KAREN WARREN'S ECOFEMINISM

Abstract

Ecofeminism has conceptual beginnings in the French tradition of feminist theory. In 1952, Simone de Beauvoir pointed out that in the logic of patriarchy, both women and nature appear as other (de Beauvoir 1952, 114). In 1974, Luce Irigaray diagnosed philosophically a phallic logic of the Same that precludes representation of woman's alterity, so that it subjects women to man's domination (Irigaray 1974). In the same year, Françoise d'Eaubonne coined the term, "l'eco-féminisme," to point to the necessity for women to bring about ecological revolution, and used the slogan, "Feminism or death [Le féminisme ou la mort]" (d'Eaubonne 1974, 221), to argue that the phallic order is the source of a double threat to human being: overpopulation, and the depletion of resources. Exploitation of female reproductive power has caused an excess of births, and hence overpopulation; while an excess of production has exploited natural resources to the point of their destruction. Though "feminism or death" was a battle cry, it was also a warning that human being cannot survive patriarchy's ecological consequences.

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