Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth

302 Pages·2014·4.07 MB·English

by  Carol J. Adams

ecofeminism
ecofeminism
feminist intersections with other
animals and the earth
Edited by Carol J. Adams and Lori Gruen
Wrenching an ethical problem out of its embedded context severs the problem
from its roots … In a sense, we are given truncated stories and then asked
what we think the ending should be. However, if we do not understand the
worldview that produced the dilemma that we are asked to consider, we have
no way of evaluating the situation except on its own terms.
Re-specting nature literally involves “looking again.” We cannot attend to the
quality of relations that we engage in unless we know the details that surround
our actions and relations. If ecofeminists are sincere in their desire to live in a
world of peace and nonviolence for all living beings, we must help each other
through the pains-taking process of piecing together the fragmented worldview
that we have inherited. But the pieces cannot simply be patched together. What
is needed is a reweaving of all the old stories and narratives into a multifaceted
tapestry.
Marti Kheel 1993
Contents
Acknowledgments
Notes on contributors
List of illustrations
Introduction Carol J. Adams and Lori Gruen
1 Groundwork Carol J. Adams and Lori Gruen
Part one Affect
2 Compassion and Being Human Deane Curtin
3 Joy Deborah Slicer
4 Participatory Epistemology, Sympathy, and Animal Ethics Josephine
Donovan
5 Eros and the Mechanisms of Eco-Defense pattrice jones
6 Interdependent Animals: A Feminist Disability Ethic-of-Care Sunaura
Taylor
7 Facing Death and Practicing Grief Lori Gruen
Part two Context
8 Caring Cannibals and Human(e) Farming: Testing Contextual Edibility
for Speciesism Ralph Acampora
9 Inter-Animal Moral Conflicts and Moral Repair: A Contextualized
Ecofeminist Approach in Action Karen S. Emmerman
10 The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Michael Vick Claire Jean Kim
11 Ecofeminism and Veganism: Revisiting the Question of Universalism 
Richard Twine
12 Why a Pig? A Reclining Nude Reveals the Intersections of Race, Sex,
Slavery, and Species Carol J. Adams
13 Toward New EcoMasculinities, EcoGenders, and EcoSexualities Greta
Gaard
References
Index
Acknowledgments
A
fter the death of our dear friend Marti Kheel on November 19, 2011, a
community of mourners came together online and at memorials on both coasts in
an embrace of compassion and care that lifted us up personally and enlivened us
politically to share the insights of ecofeminism. We are deeply grateful to this
extended community and to the Kheel family for facilitating this renewal of
ecofeminist theory and practice in the wake of Marti’s death.
To build on the conversations that were happening, we organized a
conference “Finding a Niche for All Animals” at Wesleyan University in 2012.
We are grateful to all of the participants at the conference for sharing their
recollections, their new ideas, and their excitement about making the world
better for animals and the earth. Some of the papers presented at the conference
are reworked in the chapters in this volume and we thank those contributors as
well as those scholars and activists whose papers were not ultimately included.
We are grateful to the sponsors of the conference: Wesleyan Animal Studies, the
College of the Environment, the Ethics in Society Project, the Feminist, Gender,
and Sexuality Studies Program, the Center for the Study of Public Life, and the
Philosophy Department at Wesleyan and the Animals and Society Institute,
Feminists for Animal Rights, Arnold S. and Ellen Kheel Jacobs, AJ Jacobs, Jane
Kheel Stanley, and other members of the Kheel family. Lynn Higgs and Hilda
Vargas provided outstanding logistical support for which we are so grateful. The
conference would not have happened without the unwavering support of Jane
Stanley and Batya Bauman, who also created a new website for Feminists for
Animal Rights: http://www.farinc.org/ after the conference.
We thank three anonymous reviewers of this manuscript for their thoughtful
suggestions. We are particularly grateful to Kevin Ohe, Haaris Naqvi, and Laura
Murray at Bloomsbury Press for their enthusiasm and encouragement in
publishing this book.
The night Marti died, Carol and Lori began a conversation about mourning
and remembrance. That night Lori suggested the idea of holding a conference.
Carol wishes to acknowledge the roots of this book in that sad night, and how
the work of collective mourning allowed for the emergence of many of these
important essays; that this book exists is due in great part to Lori’s spirit,
insights, and skill, as well as her deep understanding of ecofeminist philosophy
and activism.
LG and CJA, November 26, 2013
Notes on contributors
Ralph R. Acampora is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hofstra University.
He is the author of Corporal Compassion: Animal Ethics and Philosophy of
Body (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), edited Metamorphoses of the Zoo:
Animal Encounter After Noah (Lexington Books, 2010) and co-edited A
Nietzschean Bestiary (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). Recent interests of his
include the hermeneutics of spectatorship at zoos, moral issues pertaining to the
built, including biotechnical environment, and the ontological status of nature. A
vegetarian who tries to be vegan in an overwhelmingly omnivorous and carno-
crazed culture, he does not eat friends, lovers, or close kin (of any species).
Carol J. Adams is the author of The Sexual Politics of Meat, now in a twentieth
anniversary edition. She edited the first multicultural ecofeminist text focusing
on religion, Ecofeminism and the Sacred. Her activist work in the 1980s
challenging racism and domestic violence and for abortion rights informs her
scholarship. She is on the Board of Directors of Minding Animals International.
For more information see www.caroljadams.com
Deane Curtin is the Hanson-Peterson Professor of the Liberal Arts and
Professor of Philosophy at Gustavus Adolphus College. While on sabbatical
writing his chapter in India he coordinated two projects at the request of His
Holiness, the Dalai Lama. At the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in
Dharamsala, he coordinated a project to translate the major texts of Western
philosophy into Tibetan for the first time. He also designed and taught a core
ethics course based on the Dalai Lama’s book Beyond Religion at the Dalai
Lama Institute for Higher Education in Bangalore.
Josephine Donovan, Professor Emerita of English at the University of Maine, is
the author or editor of 13 books and numerous articles. With Carol J. Adams she
co-edited The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics (2007), Beyond Animal
Rights (1996), and Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations
(1995).