Is the Body Essential for Ecofeminism?

Abstract

In this article, the author argues that the body is essential, that is, indispensable, to ecofeminism. Ecofeminists have revealed the many ways in which women and nature have been devalued and dominated. Although the author follows other ecofeminists in disagreeing with a mischaracterisation of ecofeminism as reinforcing an essentialist connection between women and nature, this article’s focus is to venture into a subject that has often been dismissed as inherently essentialist: the body. In fact, it is suggested that it is in the interests of environmental philosophers to begin theorising embodiment from a specifically ecofeminist perspective. A number of useful ways in which ecofeminists have attempted to deal with issues of embodiment are outlined, highlighting the deficiencies in these approaches. By introducing the work of feminist theorists that problematises a number of long-standing and entrenched assumptions regarding embodiment, this article shows how ecofeminists might benefit from these insights and addresses the inadequacies revealed in this work through an ecofeminist analysis.

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