Ecofeminist analysis and the culture of ecological Denial

Abstract

There are several respects in which the dominant cultural paradigm of modern civilization can be described as life-denying. Ecofeminist analysis reformulates the environmental crisis as an expression of human/nature dualism, a key part of the network of culture/nature, spirit/matter, mind/body and reason/nature dualisms of Western culture, which distort and hyper-separate both sides of what they split apart. A focus on human/nature dualism provides a fuller, more integrated and coherent conception of the environmental problematic, broadening a narrow focus on non-human and wilderness issues to represent more closely the full range of issues and concerns in real-life environmental struggles. The environmental problematic is double-sided because denial of our own embodiment, animality, and ecological vulnerability is the other side of our instrumentalization and devaluation of the natural order. Surviving the environmental crisis thus presents the dominant culture with two historic projects of cultural transformation: the task of situating the human in ecological terms and the task of situating the more-than-human in ethical and cultural terms. The first task especially pertains to our contemporary dangerous state of ecological denial.