Bridging Theory and Practice
Reflecting on the 2nd panel of the Connecting Lines: International Conference on Ecology, Feminism and Care; Bridging Theory and Practice
Within the framework of the TRACTS and City of Women international conference Connecting Lines: International Conference on Ecology, Feminism and Care, we tried to bring together discourses on gender equality and care in the deteriorating conditions of the late Anthropocene. For this purpose, we brought together artists and researchers who explore the issues of the climate crisis and social justice from a feminist, intersectional, queer, and decolonial perspective with a focus on care as a central paradigm for redefining our relationship with the environment and each other.
The second of five parts of Reflecting, begins with a contemplation the interconnectedness of ecology and feminism. It touches on bridging theory and practice, as discussed in the contributions by Goran Đurđević, Suzana Marjanić, and Myriam Bahaffou. The second panel also focuses on the relationship between theoretical ecofeminism and its practical forms.
Since feminism is understood as a resistance against the repression of the dominant ideology, which is historically based on white cisnormative patriarchal logic where racialized minorities, women*, and non-human species fall into the category of "otherness" and are subjected to violence, this movement is inherently linked to ecology and environmental struggles. Ecofeminism represents the connection between the exploitation and degradation of nature or more-than-human beings and the history of women's oppression. Contributions in the second panel attempt to emphasize that ecofeminist practice and academic theory must remain connected; theory should not live a separate life from the history and present-day practical class struggles intersecting with the fight for the rights of sexual and racialized minorities and more-than-human beings.
As Lisa Kemmerer writes in the introduction to Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice, racialized minorities are much more exposed to toxic dumps, landfills, incinerators and polluting industries. This is also related to the fact that poorer countries are proportionally much more susceptible to deforestation, desertification, and air and water pollution, which affects women the most. In many regions around the world, women are responsible for gathering fuel and water, and environmental pollution directly impacts their health (Kemmer; Warren, 15). As speaker Myriam Bahaffou also points out in her lectures, women are mostly responsible for cleaning up capitalist waste, as most women perform reproductive work, including organizing and cleaning homes, taking care of their surroundings, food, and water. Although women and other genders and racialized minorities feel the consequences of pollution and violence against human and non-human beings the most, they are at the same time, within institutions or at home, often tasked with cleaning, taking care of, and organizing dirty, polluted environments. It is also important to be aware of the historical and contemporary discourse that tends to dangerously link women and racialized minorities with nature. One of the characteristics on which patriarchy as a form of oppression is based, is a dualistic view of the world: white/non-white, reason/emotion, culture/nature, human/non-human. This dualism is based on the domination of the first over the second: historically, women, in intersection with indigenous people and racialized minorities, were equated with the natural and irrational, consequently inferior.
We see the resistance against forms of violence against women's bodies and non-human beings not in glorifying the original categories historically assigned to women, nor in trying to move to the other, dominant pole, but in transcending the binary itself. Ecofeminism creates space for advocacy for non-human beings, being simultaneously a decolonial and anti-capitalist struggle against the exploitation of nature for the creation of surplus value and profit, an anti-militaristic struggle, and a struggle for equality. It also requires critical reflection and a critical view of what we understand as development, progress, and modernity.
The role of ecofeminism in theory and practice is illustrated by Myriam Bahaffou, an activist, doctoral student, and lecturer in environmental humanities at the University of Ottawa. At the ecofeminist conference, she presented her book Glitter on Compost: Everyday Ecofeminism as editor and author. The book focuses on embodying the dynamics of naturalization, i.e., how different bodies, racialized, animal, and/or feminized, have been assigned natural categories, both historically and currently, and how this is manifested in everyday practice. Her contribution deals with bridging theoretical and popular discourse and their connection to everyday speech and practice. Her presentation followed the introduction of the book Ecofeminism: Between Women's and Green Studies by Goran Đurđević, an archaeologist and digital anthropologist, and Suzana Marjanić, a researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb. In her contribution, Suzana Marjanić offered a critique of the meat industry and its connection to ecology and presented the artistic example of Eko Eko Human Milk by Tajči Čekada, in which the artist made dairy products from human milk and sold them at markets, criticizing dairy propaganda. Goran Đurđević's contribution focused on the development of ecofeminist theory in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially in the context of academia and artistic and activist practices in the southeastern region, such as Gea Viva, Earth for Us, Women of Kruščica, and Ecofem BiH. Suzana Marjanić and Goran Đurđević dedicated their work Ecofeminism: Between Women's and Green Studies to ecofeminism in southeastern Europe.
Presentations of all the works and views on the topic of ecofeminism can be viewed at the following links:
Literature:
Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice. Ed.: Kemmerer, Lisa. ZDA: Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2011.
