Ariel: Indeed there's plenty to unpack
here - particularly for students in disciplines like political economy.
Masculinist values are what energise, even legitimate capitalism given that they
are deeply embedded in the constructs of Western philosophy, science,
economics, law, and so on. As a sociologist of knowledge, I have spent
thousands of working hours attempting to deconstruct this.
Andreas: When outlining your ecofeminism, one way of proceeding
is by clarifying what it is not. First, it is not liberal feminism with its focus on equality between men
and women in currently existing social and power relationships. As you point out, ‘for too many equality
feminists, the link between their own emancipated urban affluence and unequal
appropriation of global resources goes unexamined’ (P.155). While inequality
between men and women is criticised by liberal feminists, they overlook broader
dynamics of oppression and exploitation between, for example, industrialised
and developing countries.
Equally,
you are critical of poststructural
feminism. While you appreciate the
contribution of deconstructing dominant discourses, you are sceptical of reducing politics to discourse. ‘Ironically,
the pluralism that results from these emancipations becomes neoliberalism by
default, because once the moment of destabilisation has passed and discourse
effects are exposed, the postmodern exercise has little further to add’
(P.258). Thus, poststructural feminism demobilises. It does not provide a basis
for resistance.
You also clearly
distinguish ecofeminism from Marxist understandings of exploitation in
capitalism. As you point out, ‘Marx’s vision of human dominion over the natural
world spoke a linear notion of progress – an idea reinforced by his
contemporary Darwin’s evolutionary schema’ (P.109). The dualism between Humans and Nature, identified as
underpinning the destructive implications of capitalism for the environment, is
also visible in historical materialist analyses. By contrast, you highlight the
distinctive experience of women anchoring ecofeminism in women’s different sex.
Ariel: Well this needs qualification,
Andreas. I use the word 'sex-gender' in this context, as there is a lack of
clarity out there, even among feminists and academics over 'sex' (which is biological)
and 'gender' (which is cultural). - The usage of these categories has become
even more confused with the rising popularity of LGBT politics, but that merits
a discussion in its own right. What Ecofeminism
as Politics emphasises is the interplay of sex and gender, and the chapter
- 'Body Logic: 1/0 Culture' - outlines the dynamics of this.
Andreas: As you
argue
‘What is undeniably given, is the fact that women and men do have existentially
different relationships to nature because they have different kinds of body
organs’ (P.147). It
is on the basis of this fundamental distinction that you perceive strong commonalities and ultimately unity of women
from around the world regardless of their ethnicity or class. ‘Sisters North
and South have more in common than many think, and that commonality increases
as globalisation expands’ (P.141).
Ariel: Well your rendering
here sounds a bit too much like biological reductionism, whereas my case in 'Body
Logic: 1/0 Culture' is precisely the opposite. It is an exposee of how our
eurocentric patriarchal civilisation has set up structural oppressions based on
observed bodily differences. The said sexual dualism is a 'political construct',
imposed over a natural spectrum of human forms and inclinations.
Andreas: So its not an
essentialist argument, in that you do not
claim that women’s outlook and behaviour is automatically different from men
due to their different sex. Rather, the argument is about how women’s social relationship
to nature and human beings alike is entangled
with their bodily capacity for
birthing new life and related caring tasks.
Ariel: Yes. And this is
such an important distinction. At last year’s Degrowth Conference in Malmo, the question of 'essentialism'
imploded among young academic feminists. Those trained in economics are not
well equipped to argue their way - dialectically - through the conceptual quagmire
of sex-gender ideology. But they should not be intimidated by the old backlash charge
of being labelled an 'essentialist thinker'. The accusation of reductive
'essentialism' is based on a category mistake.
For
sure, giving birth is a biological act, but it is not only biological; it is
also sociological and economic, since the continuity of species life, society
and economy is fully dependent on it. In being social, women's relation to
biological reproduction leads in turn to the acquisition of specific kinds of
reproductive labour skills like caring. There are thus 3 interactive lenses,
and 3 discourses at play here - biological, sociological, economic.
Andreas: So that's
why you say:
Biology can inscribe cognitive structures just as much as discourse does’
(P.147).
Ariel: From here, it is
a short step to recognising the economic value of domestic labour, which as
Marxist feminists note, is freely appropriated by capitalism. You might say
that the conventional dualist separation of Humanity over Nature and the positivist
separation of academic frameworks such as biology from cultural studies, economics
from social psychology, etc., serves capitalist patriarchal ideology very
nicely in disguising these complex 'internal relations'.
Andreas: These capacities
and experiences are fundamentally different from male experiences and, hence,
sustain different activities and ways of approaching crisis. ‘Women are
organically and discursively implicated in life-affirming activities, and they
develop gender-specific knowledges grounded in that material base. The result
is that women across cultures have begun to express insights that are quite
removed from most men’s approaches to global crisis – whether these be
corporate greenwash, ecological ethics or socialism’ (P.240).
Ariel: Yes, although
using the adjective 'male' above, as distinct from 'masculine' pulls the
argument back into the biological, and away from the social structural and
culturally learned process which is what sex-gendering is.
At
the same time, physical labour itself entails learning. To reiterate: this is
what it means to say that 'biology inscribes cognitive structures'. Men too
will learn different skills and values if they are involved in materially
embodied care work. Accordingly, with the chapter - 'A Barefoot Epistemology' -
the book takes a decolonial turn towards indigenous knowledges. The labour of
subsistence farmers and gatherers - men and women together - is identified as regenerative of natural
cycles, just as householding skills are. What we are about here is identifying
'the forces of reproduction' that sustain forces of production.
Andreas: That the
appropriation of women’s unpaid labour in the household and the expropriation
of natural resources are both part of capital’s wider social relations in
ensuring ongoing accumulation of surplus value is acknowledged by a number of
authors. Jason Moore, for example, points out that capitalism relies equally on
unpaid female labour as
well as on securing constantly new ‘cheap natures’ (see Capitalism in the Web of Life: Jason
Moore on the exploitation of nature). Nevertheless, while he adds up these
forms of capitalist exploitation, your
ecofeminism is able to understand their inextricable internal relations with other political movements. ‘Global
crisis is the outcome of a capitalist patriarchal system that treats both women
and nature as “resources”’ (P.209).
Ariel: My design in Ecofeminism as Politics, and numerous
articles over the years, has been to tease out the internal relatedness of
workers, women’s, indigenous, and ecological politics. As distinct from the
sphere of production, their common denominator is the sphere of reproduction.
In fact, as ecofeminist activism gained momentum in the 70s, it dubbed itself
Women for Life-on-Earth. From the start, this life-affirming grassroots politics
was cross-cultural and transnational in scope.
So
my claim has been that Marxist theorists need to acknowledge these invisible
yet indispensable 'forces of reproduction'. The industrial working class has
shown itself too deeply implicated in and reliant on capitalist production. My thesis is that, in a future drive towards
nature regenerative post-capitalist societies, an hitherto marginal 'meta-industrial
labour class' must replace the urban proletariat as agent of historical change.
Andreas: Your work is highly
important in the way it furthers our understanding of how capitalist
accumulation is not only sustained through exploitation and the extraction of
surplus value in the workplace, but equally dependent on the internally related
patriarchal oppression of women and relentless destruction of nature. My only
concern is the difficulty of identifying an agent of resistance in ecofeminism.
You talk about ‘women’s unique
agency in an era of ecological crisis’ (P.20), but do not seem to translate this insight into current struggles against
capitalist exploitation and the wider landscape of social movements involved in
these struggles. Perhaps, we need to understand ecofeminism more as a way of
struggle rather than specific agency?
Ariel: The chapter - 'Ecofeminist
Actions' - outlines the first 25 years of women's resistance, occasionally joined
by men who understood the linkages between capitalist, colonial, patriarchal,
and ecological dominations. My - Introduction - to the 2017 edition names
several contemporary ecofeminist struggles, but a comprehensive history of
women's ecopolitical agency over the past five decades would run to volumes. As
said: what makes an action ecofeminist is its political focus on protecting the
web-of-life in all its organic mutuality and complexity. What gives veracity to
ecofeminist theory is its grounding in praxis.
Andreas: Interestingly, in
a report on the international conference The Future is Public: Democratic Ownership
of the Economy, organised by the Transnational
Institute in Amsterdam on 4 and 5 December 2019, ecofeminism is specifically
referred to as a lense, which ‘recognises the equality and interdependence of
human beings and the ecosystems we inhabit’ (7
Steps to build a Democratic Economy). It allows us, the report states, to
think about re-orienting our economic system, including ‘the deprivatisation of
care-based services; new training for public servants that emphasises the
quality of relationships rather than market efficiency; and the reorientation
of investment away from socially and ecologically destructive industries
towards forms of caring labour which are inherently low-carbon, as well as
being of immense social use’ (7
Steps to build a Democratic Economy). In short, there is a clear example of
how ecofeminism as a way of struggle and way of creating new forms of living is
already influencing concrete policy proposals.
Ariel: The Transnational
Institute has been a guiding light on the Left for many years - and these steps
for building a Democratic Economy are resonant with a number of Green New Deal
proposals. Certainly the TNI acknowledgement of care labour is invaluable,
although this alone is not necessarily ecofeminist. Political liberals are also
campaigning for the economic recognition of care labour. It is very much part
of the current liberal feminist agenda, and does not necessarily imply a broad
civilisational critique as ecofeminism does. Again for TNI, the Western
industrial economic model is still the 'received' global norm, considered redeemable
in a post-capitalist era. This is not far from bourgeois idealism in my view,
because it lacks an adequate materialist or thermodynamic understanding of how
the web of life works.
So
too, the trans-Atlantic Left tends to overlook the many other cultures around
the world which already exemplify ecologically sustainable ways of worlding. In
Ecofeminism as Politics, the
decimation of such alternatives is referred to in the chapter - 'Terra Nullius'
- a phrase that echoes the eurocentric illusion that 'there is nobody else out there'.
Currently, women's anti-extractivist activities, especially in South Africa and
South America are making this contradiction very clear.
Andreas: So ecofeminism has
an important role to play in resisting exploitation and developing paths
towards alternative, post-capitalist futures due to the ways it comprehends the
internal relations between different forms of oppression. As you say: ‘Ecofeminist politics is a feminism in as much as it
offers an uncompromising critique of capitalist patriarchal culture from a
womanist perspective; it is a socialism because it honours the wretched of the
earth; it is an ecology because it reintegrates humanity with nature; it is a
postcolonial discourse because it focuses on deconstructing Eurocentric
domination’ (PP.282-3).
As
scientists point out, it has been capital’s relentless encroachment into
nature, which is ultimately responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic (see Guardian,
27 April 2020). As the world struggles with the coronavirus crisis and the
onset of a major economic crisis, capitalism is again thrown into turmoil due
to its internal contradictions. Your
volume helps us understand these dynamics and
I strongly recommend it to everyone who
is interested in moving towards
post-capitalist futures!
Ariel: Certainly it is a
hopeful sign that the pandemic has brought the public face to face with the
indispensable role of reproductive labour.
Further Reading
1991 Ariel Salleh,
‘Essentialism - and ecofeminism’, Arena,
No. 94, 167-173 (available at www.arielsalleh.info).
2004 Ariel Salleh,
‘Global Alternatives and the Meta-Industrial Class’ in Robert Albritton, John
Bell, Shannon Bell, and Richard Westra (eds.), New Socialisms: Futures Beyond Globalization. London: Routledge.
2009 Ariel Salleh
(ed.), Eco-Sufficiency & Global
Justice: women write Political Ecology. London. Pluto Press.
2019 Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria
and Alberto Acosta, (eds.), Pluriverse: A
Post-Development Dictionary.
New York: Columbia University Press and New Delhi:
Tulika/AuthorsUpFront.
2020 Khayaat Fakier, Diana Mulinari, and
Nora Rathzel (eds.), Marxist Feminist
Theories and Struggles Today: Essential Writings on Intersectionality, Labour,
and Ecofeminism. London: Zed Books.
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