptainAhabinMelville's MobyDick,wecan cry human development,does not negateits presuppositions out forlornly: "All my means are sane; my and insightseven in buiiding housesand bridges.Even motivesand objectsmad."tt hunting-gatheringpeoples use instrumental reason when they build shelter or get food, as Bookchin points out: ..We can no more divest But instrumental reasonhas been fallaciously criticized as if ourselves of instrumental reason than we can divest ourselves it constitutedreason per serather than just one form of reason.Here of technics."" science provides a much better explanation of again,the baby is spilled out with the bathwater.As we shall see, mechanistic processesthat affect all organisms and human cultures there are offier forms of reasonthat are not hypothetico-deductive, in the biosphere-like the operationsof the solar system instrumental, and formalistic in character. and the functioning of the heart_th"r, do", metaphor. To see scienceas "dominating" in itself obscuresthe much more insidious processof the instrumentalization of society,and the social forces that have benefited so greatly from their use of An Evolutionary perspective instrumental techniques.This one-sidedview Ieadsinevitably to Science,as we have noted, js the history of the conclusion that science and reason-rather than these sociol science.)ust as mechanism has a delimited prace-even in organic the problem. Ecofeminist Corinne Kumar d'Souza crit- rife and human forces-arc soc.l.ety_-sodo analogy and development. icizes Analogy, as I have noted science for its "universalism,"t' and to be sure, scientific tTliul' plays an important role in biological ,.iuo.", concerned. claims have certainly been grossly overstated. When applied to with form. Biomechanicsstudies anarogiesbetween technologies human societies, for example, whether Western or non-Western, and biological-phenomena. In organic lvolutionary ,"iuo"", Zrri, sciencehas more often facilitated social manipulation than not and oence that evolution has occurred rests at least partly has thus played a role in restricting human freedom. Indeed, it is on compar_ ative anatomy and embryology. All questionable vertebrai"s d"rr"lop *itn that a scienceofsociety, or sociology,can ever explain surprising similarities, for exa'r'ple. closery related g"oupl of or- in the human world what physical scienceis expectedto rigorously ganisms have like structures and functions. explain in the inorganic world. If scienceuses analogy,science in the But d'Souza, in her understandable struggle to defend the overall also revealsa developmentalpicture, whether it understands integrity of non-Western cultures from the devastation of Western- itserfas doing so or Ethics of Social Ecology 774 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS 115

nature literally develop. The word not. For example, a chemist knows that two atoms of hydrogen inorganic evolution is correctly (at on applied to both: to inorganic evolution, concerned with the one atom of will always produce water least devel- placed opment of the physical universe from unorganized uniformity, terrestrial level). This is an immutable chemical fact. But as well as to organic evolution, concerned with the development the context of-xygen the development of the inorganic universe' of animals and plants by a process of continuous change chemical combination occupies a certain historical place. Acr and differ- entiation from previously existing forms. ing to the generally acceptedbig-bang theory, aII of the matter an into This is not to say that inorganic or organic evolution en"ergyin the univetse *"t ott"" concentrated very densely had to develop in the specific directions they did. Nor is it tiny volume at a very high temperature' This primeval "fireball to say that the of the cosmoshad ,"sulting in an expansion that continues-today'Neutron history to lead inevitably from the hot fireball to human society. We do not know if the origination "*ilod"d,an-dprotons formed from their quark constituents' In na of life in its present forms was inevitable; nor can some of the hydrogen was converted into helium' The we say that the organic development that did occur was predetermined. universe thinned and cooled enough to condense into indi The earth is a microspeck in the infinite universe, and galaxies and then stars, leading to the present universe' GI human evolution as we know it may be one form of development among iollapsed the matter into the celestial obiects such as we see many others in the "tree" of evolution. But like it or not, a very lhe billions of galaxies in the universe are all receding from distinct develop- ment did take place and has tobe explained. It cannot other at speedscomparable to that of light' After a very long be dissolved -system, into mere contingency or fantasies about what might or the solar including the earth, was formed' Somewhere might not haveoccurred. Moreover, we must asknot merely ftowit the course of this development, oxygen was formed from "primr occurred, but dryit occurred, whether it reveals any rationale hydrogen and combined with it to form water' Here we see or is merely a meaninglessflow of random events.When all is said and ,ttiti"g example of a cumulative inorganic evolution: the "natul done, this natural history clearly reveals ever greater differentiation history of water," as it were. Water was not present in the of life- forms, increasing subjectivity and flexibility, and finally firebail; rather, it is the product of a development in inorg the emer- genceof intellectuality, intentionality, and a high evolution. Although its chemical formation is subiect to order of choice, which forms a precondition for freedom. law, it has a natural historY. To labor over whether When scientists look for alternative explanations to this was inevitable is to make a mean- ingful problem meaningless. We must nistic natural law, they often turn to randomness' And indeed' inquire into the krnd of development that led to the emergence the best of our knowledge, randomnessis at work in the uni of existing species,includ- ing the human, with its conscious willfulness, although chaos theory has recently been finding mathemat enormous powers of conceptual thought, symbolic language, order Jven in chaos. But when one looks over the course of and well-organized but highly mutable social institutions. To dodge development of the universe-from fireball to galaxies to this question, to regard Jnutrient human evolution as a pure accident, as Stephen to the broth" of amino acids to unicellular life to iay Gould aoJs in his recent book Wonderf"l Life animals, and human society-it is hard to attribute it excl fbased on the many exotic early life-forms fossilized in the Burgess Shale), is to randomness, despite the fact that there were many ft to piace a veil of obscurity over the very real, existential evolution events. Its zigs and zags and dead ends notwithstanding, a of life from a simple, unicellular organism through itt"tsxsingly neurologically tionality is apparent in the evolution of the cosmos' Looking complex life-forms, to large-brained animals, and in retroipect, this is simply a fact-not a mere hlryothesis- to a highly self- conscious creature called homo sapiens.The failure must be philosophically accounted for' Indeed, both organic to try to deal Ethics of Social Ecology 116 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS 1,77

forms. In rationallv with this evolution, whose history has also literally complex this sense, human subjectivity is "the very of natural subjectivity, "carved in stone" bv the fossil remains of the past is to si history not merely its product."'u Ecofeminism has no graded profound philosophical questions that have very important eth such evolutionary approach to It either sees "nature" as a implications. nature. social construction, or as an undifferentiated "oneness." One aspect of inorganic and organic evolution that has effusive Social ecology opens an en- different approach to a definition flected a remarkable interaction of persistence and change is tirely of nature and to the recon- it too has ciliation of humanity with the natural world. This approach is what iectivity. Subiectivity is not unique to human beings; Bookchin calls dialectical natural historv of its own' From its most rudimentary forms Murray naturalism. unicellular organisms, as mere self-identity and sensitivity, it har expanded throughout natural history. The earliest, simplest organ D i al isms that developed had self-identity-even if only as the e ctic al N atur alism activity on the part of an amoebato activelypersist a metabolic What, then, do social ecologistsmean by dialectical natural- that would otherwise tend reproduce itself in an environment ism?'u it. Although seemingly unconscious-indeed, dissolve Dialectical naturalism is an attempt to grasp nature as a incapable of consciousness-the very fact that it is even developmentalphenomenon, both in its organicand socialrealms. itself is a germinal form of selfhood and a nascent maintaining All organic phenomena changeand, even more important, undergo Whatever else an amoeba may have, this acti of subjectivity. development and differentiation. They form and re-form, while it from the nonliving environment self-identity distinguishes actively maintaining their identity until, barring any accident, they which it is immersed. fuIfill their potentialities. But since the cosmos,seen in an over- view of its evolution, is developmentalas well, dialectical natural- Natural history includes ahistory of mind aswell ism approaches the world as a whole from a developmental as of physical structures-a history of mind that perspective.Its various realms-inorganic, organic, and social-are develops from the seemingly "passive" distinct from each other, and yet grade interactivity of the inorganic to the highly active they into one another. cerebral processesof human intellect and This approach above all focuseson the transitions of a devel- volition. This history of what we caII "mind" is oping phenomenon, which emergefrom its potentiality to become cumulatively presentnot only in the human mind fully developedand self-actualized.These transitions, in turn, arise but also in our bodies as a whole, which largely from a processof "contradiction" between a thing as it is, on the recapitulate the expansive development of onehand, and a thing as it potentially should become,on the other. life-forms at various neurophysical levels of As a result of a developmental transition, each new potenti- evolution....Whatwe today call "mind" in all its ality in a development cumulatively contains all its previous and human uniqueness, self-possession, phases,albeit transformed, even as it itself-when it is fully actu- possibilities is coterminous with a imaginative alized-contains the potentiality to become a new actuality. The Iong evolutionof mind." emergenceof life out of inorganic nature is such a transition. Life not only emergesfrom the inorganic, but it contains the inorganic Mind thus derives as a form of abroad evolution of su within itself, yet it is clearly more than the inorganic. Together, ity, in the course of the cumulative development of increasingl inorganic and organic nature constitute what social ecology calls 118 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLMCS Ethics of SocialEcology 119

developsitself into "should ,,first nature." The emergenceof human society out of first nature; what it be" in all its wholenessor fullness.It cannotremain in endless in turn, is also such a transition, for society contains the vast tension or "contradiction" with what it is evolution of its biological heritage within itself, yet goes organizedto becomewithout becoming warped evolution as such to become what we would rightly call biological or undoing itself.It must ripen into the fullness social ecology sociJ evolution. This social evolution is thus what of its being." calls "second nature"-a phrase that is meant 1s smphasize natural continuity between biological and social evolution' This instability of contradiction propels a being toward self- gxample that To give another of this process of development development,whatever it should becomeby virtue of they way its into incorporates a previous development from which it stemmed potentialitiesare constituted.To usethe exampleof human devel- he or she itselfia human adult does not simply replace the child opmentagain, given the potentiality of a child to becomean adult, is once was. Rather, the child is absorbed into and thereis a tension that existsbetween infancy, childhood, adoles- is hopefully beyond the state of childhood and, barring accidents, cence,and youth, until the child's abilities are fully actualizedas develop- aciualized into a fuller, more differentiated being. This a mature being. To be sure, its development may be arrested or not only ment follows a logic that is cumulative, that contains warped during any one of these transitional phases,which obvi- child's biological course of growth but his or her social ouslyleaves it lessthan a fully actualized-or in a sensea lessthan ment as well. rational-even "irrational"-human being. (The same can be said In examining tie processof development, dialecticd natur to apply to society.)Accordingly, impelled by a logic of growth (a ism is especially interested it form and the way it is organized processthat has its mechanico-chemicalaspects, to be sure, in inorganic and organic nature. From formal ensembles,tensions chromosomesand the creation of proteins from nucleic acids), "contradictions" emerge.Contradiction in dialectical developmentoccurs, yet preservesthe old. This cumulative ap- as in all dialectical thought-is a dynamic process that proach produces a continuum "that contains the entire history of self-development. But unlike other dialectical approaches, [achild's] development."'n as have regarded contradictions as abstractly logical or Thus, dialectical naturalism does not attempt to efface a materialistic, dialectical naturalism "conceives contradiction dualism like the dualism of mind and body, for example,simply distinctlv natural."" by trying to collapse mind into body, as some ecofeminists seemto ln an organism, for example, tlere is a tension between do.Although Western culture-especially in recent centuries-has that organism could potentially be when it is fuIly actualized, conceivedof mind and body asradically separatedfrom eachother, t the one hand, and what it is at any given moment before we cannot "heal" this split by reducing the one to the other. A development is futfilled. That which it is consfifuted to become humanbody without mind can hardly be called conscious.In fact, imms6il "shouldbe"-the implicit-causes that which it irits the mind-body dualism has abasis in an ontological dualify. Mind explicit existence at a given moment in its development-to ooesemerge out of body as something distinct, even as it is part of unstable. andremains embeddedin the body. Indeed, it is a socially condi- tioned but organic dffirentiation of the body's own development, A thing or phenomenon in dialecticai causality as the evidence of evolution shows us. A dialectical naiuralist unstable, in tension-much as remains unsettled, approach overcomes mind-body dualism not by rejecting the dis- a fetus ripening toward birth "straiDs" to be born tinction between the two but by articulating the continuum along because of the way it is constituted-until it POLITICS RETIIINKING ECOFEMINIST Ethics of SocialEcology 727 which the human mind has evolved. The relationship be with its recourseto "Spirit," dialectical naturalism doesnot posit mind and bodv-their distinctness, as well as mind's the presenceof a spiritual principle apart from nature's own-self_ on and its origins in first nature alike-is a graded pheno evolving attributes to explain either inorganic or organic existence. asBookchinhas argued,not oneinwhichmind andbody are Nor does it posit any "Absolute," as Hegelian dialectics did, in separated. which development is completely fulfilled. Rather,in diarectical Nor is dialectical naturalism a macrocosm-microcosm" naturalism, self-directivenessremains a tendency whose fulfill- ..wholeness," spondencetleory." Indeed, developmentin inorganic nature ment, while marked by ever-greaterdegrees of re- not been of precisely tle samekind that we find in organic nal mains open-ended and continually self-formative. We can explain many biological facts by means of Dialectical reasoning is a form of reasoning that attempts to Bookchin has pointed out, but we cannotexplain chemical facts understandthe developmentalprocesses in first and secondnature means of biology. The history of inorganic nature is a that I have been describing. It clearly differs from instrumental of reactivity and interactivity, in whichincreasingly complex reason,which freezesa phaseof a developmentin order to analyze arise from interactions of elementary particles. The history its components.That physiology and anatomy can satisfactorily organic nature is a fully active development, in which- analyzea human body only if they regard it as fixed and unchanging nascently-even the simplest unicellular organic forms are b shouldbe fairly obvious,even though a living body is continually involved in maintaining their self-identity from dissolving developing and differentiating. without operating on this level of their inorganic environment, even as they absorb the su fixity, to be sure, we would know nothing about the structure and they need for their self-maintenancefrom that immediately co functions of the human organism, a knowledge that is indispens- uous environment.In the evolution of life-forms,nascent self-i ablefor the details of medical diagnosisand therapy. Analysls, in tity developed into more complex subiectivity and form, effect,can indeed provide a grcat deal of knowledge about things. ever-greater self-intentionality emerged in maintaining But instrumental or analyticd reasoncannot explain the develop- selves, in modifying their environment, and in rendering mental,because developmental processes involve more than sim- environment more habitable-an elaboration of the self-ide ply the rearrangementof component parts into a new arrangement. that distinguishesorganic frominorganic development.Yet d Development involves a transition from one state of being to this increasing subiectivity and intentionality of organisms, another for which mere analysis provides only a woefully incom_ plete evolutionary continuity remains between inorganic and account. Dialectical reasoning, indeed, absorbsanalogical nature, and at the roots of the intentionality of complex and analytical forms of reasoning in its developmental approach we find the increasingly complex formal arrangementsof but goesfar beyond them. particles and compounds. There is wisdom in the claim of 1 Dialectical reasoning originated in the .logosconcept of the century Enlightenment thinkers like Denis Diderot that the di .Greeks.Having survived in various forms over the mill-ennia, it blossomed ences between the inorganic and organic worlds-and bet in the 19th-century German Enlightenment and was different organisms-lie in what he called "the organization elaboratedmost fully in its time by Hegel.,oFor Hegel, dialectical reasoning matter." conceivesof basic,seemingly contradictory logical cate_ gories-like Dialectical naturalism, it goeswithout saying, sees "being" and "nothing"-as leading to the category of ment as immanent in nature itself. First nature alone, in all oecoming," a categorythat dialectical logic takes as its great point of wholeness, richness, self-creativity, and marvelousnessrequires departure and also begins to define becoming for what it really is, supernature to explain its processes.Unlike Hegelian dialec namely development. Becoming, with its full wealth of logically 122 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS Ethics of Social Ecology 723 educed categories,in Hegel'slogical works, is literally the cr tical contradiction involves the fulfillment of a potentality that Iative history of pure thought.Dialectical reasoningdescribes negatesthe previous state,absorbs it, and goesbeyond it-not the cessesof cumulative change in which the logically prior is juxtapositionof ideasor factsthat patently haveno connectionwith annulled, incorporated,and transcendedby its synthesisas a eachother. category. Dialectical reasoninguses neither the inductive process of In everyday commonsensicalthinking, itmight seemdi empiricismnor the hypothetico-deductiveprocess of formal reason to believe that a consistent developmental Iogic could be but a third form of thinking that Bookchin calls educfion.Eduction, that had the rigor that reason has generally claimed for itself' writes Bookchin, is directed "toward an exploration of [a despite certain limitations, the logical works of Hegel demonst potentiality'sl latent and implicit possibilities." It aims to under- tnaitnis can be done with extraordinary brilliance. What Hegel standthe inherent logic of a thing's development-that is, the point was to try to systematically understand the nature of becoming, from which it started, where it is now, and where by its immanent resolve"the paradoxof a 'something'that'is' and is developmentallogic it should go. Eduction attemptsto render "the developing into 'what is not."' He took the vast array of logir latentpossiblities of a phenomenonfully manifestand articulated." categoriesthat had surfaced in Western philosophy, includi Dialecticalpremises are not random hypothesesbut rather poten- many of his own, and ananged them from the simplest to the tialities that stem from a distinct continuum, with a past, present, complex in an order in which each was educed from its and latent future of their own. From thesepotentiaiities is educed internal logic and incompletenessto its sucessor,filling out the agraded differentiation toward wholeness-without dissolving the terrain of thought in a cumulative, increasingly differentiated' richly articulated phasesthat make up the whole into a vague, ever more adequateapproximation of a rational whole. unarticulated"oneness." Hegel referred to the potentiality of a logical category as In its Hegelianform, dialecticsoperates primarily within the which is implicit, or an sich,and to the more developed,exp realm of thought. Hegel's system invokes an inexplicable cosmic categoryemerging from it asthe explicit, orTtirsicft. He spirit [GeisfJ that culminates in a mystical Absolute. Marxian dialectics, the rational fulfillment of a potentiality as its actualization (on in turn, as developedby Frederick Engels,tilts toward nature the relatively mechanisticscience of the 19th century,which dealt fir sich).Owing to its incompletenessor "contradictory" more the elaborationof the "whole," the implicit strives, in a sense' with matter and motion than with a truly organic develop- ment. futfitl itself by its own developmental logic, the way living In contrast to both of these,dialectical naturalism is com- pletely in nature "strive" to grow and developby a tension between informed by ecology. Development remains strictly naturalistic, they are at any given moment and what they should be in th' without recourse to Hegel's spirit or to Frederick Engels' maturity. The process by which the implicit becomes explicit mechanical kinetics. Nor does the naturalistic dialectics advanced rendered in Hegelian terminology by the untranslatable by Bookchin terminate in an Absolute, or any notion of an "end word Aulh ebung, sometimes expressed as "transcendence" of history." It thus remainsmore open-ended,fluid, spon- taneous, "sublation." In an Aufhebung, the new category or phase of organic, and free from predeterminations than we find in the development "contradicts" or "negates" the previous one, even dialectical tradition by which it is informed. it incorporates it in a more complete condition' It should In first and second nature, the character of dialectical devel- opment emphasized that controdicfion in dialectical reason does not varies from the evolution of the inorganic and organic to the to a contradiction between two arbitrarily chosen statements evolution of human societv. But the verv fact of the evolution of the have no developmental relationship to each other. Rather, d organic out of the inorganic, and oi the social out of the Ethics \24 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS of Social Ecology 125 organic (each preserving what rationally came before it in a conceptual thought of advanced primates. Here, as we have seen, formed state) dialectically grounds second nature in first is a graded development of subjectivity in the evolution of life. itself. Dialectical naturalism is thus both a form of reasoning Yet animal behavior is for the most part determined by biol- ethnologists an ontological form of causality. ogy.Although commonly speakof "animal societies" As both a form ofreasoningand asan accountofdevelo with impunity, animals do not have the unique type of community in first and second nature, dialectical naturalism offers an expl sguctures developed by humans. Their "social iurangements," as tion for Aristotle's "most significant fact," with which we Bookchin has argued, such as those of ants, are genetically pro- even this chapter: the fact that the world of nature is comprehensible grammed, though the role of the genetic is lessened as we primate forms of life. the human mind. It is becausehuman beings are a product of approach humanity, increasing subjectivity in first nature-not created by God, not With natural evolution gives rise to social evolu- fullest microcosm that "corresponds" to an analogicalmacrocos tion in the senseof the word. While we are embeddedin first they can understand the processesof first nature. Human nature, we have also evolved from it into something different in and human society evolved out of first nature-even as they very important ways. If "being determinesconsciousness," so to part of it and are embeddedin it. By virtue of the very "ph speak,for animals, it is by no means strictly true for human beings, anthropology" of human rnentality, human subjectivity Marxian theory notwithstanding. Human beings create institutions grounded in first nature, as a product of its emergence,and that are often highly mutable, indeed subject to radical and revolu- fore can comprehendit. tionary changes, a phenomenon that does not appea.rin animal communities. The evolution of society, which uniquely character- izeshumans, gives them the ability to changetheir social relations The Ethics of Social EcoIogY in a great variety of ways, potentially toward ever greater self-con- sciousnessand freedom. This representsa development from mere A rationality that conceives reality as the actualization animal community to human society, a crucial advance, however potentialities into ever-differentiating degrees of wholeness phased it may be, from the world of the biological to the social, profound ethical implications. Obviously,the ground of an from first nature to second nature. ical ethics must be ontological: it cannot be grounded in Unlike animals, human beings can clearly perceive that a vagariesof socialconstructions, public opinion, or tradition, society is des.troyingthe biosphere, and they can try to do some- Iessin patently absurd myths. In social ecology,nature reenters thing about it. Unlike animals, humans also engagein strugglesto philosophical and political sphere of Westernculture as an or make changes in their lives and in their social institutions. With Iogical ground for ethics. This ethics is one that is premised their highly developed newous systems and brains, they are the natural evolution and the emergenceof second nature out of only animals with minds that seem capable of sophisticated con- nature. ceptual reason and a richly symbolic vocabulary that forms the As we have seen,first natute's development is inorganic, basisfor highly intricate modes of thinking and human consocia- (in our planetary biosphere, at least) biological. Subiectivity tion. And unlike other animals, humans are able to make moral creasingly emerges from the most nascent unicellular process choices.They are potentially ethical creatures that can, for exam- self-maintenance and subiectivity, through the rudimen Ple,impart "rights" not only to themselves but even to nonhuman choices exercised by highly flexible mammals, to the rrte-forms if thev so choose. second nature thus marks a new 726 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS Ethics of SocialEcology L27 evolutionary phaseof nature,with its sociality, institutions, of an ecocornmunity. nosaic There, human needs and the need.sof Iectuality, language,ethics, and political life. life-forms nonhuman would be joined in a complementary *r"y ro We know only too well from the history of civil is a beneficial, that there reciprocal relationship betweenihe two. however, that human societv has not as vet reached its full truly mutualistic In this free nature, humanity would ceaseto be rity, rationality, or indeed, its full humanity. Dialectics,by divided against the nonhuman world-and against itself. lndeed, ing the potentiality and internal logic of a development, in free nature, human society would be nonhierarchical and coop- what society should be. This is not an arbitrary endeavor. It erative'society's "completeness"would be based on tie ,,com- be validated by reason and by real material as well as cult of h,mans pleteness" in their self-fulfillment as rational, free,and possibilities. By examining what potentialities humans have self-consciousbeings. they grade out of first nature, social ecologyadvances the Free nature's ,,final end is hardry a predetermined cause,,in view that their capacitieswill not be realized unless they create a scholasticsense, nor a predeterminedcourse of social evolution. rational ecologicalsociety based on an ethics of comp is no certainty There that society will become free and rational and with first nature.But what societvsi ouldbeisvastlv different ecological. thereby The potentiality of society to develop into its what it is. Where it should be rational and ecologicalif humani is immxllgnt fullness but not inevitable. Today ottr conciptions of potentialitiesare fulfilled, it is irrational and anti-ecological freedomhave never been so fully elaborated,but it requires a This potentiality, the "should be," becomesin the ethics of supremeact of consciousness,as Bookchin emphasizes,to achieve ecology, the overarching standard of actualization and a free world. since we have not attained this free nature, human Herein lies the crificolthrust of social ecology'sethics: the fact beingsstill remain in the perverteddevelopment of secondnature, by educing the true actualization of humanity's potentialities, and first nature is still being grievously harmed. But we can provides a standardby which we may judge the irrationality of certainly advance a vision of "free nature', as an ethical ,,should "what is"-p6[ merc appeals to the vagaries of myth and religi be" that alone would mark the fruition of nature,s and humanity,s There remains still another step, or Aufhebung, that must potentialities, and we canseekto deveropan ethicsof complemen- made in natural and social evolution. This is the step that tarity,.even aswe fight to destroyhierarcly in society.It isihe end, forms second nature-with all its marvelous advances and the telos, so to speak, albeit by no means a predeiermined one, terrible abuses-into a "synthesis" of first and second nature in toward which we strive to furfiil both ourselves and first nature.,, form of a harmonious, conscious,and ecological"free nature." The ethics of social ecology has particularly profound impli_ free nature, both human and nonhuman nature come into their cationsfor women. As human beings, women,s lives are no more as a rational, self-conscious,and purposeful unity. Humanity, de^termined by biology th* *" rrr.rr,I. Unlike other female animals, product ofnatural evolution,brings its consciousnessto the se .oe human female is capable of making decisive choices about of both first and second nature. It brings its consciousnessto wtren and under what circumstances she will reproduce. The service of first nature by diminishing the impact of natural distinction between the facile ethicar prop*ul, of ecofeminists and trophes, and promoting the thrust of natural evolution socialecology's ethics shourd b* clear on the issue of diversity and ending needlesssuffering, thereby fueling the "ri""iaty freedom generally. An ethical ity of natural ;:T::: Td.t:p'*"ctive prescrip_ evolution through its technics,science, and superficially drawn from ;un first nature which arguesthat ar ute ity. In free nature, we would no longer expect human beings rus€lcr€d would, if its adherentsare to be consistent,oblige us to regard themselves as the lords of creation but as conscious bei oPposeabortion on tle grounds that it is destructive to ..Iife,,. By indeed as the products of natural evolution, in the rich contrast, in social ecorogy'sethics, in which first nature is a realm 128 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS Ethics of SocialEcology 729

out of which society emerges, of increasing subjectivity Human beings,by virtue of their potentiality to choosedifferent would have a right to reproductive freedomthat is groundedin social roles, transcend the more rigidly biological sexual differ- of society and natural evolution. As human emergence ences€rmong nonhuman beings. The emergenceof second nature uniquely capable of making ethical choices that increase thus initiates a new dialectic in which men and women can have whole, women's freedomin the context of an ecological interchangeableroles in all realms of human life without losing given. tive freedomwould be a their sexual distinctiveness.That women and men today can po- men share a common natural historv. As Women and tentially do so at a high level of social integration is truly an Heller has pointed out, women's natute is also human nature, evolutionaryadvance as such, is grounded in organic evolution. The human capabi If it is true that "men make their own history, but they do not for reason,consociation, and ethical behavior areas femaleas make it...under circumstancesof their own choosing," is Marx are male. oncesaid, neither do women. without a dialectical, evolutionary view of nature, ecofeminismwiil succeed.only in integratingitserf The unifying principles within human into existing society with trendy metaphors of .,inteiconnected- nature...constitute a common natural history ness"and "aliveness" and an appeal to the irrational rather than shared by both men and women;...Foremost, the best faculties we possess.If it follows the muddy direction woman, as the female expression of human createdby ecofeminism, it wirr regressinto nature, shares with man the capacity to build a a mentaritv where choiceis replacedby tradition, will "second nature." This second nature includes the by ritual, insight by th" incan- tations of priestesslikeleaders, distinctly human potential to create cultural and psychologically regressto a time s6"tr humanity institutions, a written language, and the was guided more by the canons of tibalistic blood-ties capacities for rational thought, intellectual than by the humanistic associationof thinking citizens. with mentation, and self-consciousreflection. The first an ecological ethics grounded in the potentiality of h,r-* beings answer to the "woman question" must be that to consciouslyand rationalrycreate a ireeecorogical society, we can woman represents a distinctive expression of begin to develop an ecorogicalpolitical mJuement that challenges second nature: a nature which is the realization the existing ord.eron the grounds that it denies both of the potential for self-consciousnessin "first humans and nonhumans their fulI actualization. To meet that nature."... When feminists focus exclusively on challenge, we need the best faculties we have-our knowledge of woman's difference from man...we forget to nature, and the understanding of what we should be-ratherrhan appreciate that which makes female human regressive myths of "oneness"that carry us backto a pastwe should nature distinctive." navelong outgrown. In reality, as distinguished from patriarchal mystificati men and women arenot ontological "opposites."They are,in differentiations in humanity's potentiality to achieve a rich gated wholeness.Maleness and femalenessin human beings transformation, an A u/fi ebung, of male and femalenessin ani inasmuch as gender traits are radically more malleable in h beings than they are in nonhuman male and female o Women in Democratic Politics

In the ideology of the 19th-century "cult of true womanhood," middle-classwhite women were given the role of maintaining the family home as a moral sanctum while their entrepreneur husbands pursued their competitive commercial lives in the stormy outside world. Even as "women's sphere"-the domestic realm-was be- coming increasingly rationalized by "home economics," women were expected to have a moral mission of preserving the home as a realm of caring and nurturing. Women were obliged to stay out of extradomestic affairs-whether political or economic-and be- comeguardians of the home as the human heart of society. Insofar asthey were perrritted to emergefrom the domestic realm, it was to do "women's work" such as social work and nursing. Like that 19tb-century ideology, ecofeminism, too, sees "home" as "woman's sphere," whether as a social construction or as a matter of biology. They note that the word "ecology" derives tom the Greek word oikos,which means "home." 'What has been traditionally thought of as 'woman's sphere,"' writes judith Plant, is "home and its close surroundings." Although Plant believes the homeis "women's sphere" for social and noi biological reasons, "home is the theater of our human ecology," where "the real work is." Indeed, "home" is the "source of our human-ness," she writes, audthe locus of what she calls "women's values." Catherine Keller, too, emphasizesthe connection between "home" and ecology: she considers that "to be simply at home again, in our bodies, our

137 POLITICS Women in Democratic Politics 133 132 PJTHINKING ECOFEMINIST

'eco" from oikos' the Greek nity level, where people can meet and interact with each other on worlds, is to becomeecocentricl a face-to-facebasis, carefor eachother, and know eachother. Social ideology' howevel' ecologists,long before ecofeminists, argued that the preservation Unlike the 19th-century *:.T,"*^T"l-" and reconstruction of community life is necessaryfor an ecological ecofeminists do not seekto literall]":*t": "the household"'Rather' -1'they society.Insofar as community life hasbeen evisceratedin European spherein the ,"r,," oio''kos as sp.het e" a^s and American cultutes, ecology movements there seek in various to extend th" rr"ry o"" i or" * ot"tn's T-:1"^?1 " "f as a wlole' Writes ecotemil ways to preserve and restore community life as essential to the and absorb the the community Hamilton,"*;;!i ethical fabric of human existence. cynthia t; 1.1:lftJ^:3,:iii: homehas been deri:*i Indeed, it is here that the ecology and ecofeminist movements iJi#ilfiil,"*' i'""iava"causethe a;F4' q"i."i"l-, shareaspirations with movements to oppose development in Third andpresmibed as !"-Tll?:'"'-?*:itl-:l people ecofeministanalysis is that the home World countries. In non-Western cultures, many seek to il #;;;,""", "t protect not only their natural environments but their very cultures the f"t"t ecologicalslTgglilt, community-as "f rikeLois t'T::IlGibbs and communities against the toxicity of Western development. ::tH#iil;;;: ii,;;; ;;;"{tv activists and orenstein argue that Womenin Third World cultures, as Diamond and Orensteinnote, Love Canal, oi"*o"d "cot"-i"i'it" havespoken out strongly againstthe spreadofthese toxicities: industrialized countries' children's Ln many ways, women's struggle in ttre rural Women who are responsiblefor their of the Third World is of necessity also an ecological *"ff+"f"g are ofien more mindful Through struggle. Becauseso many women's lives are i""u-,;; ;"sts of quick-fix solutions' and nurturinE' intimately involved in trying to sustain and the"socialexperience of caretaking of distress conserve water, Iand, and forests, they women becomeattentive to the signs their understandin an immediateway the contrastsof i" tfttit communities that might threaten "accidents" technologies that pillage the Earth's natural households. When enviromental the first riches.u occur,it is thesewomen who aretypically becauseof i"-i*.t a problem' Moreover' biological To be sure, women have been much involved in ecological strug- women's unique role in the bodies are gles,in both industrialized and Third World cultures, sometimes rlg"""t"ri"n of the species'our which local' at the i#ortant markers,the sites upon forefront, sometimes not-few would argue that Chico often played .;i;;"1";en planetary stressis Mendes,the martyred organizer of rubber tappers in the Brazilian out.' rainforest, was a woman. Moreover, whether all women involved in ecological struggles would call themselves ecofeminists is an- has been evisceratedby Community life, as we have seen' other question entirely. At least one American feminist environ- Iargelyr"pl"""d bv' mental activist considers ecofeminist writings to be "hopelessly market, T {l:"""oll"::19'^y:d^ty"1:it: "rheagencv and :"ffi;ilffi;'#;, assookchin puts abstract,gorged on rhetoric, humorless, full of resentment toward for the family' the town bureaucrat ha.,ebecome the substitutes professionals and achievement, and above all, tiresome." Authot In the face of the massive bureaucratization Anne Cameron considers the term ecofeministto be an "insult" to ti9lt1^1 feminist "JgUt"tn"od.'*commodification of life, ecofeminists-Iike ::" activists-ironically, in an article in an anthology subti- societiesat the giJr-U"fi"ve that we canbuild ecological tled Tfte Promiseof Ecofeminism." 734 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLMCS Women in Democraticpolitics 135

In any case,"community" and the communitarian ethos todaywithout the Enlightenment'slegacy emphasizing the impor- been controversial subjects of discussion in radical tance of the individual-however much the Enlightenment dis- thought in recent years. Some theorists have rightly pointed torted that individual into a self-interested ego (without the right 1e1sxemple, that life in previous communitarian contexts has' to political dissent, or without the combined Greek and Enlighten- notoriously oppressive to women. We cannot ignore the fact ment legacyof democraticdecision-making). male-oriented cosmologieshave invoked "nature" pute and Although the Greek word oi.kosoriginally did mean ,,house_ as a prescriptive ethical order for society and disdainfully hold," we must recall that the household alone did not make up women by their biological role in reproduction. Clearly, any the Greekcommunity any more than the poft'salone did. The Greek attempt to work with the concept of community must grapple community was formed by the melding of the polis with the oikos, this patricentric tradition of women's "naturally" prescribed in which the former rested on the latter, howevel much it disdained ,,otkos" riority. it. Thus, ecofeminists cannot slip so casually from to Moreover, the decentralized community, seen "community." Any community must have a public realm-where without due regard to democracy and confederalism, has the generalmatters are considered-as well as a more intimate realm tential to become regressivein other ways as well. Homo of childrearing and familial relationships. Thus, ecofeminist cyn- anti-Semitism, and racism, as well as sexism, may become part thia Hamilton is quite right to call for "direct participatory democ- a parochial "communitarian" ethos that does not confront racy."' Without this general realm of direct participatory troubling history of "naturalistic" prescriptions of "inferiority" democracy,community life runs the risk of becomingas oppressive "perversion" that ale applied to certaingroups ofpeople. Thus, as it once was, even if it is also intimate and integrated with the communitarian ethos has a history of repressivenessand fabric of the natural world. alism that cannot be ignored. But for the mostpart, asidefrom lonely voiceslike Hamilton's, Given this history of community, then, it is necessaryfor ecofeministwritings are remarkably bereft of referencesto democ- ecology movement generally to carefully rethink how it is going racy.The most common approachis simply to ignore the question construct community in a liberatory sense,so that such of the poft'saltogether and concentrate on the presumed "liomen,s can be avoided. The new communities that we construct must values" of the oikos. Thus, while these writings are filled with .,aliveness,,,,,goddesses,,, contain the hierarchical features,for example, of the discussionsof "oneness,,, and,.inter- that capitalism destroyed. It is necessary to understand what connectedness,"they provide very little vision of the democratic processes enlightened community shouldbe, one that preservesthe that can keep these new "ecological" values from trans- and intimacy and bamaraderieof community life, yet that igrming communities into tyrannies, the way they have developed historically not be so parochial as to permit black men and women once (aswe have seen),or keep community life from deteri- orating to be excluded or white women and women of color to be raped into oppressiveparochialisms, as has also been the case historically. deprived of their reproductive freedom. clearly established,distinct face-to-faced.emocratic nsfffutions, ,,forms The only way that community can be restored in a as specifically human of freedom" (to use Eookchin's way is if there is some way that people can make general phrase), are essential to a liberatory-rather than a repressive-community. about the life of the community as a whole. If we are going to community life that is liberatory for women, the community Some ecofeminists who refer to the ideas of democratic poli- have an arena where o// of its members can democratically u"tn"lly do so in a pejorative way. ynestra King sees the I..uemocratic such basic questions. We cannot have liberatory political tradition as historically contrary to organic 136 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS politics Women in Democratic 737 community. "The Westernmale bourgeois.. .extractshimself of the community to evaluats its decisions and revoke them where the realm of the organicto becomea public citizen, as if born they are evidently wrong. the head sf lsgs"-xs if the words "public citizen" denoteno By contrast, many ecofeminists prefer consensus decision- but the grasping"male bourgeois"ego concerned only with sel making to that of majority-minority democracy. Ideally, consensus terest!For King, to draw on "the Westerndemocratic tradition" processseeks group unanimity. In the ideal consensusprocess, no to "work. . .with a political legacythat is foundedon the repud decision is made by a group without unanimity. After a period of of the organic, the female,the tribal, and particular ties debateon an issue,according to consensustheorist caroline Estes, people...I am mindful that the original citizen in that tradition "there startsto emergea common answer to the question that moves male, propertied, and xenophobic."uThis is convoluted thi the group to a decision." This is a prayer at best rather than a and atavismwith a vengeance,especially if one considersthat description,for sometimesa "common answer" doesnot emergeat Westerndemocratic tradition produced a consciousnessof uni all. Ideal consensusand consensus-seekingprocesses are nonethe- ,,common so/freedom that ultimately openedthe public sphereto women lesspremised on the notion that such a answer,,must advancedbeyond the parochialismof "tribal" life with its focus alwaysemerge if a decision is to be made,not unlike the emphasis the blood tie. many ecofeministsplace on the "oneness"of "all" in a cosmologi- As most peoplein Europeanand American culture learn calsense. Says Estes, "It is fairly easyto arrive at a unity placewhere in their school years, in an ideal democratic decision- people can get behind and move forward together.,'1ndeed,for process,differing views on a given issue are arguedout publ Estes,consensus is a matter of urgency: "This integration is going After everyonehas heard aII sides,they take a vote. The view to be essentialfor our survival."n ,,essential gainsthe majority of votespasses. Since politics in this ideal By affirming that this ',integration,,is for our sur_ concerns itself with the affairs of the general community, and vival," Estescreates a quasi-authoritarianimperative. we are left ..unity,,-or any community will contain people with varying personal with the impression that there must be else! Estes, majority rule has long been seen as the most democratic way affirmationof group unity thus concealsthe factthat she dispenses make decisions.While the decision of the majority passes, with the notions of majority rule and minority dissent so basic to who hold the minorityview have the right to dissent until they the ultimate recourse of all democratic decision-making.Estes, persuadethe majority. The decisionof the majority may well be rather, argues that "we can no longer have majorities and minori- wrong decision initially and may even by challenged by ties:we need collective unity." she calrs the consensusprocess ,,a feminine disobedience,if opponents of a decision are preparedto face form of decision-making:it is unifying, it is shLing, it is consequencesof their actions,in an oufftenfic democracy.But caring, it is nondominant, it is empowering.', Although she regards her ideal democraticprocess allows those who disagreeat the time vision of consensusas "nondominant," Estesalso describesa collective argue their position and remoin publicly drssociofed from "wisdom" that individuals may well be cautious about they consider the wrong decision. This admittedly is a far challenging: perfectsolution, but at leastit is explicit. Minorities arenot to obey the decision of a majority; rather, the differences are It's very rare that any of us has the audacity to clear, and definable. In an authentic democracv,we can think that we have more wisdom than the expect that experiencewill eventually provide evidence of collectivewisdom of the group.And when tlose a majority's decision is correct or not, as long as the occasionsoccur, it is very difficult for us to take processis an open one and allows for changein repeatedgathe that stand.You must be terriblv sure.'o 138 RETHINKING ECOFEMINISTPOLITICS Women in DemocraticPolitics 139

Such imperatives and commandments have a very c fion that gives rise to new ideas and critical thinking. To disparage ring to them. The fate of individual dissent in consensusas t; dissent as "the audacity to think that we have more wisdom than describesitinvolves its elimination-and this today, at atimew the collective wisdom of the group" is to foster passivity, compli- dissent itself is already in tatters. what is important in the eco ance, and even fear to voice one's opinions, to subordinate the ical concept of "unity in diversity" is the recognition that di' individual to the group, to force the idiosyncratic and the original can exist without destroying the unity of a community' In to adapt to the conventional, and to reduce creativity of thought to formulations, diversity-let alone dissent-is literally era the lowest common denominator.No view is less democratic,in through the moral coercion of consensus-seekingby "unity"' reality, than one that homogenizes everyone on the basis of the problem is not resolved by such gimmicks as having disse mystical principle of the "ferninine," which as we have seen has a "step out" of the decision-makingprocess, as Estes proposes, \ fearful eternality of its own. For an ecofeminist like Helen Forsey simply obliges dissentersto step out of the political process "the issue of tolerance is a thorny one. How much are we willing gether.) "Unity" and "integration" are given almost metaph5 to tolerate actions and attitudes that go against our cherished if not quasi-religious, qualities that smother personal ind values?"" Forsey herself does not answer her own question, and denceand disagreement.One can only applaud peoplelike indeed, it is one that ecofeminists-redefining community as Weyer and ReginaldScot, who did not have Estes'high opinion otkos-must openly confront. "group wisdom." Thesebrave 16th-centurywriters But the many brief essaysby the variety of writers that make stood up to the "collective wisdom" of their day that was up ecofeninist "theory" rarelymanage to answer this crucial ques- persecuting and burning women as witches' Recent attemPts tion, or even raise the question of democracy itself. The numerous imposeconsensus on "collectivities" haveoftenIedto grimresu' ecofeministswho ignore the subiect of democracy altogether seem In 1978,for example,the ClamshellAlliance, avibrant anti to feel that "women's values" of "caring and nurturing" constitute group inNewEngland, was nearly destroyedwhensome of its mc a compassionateand organic alternative to the presumably cold, media-hungry members used the tyranny of "moral persuasion" abstract,individualistic, and rationalistic-if not outright "mascu- attain consensuson turning a militant occupation of the line" or "1anls"-dgmocratic ideal. The ethos of motherhood is a reactorinto a vapid theatrical event. "paradigm" for ecofeminist Arisika Razak,for example,since "birth Consensusis a form of decision-making most appropriate is ffte primary numinous event." Indeed, for Razak, small, intimate groups-for families and friends' It presupposes Birth is such a universal and certain commonality of views that emergefrom shared central aspect of human existencethat it can serveas the nucleus and affinities. But we encounter problems in larger, more around which to build a paradigm for positive geneous,public spheres,where conflicts of opinion are not human interaction.... If we begiuwith loving care Benign as consensusmay seem inevitable but even desirable. for the young, and extendthat to social caringfor "organicity" in the past some at first glance, its seeming a// people and personal concern for the planet, largely from the power of entrenched custom and the pressure we would have a different world. If we public opinion in tribal societies and certain religious groups' understoodand celebratedbirth, we'd...reclaim merely "collective wisdom"'Today, total agreementon issues the inportance of love and warmth and genuine easily reflect a degree of homogenization or demands for human interaction. (emphasisadded)" mity that stunt personal and social creativity. Dissent is not a form of disagreement.It is a form of healthy and creative Women politics POLITICS in Democratic L47 140 PJTHINKINGECOFEMINIST

of a more was the world of entrapment, of home econornics,from which they Presumably, we can attain our ecological ideal the ethos of the fought bitterly and valiantly to escape,indeed, the locus classicus humane and sharing community if we revalue ourselvesto the of patriarchy, asin tb.eGreek orl

enhance and lineages."'oThose outside the kinship group were positive aspects of tribal society could well sewe to not entitled to the protection of the com'nunity. the democratic political tradition' codes of hospitality toward visitors were variable. Non-kin people "*i.U Finally, since thl family realm in tribal organic societies had no guaranteed rights women played and status in relation to the kin group and could formed the authentic core of social life, the fact that even be regarded consider- as enemies.As Bookchin writes, a central role in the domestic realm tended to give them ablestatus.AnthropologistMichelleZ.Rosaldooncenotedthattho "those in which Aside hom its lavish codeof hospitality, organic cultures in which gender is most "egalitarian" ale where society made no real provision for the rights of public and domestic spheresare only weakly differentiated' the stranger,the outsider,who was not linked by ttto"l authority and the force of social life itself neither sex claims maniage or ritual to the kin group. The larger societiesseem in fact to have been ,.The is the home."" Early matrilineal world beyondthe perimeterof people" was w€rslikely of central quite egalitarian, and women's participation "inorganic." Loyalties exteuded in varying importance, as we have seen in Chapter 2' degreesof obligation to tlose who shared the But we should not ignore the warts in early organic cornmon blood oath of the comm.unity and to peoples today society, ones that would make Westem and other allies united by material systems of gift past has a great deal to teach us' but reciprocity. The notion of a humanity in which .r"ry on"o*fortable. The 1e prob' all hrrrnan should not embraceit uncritically' Perhapsthe most serious beings are considered united by a courmongenesis was still largely lemthatorganictribalsocietyfacedinthepastwasthefactthatit alien.'u imput was organiled according to the blood tie, or a shared tie a way Becauseof the virtual exclusivity of early kinship systems, then, to a common ancestor.The blood tie was overarching as least' it they did not adequately solve the problem of how to deal with describing one's loyalties. Unchangeablein theory' at sex' P peoplewho were not kin, except by marriagealliances, adoption, social organization into patterns set by birth, a-ge^'and that and other extensions of the shared ancestry to the point of fiction. had no control over the seemingly biological factors Human political and social existence remained parochial and par- determined their social position. In this sense'these kinship roles ticularized into family groups. Unless humanity was to remain eties were not moral, strictly speaking, because social completely isolated in small exclusive communities, early organic limited by a commitment to biological attributes' not to societieshad to find someway of establishing suprablood relations ones. Like it or not, one owed one's Ioyalties to a bio so that non-kin individuals could interact with each other without constitued form of association that tended to narow one's sense incurring blood feuds. belonging to a larger social order' That is, it was necessary, political groupings, in effect' were the sooner or later, to create a public Moteover, since sphere in which "the strangel"-fts non-kin individual-could be as family groupings, membership in a political group often a community member on the basis of a shared humanity, not o" U"i"g born into it. That is, kinship tended t birth. pended l" -"] It was for or clan usually remained I tlis reason that the public realm slowly emerged out of sive. fhe "good life" in a tribe the private oikos, especially in tne West. In the emergiirg public privilege of ihe person born to it Becauseit was !1*-d. :" i*d t"d_T, strangers obligations of kinship life often could begin to find a place in t}e comm"oiiy fn"y putativ-eblood tie, the "moral" could be dealt with amicably, as resident aliens or as citizens, irot extend beyond the }lin grouP: "The community based or they could alone, finds it impossible to be dealt with hostilely, as in warfare, but they could be association through kinship dealt with-by increasingly rational rather than customaiy itself in other communities that do not share common patterns 744 RETHINKING ECOFEMINISTPOLITICS Women in Democraticpolitics 745 of behavior.But ultimately, in early organicsocieties, the domestic within the domestic realm. In ancient Athens, of course, realm was the women's realm, and the emerging public realm was it was the father, not the mother, who ruled in the oikos;.p"rhdr-th" the men's realm, a configuration that has persisted in the West for slaves were women "weavers" and. servants whom patrLchs"Jrr"r, millennia since. But in its beginnings,the public realm did not brought to the service of their wives and familier. rri""l, ,n" necessarily exist in a hierarchical relationship with the domestic. biological rankings of organic tribal society were themservesulti- It may well be an instance of present-dayhierarchical thinking that mately used as rationales. for increasing stratificatior, *d po*"r, we seethe public and domestic in hierarchical terms. In fact, the such as in many societies in the ancient"world. Egypt, to, public and domesticrealms probably coexistedon equal terms for wasnot a "poritical" statein the "*I_pte, sensewe know iii"a"v-ii** * a long period of time before the public realm gradually gained oversized, aggrandized ..pharaoh,, oikos. The very word means ascendanceover the domestic.The two were initially complemen- "greathouse," and in ,,great his house,i the fixei statusrankings tary to each other. of hierarchical tribal society were not only retained but exacer- Needlessto say,the public realm not only gainedascendance, bated, and mystified into a theocracy to boot. Moreover, as wealth it developed extremely hierarchal structures of its own. Through was accumulated in early societies generally, it was t"p, i" ,n" various combinations of emerging stratification, force, and also domestic orkos by virtue of being f,ansmitted through kinship invasion, through a history of greaterand lesserdegrees of what lines' It was the blood tie that Jnderpinned and continues to Bookchin calls "statification," the public realm developed from underpin aristocratic lineages-keepini wealth in the domestic warrior elites into the extraordinarily hierarchial one with which realm of privileged families. we are familiar today and from the past. And indeed, during times The orkos, as it evolved through history, has thus not been when the public realm was Iess powerful and the orkos had prcm- "women'srealm,, alone. perhaps most comp"liir,gty fo. o* al*rrr_ inence once again-as in the 9th and 10th centuries A.D.-Euro- sion' the private orkos encompassesnot only the domesticrearm peanwomen exercisedarelatively prominentrole in socialaffairs.'E but also the economic realm, foe realm of private interests. oikos But in the Iight of this history, to glorify women's domestic is, after all, the root not only .,ecology,, of the word but also of the realm as "ca.ring" and "nurturing" without emphasizing how easily word "economics." Indeed, the interestsof earf capitalists were it could be manipulated by men or, worse,become a refugefor the quintessentianyprivate interests. Earry capitalists justified the weary warrior, is to mystify the relationship of the domestic to unequal distribution of wealth that they caused by irrrroting *nat public-presumably "women's world" to that of men. For although they saw as thsil private deserts,th"i, p"rrorral abilities, their kinship societies look after their own and may therefore be said enbepreneurial savrry-and very often, their family trad.itions, to be caring, nothing in the kinship ethos-or in the domestic, for the point of absurd nepotism. Ail of the important capitalists of the matter-prevents stratification from emerging out of biol 19th century and wei into the ZOth were known by their delineated ranking systems like age, gender, and blood ties. names-such family as the Astors, the Rockefellers, the Morgans, even the Neolithic "ethic of care" could prevent this devel Krupps. and the (which perhaps is why "Kurgan invasions" are such a con Thus, the word orkos has at least a double meaning. It can ploy for many ecofeminists).Indeed, paradoxically, "caring" hean home-the domestic realm_to be sure, as ecofeminists remarkably compatible with hierarchy. An ethic of motherly it can also mean ,,oikos,, **$u"t economy. It was the of the prirate thus does not by itself pose a threat to hierarchy and domination. hterests of capital that unleashed enormous productive forces and The emergenceof the patriarchal family-inwhichthe fa that is now r-rlsedto wreak such havoc on the biosphere not the mother ruled-was a development that occurred and on 't46 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLMCS Women in Democraticpolitics t47

life. honically, the "oikos" of economics is now de- course ended, fighting community began; hence the importance of rational stroying the "oikos" of ecologY. discussionin Athens.'," The Athenixr polis also defined itself in contrast to Near Easternsocieties, which it regardedas despotic rather t'an rationar. Public Realm Its fearsof despotism, The moreover,were wei founded.or"u th" pott was established, the primary effort of the citizen *"" If the private rcalm has varying senses-ranging from the airJ.,"a against threats that were external to the polis-notably, "household." to the family fortunes of capitalists-so does the ty "barbarians', (who included everyone tut Greeks)_that"ti""r., public realm have a double meaning: "the state" and "the demo- would have undermined the community as public realm have a unique living organism. tratic polity." The operations of the state in the Thus, never did Athens rest secure,nor was it ever at peacewith produced the huge centralized bureaucracies that dehumanize all its neighbors. capital, to which we are people and protect the private interests of The Athenian democratic polr.s developed not only to chal_ accustomed today. But although today we normally think of the lenge the hierarchies of the public realm, brrito contest,i";i;_ public realm as exclusively the state, the state is only one kind of chy and exclusivity of kinship society: the increasingly stratified public realm. In addition, there is another kind of public realm that aristocratic family interests in its immediate past. Exclusivity legitimatelybe called politicsinthe original Greek democratic had can been a problem beca,se membership in that particular kin grorips_ senseof managing the polis. Indeed, it was this political realm clans-was a prerequisire for participaUon in public affairs of emerged.,particularly in Athens, to challenge the interests of priv- general concern. But such membership could U" ott"io"J not to prctect them. Despite the limitations that UV ilege and status, birth. Moreover, wealth-was becomin! ""fV Athenian dem- increasingly concentrated seriously tainted it-its patriarchy, its slavery-the in certain clans. The clans' control of religion iu"s y"t ;;;", ocratic polis developed as a relatively egalitarian responseto many stratification that caused bitterness; certain had clans had tecome the of the hierarchies of both the public and private realms that priestly caste, controlling the religious rife of the generar pop,,r"- developedbefore it. tion. The democratic polis emergedin part as a responseto hierar- The Athenian democracy tried to break down this private in the public realm-the warrior class of its aristocrats. The stratification chy and excrusivity. By the end it was of the ,i*tl Athenian democrats established the ideal-howevel much Kleisthenes took "urri,rr| the rem""tabi" step of abolishing tu" urroJli""a.r. honored in the breach-of resolving internecine conflicts altogether as the basis for poritical organization and but through reasoned argumentation- stroyed thereby de- through mutual slaughter, the political power of privileled argued clans. This ended kin in contrast to despotic or oligarchic rule. When a citizen exclusivity as a criterion for poiiti"a"pa"ti"ipation. By dividing position, his aimwas to persuadehis opponents,notto usevi geoplegeographically instead of according Hence to blood constituencies, against them, as had been done earlier in Greek history. Kleisthenesabolished the power of tribai and kinship ties. enormous emphasis on discourse and reason, which provided dence nesi- eventually became the basis for citizenship of Greek philosophy. That the citi albeit in the polrs, initiating impulse for much only of Atlenian men. conflicts of the polis tried to resolve disputes through rhetorical For classical Greek political philosophers, the orkos on which ideas rather tlan turn to violence was a radical advance in restedand depend"J*J, ,n" realmof affairs, however much this ideal was not always realized' To $:,"11,r.ellody thepartic_ wrrereas the polis was, relatively speaking, tle Greek mind, where universal,.*rdr', the realm of the one of Bookchin's formulations: "In ofpublic regisration and tair trials ty f""rr. rhe poriucal POLITICS Women in Democraticpolitics t48 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST 149

a more unr- child or membersof her family. To propose realm-occupied by men-was seen as having to carefor'.all people,, with the manage- would be to make the concept of ,,caring,, versalistic orientation than the oikos,concerned so broad to l" democratic polis meaningless and unfocused. ", ment of the community as awhole' The Athenian not only those of Nor is "caring" in itself anti-hierarchical, now regarded private interests as particularistic' any more than orkos itself' kinship organizationwas. The "mothering" wealth] aristolrats but the claims of the domestic ideal itself is not inher- not contest the ently democratic, as Mary Dietz Otviously, the Athenian democratic polis did has pointed out, nor does it not actualize the necessarily foster freedom. "There is no hierarchy in its own oikoi, and thereby did reason to think that moth- people from ering necessarilyinduces commitment potentiaiity of its ovm innovation' And it excluded to democratic practices," Greeks from other she observes, iiii""nrnii-not only women, but slaves' male regarded as pot"ir, ani resident aliens' But what the Athenians were the same nor are there good grounds for arguing that a universal, as transcending kin among aII peoples' principle like ',care for vulnerable human attributesthattheybelievedmadecitizenspoliticallyequal:the life"...by definition encompassesa defenseof for rationality' It must be emphasized that the human capacity participatory citizenship. An enlightened everyone in citizenship was present in potentiatiiy for including despotism, a welfare state, a single-party thtt the Athenians devised' even if it ih" d.-o"ratic framewotk bureaucracy,and a democraticrepublic may ali was not fuIfilled. respect mothers, protect children,s lives, and Although This potentiality does not exist in kinship groups' show compassionfor the vulnerable." both exclusive in kinship organization and polis organization were could not their oin iays, the kinship system,however contrived' Not only is "caring" compatible with hierarchy, if it is in any way idea of the be broadened without vioiating its very essence-the grounded in "women's nature"-or men's for that matter--but it was exclusive blood tie and shared ancestry' Kinship organization lacks any institutional form. It simply rests on the tenuous prayer and of corrmon Uf a"firri,ion. The biological accidents of birth that individuals will be motivated to "care." But individrr"l, ancestry-however fictitfus they were in many communities-ul- easily start or stop caring. They may care at their whim. They may-uy timately decided membership in the community' not ca-reenough. They may care about somebut not others. Lacking Noristheemotionof..caring''somethingthatonecanauthen- an institutional form and dependent on individual whim, ,.caring" it' Even the human tically extend to "all people," as Razak puts is a slender thread on which to basean emancipatory political life. t2 eyyone'! beings who are most caring cannot extend:*iig But if kinship and caring are by their very nature particular ..caring,, basis for social - an emotion, canno"tbeuniversalized as the and limited, democratic politics is expandable and potentially whether kinship' org*ir"Uon outsilcle one's own small group' all-inclusive' The essenceof democracy is precisely its latent (or fa capacity based or not. Nor can the kind of caring that a mother to cut acrossparticular ethnic, gender, and other cultural of whether lines. ,,universJize,,-as feels for a child be universalized-irrespective The Athenian impulse to limited asit was a tree"' Per in "thinks like a mountain" or "allows oneself to be its time-came from a recognition of a humanity that went their shared beyond can certainly achieve a universal recognition of the exclusivity of the biood tie. And as the definition of who su citizenship manity-witness our concerns for the fate of people was extended historically-initially by the Emperor know er Caracalla-the disastlrs in every part of the world' But they can hardly rights, privileges, *d r"rporrsibitities of political all rue human being in ihe world or care intimately for were extendedas well. "q*9*for individuals in the same sensethat a mother cares intimately politics Women in Democratic 151 150 RETHINIANG ECOFEMINIST POLMCS

In this new political realm, any conflicting private interests that existwithin acommunitycanbe confrontedand arguedin fulr view of every citizen. This polity is held Cteating a New PoliticalRealm together not by religion but by a corlmon political ideal and an educated citizenry, ,"hor" lr"ry as a system raison d'6tre is Social ecology distinguishes between statecraft' discussion and debate, argumentation and agree- means of professionalized ment, clashesof ideas and of dealing with the publi"c realm by concerns,and decision-makingU| the on the ono majority-needless and their legal monopoly on violence' to say, with minorities free to publicly-dissent. of the community on a As part of the community, a local "aJ"ito"*orshand, and politics, as the management face_to_facedemocratic polity by citizen bodies' on would be embeddedin the mutual g;sroots democratic and face-to-facelevel interdependencyof its citizens. of social ecology provides To the extent that both women and the other. The libertarian municipalisn men come into their furlness as as a participatory demo- public and private participants, a framework for recreating political life thry infuse political life with only presewed and concern as well as affection p,o"uss''nThus' tnu ioiiti""t sphereis not for those with whomthey have worked politics is reformulated to so hard, and those with whom ;iJ"d"r"u. expanded, but thi concepf of they are avowedly inierdependent. close to-the as possible-that is' As municipal democratic political Errenas Ui"g a""ition-making as P.":pI" and attainable' such as strengthened by popular participation, "ru "*p*d"d to the most grassrootJlevel that is politically they can join together to constitute a dual power popular assemblies. to the authority of the ,tat". t-his du"l that are destroying power would be The struggleto contestthe private interests strong becauseit emanatesfrom popurar institu- It must be organized tions, institutions in which the biosphere*must be a politi-cal struggle' citizens maintain theii democratic political realm of freedoms.Thus we wourd see around the creation of ,n^it opp*itional the embodiment of the communitar- ""* the importance of a ian ideal in a new, enlightened face-to-faceparticipatory democrary' Indeed' form. olitics o,ti:"91*]":,T,:^tht* clearly, the interests of capitar transcend. .rli"f p,rUfi.'r""1* fo, ecolo gi c aI .p even the boundaries the nation-state-in' of the nation-state, let alone Iess than the elimination of capiialism and those of the community. Fighting large cooperative economic entities that deed, the restructuring of sociely into decentr"lil*' operate even on the internationJ level public ondpri' requires large numbers communities-will *Ik" u healthy' concerned of municipalities to work together. To address iif" p" ttiUfe. The democratic tical **--:t- macrosocialforces rike capiialism, the politicallommuni- -poli that:try::l hasthe ::po ties, according ,t"tiiip"Ufic realm-is the only realmwe have to a libertarian municipalist approach, would. re_ are destroying store the principle tial to;ontest both the private intereststhat of.confederation-aprinciple that for centuries to degrade has been advanced U1orpn"r"and the public-hierarchies that attempt by radical thinkers as an alternative to the ecofeminists seem to nation-state.Lest we forget instirmentalize human beings' Even as this great historic tradition and its clash flvo1 with statecraft, confederation is writingthe polis out of theirJommunitv.in "lt"-:lt:* the grassrootslinkage of commu- challenge neighborhood, citywide, are eliiit atingthe one arenathat can seriously l^t-,t:r :" district, county, and regional d in such tne piUtic and private realms: participatory a way that power flows from the bottom up iather in both than13ve\ from the top down asit doesin the nation-state.In a confederal society, the "higher" we go in coordinating our efforts to administer society, the more the right to formulate policy becomesdiminished, untilthe "highest" confederal councils have no power but those of coordination and administration. The formulation of policy, in POLITICS Women in Democraticpolitics 752 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST 153

and its adminisfm' into the relations we must establish short, is made at the grassrootslevel of society' in a democratic politics. Not to say' in a truly everyone can know everyone who fion is executed by confederal councils' Needless makes up a sizeable cornrr.,u- their individual views nity-certainly not to the extent democratic poliry, people are free to argue that one k ro*, the members of to representatives one's family, one's lovers, one,s jnti_ in a face-to-facemannJr, not assign their rights personal friends, and othe. of particularistic mates.It shourd be clear that who may or may not be subiectto the pressures a certain amount of objectivity is notby represen' necessaryfor conducting political interests.Policydecisions aremade by the people' affairs that involve individuals who are not one's intimates. tatives. Beyond the circre of one,sintimates, realm has its political institutions As such, democratic citizenship in the political must be establishedthat involve tu" p*ii"i- behaving, its own pation of sizeablenumbers own distinct virtues, its own distinct ways of of peopre,especialry if we seekti attain "Its relation is that a participatory democracy. distinct relations, asMary Dietz has pointed out' The precondition for such a democracy respect; its primary is the delicately formed institutional of civic peers; its guiding virtue is mutual fabric through which dissent and self-govern- as well as agreementcan principle is the 'positive liberty' of democracy be adequatelyexpressed. In short, there ,negative Insofar must be organized and coordinated ilent, not simply the liberty' of noninterference."'o structures that make both dealing with issues political and personalfreedom as citizens in a democratic polity are engagedin possible. to allow their In any democratic p"uri" concem, they would tirra it very difficult polity worthy of the name, one is account_ one's able to one's fellow citizens, "ipri""," interests to deilect them' At the very least' not oniy to one's friends and rovers. spirituali:::*1: or Evenin the political ir""iJu" Jirectedoutward, not only inward to purely rife of a local community, a certain amount of the acceptanceoI objectivity is unavoidabre-for intimate concerns. Democratic process involves exampre,to assurethat everyoneis procedures-'whi.ch.can th-" free to exercise her or his rights, or that obl""ti.r", external political 9:f-":: decisions harrl be"n -:T that are properly carried out, or that rai or postponement of private, particularistic interests no favoritism has been shown, or that a whole' minoritiesmay freerydissent. A certain objective supportive of the public welfare-as . r ,, framework must that personi be establishedin Let me make it quite clear that I do not contend order that the interplay of conflicting ,rie*s ca' to the contrary' beexpressed in a creative life must be sacrificed to political life. Quite and education"l citizens cannot balanced' rationi be expectedto learn of others' -"nn"r. believe that the two of them have to coexist in a views or answerchallenges to their personal in itself own if their differences *J *fy ecological manner' Attention to the are muted by a morar tyranny"of consen- as social concer sus-seekingor by the growing *a **"y, will be of great individual as well belief that all ideologi""t Iove' play' areforms of violence.Even "orrfli.t, Human llings have vilal needs for self-expression' if onewere to aciopta consensusprocess nature' as of.decision-making, relationship with a particular place,with nonhuman one wourd at least require an objectivefacili- have a vital tator.This objectivity is as intimatelelationihips with other people' They not a matter of alienation or an absenceof senseof concern or caring, nor is for a spiritual dimension in their lives-in the broadest it a matter of "controlling and regulating i'tpititual"-a in our soci rlature," to use plant's formulation." *ora dimension that is sorely lacking It is merely a iratter oTb*h"rr- and cannot ing in a mature, responsible, AII of tiese needs have strong social implications and fair-minded manner in which and forms everyonehas the opportunity isolated from the kinds of institutions, communities' to fully expressher or his ideas. society. The virtues, relations, associationwe should establishin an ecological and practic", th"t are necessaryfor a do Participatorydemocracy ..masculine,, But we must also recognize that certain distinctions are not ',male,,or ones but and the political in this sense'The intirr orres._Aspolitical creatures, human beings between the personal uranage:11"" as such can over the affairs that we develop in personal life cannot be carried of the community so that individuals within it POLITICS Women in Democraticpolitics 154 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST 155

dependonthewilling- History clearly belies any assertionthat can fulfiil themselves'Political movements women are congeni- citizens to fight for tally unsuited for political life, or that the ness of clear-thinking, critical' individuated western democraticideal above and beyond their personal needs' is hopelesslycompromised by its emergencefrom a sexistcurture. frin"ipt"r-sometimls of the polis with thoseof Indeed, the very logic of democracy Instead of working to replacethe virtues demand.sthe inclusion of them' women in ecological women, that any counterposition of a ,.female,, ,,male,, an oikosthat hashistorically oppressed orkosto a the political world aspart of polis be overcome.women's crucial movementsmustbecome in"ol"ed in and massiveinvolvement in citizenship for themselves' social movements, in grassrootspolitical a truly liberatory politics and claim work, and in revolu_ oikos-whether that is the tions-such as the French Revolution paris ii"V i""" at longiast break out of the and the commune of oikos of "womeu's 1871-has long expandedthe circle literal otkos of thl household or the figurative of their inclusion in the polit- of their ftuman capac- ical realm. we must treasurethese ,r"lrr"r"-*d work to expand the fuIl range legaciesof political revol-tand ceaseto be women' with the seekto expand them with the full participation ities. This doesnot mean that women not only of women and qualities' but that they but of people of color and all other iott r""ogrrition of their own uniqueness formerly excluded groups. restrictions that have been long placed Democratic practices and virtues are inherently neither gender- transcend the suffocating -a as people by patricentric bound nor race-bound.Indeed, their on the development of tleir capacities very logic calls for more all-inclusive community of human society. beings than any we have ever capacity to reason- seenin the past,inciuding the Their human capacities-including the Neorithic village. Far from demand- biology is not-simply a ing women's subordination,participatory are quite equal to those of men' Women's democracypresupposes of their minds and the their inclusion to the full capacityof matter of reproductive organs-it is a matter their beings. Their minds are part It is unfashionableto speakof "human intellectual capacitiesthose minds provide' nature" in the 1g90s. fully capable oJ rltiolal The presentradical political culture, of their human ,r",orr, and make tlem to the extent that one exists as well as a wealth of other in the 1990s, most often rejects the ii""gft, and of political participation' universal in favor of the on the part of both women particular and parochial. But the fact ,"nrililiti"r. Moral and politicai agency is that women alone do not potential to challengenot makeup a community. The very breadth and men gives them thi revolutionary of the ecologicalcrisis is whatever oppressive social such that it affects everyone, not only "biology a",ti"y" but aiso women alone. Toxic dumps, ", they encounter' Admit' nuclear power plants and wastes,polluted constructions and socioptlitical structures water and air, toxic enforcepatn'r substancesin households il;li,l",ia,i =-;;;t"; socialconstructions that and workplacesthreaten the health and itselffemint::]: well-beingof presentand future generations centricityinto a movementthat calls 1l:?T$ of both sexeswherever liberatory for women' they live and work. Moreover, the horse. por an ecological feminism to be capacitiesof reason,language, of their choices agair culture,and consociationfor choice must be committed to expanding the range and decision-making,f* cultural' or economic'r ical and political behavior,as well asfor "ih_ deterministic forces,whether biologicai' affectionand nurtur+-are private.".fomall' capacitiesthat people have as human io the narrowing of politics to an "intimate _all beings,whether they are wav it mustbe yo*:tt or men, gay or straight, ;"#;;;;i;;y;;""'"ents areto " find their of African descent,Caucasiarr, Jewish,Hispanic, brings them out o-fthe oikos., "' Asian, Arab, Native American, or any combina_ way that ""t":i:-:11:,H::*: tion thereof. backintoitinthenameofadomesticethosof..caling,''..nuttuting' and mystical "biologism" in the nar! Social ecology provides a basis for the recognition of our *a an" evocation of a cryptic cornmon humanity by virtue of our shared naturallistory in the of organic or tdbal ties. coutse of biological evolution or first nature. It is the potential of 156 RETHINKING ECOFEMINISTPOLITICS Women in Democratic politics 757 the ecology movement to become a general interest that crosses larity' defamethe most generous traditions of democracy as ..male,, what many ecofeminists claim as an interest of or "patriarchal, gender lines. " and ultimately degradewhatev"" p;;;;;;*_ is in fact a general interest-with the ity as awhole particular concern to women has attained in the of its deveiopi""ir-or*il as the locus of struggle, incorporating and going be- they pursue a more generous "ir.r" community approach by joining with others-men yond the best democratic aspirations of the classical polis and the no less than women t":'l;iilt,H$n; Enlightenment. rogicarrestoration?;#;ffiTI,:T:f The local "forms of freedom" so necessaryfor an ecological merely in terms of domestic values, of atavistic mystical retreatsto society in which all domination is ended-forms like neighbor- the "tribalistic" virtues of the Neolithic village, or of direct or meetings, and confederal forms of associa- indirect denigrations hood assemblies,town of reason, science, and tecinologf tion-are increasingly losing ground to centralized state or "patriarchal." In the ecology "r;oia"" movement, thinking *1_"o *i,rt, governments. As European and American governments have be- if only to realize ttreir.own human potentialitier, *itU come increasingly centralized in this century, the vitality of local thinking men in developing ""ith"r;"i" a ne#pohtics, rationality, and sc! political life has increasingly dwindled. Base-democraticinstitu- ence-not to speak of thsr. qualities that make us humine as well iions wiII have to be fought for if they are going to survive, or be ashuman-or they are likelyio follow the ecofeminist path toward created where they no longer exist. In a time of massive privatiza- a narrow parochialism, primitivism, and irrationalis]n that will tion, we cannot permit what remains of the democratic political ultimately mystify and s rpport the statusquo rather than privatistic, partic- transcend sphere to be vitiated further by inward-looking it by achieving a free ecological society. ularistic, or oikos-oriented tendencies. We must reclaim the polit- ical tradition of radical democracyand fight to preserveand expand it. Such a goal would indeed provide the coordinates for a radically new feminist dnd social ecology movement in which women together with men can find theirway out of the morassthat threatens to bog down the vast project of ecological and fulfiIlment. It is bad enough that we are all Iess than human todayr that the realm of second nature after thousands ofyears of and perversion has reached the cruel impasse that marks presentera. If women havea "calling," it is not the even elitist-one that ecofeminists assignto them. Rather, it is challenge to rise to a generousecological humanism, so underl to the principles of social ecology, and to an all-embracing sense solidarity, not only with nonhuman life, but with the men who fot an integral part of humanity as a whole. To heighten gender differences-ironically in the name of an ecological is to taint ecology and the authentic goals of feminism alike. Here all thinking women stand at a crossroads. Wiil mystify the domestic virtues of the orkos, emphasizetheir ENDNOTES

Introduction

1. Biehl, fanet, "What Is Social Ecofeminism?" Green Perspec- tives 11 (f SAA),available from Green Program Project, p.O. Box 111,Burlington, Vermont 05402.

Chapter 7 Problems in E cofeminism l. Irene Diemond and Gloria Orenstein, "Introduction," in fle- weavingthe World: The Emergenceof Ecofeminism, ed. Irene Di- amond and Gloria Orenstein (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990),p. ix. 2. Ynestra King, "Healing the Wounds: Feminism, Ecology, and Nature/Culture Dualism, " in Gender/Bo dy/Knowle dge: F eminist Reconstractionsof Being and Knowing, ed. Alison |aggar and SusanR. Bordo (New Brunswick, N.f.: Rutgers Univeiiity press, 1989),p. t23. 3. SusanGriffin, "Curves Along the Road," inReweavingthe World, ed. Diamond and OrenJtein, p. 9s. 4. Audre Lorde criticized Mary Daly for ignoring the heritage of African women in "An Open Lettei to tvtary Oaly" (in Sistei Out- sider Essays and Speeches(Trumansbu1g, Ny: brossing press, rc84), pp. 66-71). The two recent ecofeminist anthologies (^Re- World, ed. Diamond and Orenstein, and Healingthe Y.?orinsthevvounds.' The Promise of Ecofeminism, ed. fudith Plant, [Phila- delphia: New Society eubnshers, 19891)contain a wide array of

159 RETTIINKINGECOFEMINIST POLMCS 160 Endnotes 161 writings by women of color and Third World women, including ments (spring 1988): 9-10 (ava'abre from centre for urban Paula Gunn Allen, Rachel L. Bagby, Radha Bhatt, Corinne Kumar commp1l1t studies, ab5 and spadin" arr"rrr,u,Toronto, ontario d' Souza, Gwaganad,Pamela Philipose, Arisika Razak, and Vand- Mss 2G8);Mary Morse, "Mou"t n*tiis No Lady: The perils ana Shiva, among others. TypecastingNature as Feminine of ,;ii" nuoder(Mayfltrne 1990): 5. Andrde Collard with foyce Contrucci, Rape of the Wild: Man's Violence against Animals and the Earth (Bloomington and India- 12. Simone De Beauvoir,in Alice Schwarzer, napolis: Indiana University Ptess,1989), p. 106. Sex: Conversations Afrer the Second with Simonua"-B"ou*ir(New york: theon, pan_ 6. Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaringlnside Her 1984),p. 103. (New York: Harperand Row, 1978),p.226. 13. Plato, Timaeus The .in collected Dialoguesof plato, Edith Hamilton and ed. 7. CharleneSpretnak, "Toward an EcofeministSpirituality," in q""tiyto"-C"*"r, b"flingen series (Princeton, N/: princeton p;;;r, Healing the Wounds,ed. Plant, p. 729. Uiirrersiiy 7961,),42b. 14. Marylin Arthur, -From Medusa 8. CharleneSprebrak, "Ecofeminism: Our Rootsand Flowering," to Cleopatra: Women in the Ancient World,,' in Bgcgmils Vi;ii;,-Wo^un in Reweauingthe World, ed. Diamond and Orenstein,pp. 5, 6; in European His_ tory,2d ed., ed. Renatenriaeithai, "Introduction," in Charlene Spretnak, ed., The Politics of Stuard(Boston: il""iiu Koonz, and Susan Women's Spirituality: Essayson the Riseof Spiritual Power HoughtonVifnir,"'rsJil p. sr. ,,The within the Feminist Movement (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 15. YnestraKing, Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism 1982),p. xvii-xviii. of Ecology,', p. iz Susan- ; GrifHrr,,.Spiit Crrlture,,,in Wounds,ed. plant, Heal i ng th e 9. Simone De Beauvoir, The SecondSex (New York: Random p. 1Off. House,1968), p.744. 16. YnestraKing, in peggy .,\,,omen, Luhrs, Ecology,and peace: An Interview with yneslra l0.Ynestra King, "Coming of Age with the Greens,"Zeta(Febru- {i"g,; Vern'ort Woman(October 1988):10; and "Healing the ary 1988):19; YnestraKing, "Healing the Wounds: Feminism, fions, wJunds,;iiriru--r""" t Reconstruc- Ecology,and the Nature Culture Dualism," inReweavingthe /aggarand Bordo] uar., p.ilil' World, ed. Dinmond and Orenstein,p. 117. (This "Healing the t7. Carolyn Merchant, ,.Ecofeminism Reweauing and Feminist Theory,,,in Wounds" article by King bears almost the same title as the one the World, ed.Di;;;-*;6renstein, "To- p. 102, 103. cited in note 2, but it is somewhat different.) Judith Plant; 18. ,,Toward Plant, World,,,p. ,,searching ward a New World: An Introduction," in Healing the Wounds, mon " I:* 3,anq for Com_ Ground: Ecofeminismand nioi"gi"""lism,,, ed. Plant,p. 1. the in Reweauine World, ed. Diamond a"d Or"rrt"ii, 11. For criticisms of ecofeminismand related cultural feminism, n.'ruo. 19.Collard, see,for example, Ellen Willis columns in The Village Voice,23 Rapeof the Wild, pp. S, 53. 1980,p.28, and 16-22\iy 1980,p.34;AliceEchols, "The 20.Plant, "Toward fune a New World,,, p. 5. New Feminism of Yin and Yang," in ?fte Powers of Desire, ed, 21' Carolyn Merchant,_?ft,eOeylh Ann Snitow, Sharon Thompson, and Christine Stansell (New and of Nature: Women,Ecology, the Scientific Revolutionts* York: Monthly Review Ptess,1983); foan Cocks,"Wordless i..*.irco, Harpe, 1980,t983), p.i. and Row, tions: Some Critical Reflections on Radical Feminism," Politics and Society13 (1984):27-57; Susan Ptentice, "Taking Sides: ..I\"t ilr;,ll-".".t:]d, Gina, rsto BeUndone in What's Wrong with Eco-Feminism?" in Women and Environ- '"rovement,"Liberation(February theWomen,s tati, iin (Reprintsof thisar- W POLITICS 762 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST Endnotes ticle are availablefrom GreenProgram Project, P'O' Box 111' Bur- Power, Authority and Mystery(San Francisco: Harper Iington, Vermont, 05402.) 1988),p. Z. and Row, 23. Plant, "searching for Common Ground," p' 5' 4. Eisler, ,,Ecofeminist Manifesto,,,pp. 23,34;Spretmk, ,,To_ ward an Ecofeminist 24. Diamond and Orenstein,"Introduction," p' xi; Starhawk' Spirituality;,, ;:i;i. Mystery: Ecofeminism and Earth-based "Power, Authority, and 5. SeeMurray Bookchin,-?fi e Ecologr Diamond and Orenst- of Freedom: The Emer_ Spirituality ," irrfr,eweavingthe Wotld, ed' gence and Dissorution of Hiemrchfipio Alto, carif.: cheshire ein, p. 74; andmanY others. Books,1982; Montreal: Iilack norr-giJr, 1991),pp. 5z_61. 25. Plant, "searching for Common Ground," p' 160' 6. EleanorLeacock, .,y:T"l in EgalitarianSocieties,,, in Becom_ ingVisible, ed. Bridenthal, 26. Starhawk,"Powet, Authority, and Mystery," p' 73' Koonz]anJiiuara, p. za. 7. Margaret Ehrenberg, Women prehistory(Norman 27. Spretnak,"Toward an Ecofeminist Spirituality," p' 131' in and Lon_ don: University of Ok-laho-"Fr"rr,-;*r),pp. 9b_96,99. 8. Ibid., pp. 96-92. Chapter 2 9. SarunasMilisauskas European prehistory(New , york: Aca_ The Neolithic MYstique demicPress, 1.97g),pp. S9_91. ,,The 10.Marija Gimbutas,"obre, yugoslavia: 1. Riane Eisler, Gaia Tradition and the Partnership Future: Two Neolithic sites,,, Arc haj ol ogr 23 (October r g zot :.T"-plu, Manifesto," in Reweavingthe World, ed' Dia- :?s ii ana of Old Eu_ An Ecofeminist rope," Arc haeologlr(November/Du""_bu, mond and Orensteit'PP.23,33-34. 19g0). 11.Eisler, ',EcofeministManifesto,,, 2. Seeespecially the following writings by Malia Gimbutas: p. 34. Culture: The Kurgan Culture during the 12. Quoted in peter ,.Idyllic "Proto-1ido-Euiopean Sterlfels, Theory of Goddesses Millennia B.C.," in Indo-European-and atesStorm,,, New york Cre_ Fifth, Fourth, *d- Thitd Times,f S February 1990,p. Hoenigswald' 810. Indo-Europeons,ed. GeorgeCardona, HenryM' 13. Gimbutas,Goddesses and Gods,pp. and Alfred Senn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania 142,196. Age in Europe and 14.Ehrenberg, Press, L}7O);"The Beginning of the Bronze Womenin prehistory,p. 7O. the Indo-Europeans:SSOO-ZsOO 8.C.," loutnal of Indo-European 15.Bookchin, Ecolog5rof Freedom,p. Studies f (f SZ-3):763-274; "The First Wave of Eurasian Steppe 6O. of Indo'Eutopean 16. Ehrenberg, Pastoralists into Copper Age Europe," fournal Women in prehistory, p. 67. (1577); Kurgan Wave #2 (c' 3400-3200B'C') into StudiesS "The 17.Ibid., p. 25. ;;;;il and the Following iransformation of culture," fournal of StudiesA SeO): 27 3-375,and T/re God desses IndolEuropean lf ,it;,t"":^T:::"_{-r1:1"*nsof the.,archaeological,,evidence and Gods-ofOIdEutope, 7000-9500B.C' (Berkeleyand Los Ange' ;"" #T:i:fi:ffif les: University of California Press,1982)' lnilH*::i*in*r":'_y:*? r ffffi:,. li:t-Y:: y"p."i ciassicJiliq;E;;;" rn wWomen in the An- 3. Spretnak, "Our Roots and Flowering," p' 110; Mara Lynn Kel- su'ivan(dilils-;;;ffi;;d;i^iJ"ilH:r"rili,;;.r_,3,,lL,Yg'f;l*.!::!!:;::{*q'i,l!'i''"'#:{:#t;:;. ler, iThe Eleusinian Mysteries: Ancient Nature Religion of De- meter and Persephott"i' itt Reweaving the World, ed' Diamond- and Orenstein, p. st; Starhawk, Truth ot Dare: Encountets with POLITICS Endnotes 165 L64 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST

31. Milisauskas,European prehistory,pp. Labytinth: A New View of l3l, 183,185, I90. 19. Rodney Castleden, The Knossos (Lond-on:Routledge' 1990)' 32.Ibid.,p. 185. the"Palace o7 t tino';: iir"*tot p' 115-20'125' 33. Colin Renfrew,"The 20.Ibid, p. 76;on priestesses'see Origins of Indo-EuropeanLanguages,,, Scientific American (October1989): - Excavationsand Discoveries"' 106_114,at 109, riO. 21. PeterWatren' "Knossos:New p' 48-55' see also PeterWar- 34. Milisauskas,Europe pre _74. Tr"n-""it"igy(|uly/Autust 1984): an hi story, pp. 773 Preliminary Observa- ren, "Minoan Crete an'Jncstatic Rieligion: 35.Renfrew, in Sanctuariesand "Origins,"p. 109. tions on the 1979Excavations at Knossos"' Robl Hagg and Nanno 36' colin Renfrew, ;"i;t;; lh,e AegeanB'on""Age' ed' Before civilization: The Radiocarbon Revolu- i Athen' 1981)' tion and Prchistoric (Cambridge dt"",;t isto;tnom, Svensfalnstitutet Europe University press, 1923, 7975),pp. 1S1-59. 727-22' 22. Castleden,Knossos Labyrinth'pp' 37. Leacock,"Women in Egalitarian Blade:Our History' Out Fu' Societies,,'pp. 32_33. 23. Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the 1987)'p' 188' 38. Bookchin, Ecology iure (SanFrancisco: Harper and Row' of Freedom,p. 62. of our EcologicCrisis"' 39. see EcologyofFreedom 24. Lynn White Jr.,"The Historic Roots for Bookchin's account ofthe rise of ed" Politics of hierarchy. Science(March tggzj: tzOzff'; Spretnak' SPititualitY, xii' Women's PP' 40. YnestraKing, "EcologicalFeminism," Z (August 1988):124. in Burma and Ferguson,"The GreatGoddess Today 25. |ohn P. 41. BarbaraS. Lesko,"Women in Egypt and the Ancient Near of Her symbolic Relevanceto Monas- i"nJii*J nn n"xploration East," in BecomingVisible,ed. Bridenthal, Wo,lslip: Themesan! Koonz, and Stuard. tic and Female nof"^'lii" Votl.' et \ari1; pp. 43,48,50. presto"n m']lt-U-ltlltsity-of North Car-olina tions, ed. l. p. t6il"p"f Khiang' The Wotld of Butm' 42. SeeStarhawk's account of the Press,1982), p. 2s5.;; Ito Vti Mi rise of hierarchv in her Trztfi 1986)' or Dare. eseWomen(Totowa, N'J': Zed Press' of Guadalupeand the Female 43. fames Mellaart, Htytk: 26. SeeEna Campbell,"The Virgin Qatal A Neolithic Town in Anatolia in Mothit Worship' ed' (New York: McGraw-HiU,1962), p. Self-Image:A Mexican CaseHisiory ZO2. Preston. "' 44. Renfrew,Before Civilization, pp. 180_82. Alone of AII Her Sex (New York: Knopf, 27. Marina Warner, 45. Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman (New york: Har_ "TLe Virgin of Guadalupe"' p' 21; iszo), p. 283;Campbell, court, Brace, 19Zg),p. 130. 22-'23:Sarah Pomeroy' lovanovich, Ehrenberg,womei in Ptehistory'pp' Women in Classical An- 46. Prentice,"Taking Sides:What's Goddesses,Wno'"'s,-Wiiis and'sliies: Wrong with Eco_Feminism,,, p' 15' pp. e-10. tti"ity(New York: Schocken'1975)' Culture"' p' 155' a7.Ibid., p. 10. 28. Gimbutas,"Proto-Indo-European D-imensionof Gteen PoIi- Kilg,"J{galing the Wounds,', 29. Charlene Spretnak, The Spititual 18. ittReweavingthe World,ed. Di_ p' 32' amond and Orenstein,p. 10g. tics,(Santa pe, N.M': Bear& Co')' 2 Apdl1988' pp. 32-33;The Nation"'Letters"section' 30.Ibid., xiv' ;ffi " P olitics of Women's Spirituality' p' ;: ;;;' odo"tiot, .rffi i[t'

POLITICS Endnotes 767 166 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST

16. Merchant, Death of Nature,p. 100. 17. Walter Raleigh, History of the World, quoted in S. L. Bethell, ChaPter 3 The CuIturuI Revolution of the SeventeenthCentury (New york: of Natute Roy Publishers,1951), pp. a6-48. Divine Immanence and the "Aliveness" 18. Spencer,Shakespeare and the Natureof Man, p. 27. zz; Eisler' "Pou/er, Authority and Mystery i' p' 1. Starhawk, 19. Onthe decayof nature and the "ancients-moderns,'quarrel, "EcofeministManifesto," P' 26' seeRichard Foster Jones, Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the 2.Starhawk,"Power,Authority'andMystery"'pp'74'73'84' Rise of the Scientific Movement in SeventeenthCentury England (Berkeleyand Los Angeles:University of California press,iSOs). 3. Starhawk, Truth or Date, P' t9' 20. Herbert Butterfield, The Ortginsof Modern Science,7300- 17-18'19' 4.Ibid.,PP. 1800(New York: Macmillan,1960), p. 100. Gods:A study of Ancient 5. Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the of Society and Nature 21. Jones,Ancients and Moderns,p. 22, Nii, n"ttu* Religioi"at tie Integtation Pt"st' 1948' 1978)'pp' 3' 33' iCfri""g"' Univers'ltyof Chicago 22.Ibid., p. 29ff. 6.Ibid.,P. 6. 23. Merchant,Death of Nature,pp. xviii, 6. 7.Ibid.,P' 280. 24.Ibid., p. 5. Philosophy: The-Intellectual 8. Henri and H.A. Frankfort, Before 25.Ibid.,p. xvii. 1949)'p' 237 of AncientMan (New York: Pelican' ' Adventure 26.Ibid,, p.254. 9. Starhawk, Truth ot Dare, PP' 14' 16' 27. Merchant's sympathetic treatment of another..vitalist" mem- West:A History of the 10, Wiliiam McNeiII, The Riseof the ber of this circle, Anne Conway,is obscure. She acceptsthat of ChicagoPtess' Hu^on Community(Chicago:University Conway was an "organicist" becauseshe-Conway-asserted 1963),P. 161. that "all things have life, and really live in some degreeor mea- (London: Oxford Uni- sure" (p. 261),then rejectsConway's work for reducing ,,all of re- 11. R.G.Collingwoo d, The Ideaof Nature' ality to the idealist categoryof spirit" (p, ZOS).How this can be versitYPress, 1960), P' 3' construedas "organicism" is unclear. The Messageof the Alien 12. Hans |onas, The Gnostic Religion: 2d ed" rev' (Boston: Bea- 28. Merchant, Death of Nature,p. 283. God and the Beginnin'gsof Chrisiianity' conPtess, 1"958, 1963),P' 242' 2e.Ibid. trans' H' M' 13. Cicero,"On the Nature of the Gods"'['1L-\4' 30. B.A.G. Fuller, A History of Philosophy,3d ed. (New york: 245' pot""t, quoted in ]onas, GnosticReligion'p' HoIt, Rinehart,and Winston, 193g,1955), p. 113. and Nature'- t11n* 14. Carol P' Christ, "Rethinking Theology 31. Merchant, Death of Nature,p. 283. pp' 65-66' World,ed' Diamond and Orenstein' *"""niln'" 32. Leibniz, (New fuom Third Explanation of The New System of the Shakespeareand the Natute o/Man 15. Theodore Spencer, f-ofure and of the Interaction of Substances(rOgOj, bans. George 19' York: Macmillan, 1958),P' M. Duncan, in ?fte European Philosophersfrom Descartesto 168 RETHINKING ECOFEMINISTPOLITICS Endnotes 169

11. Marjorie Nietzsche,ed. Monroe C. Beardsley(New York: Modern Library, Nicholson, The Breakingof theCircle:Sfudjes the rn 1e60),p. 315. Wct of the "Ne11tScience', upoi i'"r"nteenth_Century po_ efry (Evanston,IL.: Northwestern'Universi,Vp**, 33.Merchant, Death of Nature,p. 280. ,n'iof ,; ;>6 12. on correspondences,see ibid.; Bethell, Discourseon MetaphysicsIV, trans. GeorgeR' Mont- cultural Revolution 34. Leibniz, of the SeventeenthCentury; ed. Beardsley,p' 253' Sp"rrc"r, iiok"rp"oru ;;;;i;";;_ gomery,inEuropeanPhilosophers, ture of Man. 35. Herman Randall, lr., The Making of the Modern Mind: A ]ohn 13. Merchant,Death of Nature,p. 2S8. Survey of the Intellectual Background of the PresentAge, rev' ed' p. 297. 14. Spretnak,.,Toward (Boston:Houghton Mifflin, 1940), an EcofeministSpirituali ty,,,p.72g. 15.Lee ,.Ecofeminism Quinby, and the politics of Resistance,,,in ReweauingtheWorld, ed. Diamond Chapter 4 anJore.rst"i", pt ;;_;;. 16.Blumenfeld, ,.What Mythopoesis and the lrrational Is to Be Undone,,,p.19. 17. Starhawk,,,power, Authority and Mystery,,,p.26. L SusanGriffin, "Split Culture," first published in ?fte Schu- 18. Nicholson, Breaking of the Cirde, p. 106. macherLectures, vol. 2, ed. SatishKumar, London. Blond & 19. Spretnak,,.Toward Briggs,1984; reprinted in Healingthe Wounds,ed. Plant,pp' 7- an EcofeministSpirituali ty,,,p.I32. L7, at'1.7,']..9,9. 20. Christ,"Rethinking Theologyand Nature,,,p,69. 2. Spretnak,"Towatd an EcofeministSpiritualily," p. 1'27' 21. King asquoted .,Women, in Luhrs, peace,and Ecology,,,p. 10;King, "Ecology 3. Starhawk, The Spiral Dance (SanFrancisco: Harper and Row, of Feminism,,, p. ZS;and,,Coming with of-i,g". 1,g75),pp.7, 13, 25; also,"Witchcraft as Goddess Religion," in the Greens,',Z (Februaryf gA'8):rg.- Politics of Women'sSpirituality, ed' Spretnak,p. 49. 22. King, "Healing the Wounds,,, irrReweeving the World,ed. amond and Di_ 4. Starhawk, Truth or Dare, P' 104. Orenstein,p. 120. 202' Doubiago,,,Mama 5. Eisler,Chalice and the Blade,pp. 183-84' ?t Lhq:_" CoyoteTalks to the Boys,,,in Heal- ingthe Wounds,ed. plant, p. 47. 6. Starhawk,Spiral Dance, P. 196. Sontag,,.Feminism 3,n ft* and Fascism:An Exchan ge,,, 7. Starhawk, Truth or Date, P. 269' York Reuiew New of Books,2oMarch 1gz5,t; 3t_32. 8. DeenaMetzger, "Invoking the Grove," in Healingthe Wounds, 25. Griffin, ',CurvesAlong the Road,,,p. 92. ed.Plant, p.124. quoted in pois, ,,Man 39: Yl"1nl"r RobertA. in the Natural 9. Murray Bookchin, "Ecology and Relolutionary Thought," vvurlq: Domelmplications of the National_SocialistReligion,,, in 1965;reprinted in Post-ScarcityAnatchism, Montreal: Black P^oliticalSymbolism in Modern Eurip",irroy, in Honor of RoseBooks,7977. L. Mosse, !1e_orge ed. Seymou, n."r"f,", eial. (wew Brunswick, N.J.: 10. Frankfort, H. and H. A., "Myth and Reality," in BeforePhilos' TransactionBooks', 1rggl). and H. and H. A" p. 20. .,Split ophy, ed.Frankfort 27. Griffin, Culture,',p. 10. 170 RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS Endnotes 777

28. See de Graaf, "The Wandervogel," Co/Evolution Quar- 12. Corinne ,,A fohn Kumar d'Souza, New Movement,A New Hope, terly (Fall \97 7): 74-27. East Wind, West Wind, and the Wind from tne Southi, il;;_ ingthe Wounds, plant, 29. ChristopherLasch, The Minimal Self:Psychic Suruival in ed. pp. 29-39. Troubled Times (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984),p. 3a. 13. Bookchin, Ecologyof Freedom,p. 274. 30. Merchant, Death of Nature,p. 288. 14.Ibid., pp.235,273. 31. Blumenfeld,"What Is to Be Undone,"p. 28. 15.Ibid., p.235. 32. Mohawk, lecture delivered at Institute for Social Ecol- 16' fohn on dialectical naturalism, seeMurray Bookchin, Thephiloso- ogy, Plainfield, Vermont, ]une 26, 1989. of EcologSr,(Montreal: lhy .S*i,al Black RoseBooks, 1990). Tt; lolowing discussionis basedlargely on this book. 17.Ibid., p. 30. 18. Chapter 5 Ibid,p, 28. Dialectics in the Ethics of Social Ecology 19.Ibid., p. 31. Z.!. S9e-C.W.F.Hegel, The Logic, translated from Tfie Encyclopae_ Nature(Oxford: Clarendon dia of 1. R.G.Collingwood, The ldea of the-Philosophicar scieicesby wilriam wallace, zi ed,., (London: Press,1945, reprinted New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1978), rev. Oxford University press,196g), 1g23. p. 6; John Herman Randall, Jr.,Aristotle (New York: Columbia 2L. On the ethics of social ecology, UniversityPress, 1 960). seeBookchin, Ecologyof Free_ dom and The philosophy of Sociil Ecology. 2. Herman Randall, The Making of the Modetn Mind |ohn Jr., 22' chiah Heller, "Toward (Boston:Houghton Mifflin, 1926,1940), p. 269. a Radical Eco-Feminism"in Renew- ingthe Earth: The prcmise of SocialEcology,ed. John Clark (Lon_ 3. Bookchin,EcologyofFreedom, pp. 234-35. don: Greenprint, 1g90). a. Randail, Making of the Modern Mind, p. 269. 5. Bookchin,Ecology of Freedom,pp. 285-86. Chapter 6 6.Ibid.,p. 238. Women in Democratic politics 7.Ibid.,p. 161. l' fudith Plant, "searching for common Ground: Ecofeminism 8. Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno, Eclipse of Reason and Bioregionalism,,' in Reweavingthe World,"a. nia-o"J La (New Oxford UniversityPress, 19a7),p.97. Orenstein, ,.Women York: p. 160; Catherine Kellerl Against Wasting the World: Notes on Eschatologyand 9. Jonas,Gnostic Religion, p. 323. Ecology,,tn Reweauinfthe World, ed. Diamond and Orenstein,p. 262. Ecologyof Freedom,pp. 27O,165. 10. Bookchin, 2. Cynllia Hamil1s1,',Women, Home, and Community: The Struggle 11.Ibid., p.277. in an Urban Environment," in Reweaving the World, ed. Diamslfl and Orenstein, p. 277. 172 RETHINKING ECOFEMINISTPOLITICS Endnotes 1,73

3. Diamond and Orenstein,"Inttoduction," in Reweavingthe 18' Mary D' Dietz, "context Is A': Feminism and Theories and Orenstein'p. x. izenship," of cit- World, ed. Diamond Daedalus(Fall rsaz): t_z+, il is. 4. Bookchin, Ecologyof Freedom,p. 138' 19. On libertarian municipalism, seeMurray Bookchin, The Rise of urbanization and 5. Diamond and Orenstein,"Introduction," p. x. the 6ecrine'o7 citiii",tnip (san Francisco: SierraClub Books), rcAz. 6. unidentified feminist and environmentalactivist paraphrased 20. Dietz, "Context by Mark Satin in "Plant and Diamond: An'Ism'Is Born," New Is All,,, pp. 14_15. Options(August 27,799O):8;Anne Cameron,"First Mother and 21. Plant,.,TheCircle Judith Is Gathering...,,,inHealingthe the Rainbow Children," in Healing the Wounds,ed' Plant, p' 64' Wounds,ed. plant, p.248. 7. Hamilton, "Women, Home, and Community," p.222. 8. King, "Healing the Wounds ," irt Reweauingthe Wotld' ed' Dia- mond and Orenstein,p. 116;King, "Coming of Age with the Greens,"p. 18. 9. CarolineEstes, "An Interview with CarolineEstes: Consensus and Community," in Healingthe Wounds,ed. Plant, pp.236,247' 10.Ibid.,pp.247,234. 11. Helen Forsey,"Community-Meeting Our DeepestNeeds," in Healing the Wounds,ed. Plant, p' 234. 12. Arisika Razak,"Toward a Womanist Analysis of Birth," in Re- weavingthe World, ed. Diamond and Orenstein,pp' 168' 166' 772. 13. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo,"Woman, Culture, and Society: A TheoreticalOvewiew," inWoman, Cultute, and Society,ed. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldoand Louise Lamphere(Stanford, Ca': StanfordUniversity Ptess,1974), p. 36. 14. Bookchin, Ecologyof Freedom,p, 54. 15.Ibid.,p. 14e. 16. SeeSuzanne F. Wemple, "sanctity and Power: The Dual Pur- suit of Early Medieval Women," inBecomingVisible, ed' Bridenthal, Stuard,and Koonz, pp.747-49. 17. Murray Bookchin, The Politics of Cosmology,unpublished ms.,p. 91. iw

Index

on emergent subjectivity, 116 A on ethics of social ecology, 725-25 abortion, 727-28 on forms of freedom,135 Adam,71 on householdin Neolithic so- aesthetic sensibility, 8 z ciety, 31 "aliveness"ofnature. on instrumentalism, 7O7 Seehylozoism ,17L- 12,1,73,1,32 Amos 62 on kinship society,143 "ancients-moderns"quarrel, 72- natural order, 73 on science and 107,108, 109 Aquinas, Thomas,17 on worship of goddessin or- Aristotle,16,17,65, 82, 106 ganic society,34 Athens, democratic pol's of, 65, Seealso social ecology 135-36,140, 145-48. 156 Boorstin,Daniel, t0t Augustine, 17, 65, 69 Augustus,67 bureaucratization, 109-1 10 Butterfi eld, Herbert, 72 E c Bachofen, 39 facob, Cameron,Anne, 133 Beauvoir,Simone de: Campbell,Ena, 41 repudiates "new femininity," Campbell, +a 16 |oseph, capitalism,5\, 52,109, 151 on woman as "other" in Sec- etbics of competitive market- ond Sex,\4-75 place,109-10 Beethoven,Ludwig van, 7 metaphorsfor, 102 belief, ga-90 organismic and women, 54 Bergson,Henri, 74 Caracalla,Emperor, 149 Blumenfeld, Gina: "caring" aud "nurturing": on magic, 91 ethos oi 24 on utilitarianism, 20 hierarchy and, 744-45, 749 on women and reason,103 in Neolithic societies,50 Bookchin, Muray, 5, 21 neededby society,12 dialectical naturalism of. particularity of, 148-49 777-24 patriarchal stereotypes on democratic polis, 746-47 and, 15-16 on development of hierarchy, women, 2, 7\O, 154-55 46-47 and Carson,Rachel,4 and ecological ethics, 22 Castleden,Rodney, 37 on ecology's critical thrust, Hiiyiik: 86,126 Catal

775 t76 RETHINKING ECOFEMINISTPOLITICS Index L77

disappearance of Neolithic deepecology,3, 4,22 divine immanence in cosmol_ Evals, culture of.44 Demeter,89 ogy of, Sir Arthur, 36-37 ss Eve,'l,z figurines found in debris,35 democraticprocess, 136-37, 153- hierarchy in, 60 goddessworshipped in Neo- 54 evolution, 1,73-1.2,1.23_24 women in. 48 .1,1,4_1.s lithic, 3a and dissent,138 inorgalric, Ehrenberg,Margaret, 31_32 priestessesin,49 and personalaffairs, 153 on organic, 715_'l.T - matrilocality and Chain of Being,Great, 67-68 virtuesof, tsg-s+ matrilinealiw, 31 134-35 I Chipko "tree-hugging" democractictradition, on relationship between movement,4 ecofeminismand, 135-36 eod_ dess worship and statui fascism,gg-100 municipalism, of Christ, Carol P., 67, 94 and libertarian women.41 female figurines, 29 Christianity,2, \7,48,69, 106 1,50-57 on.sVppatheticmagic and fe_ found in debris,35 Cicero,66 potential inclusiveness of, malehgurines, 35_36 possible use in sympathetic ClamshellAlliance. 138 149,155-56 Eisler,Riane. 29 magic,35_36 coherence,3, 19,90 women and, tso-sz on hylozoism,57 Ferguson,John, +O Collard, Andr6e, 2, 19 Democritus,65 on imagesand myths, 40 Filmer, Robert,52 contradictionsin, 18 dependency,human, on Minoan Crete,36 final cause.See teleology L Rapeof the Wild,2,1,8 onbiosphere,ll on power of myth, 83_84 Firestone,Shulamith, ro on women's reproductive bi- Descartes,Ren6, 106, 108 on reclaiming Neolithic tradi_ Forsey,Helen, j.39 ology,11 dialecticalnaturalism, LL7 -24 rtons,30_31 Fox-Genovese,Elizabeth, ++_+5 1,20-2'1,,'1,22- Collingwood,R. G.,65, 66, 69, dialectics,Hegelian, ElizabethI. zr Frankfort,Henri, 59, 60 106,107 23 Engels, Frederick,123 and H.A. Frankfort, on community: dialectics.Marxian. 123 Enlightenment, mythopoesis, 94 . BZ declineol 110,132-36 Diamond, Irene.and Gloria Epictetus,6T ITeedom: need for preservationof, 11 Orenstein,2, I Epicurus,65 forms of, t35 process; interconnected- See also democratic and ethic of Erigena,fohn Scotus.B7 See also democratic process; democratc tradition ness,22 Estes,Carolin .1,g7 democratic e, -gg . tradition confederation.151-52 on women and community ethics: nee nature, '1,26-27 "conespondences,"70-73, BB, issues,132,133 divine immanenceand, 5Z_64 .t 106.120 Dickinson, Emily, 7 ecological,2.J._22, 24_zg I cosmology Diderot.Denis. 120 gr.osi.onof old systemsol 109 Gaia(goddess), Egyptian,59 Dietz,Mary, 1.49,152 ralsehood r3 and,95_96 Gaiahypothesis. hylozoism as,see hylozoism domesticrealm, 23, 110, 131-33, hylozoism and,T7_Bo Seehylozoism Mesopotamian,60-61 139-41 in kinship EgPd..:il natural history, 7z}-2g society,1.42_43 blDos, medieval,68-69 and oublic realm: runprctes,- Lols,1.32 1Z Gimbutas, Crete,Minoan, 23, 30, 31, 36-3S, in hiitorv. '1.4'1.-46 E"-.9p", Neolithic, Marija, 31 2, zs_g6, 84, on 84 in social-ecology,150, 155-57 100,141 numan sacrifice,32 on goddessworship in, 37 Doubiago,Sharon, 95 and ecologicalethics, 23_24 .Indo-European Earth human sacrificein, 38-39 Driesch,Hans, 74 Mother,33_34 goctdessworshipped in, 33_36 Knossosas temple in, 37-38 d'Souza,Corinne Kumar, 772-'1.3 nrerarchy 11d j lurgan,' invasion theory, in, 49 42,43,44,45 priestesselite in, 37-38,49 dualism, mind-body, 77, 779-20 househoidin. sr "cult of true womanhood." 1t0. and "Old Europe,"30 !y-* sacrificein, 32-33 1-31 E pottery religiousinterpretation of data llnear Culture in, 31, 45 ol 33 earth,as "mother," 13, 69 god, q matrilineality Hebrew conceptionof, Homeric Hvmn to. 13 and matrilocal_ 61-63,78 rry rn, 31-32, Daly,Mary,2,9 ecological ethics, 27-22, 95-96, SO.1.42 goddess,i,4,25, myth ol 29-32 97 Darwin, TB 1,09,1,24-29 asconsumer item, peacefulnessof, 32 100-104 De Beauvoir,Simone. See Simone eduction,123 existenceof, g3 social factors in, 4L_42 de Beauvoir Egypt,ancient: and "oneness,',BZ_83 Index 178 RETHINKING ECOFEMiNIST POLITICS 779

philosophical idealism and, of priestsand Priestesses' K sympatletic, 35-36 39-41 48-50,61 market society, 1^O1-7O2.See also realms, utilitarian aPProachto, 96-98 of public and Private Kant, lmmanuel, 104 capitalism worship of: 1,44 Keller, Catherine, 737-32 Marx, Karl, 129 oPPosedto, 127 ecofeminist claims for reviv- socialecologY Keller, Mara Lynn, 30 matrilocality and matrilineality, ing,33, 41 Himmler, Heinrich,99 King, Ynestra: 37-32,50,742 to Earth, f g in Minoan Crete,36-39 Homeric HYmn on democratic tmdition. 135- McNeill, William. 62 in Neolittric EuroPe,33-36 Horkheimer,Max, 110-111 36 Mellaart, James,49 Mendes, in Neolithic Qatal HiiYiik, 3a Hosea.62 on developmentof hierarchy, Chico,133 relationshiP to women's sta- human sacrifice,33-39 47-48 Menes,59 tus,40-41 hvlozoism,23 on innovations of ecofemin- Merchant, Carolyn,89 and Rome, Goldman,Emma,52 in ancient Greece ism,55 Deathof Nature,The,2, 68-69, Gould, StePhen|aY' 115 65-67 use of"vantage point" foreco- 73-74 ecofeminist eth- GreatChain of Being' 67-68 as a basis for logicaletlics, 94-95 on medievalcosmology, 68-69 ancient, 76, 53, 77-7 2 ics, 57-58,64-80 "woman = natureconnection," and metaphors,19 Greece, 88 Athenian 65' 145-48 believed true in its time, 75,17 on organismic metaphors for Polis, 71-73 hylozoism, in 65 decayof nature and, as male ideology,17 capitalism,102 "alive" in, 95-96 Griffin, Susan, 2 earth not as not male ideology, 10 and social constructionism. 1B 93 and vitalism, on boundariesin realitY,B1-82 GaiahyPothesis, kinship society, 147-{4,'J.42-48 73-78 of Being' 67- on Himmler, 99 and GreatChain exclusionsof, 148 Mesopotamia: on origins of dualism, 17 68 Kleisthenes,147 divine immanencein cosmol- on "solial and biological ma- Leibniz al.d,7q-72 Knossosas temple, 37-38 ogy of, 60-61 of'77-80 trix," 1"L limitations Kurganinvasion theory, 30,42-43 hierarchy in, 61 tlteory on the qualitative' 107 macrocosm-microcosm statusof women in, 54 106-107' on and earth, t3 and, o6-08, 69-71' ! metaphors,1,8-79, 24-ZS -ottieo 720 distinct from reality, 87-88 g Stoics,66-67 Lasch,Christopher, 102 not explanatory,Sti Leacock,Eleanor: in politics, 84-85 Hamilton, CYnthia'132, 135 I on developmentof hierarchy, Metzger,Deena, 86 Hakewill, George,73 46 Milisauskas,Samnas, 32, 44 god, immanence: Hebrews, and transcendent on matrilineality and matrilo- Minoan Crete. SeeCrete. Minoan divine, in ecofeminist ethics, 61-63,78 cality, 3t Mohawk, 104 23.57-64 fohn, Hegel,G.W.F., 82, 122' 723 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von. Montagu,Ashley,43 naturalistic, 720-21 Heller. Chiah: 74-77 mr:nicipalism,libertarian, instrumentalism, 21, 1'O7,'l'O9' 150-5 z on gender in natural history, Lesko,Barbara, 48 mysticism,87-88, 173,132 89-90 128 libertarianmunicipalism, 1S0-5 z myth, BB-89,102 interconnectedness,2, 22, 57-58, social ecofeminismof, 5 Lille, Alan de, 69 and utilitarianism, 87-82,129 96 Herodotus,4S Linear Pottery Culture, 31-eS mythopoesis,7,87 as metaphor for market soci- Hesiod,13,29 Luxemburg,Rosa, 52 as noncritical mentality, ety,101-102 hierarchy, 32 100-101 in ancient EgYPt,60 intuitionism, B3 M "caring and nurturing" and, irrationalism, dangersof, 98-100 N macrocosm-microcosm \44-45,149 Isaiah,62 theorv, Seehylozoism internal develoPment of, +3- Ishtar,89 naturalism, dialectical, 777-24 magic: 47 nature: as not explanatory, in modern era, 109 T 90-91,92- first and second, 177-78,72s- 93 26 in "OId EuroPe,"49 Hans, 66, 69, 111 fonas, and political change,90-91 free,726-27 origins of,42-qz Richard,72,73 lones, and trickerv. 92 idea of dominating, 53-54 180 RETHINKING ECOFEMINISTPOLITICS Index 181

order in, 106 psycho-biologistic ecofeminism, senescence. See hylozoism, Stone,Merlin, 36, 4S Neolithic Europe. See Europe, 't't-'t 4 decayofnature as .J..1,6 subjectivity, - 1,7 Neolithic oublic reaim sexual liberation, 10 - .LZ sy'rnpatheticmagic, 3 5_3 6 Nero,Emperor, 67 in historv.1,41-46 social constructionism,S, -7g, "new stars," 72 in social-ecology,150, 155-57 socialecofeminism, b I Nicholson,Marjorie Hope, BB, 93 q socialecology, S,4, S, Zz antihierarchical.6_Z teleology,1,07-708 o dialectics Tertullian, Lee,90 in, 10S 1z Quinby, dialectical Tinker realm naturalism of. Bell, SS oikos. Seedomestic 't1,7_24 Tringham, "oneness,"82-83,'1.'1.7 Ruth, 33 E domestic nature, L06 realm in, 1E0_155_5 Z order in racism,51, 53 as eco-anarchism, q organicsocieties, 20 6 Raleigh,Walter, 70-71 ethics of, "other,"women as,14-16 L24_29 u:riversalism, Randall, Herman, 106, first 1,1.2-'1,3 John Jr., and secondnature in. i.i.7_ utilitarianism, g6_98 B 107 1.8,L25_26 Randi,James, 91-92 free nature in,.1,26_27 v patriarchal stereotypes,15-16, randomness,114-15 libertarian municipalism of, 25-27,97-98 Razak,Arisika, 13S-40 150_57 vitalism, T4-77 immutable femalenature, 25- reason,human: Socrates,106 Voltairc, Tz 27 and orderin the naturalworld, Sontag,Susan, 98-99 "otherness"and, tq-t6 106 Sorel,Georee. 85 w Spencer, Plant, Judith, 2 dialectical,'117-24, 720-23 Ti'eodore, 67, 68,7L Warrrer, Spretnak, Marina,41 on "home," 131 hypothetico-deductive,1 06 Charlene,41, 45 Warren,peter, on "Kurgan,' 38-39 metaphor and, 19 importanceof, 103-104,154 invasions,43 Weyer, "otherness" as nondualistic instrumental,L1,'L-L12 on Neolittric, Johan., 136 24 White,Lynn,40 epistemology,15 women's: on "oneness,,'82 Wollstonecraft, Marv, s and "women'svalues," 22,23, ethics of social ecology and, psycho-biologismof, t 3_t4 "woman-nature" metaphors, 131 '1,27 rerrgrousdeterminism of,40 4, Starhawk,^ 85,89,97_98,L54 Plato,16, 65, 6S, 106 as human birthright, 103 22,68, L01, women: Plotinus.65 Iacks authority, in Aristotle, and "aliveness,' of the earth. associatedwith polis,135-36, 140, 146-48, 156 16 23 nature, 12_13 biologyoi g, t+B Renfrew,Colin: on development 10,1s4 exclusionsof. of hierarchv. and democratic politics: critical of "Kurgan" invasion 49 tradition, I J D-J./ contrastedwith statecraft,150 theory, 44, 45 and divine imma-nence. in Egypt,48 possible religious hierar- 58-59,62 new realmof, 150-57 on in Mesopotamia, Pomeroy,Sarah: chy in Old Europe,49 and hylozoism,5Z_bB, 54 73.77_ as "other," 14-16 on Knossosexcavation, 36-37 Rosaldo,Michelle 2,, 142 to sta.fus and interconnectedness of, and goddess wor_ on relationship of goddess Russell,Berband, 108 as snrp, valte.22 39-41 worship and statusof women, See,,also,,caring and intuition, and nurtur_ 41, ! 83 lng.' on magic,85_86, Potnia,37 sacrifice,human: 91 priestesses: on progress,30 in Minoan Crete,38-39 I as elite in Minoan Crete.38 on "worldview in Neolitlic Europe,32-33 of power_ 48-50,61 over," 60-61 Xenophanes,g3 as hierarchical, Scientific Revolution, 2, 48, 70, primary oppression, theory of, state: 707-1,O9 47-56 developmentoi z scientism, 712-73 51_52,109 privaterealm,44. See also domes- qual powerto, 1S1 Scot,Reginald, r3B Zeus,13, 136 tic realm and women, 54 Semonides.17 W

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Walking to the Edge: -Essaysin .Resistance MargaretRandall Women, AIDS, and Activism ACT UP/NY Women and AIDS Book Group $r0.00 WOMEN'S STUDIES/ECOLOGY

Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics Janet Biehl

Ecofeminism is marked by massive internal contradictions- and even celebrations of its own incoherence. Some ecofeminists atavistically romanticize Neolithic prehistory, and spread theism, irrationalism, and mystification in both the ecolory and the feminist movements-and thereby contribute to a general counter- Enlightenment. Their proposals for an ecological ethics- ranging from a beliefin the supposed'aliveness" ofnature, to goddess worship to affirming "'women's values"-are utilitarian at best, and regressive for women at worst. By emphasizing these themes, ecofeminists define the ecological communif largely apart from democratic political praetice. This book is intented to provide an alternative for all women, be they ecological activists, and./or eco-political theorists, who are doubtfirl about ecofeminism. Revealing the fallacies and contradictions of ecofeminism, Biehl argues that a feminist in the ecology movement need not accept ecofeminism per se as an ideologT.In the end, she argues, social ecology,an alternate framework, is more liberating for men and women, as well as for our beleagueredbiosphere. Janet Biehl, a social ecologist,is a member of the Left Green Network. A resident of Burlington, Vermont, she is also a member of the Burlington Greens and co-edits GreenPerspectiues. }Ier main interest lies in building an anticapitalist, participatory- democratic, gender equal ecologymovement.

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