LLCER L3- Genres Littéraires

2A
« Ecofeminist and Ecopoetic
Literature ».
Professor Meillon,
Université d’Angers,
3 L.AM
Vice-President of EASLCE
Dessin de Heba Bkeri, cover from Margot
Lauwers, Les Amazones de la plume:
Manifestations littéraires de l’écoféminisme
contemporain, PhD, thesis, 2014, UPVD.
Ecofeminism, Ecocriticism, & Ecopoetics
Eco => derived from oïkos, in Greek, meaning « home », « habitat »
Eco + feminism?
Eco + criticism?
Eco + poetics?
What can it mean? What might we be studying?
 Ecofeminism in a nutshell
Linking the subordination, oppression, and exploitation of the earth with the subordination, oppression,
and exploitation of women => Explores the ties between patriarchal dominion over (and violence against)
women & dominion over (and violence against) the nonhuman world, or « nature ».
Interrogates our very concepts of both « Woman »/« women » (and implicitly « Man ») and « Nature »,
and how those concepts have co-evolved in a modern, patriarchal culture.
Deconstructs various interrelated logics and systems of power and abuse (of natural ressources, women,
animals, indigenous peoples, etc.)=> patriarchy, racism, colonialism, industrial capitalism, classism,
speciesism
Ecofeminism(s)
troubling Binary thinking & conceptual dichotomies
Men vs Women
Reason & intelligence vs Emotions & (animal) senses
Culture (humankind) vs « Nature » (animals, plants, elements, etc.)
Civilization vs « Wilderness »
European (white) culture and science vs indigenous, « primitive » or « savage » (non-white)
cultures
Patriarchal sky-God religion vs (Earthly) « Paganism »
Mind vs Matter, etc.
Ecofeminism(s)
Common ecofeminist Tropes and TopoI
• Deconstructing patriarchal dichotomies that serve hierachical systems & ideologies: domination of
women, of non-human nature, & first peoples, or non-white people, by white men.
• Early critique of mechanistic and reductionist scientific models, precepts & ideology (inert mute
matter), of militarism, and threat of nuclear power
• Complex political dimension of ecofeminist writing and movements & intersectional concerns:
environmental, feminism & sexism (now queer ecologies), ethnic groups and racism, classism,
speciesism, etc.
• Reclaiming our animal and sensitive intelligences
• Polyphony, plurality of voices and points of view, celebration of singularity and diversity
Common ecofeminist Tropes and TopoI
• Reclaiming our ancestral ties to the earth & interconnections with all lifeforms and elements
• Working toward an earth-based spirituality, ethics of care & interdependence
• Feeling and seeking kinship with the more-than-human world=>Belonging to the earth & biocentric
worldview=> any being as part and parcel of a multispecies community
• The earth as a female body, the « Rape of the earth » metaphor
• The Earth as kin: Mother Earth/Gaia, the body/earth as sacred, which cannot be owned, violated, etc.
• Sisterhood, covens and circles=> Horizontal and collective distribution of power (vs vertical schemas)
Models of « power with » and « power from within » rather than « power over »
Common ecofeminist Tropes and TopoI
• Recycling of Gaian mythology & myths hinging on Goddesses (as opposed to male sky Gods)=> motherhood,
creative/generative/life-giving and sustaining powers of the earth, ocean (water), & female body
• Ecofeminist rereadings of Christianity, Mormonism, Zen Buddhism, etc.
• Mythopoeic and self-reflexive dimensions => reclaiming the power of storytelling and rituals, rehabilitating the
affective and ethical, consciousness-changing power of myth
• Celebration of the ’song’ and ‘dance’ of the world
• Metaphor of weaving, interweaving (« Sacred Hoop of Being »)
• Propension toward web, patchwork, compost, or kaleidoscopic patterns
 Common Tropes and Topoi
• Multicultural approaches & lenses, plurality of perspectives
• Queering, or troubling, borders: masculine/feminine, material/spiritual, realism/magical, rational/poetic, human
animals, etc. => Oxymoronic quality of ecofeminist writing and thinking (« bodymind », « natureculture », Donna
Haraway, or « naturculture », Meillon)=> ‘and/and’, rather than ‘either/or’
• Tendency to mix fiction, epistemology, science, myths, etc. in ecofeminist thought-experiments
• Creative stories of emancipation, transformation, regeneration, metamorphosis or becoming often via alliances and
partnerships with both humans and nonhumans
• ‘Dreaming the dark’ (Starhawk), working one’s way through grief, loss and despair=> Literature of resistance,
literature of hope, literature of resilience.
 Ecocriticism
« Environmental imagination » Lawrence Buell (1995)

1) In ecoliterature, the nonhuman world is more than a simple

background=> it is endowed with agency, and implies an
entanglement between human & natural histories.
2) Non-human interests are foregrounded and appear just as
legitimate as human ones.
3) Ecoliterature is characterized by its ethical orientation=> highlights
humans’ ecological responsibility
4) « Nature » in ecoliterature is aprehended as a dynamic process, an
ever-changing complex system of forces and fluxes, rather than as
a given, forever fixed and immutable.
Oïkos, or Home
 Ecocriticism & Ecopoetics
• Ecocriticism: ecological themes, w/ a focus on honing our attention to the more-than-human
world, tied to phenomenological and philosophical concerns + much deconstruction of our
representations of « nature »: metaphors, mythologies, etc.
• Ecopoetics: « the language of nature & the nature of language » (Knickerbocker) => great focus
on stylistics, eco-poiesis, how the stuff of nature shapes the stuff of our poetic languages.
Explores the ties between prosody, rhythm, sound effects, and all the different textures of
language and the textures of the earth. Ecopoiesis = an offering of « poetic echoes » of the
earth (Bate).
Ecopoetics
Homework for next week

Read « A Fable for Tomorrow »,

opening of Silent Spring, by
Rachel Carson (Free PDF online).

Thank you for your attention!