Ecofeminism and Allied Issues 1527566803, 9781527566804

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Ecofeminism and Allied Issues

Ecofeminism and Allied Issues Edited by

Dipanwita Pal and Prasun Banerjee

Ecofeminism and Allied Issues Edited by Dipanwita Pal and Prasun Banerjee This book first published 2024 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2024 by Dipanwita Pal, Prasun Banerjee and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-6680-3 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-6680-4

CONTENTS

Foreword .................................................................................................. vii Amit Baishya, PhD. Editorial ..................................................................................................... ix Prasun Banerjee Concepts of Ecofeminism and Allied Issues Gender Inequality in the Global Warming Era: The Disparate Impact of Climate Change on the Female .............................................................. 2 Julia M. Puaschunder Ecofeminism, Patriarchy and Female Subordination in Criminal Organizations............................................................................................ 17 Rossella Marzullo The Ecology of Being Woman: Understanding Ecofeminism in the Age of Transnational Capitalism...................................................................... 31 Jai Singh Precarity and the Global Dispossession of Indigeneity through Representations of Disability.................................................................... 45 David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder Re-Constructing the Concept of Androgyny: Protest Against the ‘Sexual Politics’ in Libby Sommer’s Henry .......................................................... 62 Dipanwita Pal Bad Affects, Women, and the Environment ............................................. 76 Jaouad Achtitah Ecofeministic Orientations in Women Writers Deinstrumentalizing the Premodern: Lauren Groff and Marie de France ... 88 Nicholas Birns

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Contents

Bonding with the ‘Other’ through Abjection: Analysis of Maggie Siebert’s Representation of the Abject in the Fourth Stage of the Process of Colonization ....................................................................................... 103 Esperanza González Moreno Ecology and Nativism in Language: An Ecolinguistic Study of Mamang Dai’s Poetry......................................................................... 115 Susanta Kumar Bardhan Rereading Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer from an Ecofeminist Perspective: A Novel Reintegrating Humankind and the Environment .... 126 Tanbir Shahnawaz Ecofeminism and Understanding the Biological Problem and the Power Problem in Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” .................................................. 137 Debojyoti Dan Water, Mother and Igbo Spirituality: The Interface between Ecofeminism and Religion in Flora Nwapa’s The Lake Goddess................................. 147 Arnab Kumar Sinha Contributors ............................................................................................ 156

FOREWORD

Ecofeminism, as evidenced in the works of pioneering scholars like Val Plumwood, Carolyn Merchant Vandana Shiva, and Greta Gaard, has probed the connections between gender and the increasing international visibility of environmental movements since the 1960s. While the critique of patriarchy and capitalism, the advocacy of care in relationships of mutual sustainability with nonhuman others, and the environment, were among its major dimensions, in the works of Plumwood, they also had an ontological dimension. In her famous essays on eating, which she wrote after her near fatal accident with a saltwater crocodile, Plumwood critiqued anthropocentrism though the lens of eating — the fact that humans eat others, but cannot conceptualize themselves being eaten. These works, thus, reconceptualized what it meant to be human, as the anthropos was rethought as a being that is in relation with multiple others. In recent years, there has been a significant upsurge in ecofeminist explorations in my home discipline of literary studies. Mention here must be made of Shazia Rahman’s groundbreaking volume Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism: Pakistani Women’s Literary and Cinematic Fictions (University of Nebraska Press, 2019). In this riveting book, Rahman argues that “[…] ecofeminist theories must be combined with Pakistani postcolonial studies to excavate and explore the idea of belonging”, so that we can probe “[…] different types of attachment to place, attachments that are aligned with the land, with the ocean, and with the nonhuman”. (2) Marking a clear distance from heuristic frames that interpret Pakistan from the lenses of nationalism or of global Muslim identity, Rahman makes a strong case for reading non-nationalist attachments to place from the standpoints of ecocriticism, and, more specifically, ecofeminism. This shift in focus enables Rahman to examine Pakistan not as a territorially bounded nation-state, but as a “place instead […] one that includes landscapes cut by man-made borders and seascapes where humans and nonhumans struggle to survive”.(9) I highlight ontological challenges to notions of humanness and the question of place-making because they show two dimensions, among many, of the influence that ecofeminism can have on our present. In this respect, the

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publication of the volume, Ecofeminism and Allied Issues is a welcome development. Comprised of twelve essays that range across fields as diverse as disability studies, affect studies, sociological analyses and literary studies, this collection, in the editors’ words, offers a “prismatic reflection” on key ecofeminist issues. The accent is weighted, to my delight, towards literature and literary studies, with essays on writers from the medievalist Marie de France to the Northeast Indian writer, Mamang Dai. The inclusion of such a broad range of writers across locations is, I believe, a testimony to this collection’s capacious theoretical range and geographical spread. Through multidisciplinary interventions it underscores the importance of ecofeminism for our current conjuncture. Amit Baishya, PhD. Associate Professor The University of Oklahoma Norman

EDITORIAL

Ecofeminism started developing as a distinct school of thought in late 1970s and 1980s, with a view to exploring the connections between androcentrism and environmental destruction. The theory emerged from various social movements, in both activist and academic fields, during the 1980s, which tend to find a pattern in patriarchy’s domination over the feminine ideologue, and modern capitalist society’s domination over nature in the name of progress and social evolution. The introduction of the anthropocentric interpretation of the cosmos, which necessitated human control over nature for development and civilizational progress, certified the human zeal for the constant accumulation of wealth and creation of public property. It destroyed both the complexity of the relationship that human beings share with their natural environment, and man’s natural, mutuallyexclusive relationship with woman through the maintenance of dualistic separation of the human (cultural) and nonhuman (natural), the masculine (the bread-winners) and feminine (the home-makers) systems. This binary separation has been further augmented and cemented by post- industrial capitalism, or what Felix Guattari calls ‘integrated world capitalism (IWC)’ which established the monopoly of man over culture and other social ideologues such as growth, ecology, war, and civilization. Having identified the fissures in contemporary gender studies and green studies, which are often shaped by capitalistic androcentrism, ecofeminism seeks to explore the possible interconnections between feminism and ecology, green studies and market economy, militarization and healing. Within the core idea discussed in the Indian scriptures of the Vedas, Vedantas and the Upanisadas, ecofeminism also encompasses the idea of nature or environment being the mother figure, and the whole universe as begotten by the celestial intercourse of nature, the mother, and God, the father. So, nature is being looked upon as the mother figure that protects her children, and gives them solace and refuge in the moment of crisis. She stands as a connector between divinity and humanity. Machine-driven modern civilization is bent on destroying this connection, and enforces a life which is divorced from the protective care of Mother Nature, the result of which is both spiritual and existential dereliction. Ecofeminism tends to address this issue of the essential disconnection between urbanized life and natural existence.

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Nowadays, ecofeminism is taking centre-stage in the realm of gender studies, but it is yet to develop into a full school of thought, as new dimensions are constantly being added to this particular area of studies. Questions are being raised regarding the fact that the politics of care management is shrewdly being imposed only on women, in the name of gender marking. This volume, therefore, seeks to take a multi-disciplinary approach to address these issues from various perspectives, using ideas from several disciplines, so that any sort of hegemonic categorization may be avoided. A total of twelve articles, written by faculty members and researchers across the world, have been selected to be part of this volume, so that the readers can have a prismatic reflection on the issues, from law to economics, from mafia studies to affect theory. All care has been taken to maintain the authenticity of the original articles with minimalistic editorial input. The editors have decided to retain the original documentation styles followed by the authors, in spite of largely following the MLA style, because the articles belong to different disciplines which require separate documentation styles. However, care has been taken so that readers can access the sources with minimum trouble. One common link that has been used for the selection of the papers is that the ideas expounded in them be corroborated through literary texts. All the articles have been categorized into two sections. The first section, entitled “Concepts of Ecofeminism and Allied Issues” includes papers which add some newer perspectives to the concept of ecofeminism, and discusses them with reference to certain literary texts and social phenomena. The second section, entitled “Ecofeminist Orientations in Women Writers” comprises articles which chiefly explore ecofeminist principles used by contemporary women writers. All the articles are original, as certified by the contributors and verified by the reviewers in a blind peer review system. They are unique in their approach too. The editors sincerely believe that this volume will further shape this specific school of thought, and will be of genuine interest for future scholars and readers in the field. However, it is needless to assert that the positions taken in the essays and the statements made are entirely the opinions of the contributors, and not of the editors. Prasun Banerjee

CONCEPTS OF ECOFEMINISM AND ALLIED ISSUES

GENDER INEQUALITY IN THE GLOBAL WARMING ERA: THE DISPARATE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE FEMALE JULIA M. PUASCHUNDER 1

Abstract In the last decade, the climate change crisis has gained unprecedented urgency. Overall, climate change has already led to, and will continuously lead to, environmental tipping points and irreversible lock-ins that will decrease the common welfare. When taking a closer look at the macroeconomic growth prospects, as measured in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per country, a changing climate will affect countries differently, considering different mean temperatures, but also differences in the GDP sector composition per country, and differing peak temperatures per GDP sector for optimal production levels. Within society, climate change has a disparate impact of sustainability on Women. Women are traditionally household caretakers who face a disproportional burden of sustainability responsibility. As economic gains and losses from a warming earth are distributed unequally within society, ethical imperatives lead to promises to redistribute economic opportunities to parts of society which will lose from global warming in the quest for climate justice. Between countries, but also over generations, differences in climate change gains and losses lead to unique and unprecedented taxes-and-bonds, climate change gains and losses, and distribution strategies. Climate justice fairness within society will also require novel ways of measuring, monitoring and distributing gains and burdens’ distribution strategies, between household members. The regular redistribution mechanisms of taxation, as used between countries or consumers, and climate bonds with diversified interest rates and maturity 1

Julia M. Puaschunder works at the New School, Department of Economics, School of Public Engagement, New York, NY 10003, USA. She is also associated with Columbia University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

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yield regimes, as a rebalancing between generations, need to be extended on the gender imbalance and family or community levels. The novel policy recommendation of this chapter calls for more interpersonal research on climate change burden sharing and socio-psychological mechanisms such as trust, future orientation, compassion and social responsibility – all powerful female attributes that can drive climate leadership-in-action. We will need redistribution mechanisms that are more diversified than merely monetary, to shift and balance gender interactions that have become skewed due to climate change. Areas of concern include the disparate impacts of zero waste strategies on women, as the household caretakers, but also the long-term burden the novel coronavirus crisis has had on women, who are particularly prone to developing long-term disability due to long Covid-19. Addressing all the above-mentioned areas of concern in future public policymaking will ensure that the burden, but also the benefits of climate change within the most granular micro-level of society, where it seems to matter at most for the individual, are shared. Keywords: BIPOC, climate change, coronavirus crisis, Covid-19, economics of the environment, environmental justice, environmental governance, equality, family, female empowerment, gender, household, monetary policy, multiplier, nuclear family, redistribution, social justice, sustainability, zero waste movement.

Introduction The climate change crisis has gained unprecedented urgency in the most recent decade. Overall, climate change has already led, and will continuously lead to, environmental tipping points and irreversible lock-ins that will decrease the common welfare. In light of climate change, environmental justice approaches call for sharing the economic benefits and the burden of climate change, rightly, justly, and fairly, around the globe, based on ethical imperatives (Puaschunder 2020). When taking a closer look at the macroeconomic growth prospects, as measured in gross domestic product (GDP) per country, a changing climate will affect countries differently. When considering different mean temperatures, but also differences in the GDP sector composition per country, and the fact that there are optimum productivity temperatures per GDP sector, it becomes apparent that economic climate change impacts vary throughout the world (Puaschunder 2020). The economic gains and losses of a warming globe are understood to be distributed unequally around the world (Puaschunder 2020). The ethical climatorial imperative demands an

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equalization of the gains of climate change, in order to offset losses incurred due to it (Kant 1783/1993, Puaschunder 2017b, c, Rawls 1971). This paper highlights the role of gender balance in the impact of global warming. Within society, climate change has a disparate impact on women. Women are traditionally the household caretakers who face a disproportional burden of sustainability pledges. As economic gains and losses from a warming earth are distributed unequally within society, ethical imperatives lead to pledges to redistribute economic opportunities to parts of society that lose from global warming, in the quest for climate justice. Conventional climate change gains and losses redistribution promises focus on taxation and climate bonds burden-sharing strategies that even out inequality, between countries and over time, between overlapping generations. Disproportionately low attention has been placed on the nuclear family and the role of women as compassionate leaders and everyday household caretakers around the world. This paper, therefore, argues that we may need redistribution mechanisms that are more diversified than monetary redistribution, to shift and balance gender dyads that have skewed power dynamics, and are exacerbated due to climate change. All the above mentioned endeavors will ensure the burden is shared, as well as the benefits of climate change within the most granular micro-level of society where it seems to matter at most for the individual. Future research on women in climate sciences which should tackle prospective household economics and dynamics shifts due to global warming will be discussed. The novel policy recommendation of this chapter is a call for more interpersonal research on climate change burden sharing and socio-psychological mechanisms. Female decision-making strengths, such as emotion, trust, future-orientation, compassion, and social responsibility, will be highlighted as powerful leadership assets for the climate stabilization agenda. As a future research avenue, the role of gender and emotions in intertemporal decisions should be investigated and applied in intergenerational equity considerations. A disparate impact analysis of interdisciplinary endeavors in law and economics would account for the most cutting-edge novel advances in the climate justice domain, with extraordinary impetus when considering that half the world’s population is female.

Climate justice Climate change has raised imperative for finding a fair climate solution. First, climate justice within a country should ensure that low- and highincome households carry the same burden, but proportionate to their

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disposable income. For instance, enabled through progressive carbon taxation, consumption tax, and corporate inheritance tax relating to the benefits of past wealth accumulation that may have caused climate change, will curb harmful behavior (Puaschunder 2017c). Secondly, fair climate change burden-sharing between countries ensures that those countries that are benefiting from a warmer environment also bear a higher responsibility for climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts (Puaschunder 2019a, b). Thirdly, climate justice over time proposes an innovative climate change burden-sharing bonds strategy, which distributes the benefits and burdens of a warming Earth pareto-optimally among generations (Puaschunder 2016a). All these recommendations are aimed at sharing the burden, but also the benefits, of climate change within society in an economically efficient, legally equitable, and practically feasible, way now, and also between generations. The future climate wealth of nations is derived from climate flexibility, defined as the range of temperature variation of a country. In a changing climate, temperature range flexibility is portrayed as a future asset for economic production and international trade of commodities leading to comparative advantages of countries. A broad spectrum of climate zones has never been defined as asset or comparative edge in free trade. However, future climate change will require territories to be more flexible in terms of changing economic production possibilities around a warming globe, and this is therefore considered as part of the future wealth of nations. The more climate variation a nation state possesses, Puaschunder (2020) argues, the more degrees of freedom it has in terms of GDP production capabilities in a changing climate. Puaschunder (2020) offers a model that aids in answering what commodity prices, financial flows and trade patterns we can expect following predictions that the earth will become hotter. Climate variation based on cyclical changes or climate zones allows for associations between climate-based advantages and risks, influencing the overall economic output prospects. Economic modelling, cross-sectional world country comparisons, and time series and panel regressions could scrutinize temperature data in relation to production, in order to derive inferences for the future wealth of nations. The degree of climate flexibility is already found to be related to human migration inflows (Puaschunder 2020). The previously defined climate change winner and loser index is blended with novel insights on climate flexibility, leading to an unprecedented outlook on the future wealth of nations (Puaschunder 2020).

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Future climate change-induced market changes could be derived from scarcity of agriculture production. Individual commodity price distribution could become the foundation for commodity price expectation estimates in the environmental domain, backtested on actual data (Puaschunder 2020). All these results should form the basis for a diversified interest rate regime related to climate change (Puaschunder, forthcoming). Financing climate change mitigation and adaptation will have different targets; while mitigation has global effects, adaptation is more focused on overcoming the negative local effects of global warming, such as disasters, which tend to be more regional. On a global governance level, climate bonds have been proposed to raise funds for the financing of global climate stability (Puaschunder, forthcoming). Green bonds are fixed-income securities which are usually certified by a third party to scale up climate policies. Green bonds provide capital for investment in sustainable projects, and a transition to a zero-carbon emissions economy. Over time, climate bonds offer an intergenerational climate change burden-sharing strategy. The current generation can thereby raise funds via debt that is paid back by future generations who inherit a favorable climate, in lieu. The policy proposal of this chapter advocates climate bonds with diversified interest rates and maturity yield regimes (Puaschunder, forthcoming). An international taxation-bonds strategy climate stabilization solution is proposed which features a commonly-shared international green bond, that incentivizes countries or market actors strategically (Puaschunder, forthcoming). An international climate regime could require countries to raise funds via taxation, or be subject to diversified interest rate bonds, which are determined by: (1) a country’s initial position on the climate change gains and losses index spectrum, in combination with; (2) CO2 emission levels in relation to other countries and over time; (3) climate flexibility in the range of temperatures prevalent within a national territory of a country in relation to other countries, as this determines the future comparative advantage to other nations in the world; (4) the willingness of countries to change CO2 emissions; and (5) the banking lending regimes of a country (Puaschunder, forthcoming). The idea of diversified interest rate regimes is also extendable to sectorspecific bond yield interest rate regimes. Within a country, the bonds could be offered by commissioning agents, such as local investment banks or commercial bank credit, which could offer industry-specific diversified

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interest rate maturity bond yields based on the environmental sustainability of an industry, e.g., as measured by the European Sustainable Finance Taxonomy (Puaschunder, forthcoming). Diversified repayment of bonds is a new incentivization method aimed at ensuring the burden is shared, but also that the benefits of climate change over time, within countries and markets but also within society, are also shared, in an economically efficient, legally equitable and practically feasible way (Puaschunder, forthcoming).

Gender equality in climate change alleviation In finding a fair solution regarding climate change mitigation and adaptation, gendered aspects have recently been discovered as neglected macro-economic disparate impact analysis targets, and essential groundlevel determinates of fairness. On the macro-level, the academic fields of law and economics will prospectively adapt to the broad demand shifts implied by climate change, paying attention to long-standing legal excellence accounting for disparate impact, inequality and redistribution. The analysis of macro-economic aggregates would benefit from a legal scholarship-led reflection of diversified and temporal views of social preferences, given the different age, gender, race and professional propensity risks stemming from climate change. The economic inequality exacerbated by global warming implies that future economic policy research may take inspiration from the legal concept of disparate impact to channel the currently unprecedentedly large rescue and recovery aid, to alleviate inequality. Measuring a potentially disparity-heavy impact of climate change on women may open the gates for targeted rescue and recovery aid which pays particular attention to empowering women and/or alleviating the disadvantages faced by women which stem from climate change. Already now we see a pegging of governmental rescue and recovery aid to socially-uplifting causes to address inequality concerns and environmental causes. Future efforts could directly investigate if there is a heavier load on women, as they are particularly likely to be caretakers and household shoppers, and to work with unstable employment contracts – all of which create vulnerabilities in the domain of climate injustice. Legal excellence on how to detect disparate impacts could be coupled with behavioral insights on how to alleviate biases in an uncertain world, in order to rescue, uplift and empower women in the age of global warming. The following section offers three case studies on how women can be rescued in a disparate impact analysis, uplifted as family caretakers, and empowered to become strong leaders on climate justice.

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Disparate impact on women: The case of zero waste pressure One of the newest trends that are highlighting the importance of a diversified impact analysis is the backlash from the zero waste movement that has been promoted over the last decade through social media (Woo 2021). Social media brought up this movement with the notable and important message to reduce waste as part of the wish to live a carbon neutral life (Woo 2021). As Alyssa Woo (2021) points out, in an analysis for the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Collaborative Association (MECA), zero waste is a “challenging, yet gratefully, fulfilling lifestyle that requires significant time and investment, as zero waste products are not widely accessible financially or by proximity” (Woo 2021). Therefore, Woo concludes that this movement can also be a gatekeeping, upper-middleclass-led, movement that unintentionally shames low-income individuals for not having the ability to participate. Black, indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) activists have recently shed light on this topic (Hernandez 2020, in Woo 2021). A disparate impact analysis on the financial burdens which also addresses the socio-psychological impetus of environmental pressures to be environmental could reveal the pressures that already marginalized communities face due to environmentalism and green activism. Shaming people into needing to spend money for a green lifestyle may not actually help the environment at all, considering the negative socio-psychological impetus on those who cannot afford to ‘shop green’. So, although the aims of environmental movements may be noble, the actual impact on households and the shoppers, who tend to be women, may be particularly hard where budget constraints already exist. Zero waste movements and other green endeavors may, therefore, also create a social divide between those who can afford to follow these social trends and those whose financial poverty is enhanced by greening the economy. Woo (2021) concludes that, especially on social media, the presence of ‘waste shaming’ is particularly hard on low-income individuals, more notably women, who cannot afford to invest in green economy products. As the zero waste movement is largely upper-middle class led, and has unintentionally placed the burden of waste on low-income communities, Woo (2021) advises that the movement itself should be made more inclusive. For instance, more room could be made for distinct BIPOC

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leaders in the environmental space (Woo 2021). Products and the infrastructure to properly dispose of waste should be made more widely accessible nationally; hence, action by governments and both the private and public sectors is recommended (Woo 2021). Municipalities could expand their recycling and composting infrastructures in order to divert waste to landfill (Woo 2021). In order for recycled materials to re-enter the market, both public and private sectors are advised to invest in significant research and development to make products made from recycled materials industry standard (Woo 2021). Most importantly, the burden of waste must be diverted away from consumers and placed onto the industries that are producing these waste products, where they should be offering consumers less wasteful alternatives (Woo 2021). Without proper accountability of the private and public sectors, waste will continue to be a global challenge, even if more individuals transition to lower waste lifestyles (Woo 2021). All this is important due to the widening wealth gap in the United States which will only be exacerbated as the climate crisis worsens, and in light of the disparate impact of Covid-19 has already had on society (Woo 2021).

Disparate impact on women: The case of Covid-19 long haulers Another case study of where disparate impact analysis will be required in the future is the disproportionately heavy impact of Covid-19 long haul cases, which tend to be more prevalent in middle-aged women. The demographic impact of long-haul Covid appears to fall disproportionally heavily on 30-50 year-old women, with a mean age around 42 years at the time of their initial infection (Rubin 2021), and women also make up an estimated 70-75% of the total number of Covid long-haul sufferers (Rubin 2021). Most recent preliminary research findings suggest that, in some Covid longhaulers, the immune system develops macrophages with protein debris that start causing harm to the immune system some time after the initial infection by creating inflammation in different parts of the body which creates, or further exacerbates, chronic debilitation. Ongoing research attributes an overactive autoimmune response, and/or early onset of a geneticallypredisposed autoimmune disease as causes of disability in Covid-19 long haulers (“Yale Study Connects Long COVID with Autoantibodies”, 2021, Wang et al, 2021).

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Given that the estimated majority of long haulers (around 70-80%) are currently believed to be female, but also taking into account that about one third of all long haulers’ symptoms come in waves during debilitating episodes, the future analysis of macroeconomic aggregates and policy impacts is likely to reflect a more diversified, gender-sensitive, and temporal view of social preferences under unpredictably changing conditions (Collins 2021, Davis et al, 2021; Doheni, 2021; Yong, 2021). As such, a climate change mitigation and adaptation regime to be carried out within the household may fall disproportionally heavily on women. This disparity may be addressed in disparate impact analysis. Respectively fine-attuned policies can protect women, who are also more at risk of carrying the longterm consequences of Covid-19 (Puaschunder & Gelter, forthcoming). Corporate settings, industry demands, and economic growth, will likely stem from attuning to eco-wellness trends and sustainable lifestyles in the future, which have been directly related to recovery of Covid-19 long haulers. In light of growing concerns over Covid long-haul risks, but also addressing the newest findings about the interaction of environmental influences on long-haul conditions, employers will likely have a pioneering advantage if they pay attention to holistic expertise for prevention. For instance, quick and accurate Covid testing, screening of employee healthcare status, and also providing a safe and secure work environment, will be crucial. This means that the environment will be constantly monitored for harmful influences. Standards for safety and security can be provided by protective masks, but healthy, stable, in-house nutrition, based on an informed understanding of personal dietary needs will become implicit benefits to attract labor, and will make a difference when scarce labor decides between potential employers. Certain eco-wellness standards even go as far as to regulate ecological, health, and social criteria for nutrition, including vegan products. Fringe benefits provided by employers may be extended to include holistic preventive care and foresighted vigilance, but also insurance coverage for long-term disability after a workplace-induced Covid infection. The legal implications and insurance coverage for the entire social compound, combined with privacy considerations when dealing with sensitive personal health status information in the workforce, are raising legal, economic, discriminatory and ethical challenges that may imply risks of discrimination, litigation, and erosion of the social glue. Multi-faceted predicaments will likely arise in the shadow of all these novel developments for the next generation. In light of the elevated risk for women to become Covid long haulers, employers are advised to be more willing to grant women greater flexibility

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for home office working and digitalized interaction opportunities, before they are forced to do so by legal action. Taking into consideration discrimination and long-term risk calculus, all these developments will likely enrich our post-Covid society in a sustainable, healthy and humanecompassionate way, especially for women.

Female leadership on climate justice Women are particularly prone to become change agents on climate agenda. Sustainability is based on intertemporal decisions. In intertemporal decision making, women tend to be more patient, future-oriented, and less costsensitive, than men, who exhibit more time-inconsistent decision patterns (Ashraf, Karlan & Yin 2006, McLeish & Oxoby 2007, 2009, Read & van Leeuwen 1998, Shawhan 2009, Silverman 2003, Tanaka, Camerer & Nguyen (forthcoming), Viscusi & Huber 2006, Wilson & Daly 2004). Intertemporal choices constitute intergenerational equity, which implies providing at least as favorable a standard of living to future generations as they currently enjoy (Puaschunder 2017a, b, 2018, 2019a, b, 2020). Intergenerational equity challenges traditional economic utility discounting models (Puaschunder 2016c). Intergenerational care requires trade-offs between individual profit maximization and net future societal gains, under conditions of uncertainty and unperceivable outcomes for today’s disciplined consumers and sustainability taxpayers, who lack any interaction and identification possibilities with future beneficiaries (Braithwaite 2003, Puaschunder 2016b, Small & Loewenstein, 2003, Steinberg et al. 2009). In the light of irreversible environmental decline and future lock-ins due to climate change, the time is ripe to reflect on intergenerational justice to avert environmental decline in a pareto-efficient way (Puaschunder 2017a, Sachs 2014). Our current consumption patterns should not transfer environmental debts to our ancestors, or jeopardize the environmental conditions of our future children. The urgent need to address climate change is attributed in annual UN framework discussions leading to international agreements (e.g. the Montreal Protocol) and the inception of multi-lateral climate change aversion programs. The humanitarian dimension of climate change is central to the formal negotiations emphasizing mitigation and security. The international focus is placed on emerging economies with the highest levels of CO2 emission. Systems of monitoring, reporting, and verification of emissions are currently being discussed in the international context, with a view to reducing emissions in non-binding agreements based on individual country pledges. While voluntary climate change aversion has been

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established over the last few years, it remains unclear how strong the commitment will be. The success of voluntary agreements depends on a strong leadership and the consent of all countries around the world. Many of the more difficult issues were raised during the yearly Conferences of the Parties (COP)s and the Rio+20 Conference. United Nations (UN) agencies, governments of developed and developing nations, corporations, foundations and constituency groups, who increasingly highlight the humane consequences of climate change, also organize public debates and concerted action on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Women take on a special role in averting climate change, as female traits distinguish them towards traditional nurturing, environmental conscientiousness, and emotionally-laden family values. On women, who are also among the world’s poorest, given existing gender inequalities, climate change ultimately places the greater burden. As primary food producers and water suppliers for their families, women are more affected by climate change because of their roles and the demands placed on them by their families and relatives. Not only are women more prone to be dealing with the effects of climate change at the local level, but also is there a strong gender impact on climate change mitigation. International climate change awareness conferences have been led by female chairs (e.g., Cancun, Copenhagen, Denmark, Durban and South Africa), and the Secretary-General of Climate Negotiations and the European Climate Change Commissioner are women. The Mary Robinson Climate Justice Initiative promotes an alliance of women leaders on environmentalism and advocates for future meetings incepting a platform of female leadership on climate change aversion (Puaschunder 2016b). The Rio+20 Conference featured a “Women Creating a Sustainable Future” Board to pledge for intergenerational climate justice concerns (Puaschunder 2016b). Intergenerational equity deviations from traditional profit maximization models are proposed to stem from emotions. Studies on emotion describe women to be more susceptible to mood induction, and impulsive when being in a negative mood, compared to men who exhibit greater patience when experiencing positive emotions (McLeish & Oxoby 2007). The interplay of gender, emotions, and intergenerational attention, is unexplored, and, in particular, it is not known if gender differences are systematically related to emotional experiences of future-orientation. Future experimental research could examine the impact of gender and emotions on

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intertemporal decisions applied to the case of intergenerational equity. International comparisons could outline which sustainability features are related to gender and which ones are exogenously construed by social norms and national specificities. Studying the impact of gender and emotions on intertemporal choices is targeted at empowering women’s leadership by strengthening female decision making. Understanding the physiological correlates and psychological mechanisms of intertemporal choices will help to resolve intrapersonal predicaments in the areas of savings, time management, education, productivity, safety, health, and prevention. Depicting gender differences in time-dependent choices promises to leverage inter-gender negotiation skills and lead to recommendations for human relations management. Being knowledgeable about gender-specificities in intergenerational considerations will allow government officials to attune public goods distribution and foster a cooperative government-citizen relationship on environmental protection through gender-attentive, emotion-based sustainability campaigns. The novel idea of finding emotional prerequisites of long-term futureorientation is aimed at curbing harmful impulsivity which relegates environmental protection, generation by generation, with the greater goal of averting predictable surprises of environmental decay and climate change. Future economic policy research may be inspired by the legal concept of disparate impact, which could open up the ‘black box’ of aggregate production function calculus as the standard measure of economic growth. It could also inform more diversified and gender-sensitive intertemporal discounting functions. Behavioral insights for women on how to navigate climate change may become fundamental for developing ideas of averting and adapting to climate change efficiently within the family compound. All the above-mentioned analysis and empowerment techniques promise to foster the Sustainable Development Goals on a very granular, but widespread, level to improve the living Earth, for this generation and those following.

Works Cited Ashraf, N., Karlan, D. & Yin, W. (2006). “Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence from a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121, 2, 635-672. Braithwaite, V. (2003). Tax Democracy: Understanding Tax Avoidance and Evasion. Hants: Ashgate.

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Eric Y. Wang, Tianyang Mao, Jon Klein, Yile Dai, John D. Huck, Jillian R. Jaycox, Feimei Liu, Ting Zhou, Benjamin Israelow, Patrick Wong, Andreas Coppi, Carolina Lucas, Julio Silva, Ji Eun Oh, Eric Song, Emily S. Perotti, Neil S. Zheng, Suzanne Fischer, Melissa Campbell, John B. Fournier, Anne L. Wyllie, Chantal B. F. Vogels, Isabel M. Ott, Chaney C. Kalinich, Mary E. Petrone, Anne E. Watkins, Yale IMPACT Team, Charles Dela Cruz, Shelli F. Farhadian, Wade L. Schulz, Shuangge Ma, Nathan D. Grubaugh, Albert I. Ko, Akiko Iwasaki & Aaron M. Ring, “Diverse functional autoantibodies in patients with Covid-19”, 595 NATURE 283 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03631-y Ed Yong, Long-Haulers Are Redefining COVID-19: Without understanding the lingering illness that some patients experience, we can’t understand the pandemic. THE ATLANTIC (Aug. 19, 2020), https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/long-haulerscovid-19-recognition-support-groups-symptoms/615382/ Francis Collins, Study finds 1 in 10 Healthcare Workers with Mild COVID have Lasting Conditions (Apr. 20, 2021), NIH DIRECTOR’S BLOG, https://directorsblog.nih.gov/tag/long-haulers/; Doheny, supra note 38. Hannah E. Davis, Gina S. Assaf, Lisa McCorkell, Hannah Wei, Ryan J. Low, Yochai Re'em, Signe Redfield, Jared P. Austin & Athena Akrami, Characterizing long COVID in an international cohort: 7 months of symptoms and their impact, 38 ECLINICALMEDICINE at 4, https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S25895370%2821%2900299-6. Kathleen Doheny, Neurological Symptoms frequent in COVID LongHaulers. WEBMD HEALTH NEWS (Mar. 23, 2021), https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210323/neurologic-symptomsfrequent-covid-long-haul-partients. Kirchler, E. (2007). The Economic Psychology of Tax Behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (1783/1993). Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Hackett. McLeish, K.N. & Oxoby, R.J. (2007). “Gender, Affect and Intertemporal Consistency: An Experimental Approach”. Institute for the Study of Labor Discussion Paper, 2663. McLeish, K.N. & Oxoby, R.J. (2009). Stereotypes in Intertemporal Choice. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 70, 1-2, 135-141. Puaschunder, J.M. (2016a). “Intergenerational Climate Change Burden Sharing: An Economics of Climate Stability Research Agenda Proposal”. Global Journal of Management and Business Research: Economics and Commerce, 16, 3, ௅

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Puaschunder, J.M. (2016b). “On Eternal Equity in the Fin-de-Millénaire: Rethinking Capitalism for Intergenerational Justice”. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 13, 2, ௅ Puaschunder, J.M. (2016c). “The Call for Global Responsible Intergenerational Leadership in the Corporate World: The Quest for an Integration of Intergenerational Equity in Contemporary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Models. In D. Jamali (Ed.), Comparative Perspectives in Global Corporate Social Responsibility, pp. ௅ IGI Global Advances in Business Strategy and Competitive Advantage Book Series. Puaschunder, J.M. (2017a). “Climate in the 21st Century: A Macroeconomic Model of Fair Global Warming Benefits Distribution to Grant Climate Justice Around the World and Over Time”. Proceedings of the 8th International RAIS Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities organized by Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (RAIS) at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., United States, March ௅ pp. ௅. Puaschunder, J.M. (2017b). “Mapping Climate in the 21st Century” Development, 59, 3, ௅ Puaschunder, J.M. (2017c). “The Climatorial Imperative” Agriculture Research and Technology, 7, 4, ௅ Puaschunder, J.M. (2018). Intergenerational Responsibility in the 21st Century. Vernon. Puaschunder, J.M. (2019a). Corporate and Financial Intergenerational Leadership. Cambridge Scholars; Publishing. Puaschunder, J.M. (2019b). Intergenerational Equity: Corporate and Financial Leadership. Edward Elgar Publishing. Puaschunder, J.M. (2020). Governance and Climate Justice: Global South and Developing Nations. Palgrave Macmillan. Springer Nature. Puaschunder, J.M. (forthcoming). Mapping Climate Justice: Green Bonds and Diversified Interest Rates. Environmental Impact Finance and Accounting for Sustainability Symposium on Green Finance and Accounting. Hanken School of Economics, Academic Research Network Oxford Research Center of Oxford University, November 11, 2021. Puaschunder, J.M. & Gelter, M. (forthcoming). „The Law, Economics and Governance of Generation Covid-19 Long-haul” Indiana Health Law Review. Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Rubin, R. (2020). “As Their Numbers Grow, Covid-19 ‘Long Haulers’ Stump Experts” Journal of the American Medical Association, 324, 14, 1381-1383. Sachs, J.D. (2014). “Climate Change and Intergenerational Well-being” In L. Bernard & W. Semmler (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Macroeconomics of Global Warming (pp. ௅  Oxford University Press. Read, D. & van Leeuwen, B. (1998). “Predicting Hunger: The effects of Appetite and Delay on Choice” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 76, 189-205. Shawhan, D. (2009). “Time Inconsistency in Public Decision-making: Experimental Evidence and Social Consequences” Working paper, Department of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2009. Silverman, I.W. (2003). “Gender Differences in Delay of Gratification: A Meta-analysis” Sex Roles, 49, 451-463. Small, D.A. & Loewenstein, G.F. (2003). “Helping a Victim or Helping the Victim: Altruism and Identifiability” Journal of Risk Uncertainty, 26, 516. Steinberg, L., Graham, S., O’Brian, L., Woolard, J., Cauffman, E. & Banich, M. (2009). “Age Differences in Future Orientedness and Delay Discounting” Child Development, 80, 1, 28-44. Tanaka, T., Camerer, C. & Nguyen, Q. (2009). “Risk and Time Preferences: Linking Experimental and Household Survey Data from Vietnam” American Economic Review, 100, 1, 557-571. Viscusi, W.K. & Huber, J. (2006). “Hyperbolic Discounting of Public Goods” Harvard University John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business Discussion Paper 543. Wilson, M. & Daly, M. (2004). “Do Pretty Women Inspire Men to Discount the Future?” The Royal Society, 271, 177-179. Woo, A. (2021). “Environmental Fascism and The Zero Waste Movement” Panel on Monitoring and Evaluation in Environmental Economics, April 16, 2021, The New School, New York. “Yale Study Connects Long COVID with Autoantibodies” (Jan 5 2021), https://medicine.yale.edu/media-player/yale-study-connects-longcovid-with-autoantibodies/

ECOFEMINISM, PATRIARCHY AND FEMALE SUBORDINATION IN CRIMINAL ORGANIZATIONS ROSSELLA MARZULLO1

Abstract What is the relationship between the oppression of women and the domination of nature? What is the relationship between ecofeminism, gender stereotypes and the subordination of women in criminal organizations? In the Calabrian criminal organization, the family represents the real strength of the organization. 'Ndrangheta (the name of organized crime in the Calabria Region, in the South of Italy) was born as an organization structured for families, each of which had full powers, over the territory where it operated, and over the members of the family itself. Thus the clan exploits land, women, and children, for the sole purpose of strengthening the criminal organization. The predatory force that the criminal organization exerts over the territory, exploiting and plundering, is also exerted over the women, who are enslaved to the power of the clan that asks them to be subordinate and accept the stereotyped roles of wives and mothers, capable of transmitting deviant cultural values from one generation to the next to secure power for an indefinite time. This study aims to investigate the links between the culture of oppression, which also passes through the brutalization of the territory, and the taking root of criminal culture that imposes submission, blind and uncritical obedience, and silence, on women. Keywords: mafia studies, criminology, law, Calabrian, 'Ndrangheta, cultural oppression

1 Rossella Marzullo is a Professor in the Department of Law, Economy, and Humanistic Studies, Mediterranea University, Reggio Calabria, 89122, Italy

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Origins of ecofeminism Feminist reflection has constantly questioned history, especially ancient history, in order to understand the origins and causes of gender asymmetry and the sexual division of labor. Looking at the historical process from the point of view of the oppressed, making them re-enter history, listening to their voices, and rebuilding their struggle for emancipation, is essential for anyone who takes a perspective of change. Making use of the numerous studies on the origin of patriarchy carried out since the 19th century, while trying to understand the obscure reasons for the original violence, scholars have investigated in depth the link between the domination of women and the exploitation of nature, between the exploitation of women and the paradigm of unlimited accumulation and growth, revealing the intertwining of injustices and oppressions in which patriarchy and capitalism have firmly united. The debate on the birth and affirmation of the patriarchy has ancient origins, but starting from the 1870s, both in Europe and in America, it drew new impetus from the flourishing of numerous ethnographic, historical and anthropological studies. The works of Jakob Bachofen, Lewis Morgan, Friedrich Engels, and Otis Tufton Mason, showed that the oppression of women was a product of history; the widespread idea that the patriarchal family was immutable and eternal, based on a law of nature, was nothing but a myth (Taylor Allen 1086). The patriarchy had, in fact, established itself earlier, following economic and social changes. The development of agricultural activity, and above all of livestock farming, traditionally practiced by men, and the consequent accumulation of wealth in their hands, introduced the concept of private property, shook the ancient noble societies, destroyed the collectivism typical of matrifocal societies, and led to the enslavement of women, the emergence of war and slavery, and the male monopoly of culture. The conquest of other groups took the form of the killing of the men and the slavery of their women and children for domestic and land work, and sexual services. From the studies on ancient societies, even with their unresolved questions and dark areas, it emerges that the greatest obstacle to the humanization process of women was, and is, the way of looking at work and productivity that has established itself with patriarchy, which has been carried to the extreme by capitalist development. This unproductive, predatory, mode of appropriation became the paradigm of all exploitative relationships between

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human beings. The main mechanism is that which transforms autonomous human producers into production conditions for others, or which defines them as natural resources for others (Mies 66). These are the cultural premises from which the cultural movement that goes by the name of ecofeminism got its start. The term ‘ecofeminism; appeared for the first time in 1974 in a paper by Françoise d’ Eaubonne, Le féminismeou la mort. In it, the French feminist focused on the environmental costs of ‘development’ and identified women as the subjects of change. In 1978, she founded the Écologie et Féminisme movement, which had little resonance in France, but which aroused great interest in Australia and the United States. In the 1970s, women's movements that developed spontaneously around the world revealed the connection between women's health and life and the destruction of nature. The awareness of female vulnerability in the face of environmental degradation, and the desire to have a voice in decision-making processes, shared those struggles which arose spontaneously. In 1973, the Chipko movement began in defense of the Himalayan forests and the subsistence economy carried out by women in harmony with nature. In 1977, Wangari Maathai started the reforestation project in Kenya, with the main objective of promoting a positive image of women and their autonomy (Weber 1988, Michaelson 1994, Shiva 2002, Maathai 2006, Maathai 2010). Between 1980 and 1981, two major events made the movement visible internationally. In 1980, in Washington US, two thousand women surrounded the Pentagon to protest against nuclear power, and in 1981, a protest took place at the Greenham Common missile base in England. The possible annihilation of the planet by destructive technology was among the first concerns of those protests. The relationship between science, women, and nature was among the first issue to which ecofeminist thought turned: I know I am made of this earth, as my mother's hands were made of this earth, as her dreams came from this earth [...] everything I know speaks to me through this earth (Griffin 227).

So wrote Susan Griffin in 1978, in the opera, Women and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, a founding text of ecofeminist thought, which she refers to as “a poem that includes history" (Cantrell 198). Griffin alternates scenarios of the oppression of women and nature and traces the history of Western civilization. This is the focus of ecofeminism, which calls us to question ourselves on the intersections of environmentalism and gender issues, on the parallel

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between the subordination of women and the degradation of nature, and on the tremendous ideological hierarchies on which society builds systematic justifications for the domination of some groups over others (power-over power): man over woman, culture over nature, race over race, organized crime against the law. In the latter context, the subordination of women in the unwritten rules of organized crime reflects the paradigm of the predominance over nature, over others and over women themselves, which must be functional for the survival of the group in order to guarantee the family strength which is its lifeblood. It is on these connections that the theme of ecofeminism meets that of the role of women in organized crime in Southern Italy, where social inequalities still persist because the patriarchal system expresses a hateful idea of domination, domination over women, over the poorest countries, and over nature.

Links between ecofeminism, family, patriarchy, and female subordination in criminal organizations In the Calabrian criminal organization, the family represents the real strength of the organization. The 'Ndrangheta (the name of organized crime in Calabria Region, South of Italy) was born as an organization structured for families, each of which has full powers both over the territory where it operates, and over the members of the family itself. Thus the clan exploits land, women and children, for the sole purpose of strengthening the criminal organization. Calabria is a very complex and restless land, brutalized by the criminal hand that has devastated landscapes of poignant beauty, archaeological sites and natural parks, to increase the enormous volume of business it already manages, and to assert its strength in the area. It is an eternally unfinished place, symbolically represented by unfinished houses, by the concrete that hides the shame of its peasant tradition only redeemed by Calabrians who emigrated to America, redesigning the geography of their countries of origin, and cultivating the secret ambition to replace the aristocratic-feudal power, without ever wishing to change the true meaning of belonging to a beautiful and difficult land. The only constant feature of this ancestral restlessness is incompleteness; not only that of the houses waiting to be finished by the children, or grandchildren, or whoever will come later, but also the incompleteness of the countless public works never finished: dams, disused factories built with

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the prospect of work and prosperity, beds of dried-up rivers that today house only debris and garbage, precarious shacks on the edges of villages, and unstable fences that delimit a space, often an uncultivated, unproductive land which luxuriantly generates gorse and wildflowers in spite of the man who needs only to symbolically mark that that enclosed space belongs to him, without caring about it. It is as if only the affirmation of possession of that space counts, the rest does not matter; it has no value. In a land- even morphologically - disintegrated, the process of progressive construction of the community is tiring, at times impossible. It is the culture of bonding with others and the affirmation of the principle according to which it is the law, that regulates everyone's lives. The relationship with place also tells us a lot about family relationships, woven through the force of blood, which holds the members of the nucleus close and keeps out everything else, which is perceived as the enemy, a stranger, one to be feared. The sense of domination over space is reflected in the history of family ties, to which the same canon has traditionally been applied, one that for centuries has legitimized and endorsed the concept of domination over women and children. The same predatory force that the criminal organization exerts over the territory, exploiting and plundering, is also exerted over the women who are enslaved to the power of the clan that asks them to be subordinate and accept stereotyped roles of wives and mothers, transmitting the deviant cultural values from one generation to the next to secure power for an indefinite time. That women are the future of the gangs, the glue of the family, 'Ndrangheta knows well. The centrality of the family amplifies the concrete importance of female figures, albeit formally denied by the culture of subordination. And this is so true that over time the women of the 'Ndrangheta have added to the ‘internal containment’; the increasingly explicit function of intermediaries in the ‘external’ activities of the clan (Pietilä 115). But what happens in the 'Ndrangheta if women break the bond and decide to talk to the police? The results are disconcerting. When a woman starts talking to the police and reveals the organization's secrets, the system ‘goes mad’, because the woman is generally considered the means of consolidating and transmitting family codes: she educates, forges, holds the structure together. If a woman decides to speak in the 'Ndrangheta and beyond, she does not exclusively destroy the family, she destroys the system. Crossing the border means breaking the bonds of belonging, thus

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questioning one's identity and reconstructing it according to other points of reference (Sciarrone 2006). The stories of the women of the 'Ndrangheta who decide to collaborate with justice follow the just-evoked concatenation of events, their attempt to free themselves from the grip of organization crime matures in the existential sphere, and is transformed into the request for greater independence. It is clear that the affirmation of a new self, of one's own subjectivity disconnected from the criminal context leads to painful choices, choices that mark a clear fracture between them and the mafia family. How much these choices are feared by the men of 'Ndrangheta has been seen in the dramatic stories of Lea Garofalo and Maria Concetta Cacciola: the fear of the breaking of the family pact, of the telluric movement that arises from within, marked their fate, their deaths useful both to stop the judicial action, and to recompose the stability of the organization system under the aegis of terror. With physical, psychological violence, with underhanded torture and moral blackmail, the men of the mafia family have tried to heal the fracture caused by the voices of women, relying on violence and further attempts to subordinate them. This is why it is possible to say that the 'Ndrangheta is afraid of them, and applies the paradigm of domination and destruction to assert its strength, always and in any situation. In the face of the disruptive choice to collaborate with justice, undertaken by some courageous Calabrian women, it is natural to reflect on the fact that the female voices of 'Ndrangheta represent the anti-'ndrangheta par excellence: in their choices there is an even stronger desire to break with the mafia world. For many years, the role of women within mafia-type organizations was ignored or underestimated, as if their presence were invisible and irrelevant to the outside. All this has allowed the women of the clans to move skillfully in the sphere of illegality, becoming strong points for organizations, silent accomplices of a code to be handed down, an active part in relational dynamics, in the transmission of information, and in the internal management of the organization. The vestals of the pedagogy of believing and obeying have carried out their duty as educators of the mafia culture, with self-denial and, for a long time, holding firm to the morality of ‘the family’. The women transmitted information to and from the prisons, to the men of the family, they managed the assets during the absence of fathers, brothers and relatives, often in the

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belief that they were carrying out their role scrupulously, even when this meant violating the law. The women of 'Ndrangheta have traditionally identified themselves first of all as ‘wives of [...]’, ‘mothers of[...]’, ‘sisters of [...]’ (Sciarrone 49), with the main task of facilitating the reproduction of the family cell, which is at the basis of the formation of other criminal cells. Totally absorbed by the family dimension, they contributed to the overlap between affection and criminal affairs, to the point of confusing them. This makes it increasingly difficult, and more tragic therefore, to decide to cut the threads of this wellstructured canvas. Women’s experiences "often recall those of the heroines of Greek tragedies, torn between opposing tensions poised between several instances, torn in their choices" (Sciarrone 50). Refusing to follow the suffocating duties of the blood family, starting from scratch, marks a turning point for the women. It is a moment of transition that requires the acquisition of a new identity that is difficult to achieve, because it generates suffering, requires the tiring and painful deconstruction of deeply rooted affective and relational codes, and is also based on the biological role that the mafia attributes to women, which allows them to ‘count’ within the dominant male system. They have the task of perpetuating the ‘species’ through procreation and are raised to cultivate the feeling of gratification for this that comes from the male world. From childhood, women born in the criminal context come into contact with the mafia reality, and assimilate the characters even in silence. This peculiar learning process is clearly explained by a sentence that the Calabrian collaborator of Justice, Giuseppina Pesce, pronounced to the magistrates after starting her path of collaboration: Being inside a family you hear these talks, where you go, also [...] that is, even not being part of it, not taking part in the speeches but you hear them, that's it! Eh, you have to live there! It does not mean, however, that they share each other, eh, this I wanted to point out […] I know, however, it does not mean that they are things that […] that is, maybe, it hurts to know them and also hurt to hear them and even breathe them. (quoted in Sciarrone 52)

It is precisely the verb ‘to breathe’ that, more than any other word, clarifies how, and to what extent, women absorb information, speeches like sponges, and the phrases, becoming guardians of secrets that are passed on, thanks to silence.

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This is why when the educational process is interrupted, when women decide to talk, thus moving away from the suffocating male chauvinist system, and decide to breathe fresh air, the chain of transmission of the code of honor is broken. This is what happened to Calabrian women who over recent years have decided to break the silence, in search of new and autonomous ways of expression. Often these are very young women, who, through a process that is certainly painful and full of obstacles, choose to distinguish the world of affection from that of crime, and begin an intense collaboration with the justice system. In many cases, they are the wives of fugitives or convicts sentenced to life in prison for mafia crimes, real ‘white widows’ who cannot bear the weight of sentimental and emotional loneliness as they did in the past. And with the aim of recovering the ‘sphere of feelings’, they choose to collaborate by challenging the founding values of mafia-type organizations. The women who talk to justice shake the system, and thus become the hope of new generations, leading the way in the fight against organized crime. They find the courage to undertake these paths because they know how to restart their interrupted emotions. It is no coincidence that the silent revolution, born from the irrepressible need to respond to the call of the soul, started from its own female world, because the bond that the patriarchal tradition had established between women, men, and family obligation, was overturned by women themselves, assuming a liberating role, just as the ecofeminist Griffin envisaged. In fact, Griffin mentioned that acquiring a deep awareness of our origins, our present, and our purpose, means acquiring full awareness of the interconnection with every single plant, animal, and human life, forming a single body with the planet. On the other hand, Rosemary Ruether stated in 1975 that, “Women must realize that for them there can be no liberation nor can there be a solution to the ecological crisis within a society whose fundamental model of relationships is that of domination (Ruether 1975, (204), 1993, 1994, 1996). In 1987, this approach was confirmed in writing by the American philosopher Karen Warren, whose reflection, together with that of the Australian Val Plumwood (1993, 1994), had a great influence. In Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections, Warren (1987) urged feminists to turn their attention to ecological problems and identify the connections between environmental degradation, and sexism, and other forms of social oppression. All the themes of feminist and ecofeminist reflection, the critique of rationalism, the connection between women and nature in Western theological and philosophical traditions, the ethics of care, and the animal

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question, were addressed with a philosophical-cultural slant aimed at enhancing differences and interconnections. Ecofeminist analyses are structurally intercultural (Warren 1994, 1996, 2000). Karen Warren would later write: What makes ecofeminism multicultural is the fact that it includes in its analysis of women-nature connection, the inextricable interconnection of all social systems of domination, for example, racism, classism, ethnocentrism, imperialism, colonialism and discrimination with respect to age, affective preferences, and so on. It takes into account different cultures (Warren 1994, 2).

The investigation into the links between ecofeminism and the role of women in organized crime in Calabria confirms that life on earth is a network of interconnections and there is no natural hierarchy; the hierarchy is a creation of human beings that is projected onto nature and used to justify oppression: sexual, social, racial and so on.

Common traits of all systems of oppression Sexism, racism, classism, speciesism, androcentrism, patriarchy, and the domination of the territory of criminal organizations are phenomena that are all systems of oppression which reinforce each other and lead to the degradation of life and the destruction of nature. What oppressed groups women, colonized peoples, the poor - have in common is the fact that each has been equated with nature, and have been considered part of nature, and outside the sphere of reason and history. The category of ‘nature’ is primarily a political one. Placing oneself alongside the female point of view, therefore, does not reflect a desire for opposition, but is a way of observing and interpreting the world from another perspective, from below, and the gender perspective is the one that best allows us to expose the intertwining of relationships of domain: Among white peoples, peoples of color, the poor, children, the elderly, the colonized and other human groups threatened by the destruction of the environment, it is those who belong to the female gender who face the greatest risks and suffer irreparable damage greater than those who belong to the male gender (Warren 2000, 2).

Domination over women is naturally at the heart of any feminist interpretation of domination, but it is also an illuminating and well-

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theorized model for any other form of domination, as the oppressed are both feminized and naturalized (Plumwood 1994, 73). The patriarchal conceptual frameworks, which are also the theoretical presuppositions of modern science and philosophy, are characterized by hierarchy and oppositional dualisms: high/low, male/female, mind/body, culture/nature, reason/emotion, action/passivity, universal/particular, freedom/necessity, civilized/primitive, public/private, subject/object, where the first term is associated with men and is high, the second is associated with women and is devalued. The list could go on for a long time; every distinction can be treated as dualism and become a real conceptual weapon constantly reworked and refined. Val Plumwood focused on the nature of dualism in Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (Plumwood 1993, 43): Each dualism is connected to the others in such a way as to form a labyrinth of oppressive links linked by the logical structure characterized by exclusion and denial. In fact, dualism is not just a dichotomy or a hierarchy, which can be contingent and surmountable, but a way of thinking that makes equality and relationship unthinkable. A dualism is a relationship of separation and domination characterized by a radical exclusion not open to change. Religion, philosophy, science, cultural symbols, social models, sexual norms, education, economics reflect this logic of background, and conceives it as non-essential, with no purpose of its own (Plumwood 1993, 41-59)

From the priority given to abstract thought, from Aristotle's sphere of freedom in the life of the polis as opposed to the sphere of necessity in the world of oikos, from the liberal distinction between public and private, the world of men was constructed in opposition to the world of nature and that of women. Being a man means dissociating oneself from the feminine and from what it represents: weakness, care, inclusion. Masculinity can be achieved through opposition to the concrete world of everyday life, escaping from contact with the female world of the home towards the male world of politics or public life. This two-world experience lies at the heart of oppositional dualisms. Dualism arises from the denial of dependence on a subordinate ‘other’. In order for the image of the superior, active, autonomous man, creator of culture and technology, to emerge, it was necessary to obscure and devalue the feminine, and this paradigm was used to strengthen criminal organizations that are based on patriarchy, on gender stereotypes, and female subordination. Only by separating culture from nature could the patriarchal order of the self-sufficient man who creates himself emerge, a symbolic order based on violence against

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differences translated into inferiority. The foundational violence with deadly outcomes, is, in fact, the universalization and absolute claim of only one of the two sexes of the human race, which bases civilization and the political order on itself and begins to displace all differences, especially sexual difference, from its centrality. This dynamic, this model, runs through the whole of Western culture (Cavarero 2007, 40-41). Ecofeminism, on the contrary, by placing the emphasis on the interconnection of all forms of life, offers an ethical theory based not on separation or abstract individualism, but on the values of inclusion, relationships, the enhancement and conservation of life, and motherhood, starting from the awareness of the vulnerability of each one. The recurring image in ecofeminist literature is that of weaving and spinning, and the ethics inspired by it have been defined as a ‘quilt in the making’; …a process similar to patchwork, composed of scraps offered by people living in different socio-economic, cultural and historical conditions…The design that will emerge will depend on the life experiences, ethical issues and specific socio-economic and historical contexts of those who work there (Warren 2000, 66-68, Kheel 2008, 214).

Ecofeminist ethics is primarily based on empathy, the ability to feel and listen. Perceiving each ‘I’, moment by moment, as the provisional center of condensation of a network of interdependencies, refers to the ideas of process, change, becoming; certainly not of stability and preserved order. On the one hand, there is, therefore, a way to be clearly antagonistic to the existing; on the other hand, is the attempt to ensure that different subjectivities all find space to express themselves (Donini 1990, 239). This starts from bodily experiences related to motherhood, and understands the body as a source of knowledge, not as pure biology. It is not possible, in fact, to separate the ability to give life from women and their bodies, bodies which have been robbed of their cultural, human, and spiritual dimensions, and which are manipulated, tortured and commodified. Recognizing that bodily experiences place women in relation to nature differently from men, the various authors have highlighted a different way of knowing, learning and feeling. Feeling the interrelation with living beings and nature requires intense attention to the reality of the other, and requires strength of concentration and judgment, and the ability to grasp the experiences of others. Ecofeminist ethics is an emotional and intellectual practice, an ethics of compassion that includes all living beings (Donovan 1996).

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In outlining the transition from a society dominated by the symbolic order of death to one oriented towards life; from a linear, fragmented, and abstract way of thinking, dominated by oppositions to a way of thinking that is respectful of subjectivity, of individuality; and from a politics based on universalistic categories, to one that has to do with plurality and differences, ecofeminists have placed particular emphasis on the symbolic character of the maternal, or on what it represents; the gift, the care, and the acceptance of the other as an unrepeatable singularity. The maternal act of giving and nourishing, already a reference point of the Gandhian economy, becomes a symbol and model of another economy, of another society in harmony with nature in which the sexual division of labor can be overcome. Hilkka Pietilä wrote: The world of nourishment and intimate human relationships constitutes the sphere in which basic human needs are anchored and in which models for human alternatives can be found. This world, which has been carried out mainly by women, already constitutes a cultural alternative, a source of ideas and values capable of pointing the way to an alternative development for nations and all humanity (Pietilä 1986, quoted by Mellor 1993, 18).

Ecofeminism then, could be the way to deconstruct the patriarchal subculture that is the lifeblood of criminal organizations, as well as the way to affirm democracy understood as an action aimed at guaranteeing the foundations of human life, an everyday life made of care and protection of life, friendship, solidarity, and compassion. In these terms, democracy would become what Dewey hoped for, “a way of life” (Dewey 1916), a process, like that of sowing and reaping, a path in which the path itself is the destination. Democracy would thus be a daily experience. To experience democracy as a force capable of breaking down barriers, overcoming contradictions, transforming relations of domination and allowing the full expression of sociality, it is necessary for men and women to understand the value of difference and the importance of solidarity. The future of a truly human community, free from the deadly actions of criminal organizations, founded on connection, not on separation and opposition, requires in the first place that men, in order to preserve their own humanity and dignity, want and know how to recognize and make their own the values of the support of life, change their way of thinking, of being in the world and in the relationship with women, reject violence, and move away from a social conception of virility as power.

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Works Cited Allen Taylor A. (1999), “Feminism, Social Science, and the Meaning of Modernity: The Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States" 1860-1914, in The American Historical Review, vol 4, pp1085-1113. Cantrell C. H. (1996), “Women and Language” in Susan Griffin’s Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, in Warren K. J., Ecological Feminist Philosophies, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indianapolis, pp197-210. Cavarero A. (2007), Il femminilenegato. La radice grecad ellaviolenza occidentale, Pazzini, Villa Verucchio. D’Eaubonne F. (1974), Le féminismeou la mort, Pierre Horay, Paris. —. (1976) Les femmes avant le patriarcat, Payot, Paris. Dewey J. (1916), “Democracy and Education”, in The Middle Works of John Dewey 1899-1924, Boydston JoAnn (ed.), vol.9, Carbondale, Southern Illinois Press, 1978. Donini E. (1990) Lanube e il limite. Donne, scienza, percorsinel tempo, Rosenberg Sellier, Torino. Donovan J. (1996) “Attention to Suffering: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals”, in Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 27, 1, pp81-102. Griffin S. (1978) Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, Harper and Row, New York. Kheel M. (2008), Nature Ethics. An Ecofeminist Perspective, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham. Maathai W. (2006) The Green Belt Movement, Lantern Books, New York. —. (2010) La sfidadell’Africa, Nuovi Mondi, Modena. Mellor M. (1993) “Ecofemminismo e eco-socialismo. Dilemmi di essenzialismo e materialism”, in Capitalismo, natura e socialismo. Rivista di ecologiasocialista, vol 1, pp10-29. Mellor M. (1997) Feminism & Ecology, Polity Press, Cambridge. Mellor M. (2006) “Ecofeminist Political Economy”, in International Journal of Green Economics, no.1/2, pp139-150. Michaelson M. (1994) “Wangari Maathai and Kenyas Green Belt Movement: Exploring the Evolution and Potentialities of Consensus Movement Mobilization, in Social Problems, vol. 41. Mies M.-V. Bennholdt-Thomsen (2005) The Subsistence Perspective. Beyond the Globalised Economy, Zed Books, London-New York. Mies M. (1986) Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. Women in the International Division of Labour, Zed Books, London.

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Pietilä H. (1997) “The Triangle of the Human Economy: Householdcultivation industrial Production. An Attempt at Making Visible the Human Economic in Toto”, in Ecological Economico, vol 2, pp113-128. Plumwood V. (1993) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London-NewYork. Plumwood V. (1994), “The Ecopolitics Debate and the Politics of Nature”, in Warren K.J. (ed.), Ecological Feminism, Routledge, London-New York, pp. 64-87. Ruether Radford R. (1975), New Woman/New Earth, Seabury Press, New York. Ruether Radford R. (1996), Women Healing Earth. Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion, SCM Press, London. Ruether Radford R. (1993), “Symbolic and Social Connections of the Oppression of Women and the Domination of Nature”, in Adams C. J. (ed.), Ecofeminism and the Sacred, Continuum, New York, pp13-23. Ruether Radford R. (1995), Gaia e Dio: unateologiafemminista per la guarigione della terra (1994), Queriniana, Brescia. Sciarrone R. (2006) “Passaggio di frontiera: la difficile via d’uscitadalla mafia calabrese”, in A. Dino (ed), Pentiti, Donzelli, Roma. Shiva V. (2002) Terra madre. Soprav vivere allosviluppo (1989), UTET, Torino. Warren K. J. (1987) “Feminism and Ecology: MakingConnections, in Environmental Ethics, vol 9, 1, pp3-20. Warren K. J. (1994) Ecological Feminism, Routledge, London-New York. Warren K. J. (1996) “Ecological Feminist Philosophies: An Overview of the Issues”, in Ead, Ecological Feminist Philosophies, Indiana University Press, Bloomington-Indianapolis, pp. IX-XXVI. Warren K. J. (2000). Ecofeminist Philosophy. A Western Perspective on What It Is and Why It Matters, Rowman & Little Field, Lanham. Warren K. J. (1996) Ecological Feminist Philosophies, Indiana University Press, Bloomington-Indianapolis. Weber T. (1988). Hugging the Trees. The Story of the Chipko Movement, Viking-Penguin, New Delhi 1988.

THE ECOLOGY OF BEING WOMAN: UNDERSTANDING ECOFEMINISM IN THE AGE OF TRANSNATIONAL CAPITALISM JAI SINGH 1

Abstract There is an ecology of ideas that influences not only human life and its relationship with the natural world but also the world of non-human nature. For a long time, people have been thinking that there is a dichotomy between man and nature, but now many theorists have started challenging this notion because man is a product of nature that intervenes in the processes of nature. One of the major thinkers of the contemporary era, Felix Guattari, adds a new dimension to the understanding of the man-nature relationship when he talks about three different, but interlinked, ecologies; mental, social, and environmental ecology. There exists a very complicated relationship between these ecologies, and even the slightest change in any of them brings about a corresponding change in all. The philosophy has evolved as a phallocentric discipline, and therefore one of the biggest challenges for ecofeminists is to choose a stance that can avoid all kinds of appropriation at the hands of phallocentric philosophers. A proper understanding of the ecofeminist stance is not possible without understanding the ecology of being a woman, because the very act of becoming an intellectual brings them nearer to the phallocentric position which is founded on the exploitation of both nature and women, and if they are not intellectuals, they are considered nearer to nature and hence their exploitation is justified. This difficult situation can be termed as the ecology of being a woman which is firmly established across time and space, and an ecofeminist has to adapt herself to grow outside this ecology.

1

Dr Jai Singh is a Professor at English and Foreign Language University, Hyderabad, India

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Keywords: De-territorialization, mechanosphere, capitalism, World Bank, ecofeminism, Western civilization, ecology, ecology of being a woman. “There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds.” (Gregory Bateson, 484)

With the dawn of consciousness and the invention of language, an ecology of ideas came into being which influenced the ecology of nature, both directly and indirectly. Therefore, while talking about ecology, Felix Guattari in The Three Ecologies (2000) adds a new dimension to the understanding of ecology when he foregrounds three different, but interlinked, ecologies; mental, social, and environmental ecology. The relationship between these ecologies is established and sustained through interactions between human beings and the world of nature, as Jay L Lemke foregrounds: First, that human organism only develops normally in the presence of environmental distributions of available matter, energy, and information which afford recapitulation of phylogenetically evolved trajectories. Second, that molecular scale information in the genome assists in the selforganization of higher scale structures, but only if the phylogenetically ‘expected’ environmental complements are present, and only with the result that the emergent structures will themselves be ‘tuned’ to be selectively sensitive to particular kinds of further environmental input. Third, that all levels of organization in an ecosocial system are in a continuous process of development, enabling (from below) and constraining (from above) development at each intermediate level, but with each level developing at a significantly different characteristic timescale (i.e. rate; faster at lower levels, more slowly at higher levels) (Lemke, 70-71).

Any change, either in the structure or in meaning of socio-linguistic formations, changes the society; its structure as well as its perception of physical reality. At the same time, social structure and economic and political circumstances interact with socio-linguistic formations, and this interaction not only mutates the linguistic structures and linguistic artifacts, but also determines the dimensions of social, economic and political circumstances, not just for the present, but also for the future, as propounded by T. Deacon: [T]he ability to use language symbolically has phylogenetically affected the human brain, not in a direct cause and effect manner, but indirectly through its effects on human behavior and on the changes that human behavior brings about in the environment. Even though the ability to use language as a symbolic system doesn’t bring about genetic changes in the nature of the human brain, the changes in environmental conditions brought about by human symbolic responses to that environment can, in the long run, bias

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natural selection and alter the selection of cognitive predispositions that will be favored in the future (Deacon, qtd. in Kramsch, 241).

In the words of Felix Guattari, under such circumstances when the fate, not only of the human species but also of the earth itself, depends on mental, social, and environmental ecology, the theoretical framework of ecofeminism becomes important because ecofeminists focus on the ecology of being a woman, as is evident from the major claims of ecofeminism foregrounded by Karen Warren, in Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections: x There are important connections between the oppression of women and the oppression of nature; x Understanding the nature of these connections is necessary to any adequate understanding of the oppression of women and the oppression of nature; x Feminist theory and practice must include an ecological perspective; x Solutions to ecological problems must include a feminist perspective (Warren, 4-5). Ecofeminism shifts the focus from merely the nature of trees and plants to the ecology of mindsets from long ago, in almost all societies around the world, and consolidated by various philosophers across time and space. Val Plumwood, in Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, gives a brief account of different philosophers’ comments establishing the relationship between women and nature to justify the exploitation of both: That women’s inclusion in the sphere of nature has been a major tool in their oppression emerges clearly from a glance at traditional sources: ‘Woman is a violent and uncontrolled animal’ (Cato 1989, 193); ‘A woman is but an animal and an animal not of the highest order’ (Burke 1989,187); ‘I cannot conceive of you to be human creatures, but a sort of species hardly a degree above a monkey’ (Swift 1989,191); ‘Howe’er man rules in science and in art / The sphere of women’s glories is the heart’ (Moore 1989,166); ‘Women represent the interests of the family and sexual life; the work of civilization has become more and more men’s business’ (Freud 1989, 80); ‘Women are certainly capable of learning, but they are not made for the higher forms of science, such as philosophy and certain types of creative activity; these require a universal ingredient’ (Hegel 1989, 62); ‘A necessary object, woman, who is needed to preserve the species or to provide food and drink’ (Aquinas 1989, 183). Feminine ‘closeness to nature’ has hardly been a compliment (Plumwood, 19).

This particular dimension of philosophers, and the anti-women and antinature stance of philosophy, and hence, the fields of intellectual calibration

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and intellectual growth, make the situation difficult for women as intellectuals. If they choose to be intellectuals, the language and intellectual traditions are already phallocentric, and therefore the moment they strive to be intellectuals they seek entry to a phallocentric zone that advocates the domination of nature and hence the domination of women. Therefore, most women thinkers may challenge the patriarchy but consolidate the phallocentric philosophy based on the exploitation of vulnerable sectors. The co-option of women intellectuals who are capable of consolidating the phallocentric dimensions of different disciplines seems liberating, as they are allowed to join elite men in the areas prohibited to them, and which are supposed to display certain kinds of human freedom, such as science and technology, as is evident from the increasing number of women in institutions dealing with science, technology, commerce, etc. These areas were previously reserved for the elite men, because they required the suppression of emotions, irrationality, and abstractness, and demanded objectivity which was assumed to be completely absent in both women and nature. Men, especially elite men, symbolize transcendence from ‘raw nature’ and are supposed to control both nature and women. Therefore, when women are allowed admittance to these institutions and organizations they are liberated individually. However, they tend to contribute to the exploitation of both nature and women in general. This phallocentric dimension of society and philosophy makes things difficult for the ecofeminists, and it is challenging to choose a stand which is both ecofeminist and avoids all kinds of appropriation. Therefore, along with the environmental ecology, the other two ecologies i.e. mental and social ecology, are equally important, and for any eco-critic in general, and eco-feminists in particular, it is necessary to understand the ecology of being a woman. Karen Warren foregrounds the overlapping of mental and social ecology over environmental ecology, and highlights the ecology of being a woman when she says, “Women are identified with nature and the realm of the physical; men are identified with the ‘human’ and the realm of the mental” (Warren, The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism, 130). Therefore, the significance of ecofeminists lies in their ability to expose and criticize not only the exploitation of nature, but also to criticize the use of naturalism (the use of the phallocentric understanding of nature) to justify the domination of women. In other words, the major struggle of ecofeminists is not to save the mere external nature, which will be protected once mental and social ecologies are set right, but to resist their own location within the philosophy and institutions. Ynestra King, in her essay “Feminism and the revolt of nature”

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terms ecofeminism as ‘cultural feminism’, which rejects both the denial of the nature/woman link (rationalist feminism) and the belief that women are more ‘natural’ than men (radical feminism), and she claims that “both these positions are unwittingly complicit with the nature/culture dualism. Women’s oppression is neither strictly historical nor strictly biological. It is both” (King, 13). While deliberating on the location of women intellectuals in general, and ecofeminists in particular, King foregrounds the essential feminist nature of ecological studies, because both are opposed to phallocentric domination, as she says, “If the nature/culture antagonism is the primary contradiction of our time, it is also what weds feminism and ecology and makes women the historic subject. Without an ecological perspective which asserts the interdependence of living things, feminism is disembodied” (King, 15). Warwick Fox does not see any difference between ecofeminism and deep ecology, which, according to him, “completely agree(s) with ecofeminists that men have been far more implicated in the history of ecological destruction than women. However, deep ecologists also agree with similar charges derived from other social perspectives: for example, that capitalists, whites, and Westerners have been far more implicated in the history of ecological destruction than pre-capitalist peoples, blacks, and nonWesterners” (Fox, 14). However, this argument is quite problematic, because nature, women, pre-capitalist people, blacks, and non-Westerners are historically considered closer to nature, or to nature in raw form. So, Warren hints at countering the ecology of being woman because domination of nature and domination of women are part of the same mental and social ecology. To consolidate her statement, she puts forward three arguments: First […] acknowledging the historical feminization of nature and naturalization of women as part of the exploitation of nature. Second […] the conceptual connections between the domination of women and the domination of nature are located in an oppressive […] patriarchal conceptual framework characterized by a logic of domination. Thus […] failure to notice the nature of this connection leaves at best an incomplete, inaccurate, and partial account of what is required of a conceptually adequate environmental ethic. Third, the claim that, in contemporary culture […] the word feminist currently helps to clarify just how the domination of nature is conceptually linked to patriarchy and, hence, how the liberation of nature is conceptually linked to the termination of patriarchy. Thus, because it has critical bite in contemporary culture, it serves as an important reminder that in contemporary sex-gendered, raced, classed, and naturist culture, an unlabeled position functions as a privileged and ‘unmarked’ position. That is, without the addition of the word feminist, one presents

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The Ecology of Being Woman environmental ethics as if it has no bias, including male-gender bias, which is just what ecofeminists deny: Failure to notice the connections between the twin oppressions of women and nature is male-gender bias (emphasis in the original) (Warren, The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism, 144).

Warren foregrounds the ecology of being woman and the challenges it poses to the ecofeminists. This mental and social ecology is consolidated by Immanuel Kant, one of the strongest influences on the modern thinking process, and one who talks about the duality between nature and culture wherein culture represented by man must dominate nature which is also identified with women. According to him, culture, as represented by man, remains unaffected by natural inclinations, impulses, passions, and sensual desires, and acts in accordance with the dictates of reason alone. Unlike women, man’s will, and his actions, are free from natural inclinations, and so are free from nature. Immanuel Kant associates both culture and man with free will independent of nature, when he says: Now, as no determining ground of the will except the universal legislative form [of its maxim] can serve as a law for it, such will must be conceived as wholly independent of the natural law of appearances in their mutual relations, i.e., the law of causality. Such independence is called freedom in the strictest, i.e., transcendental, sense. Therefore, a will to which only the law-giving form of the maxim can serve as a law is a free will (Kant, 28).

Therefore, in the phallocentric philosophy, only man, and not woman, is seen as a rational being, endowed with a free will and emancipated from nature. So, when a woman emerges as an intellectual subject, she, like man, is emancipated from nature and consolidates the exploitation of both nature and women, constituting a difficult situation for ecofeminists. Therefore, the major concern of ecofeminism is to problematize the conceptual connection between women and nature that justifies the domination of both. Holly L Wilson foregrounds the domination of nature and women through the use of vocabulary drawn from nature itself: Modern science has portrayed nature as passive, inert, and as a collection of mere objects to be manipulated, and women are connected to nature in various ways. The main point is that when nature is viewed in this way, and women are identified with nature . . . then dominating women is justified. Nature is passive and inferior, women are natural, hence women are passive and inferior; since nature is inferior, it is permissible to use nature for all our arbitrary purposes, hence it is permissible to use women for arbitrary purposes (Wilson, 377).

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As developments in the field of modern science facilitated the emergence of capitalism in Europe, it spread to the rest of the world and dominated from its emergence. This is because capitalism as a universal system of dominance consolidated the exploitation of nature including human beings in an unprecedented manner. It co-opts whites, blacks, Europeans, Asians, Africans, men and women to consolidate its system of exploitation and exploits all of them without much discrimination through the significant changes in the mental and social ecology. So the real struggle is not just to save ecology of outer nature, rather it is to save the mental ecology which is endangered by capitalism, as Felix Guattari foregrounds in The Three Ecologies, when he says: It is equally imperative to confront capitalism’s effects in the domain of mental ecology in everyday life: individual, domestic, material, neighborly, creative or one’s personal ethics. Rather than looking for a stupefying and infantilizing consensus, it will be a question in the future of cultivating a dissensus and the singular production of existence (Guattari, 50).

The mental and social ecology promoted by capitalism co-opts everyone and uses them to its own advantage. In the words of Heather Eaton, “ideologically, economic globalization appeals to an ideal of adventure, entrepreneurship, and superiority. ‘Gateways to the World’, ‘Go Global’, ‘Track Global Competition’, ‘Spread Global Wings’, ‘Crossing International Borders’, and ‘Becoming Master of One’s Domain’, - these slogans invite expressions about global prospects for business” (Eaton, 25). The impact of this rhetoric is very powerful, and it acts like a ‘black hole’ that attracts all resources, human and non-human, towards its center, appropriating them to its own advantage. Like the earlier structures of feudalism and patriarchy, this new structure of capitalism does not discriminate against people directly, but co-opts everyone who can strengthen it, directly or indirectly. However, it destroys the mental and social ecology, and hence, the environmental ecology, as evident from examples cited by Eaton: The consequences of this seductive rhetoric are never mentioned. What about the mining corporations in Latin America that use cyanide in the water to separate minerals to produce gold for jewelry? The water table has become saturated with cyanide from which animals, plants, and people drink. Further unacknowledged repercussions are the relocation of workers and the resulting fragmentation of community structures; the increasing sexual exploitation of women and children by men as the social fabric weakens; the loss of home, land, and livelihood, because land is now owned by a multinational corporation; and the escalation of toxins in air, land, food, and in most life forms. The lives of many, especially poor women, are marked by an increase in work and a decrease in health. As a result of some

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The Ecology of Being Woman globalization initiatives, there is deterioration in educational and health systems, a rise in infant mortality, and a decline in democratic pluralism (Eaton, 25).

In this capitalist setup, everyone, including Blacks, Asians, Women, etc., who works for the big multinational companies and their subsidiaries, contributes to the emergence of pro-capitalist mental and social ecology. In this situation, the question regarding the effectiveness of ecofeminism arises, because whomsoever resists this megastructure is held hostage by numerous layers of the system. Such a person is labelled as a ‘fake ecologist’ or ‘ecofeminist’ by another more powerful group of ecologists and ecofeminists. The situation is so grave that anti-human and anti-nature actions are termed ‘pro-people’ actions, as Eaton notes: […] much of life’s work, caring for children or the aged, cottage industries, subsistence farming, and women’s work in particular, are not calculated into the GNP. It is even more skewed, and repulsive when social and ecological disasters, such as the Gulf War or oil spills, actually register as a gain to the GNP (Eaton, 26).

In the name of globalization, the transnational capital erodes democratic setup around the world through the ownership of institutions that can influence public opinion. Over a few decades, people are persuaded to doubt their own elected representatives and trust multinational capitalist organizations. Simultaneously, at the time of elections, the same multinational capitalist organizations build a narrative in favor of the candidates chosen by them, and people elect those same candidates. Therefore, the idea of a welfare state is completely taken away. The multinational capitalist organizations have captured the psyche of masses to such an extent that they dislike a welfare state and harbor their hopes in transnational capitalism. They are cleverly persuaded that elected governments, and the restrictions put in place by them on free trade, are the biggest hurdles in the path of greater GNP and GDP. They are blinded to an increase in undeclared slavery, child labor, assaults on the environment, the percolation of toxins in the food chain, and numerous other dangerous aspects of transnational capitalism. The very language and vocabulary of personal understanding and solidarity are becoming extinct, as Guattari says, “it is not only species that are becoming extinct but also the words, phrases, and gestures of human solidarity. A stifling cloak of silence has been thrown over the emancipatory struggles of women, and of the new proletariat: the unemployed, the marginalized, immigrants” (Guattari, 45).

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Understanding the ecology of being a woman becomes extremely important, because the location of an ecofeminist in the university space, highly controlled and funded by the corporate world in the highly capitalized First World, is quite precarious. This is because her very recognition as an intellectual depends on her location in the channels of transnational capitalism. Transnational capitalism has colonized almost all spaces, from cinema and TV to classrooms and social media, which makes it possible for the corporate world to control the psyche of the masses. In this regard, Eaton raises some very pertinent questions regarding the location of an ecofeminist in the big machinery of transnational capitalism, when she asks: How can ecofeminist theology respond? What theoretical frameworks are adequate to match the corporate narrative? […] Do we engage in the foundational thinking? Or is this another form of hegemonic oppressive discourse? Corporate rule is a meta-narrative. Feminists deconstruct metanarratives. Postmodern, poststructuralist narratives argue that meta-narratives are archaic. Certainly this emphasis is necessary for the emancipation and appreciation of human/cultural distinctions and the decentering of hegemonic interpretations of reality, but globalization is now the meta-narrative (Eaton, 31).

In most cases, the theoretical framework for ecofeminism is drawn from postmodernism/poststructuralism, and it tries to deconstruct the metanarratives. However, a postmodern economy based on transnational capitalism is a mega structure which is beyond the grasp of any individual, or group of individuals, or even any nation. Now the question arises; how can the theory of eco-feminism be used to challenge the megastructure of transnational capitalism? According to Rebecca Chopp, the answer to this question lies in the effective use of the theoretical framework, methodology, and epistemology. She says that instead of avoiding the global situation, or the utopian visions of feminism, feminist theology “might think even harder about the use of theory” (Chopp, qtd. in Eaton p31). The seemingly romantic ecofeminism that revolves around preserving wildlife, and celebrates some small-time movements to save trees, plants, animals, birds, etc., without being aware of the mental and social ecology, seems appealing, but, according to Eaton, this “ecofeminist emancipatory vision and strategy seems weak in the context of today’s world (Eaton, 34). Rosemary Radford Ruether produces a critique of romantic ecofeminism and foregrounds the complex relationship that exists between capitalism, human beings, and nature, when she says,

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The Ecology of Being Woman “we must recognize the ways in which the devastation of the earth is an integral part of an appropriation of the goods of the earth whereby a wealthy minority can enjoy strawberries in winter, while those who pick and pack the strawberries lack the money for bread and are dying from pesticide poisonings” (Radford Ruether, 5).

The most challenging feature of capitalism is that all aspects of life are commodified, and everyone, including scholars and intellectuals, is brought under control through the propagation of dualism which is reproduced and sustained within all discourses, including art. Susan Bordo foregrounds the true and all-consuming nature of capitalist consumption when she says: In advanced consumer capitalism […] an unstable, agonistic construction of personality is produced by the contradictory structure of economic life. On the one hand, as producers of goods and services, we must sublimate, delay, or repress desires for immediate gratification; we must cultivate the work ethic. On the other hand, as consumers, we must display a boundless capacity to capitulate to desire and indulge in impulse; we must hunger for constant and immediate satisfaction. The regulation of desire, thus, becomes an ongoing problem, as we find ourselves continually besieged by temptation, while socially condemned for overindulgence (Bordo, 199).

In the age of transnational capitalism, the personality of the common mass, as well as the personality of intellectuals, are products of capitalist consumption, and ecofeminists are no exception. Under such circumstances the nature and scope of the intended projects of ecofeminists are big questions. The answers come from Rebecca Chopp’s assumption that feminist theology “might think even harder about the use of theory” (qtd. in Eaton, 31). Various scholars have tried to rectify the mental and social ecology that opens up the possibility to save the ecology of nature as well. For instance, Karl Marx challenged the dualism of man and nature/women that ultimately validates the exploitation of both nature and women. He challenges the dualism by asserting that “Man lives from nature, i.e. nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself for man is a part of nature” (Capital, 328). Christopher Caudwell also supports this notion and challenges the dualism when he asserts that “the whole process of working, thinking and behaving like a human individual is one world of individuals and Nature” (Cauldwell, 279). In the prehistoric age, when the difference between human beings and other creatures was minimal, there existed a metabolic process between man and nature; a process, by which man, through his own actions, medicates,

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regulated and controlled the metabolism between him and nature. But an irreparable rift emerged in this metabolism as a result of emergence of human intervention that culminated in the capitalist relations of production, which, as Karl Marx points out, is “built on systematic alienation from all forms of naturally based need. Hence under the artificial regime of capital, it is the ‘search for exchange value (that is profit), rather than the servicing of genuine, universal, natural needs, which constitute the object, the motive for production’” (Capital, 873). Some mutations in social linguistic genes, which Gregory Bateson calls “epistemological fallacies” (Bateson, 484) in Western civilization, which spread to the whole world through colonialism, were both cause and effect of capitalism. The capitalist structure follows Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, according to which the unit of survival is the individual/ family or species. But in reality, as Gregory Bateson argues, “the unit of survival is organism plus environment. We are learning by bitter experience that the organism which destroys its environment destroys itself” (Bateson, 484). This epistemological error of choosing the wrong unit ends up “with the species versus the other species around it or versus the environment in which it operates […] Man against nature” (Bateson, 484) or even man against man/woman. Another major scholar, Guattari, also, challenges the theory of dualism when he says, “nature cannot be separated from culture; in order to comprehend the interactions between ecosystems, the mechanosphere and the social and individual Universe of reference; we must learn to think ‘transversally” (Guattari, 43). As the environment is invaded by harmful chemicals, similarly the psychological space is invaded, populated, and saturated by degenerated images and statements. In the field of social ecology, industrialists, capitalists, and MNC’s are permitted to proliferate freely. They redevelop by converting people into bonded laborers. It is so because the ideologies of capitalism capture the mind, not by certain types of production but by products of consumption. So scholars and intellectuals, just like the common masses, consciously or unconsciously serve the capitalistic structure, and ecofeminists are no exception. It unleashes the ideology of unrestricted competition that forces poorer countries and sections to sell labor, especially women’s labor, extremely cheaply, which leads to the speedy plunder of natural resources. That is why technology and scientific advances that could be used to serve human beings remain instead in the service of a capitalist drive for profitability. The most dangerous part of this capitalistic structure is that the increasing globalization of all areas of our lives is not being directed by one particular capitalist organization, party, or country. It is so pervasive that no part of

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human society in the world can be called free of it, because, as Gray Genosko foregrounds, this ‘post-Industrial-capitalism’, which Guattari calls, ‘integrated world capitalism (IWC)’ is delocalized and deterritorialized to such an extent that it is impossible to locate the source of its power” (Guattari, 24-30). IWC’s most potent weapon for achieving social control without violence is the mass media, which links the whole world, and in this way, is involved in the creation of demand, so there will always be a market for capital investment. If we look into the emergence of ecocritical theory, the production of its discourse, and moreover, the production of this discourse’s consumption, we will find that it has less to do with individuals’ need for rejuvenating the environment, and more to do with the profits of those who invest capital in all these ventures. It clearly shows that a new type of individual is being shaped and molded by the unseen pressure of market forces, as Guattari and Negri in Communists Like Us: New Spaces of Liberty, New Lines of Alliance point out: The time of capital, or the capacity to translate every sequence of life into terms of exchange, and of overdetermination with the urgency and the necessity of the operations of economic quantification and of political command; terror, or the capacity to annihilate all those who refuse to submit to it: this is what the reshuffling of the traditional functions of the state, and their unlimited penetration of people’s attitudes, sensibility and minds, amounts to. By threatening the very foundations of being, the state manages to control the singular flow of our lives, subjecting it to the rhythm of capitalistic time (Guattari and Negri, 53).

Guattari goes even further, and says that human subjectivity in all its uniqueness, what he calls its ‘singularity’ is as endangered as those rare species that are disappearing from the planet every day, because “Individuals are captured by their environment by ideas, tastes, models, ways of being, the images that are constantly injected into them and even by the refrains that go round and round in their heads” (Guattari, 8). Now, the biggest challenge before eco-critics in general, and ecofeminists in particular, is the search for a solution. However, contrary to what many people think, it is quite absurd to turn back to the past in search of a solution, because, as Guattari says, “After the data-processing and robotics revolutions, the rapid development of genetic engineering and the globalization of markets, neither human labor nor the natural habitat will ever be what they once were, even just a few decades ago” (Guattari, 42). While there appears to be no direct cause and effect relationship between the growth in techno-scientific resources and the development of social and cultural progress, it seems clear that we are witnessing an irreversible/erosion

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of the traditional mechanisms of social regulation. Faced with this situation, the most ‘modernist’ capitalist formations seem, in their own way, to be banking on a return to the past, however artificial, and on a reconstitution of ways of being that were familiar to our ancestors. In the words of Heather Eaton, “this deliberate effort on the part of capitalism makes many ecocritics in general, and many ecofeminists in particular, fall prey to cultural escapism, illusions and irresponsibility […] It is disconcerting that the more time that is spent on developing forms of ecofeminist responses as above, the more powerless it will be in the face of globalization. Worse still, ecofeminism will be not only powerless, but participating in the destruction of the world while creating beautiful theories about alternative futures. Can the current forms of liberation theology methodologies, feminist theories, and ecofeminist efforts be effective in the face of globalization?” (Eaton, 35) Under these circumstances, the only solution is that eco-critics in general, and ecofeminists in particular, can seek is to work towards rebuilding human relations at every level. They should never forget that capitalist power has become delocalized and deterritorialized. Its influence now extends over the whole social, economic and cultural life of the planet. The destructive influence of capitalism can be controlled by reshaping the objectives of production of both material and immaterial assets. This movement can be successful if it includes molecular domains of sensibility, intelligence, and desire, along with visible aspects.

Works Cited Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Ballantine, 1972. Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight, Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. University of California, 1993. Caudwell, Christopher. Illusion and Reality. International Publishers, 1937. Eaton, Heather. “Can Ecofeminism withstand Corporate Globalization?” Ecofeminism and Globalization, edited by Heather Eaton, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003, pp. 23-38. Fox, Warwick. “The Deep Ecology-Ecofeminism Debate and its Parallels” Environmental Ethics, no.11, 1989, pp. 5-26. Genosko, Gray. “Introduction” The Guattari Reader, edited by Gray Genosko, Blackwell, 1996, pp. 1-34. Guattari, Felix. The Three Ecologies. Trans. Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton. Continuum, 2000.

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Guattari, Felix and Toni Negri. Communists like Us: New Spaces of Liberty, New Lines of Alliance. Trans. Michael Ryan. Semiotext(e), 1990. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. Trans. Lewis White. Prentice Hall, 1993. King, Ynestra. “Feminism and the Revolt of Nature” Heresies, No. 13, 1981, pp. 12-16. Kramsch, Claire. “Language, Thought, and Culture” The Handbook of Applied Linguistics, edited by Alan Davies and Catherine Elder, Blackwell, 2006, pp. 235-261. Lemke, Jay L. “Language development and Identity: Multiple Timescales in the Social Ecology of Learning” Language Acquisition and Language Socialization: Ecological Perspectives, edited by Claire Kramsch, Continuum, 2002, pp. 68-87. Marx, Karl. Capital. Vol. I. Vintage, 1981. —. Early Writings. Vintage, 1974. Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. Routledge, 1993. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. “Introduction” Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion. Edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether. Orbis Books, 1996. 1-8. Warren, Karen J. “Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections” Environmental Ethics, no. 9, 1987, pp. 3-20. —. “The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism” Environmental Ethics, no. 12, 1990, pp. 125-146. Wilson, Holly L. “Rethinking Kant from the perspective of Ecofeminism” Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant, edited by Robin May Schott, Penn State University Press, 1997, pp. 373-399.

PRECARITY AND THE GLOBAL DISPOSSESSION OF INDIGENEITY THROUGH REPRESENTATIONS OF DISABILITY DAVID T. MITCHELL1 AND SHARON L. SNYDER 2

Abstract In this chapter, we take up Judith Butler’s key theorization of ‘precarious embodiment’ and apply it to conditions of precarity used in representations of indigenous disability conditions. Specifically, our argument analyses the opening poem in lesbian Jewish writer, Adrienne Rich’s An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991), in her portrayal of Mexican migrant laborers picking crops on the toxic borderland farm plantations of the Southwestern US following colonial dispossessions and genocide from the late 15th century to the present day; Native American (Laguna) writer Leslie Marmon Silko’s first novel, Ceremony (1977), which draws parallels between her protagonist Tayo’s ‘battle fatigue’ after his return to reservation life following service for the US military in the Pacific Rim of World War II; and, finally, the second volume of William Vollmann’s Seven Dreams series, Fathers and Crows (1992) which follows the research exploits of ‘William the Blind’ as he ferrets out the destruction wrought on the indigenous peoples of 17th century North-eastern Canada through an elusive search for an airbrushed, able-bodied Saint Kateri, who turns out to have been pock-marked by smallpox, scarred from self-ablation, and blind. Our goal, here, is to map some ways in which disability offers ‘alternative ethical maps of living’ in works of indigeneity opposed to the imposition of EuroAmerican sovereignty, and the rendering of native lives ‘ungrievable’. Keywords: disability, dispossession, precarity, colonialism, animal holocausts, toxicity

1

David T. Mitchell is Professor of English in the Department of English at George Washington University. 2 Sharon L. Snyder is an author, artist, activist and filmmaker at New York, USA.

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Introduction: Indigeneity and Precarious Embodiment Under the imposition of colonialism on indigenous people, disability offers up insights at both ends of Butler’s key formulation. First, disability represents a key aspect of the precarity of vulnerability that disrupts models of normative self-sufficiency characteristic of colonial mindsets and acts as foundational to conditions of racism/ablism predicated on the belief that indelible marks of inferior or unworthy ancestry prove non-transcendable (Fredrickson, 141). If the racism occurring ‘under Western eyes’ invests itself in false explanatory models of primitive inferiority and, therefore, justifies the governance of indigenous lives, then disability precarity (devalued in-built biological characteristics of sensory, cognitive, psychiatric, and physical differences) serves as cement to such binary justifications of power (Mohanty, 61). No matter that decimating disease was the product of encounters with European colonialists, the presence of ‘weak’ immune systems solidified disability as synonymous with claims of the defining biological incapacity of indigenous peoples. Second, disability exposes those in positions of sovereignty as demarking the artificial limits of autonomy and their (presumed) imperviousness to the incapacitation of liberal subjecthood as a false European, bourgeois, universal. Our argument here is that we must cultivate a mode of reading the mapping of precarious embodiment and indigeneity ‘against the American grain’. All these works foreground the common association of disability’s association with injurious dependency as a recurrent figuration in texts of anti-colonial indigenous writers in order to recognize models of the often more substantive interdependent relationality they offer (Mohanty, 43). Specifically, our argument analyzes poetry by the lesbian Jewish writer, Adrienne Rich, in her portrayal of Mexican migrant laborers picking crops on the toxic borderland farm plantations of the Southwestern US following colonial dispossessions and genocide from the late 15th century to the present day; Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko’s first novel, Ceremony (1977), that draws parallels between her protagonist Tayo’s ‘battle fatigue’ after his return to the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico following service for the US military in the Pacific Rim of World War II; and, finally, the second volume of William Vollmann’s Seven Dreams series, Fathers and Crows (1992) which follows the research exploits of ‘William the Blind’ as he ferrets out the destruction wrought on the indigenous peoples of 17th century North-eastern Canada through an elusive search for an airbrushed, able-bodied Saint Kateri, who turns out to have been pock-marked by smallpox, scarred from self-ablation, and blind.

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All these works reach back from their contemporary settings to exhume myriad past violence wrought by European conquests, and the continuing effects of colonialism in the Americas and its attendant genocidal impact. All these creative re-imaginings of first contacts with European adventurers, traders, and colonialists, seek to archeologically unearth the ruins of history – the incomplete erasure of indigenous practices, cultures, and lives. Our analysis of disability precarity endeavors to show how the remnants of historical dispossession have shattered indigenous lives, impaired the health of colonized populations, brought death-dealing practices to previously sustainable indigenous communities, and threatened to destroy the world for the presumed present-day inheritors of various colonial projects.

Disability and Dispossession All the works analyzed here offer wide ranging historical recoveries of the devastating impact of varying forms of colonialism on indigenous peoples. Framing these historical recovery missions shows that what appear to be stories of individual suffering and disablement due to inferior biology, are, in fact, the longstanding residual results of historical violence, dispossession from the land, the slaughter of non-human animals as sustainable resources, and the annexation of indigenous forms of sovereignty. Significantly for our purposes here, these works deploy representations of disability as the misrecognized marker of precarity born of beliefs of in-built inferiority among vulnerable populations. Their primary tactic of representation is to show how individual/group precarity is the product of erased histories of violence experienced by indigenous populations in their (now) post-colonial worlds. None of these works avoid the risky encounter with the particularities of impairment (thus, they break from social model traditions developed by disability studies and partake in the ‘return to the body’ methodologies of crip/queer studies). Instead, their in-depth diagnostic investigations into personal symptomatology offer a way to push through the sleeve of impairment as a passageway through the rubble to wider colonial histories of precarity. Thus, whereas the social model of disability might formulate the problem as encounters with discrimination imposed on top of individual impairment, these investigations into the precarity of indigenous body minds go beyond the exposé of in-built systemic oppression to the global expanse of historical effects symptomatically surfacing in today’s native peoples. We call this foundational representational tactic of contemporary indigenous literature ‘indigenous models of precarious embodiment’.

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In their co-authored book, Dispossession: The Performative in the Political, Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou define ‘precarity’ as multiform dispossession: “imposed injuries, painful interpellations, occlusions, and foreclosures, modes of subjugation that call to be addressed and redressed” (Butler & Athanasiou 2013, 2). We endeavor to redress the defining precarity of indigenous embodiment captured in these works, particularly as it relates to aspects of what Elizabeth Povinelli theorizes as ‘economies of abandonment’ and how the mortality-dealing experiences of the disabled body/mind assists in developing alternatives in these works of indigenous literature (Povinelli, 29-50). In order to redress the ghostly haunting of disability at the outskirts of normativity, those existing in precarious forms of embodiment have to be factored into our understanding of how lives living in the aftermath of the ‘lang(ue) durée’ of colonialism continue to be constituted by state-sanctioned risk and expendability. In this sense, disability exceeds the boundary of individual symptomatology, and even models of systemic oppression, and surfaces in indigenous diagnoses of historical experiences of dispossession as intended outcomes of ongoing colonial necropolitics (Mbembe, 92). In doing so, we examine the vulnerabilities that attend those who might be categorized as living in ‘peripheral embodiments’ as a characteristic condition of indigenous populations who remain caught in the chronic reverberations of colonial violence (Mitchell & Snyder 2015, 6-11). If, as Butler puts it, unrecognized violence of vulnerable populations is a further violence compounded by neglect, then “[n]ot only is there the possibility that vulnerability will not be recognized and that it will be constituted as ‘unrecognizable’, but when a vulnerability is recognized, that recognition has the power to change the meaning and structure of vulnerability itself” (Butler 2006, 95). If this observation is true, then the particularity that marks conditions of vulnerabilities such as disability in representations of indigenous literatures has something new to teach us about susceptibility to disasters characteristic of the anthropocene world (Alaimo, 1). In her book, Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically, Chantal Mouffe refers to this necessity of recognizing not false universalities of exposure, but rather a ‘pluralization of hegemonies’ in forming collectivities that include dissent and difference (Mouffe, xiii). Thus, the offering here is how disability can help to expose the ruses of sovereignty that “cares for nothing other than itself” (Butler 2006, 94). Such ‘multi-form dispossessions’ in works that pluralize colonial forms of hegemony on indigenous people deploy representations of embodied precarity (i.e. disability) as a key tool in their unfolding critiques.

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“Disabling the Pickers”: Toxic Intimacy’s Atlas Adrienne Rich’s book of poetry, An Atlas of the Difficult World, begins with an image of migrant field workers laboring beneath clouds of airplane pesticide: Malathion in the throat, communion, the hospital at the edge of the fields, prematures slipping from unsafe wombs, the labor and delivery nurse on her break watching planes dusting rows of pickers (Rich, 3)

The scene exposes the thanatic practices of the contemporary corporate migrant farming industry as the food chain is contaminated by pesticides that re-write the internal biology of plants and workers alike. Carcinogenic isotopes collect in the throats of the workers and then find their way onto the tabletops of consumers, following purchases of the vegetables and fruit picked at the scene. A chain reaction takes place where workers grow ill, hospitals sprout up on nearby grounds to treat those whose lives are affected by the spraying, babies arrive prematurely, and wombs become unsafe havens. There is nowhere in this chain to find an uncontaminated space, and the triad of the field laborers, the reproductive capacities, and the food chain, all grow increasingly rancid and mortal. The space of those occupying peripheral embodiment ‘units’ all present in an unhealthy ‘communion’ that is marked by neglect and erasure of teratogenic and/or disease-dealing outcomes. Butler calls this toxic space “the ghosts of the undead” who go unrecognized as a population harmed by corporate agribusiness emboldened by the sovereign state that “decides the value or the nonvalue of life as such” (Butler 2006, Agamben, 142). Rich’s globalizing vision in An Atlas of the Visible World ranges across cultural sites of difference in order to connect her subjects through the harm of state-secured abandonments of wanton existences. She uses disability as a key connector between migrant workers, Holocaust survivors, Black Panthers “spooning cereal” to hungry black children, among others, in order to create a kaleidoscope (the ‘Atlas’ of the title) of those existing in peripheral embodiments. Her poetry records those who are sacrificed by the production of disability as the basis for preserving normative lives worthy of salvage. Thus, all lives that appear in these poems are in jeopardy, but, “we cannot, however, will this vulnerability away. We must attend to it, even abide by it, as we begin to think about what politics might be implied by staying with the thought of corporeal vulnerability itself” (Butler 2006,

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29). One could say, then, that the connective thread of An Atlas of the Difficult World is “corporeal vulnerability itself – ‘peripheral embodiments’ – and that the goal of the book that Rich shares with Butler’s elusive goal in Precarious Life “has to do with demanding a world in which bodily vulnerability is protected without therefore being eradicated” (Butler 2006, 42). We want to sit with this formulation for a moment, in that the wording is carefully selected, and even a bit peculiar, at first reading. To tack on the phrase “without therefore being eradicated” seems unnecessary in the wake of arguing that the critical political goal is to create a world in which bodily vulnerability is ‘protected’. In Butler’s terms, Rich’s poem demonstrates that “[v]iolence is surely a touch of the worst order, a way a primary human vulnerability to other humans is exposed in its most terrifying way” (Butler 2006, 28). The predominantly Central and South American migrant workers are dusted along with the crops, and the violence is covered over by the ‘slow violence’ that chronic exposure entails (Nixon, 24). However, this formulation is crucial to our own argument, as it underscores that what passes for the benign treatment of disabled people is often the instrument of their experience of further levels of impairment, medical neglect, and even lethality. To make this point, we want to take up our own kaleidoscope of vulnerable body minds, as does Rich in her astonishing mapping of global dispossessions, by analyzing the indigenous mixed-origin writer Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, alongside William Vollmann’s work on the French colonization of Northeast North America (aka. The Ice Shirt, 420). We use these works in order to think through what a documentation of the precarity of indigenous disability can offer us in understanding the relationship of collapsing ecosystems, the extinction of non-human animal populations, and the uninhabitable lawless zones of disease transmission to ‘corporeal vulnerability’. The analysis will be designed to help readers analyze the ways that disability places people in the way of what might be called an excess of intimacy with characteristic toxicities of our time. This excess intimacy, or precarity, that we employ to mean living on the edge of survivability through dispossession in late capitalism signals a way of thinking of disabled bodies as a switch-point for contemplating our radical human porosity with the environment.

Colonialism’s Rapacious Bodily Intimacies The impact of environmental toxicity on Mexican and South American migrant laboring people in Rich’s poems, which stretches back into the

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poem’s lang(ue) durée to dispossessions of Central and South American tribal communities begun by the Spanish Conquistadors in the early 16th century, offers a bridge to a close reading of the chronic reverberations of colonial historical violence explored in Ceremony by Native American novelist Leslie Marmon Silko. The novel charts the return of World War II veteran, Tayo, and his experiences of post-traumatic stress syndrome after repeated exposure to weaponry toxicities, uninhabitable conditions in a prisoner-of-war camp, the death of his Native American brother, Rocky, and military carnage from the clash of Japanese and US military in the Pacific Rim during the war. Despite this experience of bodily trauma in irradiated militarized environments, Tayo finds himself abandoned by the promised military and social support systems for disabled veterans at home. On the opening pages, Tayo awakes in a tangle of voices which intertwine Spanish, Japanese, and Laguna, in a mesh of sources, traditions, and influences, from which he must draw for survival. The precarity of Tayo’s situation is also a product of an archival overlay of meanings that enmesh themselves in impassable underbrush of words that cannot be easily teased out or separated. Thus, from the opening pages, Tayo’s disabling condition is as much a product of understanding historical forces and the meaning of enmeshed traditions – the overwriting of Laguna teachings and practices by European and Asian Pacific belief systems which he struggles to unearth. This web of contradictory traditions functions as akin to the historical rampage of an epidemic of unknown origins, and Tayo experiences a brief vision of his Uncle Josiah bringing him “the fever medicine when he had been sick from a long time ago” (Ceremony, 5). Tayo has lost touch with the Laguna language of his mother, and just as he thinks he is about to make sense of the words’ lost meaning, “the voice suddenly broke into a language he could not understand” (Ceremony, 5). Silko’s jumbled portrayal in Tayo’s mind depicts a variety of sources for the sickness which underscores the precarity of native American lives. The defining nature of precarity that surfaces in our explication of the Butlerian dual formula of dependency on others and the revelation that interdependency often results in vulnerability to harm rather than care, underscores the novel’s navigation of Tayo’s search to find reliable traditions to interpret his own contemporary condition through which the disability stakes in Ceremony are established. Thus, Silko’s protagonist finds himself subject to symptoms vaguely diagnosed under the pathologizing category of ‘battle fatigue’ from his white doctors at the VA hospital in which the military deposits him, but Silko offers up an alternative diagnosis: “Every day they (the native people living on the Laguna Reservation) had to look at the land, from horizon to

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horizon, and every day the loss was with them; it was the dead unburied and the mourning of the loss going on forever” (Ceremony, 157). Tayo’s ailment is the product of the chronic effects of the original conquest of US settler colonialism that actively sought the dispossession of indigenous people from the land by European militaries and settlers, who, ultimately, sequestered native peoples within reservation boundaries and led them to “pass [ ] the time away, waiting for it to end” (Ceremony, 156). Thus, when Tayo wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital beneath a veil of ‘white smoke’ that is the product of overmedication and nauseating trauma from memories of the death of his brother on the battlefield (Ceremony, 13), both of these immediate causes need to be recognized as merely immediate precipitating developments of dislocation in Tayo’s present post-war experience. Ultimately, they hide a much longer disablement that is the result of indigenous dispossession by Euro-American removals, and genocidal tactics from the 15th century onward in the Americas. Disability in the present – both its impairing affects and the alternative navigations that it calls forth -- is the long offshoot of the violence of colonialism from four centuries prior.

Non-Human (Animal) Holocausts While Stannard exposes the devastation of European and American-based epidemics on the populations of the Hawaiian island, and Silko’s Ceremony traces Tayo’s modern ailment to the lang(ue) dureé of native American dispossessions as precipitating genocidal outcomes into the present, William Vollmann’s Fathers and Crows traces the introduction of iron as the devastating source of disease transmission into Ihonatiria - the land of the Haudenosaunee and the Hiriquois – by French settler colonialists (Vollmann, 898). Like Hawaii, the Northeastern world of Native American peoples is decimated by disease, and Vollmann’s European narrator narrates the destruction through a characteristic (yet novelistically satirized) imposition of primitivism: “So it was on this spot Kebec, which a mere three and a half decades since had been rocky wilderness of screeching savages. Now it was reclaimed and [the Jesuit missionaries] had little reason to fault the improvement” (Vollmann, 784). The massive transmission of measles, influenza, smallpox, and other communicable diseases from Europe, resulted in the devastation of a population estimated at two million before European contact. Yet, as the work’s Glossary timeline states, by 1660 the Cayuga were estimated at 1500, the Micmac at 2200, and the Five Nations at 16,000 (Vollmann, 931-3). The transmission upswing in disease and death resulted from increasing contact with French and British colonials,

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whose ever-escalating demand for beaver pelts introduced new ways of mass killing. Increases in the productivity of non-human animal killings occur throughout the novel following the introduction of more lethal iron weaponry, such as axes, swords, and spear tips. The fur trade gave fuel to an unprecedented slaughter of beaver, for example, which expanded from 12,000-15,000 beaver furs in 1612 to 30,000 by 1645 (Vollmann, 920, 929). Thus, native peoples decimated a key animal resource to meet European desires and gain ever greater access to iron products introduced from Europe, such as copper kettles and Dutch door hinges. This incessant trade of baubles for animal hides produced massive effects beyond the decimation of animal lives and essentially enlisted indigenous peoples as the agents of destruction of their own environment. The beaver extermination crashed a sustainable resource upon which native peoples relied, and which they had cultivated for thousands of years. The obsessive hunt for beaver furs to satiate European appetites shifted indigenous practices from those of a stable agrarian community relying upon careful stewardship of the land and husbandry of crops, toward a more nomadic murderous relation to non-human animals. Beaver kill rates ran up to extinction levels within three decades. By 1630, for example, the Wendats had hunted the beaver in their area to extinction (Vollmann, 924), and to return to our disability and disease analysis, the indigenous peoples of Northeastern America grew increasingly subject to malnutrition, hunger, and disease. Thus, non-human animal holocausts led to increasingly lethal forms of intertribal warfare and the loss of sustainable proteins. Vollmann identifies that between 1634 and 1640 the Hurons lost more than half of their population to war, disease, and famine (Vollmann, 925). While in Rich’s poem the migrant laborers’ health is jeopardized by the indiscriminate application of pesticides to the pickers as well as the crops, Fathers and Crows outlines a parallel route to the re-shaping of native societies through its key thematic focus on the destruction on indigenous lives due to the growing appetite for iron. Given that one of copper’s most prized features as a precious metal is its malleability, Vollmann turns its sparkling claim into a mortality metaphor for the way European expansion ideologically overwhelmed native consciousness: When the Iron People came into the land, and all Five Nations of the Hiroquois, or Haundenosaunee, began to crave iron goods as once lovers had craved lovers, one of their Rodiyaner [chief advisors] stood up in Council and addressed them . . . We want iron and iron. But we do not have

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Vollmann’s Rodinyer exposes the destructive nature of indigenous thirsts for iron. He advises abandonment, and a restoration of the previous agrarian practices that resulted neither in animal holocausts, nor in the loss of sustainable indigenous farming practices. Thus, Vollmann lays out his multi-pronged thesis of the problem with iron: 1) it makes the work of tilling too easy and cultivates the recipients’ laziness and failing responsible stewardship of the land; 2) guns, spears, hatchets, axes, and iron swords kill animals too quickly and empty the forests of key food sources; 3) seeking iron exposes tribes to disease, as the desire to trade results in the letting down of barriers and the infiltration of European traders and missionaries into tribal villages; 4) the desire for iron deflects from longstanding practices of planting and cultivating by orienting native peoples toward only killing animals for trade; 5) the rise of lethal weapons makes genocidal outcomes increase; and 6) nomadism accelerates and destabilizes indigenous agrarian-based communities that have underwritten tribal survival for millennia. Extended intimacies of trade lead to the extinction of sustainable species, which, in turn, leads to increases in disease transmission and the collapse of sustainable ways of life. The Mexican migratory laborers in Rich’s poem fall sick and die from exposure to toxins while harvesting crops to sustain non-migrant populations. Silko’s Laguna Pueblo inhabitants suffer from immobilization within the boundaries of non-arable land, and Vollmann’s native people of Northeastern North America feed the appetite for beaver hats in Paris which results in the destruction of indigenous populations. All these works invert the common ascription of cannibalism to inferior primitive societies, as diagnosed by European men of the Enlightenment to expose the traumatic ingestion of indigenous lives by the progenitures of religious and scientific faith. Disability grounds the key understanding of precarity by underscoring the invention of dependencies, and the too-late revelation that those upon whom one comes to depend on for viability can lead one to a non-viable future. Likewise, the surrender of caretaking responsibilities toward the preservation of non-human animals boomerangs back with massively devastating effects on the abandonment of the caretakers. Although Vollmann’s novel takes a wide-ranging historical perspective by gathering up events from the 17th and 18th centuries, and re-telling them retrospectively, Silko’s Ceremony situates its primary plot much closer to a

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post-World War II present. A substantial portion of Tayo’s PTSD treatment is oriented around revelations of the slowly dying indigenous techniques of animal husbandry in a land where native peoples have been dumped to die. The Laguna reservation exists on non-arable, drought-ridden land that will not support cattle, and whose size diminishes over the years. For instance, at a place the white loggers called ‘North Top’ the reservation land was “but a small portion of the mountain […] the rest of the land had been taken by the National Forest and by the state which later sold it to white ranchers” (Vollmann, 172). In order to feed the loggers in such a distant location, logging companies hire full-time hunters who “take ten or fifteen deer each week and fifty wild turkeys in one month” to feed entire logging camps (Vollmann, 172). Thus, we see this pattern of extraction of resources from the wilderness taken to excess, and as the food requirements of the humans are met, the place’s resources dwindle and die. The mass slaughter of nonhuman animals leads to the failing health and disability of the indigenous communities who have depended on these resources to sustain themselves. Europeans arrive and develop the land at levels that can only result in further migration to new resource-plentiful locations with resources which can be plundered in turn. Tayo learns the lesson of the devastating effects of neglect and wanton killing in numerous scenes. During his childhood, Josiah comes home to find that Tayo has swatted hundreds of flies to their deaths, in a pile on the kitchen table before him. In response, Josiah tells him of how the greenbottle fly once saved a community from a pattern of neglect they had fallen into: “The animals disappeared, the plants disappeared, and no rain came for a long time […] People make mistakes. The flies know that. That’s how the first greenbottle fly came around” (Vollmann, 93). Similarly, Tayo grows attentive to the livelihoods of grasshoppers in their “bright green color of the spring […] He looked down at the weeds and grass […] stepped carefully, by pushing the toe of his boot into the weeds first to make sure the grasshoppers were gone (and then) [h]e wanted to catch a grasshopper and hold it close to his face, to look at its big flat eyes and shiny thin legs with stripes of black and brown like beadwork, making tiny intricate designs. The last time he held one, Rocky was with him, and they had stained their fingertips brown with the tobacco juice the grasshoppers spit” (Vollmann, 155-156). In each of these commonplace examples of the care of non-human animals, the context of wider, more devastating destruction of the land in history awaits to be uncovered. Thus, while Rich discusses the health fallout awaiting migrant workers in the future, due to their direct pesticiding from above in the mid-20th century, Vollmann documents the collapse of entire ecosystems in the 17th century settler colonialist infiltration

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of North America as the slaughters gain momentum and reach holocaust proportions in indigenous animal and human populations. All these works operate from the historical origins of these environmental devastations in reverse, to recognize an investment in the wellbeing of even the smallest creatures as a pathway to staving off future decimation of the environment.

Precarity’s Alternative Ethical Map of Existence One of the centerpieces of Silko’s novel involves the admission that white people did not bring human and non-human holocausts to the shores of the Americas on their own. Rather, as the pre-contact competition of witch ceremonies exposes, indigenous peoples “invented white people; it was Indian witchery that made white people in the first place” (Vollmann, 122). Thus, the novel foregrounds the necessity of an acceptance of responsibility that is not a simple victimization of one less powerful people by a more powerful civilization. This would strip indigenous people of agency and essentially underscore the claim to superiority (at least in terms of conquest) to which colonialism aspires. Rather than accept the binary premise of this condition, these works all foreground the fact that civilizations attempt to read and effectively navigate the otherness of alternative cultures with which they come into contact. The agency of which Silko’s novel speaks unravels through the strange encounters initiated in the first contacts, but while Tayo struggles to regain his health and divest himself of the sickness of unknown origin that affects his wellbeing, he learns to integrate his experience of psychological and physical desolation as part of an alternative navigation of disability. The most important example of this alternative value of disability as precarity, and the real stakes of the alternative navigation it requires in the future, is contained in his Uncle Josiah’s plan for the development of a new breed of Mexican cattle. While Mexican cattle possess the undesirable qualities of less meat and longer legs, thus making their productivity for human consumption less valuable, Josiah recognizes that these ‘disabling’ qualities are exactly what is needed to breed cattle in the non-cattle sustaining desert lands of the reservation. While English-imported Herefords produce fat and meat in greater quantities, thus making each animal subject to violence to fill corporate grocery counter shelves, Josiah’s plan is to breed against these qualities: “Herefords would not look for water. When a windmill broke down or a pool went dry, Tayo had seen them standing and waiting patiently for the truck or wagon loaded with water, or for riders to herd them to water. If nobody came and there was no snow or rain, then

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they died there, still waiting. But these Mexican cattle were different” (Vollmann, 79). Josiah’s revelation is to cultivate a breed more renegade and akin to the kind of cattle that had successfully grazed these lands for centuries. Rather than stand in passivity for water to come to them, Mexican cattle run and break the boundaries of the cattle ranch in search of water. Their renegade existence also ignores national boundaries and they proceeded into land previously settled by Mexican people and other indigenous populations. Their inclination is toward self-preservation and a thwarting of the will of the white cattle rancher, who seeks a more docile and thus subservient species with which to content. Josiah works against the European norm of passive, over-freighted cattle for a breed in which docility is not its first or primary quality. To avoid the mass starvation and death from drought, that will result in mass extinction first for the animals and second for the humans who rely on those animals for sustenance, Josiah teaches Tayo that resisting the immobility of the colonizer is a critical aspect of survival. To take responsibility for cultivating resistance to the restrictions placed upon life in order to cultivate an inability to survive, Tayo cuts the barbed wire fence that has penned in Josiah’s cattle, to avoid theft by corporate ranchers. The cattle run as their instincts tell them to, their long legs carry them ever Southward toward Mexico, the homeland from which they’ve been ousted since the invasion of the Spanish Conquistadors since 1523, and their desert cultivation allows them to suck water from rocks. This alternative breed echoes Tayo’s own non-normative orientation toward the world, in that disparaged characteristics turn out to be alternatives to perishing. Tayo’s fever and sense of numbness at the beginning the novel, which cannot be cured, ultimately come to be valued alternatively as survival mechanisms against the effects of the violence of colonialism. The protagonist travels through Galveston, for example, and counts up all the unemployed and disabled Indians he sees on the streets and sidewalks among the urban blight. Yet, given the degree of destruction that filial networks have suffered in the wake of colonialism, Tayo does not reject these lives, but rather collects them in his imagination as those who survive alongside himself. Their mutual ability to survive in squalor is represented by their refusal to become yet more possible candidates for the human detritus pile. He explains his vision of belonging to the horde of outcast Indians to his step-father, Robert, in the following manner: I saw Navajos in torn old jackets, standing outside the bars. There were Zunis and Hopis there too, even a few Lagunas. All of them slouched down against the dirty walls of the bars along Highway 66, their eyes staring at the ground as if they had forgotten the sun in the sky; or maybe that was the

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Precarity and the Global Dispossession of Indigeneity through Representations of Disability way they dreamed for wine, looking for it somewhere in the mud on the sidewalk. This is us, too, I was thinking to myself. These people crouching outside bars like cold flies stuck to the wall” (Vollmann, 107).

This revelation of the continuance of an ‘us’ functions as an epiphany in order to save him from the pathologization of the malaise he experiences. Rather than accept ruin, Tayo comes to read himself and other dispossessed people as fashioning themselves into an alternative breed that can continue to survive the onslaught. Uncle Josiah’s model for alternative valuing of devalued features in livestock is translated by Tayo into alternative human capacities marked by disablement. In Vollmann’s Fathers and Crows, there is a tragic scene near the conclusion of the novel that helps further to expose the logic of the ‘productiveness’ of disability beyond positioning impairment as merely a marker of mortal outcomes visited by European settler colonialism on indigenous lives. After a history of multiple refusals to allow European missionaries into indigenous villages, a key recognition forms among native observers; the only nonafflicted tribes are those who have abjured from contact with traders and priests. As the intertribal wars increase, animal populations become extinct, agrarian husbandry is abandoned, and lethal weapons makes the slaughter of one indigenous tribe by another more deadly, as infection spreads and the thirst for iron deepens among young indigenous men who seek vengeance for their treatment by Europeans. The next generation begins to die off in massive numbers, and conversion to Christianity seems inevitable; long line-ups of indigenous people form outside the tents of the Jesuit missionaries who have now wormed their way into many indigenous communities. The Jesuits baptize the dying, disabled, and dead (those who now comprise a majority of the remaining indigenous populations following decades of contact with Europeans), and stoke the numbers of conversions that they document in reports to Paris, writing about their theological successes in bringing native peoples to a more obeisant Christian conversion. At the same time, ironically, they convert those who will not survive for more than a day or two. The realization of what Father Brébeuf refers to as ‘the Black Gowns’ profession of meting out holocausts against a savage people’ reveals that there is no true path for indigenous people to assimilate, even through theological conversion (Vollmann, 579). They are forever savages, and conversion remains largely theoretical. Thus, the mass baptism of the dying, ill, and disabled, performs an administrative function only. It leaves the Jesuits assured in their continuing cultural superiority through the residual

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convenience of not having to deal with those the Jesuits mark as incapable of transcending their defining biological inferiority to reach their ranks. The one partial indigenous mixed-origin exception to French Christianity through assimilated sainthood is the air-brushed statue and stained-glass non-disabled portrait of Katherine Tekakwitha, who now serves as a token of Jesuit conversion. Katherine, who has ‘weak eyes’, whose ‘ugly face’ is pock-marked by smallpox, and whose body is scarred by the Jesuit practice of self-ablation, takes a canoe ride with her indigenous consorts down the Saint Lawrence River from Indian territory to join the monastery in Montreal. As one whose vision and body has been compromised by contact with French missionaries, and who has none of the gifts of the novel’s indigenous protagonist, Born Swimming, who can see into the future and predicts the arrival of the first French settlers, Tekakwitha feels the hand of one of the indigenous paddlers on her shoulder, and asks, hopefully, “Is it [the city of Montreal] beautiful?” (Vollmann, 848). The paddler responds falsely to her question with, “Yes, child. Very beautiful” as the canoe makes its way through the discarded trash and human waste that the Europeans dump into the river without regard for the environmental destruction it leaves. The coupling of this chapter’s key elements of disability precarity – blindness, a pock-marked face, and bodily scars, the pollution of the waterways and airways of a once pristine environment, the ‘holocausts’ of deaths of non-animal and indigenous human populations alike – all converge in Katherine’s figure as the ironic icon of reverence who is canonized into sainthood and has her disabilities airbrushed away during efforts to diminish the violence of Canadian colonization in the 1980s. Since disabilities don’t serve the romance of nationalist histories, they are erased. Thus, Katherine’s disability markers are brought back into view, as is the genocidal fury that this 900-page novel of European devastation has just steered its readers through. The narrator, William the Blind (yet another disability figure in this drama), who is trying to find images of his indigenous ‘muse’, Katherine Tekakwitha, abandons his search as he comes to realize that Canadian history can only enshrine one who ennobles its historical mission of colonialism in the Northeast. As Katherine’s airbrushed exterior reveals to him, state-sponsored history only serves as a nationalist icon of Canada. By using Katherine’s conversion to the Jesuit faith without irony or as a pathway of the history of destruction that both the French and the British have wrought, he realizes both missions must be surrendered in favor of the creation of a resistance literature which Fathers and Crows represents. Katharine is a figure of nationalist tokenism that falls as far away from

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indigenous peoples’ actual dealings with European colonialism as possible. William’s metaphorical blindness (he begins his research ‘blind’ to a nationalist history that will paint itself in the colors of a nation whose indigenous peoples it has knowingly mass murdered and whose animal species it has driven extinct) and Tekakwitha’s literal blindness, both converge at the conclusion of the novel to reveal that state history is nothing but a burial ground for the histories of violence it perpetuates. Thus, in this final ironic fashion, Vollmann brings his massive historical novel to conclusion, and disability serves as a reliable guide to the revelation of the falsities of a nation’s self-serving stories of conquest, adventure, and the rapine of indigenous people, who, in Butlerian fashion, may be the only worthy subjects of a precarity whose reliance on others proves mortal.

Conclusion: Re-Thinking Precarity as Viable Futurity The ubiquity of globalization schemes to ransack the Earth of resources for expansive practices of human consumption, and the relative dearth of ways to analyze the impact of these developments on disabled people, reveals the considerable stakes behind cultivating a broader global methodology of disability. The point is to argue that a closer analysis of Butler’s theorization of precarity provides a productive fulcrum for indigenous disabled peoples’ experiences within these situations, as a means to realizing a more viable futurity by unearthing the conditions of an unviable past. Our cultural tendency to make targeted individuals experiencing physical, sensory, psychiatric, and cognitive disabilities as merely evidence of human, nonhuman, and environmental violence, provides an opportunity to think of alternative embodiments more productively. How do we contemplate the stakes of the planet as tantamount to the stakes of disabled people on behalf of all people, rather than persisting in our tendency to make disability a ‘special issue’ of exceptional vulnerability?

Works Cited Alaimo, Stacy. Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. Verso, 2006. Butler, Judith, & Athena Athanasiou. Dispossession: The Performative in the Political. Polity Press, 2013. Mbembe, Achilles. Necropolitics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019.

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Mitchell, David T. & Sharon L. Snyder. The Biopolitics of Disability: Neoliberalism, Ablenationalism, and Peripheral Embodiment. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2015. Mohanty, Chandra. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Feminist Review 30.1(1988): 61-88. Mouffe, Chantal. Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically. Verso, 2013. Nixon, Rob. “Slow Violence.” Chronical of Higher Education (26 June 2011):

Rich, Adrienne. An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 (p. 3). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. Silko. Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. Penguin Classics, 2006 (1977). Vollmann, William T. Fathers and Crows. Volume II of Seven Dreams of North American Landscapes. New York: Viking, 19

RE-CONSTRUCTING THE CONCEPT OF ANDROGYNY: PROTEST AGAINST THE ‘SEXUAL POLITICS’ IN LIBBY SOMMER’S HENRY DIPANWITA PAL 1

Abstract ‘Sexual politics’, as has been projected by Kate Millet, has always favored the oppressive patriarchal machinery, and the male/female binary has been instrumental in the process of subjugating women. On the other hand, the concept of androgyny encompasses wholeness, completion, and unity, within a single human body. Philosophers like Ferguson strongly believe in androgyny being the ‘highest ideal of human nature’ (Morgan, 245). Mary Daly, and other critics, have debated the possibilities of the God of Christianity being androgynous. In this context, we may refer to the concept of Ardhanariswara in Hinduism. Ardhanariswara is a combined androgynous form of the two Hindu deities, Shiva and Parvati. The assertions that are made for androgyny are, in fact, daring and obviously, challenging. Jyatte Nhanenge finds the Daoist theory, which advocates the existence and reflection of the eternal opposites of yin and yang, specifically relevant. This concept of yin and yang reminds me of the image of Ardhanariswara that I have previously mentioned. When one turns out as an androgynous individual, one is a more complete, more truly whole human being. Bazin and Freeman argue, in The Androgynous Vision, that in an androgynous society, the complete scope of experiences is made available to every individual, irrespective of gender difference. They go further, and advocate that an androgynous society needs/desires the abolition of economic, racial, and sexual discrimination (Bazin & Freeman, 186). And this is exactly the demand of the ecofeminists, like Val Plumwood, who identify this existing exploitative binary of male/female, and therefore argue for the elimination 1 Dr Dipanwita Pal works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, GalsiMahavidyalaya, West Bengal, India

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of such binaries. The Chinese concept of ecofeminism has a close association with the concept of androgyny. Henry is a short story, written by Libby Sommer, that cogitates on the much ignored sphere of male androgyny. The whole story is actually a journey on the part of the speaker of the story, who is a lonely middle-aged woman, from playing a victim of hegemonic patriarchal practices to asserting her individuality. Henry, who is an androgynous being, is instrumental in leading her to her goal. Though she oscillates between accepting and not accepting Henry at times, she is finally able to break free from the shackles of the oppressive society. Their union is significant because it is indicative of acceptance of freedom of choice in a more desirable way, even within a couple. That is what androgyny advocates for. In this paper I try to navigate exactly what the author tries to disseminate within the story, and how she executes it. Keywords: Androgyny, ecofeminism, gender roles, homosexuality, freedom of choice, nonconformist “And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he” (Diving into the Wreck, Adriene Rich)

This poem by Rich says everything about the issue of androgynous vision. The concept itself comprises wholeness, completion, and unity. Philosophers like Ferguson strongly believe in androgyny being the “highest ideal of human nature” (Morgan, 245). Mary Daly and other critics have debated the possibilities of the God of Christianity being androgynous. In this context, we may refer to the concept of Ardhanariswara in Hinduism. Ardhanariswara is a combined androgynous form of the two Hindu deities Shiva and Parvati. The origin of the term can be found in the combination of three words; Ardha (half), Nari (woman) and Iswara (Lord), denoting the Lord whose half is a woman. The image conveys the message that Shiva and Parvati (Shakti) are the same, that each human being bears the potential of both male and female. In the article “Psychological Androgyny: A Concept in Search of Lesser Substance: Towards the Understanding of the Transformation of a Social Representation” Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi finds that, “The concept of

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psychological androgyny rests on the idea of the reconciliation of the sexes in a new being, and takes its strength from keeping the Utopia to be done with androcentrism and with social inequality between the sexes” (LorenziCioldi 1996, 137). He identifies three leading formations of psychological androgyny. The first among them is that of a person who “achieves the copresence and psychological balance of sex-typed characteristics” (LorenziCioldi 1996, 137). They are sometimes male, sometimes female. We can find a similar concept of androgyny within Ila, an androgyne deity of Hindu mythology, who is known for his/her occasional sex-changes. When a man, he is called Sudyumna and when a woman, she is Ila. Such androgynies combine attributes of both the sexes together, and the situational aptness brings out the alteration of sex-types within their behavior. As LorenziCioldi puts it, “this conception has most often been labeled as co-presence” (Lorenzi-Cioldi 1996, 137). The culmination of this kind of androgyny could be seen within Brihannala, the disguised self of Arjun in Mahabharata. And the third, which is the current conception of the androgynous person, depicts the indifference of a person regarding feminine and masculine binaries. According to Lorenzi-Cioldi, “Neither male nor female, the androgyne outsmarts sexual dimorphism by making use of alternative cognitive tools to perceive and to categorize the self and his/her environment” (Lorenzi-Cioldi 1996, 137). The assertions that are made for androgyny are, in fact, daring and obviously, challenging. When one appears as an androgynous individual, one is a more complete, more truly whole, human being. In The Androgynous Vision, Bazin and Freeman argue that in an androgynous society the complete scope of experiences is made available to every individual, irrespective of gender differences. They go further, and advocate that an androgynous society needs/desires the abolition of economic, racial, and sexual discriminations (Bazin and Freeman 1976, 186). This is exactly the demand of the ecofeminists, such as Val Plumwood, who identify this existing binary of male/female and therefore argue for the elimination of such dualism/binaries. They claim that the phallocentric metaphysical dualism, like culture/nature, reason/emotion, mind/body, man/woman, etc., is the basic cause for all oppression. In dominant patriarchal culture, masculinity is linked with higher values, an idea which is known as hierarchical dualism. Within such hierarchical construction, nature and women are both associated with passive and secondary status. The advocates of androgyny in the early 1970s tried to define androgyny “in terms of an individual’s endorsement of masculine and feminine attributes” (Lorenzi-Cioldi 1996, 140). For that matter, questionnaires like

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“The Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI)” (Bem 1974) was one of the chief instruments. Bem claims that androgyny “would thus represent the very best of what masculinity and femininity have come to represent” (Bazin and Freeman 1976, 51). But then, the question that arises is: Is it a must that the androgynous self has to represent only the ‘very best’ of masculinity and femininity? Can’t one have the choice to adopt to any trait that is attributed to masculinity or femininity, be it ‘very best’ or not, if one feels like it? Again, even if the ‘very best’ factor is a must, who would decide what is ‘very best’ and what is not? The very parameters of good and bad are then themselves vulnerable. The Chinese concept of ecofeminism has a close association with the concept of androgyny. In her book Ecofeminism: Towards Integrating the Concerns of Women, Poor People, and Nature into Development (2011) Jyatte Nhanenge finds the Daoist theory of yin and yang specifically relevant: The logical quantitative, masculine, yang framework is the foundation of modern science, economics, technology and development. […] however, when we become aware of this limitation, and combine quantity with quality, masculine with feminine, yang with yin, we may be able to see. That is when we observe that the world is a living, dynamic, interconnected and harmonious whole” (Nhanenge 2007, xiv).

About the moralistic consideration for yin and yang, Nhanenge further advocates: The Chinese philosophy avoids dualism. Opposites are neutral. They simply exist and reflect the eternal opposites of yin and yang. Thus, yin and yang are not associated with moral values. One is not better or more important than the other is [...] What is bad or harmful is imbalance. The basic norm is that the two forces should be balanced, for any excess causes a variety of troubles or evils (Nhanenge 2007, 76).

It seems to be clear that yin and yang are not static or mutually exclusive. They can co-exist and complement each other. The real nature of yin and yang lies within the interchangeability and interplay of the two components. This very formation of yin and yang completely falls in accordance with the basic concept of androgyny. At the same time, this is the ideal worldformation that the ecofeminists argue for. Again, this concept of yin and yang reminds me of the image of Ardhanariswara that I have previously mentioned.

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As Ellen Morgan argues, most of the feminist novels depicting androgynous fantasy aim at suggesting the ‘contours of authentic female personhood’ (Morgan 1977, 41). It delineates the difference between the societyconstructed femininity and women’s true psychology, which is closer to simply being human. Ideologies like patriarchal religion and Freudianism have urged that whatever is non-feminine is seen in women as unwomanly and evil. Therefore, such attributes are not to be developed or expressed. On the other hand, the feminist novels of androgynous fantasy point out that the non-feminine in women is their natural humanity, and therefore should not be subdued/censored. However, Morgan talks only about those fictional writings that deal with feminine androgynous fantasy, but androgynous fantasy is not meant to be limited only to the feminine androgynies. We can find male characters too, though few in number, who cherish within them androgynous fantasies. But the problem is, that the ecofeminists tend not to take them into consideration. Libby Sommer, the Australian fiction writer, is one of those rare authors who deal with this less talked-about area of androgyny, in her short story Henry. The story opens in the living room of the female protagonist, where she is having coffee with her friend Maxine. We see them discussing her adventure with Henry the previous night. She is an elderly lady, single, and her children are settled with their own lives. So she is alone, and badly in need of company. She is in search of a partner in Henry. Everything is absolutely fine, till now. But problems arise when, on their first (probably) romantic date, she discovers some ‘strangeness’ in his behavior. That night, when Henry enters, in the dimmed light of the stair, his silhouetted figure is primarily mistaken by the protagonist as that of a woman. The cause of her confusion is Henry’s new hairstyle: “His thick dark brown hair is freshlywashed and blow-dried - puffy – you know how it is when you’ve just washed your hair? It hangs to his shoulders” (Henry, 78). She is shocked. But there is more to her surprise. As they are just getting intimate, she finds out that Henry is wearing “a stuffed bra and a lace silk camisole” (Henry, 78). Her conventional self is repulsed at seeing a man in women’s lingerie. At this juncture of the story, the reader’s mind is perplexed: why has Henry dressed himself in such an extremely unusual manner? That too, when he is on an amorous adventure! Usually men try to assert their masculinity on such occasions. Is he then gay, or, as the protagonist suspects, “a woman in man’s body?” (Henry, 79) But to discomfort the society even more, Henry asserts that he is not at all gay, or transgender, or a woman within a man’s body. Though the editors, Meenakshi Bharat and Sharon Rundle, refer to Henry simply as a ‘crossdresser’, and summarize the story just as a ‘date

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with a man who is crossdresser’ (Bharat and Rundle 2019, xv), in the Introduction to the collection, my understanding of the issue is completely different. To begin with, let us study the signs that lead the readers to conclude that Henry is not ‘normal’. It strikes the protagonist at the very first sight of Henry on that particular Friday night. On that night we see her waiting for Henry, standing at the top of the stairs. She has kept the lights down low, perhaps to create a romantic environment. Then she sees a person appearing with long hair, trousers a jacket. It is only the silhouette of the person that she can make out in the dimmed light. The long hair leads, or rather misleads, her to assume the figure to be of a woman. When the person gets closer, only then can she recognize him as Henry. Her first impression of him is, he ‘seems different’. Henry’s long hair is not at all a new thing to her. She is quite familiar with it. The thing that shocks her is only the new hairstyle that Henry has. The next ‘objectionable’ factor is that Henry is wearing a staffed bra, along with a lace silk camisole. The protagonist finds this out when they are intimately kissing each other and she is passionately running her hand over his chest. She is surprised at touching something soft and silky on his body. At the same time she is afraid at the strangeness of the person she has got so close to. Being alarmed, she begins to notice him carefully, and only then she notices the stockings on his feet. Looking for his shoes by the side of the room she finds a pair of “black strappy sandals with a small heel” (Henry, 9). Strappy sandals are usually worn by women, whereas men are seen in shoes. Again the artificial ‘heel’ is also a common feature of the sandals for women. The lady is repulsed at the possibility of “seeing him in a suspender belt and stockings” (Henry, 79). He can feel the repulse and offers to leave. So these are the ‘unnatural’ behaviors that lead us to suspect his true genderidentity. Three alternatives come out. One is that he is a transgender, ‘a woman in man’s body’, the second is that he is simply a crossdresser, as diagnosed by Bharat and Rundle, the editors of the collection, and the third, projects him as an androgyny. Let us take all these probabilities one by one, for the sake of discussing their pros and cons. The proposition that he is a transgender is the most dominating one within the story. And Maxine, the friend of the narrator, is the advocator of this proposition. Maxine is one of the narrator’s closest friends, to whom she may confess even her most secret experiences. Maxine possesses the authority to suggest,

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or advise her on her most intimate issues. Her initial reaction on being told about the narrator’s strange feelings while touching Henry’s chest (“a lump, like a breast, although it feels spongy”, Henry, 78) is, “He’s got breasts?” When the speaker assures her that they were not real breasts, rather it was a bra that Henry was wearing, she cannot believe it! A man wearing a bra! How can a man wear such things! Why should a man wear such things! The speaker initially suspects Henry as being transgender. She asks him directly about his choices, “Do you feel like a woman?” (Henry, 78). But before we proceed further, let us have a look into the meaning of the word ‘transgender’. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary someone who is transgender is: …a person whose gender identity differs from the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth. Especially: of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity is opposite the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth. (Merriam-Webster)

So it is clear that sex-identity and gender-identity are not the same for transgender people. And that’s why Henry’s choice of women’s outfits/robes is the main reason which leads the two ladies to suspect him as such. As for the second alternative, which proposes that Henry is simply a crossdresser, there are ample signs within the text to disprove it. According to The Cambridge Dictionary, a cross-dresser is “a person who sometimes wears clothes usually associated with the opposite sex, as a form of selfexpression, usually a heterosexual (= not gay) man, who sometimes wears women’s clothes, make-up, jewellery, etc.”. Now let’s see what the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary has to say about what ‘cross-dresser’ means: “A crossdresser is a person who often wears clothes usually worn by the people of the opposite sex”. Cross-dressing, particularly wearing the undergarments of the opposite sex, is most often linked with sexual fetish, though this linkage is not apt all the time. There can be many more psychological reasons behind people’s preference to cross-dress; sometimes it may even be sheer amusement. But one thing is clear from these discussions on crossdressing — this particular habit is associated only with the way of dressing up, which is an external affair. It needs not necessarily have any connection with other gender choices of that person. He/she only loves to dress like the opposite sex. He/she may not be interested in the other gender-attributes of that sex. But this is not the same for Henry. He likes to dress himself up in women’s lingerie when he is on a date, but this cross-dressing is possibly not just a kind of sexual fetish for him; he likes to wear women’s dresses on

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other occasions too. He quite enjoys the attention people pay him when he roams about in “a dress and high heels” (Henry, 79). For him, adopting things associated with women has a deeper value/significance. He is also interested in other things which are generally associated with women. He loves shopping. He loves making friends and gossiping with them. Such things are most often linked by society with women. So Henry’s liking for shopping and other such things certainly exempts him from being branded as a mere cross-dresser. This term is an understatement for him, for sure. Henry and the narrator are going to have their first romantic date on a Friday night. Significantly, Friday is believed to be associated with the deity Venus, goddess of love and fertility. So the day is perfect for the beginning of a romantic relationship. The speaker has created an environment ideal for such a date, by dimming the lights. And this dimmed light is responsible for her initial confusion about Henry’s identity. Here, the dimmed light, which creates difficulty with visibility, may stand for the hegemonic practices of conventional society that bars the individual from viewing things as they actually are. Thus the ‘dimmed light’, or the hegemonic practice, misleads/compels every individual with a capacity to think freely to perceive things exactly the way society wants. The first description of Henry’s appearance on that night, as it comes from the speaker, highlights his new hairstyle — 'freshly washed’ and ‘blow-dried’. Now, washing has a connotation of purity, as well as of rejuvenation, reinvigoration. Does it, then, hint at the new identity that Henry is going to disclose to her? It is not his long hair that is surprising her. She is aware of it. But at other times it is tied back in a ponytail or in a twisted bun. Tying the hair in a ponytail or in a bun is a common masculine practice for men with long hair. At the same time, it may also denote the hiding of Henry’s real nature, just like hiding the ‘thick dark brown’ hair in a bun. Again ‘blow-drying’ might stand for blowing away the traditional images that patriarchy has carefully created and maintained through the man/woman binary. The speaker is shocked at the discovery of the new identity of a person whom she wants to know intimately. I believe the shock is intentional on the part of Henry, as well as of the author. The author deliberately gives this shock to the speaker, and through her, to the whole of society with its preconceived ideas. Then when Henry enters the room he kicks his shoes off, which is more of a male practice. So we can see that the speaker is constantly playing with conventional ideas of masculinity and femininity within the story, and her instrument here is Henry. Just after referring to the masculine practice of kicking off the shoes, she very quickly switches to describe Henry’s nice way of kissing —“gently, very sweetly”. This way of kissing is very unusual, and in contrast with the usual male attitude to lovemaking —

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aggressiveness. The conventional gender roles usually endorse/foreground the male partner to be aggressive in such intimate moments. At the same time, the author also depicts the uneasiness of the speaker’s experience through the use of the words “slightly sour smell”. She cannot fully accept her lover’s strange appearance, and this is denoted by the ‘acrid flavor’ which is marring the full enjoyment of the moment. The tension on Henry’s part is also evident within the ‘little sighing sound’ he occasionally makes. This is indicative of his discomfort with the uncertainty of being accepted in his unconventional way of behaving. But there is even more to the speaker’s surprise. The greater part of Henry’s ‘strange’ behavior is yet to be discovered. The real reason for Henry’s nervousness, which the speaker could sense, was not only his unusual hairstyle. There was more. During their intimacy, she discovers the bra and camisole that Henry is wearing under his shirt and trousers. This is the real blow that swipes her. A bra is exclusively women’s wear. Significantly, what Henry is wearing is a bra which is stuffed with sponge, creating an artificial feeling of breasts. So the bra Henry is wearing can also be perceived as a symbol for breasts, which again stands for women’s power/ability to procreate and nurture new life. So the desire to dress up like a woman, especially wearing false breasts, may not necessarily express a sexual fetish (as is generally conceived). It may bear even deeper significance, indicating more intense emotion. We know that the process/act of becoming a mother (biologically), I mean giving birth to a new life and feeding the baby, is in itself a source of immense joy, almost unparalleled by anything else in the world. But unfortunately, the male sex is deprived of it because of their biology. So the desire to wear false breasts may be emblematic of Henry’s innermost desire to give birth to a baby and become a mother — a desire of which he himself may not be aware. Now I would like to concentrate upon what Henry has to say about the ‘strange’ attire that he has put on. But before that, I would like to draw attention to the level of honesty that Henry shows. He could easily have hidden his real self, like he has at other times. He is very well aware of the chance of him not being accepted once he discloses his androgynous identity. It seems he is mentally prepared for that. That is why, when he feels the lady’s repulsion, he very calmly offers to go. He is quite familiar with this kind of non-acceptance. Even so, he has not changed his decision to be completely transparent regarding his choices. While having dinner, which is offered by the lady even after her disappointment, he tries to make his stand quite clear. According to his own account, it took him eighteen months to gather the courage to tell the woman with whom he was in a

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relationship at the time about the truth. And that woman left him after knowing that. The incident certainly has hurt him, but this time he is more mature. Moreover, he now knows himself, as well as society, far better. Henry is the author’s instrument in her war against the patriarchal hegemony. Through him she throws few stinging questions into the face of society. The story compels us to rethink why men can’t wear silk garments. Silk is a nice fabric to embrace, so why should women be the only ones to wear it? Moreover, if a short girl can have the opportunity to make her height up with the help of high heels, why shouldn’t a man of short height do that? Why are these exclusively women’s territory? Women often encroach upon the so-called territory of men, especially regarding their outfits. If women can wear men’s robes and trousers without any hesitation, why can’t men do the reverse? Why is it that a man who does so falls prey to either ridicule or repulsion and loathing? Even in this we can find the voice of patriarchy. According to patriarchal hegemony, everything that is related to the male is superior in nature. So those on the other side of this binary are sometimes allowed to imitate them, attaining a kind of ‘reflected’ glory. A woman wearing men’s clothes may be accepted as affecting the ‘smartness’ of the men. Similarly, a short woman can affect a better height closer to that of a man (and that is why it is something to aspire for) by wearing high heels. But the vice versa is never accepted by society. It would never allow a member of the ‘superior’ class to imitate something that belongs to, or is associated with, the inferior. Anything related to the downside of the binary is not something to wish for. They are less worthy of imitation. Through Henry, Sommers raises such questions to discomfort society and thereby give a jerk to the whole system. The immediate effect of such stirring questions on the common people is portrayed through the narrator. She is misled into developing a wrong idea about Henry. She initially builds the impression that Henry must be transgender. As he is so sensitive regarding the issues of women, he might be a ‘woman in a man’s body’. But when she expresses her doubts to Henry, he readily rebukes her, by replying, “Do you know what it feels to be a man?” Now this is the most tragic part of patriarchal practice. In its attempt to control and exploit women, it has trapped men too, within the artificial parameters of masculinity. Within the patriarchal society even the men are not free to behave as they wish. They are judged for any kind of ‘abnormal’ activity. And the worst part of such hegemonic practices is that they have been successful in keeping the two integral parts of humanity, who should have been complementary to each other (remember the mythical concept of Ardhanariswara?) so wide apart that they have become complete strangers

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to each other. Thus it is now very unlikely for one to realize the feelings of the other. Maxine represents the voice of the typical patriarchal society. In other words, she is the instrument of society’s surveillance upon the individuals. The speaker stands in between Henry and Maxine. Maxine possesses the typical authoritative tone of patriarchy which she tries to impose upon her friend. Just like any other imperative agency, she never bothers about the feelings or the needs of her friend. She is critical of everything that doesn’t fit perfectly into the binaries fixed by masculine society. Neither Henry nor his ex-wife are exempted from her verbal assaults. Maxine makes fun of her just because she is in love with another woman. On one hand, she tries to define Henry as transgender for the way he dresses himself up. Initially the narrator shares this impression. No wonder, because this is the influence that hegemonic practices have upon individuals — blurring their independent thought processes. Being introduced to such a notion, she asks him, “Do you feel like a woman? A woman in a man’s body?” (Henry, 79). This is the prototype of patriarchal hegemony that always tries to categorize things and people. At first it tries to fit people within the male/female binary that it has fashioned. If not possible, then at least into the sub-category of the ‘third gender’. Though patriarchy is not quite comfortable with this ‘new’ category, it has at last accepted it, with much reluctance. But such people have been positioned at the margins, on the outskirts of social accessibility. Still it has at least accepted them. No wonder the speaker enquires about the real nature of Henry’s sexuality. On her failure to establish Henry as transgender, Maxine tries to dismiss the whole entity of Henry, by branding him merely as a confused personality. A person who doesn’t fit even into the ‘third gender’ as specified by society is a real threat to its hegemonic practices. Henry is a free thinker. He is not one to be brainwashed by any institution. He has the nerve to question the oppressive machineries to their faces about the baselessness of their propagandas. Even more significantly, he has the guts to defy all those nonsensical ideas. He can lead his own life according to his own choice. He is quite confident regarding his preferences, and can defend them too: “Why shouldn’t I have silk next to my body? It feels nice. Why shouldn’t I wear high heels to make me taller? Women wear men’s clothes. Why not the reverse?” (Henry, 79). This is about equal rights for every individual, irrespective of their gender identity and gender choices. Androgyny is all about asserting one’s individual agencies. So it tries to negate the existence of any kind of boundaries between the gender roles. Oppressive, hegemonic societies are most threatened by such individual agencies, so they try to

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counteract the existence of any such phenomena. Moreover, the most threatening aspect of the assertion of individuality upon hegemony is that it is infectious. Then the greatest challenge for hegemony becomes saving others from its influences, for the sake of its own existence. That is exactly what Maxine, the agent of oppressive society, endeavors to do with the speaker. She devotes her utmost efforts to save her from the influences of Henry. She begins by stigmatizing him as transgender. Being unsuccessful at that, she then goes on to dismiss his individual self by referring to him as ‘confused’, ‘living a secret life’, and so on. She advises her friend (though her tone is more instructive than advisory) not to continue her relationship with Henry. The real threat that patriarchy faces from people like Henry is reflected through her voice, “You shouldn’t get involved with someone like that. If you’re in an intimate relationship, you take in the other person’s stuff. You must know that? It passes across from one person to the other” (Henry, 80). Later, we see exactly how that happens with the speaker, as she becomes influenced by the way Henry thinks and leads his life. The whole story is actually a journey on the part of the speaker, from being a victim of hegemonic patriarchal practices to asserting her individuality. Henry is merely instrumental in leading her towards her goal. At the beginning of the story we find her shocked and repulsed at Henry’s unusual behavior. She even tries to feel relief by branding him as “a woman in a man’s body”. But as she comes closer to him, and encounters his argument, we see a change in her attitude. It seems she becomes convinced by the way Henry sees the world, gender identity, and gender roles. She begins to grasp the absurdities of the gender roles imposed upon people. Henry is the eyeopener for her. He teaches her not only to perceive freely, but also to uphold her own self to the world. Thus we see a woman who appears to be subservient to the authoritarian advice of Maxine at the beginning, confidently proclaiming her own preferences at the end. When Maxine ridicules Henry’s ex-wife for her queer sexual inclination, she cuts her short by clearly stating her disapproval, “I don’t want you to judge him, Maxine” (Henry, 80). Again, when Maxine tries to undermine him as ‘confused’ and tells her to leave him, she asserts her feelings, “It’s true he’s confused. But I really like him”. In spite of being castigated again and again by her friend, she is not ready to break the promises she has made to her lover just because he has some choices which society is critical of. It is true that the narrator oscillates between accepting and not accepting Henry at times. It is not easy to overcome hegemonic influences, that have been sitting within us since birth, in just a few days. No wonder she is doubtful about what to do with a man who is eighteen years younger than

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she is. Patriarchy never endorses the relation between an older lady and a younger man. It always propagates the other combination. The reason is very simple. If the man in a couple is older, it is he who controls the unit. He has the advantage of his age. But if vice versa, then the whole system gets disturbed. That’s why society is very uncomfortable with it. Patriarchy speaks through Maxine, “You need an older man, more of a father figure” (Henry, 80). A lady, however old she may be, always needs a guardian to guide and instruct her throughout her life. However, finally, she is able to break out of the shackles of the oppressive society. Despite the repeated attempts of Maxine (who is an agent of traditional regressive practices) to discourage her, she at last becomes successful in pursuing her individual agency. She chooses to follow her own preferences, without caring about what others have to say about it. This doesn’t necessarily mean that she likes or supports whatever Henry thinks or does. In spite of that, she decides to go on with him. But their union is significant because it is indicative of the acceptance of freedom of choice in a more desirable way. It proves the fact that, between a couple, it is not always mandatory to feel or act in the same way. What is needed is neither imposing his or her thoughts upon the other. This spirit is surely against the hegemonic practices of oppression. This sense of acceptance of the individual agency (however different that may be) even within a couple, is something to desire for a better world. That is what androgyny advocates. Remember the concept of yang and yin in Chinese mythology? This is the spirit of androgyny. Asserting one’s individual agency in every sphere of life is the ideal model for breaking the oppressive binaries crafted by patriarchy. This is what Sommer tries, quite successfully, to disseminate within her short story Henry. And the deliberate animosity of the speaker is the emblem of confirmation of the universality of this model on the part of the author.

Works Cited Bazin, Nancy Topping and Alma Freeman. “The Androgynous Vision”. Women's Studies, 2:2, 185-215, DOI: 10.1080/00497878.1974.9978350 Bem, S. “Probing the Promise of Androgyny”. 1976. Beyond Sex-role Stereotypes: Reading Toward a Psychology of Androgyny. Eds. A.G. Kaplan and J.P. Bean. 48-62. Toronto: Little, Brown and Co. Bharat, Meenakshi and Rundle Sharon, eds.2019. “Introduction”. The Glass Walls. xiii-xvi. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan,

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Daly, Mary. 1990. Gyn/ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Boston: Beacon Press. Lorenzi-Cioldi, Fabio. 1996. “Psychological Androgyny: A Concept in Search of Lesser Substance. Towards the Understanding of the Transformation of a Social Representation”. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. 26. 137 - 155. 10.1111/j.1468-5914.1996.tb00526.x. Merriam-Webster.https://www.merriam-ebster.com/dictionary/transgender Morgan, Ellen. 1977. “The Feminist Novel of Androgynous Fantasy”. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 2.3: 40-49. Morgan, Kathryn Poly. 1982. “Androgyny: A Conceptual Critique” Social Theory and Practice. 8.3 245-283. Nhanenge, Jyatte. 2007.Ecofeminism: Towards Integrating the Concerns of Women, Poor People, and Nature into Development. Pretoria: University of South Africa. Plumwood, Val. 1994. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London and Newyork: Routledge. Sommer, Libby. 2019. “Henry”. The Glass Walls. Eds. Meenakshi Bharat and Sharon Rundle.78-81. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan,

BAD AFFECTS, WOMEN, AND THE ENVIRONMENT JAOUAD ACHTITAH 1

Abstract This paper studies how women experience annoying affective intensities under environmental change. The approach adopted here is affect theory which analyzes human affects in relation to different environments. That is, women’s negative affects, such as grief, anxiety, despair, or suffering, are analyzed in terms of their spatiality and environment. Such annoying affects are to be understood as a result of inter-subjective connections between women and the environment. Hence, this paper seeks to answer two main questions: How can affect link women’s emotional lives to the environment? How does environmental change provoke bad affects in women? Keywords: Bad affects, women, environment, affect theory, intersubjective connections.

Introduction Environmental change has negative impacts on women because of multiple disparities. Gender disparities play a central role in how women are negatively affected by environmental change. In view of these disparities, women have less access to power and resources, which makes them more likely to be negatively affected by environmental change. Moreover, there are political disparities which can intensify the negative effect of environmental change on women. Women experience political disparities in their inadequate access to decision and policy making about the environment, rendering any environmental change more affective on women. Besides, environmental change negatively influences women 1

Jaouad Achtitah is Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Mohammed I University, Oujda, Morocco.

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because of economic disparities, in the sense that women are subordinated while they have limited job opportunities, low income, and less access to resource management. Social injustice is another disparity which adds to the negative effect of environmental change on women who are burdened with difficult roles and responsibilities towards family or community. Disparities in healthcare, too, make women’s situation more critical under environmental change. Additionally, these disparities leave a high percentage of women with inadequate information about environmental change and disasters, increasing the extent to which women are affected. Because women do not receive enough training about coping and life-saving skills, they are more vulnerable to mortality during environmental change. Thus, the confluence of all these disparities leaves women with a very fragile psychological base, which aggravates the negative affective intensities of environmental change. Environmental change has an intense affective influence on women. Initially, affect theorists state that environmental change, including biological and chemical change, conditions the affects women experience. Liz Bondi, Joyce Davidson, and Mick Smith use emotional geographies and place attachment as important terms to explain how environmental change provokes affects in women. In Ben Anderson’s and Nigel Thrift’s account, the affects women might experience are products of combined environmental forces which automatically include political, economic, cultural, affective, and other material factors (Bladow and Ladino, 5). Further, George Dimitrov, Jamie Thompson, Margaret du Bray, and Cecilia Sorensen, among others, highlight that women in particular, experience more negative impacts in relation to environmental threats. Women’s affects in connection to environmental change could be intensified by inter-subjective connections which include economic, social, ecological, political, physiological, and psychological forces. These inter-subjective connections could worsen the affective influence of environmental change on women. Therefore, this paper sheds light on how women experience bad affects such as grief, anxiety, despair, and suffering under environmental change. The debatable issues aroused here can be summed up thus: How can affect link women’s emotional lives to the environment? How does environmental change provoke bad affects in women?

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Environmental Change and Women’s Experience of Bad Affects Affect binds women’s emotional lives to the environment. Affect renders women connected, and therefore emotionally vulnerable, to either the local, or the global, environment. Affective intensities circulate around environmental risks and issues and play a powerful role in shaping women’s emotional experiences in a substantial way (Bladow and Ladino p2-3, du Bray et al. p59). Affect is understood here as suprapersonal connections that link women’s emotional lives to the environment. That is, when something quite universal or environmental happens, women should simultaneously feel it, perhaps more intensely. More importantly, affect is of greater concern to women’s emotional lives, as they experience more negative affective intensities in relation to environmental change. An affective perspective which looks at the reason behind the negative effects of environmental change suggests that women are more emotionally repressed because of cultural, economic, and political forces (Jung 51, 76-77). Seen in this way, women’s emotional lives are more vulnerable to being negatively affected by environmental change. Women are caught in a net of affective, inter-subjective connections that worsen their emotions in relation to the environment. According to the geographers Anderson and Thrift, women’s negative emotions stem from the affective confluence of environmental, cultural, political, and other material forces (Bladow and Ladino, 5). Hence, women’s emotional lives are not so personal, as they are, instead, related to the environmental context, especially when women report greater fear and sadness about environmental change (Bloodhart et al., 1-2, 4). Women are more emotionally attached to the environment. According to du Bray, women indicate that they have a deep emotional attachment to the environment. Once they are accustomed to seeing their environment in a certain way, it means that any change to it should make them feel sad and anxious. Environmental change disturbs women’s emotions, not just because women appreciate the environment, but because a sense of attachment to it is disturbed. Therefore, a lost environment engenders negative emotions, or what Glenn Albrecht terms ‘solastalgia’, in response to the loss of the fundamental aspects of the environment which might symbolize the past, heritage, memory, and existence. This emotional entanglement can be understood in terms of place attachment, sense of place, and emotional geographies, which provide a theoretical explanation of the way women, in particular, experience emotional effects in connection

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to their environment. This emotional attachment to the environment should be understood as the “interplay of affects and emotions, knowledge and beliefs, and behavior and actions in reference to place” (du Bray, 60). Based on this attachment, women tend to build their identities around the environment, and that, of course, encompasses emotional bonds, values, and meaning constructed in the place. The growing body of research indicates that, due to that attachment, women are significantly more likely to feel ‘bad’ under environmental change. When women express their grief and anxiety at changes in their environment, they often talk about the way these changes affect their emotions about home. Consequently, their emotional attachment to the environment makes them more vulnerable to climatic changes all round. Women’s experience of emotional distress can be understood in connection with environmental change, which gives rise to emotional distress among certain disadvantaged groups, such as women. Women are emotionally distressed because aspects of environmental change often involve intersubjective connections which exert a negative influence. That is, emotional distress, which includes negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, or grief, is explained in terms of its ‘environmentality’. By ‘environmentality’ we mean that the emotional distress involved is not centered only in women as discrete individuals, but rather in a more collective, shared, socially, culturally, and environmentally situated play of affective exchanges. In this account, the raising of distressing emotions is thoroughly woven in the relational realities of women’s everyday environment (Bondi et al., 90, 9798). Women’s emotional distress is also due to marginalization which places women out of kilter with environmental change and everyday expectations, which in turn, becomes a source of anguish and anxiety. Besides this, the emotional distress felt in response to environmental risks is read as a result of environmental institutionalization. It is a state connected in part to proximate patriarchal networks in which distress about environmental ostracism dominates women’s sense of ontological security. Indeed, the environment where various factors conspire fosters women’s emotional distress. Environmental change can be an emotional topic on account of the emotional distress it provokes in women. Added to that, given the disadvantages of being women, the impacts on environmental resources provoke negative emotional states. Women’s anxiety, fear, despair, and grief are concerned with the concomitant risks and future impacts on the essential environmental resources (Bloodhart et al., 1,4). In short, the way women experience environmental change is full of emotional distress.

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Gender disparity is an undeniable feature that shapes women’s affective experience of environmental change. It is a key variable in understanding how environmental change affects women’s emotional lives differently, from their most banal everyday moods and background feelings to their more complex states of mind. Gender inequality is an important factor that worsens women’s emotional experience of environmental change. Worldwide, the limited access to power and resources makes women more likely to be negatively affected by the impacts of environmental change (UN WOMEN, 2) compared to men. In fact, “women, who make up the majority of the developing world’s 1.4 billion poor, generally have lower incomes, less access to credit and decision making authority, and limited control over resources, increasing their vulnerability to many climate impacts” (USAID, 1). It is so important to conceive of these distinctions as multipliers of the environmental effects on women. Because of gender disparities, women show more anxiety and concern about environmental risks. Steven Arnocky and Mirella L. Stroink argue that the literature on gender and environmentalism has indicated that women are more concerned about, and feel greater empathy for, the environment than men (Arnocky & Stroink, 3-4). In other words, gender disparity, which could be in different sectors, intensifies women’s negative affective experience of environmental change. Women experience the effects of environmental change more intensively under patriarchal rule. The patriarchal hegemony has worsened environmental change, and, consequently, has exacerbated how women feel this change. There has been a single patriarchal mindset which uses and abuses the environment, which has eventually, and negatively, affected marginalized groups such as women. However, that single patriarchal mindset does not support the act of embracing environmental diversity and interdependence as much as it maintains inequalities in terms of access to environmental resources and management; increasing disparities that intensify the effects of environmental change on women. That is, the effects of environmental change on women have been aggravated in view of the patriarchal exploitation of the environment. In this regard, the patriarchal rule has taken over the environment, exploited it, and changed it, while women have been kept away, silenced, and marginalized, making the effects of environmental change fall on women intensively. The acute effects of environmental change felt by women are congruous with the patriarchal exploitation of the environment itself. More than that, the patriarchal hegemony approaches the environment as a cluster of numb objects, turning a blind eye to what marginalized groups such as women might feel as matter of consequence. Hence, this patriarchal, disconnected, uninviting, and depersonalized,

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conception of the environment has made women’s experience of environmental change extremely intense (Thompson, 76). Women, as a marginalized group, are negatively affected by environmental change in the patriarchal society. Thompson argues that women experience more negative affects under environmental change in the patriarchal society which rose up to dominate politics, economics, and the environment itself for a significant time. He continues to assert that it is this society that is responsible for the destruction of the environment and the negative affects which disadvantaged groups such as women suffer from. The patriarchal society, through its monopoly of different sectors, worsens environmental change and its negative influence which falls on women disproportionately. That is, the patriarchal society makes the negative effects of environmental change more acutely felt by women, who are the least powerful and the most vulnerable. Significantly enough, women represent half of the world population, and are regarded as among the largest human resources, yet they do not share the same opportunities in the patriarchal society, which makes them weaker and more vulnerable to the negative affects of environmental change. Dimitrov argues that women are often exploited, oppressed, and discriminated against, on account of gender bias in patriarchal society, increasing their fear and anxiety about any change in the environment. Worldwide, women’s negative affects concerning environmental changes stem also from their unsatisfying participation in politics, decision making, and policy and advocacy in the patriarchal society. In particular, women’s anxiety about environmental change increases, while the patriarchal society limits their proper representation in economy, science, and technology. In short, women’s situation as a marginalized group in the patriarchal society augments their negative affects under environmental change. The economic factor is an anxiety-multiplier for women during environmental change. It is difficult for women to find employment opportunities in the formal and informal sectors, and in where they find an opportunity, they are underpaid, which worsens the anxiety they experience under environmental change. To be clearer, the affect of anxiety is increased in response to environmental change while thinking about poverty, malnutrition, and hunger that are looming. From an economic point of view, reports indicate that women experience more anxiety while “[they] are vulnerable and produce up to 90% of rural poor’s food and face climate change, depletion of natural resources, because they are disproportionately involved in the livelihood and reliant on natural resource-dependent activities” (Dimitrov, 212). In this context, the economic factor plays a fundamental role in the anxiety women experience under the environmental change. For instance,

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poverty amplifies women’s anxiety on a regional scale. Sorensen and others state that a total of 1.3 billion people globally live below the poverty line, 70% of whom are female (Sorensen et al., 283), which indicates the centrality of the economic factor as an anxiety-multiplier during environmental changes. Hence, loss or reduction of economic opportunities increases women’s anxiety during environmental change. Social injustice greatly intensifies women’s bad affects during environmental change. Given the social subordination they live with every day, women undergo annoying affects during environmental risk. Women are recognized to have knowledge of their community, social networking, and protecting and managing resources. Therefore, they are prime players during environmental disasters which increase their fear and suffering. As a matter of fact, women are not equipped with enough information and training concerning floods, earthquakes, cyclones, tsunami, and other environmental threats, something that is unfair and adds to their fear. For example, in 2002, 77% of the victims during the Tsunami in the Indian ocean were women because they were not trained to swim. In other words, what arouses annoying affects is that women are 14 times more likely to die during environmental disasters as a result of inadequate information and training (Dimitrov, 212-13). That is to say, the social role ascribed to women increases their anxiety about, and fear of, any possible environmental change. Their roles as family caregivers are intensified during and after environmental disasters, which potentially leads to emotional and physical exhaustion, increasing the degree of suffering. Besides, studies have proven a rise in levels of sexual and domestic violence during environmental change, which is a crucial variable which augments women’s bad affects. Also, in response to the impacts of environmental damage, girls are more likely than boys to be obliged to drop out of school in order to help with domestic chores, a sad fact indicating the level of grief and suffering females experience (UNWOMEN, 3, USAID). Therefore, inadequate access to equal social rights and opportunities highly influences women’s affective experience of environmental change. Another source of annoying affects is the ecological vulnerability during environmental change which makes it difficult for women to manage their livelihoods. When the environment changes drastically, anxiety and fear arise while women find it difficult to maintain their livelihoods. As women produce from 60% to 80% of the food in developing countries, drought, flooding, or pest damage automatically affects their livelihoods, which consequently provokes their anxiety and fear. According to the National Sample Survey Organization, during environmental change, 54% of rural

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women have to move anxiously and fearfully across distances between two hundred meters and five kilometers every day to get drinking water, which means they walk on average for twenty minutes and spend another fifteen minutes in search for drinking water. What adds to their suffering is that traveling long distances to procure water, and the lack of access to water and sanitation, creates unsafe conditions for women, especially during pregnancy. In a number of societies, women often show fear and anxiety about their primary responsibility for collecting water, food, and animal feed. Due to resource scarcity during environmental disasters, women may engage in huge competition which in turn, leads to conflict and violence, which is itself a source of suffering, grief, and despair (Dimitrov, 212, Sorensen et al., 287, USAID). Thus, the ecological vulnerability of women during environmental change is a risk-multiplier that aggravates their experience of bad affects. Inadequate access to political power regarding environmental management is a key factor that exacerbates women’s bad affects during environmental change. Women are unfairly prevented from being represented in decisionmaking concerning environmental management, which makes their anxiety about the environmental changes very real. Based on reports introduced by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, women are at higher risk, suffering more greatly, and experience higher anxiety in view of political factors, during environmental change (Dimitrov, 211, Sorensen et al., 283, UN). As a matter of course, women experience bad affects of environmental change due to their limited political participation in environmental management. That is to say, women’s lack of access to policymaking about the environment increases their fear and anxiety during any possible environmental change. The fact that women are politically voiceless when it comes to environmental management fuels their sense of anxiety and fear about any possible changes in the environment itself. To rephrase this, the widespread sense of political futility about environmental management creates more fear, anxiety, and despair for women during environmental change. The political exclusion of women from environmental management exacerbates the negative affects during looming environmental change (Berlant, 211, 228, 261). Consequently, political disparities in terms of policymaking about environmental management are a serious aspect which worsens women’s affective experience of environmental change. Physiological vulnerability during environmental change is a source of women’s negative affective intensities. In Stacy Alaimo’s Bodily Natures, a number of factual cases are presented about women’s grief and suffering from serious health problems due to disastrous environmental conditions.

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Alaimo emphasizes that the physical, chemical, and biological aspects of the environment tremendously influence women’s health and wellbeing. In other words, environmental change exacerbates women’s anxiety and fear about malnutrition, and limited access to medical services and healthcare. Women express more fear and anxiety about droughts, floods, changing temperatures, and disaster-related epidemics, since these environmental changes worsen sanitation and hygiene. More fear is shown about water scarcity, which forces women to rely on sources that might be biologically and toxicologically contaminated, resulting in bacterial and viral infections. Further, pregnant women are fearful of, and anxious about, food scarcity during environmental disasters, taking into account that 50% of pregnant women suffer from iron deficiency in developing nations, and 315,000 women die yearly during childbirth. Also, pregnant women report a high level of negative affects during environmental change, such as prolonged high temperatures, which are associated with stillbirth, congenital birth defects, pre-term delivery, gestational hypertension, bleeding, preeclampsia, and other pregnancy complications. What arouses women’s fear, grief, anxiety, and suffering under environmental change is that they may be infected during pregnancy, which can lead to anemia and trans-placental nutrient transport, which results in intrauterine growth restriction and increased vulnerability of the mother to hemorrhagic complications of delivery. In addition, negative affects stem from the fact that women are at higher risk of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and complications, as studies demonstrated that women’s arteries are highly correlated with, and affected by, air pollutants during environmental change. Hence, women’s negative affects are further intensified during environmental change because of their physiological vulnerability (Dimitrov, 212, Sorensen et al., 284, 286-87, UN). The psychological factor is another key element that intensifies women’s bad affects during environmental disasters. Women experience more anxiety, fear, and grief since they are the most common victims of mental health disorders during environmental change and disasters. Charles A. Ogunbode, Stale Pallesen, Gisela Bohm, and others, assert that during environmental change females report higher levels of insomnia symptoms on average, which automatically gives rise to negative affects. Polls demonstrate that 41.9% of neuropsychiatric disorders, which include depressive disorders, brain syndromes, and dementias, are higher among women who face intense bad affects in view of environmental risks (Dimitrov, 212). Fear, anxiety, grief, and frustration arise in the light of the inevitable effect of environmental changes on women’s mental health. That is, environmental catastrophes can leave women overwhelmed with

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insomnia, dementia, or depression, accompanying other bad affects such as grief, anxiety, and fear. For instance, the loss of home or beloved ones during environmental disasters is enough to affect women with traumatic and post-traumatic disorders, leaving them overwhelmed. Here, memory of a lost home or beloved one becomes a source of mental anguish and grief (Berlant, 83). Therefore, understanding women’s psychological vulnerability is important to comprehend the negative affects women experience during environmental change.

Conclusion Under environmental change women experience negative affects. An environmentally oriented theory of affect explains how the environment is linked to women’s emotional lives. Here, the concepts of emotional geographies and attachment to place clarify the way the changing of the environment has an emotional effect on women. Moreover, women feel bad affects during environmental change because of multiple factors which represent inter-subjective connections. Women experience negative affects under environmental change while they have limited access to power, policymaking, and environmental management. Also, women’s negative affects are intensified in the light of specific social roles and responsibilities which make them more vulnerable to the effects of environmental change. Another factor that adds to women’s anxiety during environmental change is their limited job opportunities, income, and access to resources. Additionally, women’s negative affects stem from their high susceptibility to morbidity and mortality during environmental disasters. Thus, due to the confluence of all these factors, women are physiologically and psychologically more vulnerable to environmental change, which in turn augments their negative experience. Therefore, the bad affects women experience under environmental change are, in this sense, understood in terms of intersubjective connections in which different factors interplay. Simply put, women experience environmental change with an aching heart.

Works Cited Alaimo, Stacy. Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self. Indiana University Press, 2010. Arnocky, Steven, and Mirella L. Stroink. “Gender Differences in Environmental Concern and Cooperation. The Mediating Role of Emotional Empathy.” Current Research in Social Psychology, Feb. 19AD, www.researchgate.net/publication/290852229.

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Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Duke University Press, 2012. Bladow, Kyle, and Jennifer Ladino. Affective Ecocriticism Emotion, Embodiment, Environment. Unp - Nebraska, 2018. Bloodhart, Brittany, et al. “‘Be Worried, Be VERY Worried:’ Preferences for and Impacts of Negative Emotional Climate Change Communication.” Frontiers in Communication, vol. 3, Jan. 2019, https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00063. Bondi, Liz, et al. Emotional Geographies. London New York Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016. Dimitrov, George. “Effects of Climate Change on Women.” Research Review International Journal of Multidisciplinarity, vol. 04, no. 05, May 2019. du Bray, Margaret, et al. “Anger and Sadness: Gendered Emotional Responses to Climate Threats in Four Island Nations.” Cross-Cultural Research, vol. 53, no. 1, Feb. 2018, pp. 58–86, https://doi.org/10.1177/1069397118759252. Fisher, Andy. Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life. State University Of New York Press, 2013. Jung, C. G. Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Harcourt, Brace & World, (Ca, 1980). Ogunbode, Charles Adedayo, et al. “Negative Emotions about Climate Change Are Related to Insomnia Symptoms and Mental Health: CrossSectional Evidence from 25 Countries.” Current Psychology, Feb. 2021, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01385-4. Sorensen, Cecilia, et al. “Climate Change and Women’s Health: Impacts and Opportunities in India.” GeoHealth, vol. 2, no. 10, Oct. 2018, pp. 283–97, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018gh000163. Thompson, Jamie. “Ecofeminism: The Path towards Healing the Earth.” Dialogue & Nexus, vol. 04, core.ac.uk/download/pdf/84674605.pdf. Accessed 23 Sept. 2021. UN WOMEN. “Why is Climate Change a Gender Issue?” UNWOMEN, www.uncclearn.org/wp-content/uploads/library/unwomen704.pdf. USAID. Climate Change and Gender. www.oecd.org/dac/gender-development /46460915.pdf. Accessed 23 Sept. 2021. World Health Organization. Gender, Climate Change and Health. Geneva WHO, 2014.

ECOFEMINIST ORIENTATIONS IN WOMEN WRITERS

DEINSTRUMENTALIZING THE PREMODERN: LAUREN GROFF AND MARIE DE FRANCE NICHOLAS BIRNS 1

Abstract This essay examines ecofeminist themes in the work of the 12th century European woman writer Marie de France, and in the fictionalization of Marie by the contemporary US novelist Lauren Groff in her 2021 novel Matrix. While the medieval original, in stories such as “Lanval”, “Le Fresne”, and “Chevrefoil”, depicts nature as a site of subversion, transformation, and wildness that can question gendered categories, contemporary rewriting sees nature as a gendered, feminist space, challenging not only male privilege but the agential appropriation of the biosphere by human institutional force, as seen in the character’s early point of view, registering “cut holly on the raw graves” which tries to render nature gray and controllable. This essay will ask if ecofeminism can be temporalized and transfer coherently across historical periods, as well as considering how changes in conceptions of gender and identity inflect interpretations of the nonhuman world. Keywords: Marie de France; Lauren Groff, ecofeminism, premodern, Anthropocene It is important to historicize ecofeminism for several reasons. Firstly, there is often a sense that ecofeminism is an exclusively contemporary phenomenon, something born out of the conscious polemical agenda of the late 20th century to enfranchise women and to cherish and protect the environment. This may be true terminologically, as ‘ecofeminism’ and even ‘ecology’, and ‘feminism’ themselves are modern coinages. But this is not true in an experiential or anthropological sense. Attitudes, stances, or situations existed in the premodern and early modern eras, which disclosed what would not then be called ecofeminism, as well as forces opposed to ecofeminism, pro-patriarchy, and the cavalier exploitation of resources. 1

Prof Nicholas Birns is a faculty at New York University, New York, USA

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This essay will explore one premodern text, by Marie de France, and a contemporary American historical novel, fictionalizing the experience of Marie de France, which depicts premodern experience through a wholly or partially ecofeminist lens. In any human text, there is always gender. Equally, there is always weather and there is always nature. Even if mentions of weather, harvests, earthquakes, volcanoes, or other phenomena of the natural world seem innocuous or annalistic, they are indicators of how past societies thought of the environment and the natural world around them. Often, while in the background, natural referents only need one jolt of disruption to emerge into the foreground, as a modern disaster. The premodern world, with its relative lack of technological infrastructure and its consequent vulnerability to sudden changes in the natural order, knew this. Thus, one can speak of premodern ecofeminism. Another way of saying this, is that there can be ecofeminism before the Anthropocene Age. The climate does not have to be perceived to be in danger, or the object of human alteration or definition, to be the object of valuation or devaluation, as it often is in premodern narratives. Premodernity can supply another dimension to ecofeminism, however. It can further intensify its anti-hegemonic tendencies by freeing us from the provinciality of valuing the urgency of contemporary times over past eras. Consideration of the premodern can widen ecofeminism, from just being a trend or a fad, to an approach that exhibits permanent variables that can be found in most textual sources. Since so much of history has been catastrophic, regarding premodern texts with an ecofeminist lens can reveal the dystopia of hierarchical visions of gender, power, and land. Equally, in spite of these hierarchies, ecofeminist spaces have, in fact, existed both historically and textually, which can make ecofeminist ideology appear less utopian and more rooted in the world which we know. This context can potentially find a better place within the perceptual categories of understanding and experience as we have them.

Hazel and Ash: Ecofeminism in Marie de France The contemporary US writer Lauren Groff’s 2021 novel Matrix provides a fictionalized and conjectural version of the life of the 12th-century poet and storyteller Maire de France. This essay will pivot around a discussion of Groff’s novel. But first we should discuss the historical Marie de France, and the way her writing provides a basis for Groff’s overtly ecofeminist speculation about the nature of her life and experience. De France’s work,

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though not unknown in intervening centuries, and extolled by 19th century woman writers, such as Matilda Betham, and male mid-20th century scholars, such as Foster Damon, was effectively rediscovered in the later 20th century by medievalist critics such as Robert Hanning, Joan Ferrante, Michelle A. Freeman, and Evelyn Birge Vitz. Since the 1980s, de France’s work has been a core element of the medieval liberty curriculum as taught in graduate schools in the Anglophone and Francophone worlds. de France, though she wrote in French, can equally be claimed by both linguistic cultures. Though she spoke of her narratives as ‘Breton lais,’ indicating a relationship to the Celtic-speaking region of Brittany in Western France, and although her material, some which centered around the stories of King Arthur and his knights, was at times Celtic, she herself was likely Norman. The Normans were a French speaking people, originally descended from Scandinavian Vikings, but by de France's time thoroughly immersed in the French language and culture, who ruled both much of Northern France and, after the conquest of 1066, England. In today’s terms, de France would be considered bi-national; English and French. Indeed Groff’s novel shows her both growing up in what is now France, and undertaking her life’s work as a nun in what is now England. The work of Constance Bullock-Davis, who theorized that de France was identical to the late 12th century Abbess of Shaftesbury, is an example of scholarly precedent for the assumptions made by Groff in her fictional retelling. Feminist criticism has gravitated to de France, not just because she is an identifiable woman writer. Indeed, unlike an earlier medieval woman writer, the playwright Hrosvitha of Gandersheim, who, in general, is either written about as a woman, or as a Christian writer, de France has been susceptible to a multitude of critical approaches, as were more canonically established authors, such as Chrétien de Troyes, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the later woman writer Christine de Pisan. However, de France’s work often centers around themes of gender and power, and seems written from a discernibly feminine perspective. Some of the critical commentary on de France, such as arguments that her works are actually those of several different authors, seem motivated by, or at least opportune vehicles for, a misogynistic assumption that there cannot be many great medieval women writers. Though the author behind the name ‘Marie de France’ cannot be definitively identified, her oeuvre, especially in her most famous work, the Lais, reveals a world that reinterprets mediaeval genres, categories, and tableaux, through a woman’s perspective. “Lanval” is one of Marie’s most famous lais, as it is set at the court of King Arthur in a context recognizable from popular stories before and since. At

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the beginning of “Lanval”, women and land are spoken of equally as objects of male instrumental desire and manipulation: Women and land He shared out with generous hand To all but one who'd served. Lanval He forgot: no man helped his recall. (L. 19-21, Tr. Shoaf)

In Judith P. Shoaf’s verse translation, King Arthur leaves Lanval out of his generous distribution of property. The balance of the narrative is how Lanval transcends the jealousy and pettiness of his rivals at court to become a true knight and gain his love. But he cannot do so in the context of King Arthur’s court. For our purposes, though, we need to concentrate on the King’s unexamined equation of women and land, as simply passive rewards to be bestowed upon, or withheld from, the varifocals in Arthur’s thrall. Lanval meets a fairy woman from the other world, who leads him on a journey of love that ultimately takes him away from the patriarchal world in which he is enmeshed. Interestingly, though, at first, this woman is also distanced from nature: This tent was the maiden's bower: New-blown rose, lily-flower, When in Spring their petals unfurl-Lovelier than these was this girl. (L. 76-80, Tr. Shoaf)

Her material possessions are compared to, and supersede, nature. She seduces and dazzles Lanval, but binds him to never even mention her to anyone in the mortal world. He goes back to Arthur’s court and is nearly seduced by Arthur, and the wayward Queen, invokes the fairy lady’s love in demurral only at the last moment. The Queen goes to the King and accuses Lanval of a sexual overture. Lanval is about to be sentenced to exile from the court (importantly, not to death) when two ladies come, each surpassing the Queen in beauty. However, neither of them is Lanval’s fairy love. They are, though, subordinate emissaries for the fairy woman. They prepare the way for her exoneration and the rescue of Lanval. After this buildup, the fairy woman herself arrives. Notably, although her beauty is still compared to nature in superlative terms, she is no longer dissociated from any surrounding biological environment. Indeed, she is almost surrounded by animal life, riding a palfrey, bearing a hawk, and leading a hound. It is not woman alone, but woman plus menagerie. At first, the fairyworld’s allegorical supersession of nature has almost the obliterative force of the mortal, Arthurian, world’s ruthless exploitation of the natural in the service of hierarchical authority. But by the end of “Lanval”, the fairy

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woman’s beauty, though just as lambent and shimmering, is more ambient and contextual, more situated: Grey were her eyes, white her face, Lovely her mouth, nose in the right place, Brown eyebrows, forehead smooth and fair, Bright blond, crisply curling hair-The radiant light of pure gold thread Fades by the brightness of her head. (L. 564-9, Tr. Shoaf)

Thus, when Lanval goes off with her to the fairy world, he is liberated from the expectations, judgments, and petty turf-battles, of the Arthurian court, but he does not simply vanish into the ether. Though the place where he goes with his fairy love is left unspecified, there is no doubt that there is a place, and that the years of their life together will transpire in an achieved ecological context. Romantic bliss, in other words, is not sundered from nature, and its fulfillment depends on being situated within a natural ambit. “Le Fresne” features two women who are named after trees, with Le Fresne named after the ash tree. As Shoaf points out, even though the character is indubitably feminine, the noun in French is masculine, and Le Fresne is continually gendered ambiguously. As Shoaf points out, the French word for ‘baby’ – enfant - requires a masculine construction. Le Fresne’s sister, La Coudre is named after the hazel tree, a noun which, in French, has a feminine construction, and indeed, La Coudre is much more conventionally gendered than Le Fresne. The two sisters are separated by their mother, when a friend of her husband tries to have one of his twin sons fostered. She alleges that this means that the friend’s wife had an affair. In a sort of karmic retribution, the woman who accused the friend’s wife of infidelity ends up bearing two children herself — the same phenomenon that she has earlier alleged must be a side effect of being sexually loose. She decides to abandon one of her daughters to save her reputation, and leaves Le Fresne by a church with a gold ring and silk brocade as tokens. Le Fresne is found in an ash tree, by a porter whose widowed daughter is able to nurse the baby: The good man calls her from her rest: "Get up, get up, my dear daughter-Light fire and candles, bring some water! I've got a child, newborn, you see. I found it outside, in the ash tree. With your own milk you will nurse it. Warm it up now, gently wash it!" She does just as he commands— Lights fire, takes the child in her hands,

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Bathes the baby, gets it warm, Nurses it with her own milk.2 (L. 195-205, Tr. Shoaf)

The nursing by the surrogate mother keeps the child alive, and engrafts it within a living biological order. But the child is named Le Fresne, after the ash tree where the porter had found her, signifying a natural attachment that is more alienated, less direct, and less purposive, and therefore fosters a broader, more inclusive, more ecofeminist vision of nature. After being nursed by the porter’s daughter, Le Fresne is raised by the abbess of a convent as her niece, and has no idea of her real origins, When Gurun, Lord of Dol, comes to the convent and sees the beautiful Le Fresne, he falls in love with her. The abbess tells Le Fresne that she is not really her niece. In turn, the abbess gives Le Fresne the brocade and the ring her real mother had left with her. Gurun takes her as his concubine (quite an unusual act in this sort of story) but his vassals complain, saying he can never have a legitimate son and heir with a companion who is not fully a wife, and who is not noble enough to ever qualify. Gurun goes to the real parents of Le Fresne, who offer him the other sister — La Coudre. Gurun’s vassal presents this choice to him as an explicit natural allegory: Leave the Ash now lying there, And trade her for the Hazel fair. The Hazel gives sweet nuts and pleasure; Barren Ash, fruitless, is no treasure. (L. 385-88, Tr. Shoaf)

Le Fresne is seen as infertile and not appropriately feminine, whereas La Coudre is seen as legitimate and fertile. This is both in the sense of being able to bear Gurun legitimate sons because of rank, and also because, as the tree-name indicates, she seems somehow ‘more’ a woman, with the bareness and masculine gender of Le Fresne making her almost seem like a transgender woman (though she is not that), or as somebody not privileged by an ecological order that constructs women as mechanisms of instrumental fertility. Gurun is betrothed to La Coudre, and Le Fresne puts up with this patiently and self-effacingly, though she does not know she is the new wife’s sister. At the wedding feast, the mother of La Coudre (and of Le Fresne), aware that Gurun has a concubine, plots to have Le Fresne sent away. Le Fresne, though, is so forbearing as to attract the admiration of the court. She even, absurdly, instructs La Coudre’s servants as to how Gurun likes things in bed. Having helped prepare the bedchamber for Gurun and La Coudre, Le Fresne is about to retire when she is seen by her mother, who recognizes the brocade. This sets up not just an epiphanic recognition, but a dissolving of the bounds of propriety she has so carefully set up:

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Deinstrumentalizing the Premodern Now she remembers that lost child; Her heart trembles, she grows wild. (L. 301-3, Tr. Shoaf)

The mother has to leave a more bounded order of nature towards a freer, less instrumental one. Just as Lanval, in finding true love, has to disengage himself from natural hierarchies, so the mother of Le Fresne and La Coudre has to accept the bimodal aspects of nature: wild and tamed, male and female, ash and hazel. With the Archbishop of Dol conveniently present to straighten things out, the knight is speedily divorced from La Coudre, and he marries Le Fresne, with La Coudre eventually married off to an equally eligible local knight, who, significantly, is ‘nearer home’. The two sisters are two different models of nature, one which is adjacent and nearby, one more wandering and dangerous. It is clear, though, where the story’s priorities are: When this story got around, Just as it happened, people found A lai of it, Le Fresne, the Ash Tree; The named the lai after the lady. (L. 405-8, Tr. Shoaf)

The privileging of Le Fresne is proto-ecofeminist in its rejection of an instrumental vision of nature, and of the model of a woman that is simply designed by, and compliant to, the patriarchy. One sister is likened to the conventionally fertile tree, the other to the less exploitable ash, not a mere instrument to bear fruit. But the poem clearly extols the ‘ash sister’ as the more truly interesting person, precisely in her resistance to an equation of both women and nature with a fertility that can gratify men. Notably, even though the ash tree is not associated with nutrition or sustenance in an explicit sense, it is a natural tree that is a living organism, and the nursing of the baby is linked metonymically with the ash tree where it is found. It has to be remembered that naming women after trees is very obtrusive, and, as seen in my summary of the story above, any time either of the names of the characters is mentioned, the reader is reminded of a porous boundary between human and arboreal identity. Our last example from the lais of Marie de France, before we move on to Lauren Groff’s novel itself, is “Chevrefoil”. This is a story explicitly named after a plant, the chevrefoil, whose English translation (actually given by de France in the poem, a sign that Groff suggests shows she was highly familiar with England as well as France). “Chevrefoil’ tells the story of Tristan and Iseult, already famous in medieval lore. Though the story makes clear that Iseult will never get away from her marriage to Tristan’s uncle, King Mark, the tragic ending of the narrative is not explicitly mentioned in “Chevrefoil”.

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Rather, it ends on a note of furtive, idealized love. The image of the hazel seen in “Le Fresne” recurs here, though this time the fertility of hazel is not contrasted to the bareness of the ash, but complements it with the fertility of the honeysuckle, that is to say the chevrefoil or goatleaf after which the story is named: or those two, it's just like with The sweet honeysuckle vine That on the hazel tree will twine: When it fastens, slips itself right Around the trunk, ties itself tight, Then the two survive together. But should anyone try to sever Them, the hazel dies right away, And the honeysuckle, the same day (L. 45-54, Tr. Shoaf)

Hazel and honeysuckle do not contrast, but are complementary mutual. Once they combine, any disentanglement will kill them. Unlike in “Le Fresne”, where one woman is more masculine, the other feminine, here, the two lovers, although biologically male and female, are not gendered in terms of the plant world. Neither hazel nor honeysuckle is more masculine or feminine than the other. The lovers’ story is left suspended, in a kind of bittersweet pastoral. But what is notable is the absence of hierarchies inscribed within nature or the instrumentalization of nature. Just as in “Lanval”, where the romantic happiness of the couple cannot be complete until the context of the natural world is fully admitted, the love in “Chevrefoil’ does not just defy social conventions, but accepts and immerses itself in an instrumentalized, non-hierarchical natural world. Or to put it another way, the mutual dependency of the two lovers is figured as much as an ecological relation than as an affective one. Though de France’s stories themselves (unlike Lauren Groff’s fictionalization of the historical Marie) find love fulfilled in romantic relationships between men and women, they do not exalt love over nature, or posit it as transcendental. This is why the difference between the first and second appearance of the fairy woman in “Lanval” is so important. In the first, she is an eidolon of love that transcends nature. In the second, she is planted in nature, and, like the hazel and honeysuckle, poised with it in mutual dependence. This is not to say that merely mentioning trees and women makes a premodern text ecofeminist. What Vin Nardizzi and Tiffany Jo Wirth (2019) called “a burgeoning” field of premodern literary ecologies” has acknowledged how nature desorption was used to shape national and colonial identities. But nature is not just background or ‘the outdoors’ in de France; nor is it

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doctrinally contrasted to Christian ideals or to an order of grace, nor does it foster empire, a tendency discerned in some of the texts analyzed by the contributors to the Nardizzi and Wirth anthology. The vision of nature in the lais is one of resistance to an ideology that would derogate, sideline, or normalize nature. A robust and plural vision of nature is a prerequisite for the human self-realization of de France’s characters. There is strong potential for a non-hierarchical, ecofeminist perspective in the works themselves.

A Great Stone Eagle: Ecofeminism in Lauren Groff’s Vision of Marie de France It cannot be doubted that Lauren Groff’s novel takes this potential and makes it highly challenging, even bracingly explicit. Sharon Kinoshita has said that what we know of Marie de France “is wholly the product of her texts” (Kinoshita, 263). Groff’s identification of Marie as the Abbess of Shaftesbury, and a member of the royal family, is a plausible and intriguing one, but hardly verifiable. Groff, though, delights in her own version of the historical Marie, as a half-sister of Henry II of England and Normandy who is discarded and sent off to be a nun in an obscure abbey. Though no one can be sure who the historical Marie is, we know roughly when she lived in the later 12th and early 13th century, and the appellation ‘de France’, as well as her very ability to write and be read, testifies to what is most likely high social rank. Albrecht Classen has argued with respect to Marie that, “the calmness with which she reflects upon her own writing process indicates the degree to which she considered herself as a fully-accepted member of a learned and high-cultured society” (Classen 2007, 226). Yet, as Classen also points out, “Marie stood up as a social critic of abuse of power” (Classen 2020, 1) in her society. Although many critics do not go as far as R. Howard Bloch did in 2003, in seeing Marie as an epochal disturber of the hegemonic peace, strong emphasis in her work on social dissent, non-conformists, unexpected outcomes, and a delight in upsetting the social order, argues that even though Marie might not take any directly subversive positions with respect to constituted authority, in Kinoshita’s words, she nonetheless “challenges patriarchal practices” (Kinoshita, 283). Certainly, a lay such as “Chaitivel”, in which a woman has four lovers, three of whom die and one of whom is castrated, is more than visibly transgressive with respect to patriarchal gender scenarios. Groff’s Marie lives in a very different world from that of any characters in the lais. Once Marie is exiled from her half-brother’s court, and is immured

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in the abbey, she lives in an exclusively female world, with her romantic and sexual life, her work life, and her spiritual life all taking place within a network of women. Marie’s stories are necessarily largely heterosexual love stories, and not only have male characters, but inhabit genres of chivalric romance and, in the case of a tale like “Bisclavret” beast-fable, which are already gendered male, in some cases relatively early in their history. Groff sees Marie as primarily a nun and a passionate lesbian. Irina Dumitrescu has commented that, “Groff has created a heroine who is more or less the opposite of the little we know of Marie de France, and it’s worth asking why she would choose Marie de France only to reject what makes that woman’s poems so remarkable” (Dumitrescu, 40). Indeed the reader who knows Marie from Matrix alone would be surprised to find that the historical de France is, as Kinoshita says, known only through her texts, because the production of the lais, not to mention her other works, are at the margins of Groff’s texts and of her concerns. In strictly novelistic terms, to respond to Dumitrescu’s question, this is perhaps both liberating and necessary: the lais stand on their own, and it would be tiresomely metatextual to wrap a novel about them. The weight of de France’s feminist studies, while being scrupulously attentive to the texts, has discerned something more behind them, a dissenting agenda that present-day efforts can excavate. Indeed, one might make a parallel between Groff’s explicit ability to formulate a lesbian-feminist, ecocritical agenda in Matrix and the way the Anthropocene makes us aware of our interaction with nature and our ability to place nature in danger. In her 2013 short story “At The Round Earth’s Imagined Corners” Groff has shown her awareness of the pressing reality of anthropogenic climate change and how it effects the lives of individuals, such as in the case of this particular story, the tragic encounter of the character Jude with a river coursing out of control. In the long-ago world of Matrix, nature has not yet been changed by humans so much as to be an overt threat to our continuing existence on the planet. Yet Marie is aware of how vulnerable and fragile the earth is and the destructive power that human interaction can become. However, the earth itself is strong, and not just through biological life. When Marie has her climactic vision, it is when she glimpses, “above the trees” (Groff, 226) the uncanny eidolon of “a great stone eagle size of a mountain”. Above the eagle, there is “a black and raging thunderstorm veined through with lightning” (Groff, 226). Present here is not just life, but matter. The vision is geological, and goes beyond the cozily biological associations of reductive visions of ecology. It exceeds traditional tropes of femininity to include the ambiguously gendered and androgynous. Yet it is also an image of strong, adamant femininity, as Marie

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projects herself into dimensions that exceed her conscious understanding or control, and of which her understanding is only fleeting and provisional. The novel is called Matrix, referring literally to the Latin word for ‘womb’ and indicating a definition of women as differentiated from men by their childbearing capacity. Yet Marie does not, in literal terms, bear children, and never has sex with a man, or does anything that would reaffirm a reproductive economy. Indeed, when Avice, one of the youngest nuns in the Abbey, bears a child out of wedlock, Marie publicly humiliates her and is dispassionate. Avice ends up dying, and there is no sense of Marie as a foster mother, or as someone who encourages other women to bear children. Matrices and matriarchy in this book are, in other words, not just biological. This can also accommodate an expanded definition of being a woman as not just linked to reproductivity and one which can accommodate transwomen and non-binary people. If Marie does not encourage literal reproduction, she does establish the abbey as a community where women can seek sanctuary and find an identity separate from men. She is an individual who will not just go down in history as somebody famous in her own right, but as somebody who will invisibly influence future generations. Moreover, the novel unobtrusively shows two different ethnicities; the pre-Conquest English, as represented by the names Wulfhild, Aelfhild, and Goda, and those of Norman background, as represented by the names Marie, Cecily, Eleanor, Tilde, and Avice, and names like Adeliza which reflect both influences. Marie is a tacit peacemaker between ethnic divisions in England, and the way she palliates potential intercommunal strife in the abbey actually reflects, and serves as a role model for, larger patterns of acculturation and reconciliation in nascent English society. It is these historical resonances that are deliberately sought out by the novel. Groff could easily have set her story in a lesbian commune in the present, or in the more recent past, like Sarah Scott’s 1762 novel, Millennium Hal. Instead, Groff went back to a deep past, and on a subject — same-sex female desire in the Middle Ages — that has been the focus of very few modern novels (though one of these, Sylvia Townsend Warner’s1948 The Corner That Held Them, is outstanding). Groff goes back to the premodern era because she wishes us to acknowledge this alternative vision of woman and nature as something that is not just utopian, but also perennial, and available in different modalities at many given historical moments. Groff depicts Marie “slashing women into the texts” (Groff, 188) by changing the masculine endings of the Latin of prayers to feminine ones. This change of gendered language does not just reflect what Groff herself is doing by reconceiving premodern. It echoes what the historical de France herself did

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in the lais. That Groff herself, in her 2012 novel Arcadia, set in a presentday utopian commune, was much more skeptical of utopian communes in the present than she is in the past, testifies to the way that the premodern can be a disruptive horizon that creates greater realms of alternative possibilities, precisely by not immuring alternative practices or expectations in one temporal setting. If, however, Groff’s intervention into the past can be seen as an Anthropocene acknowledgement of the way reality is changed by interpretive mobilization, the novel also acknowledges that selfawareness is not only an index of destruction but a possible spur of it; “Why must this abbey eat more land?” (Groff, 212) protests Wulfhild, in taking a position against Marie that is, for very different reasons, supported by the more doctrinaire Tilde. Marie wants to flood land the abbey does not own in order to produce more cops. Here, the idea of a self-sufficient female utopia that will embrace and live off the land veers into land-fulfillment, a use of the land that does not respect balance. After a point, there emerges a potential conflict between the growth of the abbey and ecological sustainability. An exile and outcast from the world of royal power, Marie is tempted to replicate power’s appetite for hegemony over land, for teleology of land-fulfillment. But she is also aware that that would just intensify the vulnerability of the earth. That Marie is not a perfect ecofeminist, but, as Dumitrescu points out, “leans into monastic administration with gusto” (Dumitrescu, 43), is part of the novel’s intention. Groff wants us to see ecofeminism as a process, not just an articulable, identifiable position taken by an individual. But she also wants us to see individuals, necessarily flawed and contingent, as important in its formulation. Ecofeminism is part of the reservoir of humanity, and not simply the product of a particular trend or a particular moment of postmodern awareness. Unlike certain recent critical tendencies such as object-oriented ontology or actor-network theory, ecofeminism does not posit non-human objects or animals as the other side of the coin from toxic or overweening human agencies. Päivi Koponen argues that ecofeminism posits a similar critique of the linguistic turn and of linguistic hegemony as object-oriented ontology. Yet Groff links a proto-ecofeminist critique with the decidedly subjective and polaristic agency of Marie de France. Groff’s Marie is transmogrified from a mere textual trace to a vocal, demonstrative individual. In her agency, and the stamp she puts on her world, Groff’s Marie gainsays and disputes that discursivity and subjectivity are counteractive to ecological and ecofeminist awareness. If there is always something worldly and self-interested about Marie, if, as the more orthodox Abbess Tilde concludes, Marie was “not an actual mystic” but somebody “ruled by her hungers” and her visions “ideas she worked up into vision

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form to sell her buildings to her sisters” (Groff, 252) this disenthralls the character from being merely an affectless part of a collective body without organs. Groff’s very decision to make her character ‘Marie de France’, somebody linked with an extant and massively studied textual corpus, and, to boot, the half-sister of the King and the spurned lover of the Queen, has some risks to it. The presence of Eleanor of Aquitaine as the beloved object focuses the reader’s attention on Queen Eleanor as a strong woman who also challenges masculinist scenarios of power, but, in contrast to Marie, does so within and through existing patriarchal institutions. But having as famous and as wellchronicled an individual as Eleanor as a character also links Groff’s novel to time-honored conventions of the 12th century historical saga, as seen in works of Jean Plaidy, such as The Courts Of Love (1987), Gore Vidal in A Search for the King (1950) and James Goldman in The Lion In Winter (1966). Groff’s Marie is not a female medieval mute inglorious Milton, she is not one of the people without history. She is disadvantaged by gender, but certainly not race or class. Indeed, Marie’s purported dynastic origin, far from being a signifier of her elite social status, is made to serve an ecofeminist agenda. The dynastic name, Plantagenet, is noted as deriving from ‘broom flower’ (Groff, 27) and denotes descendants of the ‘Lanval’like figure of “a fairy queen who lived among the humans” (Groff, 27). If royal blood is mixed with ignominy by the rape that produces Marie, it is also mixed with the subversion of the human hierarchies that dynastic rule would otherwise represent by the disruptive force of nature, the botanical, and the biological. Much like the names of Le Fresne and La Coudre in Marie’s lais, the name ‘Plantagenet’ itself calls our awareness to nature as an active element in a frame that the human will cannot rule alone. The novel’s only ventures outside Europe are when Eleanor goes on the Second Crusade and Marie has a vision of “the plains of Thrace, Byzantium glowing on the horizon” (Groff, 29) and do not really depart from the way crosscultural encounter is depicted in the Crusader historical novel going back to Sir Walter Scott. They are discernible individuals who the contemporary reader can focus on as an exemplar. All this might potentially detract from an ecofeminist agenda which foregrounds the mutuality and collective agency of woman as an aggregate force that can upend the patriarchal instrumentalization of, and depredation on, nature. But Groff seems to feel that a strong identifiable female central character with agency, who pursues passionate erotic relationships with other women, is a figure necessary for the effective promulgation of a radical ecofeminist agenda. But the novel also realizes the limits of agency

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in an ecological frame. This is shown in Matrix’s most explicit depiction of environmental crisis, when Marie imagines apocalypse: Marie suspects that this fiery end would be the stone and the soil and the waters of the earth itself, through human folly and greed made too hot for it to be willing to bear any more life upon its back. So it will go, and so it would be, and Marie cannot stop it, even if she had the force and will any longer to do so (Groff, 227). Groff here signals both the power and the limits of agency. Marie’s agency helps discern the ecological crisis, and instills in her, and the women she mentors at the Abbey, a sense of the fragility, wonder, and plurality of life on earth. But it cannot prevent environmental crisis, and indeed, there are some aspects of Marie’s approach, such as her emphasis on developing the land, even if it is just for the self-sustenance of the community, that help bring about, or in any event do not forestall, the apocalypse. But witnessing is a very strong act, and Marie’s witnessing, necessarily contingent on her agency, is what requires her to be such an outstanding, even attentionseeking individual. This is fundamental to the way Groff’s novel asserts the premodern presence of an ecofeminist agenda as much as the lais of Maire de France do themselves. Groff’s use of the past for a present-day purpose is also a respect for the plurality of the past in itself. Part of the way Groff’s reframing of Marie deinstrumentalizes the premodern is by understanding that the premodern world contained many of the issues and problems that today, we might name more specifically, but that we have neither invented, discovered, or conjured for ourselves, or our own genius. The idea that humans and nature are both dependent on, and potentially destructive of, each other is a 21st century emergency, but hardly a contemporary novelty, which means that what is on one level a disruptive anachronism, is on another a respectful acknowledgment. That “such fires, so small to themselves, will heat the world imperceptibly until after centuries it will be too hot to bear humanity” (Groff, 256) is proleptic from our perspective; a dream-vision for Marie herself. But what for her is visionary, is for us an urgent aspect of lived reality, which shows us how ecological fragility has always been a factor in organized human life. Groff suggests that by acknowledging the premodern we are also making the fullest possible acknowledgment of our own crisis. In this way, her creative animation of Marie de France as a lesbian Abbess is also a celebration of how de France, in her own work, called attention to the interaction of gender and nature in a way that resists patriarchal suppression and exploitation. Only by

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including the past can we fully equip the present with the tools of awareness and resistance it requires.

Works Cited Bloch, R. Howard, The Anonymous Marie de France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Bullock-Davies, Constance, “Marie, Abbess of Shaftesbury and her Brothers,” English Historical Review (1965). 80: 314-22 Classen, Albrecht, The Power of A Woman’s Voice In Medieval and Early Modern Literatures: New Approaches to German and European women writers and to violence against women in premodern times, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007. Classen, Albrecht, “A medieval woman dares to stand Up: Marie de France's Criticism of the king and the court”, Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, vol. 12, no. 2, 2020, pp. 1-13 Dumitrescu, Irina, “Industrious Habits” New York Review of Books, December 16, 2021, pp. 40-44. Ferrante, Joan, and Robert Hanning, The Lais of Marie de France New York: Dutton, 1976. Freeman, Michelle (1991). “The ‘Lais’ of Marie de France: Text and Context” Speculum 66 (1): 1991, 129-130. Groff, Lauren, “At The Round Earth’s Imagined Corners” in Best American Short Stories 2014 (I) pp, 61-78. Ed. Jennifer Egan with Heidi Pitlor, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014 Groff, Lauren, Matrix New York: Riverhead, 2021. Kinoshita, Sharon, “Cherchez La Femme?: Feminist Criticism and Marie de France’s Lai de Lanval” Romance Notes Vol. 34, No. 3 (Spring, 1994), pp. 263-273 Koponen, Päivi. 2017. "Animal Dystopia in Marie Darrieussecq’s Novel Truismes" Humanities 6, no. 3: 65. https://doi.org/10.3390/h6030065 Leventhal, Cassidy, “Finding Avalon: The Place and Meaning of the Otherworld in Marie de France’s Lanval” Neophilologus 98, 193–204 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-013-9365-1 Nardizzi, Vin, and Wirth, Tiffany Jo, Premodern Ecologies in the Modern Literary Imagination, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2019). Shoaf, J. P. tr, The Lais of Marie de France: A Verse Translation, 1991, https://people.clas.ufl.edu/jshoaf/marie_lais/ accessed 3 February 2022, Vitz, Evelyn B. “The Lais of Marie de France: Narrative Grammar and the Literary Text” Romantic Review, 74, 1993. op. 61-72.

BONDING WITH THE ‘OTHER’ THROUGH ABJECTION: ANALYSIS OF MAGGIE SIEBERT’S REPRESENTATION OF THE ABJECT IN THE FOURTH STAGE OF THE PROCESS OF COLONIZATION ESPERANZA GONZÁLEZ MORENO1

Abstract The connection between women and nature continues to be a contested field, because, as Val Plumwood metaphorically explained, the Cavern of Reversal and the Swamp of Affirmation are difficult to avoid (Plumwood 2009, 3). In such a complicated task, I argue, Julia Kristeva’s notion of the abject, despite being seemingly swimming in the latter, could still work as a useful tool. Understood as the disruptive force that threatens the borders protecting the subject, I analyze the representation of scatological images in three short stories contained in Maggie Siebert’s Bonding (2021), in order to observe the forced deconstruction of the master identity they carry out. I argue that the protagonist role played by abjection in these stories interrupts the assimilation of the otherness in the fourth stage of colonization, as described in Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (2009) by challenging the hyperseparation from the devoured feminized and natured other in which it is justified. Without falling into the postures of uncritical equality or uncritical reversal of the values associated with women, the abject can help in the exposure of the continuity between nature and humanity and the urgency of such recognition. Throughout this chapter, I make use of the ideas of the authors named here, in the short stories titled Messes, Smells, and Every Day for the Rest of Your 1

Esperanza González Moreno is now a PhD student at the University of Granada, Spain

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Life. Each of them offers a distinct, yet confluent, discourse on the system of assimilation, coinciding in the highlight of the abject and the persistent need for connection of the characters in them. Maggie Siebert’s gore narrative can provide ecofeminism with an innovative point of view in the analysis of the master identity now that such an impact is needed. Keywords: Julia Kristeva, abject, Other, scatological, ecofeminism, capital realism Julia Kristeva’s ideas on the abject have been used in feminist theory in frequent and controversial ways. In Powers of Horror (1982), she places the maternal body as the locus of origin of the formation of the subject through the opposition to the abject embodied in the female body. Her portrayal of the anatomy of the mother as the original rejection offers an explanation to the perceptions of abjection that the subject encounters throughout their life as reminders of that pre-objectal relationship, the “immemorial violence with which a body becomes separated from another body in order to be” (Kristeva 1982, 10). With the abject, as Imogen Tyler explains in “Against Abjection” (2009), Kristeva blames “the ultimate secret violence at the heart of all human existence” (Kristeva 2009, 80) on the maternal body - a vision of maternity that does not seem to hold the feminist revolutionary element attributed and explored by many of the applications of her work in Anglophone academic scholarship, such as the influential The MonstrousFeminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis (1993). In what could be considered part of the “feminism of uncritical equality” that Val Plumwood talked about in Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993), Tyler calls to contest the “dehumanizing effects of abjection” against the numerous applications of Kristeva’s ideas and their embrace of the abject condition of maternity (Tyler 2009, 78). Even though her analysis is successful at explaining the damaging consequences that the uncritical defense of abjection and reinforcement of the essentialist association women/nature bring to the situation of actual maternal subjectivity, her approach to abjection as the forces that “strip people of their human dignity and reproduce them as dehumanized waste, the dregs and refuse of social life” (Krauss 1999, 236 quoted in Tyler 2009, 87), when viewed from an ecofeminist point of view, can be observed to be an analysis as indulgent with the current situation of women as those she critiques. As Plumwood explains, the absorption into the master model of humanity, and the subsequent inclusion of women to the human identity and culture in opposition to nature would never be a successful feminist movement (Plumwood 1999, 29). The inclusion of women into the master identity

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could only achieve a broadening of the dominating class without challenging the apparatus that would make most women remain as oppressed as nature, racialized people, and manual laborers, and would continue to be in the current dichotomous model based on the hyperseparation between the elements associated with the image of negativity that the otherness embodies, and the positivity of Western ideas on reason and the individual (Plumwood 1999, 29). Instead of taking a posture of uncritical equality or uncritical reversal of the values associated with women, if we approach the abject as ‘the human reaction’ (horror, vomit) to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other" (Felluga 2015, 3) from a poststructuralist point of view, Kristeva’s notion can act as a powerful tool in the depiction of the master model of humanity that Plumwood explored in her work. I argue that the master identity explored in Feminism and the Mastery of Nature can be directly linked with the notion of the subject as understood by psychoanalyst theory. Taking into account that it is the abject which enables “the productive fantasy of the individual or social body as an agential or sovereign being” (Hennefeld and Sammond 2020, 12), Kristeva’s formation of the subject and instrumentalization of the object can be observed to be as dependent from the opposition to abjection as Plumwood’s master identity and its instrumentalization of nature, through the hyperseparation from it and the rejection of the values associated. For it is by walking the border between agent, self, and other that the master identity and its subsequent oppressive apparatus could be challenged. In this chapter, I will make use of three of the short stories that are included in Maggie Siebert’s Bonding (2021) in order to shed some light on the different possibilities that the representation of abjection offers as the source of disturbance of identity, system, and order that Kristeva described it to be (Kristeva 1982, 4) instead of underscoring the reclusion of women to nature. Siebert’s first publication alone offers the reader twelve stories of horror and black humor whose scatology and darkness may frighten and disgust many. From stories where the supernatural mingles with the most down-toearth situations, I chose three where the body and the abject play an important role in the disruption of the rationalist system that they are portrayed in. Far from an exclusive connection between woman, nature, and abjection, Siebert’s narrative gives space to the body and its fluids as the unavoidable presence of nature and mortality within humanity, exposing humanity’s inscription in nature and the artificiality of its distance from it whilst contesting the subject/object identities that they tend to be associated

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with, respectively. For, as Kristeva said, the cause of abjection is not in lack of cleanliness or health but in “what disturbs identity, system, order” (Kristeva 1982, 4). In all three of the stories chosen, the abject occupies a central role, yet the message that each of them conveys provides different facets of the role that it can play in the blurring of the frontiers of the subject as master identity. While doing this, I argue, they expose the rapid upsurge of the process of colonization of the otherness, and the increasingly pervasive space occupied by the master. In her work, Plumwood distinguished four different periods of this process. After the phases of justification, invasion, and appropriation (instrumentalism), she describes the current and last stage as one of incorporation. This, characterized by its assimilation of the otherness in Rational Economy ʊ in other words, where the object is devoured and made to disappear under the master’s limitless domains ʊ is the one in which the short stories analyzed in this chapter take place. In the first one, Messes, the narrator introduces the reader to a territory in which the biological appears merely as waste and abjection in the denaturalized aseptic environment of a gay sauna. The subject is completely detached from the object it makes use of, and the identity of which is not acknowledged, but made invisible. The main character, in his first day of work as a cleaner, starts the narration in a room full of laundry machines and cleaning supplies, with a detailed description of the buffalo chicken strips that his boss is eating: “Whole pieces of breading have slid off revealing soft white meat underneath. Their wetness disintegrates inside his mouth” (Siebert 2021, 13). The surprising interest in the texture of the meal anticipates the role played by the biological in contrast with the background of hygiene and asepsis represented by the washing machines and cleaning supplies that set the tone for the rest of the place, because in Messes, the limits of the subject are constantly reinforced. Simple Green and flashlights are used to clean the semen on the surfaces of the rooms (Siebert 2021, 14), glory holes are placed in the walls (Siebert 2021, 14) to avoid the face of the other in an anti-Levinasian movement, and stairs, doors, and security devices are used to protect the inside in anonymity (Siebert 2021, 13). In the corridors of the building, men in towels try to make eye contact with other men as the tentative signal for engaging in sexual intercourse, an exchange that contrasts with the blindness of one of the prostitutes who works there, a “blind queen in a leotard” (Siebert 2021, 15). Instead of the recognition and communication between the subjects in towels, she, as a crip queer sexual worker, embodies the body of the otherness without identity. Plumwood explains that, through a process of instrumentalism, the

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other’s autonomy is not recognized, but denied “as a limit on the self and as a center of resistance”. There is a use of an earth other, treated “as entirely a means to another’s ends, as one whose being creates no limits on use and which can be entirely shaped to ends not its own” (Plumwood 1993, 142). In contrast with the eyes that can be met by other equal subjects, the old bald queen, who has to ask “if she can go outside for a cigarette every half hour” before going back with another client (Siebert 2021, 15), cannot look back, cannot agree, and, as in the case of every earth other, her identity and limits are never acknowledged. This instrumentalization achieved through hyperseparation and objectification would have been repeated in the rape of the narrator by one of the clients, had he not fought back and ʊOLWHUDOO\ ʊ broken down the subject’s borders. In the final scene of this short story, the abject becomes the central element of the narration. The reader is forced to look at pre-seminal fluids that look like “a thin spurt of sludge that looks green in the light” (Siebert 2021, 17) and the forty-six-line detailed description of the murder of the attacker. The narration revolves around the image, smell, and touch of the vertebrae of the rapist’s spine brushed against the protagonist’s knuckles, the stomach splitting open with “a bassy pop”, and the hot inside of his “kidneys and his gallbladder and his distended stomach” (Siebert 2021, 17-18), along with the howling, gurgling, sputtering, blood and shit of a victim who keeps begging for more, who laughs, and looks at the man with an arm inside his guts like he loves him (Siebert 2021, 18). This way, Siebert breaks down the hyperseparation between subject and object and floods it with abjection. Before the punch, the attacker as subject can be read as the representative of the detached homogeneity formed by the clients of the sauna. However, during and after his murder, the mastery that he embodies fades away and gives space to his body as the protagonist of the scene. Despite the pleasure that he achieves through the reconnection with his body and the other in abjection, it is the narrator who becomes the agent of the situation, exercises the rage he feels towards his attacker, and forces the breakdown of the frontiers that construed the subject through opposition to the abjection of the other and within him. Instead of a vision of the self as only accidentally related with others, Messes exposes the self as a mortal body, related and interdependent despite their efforts, and “desires of the individual as selfcontained” (Plumwood 1993, 192). Messes accepts that even the subject ends up being nothing but “[a]nother mess to clean” (Siebert 2021, 19). The abject can be observed to expose and break down here the culmination of the process of colonization as described by Plumwood. In this fourth stage, the otherness is devoured and all difference and resistance are

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eliminated under the totalizing control of the master, “the colonizing self which presents to all unassimilated otherness the alternatives of elimination or incorporation” (Plumwood 1993, 193). Through the implementation of such a Cartesian dream, the other of nature is completely controlled, and so is its power of resistance, as the mastering technologies rule energy flows and incorporate them into the Rational Economy (Plumwood 1993, 193). After an understanding of such a system in Messes, Smells allows the reader to see how such a detachment works to the detriment of the master subject too. For if we understand that it is our condition of mortal beings, and negativity the pillars on which individual difference is founded, the extension of the master identity in the radical absorption and domination of nature that anthropocentrism sustains also involves the paradoxical neutralization and disappearance of human subjectivity as one more step towards the control of Rational Economy in favor of capital. In the fourth stage, the nature other is not allowed resistance, and, therefore, neither is the living and defining animal dimension in human beings, devoted and embedded as they are in the system of production and consumption in which their lives have developed to be, as the clients in a gay sauna whose eyes cannot meet. The workplace portrayed in the second story, in contrast with the hyperseparation between subjects and objects in the first-story gay sauna and the still-present abjection sustaining it, is only inhabited by individuals equally used by, and users of, the system, objects with no other subject but themselves. Neither difference nor abjection can be found there, as their physicality, difference, and negativity seem to be obliterated. The call center in the story can be observed to fit in Jon-Arild Johannessen’s descriptions of the workplace of the future as a result of the increasing demand for flexibility to the detriment of work-life balance), and the commitment of workers to what they are working on, especially since their work becomes their social life and hobby (Johannessen 2018, 22,23,61). In Bonding, Siebert portrays the call center as “vibrant and upbeat”, a place that has all kinds of amenities, including ping pong tables and scooters (Siebert 2021, 97). All the people there act as if they have enthusiasm in their work, and even the supervisor’s orders sound like a scolding to kindergarteners (Siebert 2021, 99). Their lives are engulfed in their work; the separation between spheres has been banished in order to allow constant production and consumption. In such an environment of exacerbated Rational Economy, those who disrupt the homogeneity of positivity and productivity are not useful, and, because of that, end up being “deprived of access to the means of life—now

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almost totally within the control of its rational meritocracy” (Plumwood 1993, 194). That is why, in Smells, the rejection that the main character, Constance, feels towards her work and co-workers has to be hidden even from herself (“She hated this place more, but wouldn’t admit it to herself” [Siebert 2021, 98]). Even though she tries to fit in the generalized positivity, according to the transcription of her thoughts (“Don’t you know Ken? We love Ken. Ken is hysterical! Ken is so sassy. Ken is so on the ball. He’s the best thing about working here” [Siebert 2021, 97, italics from the original]), the omniscient narrator reveals to the reader that she still fosters negativity and resistance within her (“She imagined what it would feel like to cave his head in” [Siebert 2021, 98]). Nevertheless, as Plumwood points out, it is her means of life which are compromised: “This time she was getting $20 per hour. That meant no more Spam. Unless she wanted it.

It also meant that in one month, after the trial period ended, she would be eligible for dental insurance. She just had to tough it out” (Siebert 2021, 96) However, despite her efforts, her body attends no reason and unravels its own disrupting force in the story. Her infected molar, and its smell of “the first thing to ever die” (Siebert 2021, 100) afford Siebert another chance for describing abjection with images of stench and decay with shorter yet still powerful sentences: “the impacted shit she once heard they pulled out of John Wayne; a freshly split hog; a hospital operating room; the broiling corpse of an invalid” (Siebert 2021, 100). Furthermore, in the description of the dissolution of the subject in abjection of one of her co-workers caused by the stench, the author situates the body and its fluids as the protagonists of her story: She wobbled her limbs in place, standing erect but unstable. Her eyes were rolled all the way back into her skull, and the whites went dark and then began to fill with blood. Her gyrations became violent spasms, and foam billowed from her slackened jaw. The foam became thick and viscous, streaking red as it poured from her mouth in a slurry of tissue. She involuntarily coughed, spraying globes of whatever was breaking down inside of her in all directions (Siebert 2021, 102).

However, the answer of abjection against the intrusive control of mastery is not limited to a reminder of its existence, for it also brings apocalypse upon Earth. Plumwood explained that the phase of devouring the other who sustains the master can only end either in the death of the assimilated otherness and, therefore, the master’s death, or with the failure and

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abandonment of mastery (Plumwood 1993, 195). In Smells, Siebert opens an imaginative third possibility, and portrays the simultaneous elimination of both master and otherness by abjection’s resistance, making all living beings except Constance perish. After the apocalypse, she takes the infected molar out with some pliers, which makes a “[r]oaring light” rocket into the sky from her mouth that dies “in an atomic burst”, after which “the sky un-split itself” and “[s]he felt much better” (Siebert 2021, 105). Such a mysterious ending, though amusing in its down-to-earth final sentence, portrays the sad image of a post-apocalyptic world that links Siebert’s narrative to what Mark Fisher called ‘capitalist realism’. “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism”, the skies could only be unsplit once all life on Earth has disappeared, for we have reached a point in which a system that allows continuity and difference instead of hyperseparation is unthinkable. There is no alternative to capitalism, nor the master ideology sustaining it (Fischer 2009, 2). The control of the master ideology works as a unity, and only as such can it end. In Smells, abjection functions as deus ex machina and impedes the totality of positivity and production sought through the assimilation of the other achieved in Rational Economy. In this ironic way, Siebert’s apocalypse exposes the unescapable bonding between humanity and nature in the body, and its abjection, and underscores the ultimatum that Plumwood observed humanity to be facing. The protagonist of the last story must also choose between giving up on his master identity and embracing nature and his continuity with the otherness. Yet abjection in this case does not function as an independent destructive force. Instead, it appears as the element with which the main character sides, as opposed to the restrictive limits of the master model of subjectivity, like the reader of these three stories is forced to do. Every day for the rest of your life can be read as being set in the same stage of assimilation in which Messes, Smells and Siebert’s audience are, but the master position the reader holds is challenged even by the narrative voice. Through the use of a second person voice, we become the subject enacting the action and the object being perceived simultaneously. The system of the story assimilates the audience as much as Rational Economy does with the otherness, with such a lack of respect for our borders. This devouring process can be further observed in the eight key events of the main character’s life that are organized in the different parts of the story. First, there are his first memories: of a dead animal on the road that his mother told him to ignore, because “[t]hey have diseases” (Siebert 2021,

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147), and, later, on the same day in a supermarket, a toy for pets with an appearance close to that of the corpse already engraved in his young mind (“A dead mouse, smashed by something, eyes and little paws distended and broken, tied to a string tied to a stick” [Siebert 2021, 147]) that she also separated him from, because they were not for kids but dogs and cats (Siebert 2021, 148). In this part, it can be observed that the abject works as the mask of the suffering of the otherness, and that the recognition of their difference and identity needs to be effaced from the minds of young humans in order to turn them into subjects by opposition to nature and mortality, like Kristeva’s ideas on subjectivity built from the opposition to the abject maternal body. The existence of the otherness, therefore, is only allowed once it has been already colonized by the self, as a pet or a lifeless representation for sale, but even then, the frontiers of the human subject must be controlled and kept detached from the nature other (Plumwood 1993, 52). The other parts continue to portray this rational system, and, especially, the protagonist’s abnormal sensibility towards nature and the need to connect with his body made only possible through traumatic experiences. Such a bond can be observed in “the first thing you think of every morning for the rest of your life” (Siebert 2021, 150), a childhood memory constituted by the accidental murder of a kitten with a hug, and the strong impact it had on the mind of the protagonist (“You say no nononononono over and over again, and not only do you hate yourself for the first time but you wish that you were dead instead of the kitten” [Siebert 2021, 149]). In contrast with a system that refuses to acknowledge the existence of the otherness, the main character empathizes with it, not as a devalued element but as an equal. The third memory in the story is the second thought in every day of the protagonist’s life (Siebert 2021, 151), constituted by the homophobic attack that he once suffered after school. Surprisingly, the brutal beating is described as “the most amazing feeling in the world” (Siebert 2021, 151), which already points to the sadomasochist pleasure he feels when, like the rapist in the first story analyzed, his barriers as a subject are broken down and he disappears in the abjection of his damaged body and fluids. In the fourth part, this pleasure is said to be further pursued in self-harm and the videos he watches as a teenager with a friend. In contrast with his friend’s taste for videos in which animals are hurt, the main character does not like them, because “you don’t like watching anyone hurt anything, unless it’s themselves” (Siebert 2021, 152). Instead, we are presented with the scenes he chooses, introduced by a “Click” (Siebert 2021, 151-152, italics from the original): a caesarean section; the jaw separated from the skull of a motorcyclist in an accident; the death of a drunk Ukrainian falling from a

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building and landing on his head; and a man on fire clinging to a tower, who cannot decide “whether to die falling or burning" (Siebert 2021, 152). As an adult, in another of Siebert’s detailed gore descriptions, we know that, even though he does not eat meat, he works as a butcher, attracted by the smell, and that he could not react when his co-worker accidentally cut off his hand because fear froze him (Siebert 2021, 155). We also know that his boyfriend broke up with him because he discovered him watching videos about meat processing, and also that his mother died of cancer, a decay that he smelt when she was still alive. When he was scattering her ashes, a smell “of emulsifying tissue, of offal and fat melting against the heat of machinery, of animal shit and blood” made him discover “where you want to spend the rest of your life”; “where animals, dying or dead, are pulverized” (Siebert 2021, 158, 159). In the last part of the story, after spending time studying its functioning and distribution, the main character breaks into the place that he refers to as “paradise” (Siebert 2021, 159), gets naked, and jumps into a material buffer bin. In there, animal remains are accumulated in one more opportunity which Siebert seizes, once again making abjection the center of the reader’s attention. The protagonist takes the liquid material and rubs it on his body, occasionally getting cut by the blades that surround him, and, eventually, lies there, barely breathing and thinking (Siebert 2021, 161). Even though before that, he put his clothes in a specific place (Siebert 2021, 160), pointing to the intention of later recovery, by the end of this part, the reader supposes that the main character feels too comfortable when occupying the space reserved to the abject, and may want to carry out his reduction to the body to the extreme, making all subjectivity leave his body for good. He will have to decide “whether to become one with yourself or to walk away” (Siebert 2021, 161), but it can be observed that he had already made up his mind long before that night: “You’re going to finish what started many years ago” (Siebert 2021, 159), “You know what choice to make” (Siebert 2021, 161). This ending represents the climax of the story of a person whose empathy and identification with the otherness as a feminized subject does not allow him to fit in. It talks about the position every element of the otherness is forced to occupy in the hyperseparation present, even between the subject and their own body as nature, and posits abjection as the only available escape out of the immanent space of mastery. As the main character of Every day for the rest of your life finds no way of being a subject while connecting with the otherness in a system that allows no continuity, he gives up on humanity and relishes in his position of a rejected, feminized, natured other, even if that means his instrumentalization and obliteration too.

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As Kristeva explains, “from its place of banishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master” (Kristeva 1982, 2). As these three stories portray, not even the complete assimilation of the otherness frees the subject from the persistent presence of abjection. In Bonding, Maggie Siebert does not allow the reader to be comfortable in their position as subject, and forces their confrontation with abject images so that their limits and position with regards to the body, and, therefore, nature, are questioned. Furthermore, her protagonists, part of the otherness, gain agency through their acceptance of abjection instead of trying to fit in the master denial of it. From an ecofeminist point of view, such a disturbance of the frontier between the master and the otherness must be seized in order to challenge the construction of the closed space of control that a history of rationalization has imposed on Earth and every living being on it. When understanding the system of instrumentalization of the otherness, the dualism described by Plumwood can be combined with abjection as the third element underlying the dichotomy of the mastery of nature. According to Kristeva, some lives are “not sustained by desire, as desire is always for objects” (Kristeva 1982, 6), but on exclusion. I argue that, when trying to allow continuity between the parts, it is important to analyze the abject as the cornerstone on which the instrumentalization of the desired other is based. As these three stories in Bonding expose, the recognition of abjection can be used as the disruptive element that unveils the artificiality of the justification of the detachment from the oppressed otherness.

Works Cited Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Tyler, Imogen. “Against abjection.” Feminist Theory, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 7798, 2009. Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge, 1993. Krauss, R. “The Destiny of the Informe”, in Y.-A. Bois and R. E. Krauss Formless: A User’s Guide, pp. 234–52. New York: Zone Books, 1999. Felluga, Dino Franco. Critical Theory. The Key Concepts. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.

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Hennefeld, Maggie, and Nicholas Sammond (Eds). Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence. Duke University Press, 2020. Siebert, Maggie. Bonding. USA: Expat Press, 2021. Johannessen, Jon-Arild. The Workplace of the Future: The Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Precariat and the Death of Hierarchies. Florida: CRC Press, 2018. Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?. Hampshire: John Hunt Publishing, 2009.

ECOLOGY AND NATIVISM IN LANGUAGE: AN ECOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF MAMANG DAI’S POETRY SUSANTA KUMAR BARDHAN1

Abstract The creative world of any literary artist is affected by his or her physical surroundings which shape consciousness, thought process and linguistic and communicative competence. All these work together in the creative mind in an alchemized manner, developing the aesthetically sound world of poetic harmony where nature and nurture can co-exist with mutual exchange. The artist is (un)consciously led to reflectively and creatively represent the ideas verbally, as observed in the literary creations of Mamang Dai, a poet belonging to the Adi tribal community of Arunachal Pradesh. The present paper attempts to explore Dai’s creative world from the perspective of ecological and ecolinguistic consciousness. It is hoped that this will represent a novel idea in relation to the literary critical venture of studying literary texts by synthetically applying both ecocriticism and ecolinguistics. Keywords: ecocriticism, ecolinguistics, ecotheosophy, ethnography, structuralism. Mamang Dai (1957-), a member of the Adi Tribe, hails from Pasighat, East Siang district and Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Though Dai was selected for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1979, she stuck to the profession of journalism and contributed to leading newspapers, such as The Telegraph, Hindustan Times and The Sentinel, and she also worked with All India Radio and DDK, Itanagar. For her dedicated work as an activist for the protection of environment of her own state and entire NorthEast of India she was appointed to Programme Officer at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) where she, along with her associates started 1 Dr Susanta Kumar Bardhan is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Suri Vidyasagar College, Suri, Birbhum, West Bengal, India.

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working for the Eastern Himalayas Biodiversity Hotspots programme. Her major writings include non-fictional works Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land (2003) and Mountain Harvest: The Food of Arunachal (2004) illustrated folklore texts The Sky Queen and Once Upon a Moontime (2003), the novels The Legends of Pensam (2006), Stupid Cupid (2008) and The Black Hill (2014), and poetry collections River Poems (2004), The Balm of Time (2008) Hambreelmai's Loom (2014), and Midsummer Survival Lyrics (2014). She is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the Annual Verrier Elwin Prize (2013), and the Sahitya Akademi Award (2017). Endowed with an acute sense of love for her own community, Adi, and its age-old cultural aspects and activities, landscape, and skyscape of her native place of Arunachal Pradesh and her linguistic-communicative ability, Dai airs her love- and concern-imbued views on the (non) human world in her writings. It is language which is the most powerful distinctive component with which man has ever been equipped. Though language use is primarily assumed to be a cerebral as well as physical activity, in relation to Saussurean concepts of langue and parole, or the Chomskyan ones of competence and performance, the societal and cultural components, and the geo-physical environment, shape the language of an individual from the very beginning of the acquisition of the language to which s/he is exposed. Each and every point of view expressed by us does not evolve out of nowhere, but is rooted to situations involving all (non) living parts. Hence, Sapir expresses it thus: ... the real world is to a large extent built up on the language habits of the group. We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached (Sapir 1956, 45).

Human beings transmit information through a rich system of pragmatic implications involving the complex process of inference and interpretation or reception of speaker/writer and listener/reader, respectively. Hence, language use is undoubtedly a cognitive as well as social activity linked with the manipulation, transmission, reception, and interpretation of concepts or ideas emanating from the close intricate interaction between the (in)visible objects, knowledge systems, and the structural patterns of the language concerned. A creative writer manipulates these linguistic resources and devices according to the needs of the ideas s/he intends to convey through his/her literary texts. Mamang Dai, as mentioned above, was brought up in the society much closer to nature, acquired her mother tongue, Adi, and

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learned English as a second language. Her instinctive and intuitive love for her own community culture and customs, and surrounding natural world full of life and enchantment has strongly built and consolidated the thoughts and ideas which she tries to communicate through her literary ventures. Like other Indian tribal individuals, Dai’s life, experience, and beliefs, have evidently been nurtured and shaped by the nature-centric and naturegoverned oral literary tradition of the Adi community, locally known as Aabang, meaning ‘a story or an act of storytelling for an audience’. Her literary creations are the testimony of this rich tribal tradition which has been, and is, being transmitted from generation to generation. In this present paper, as expressed by the title, we will try to explore how Dai has put forward the intuition-and-reflection-based ideas or significance of the age-old hostile but blissful ecological system of Arunachal, of which she along with her people feels proud, in her literary creations. Her close association with nature and nature-based culture are conveyed in her creative world by the linguistic knowledge effected and shaped by ecology. This is accredited by M. A. K. Halliday, in his essay “New Ways of Meaning”: Grammar, since it is internal, to language (not located at either material interface), can to a certain extent ‘take off’ on its own; but since it is the powerhouse for constructing experience there can never be a total disjunction between the symbolic form and the material condition of their environment (M A K Halliday 2001, 180).

As a member of a tribal community Dai intuitively believes in the presence of life and life-force in each and every constituent of nature, be it rock, or river, or sky, and this strong bondage-born belief, enriched by reflective thoughts and experience, remains as the central force behind, and with, her poetic creations as she lays importance on the land, the mountains, the trees, and insects, etc., as part of our existence, in the prose-poem titled “The Deification of Nature” included in Midsummer Survival Lyrics: When we say our people believe that rocks and trees have life, what does it mean? In this environment where we live and what we call our land, land of our ancestors, we cannot crush the mountains or tear off the green covering saying this is what is getting in the way of development (Dai 2014, 53).

The above quoted passage suggests that Dai’s poetic self has been shaped by nature, nature-affected-and-effected beliefs, customs and rituals, and the academic and social interaction or encounters with the people of her community and others. In order to represent unique amalgamated experiences and thoughts she has resorted to very simple, commonly known words or

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phrases and imageries, but her use of these in her poetic creations is so striking that semiologically rich signification appears before the reader in every step of the thrilling journey to her poetic world. This kind of poetic endeavor on the part of Dai can be equated with the concept of Nativism (Deshibad) propounded by eminent Marathi novelist, Bhalchandra Nemade (2009), in his book of the same name. Nemade aptly argues in favor of Nativism: “The sense of rootedness that accompanies nativism is a primordial attachment to place, the emotional bond, often extended to country and nation […]” (Nemade 2009, 30). The sense of rootedness which is very strong in Dai’s (poetic) consciousness plays a guiding role in the steps of her literary career. Let us now substantiate this with illustrations, indicative of the mystified organic unification of the human mind, language, culture, myths, folklore and ecological existence, i.e., nature leading to the exploration of the past and present nature-man bond. A glaring example of such poetic admission is her poem “Missing Link” (Dai 2000b) which projects the poet’s soul dominated by nature and its favorable and unfavorable constituents undergoing the process of being transformed into a trope of concretized memory: I will remember then the great river that turned, turning with the fire of the first sun, away from the old land of red robed men and poisonous ritual, when the seven brothers fled south disturbing the hornbills in their summer nests. Remember the flying dust and the wind like a long echo snapping the flight of the river beetle, venomous in the caves where men and women dwelt facing the night guarding the hooded poison (Dai “Missing Link”).

The poet is aware of both the pleasing and hostile components co-existing in nature for ever, and her sound memory does not feel burdened to store both in such a way that bliss can be easily elicited even in the odd and inevitable unavoidable changes. Remember, because nothing is ended but it is changed. And memory is a changing shape showing with these fading possessions

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in lands beyond the great ocean that all is changed but not ended. And in the villages the silent hill men still await the long promised letters, and the meaning of words (Dai “Missing Link”).

Here we observe that the poet so convincingly declares in a simple but highly suggestive expression “all is changed but not ended” (Dai “Missing Link”) having both passive and active voices sequentially, with the highlight on the ‘active’. Notice that the expressions used in the poem “Missing Link” to represent nature, and her close intimate attachment with it, are mostly simple expanded phrases (noun phrase, adjective phrase, prepositional phrase, verb phrase, etc.) in terms of transformational generative grammar (Chomsky 1965). Evidently, it is nature which nurtures simplicity in the mind of its innocent lover, and chastens the poetic insights as well. Dai, as we know, was born and brought up in the lap of nature, in which all the material and living partners “no strangers / to our valley” constitute her ‘green’ experience, as conveyed in the poem “Birthplace” where she spontaneously utters: We are the children of the rain Of the cloud woman. Brother to the stone and bat In our cradle of bamboo and vine In our long houses we slept, And morning came We were refreshed (Dai “The Birthplace”).

Such is the alchemizing power of nature which leads the poetic persona to imagine the science-based myth of the creation of this world: “The first drop of water / gave birth to man”. The imageries born out of rain, cloud, rock/mountain, tree, flower, fruit, and colors emanating from these natural parts, are strewn in most of Dai’s poems and have created a semiotically identified world prevailing in the poet’s mind, giving space to an aesthetic world of bliss, i.e., nature of mindscape. Here the linguistic sign, i.e., a word and its varied (denotative, connotative, sentential and suggestive) meanings play in both normal societal and literary discourses in a very organic manner, in a hilly, more or less secluded, area which is “far from the madding crowd”. As a result, each and every part of the surrounding nature

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has found, and thereby occupies, a major space in Dai’s poetic world, and so her poetic world can be called ‘green’. In the poem “Floating Island” the poetic persona is deeply engrossed in nature, as conveyed by the very first two lines: “The sloping mountain is trying to reach me/stretching down into the water”. The very effect of nature-surrounded life is the generation of subtle feelings helpful for the formation of a space dominated mainly by ecological matters or ideas which develop innocence in man’s heart, which ‘clings to the life water / Into the deep, into the sea green’(Dai “Floating Island”). Thus the semiotic construction of reality which develops among the stakeholders, i.e., the tribal people of Arunachal Pradesh and other parts of the world, in close interaction with nature, dominates their thoughts, ideologies and standpoints relating to the ecological reality of the region. Because of this, even when the poet Dai brings the modern civilizationsymbols called towns into her physical and mental space, she utters in her poem “Small Towns and the River” (2003) suggesting that the small towns remind her of death, and also remind her of life. The basic fundamental course of the living world and ecology, even in her hometown, is “always the same, / in summer or winter”. It suggests that the towns of Arunachal Pradesh surrounded by mountains, trees and rivers, have not so far been affected by the pollution caused by the so-called modern lifestyle, as are the towns of the plains land. Hence the inhabitants of such hill towns can identify the life in the river, and the immortality of its water, and so the poet expresses: The river has a soul. In the summer it cuts through the land like a torrent of grief. Sometimes, sometimes, I think it holds its breath seeking a land of fish and stars The river has a soul. It knows, stretching past the town, from the first drop of rain to dry earth and mist on the mountaintops, the river knows the immortality of water. -------In small towns by the river we all want to walk with the gods (Dai “Small Towns and the River”).

Dai’s poetic perception of the existence of life and soul in the river, and the minute observation of its differences during summer and rainy seasons, as

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shown in the entire poem “Small Towns and the River” suggest that her poetic thought and consciousness have not cut their roots from the native perennial nature, being endowed with both life and death. Like rivers, mountains also, as we find in Dai’s poetic discourses, appear before the sensitive poet as a living existence, touched with antiqueness, inherent conflict, mysticism, and spiritualism. Now we will try to navigate two of Dai’s popular poems, “An Obscure Voice” and “The Voice of the Mountain” in order to explore how the mountains, as a primeval constituent of ecology, exercise a lasting impact in the poet’s mindscape. The poem “An Obscure Voice” begins with a basic doubt about the time of the initiation of human race, and its spoken or written language. It remains in the mystery as “nothing is certain”, as assumed by the poet. From time immemorial, the aboriginal people of Arunachal Pradesh, including poet’s own Adi community, have grown up in association with the surrounding mountains, and all those existing on, and derived from them. Unlike man, these all-secret-knowing mountains do not vaunt their pride even for such invaluable service to the world. The repetition of the following three lines in this poem highlights the ignorance-born-pride of the modern mechanized people: There are mountains. Oh! There are mountains. We climbed every slope. We slept by the river. But do not speak of victory yet (Dai “An Obscure Voice”).

All kinds of people enjoy the physical and mental food from nature, represented here by the mountains, where silence and eloquence play in a strange manner, leading humanity to realize “If there is only silence, we should be disturbed / Listen, the tone of a prayer is hushed…” (Dai “An Obscure Place”). The arrival of mysterious strangers disturbs the peace of the region which the poet wants to be maintained, even at the cost of earthly material prosperity, the omniscient mountains have accommodated, and will accommodate, all sorts of events - both positive and negative - leading to the ultimate gain of ‘thoughts of beauty’: The words of strangers have led us into a mist deeper than the one we left behindweeping, like the waving grassland where the bones of our fathers are buried. surrounded by thoughts of beauty. (Dai “An Obscure Voice”).

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In this context, the statement made by Harpreet Vohra is apt: “The mountain thus not only embodies the collective consciousness of hope of a people but also embodies the fears and lost expectations in an increasingly complicated and changing society” (Vohra 2013, 47). The mountains have gained the status of an all-knowing and secretpenetrating mythical entity which occupies a wide space in the culture, thought, and consciousness of the people concerned. Every step of their dayto-day life experiences adds a new dimension to the semiotic or symbolic representation of the mountains and the objects linked with them. This is also evident in another of Dai’s well-known poems, “The Voice of the Mountain”. In a heightened poetic mood the poet becomes a visionary for whom mountains are associated with “the desert and the rain” and which grow, flourish and perish on and in them, over the path of time. These have, thus, linked the past, present and future: I am the desert and the rain. The wild bird that sits in the west. The past that recreates itself and particles of life that clutch and cling For thousands of years – I know, I know these things as rocks know, burning in the sun’s embrace, about clouds, and sudden rain; as I know a cloud is a cloud is a cloud, A cloud is this uncertain pulse that sits over my heart (Dai “The Voice of the Mountain”).

The mountain, thus, has been projected as a mythical, living, seer figure, having the prophetic power to delve deep into the inscrutable time of the world. I am the breath that opens the mouth of the canyon, the sunlight on the tips of trees; There, where the narrow gorge hastens the wind I am the place where memory escapes the myth of time, I am the sleep in the mind of the mountain (Dai “The Voice of the Mountain”).

All these symbolic significances associated with mountains are born out of the poet and her people’s encounters with the situations of life in the

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mountain-dominated region where they have been living for a long time, in close attachment with the river, trees, rain, and animals, colors of the sky. That Dai’s ecological consciousness is always found to be the guiding force in her efforts to compose a literary work has presumably been shaped by (1) her sharp and critical observation of the differences between life in the hills and that in the plains, and (2) her close acquaintance from childhood with the Adi community’s nature-centric folklores dealing with evils. As an academician and administrator, Dai has encountered the dry, drab, mechanical life in the modern industry-based towns of the plains, which continues to destroy the ecological balance and places them far away from nature, beauty, and peace. Coupled with pollution, the inhabitants of these towns suffer from physical, mental and spiritual hazards, leading them to loneliness, complexity, and anxiety. On the other hand, Dai’s hometown, Pashighat in Arunachan Pradesh, is an abode of peace and beauty, as it is in the lap of nature and pollution-free, as it still sustains ecological balance in every sphere of life, nurturing simplicity in thought and action, and a peaceful coexistence of nature and man, as reflected in her writings. The Adi tribal community to which Mamang Dai, a creative chronicler, belongs, is preoccupied with the idea of evil emanating from, and existing in, the local ecology. In Dai’s works we find that animistic principles and the idea of evil connected to the devil have been reconstructed by her poetic insights, imagination, and sound ecological consciousness. Natural components are endowed with life and soul, controlling the universe which leads to the Adi ecotheosophy upholding biodiversity. In this context, Nigamanda Das clearly states, Like human rights, animism pleads for the ecology rights (ecofeminism) and animal rights. The humans smell the Evil in the huge ferocious ecology and the tribes practice the rituals to propitiate the Evil for peace and prosperity of all concerned. The Evil in the Adi culture as has been portrayed by Mamang may be classified as (i) supernatural, (ii) physical, (iii) ecological, (iv) symbolic, (v) mysterious/magical. These evils essentialize the tribal cultural ecology. Evils experienced by the Adi tribals have become legends (Das 2012, 147).

The legends borne out of the experiences of evil and encountered in nature always function as the guiding force to develop love for nature among the co-sharers of these, including our sensitive poet Dai and her associates, as evidenced by her poems, illustrated above. In addition, Dai has utilized this idea in her debut novel Legends of Pensam (2006) which comprises several stories or events linked by the undercurrent of the dominant idea of Adi

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ecotheosophy. For instance, in this novel, the character of Nyibu explains the logic related with ecotheosophy: In the beginning, there was only Keyum. Nothingness. It was neither darkness nor light, nor had it any color, shape or movement. Keyum is the remote past, was beyond the reach of our sense. It is the place of great stillness, the first flicker of thought began to shine like a light in the soul of man. It became a shimmering trail, took shape and expanded and became the Pathway. Out of this nebulous zone, a spark was born that was the light of imagination. The spark grew into a shining stream that was the consciousness of man, and from this all the stories of the world and all its creatures came into being (Legends of Pensam, 56).

Thus, it is evident that the world created by Dai in her literary creations is mainly occupied by the nature-centric elements, and for portraying this, she has used the lexical items and phrases denoting and dealing with part or whole of the ecological reality represented in myths and legends. (see Elwin 1999, Ering 2004). The ethnographic and geographic acquaintance of the poet is so intense that Dai’s creative world addresses and redresses the bipolar categorization of human thought and action, as traced in the creative verbal depiction of nature and transformation of the physical world to a symbolic one where innocence, simplicity, mutual cooperation, and empathy in verbal and non-verbal and materialistic behaviors, exist, and build a healthy humanistic space.

Work Cited Chomsky, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Mouton. 1965. Dai, Mamang. “An Obscure Place” Muse India Archives. Issue 8, 2006. Web. 13 September, 2012. Dai, Mamang “Small Towns and the River”, Poetry International (Web) October 16 2012. Dai, Mamang “The Voice of the Mountain”. India International Centre, Quarterly. Vol. No.2/3. 2005. Dai, Mamang. The Legends of Pensam. New Delhi, India: Penguin Random House, 2006. Dai, Mamang Midsummer Survival Lyrics. Guwahati, India: Wordsmith, 2014. Das, Nigamananda, ‘Ethno-ecology, Women’s Predicament and the Idea of Evil in Selected Works of Mamang Dai and Indira Goswami’. In Indu Swami (ed.). Exploring North-East Indian Writings in English (pp. 144162). New Delhi: Sarup Books Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 2012.

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Elwin, V. Myths of the Northeast Frontier of India. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1999. Ering, Oshong. Philosophy of Donyi Polo. In T. Mibang and S. K. Chaudhuri (Eds.), Understanding Tribal Religion (p. 35-37). New Delhi: India, Mittal Publications, 2004. Halliday, M. A. K. ‘New Ways of Meaning’. In Fill, Alwin and Peter Muhlhausler (eds.). The Ecolinguistics Reader. London and New York: CONTINUUM. 2001. Nemade, Bhalchandra. Nativism (Deshibad). Shimla: IIAS. 2009. Sapir, Edward (1956). Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Vohra, Harpreet (2013). ‘Symbolism of the Mountains: A Study of Selected Poems of Mamang Dai’. The NEHU Journal, Vol XI, No. 1, January 2013, pp. 45-54.

REREADING BARBARA KINGSOLVER'S PRODIGAL SUMMER FROM AN ECOFEMINIST PERSPECTIVE: A NOVEL REINTEGRATING HUMANKIND AND ENVIRONMENT TANBIR SHAHNAWAZ 1

Abstract Environmental protection has moved to the forefront of the agenda in today's world because our environment is at stake. As a consequence of this, in Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer: A Novel, readers will indeed be re-aligned with environmental consciousness by understanding the need for ecological preservation and biodiversity while also learning about the extinction of wildlife, flora and fauna, the preservation of species, and ecological equity. While writing this piece, the author drew on her experience in the Southern Appalachian region. She tells the experiences of three promising women: Deanna Wolfe, Lusa Landowski, and Garnett Walker — all of whom are struggling for a place in society and in quest of meaningful existence. It shows how drastically their lives change over the course of a spring and summer. 'Predators', 'Moth Love', and 'Old Chestnuts' are the three interconnecting segments of the novel. These three storylines underscore Kingsolver's concept of the interdependence of all things. She appeals to a broad demographic with her ecofeminist and political concerns. Environmental ethics are also examined in terms of human, non-human, and natural landscapes in this paper. Keywords: Ecofeminism, environment, existence, eco criticism, flora, fauna.

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Tanbir Shahnawaz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Rishi Bankim Chandra College, Naihati, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India

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Barbara Kingsolver is a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from the United States. She's a political activist and a freelance journalist, too. Her work frequently focuses on issues such as social justice, biodiversity, and human-environment interaction. Kingsolver was raised in Carlisle, Kentucky, but was born in Annapolis, Maryland. Even though Kingsolver covers a broad variety of topics in her writing, she frequently writes about places and events that are known to her; for example, several of her books are set in regions like central Africa or Arizona, where she has lived. Feminism is a political and philosophical movement that promotes equality between the sexes in all aspects of life, including socioeconomic, cultural, and societal. With its emphasis on the dominance of women and environment, ecofeminism is an essential aspect of eco-literature. The novel Prodigal Summer places a strong emphasis on environmental issues, and it has multiple plotlines that are all intertwined. In the view of ecofeminists, the ideology that allows for racial, social, and gender inequality is the same as that which sanctioned the exploitation of nature. The split of nature with human civilization, which codes nature as nonwhite and women, while denoting human civilization as white and male, is exposed by Prodigal Summer's examination of gender differences in relation to nature. It also recognizes the roots of this duality and explores its historical utility in attempting to explain interpersonal interactions. As a sociological, political, and scholarly movement, ecofeminism emphasizes the connection between patriarchal oppression and the exploitation of environment. It states that everything in the universe is fundamentally interrelated. An important theme in the novel is the challenge that female protagonists have with society's patriarchal structure as a result of environmental concerns like change of climate, extinction of animals or species, and declining biodiversity. For example, misogyny and deforestation in third world countries are just two instances of the way feminist and ecological issues are connected. In fact, ecological and feminist issues frequently cross paths because both stem from societies dominated by men (also known as patriarchy). With a focus on ecosystems out of equilibrium, Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, which was published in 2000, explores regional environmental and socioeconomic difficulties in Southern Appalachia, a cultural region in the Eastern United States of America that stretches from the Southern tier of New York State to Northern Alabama and Georgia. Protection of the environment has risen to prominence in present era because our ecosystem is at risk. Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Kingsolver’s novel Prodigal Summer helps readers re-align with ecological consciousness by addressing themes such as ecological preservation, biodiversity and natural sustainability. She incorporates three

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Rereading Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer from an Ecofeminist Perspective

stories of human love within a broader tapestry of characters inhabiting the small farms of the Appalachian mountains. An ecocritical analysis of Prodigal Summer is made possible through the use of this study. While writing this story, the author drew on her experience in the Southern Appalachian region. This investigation gradually reveals the many interconnections that exist between humans and non-humans. Ecology (as a branch of science, a discipline, as the ground for human vision) has the highest impact on the current reality of the Earth, according to William H Rueckert's article "Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism" written in 1978 (Rueckert, 107) Ecocriticism is a kind of critical theory that focuses on literature's interaction with nature. Apostles of this criticism opines that everything is interconnected. Prodigal Summer depicts how feminists view nature, how women can be farmers, and how each of the female characters has power over the male characters, and ends up assisting them. Considering how I feel about ecofeminism, I chose to look at how eco-feminism and feminism in general overlap in the book, to see if I could draw any conclusions. In a nutshell, ecofeminism is a movement led by women who wish to defend the rights of nature. Using feminist principles and ideas to address ecological challenges, ecofeminism is a movement or theory, and is a movement led by females who value and care about the environment. Because of her passion for the environment and desire to conserve it, Barbara Kingsolver can be labeled an ecofeminist. Prodigal Summer offers provocative possibilities, in which female farmers play a prominent part in the depiction of an alternative, ecologically-based agriculture. Kingsolver and her husband own and operate a farm in the Appalachian region in the United States. She is well aware of the struggles her fictional characters encounter, and as a result, the book's plot and characters may reflect some aspects of her own life. The way female characters interpret nature can be cited as an example of ecofeminism in the narrative. In Prodigal Summer, Kingsolver delves into the glories and challenges of the natural world. It presents the experiences of three progressive women - Deanna Wolfe, Nannie Rawley, and Lusa Landowski – as well as the novel's principal male character, Garnett Walker. Chapters are entitled "Predators", "Moth Love", and "Old Chestnuts", illustrating the efforts of the three ecologically-conscientious female protagonists. The book demonstrates how substantially their lives change over the course of a spring and summer. As a forest ranger, Deanna Wolfe's responsibility is to protect coyotes from being hunted by sheep ranchers in the Zebulon National Forest. When Lusa Maluf Landowski, a recently widowed woman, sets out to reconstruct her existence in Zebulon County after the loss of her husband, the story begins. The life of eccentric Garnett

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Walker, and his neighbor, Nanny Rawley, is chronicled in the third and last part of the book, "Old Chestnuts”. The chapter titled "Predators" features Deanna Wolfe. She works for the Forest Service, and one of her responsibilities is to monitor the coyote population. Coyotes are referred to as keystone predators in ecological circles. They are crucial to a healthy ecosystem's structure. Deanne has a strong ethical stance towards animals as she is environmentally sensitive: Sixty-five kinds of mussels, twenty now gone for good. There were hundreds of reasons for each death—pesticide runoff, silt from tilling, cattle in the creek—but for Deanna each one was also a piece in the puzzle she’d spent years working out. The main predator of the endangered shellfish was the muskrat, which had overpopulated to pestilence along the riverbanks over the last fifty years (Prodigal Summer 63).

The elimination of a major species will have far-reaching consequences for the environment. Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher, believes that all kinds of living entity, whether human, animal, bird, or plant, has an equitable right to exist as well as expand. The character of Deanna Wolfe exposes the farmer's erroneous view about the coyotes species. Lusa Maluf Landowski first appears in the chapter entitled "Moth Love". She has trained as an entomologist before marrying a farmer and raising a family on their farm. She finds it her ethical duty to take care of her late husband's property. It is not long before she becomes fascinated by the moths and other flying creatures that appear in her new surroundings. From that point on, her life becomes one with everything up there; the woods, the butterflies, the animals; all the wild things. Lusa crossed her arms over her stomach, holding her breath, transported by the scent-memory of honeysuckle across a field. Like a moth, here I am, we’re here. She glanced over at Jewel. “I’m sorry, it won’t make any sense to you. It’s nothing I can say in words (Prodigal Summer, 120/121).

Because of her strong ethical views about the land, Lusa refuses to plant tobacco on her property. She vows not to clear those trees. She refuses to sell the property, regardless of whether or not there is a hundreds and thousands dollars' worth of furniture behind it. What she relishes most about the place is just that. In the words of Kingsolver: “When it came to defending her husband's farms even in the face of many difficulties, Lusa proved to be an independent and self-reliant woman who loved nature” (Prodigal Summer, 122).

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In the chapter entitled "Chestnuts”, Kingsolver emphasizes the value of organic farming in opposition to the usage of pesticides and other chemicals. We are introduced to the characters of Garnett Walker and Nanny Rawley. Garnett laments over the disappearance of American chestnuts, and he employs pesticides in defending them. On the other side, Garnett is a proponent of organic farming and cultivates organic apples in Nanny’s adjacent orchard. He is haunted by the ghosts of these old chestnuts, by the great emptiness their extinction has left in the world, and so this is something Garnett does from time to time, like going to the cemetery to be with dead relatives: he admires chestnut wood. He takes a moment to honor and praise its color, its grain, and its miraculous capacity to stand up to decades of weather without pressure treatment or insecticides (Prodigal Summer, 123). Even when the prevalent outlook of humans is to see weeds as waste, Nanny stresses their ecological interdependence. She advocates the right for all living beings to exist. Garnett is not aware of the unintended effects of usage of pesticides can have on the ecosystem, yet he utilizes them to protect his saplings. In contrast, Nanny’s approach in addressing the circumstances reveals her ecologically sensitive mindset. Nanny also admires other living species and is concerned about the function they play to balance our ecology. She acquires a propensity of lizards from Grandy's bait store once a month and releases them. She says that there might have been ten or fifteen varieties of salamanders in the Zebulon region which were endangered species, and declares she is doing her best to conserve the ecosystem. Leading American environmental activist Aldo Leopold was a trendsetter of comprehensive ethics towards the territory. "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community, it is wrong when it tends otherwise” he wrote, in A Sand County Almanac (Leopold 1949, 262). He illustrates in the book, how when it goes the other way, that is when it is wrong, the land ethic simply extends community perimeters to involve soil, water, plant, and animal, or cumulatively. In Leopold’s words, it's also stated that a land ethic shifts the roles of humans from conquerors to natural members and citizens of community on the land. In other words, it implies that he respects both his fellow members and the community at large. Prodigal Summer, Kingsolver's environmentally conscious novel, takes this vision to new heights. Prodigal Summer acknowledges the union of people and nature, as well as the influence of the local environment and the world at large. It's a novel written from the perspective of an ecofeminist. While Deanna's quest for the

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elusive coyote, Lusa's search for a new residence, and Garnett's quest for his beloved chestnuts all run concurrently, they occasionally cross each other's limits. A chair that now sits in Deanna's log cabin once belonged to Lusa. Nanny had a fling with Deanna's father's mother, and Garnett shares a secret with Lusa that ties him to Nanny. It's a pheromone-filled summer when birds sing, wolves scream, moth’s court, and people let their feelings run wild all through the countryside in the novel. Kingsolver’s heroines are strong, empathetic women, who persevere in the face of life's challenges. Through the use of lyricism, Kingsolver subtly appeals to her readers' senses by turning settings, scenarios, characters, and activities into patterns of imagery. The story's three protagonists spend a lot of time contemplating and researching the natural world around them. Beginning with a lengthy description of the many plants and animals that live around the characters during a spring season on an Appalachian mountain, the author continues to tell the story. Then, for the remainder of the seasonal cycle, she maintains the same level of depth and investigation of the natural world. Zebulon Valley and Zebulon Mountain's inhabitants make varied choices when it comes to the nature that surrounds them, but they all exhibit a great deal of respect and understanding for it. Vegetables, flora and fauna, and climate, all play a significant role in their daily lives in Appalachia. Whenever the protagonists in each narrative face a different challenge, and in the way they resolve it, they reveal their ethical consciousness towards the environment and other non-human species explicitly. Deanna defends the coyote from poachers in the first narrative, which highlights the importance of wildlife conservation and the looming threat of extinction for certain species. Lusa's relationship with her farmland is explored in the second story, as are her ethical worries about its preservation. In addition, she is shown to be fascinated by insects such as moths and beetles. In the third story, we learn about pesticides and deforestation's negative impacts. Three alternate narratives underscore Kingsolver's concept of the interdependence of all things, and this raises environmental ethical dilemmas among the characters. She appeals to a broad spectrum of people with her environmental and political messages. Widener farm and the Southern Appalachian ecology depend heavily on Kingsolver's philosophy of interconnectivity between people and nonhumans, between the global and local, and also between locals and immigrants. Ecology and feminism can coexist, yet there are significant differences in their core beliefs. In her book, Kingsolver explores the relationship between human mothers and mother nature, showing how a patriarchal system oppresses underprivileged groups, including women, minors, and racial minorities, often violently. We may learn more about how

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systems work from both a human and ecological standpoint by integrating Kingsolver's insights and storytelling. The dominant capitalist culture, like the female gender, aims to rule nature. These three women are the focus of Prodigal Summer, constantly defying the limitations of womanhood. It is not uncommon for women to be denied the same rights and freedoms as males. Farmers, and others who live in the woods, expect men to do most of the work. It is by subverting these chores that the book’s protagonists may dispute the patriarchal system's initial assumption: that men ought to have more authority than women. These women believe that women have a right to be treated the same as men. Even so, they still have to deal with these outdated traditions, which hark back to the days of slavery and coverture. There is still a social heritage of subjugation in Appalachia, yet conflict arises in Zebulon County due to the characters' departure from the old patriarchal lifestyle. When the three women refuse to adopt the social position others anticipate, the community sees evidence of their accomplishments in retaining their autonomy while engaging in the patriarchal fraternity. These characters dispute the sexist ideas that women and men live in distinct worlds, and, as a result, should be protected from the men's gaze. They're not defined by their male partners; the novel's female characters know that. Since Prodigal Summer is about women who refuse to conform to traditional gender norms in marriage, it depicts their lives when they aren't bound by them. They gain power in other ways besides just engaging with men, since the women's quest for knowledge and financial liberty allows them to do so. Women's agency is defined under patriarchy as being limited to claustrophobic domesticity. The farm, the orchard, and the woodland, which become their individual sanctuaries, become too small as the domestic space becomes too limiting for Deanna, Nanny, and Lusa, to exercise their influence. Throughout Prodigal Summer, the institution of the wedding, and the domination it places on women, are used to highlight the protagonists' efforts to liberate themselves from slavery. In the beginning of the story, Deanna is divorced, Lusa is widowed, and Nanny has always refused to marry. When the protagonists look at their own marriages, they see how the power structures are skewed in men's favor. Even though the legal and financial foundations for a husband's dominance over his wife have largely disappeared, critics claim that, even in this day and age, we have all inherited unconscious habits and emotional expectations that keep women at a disadvantage in marriage. Other women in the narrative, however, appear to either neglect or conform to these disadvantages, despite the fact that the primary protagonists are well aware of them. Marriage contrasts the

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protagonists, who distinguish themselves from their male companions despite choosing to participate with the other characters who exhibit coverture beliefs. As Nanny, Deanna, and Lusa defy patriarchal expectations, they are seen as outcasts in their little society. Their freedom from male partners gives them a higher social dignity than the other characters in the narrative, who are subordinate to them. Despite the fact that Nanny is the only one of the three main characters who vigorously desired not to get married, the novelist's endeavor in demonstrating how these women feel about their freedom from coverture is evident in the fact that none of the three characters are married for the majority of the narrative. While writing my paper, focus has been directed on Kingsolver's key concerns about the agrarian farming class or community, and issues such as the loss of diversity among homogenous people and the dangers of chemical toxicity to pregnant women. Kingsolver gives readers a variety of alternatives in their own quest for social change by showing activism through fictitious characters. Kingsolver demonstrates in Prodigal Summer that such participation can have a significant impact on the social knowledge. In one example, Deanna uses Eddie Bondo's emotional opposition to coyotes as a logical argument by explaining the scientific justification for the adoption of coyotes as substitute predators for the overhunted wolves. However, Kingsolver also portrays different tactics of persuasion, so that her readers can imagine alternate ways of discourse to indoctrinate those similar to Deanna, who are hostile to ecofeminist beliefs throughout the story. Garnett and Nanny Rawley's relationship shows the power of individual activity, although Nanny uses pathos instead of ideas to persuade Garnett. Even though Garnett initially rejects Nanny's logical arguments in her thoughtful letters, his growing affection for her over time helps him to see her point of view and accept the scientific facts for evolution she employs as an ally. When it comes to influencing Garnett, Nanny is more emotional than Deanna. She becomes connected with him through a variety of gentle gestures; she bakes him a pie and saves him from an angry powerful hooked snapping turtle. She also uncovers the source of his dizzy spells and gives him seeds for his project to create a blight-resistant American Chestnut. With her depiction of this connection, Kingsolver is showing readers how logical argumentation isn't always the most effective; a personal, emotional approach has much more resonance. The novel depends on scientific evidence, yet Kingsolver does not ignore the profoundly ingrained Appalachian sagacity that has been passed down through the generations. Despite her intellectual approach to farming, Lusa is often conceited about it, such as when she feels that she can graze mother and calf at the same time and forego milking entirely. She admits that folklore like the mountains

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breathing, something which appears figurative, yet could be real. According to Kingsolver, the precipitous valley behind the farmhouse inhales slowly in the morning and exhales back out into the meadows in the evening, with only one full breath every day. By the end of the book, Lusa has changed her mind about several of the community's farming practices that she has previously opposed, such as the eradication of honeysuckle from the Widener farm's barn. Because Kingsolver arguments are massive, the span of this paper restricts my abilities to thoroughly analyze them. Evaluation has not been made about the purposeful use of Darwin’s theory, which is particularly noticeable in the book. Lusa is seen regularly reading Darwin’s Origin of Species, while evolution is pervasive across Deanna and Nanny’s storylines. In conjunction with the ecological perspective of the book, I think the feminist aspirations of each are crucial to their argumentative implications. Although the discussion starts with parenting, pregnancy, and infertility, there is potential for more progress to be made addressing the interconnections and hierarchies between male and female in Prodigal Summer. This is significant because feminism attempts to achieve gender equality, and I think that consideration could be given to the men of the narratives, and the extent that their masculinity is mirrored in the controversy related to feminism and environmentalism. Men who have open minds portray a hue of masculinity which is favorable to the advancement of women’s community and the ecology, as opposed to characters who have toxic masculinity and restrict progress in these directions. With regard to the present sociopolitical stance towards women and environmentalism, Kingsolver's work in Prodigal Summer is not only pertinent, but extremely necessary. Ecofeminist researchers should use the stories to bolster their arguments as they work to create a more equal society for men, women, and the environment. There are various tactics that real-life readers can learn which can be used in their own campaigning for feminism and environmentalism, which are represented by the variety of rhetorical approaches used by Kingsolver in her work. The seminal work represents the core values of ecofeminism, and contributes significantly to the objective of generating a more socially conscious society. As a result, the novel obviously demonstrates how environmental issues are addressed, and eco-criticism is proven to be an effective method for examining the current state of environmental degradation and its implications for humans and nonhuman species alike. With its focus on the exploitation of women and the environment, eco-feminism is an essential aspect of eco-literature. Environmental issues such as global warming, extinction of species, biodiversity, pesticide applications, etc. are treated in the book alongside the

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female characters' battles against patriarchal systems in society. These are strong, resourceful women who care about the planet and make environmentally friendly decisions in their daily lives. The female protagonists in these stories demonstrate a regard for nature's basic virtues while also overcoming injustice and inequality. It is not merely that they exhibit resiliency in the face of such oppression; they also emerge as strong, self-reliant women. There is a clear understanding of the worth of all kinds of non-human creatures in the natural environment, from microbes to animals, and how they contribute to the overall health of an ecosystem. The women in the novel, Deanna, Lusa, and Nanny, challenge patriarchal norms, express their identities, and get involved in environmental preservation efforts. Writers and critics of ecofeminist literature frequently infuse discourses from other branches into their literary works. This is especially the case in the organic and social sciences, which are frequently referenced in the study of literature of ecofeminism. Such well-executed crosspollination enhances texts and produces vivacious discourse. Unfortunately, literary scholars who undertake such projects often lack the expertise and reputation essential to support scientific assertions. It's rare for anyone to contest the validity of Barbara Kingsolver's writing because of her significant background in science (she has both a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in biology). Despite the fact that her writings are extremely dexterous and her research is well-documented, opponents who disagree with her depictions of science frequently challenge her. Even though she makes a point of including science in her writing, she prefers to convey her ideas through the medium of fiction. She is an ecofeminist, which allows her themes to challenge the mechanisms that limit the power of women and the natural world at the same time. By storytelling, authors are able to connect with their audiences on a deeper level and experience less resistance from their readers. Kingsolver boosts her readers' empathy, and, as a result, the potential that they will act decisively by presenting her messages through fiction instead of analytical study, editorial writing, or any kind of non-fictional media. The novel challenges the readers to reexamine conventional beliefs and to discover why they become norms. The struggle of the women protagonists against resistance and restrictions serves as an illustration of how even seemingly insignificant problems that women face in society can be traced back to outdated cultural norms. Although these traditional values may be stronger in specific areas, such as the South, Prodigal Summer shows that they may still be found around the world today. The book reads like an appeal for a shift in the way humans interact with one another and the environment. An attempt is being made to link everything together and

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underline how interconnection makes everyone responsible for the long term, by urging readers to regard themselves as part of nature.

Works Cited De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany Chevallier. New York: Vintage Books, 2011. Commoner, Barry. The Closing Circle; Nature, Man, and Technology. Knopf, 1971. Gaard, Greta Claire. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1993. Glotfelty, Cheryll, and Harold Fromm. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. University of Georgia Press, 1996. Kerr, Sarah. “The Novel As Indictment.” The New York Times. Oct. 11, 1998. n.p. http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/11/daily/kingsolvermagazine.html Kingsolver, Barbara. Prodigal Summer. Harper Collins, 1995. Leopold, Aldo, Charles Walsh Schwartz, and Aldo Leopold. A Sand County Almanac. With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River. Oxford University Press, 1966. Marie-Daly, Bernice. “Ecofeminism: Sacred Matter/Sacred Mother” Teilhard Studies, no. 25, Autumn 1991. Narduzzi, Dilia. “Living With Ghosts, Loving the Land: Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer”. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 15.2(2008):74-75. Web.1 Nov. 2010. Næss, Arne, David Rothenberg, and Arne Næss. Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. Cambridge University Press, 1989. Rueckert, William. “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism” Iowa Review 9.1(1978). Sweet, Timothy. “Projecting Early American Environmental Writing.” American Literary History, vol. 22 no. 2, 2010, pp. 419-431. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/382114. Vaughan, Llewellyn. “Eco-spirituality: Towards a Values-based Economic Structure” The Guardian. 17 May 2013. Web 11 March 2015

ECOFEMINISM AND UNDERSTANDING THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM AND THE POWER’S PROBLEM IN ROSSETTI’S “GOBLIN MARKET” DEBOJYOTI DAN 1

Abstract Ecofeminism has woven itself into the cultural episteme with its amazing ability to realize its potentiality of identifying the female self in nature. In the post-anthropocene world, where the identity of nature is filled with signifiers, the otherized female self of nature should be looked at ecocritically. This paper tries to fathom out the existence of nature and nurture in the Victorian era where biopolitics has defragmented the ‘being’ of a woman’s self through the lens of toxic masculinity. Keywords: Ecocriticism, Victorian, phallogocentric, placebo effect

biopolitics,

maldevelopment,

Christina Rossetti locates the ‘biopolitics’ of male culture in the world of text, where the ‘female’ is not only the other, but also her body becomes a center of mapping the structure of language and enforcing the logic of silence. Foucault supplements that “Biopolitics deals with the population, with the population as a political problem, as a problem that is at once scientific and political, as a biological problem and as power’s problem” (Foucault, Lecture 11 245). With respect to language, the man is both the ‘biological problem’ and ‘power’s problem’ when it uses the female body as the text of their violence. Rossetti emphasizes the viability of Foucauldian ‘biopolitics’ in understanding the genomics and the exercise of mutating the bio-political spaces of women. The ‘goblin culture’ has eroded

1 Debojyoti Dan is a State-aided College Teacher at Naba Ballygunge Mahavidylaya, West Bengal, India

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the bio-space of the female, and therefore their logos are doomed in the space of silence. Foucauldian biopolitics ensures the re-reading of the Great Fall. Eve being seduced and responsible for the Fall is a male narrative designed to subvert female identity and negotiate in terms of marketable archetypes of the fallen woman/other. Thus, in Christina Rossetti’s poem, there is no Adam. The terms of negotiation are between women [Lizzie and Laura] and the transgendered goblins. Rossetti’s exclusion of men is her way of dissolving the male biopolity to hegemonize over the narrative body of female, and the ‘sisterhood’ marks a reaffirmation of the encoded potentiality of a nonsexual rapport between women. The phallic signifier is the fruit which marks the simulacra of knowledge. In his critical discourse on postmodernism, (Simulacres et Simulation 3) Jean Baudrillard problematizes the notion of duplication of a sign or a signifier whose original is absent. But the duplication and re-duplication necessarily ensures that death is done away with, and there is no question of an original ‘apple’ in the case. Thereby, we have the cornucopia of fruition in the poem “Goblin Market”: Apples and quinces, Lemons and oranges, Plump unpeck’d cherries, Melons and raspberries, Bloom-down-cheek’d peaches, Swart-headed mulberries, Wild free-born cranberries, Crab-apples, dewberries, Pine-apples, blackberries, Apricots, strawberries; (Rosetti, “Goblin Market”)

Thus the sin here is indulging in the game of duplication of the forbidden fruit. Milton’s version of “Man’s First Disobedience” (Paradise Lost), gets a narratorial re-visit. Here we see the female praxis in nature being otherized through the cultural conduit of male stereotyping. Thus, the fruits of womb are fetishized and the feto-placental bond of a woman is subjected to the episteme of temptation. When Eve (woman) is no longer the Lacanian symptom/desire, but rather a Christian archetype of redemption – then a female Christ, as Florence Nightingale asserts in her treatise “Suggestions for the Thought for Seekers After Religious Truth” becomes the savior, restoring and redeeming Laura, with penance and sacrifice:

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Never mind my bruises, Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices Squeez’d from goblin fruits for you, Goblin pulp and goblin dew. Eat me, drink me, love me; Laura, make much of me; For your sake I have braved the glen And had to do with goblin merchant men. (Rossetti, Goblin Market)

Lizzie’s negotiation with ‘goblin merchant men’ for the sake of Laura is a sacrifice transcripted from the page of masculine archetypes. In this version too, woman is the body of the condemned (Foucault 1977, 135). She can either be a fallen woman or the Angel. The savior agenda donates a justification of her suffering to provide redemption to the narrative – something which is the value-added resource in the male narratorial biopolitics of the church. In the verbal discourse between Lizzie and Laura, Rossetti constructs Lizzie as a model of Victorian purity, thereby encoding her in the archetype of the Angel. The syllogism used here is another parable of Christ, resisting the temptation of flesh. To remind Laura that she must resist the transgendered goblins, Lizzie introduces Jeanie as a forbidden breach of the sacred parameters of sisterhood. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue that, “Jeanie became a witch or madwoman, yielding herself entirely to an ‘unnatural’ or at least unfeminine, life of dream and inspiration. Her punishment, therefore, was that decline which was essentially an outer sign of her inner disease’(Gilbert & Gubar, The Mad Woman in the Attic, 567). Thus Jeanie becomes the victim of the biopower of phallic politics and male stereotyping. ‘Biopower’ is the term Foucault uses to describe the new tactics of power when it focuses on life; that is to say, individual bodies and populations when such mechanisms differ from those that exert their influence in the legal and political sphere of sovereign power (Foucault, Lecture 11, 245). In Rossetti’s text, Jeanie’s body becomes the sub-text of phallic textual narrative and her biological degeneration and spiritual depravity is regarded as the counter-culture by the phallogocentric gaze. Later, Laura’s illness is bracketed in the similar state of vegetative barrenness: Jeanie and Laura are both cursed with physical barrenness, unlike most Victorian fallen women, who almost always … bear bastard children to denote their shame. But not even daisies will grow on Jeanie's grave, and the kernelstone Laura has saved refuses to produce a new plant. Sickening

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Laura, like Jeanie, violates the Victorian code of the domesticated woman in a structured patriarchal monolithic domain, and we encounter Rossettian body and non-body, as the gaze of the readers turns towards the body of Laura in the bio-space. On the other hand the ‘docile’ body of ‘disciplined’ Lizzie is a text of masculine stereotype of Christ, so she is made to donate her body for the greater cause of the redemption of Laura: Never mind my bruises, Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices […] Eat me, drink me, love me; (Rossetti, Goblin Market)

Lizzie does offer her body as Christ, so the biopolitics continue to function through the technology of female anatomy; one as condemned body the other as the docile body. This is what Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies call ‘maldevelopment’ where the female self and nature become passive subjects of the toxin engineered by hyper-masculinity and male biopolitics. The male episteme of radical deprivation of the female ‘being’ becomes a consumerist agenda driven by androcentricism to deprive the ‘juice’ and provide the ‘bruises’ in their attempt to consume the nature and otherise the unconsumable as ‘fallen’. Clark writes, “This reduction not only takes place in the realm of ideas and values but also encompasses a historical project of pacification and disempowerment of women.” (Clark, 127) In the poem we find the problem further posited by the Goblins. Their ‘being’ is not harmonized with the bio-space of Rossetti, but the hyperspace of microbiologic exponents. Due to the fruits taken by Laura, there is a dysfunctionality in her body as organic focal thematization and hence the ‘dys/dis’ appearance of connectivity with Lizzie. The illness here is the Derridian rupture. According to Derrida, the event of the rupture occurred when there was a disruption in the series of substituting one center for another. In the poem “Goblin Market” the center of Laura’s healthy body as a ‘text’ is disrupted by her illness which now becomes the centrality of her text. According to Derrida, this disruption occurred when the very idea of the structurality of the structure became the subject of somebody’s thought (Derrida, Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, 279). So Laura’s illness structures her diseased body-as-text, and Lizzie creates the placebo effect (a beneficial effect produced by a treatment or

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drug, which cannot be attributed to the properties of the treatment or drug itself, and therefore must be due to the patient’s belief in that treatment). Hence it is Laura’s belief in Lizzie that creates the therapeutic balance and the hospital space resulting in Laura’s cure: Life out of death. That night long Lizzie watch’d by her, Counted her pulse’s flagging stir, Felt for her breath, Held water to her lips, and cool’d her face With tears and fanning leaves: […] Laura awoke as from a dream, Laugh’d in the innocent old way, Hugg’d Lizzie but not twice or thrice; Her gleaming locks show’d not one thread of grey, Her breath was sweet as May And light danced in her eyes. (Rossetti, Goblin Market)

Through her penance, Lizzie creates a phenomenological distance between body and illness. The gaze of the doctor affects the patient, and their sickness is a gaze that transforms the doctor, therefore Lizzie cannot be the doctor who creates the otherness of the sick. When medicine becomes the only social language, the distinction between the doctor and the patient becomes more explicit. Their perception of each other becomes hierarchical. In this relationship, the physician is the healthy, wise, and authoritative one, whereas, the patient is perceived by the doctor as sick and powerless, even though the doctor may also get sick sometimes. This is what Foucault calls the ‘medical gaze’ He says: Facilitated by the medical technologies that frame and focus the physicians’ optical grasp of the patient, the medical gaze abstracts the suffering person from her sociological context and reframes her as a “case” or a “condition” (Foucault 2007, 23)

So instead of the doctor, she becomes the archetype of the Angel, who rejects the logos of medicine and indulges in the savior agenda, framed as the female Christ, and providing the placebo effect to Laura. As a ‘docile body’, Lizzie’s anatomy is under ‘strict discipline’ (“Docile Bodies: The Means of Correct Training” in The Foucault Reader, 188). Therefore, she belongs to the bio-space of Rossetti. As for Laura, she finally becomes the ‘human body’ where the mechanics of power enters and rearranges it. Thus,

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the poem concludes with a eulogy to sisterhood which supplements medicine and is rearranged under the Victorian ‘mechanics of power’. …how her sister stood In deadly peril to do her good, And win the fiery antidote: Then joining hands to little hands Would bid them cling together, “For there is no friend like a sister In calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, To fetch one if one goes astray. (Rossetti, Goblin Market)

Lizzie’s deal with the goblin brings us to the ontology of ‘unconcealment’ which Heidegger discusses (Wrathall 112). Unverborgenheit in Heidegger is originally the translation of Greek DOƝWKHLD, which generally means ‘The Truth’. Here, the truth of Lizzie is in the ‘unconcealment’ of the entities of both the goblins and their fruit. The truth is the ‘being’ of goblins. Here they are transgendered, and are a threat to the Victorian society and the Christlike Lizzie. The short form of Elizabeth signifies the intended figure to restore the fallacy of utopia and the felicity of the patriarchal notion of the fallen woman, to be redeemed by Angel (woman). The poem is an amalgam of various ideologies; some intended while others need ‘unconcealment’. Eden is restored in the poem as Laura is redeemed by Lizzie, or as England is by Queen Elizabeth/Victoria. Such redemption is the ideal that Rossetti wished to continue through poetry as her brother did through his paintings of “Venus Verticoda” (See Fig.1.) which are reminiscent of Laura as she holds the golden apple in her left hand. Just as in Fig. 1, so are the female protagonists of Christina Rossetti’s work, as well as nature in itself. They emblematize the fetishistic entrapment of the male gaze. In the retinal space of readers, they exist as the text encoding the Victorian agenda of sisterhood. Taken out of the sexual space they exist as non-bodied ‘beings’ in the bio-space of Rossetti, until Laura commits the ‘sin’ in the male archetype and her body becomes condemned, while Lizzie’s body becomes the ‘docile’ one. Thus, Foucault writes: The classical age discovered the body as object and target of power…La Mettrie’s L’Homme-machine (man-the machine) is both a materialist reduction of the soul and a general theory of dressage, at the center of which reigns the notion of “docility” which joins the analyzable body (Laura) to the manipulable body (Lizzie). A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved. (Faucault 1991, 180)

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Fig. 1. Medium: oil. Dimensions: 38 5/8 x 27 1/2 in. Production Date: 1864-8. Exhibition History: Birmingham 1891, Special Loan Collection, (no.179); Bournemouth 1951 (no.9); Paris 1972 (n.222); R.A. 1973 (n.317); Baden–Baden 1973-4 (n.127); Rotterdam–Paris 1977 (n.204); Monaco 1979-80 (no.373); Tate 1984 (no.130)

Hence the bodies of both Lizzie and Laura become ‘docile’ at the end of the poem, to be used later for the production of mankind when their ‘service’ will be needed. So there, docile bodies will be ready for the phallic hegemony when they finally enter conjugal relationship hinted at in the end.

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Vandana Shiva theorizes ecofeminism by amalgamating the otherized perspective of woman into that of Nature. Due to globalization, the very praxis of woman’s ‘self’ and ‘being’ in nature is dislocated, and we find here that Christina Rossetti presents the very essence of such loss of identity through this poem. The toxicity of the male gaze has decoded nature in terms of usability just as it did to the performative space of the female self. J.P. Clark, in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics writes: “Ecofeminism is one of the most sophisticated and creative philosophical ecologies. Ecofeminist theory (or at least the Anglo-American varieties that have received the most attention) has sometimes been thought of as emphasizing issues of personal life, values, and spirituality. However, important contributions to social and political theory have been made by ecofeminist thinkers, particularly with the emergence of a materialist ecofeminism that is concerned with the global social order and the place of women in the world economy.” (Clark 512)

In the poem “Goblin Market” we are placed in the rhetoric of global social order, where terms like ‘fallen women’ and ‘pure women’ are the male episteme of biopolitics. Nature here is rendered to be the fetishistic trophy of the male gaze. The ecological concern of Christina Rossetti is provided with an ontological coordinate of restorative anthropology. Laura’s recuperation is the medicinal curative to the identity of female ‘being’ in nature, and Lizzie incarnates the performative space of woman in curing the nature of her male afflictions and stereotyping.

Works Cited Baudrillard, J. Simulacres et Simulation. Trans. Sheila Glaser. Éditions Galilée (French) & University of Michigan Press (English), Original Publication date, 1981. Print. Published in English, 1994. Print. Clark, J.P. Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (Second Edition). Ed. Dan Callahan Peter Singer, Editor-in-chief. Ruth Chadwick. UK: Academic Press. 2012. Print. Derrida, Jacques, “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Print. (“La structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discourse des sciences humaines” in L’écriture et la différence, Collection «Essais», Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 1972). Print. Foucault, Michel. The Archeology of Knowledge. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, Pantheon Books. 1972. Print.

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Foucault, Michel. Lecture 11. 17 March 1976 in Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the College de France. France: Picador Press. 2003. Pdf. Foucault, Michel. Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Donald F Bouchard. Tran. Donald F Bouchard and Sherry Simon (eds.) Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press. 1977. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, Pantheon Books. 1977. Print. Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality. Vol 1: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, Pantheon Books. 1978. Print. Foucault, Michel. “Docile Bodies’, ‘The Means of Correct Training” in The Foucault Reader. Edited by Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon. 1991. Print. Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Ed. Collin Gordon. Trans. Collin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham and Kate Soper. New York: Random House, Pantheon Books. 1980. Print. Wrathall, Mark A. Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language, and History. Cambridge University Press: 2010. Hsu, Hsuan L. and Martha Lincoln, “Biopower, Bodies […] the Exhibition, and the Spectacle of Public Health”, Discourse, Volume 29, Number 1, pp. 15-34, Winter 2007. Web Rossetti, Christina. “Goblin Market” Poetry Foundation. Web. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market

Painting source Production Date: 1864-8 Exhibition History: Birmingham 1891, Special Loan Collection, (no.179); Bournemouth 1951 (no.9); Paris 1972 (n.222); R.A. 1973 (n.317); Baden– Baden 1973-4 (n.127); Rotterdam–Paris 1977 (n.204); Monaco 1979-80 (no.373); Tate 1984 (no.130) Patron: John Mitchell of Bradford Date Commissioned: 1863 or 1864 Model: Alexa Wilding

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Note: The first model was “a very large young woman, almost a giantess” whom DGR “noticed in the street” (Surtees vol. 1, 99). In 1867 DGR replaced the image of the original model with Wilding's face. Repainting: March 1867 Head was repainted. Provenance Current Location: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, Bournemouth Catalog Number: 1136 Archival History: J. Mitchell; John Graham; Christie's sale April 30, 1887 (lot 82), £472. 10 s; Arthur Anderson; Christie's sale May 19, 1894 (lot 34), £525; H.S. Saunders-Clark; Christie's sale July 30, 1936 (lot 71), £105; Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, Bournemouth 1946.

WATER, MOTHER, AND IGBO SPIRITUALITY: INTERFACE BETWEEN ECOFEMINISM AND RELIGION IN FLORA NWAPA’S THE LAKE GODDESS ARNAB KUMAR SINHA1

Abstract Flora Nwapa’s recent novel, The Lake Goddess (2017) is an interesting representation of the connection between women and nature. In the Igbo deity, Ogbuide, or the Woman of the Lake, occupies a central position in the narrative, motivating Ona, who is the young daughter of Mgbada and Akpe, to become the Priestess of the Lake. Ona abides by the wishes of Ogbuide, and in due course she assumes a powerful status in her community. Traditional Igbo women consider Ona as a water deity, believing in her spiritual ability to transform the fates of oppressed women. Ona is idolized by traditional Igbo women for her strong spiritual connection with the Woman of the Lake. This connection, which is a significant aspect of the Igbo religious system, can be analyzed from the perspective of Karen Warren’s ‘ecofeminist spiritualities’. Though most of the critics label Ona as a representative of the Igbo feminist standpoint, issues related to the philosophical threads of ecofeminism, and the gaps in the feminist ideological position, have not been seriously dealt with by the scholars. This article, apart from reading the character of Ona from Warren’s ecofeminist viewpoint, seeks to question the validity of Ona’s feminist standpoint. Is she really an independent woman? Is Ona capable of resisting the patriarchal system? The role of Christianity which challenges the emotional logic of the Igbo women and their deep faith in the water goddess is also important. In fact, water, as an element of nature, plays a crucial role in shaping the power of the Lake Goddess. This article attempts to interrogate the role of

1

Dr Arnab Kumar Sinha is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Culture Studies, Burdwan University

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water in the context of Ona’s power, which is derived mainly from the water bodies. Keywords: Water, Ecofeminism, Spirituality, Christianity Flora Nwapa is considered to be one of the pioneering female novelists of Nigeria. Being a representative of the Igbo community, her oeuvre is reflective of a strong feminist sensibility that aims to motivate the Igbo women to devise strategies to resist the ideology of patriarchy. In the Preface to the The Lake Goddess, Helen Chukwuma observes, “Nwapa believes in the emancipation of the human spirit” and her symbolic representation of the “ideology of womanhood is the Lake Goddess, Ogbuide” who is capable enough to combat the repressive forces of human society (Chukwuma, 5). The figure of the Lake Goddess is intimately connected to the lifestyle of the Igbo people living in Oguta, and in Nwapa’s novels, the citizens of Oguta preach this deity with sincerity and devotion. Nwapa represents a complex relationship dynamic between the Lake Goddess and the Oguta people. Emphasizing the significance of this deity in the context of the socio-cultural mores of the Oguta people, Jell-Bahlsen, in her article, “Flora Nwapa and Oguta's Lake Goddess: Artistic Liberty and Ethnography” opines that the Lake Goddess is “the major reference point” for the denizens of Oguta, as “she is the mythical mother” whose blessings are required for “farming” and cultural activities” (Jell-Bahlsen 2007, 254). This goddess, who is associated with water, plays a crucial role in ensuring agricultural productivity, and occupies an important position in the cluster of Igbo deities (Jell-Bahlsen “Flora Nwapa and Oguta's Lake Goddess: Artistic Liberty and Ethnography” 254). Nwapa’s portrayal of the Lake Goddess is, therefore, remarkable from the point of view of the traditional Igbo women, because according to Jell-Bahlsen, in her article, “The Concept of Mammy water in Flora Nwapa’s Novels”, they derive inspiration from this deity and also consider themselves as goddesses daughters (Jell-Bahlsen 2007, 33). Thus, the figure of the Lake Goddess is an ideologically dense, cultural symbol, reflective of the Igbo women’s cultural, social, religious and political viewpoints. In the context of this intersection of the Lake Goddess and the Oguta women, Nwapa’s novel, The Lake Goddess (2017) presents an interesting account of a worshipper of a water goddess and the methods adopted by her to influence the minds of Oguta women. The chief protagonist of this novel is Ona, the daughter of Mgbada and Akpe, who is chosen by Ogbuide (the Lake Goddess) to become her worshipper. Ona’s love for the water, her mysterious connection with the lake, her desire to follow the instructions of Ogbuide, and her motive to empower the Igbo women are representative of the ecofeminist perspective embedded in Ona’s

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psychology. Her ecofeminist ideological standpoint is based on a spiritual connection with the water goddess, which can be analyzed from Karen J. Warren’s philosophical thought, expressed in the essay, “A Feminist Philosophical Perspective on Ecofeminist Spiritualities” (1993). Warren’s theoretical framework will be discussed in the first section of this article, to amplify Ona’s critical standpoint in Nwapa’s narrative. Ona’s ecofeminist ideological outlook has been interrogated in this article, and an attempt has been made to explain how she uses this outlook to counter the repressive measures adopted by the colonial missionaries to subjugate Igbo women. Also important is the way in which she attempts to challenge the patriarchal gaze of the Igbo men. Despite assuming a powerful position in her society, Ona, as this article argues, fails to attain the status of a goddess who can liberate women from the shackles of patriarchy.

Contextualizing “Ecofeminist spiritualities” in The Lake Goddess While elucidating the interface between ecofeminism and spirituality, Carol J. Adams in the introduction to the book, Ecofeminism and the Sacred states that the ‘spiritual’ discourse is often used by some ecofeminists to register their ‘protest’ against the dominant views of patriarchy (Adams, 4). Although some ecofeminists, according to Adams, are skeptical about the ‘spiritual’ dimension of ecofeminism, there has been a conscious effort to include the ‘idea of the sacred’ in ecofeminist studies. Indeed, ‘ecofeminist spiritualities’ are of various types, as women belonging to different religious traditions act environmentally to develop their specific responses to oppose the system of patriarchal spirituality which endorses the subordination of women, body, and nature, making the oppression sacred (Adams, 1). Karen J. Warren’s perspective on ecofeminist spiritualities echoes some of the ideas of Adams, but her main agenda is to develop a model of thought that focuses on activism. In the essay, “A Feminist Philosophical Perspective on Ecofeminist Spiritualities”, Warren asserts the significance of the discourse of ecofeminist spiritualities, which can truly assume a feminist standpoint if the discourse focuses on combating gender inequality, and values women’s experiences and perspectives” (Warren, 124). Adams and Warren are hopeful about the philosophical framework of ecofeminist spiritualities that can enable women belonging to different religious traditions to question the logic of patriarchal dominance over women and nature. An illuminating instance of the working of ecofeminist spiritualities can be found in Nwapa’s The Lake Goddess.

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In Nwapa’s novel, The Lake Goddess, the central protagonist, Ona, associates with the water goddess, which leads to her transformation of identity, and this phenomenon presents a framework of ideas exhibiting the use of the sacred in forging an ecofeminist model of thought. This philosophical perspective can be better understood by analyzing Ona’s life and her divine connection with the water goddess. As a child, Ona, even before the age of two, learns to swim and her love for water is so intense that her siblings address her ‘a fish’ (The Lake Goddess, 55). Instead of upholding her human identity, Ona feels proud of fact that people call her a fish, and as she grows up, her curiosity about the spirit of the Lake Goddess increases. During one of her conversations with Akpe (her mother), she comes to know that a spirit named Ogbuide lives at the bottom of the lake. This tempts her to become a spirit, and also to live with the spirit (The Lake Goddess, 56). Ona does not want to go to school, preferring to dwell in a place where the patriarchal order of ideas is not operative. Though Ona innocently attaches herself to the water goddess, desiring to live in water, this attitude is indeed important for configuring an ecofeminist identity. She rejects a school education to build a fictional world in which she communicates with the spirits. This imaginative communication persuades Ona to develop a deep bonding with Ogbuide and her spiritual world. While narrating her association with the Lake Goddess, Ona tells Mgbada (her father) that she has often imaginatively travelled to the bottom of the Lake to live with the fishes, while having ‘the heads of humans’ and in this place, the woman of the lake resides with the other creatures peacefully (The Lake Goddess, 111). Ona’s vision is of an alternative societal set up where gender discrimination, racism, and exploitation of nature are absent. In this vision, the ecofeminist dimension is clearly present, and it includes the aspect of the sacred because the entire vision is based on a spiritual connection between woman and nature. The imagery of “fishes with heads of humans” is suggestive of an ecofeminist perspective, indicating a communion with the creatures of the lake. Ona dreams about swimming with the fishes, and travelling with the fishes inside the lake to meet the water goddess (The Lake Goddess, 121-123). The women of Oguta witness Ona’s unusual attachment to the Lake Goddess, considering her a divine woman who could motivate women in her community to raise their voices against patriarchal/colonial oppression. Mgbeke, a woman of Oguta, is impressed by the freedom enjoyed by Ona, and during a conversation with Ekecha, she asks a series of questions which are important from a feminist perspective. Mgbeke first asks, “Aren’t women really the cause of the disaffection among women?”, and then she again puts another question to Ekecha, “What man would not be flattered if he had three or more wives competing

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for his attention?” (The Lake Goddess, 134). These questions seek to challenge the custom of polygamy in the Igbo community, emphasizing the need to abolish such a custom that subdues Igbo women. Mgbeke further says that women should not treat their husbands as ‘little gods’, and to substantiate this claim, she refers to Ona, who has left her Christian husband (Mr Sylvester) to become a devotee of Ogbuide. Ona, according to Mgbeke, has ‘extraordinary powers’ which can be used for expressing the rights of women. The women of Oguta often consult Ona to get her advice on various domestic matters, including “ways to deal with husbands and co-wives” (The Lake Goddess, 144). Ona’s decision to leave her husband in order to become a devotee of the Lake Goddess is an instance of the rejection of marital bonding which often authorizes husbands to assume control over the activities of their wives. Mgbada supports Ona’s decision to dissociate from Sylvester, because he knows that Ona has been ‘chosen’ by Ogbuide to serve the Oguta people. Ogbuide’s relationship with Ona inspires the women of Oguta to shape a feminist ideology based on the harmony of women and nature. While preaching Ogbuide’s spiritual thoughts, Ona convinces the women to have a voice, because voiceless women are disliked by Ogbuide. This communion between Ona and Ogbuide is central to the idea of ecofeminist spiritualities in The Lake Goddess. Without this bonding, the emancipation of the women of Oguta would not have been possible. The discourse of ecofeminist spiritualities, demonstrated in the context of this narrative, contains a very important element of nature, i.e. water. A thorough investigation of the symbolic and cultural connotations of water, particularly in the context of Igbo religious tradition, will provide us with a better understanding of Ona’s psychology. At the end of the novel, Nwapa writes a fish-seller’s song, in which there is a reference to Ogbuide, the water goddess, who the fish-seller believes is ‘the greatest’ because she provides water to the people of Oguta community, and this water ensures good agricultural productivity, cures all ills, is powerful, and is synonymous with life (The Lake Goddess, 163). This song, apart from foregrounding a profound sense of respect for the Lake Goddess, highlights the dependence of the Igbos on water. Chimalum Nwankwo, while discussing the representation of the religious outlook of Igbos in Nwapa’s early novels, observes that, “the Igbo world is a world of fluid dualities”, offering a mode of existence which is never closed in terms of meaning and possibilities” (Nwankwo, 46). The Igbo mode of life, Nwankwo argues, is evocative of contradiction, involving a spirit of negotiation with the indeterminate aspects of their living (Nwankwo, 46). In this sort of life, water is a suitable medium for recording the experiences of existence. Instead of the land, which is symbolic of fixity, the image of water defines

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the spiritual outlook of the Igbos. Emphasizing the significance of sea or water in Igbo worldview, I.I. Egbujie notes that, the sea, for the Igbos is a special cipher-script, a coded message that defines their lifestyle beyond the realm of this physical world (Egbujie, qtd. in Nwankwo, 47). The sea, or the water goddess, in the Igbo belief system, is therefore representative of the Igbos’s ‘fluid’ existence; reflective of their attitude to nature. The women of the Igbo community probably invoke the Lake Goddess to negotiate with the water in order to configure an identity that remains shrouded in mystery. Ona’s mysterious link with Ogbuide is a matter of concern for many people of Oguta, and her behavior is also considered insane. However, Ona’s insanity, derived from the mysterious association with the watery world of Ogbuide, gives her the agency to motivate the young women of her clan to protest against the oppressive patriarchal system. Ona’s ecofeminist worldview is therefore largely determined by her water-based existence.

A Deconstructive Reading of Ona’s Feminism Despite the fact that Ona assumes a feminist standpoint, inspiring the women of Oguta to worship the Lake Goddess for gaining strength to fight against the dominant ideology of patriarchy, there are some critics who locate problems in Ona’s preaching of feminist ideas. Jell-Bahlsen appreciates Nwapa’s deep engagement with the figure of Ogbuide, but this engagement has a tinge of criticism. Nwapa’s use of the figure of a ‘divine woman’ is problematic from the perspective of the ideals of womanhood, bearing “serious flaws that contradict customary ideals and norms” (JellBahlsen “The Concept of Mammywater in Flora Nwapa’s Novels” 32). The Lake Goddess, being elusive, and “as slippery as the liquid element, can acquire any shape which is the outcome of a negotiation between the goddess and “her worshipper” (Jell-Bahlsen “The Concept of Mammywater in Flora Nwapa’s Novels”, 32-33). In Ona’s case, we see how she imagines the presence of fishes in the lake which have human faces. Thus, the water goddess combines with the individual selves of the female worshippers to form a sort of feminist identity that is context-specific and oriented individually. This phenomenon is appropriate to the Igbo belief system because the spiritual psychology of the Igbos is based on the idea of individual gods/goddesses, which aptly resonates in the popular Igbo proverb, “when one thing stands another stands by its side” (Nwankwo, 48). Though there are community gods/goddesses in Igbo culture, these deities often merge with the individual selves of the Igbos to form hybrid identities. Chinua Achebe describes the presence of individual gods, or chi, in Igbo social psychology, mentioning the significance of the idea of the ‘double’

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in the Igbo world. Achebe asserts that an Igbo man’s life is governed by the principle of a self, and that has its counterpart in the realm of spirits (Achebe, qtd. in Okpala, 560). Such a construction of self enables an Igbo individual to spiritually transact with the chi, leading to the configuring of a negotiated self that can deal with the problem of lived experience. Ona’s spiritual transaction with Ogbuide facilitates the formation of a hybrid self, enabling her to become independent and withdraw from the domestic realm of servitude and sacrifice. Though Ona attains individual freedom, she does not qualify as a leader of the women of Oguta, because her practice of preaching feminist ideas is ineffective in a social system that instills the philosophy of transacting with chi in Igbo women. In an attempt to inspire the women of her clan to become like her, Ona is unconsciously dismissing the creation of a feminist self that is configured through a process of spiritual transaction with personal deities. In the novel, women such as Mgbeke, Ekecha, and the anonymous fish seller, appreciate Ona’s spiritual connection with Ogbuide, but they do not claim to become like Ona. Nwapa, as per my analysis, is sensitive to the communal customs and religious beliefs, and therefore, she probably does not endorse the emergence of a singular model of feminism. Every woman of the Oguta community must communicate with their own personal goddesses and seek to develop a model of feminism based on individual context.

Conclusion Nwapa’s The Lake Goddess, apart from dealing with ecofeminist issues, is contextually situated in the colonial occupation of Nigeria. In fact, the novel can also be read from the point of view of the conflict between Christianity and the Igbo deities. Some critics have even argued that Nwapa’s perspective on this conflict is complicated. Jell-Bahlsen, in her essay, “Flora Nwapa and Oguta's Lake Goddess: Artistic Liberty and Ethnography” echoes the perspectives of those critics who have questioned Nwapa’s representation of the Lake Goddess, and observes that she has tactfully diminished the significance of the water goddess by emphasizing women’s personal success and demonizing the water goddess (Jell-Bahlsen, 256). Through this sort of representation, Nwapa has supported the “efforts of missionaries to subvert indigenous admiration for the divine woman (who is) considered to be an agency of fulfilling the utmost desire of Igbo women” (Jell-Bahlsen, 256). This view of personal success, or female empowerment, Jell-Bahlsen asserts, is linked to financial prosperity, which is not necessarily an act of endorsing Western education. While responding to the claims of those critics who have attempted to link Nwapa with the colonizer’s view

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of the Lake Goddess, Jell-Bahlsen opines that Nwapa did not champion Westernization at the cost of sacrificing the sacred beliefs and customs of Igbos (Jell-Bahlsen, 256). In another article, Jell-Bahlsen addresses this issue once again and, supports Nwapa’s representation of the water goddess by asking a series of questions. These questions, which are related to the choices made by the female worshippers about the water goddess, reflect Nwapa’s attempt to redefine the position of Igbo women. Why can’t Igbo women think of sacrificing the joys of motherhood to achieve success and wealth?, and why can’t women without children remain happy as ‘mothers?’ Jell-Bahlsen, 36). These questions are crucial to the framework of Igbo ecofeminist/feminist philosophy. Ona chooses to leave the domestic realm consisting of her husband and children to acquire an ecofeminist identity. This choice is a marker of her success, and such choices are to be made by the Igbo women to ensure their emancipation. In fact, women, as Nwapa tries to emphasize, have to trace the trajectory of their independence by making conscious choices. The character of Ona is, therefore, reflective of personal success, personal empowerment, and personal freedom. Instead of developing a broad ecofeminist/feminist framework of thought, Nwapa seeks to advocate the idea of personal models of ecofeminist/feminist thought.

Works Cited Adams, Carol J. “Introduction” Ecofeminism and the Sacred. edited by Carol J. Adams, The Continuum Publishing Company, 1993, pp. 1-12. Chukwuma, Helen. “In the End is the Beginning.” The Lake Goddess. by Flora Nwapa, Tana Press Ltd., 2020, pp. 5-7. Jell-Bahlsen, Sabine. “Flora Nwapa and Oguta's Lake Goddess: Artistic Liberty and Ethnography” Dialectical Anthropology, vol. 31, no. 1/3, 2007, pp. 253-262. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29790781. —. “The Concept of Mammywater in Flora Nwapa’s Novels” Research in African Literatures, vol. 26, no. 2, 1995, pp. 30-41. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3820269. Nwankwo, Chimalum. “The Igbo Word in Flora Nwapa’s Craft” Research in African Literatures, vol. 26, no. 2, 1995, pp. 42-52. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3820270. Nwapa, Flora. The Lake Goddess. Kindle Edition, Tana Press Ltd., 2020. Okpala, Jude Chudi. “Igbo Metaphysics in Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” Callaloo, vol. 25, no. 2, 2002, pp. 559-566. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3300586.

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Warren, Karen J. “A Feminist Philosophical Perspective on Ecofeminist Spiritualities”. Ecofeminism and the Sacred. edited by Carol J. Adams, The Continuum Publishing Company, 1993, pp. 119-132.

CONTRIBUTORS

Arnab Kumar Sinha, PhD. is Associate Professor at the Department of English and Culture Studies, The University of Burdwan. He has co-edited the books: Indian Fiction in English: Mapping the Contemporary Literary Landscape (2014) and Indian English Poetry and Drama: Changing Canons and Responses (2019). In 2019, he received funding from German Association for Postcolonial Studies (GAPS) and visited the University of Bremen, Germany to present a paper at an international conference organized by GAPS. Sinha was invited by the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS), in Shimla, to present a paper at an international seminar organized by the IIAS in 2019. His areas of interest include Indian English Literature, Diaspora Studies and African Literature. David T. Mitchell, PhD. is Professor of English in the Department of English, Columbian College of Arts and Science, The George Washington University, USA, a scholar, editor, history/film exhibition curator and filmmaker in the field of Disability Studies. He is the author of three books: Narrative Prosthesis: Discourses of Disability (University of Michigan Press, 2000), Cultural Locations of Disability (University of Chicago Press, 2005) and The Biopolitics of Disability: Neoliberalism, Ablenationalism, and Peripheral Embodiment (University of Michigan Press, 2015). As an editor, he has published four edited scholarly collections: The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability (University of Michigan Press, 1997), The Encyclopedia of Disability (Volume 5): A History of Disability in Primary Sources, The Matter of Disability: Materiality, Biopolitics, Crip Affect (University of Michigan Press, 2018) and Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury Press, 2020). As an exhibition curator, he co-created The Chicago Disability History Exhibit (Vietnam Veterans Memorial Museum, 2006) and also assembled the program for The Screening Disability Film Festival (Chicago, 2006) as well as DisArt Independent Film Festival (Grand Rapids, MI, 2015). As a filmmaker, he has produced four award-winning films of disability arts and culture: Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back (1995), A World Without Bodies (2002), Self-Preservation: Art of Riva Lehrer (1995) and Disability Takes on the Arts (1996). He is currently working on a new book and feature-length documentary film on German psychiatric killings during World War II as the origins of assembly line death-making in the Holocaust.

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Debojyoti Dan has been working in Naba Ballygunge Mahavidyalaya since 2009. He has special interests in Modern and Postmodern Literature and Theory. He was the Head of the Department in English in Naba Ballygunge Mahavidyalaya, from June 2015 to January 2017. He learned French initially from the Rama Krishna Mission, and then pursued further diplomas in French from Alliance Française du Bengal. He has several publications to his credit, including a book of poems Enigma of Red Shadows. He was awarded the first prize in the World French Poetry Competition, known as ‘Le Printemps des Poètes’. He worked in Alliance Française du Bengal as a cultural co-ordinator in the Cine Club from 2007-2009. Dipanwita Pal, PhD. is an Assistant Professor in English at Galsi Mahavidyalaya, West Bengal, India. She is interested in Ecocriticism, Indigenous Studies and Gender Studies. She has a number of papers published in various reputed national, as well as international, journals. She has edited the conference proceedings for the 26th International RAIS Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities, held in New York City, and co-edited the Congress Book for 1st International Women Studies Congress, held in Ankara, Turkey. Esperanza González Moreno currently works at Texas Tech University and is pursuing a PhD. in English Literature at the University of Granada. Her main areas of interest include Posthumanism, Disability Studies and Vulnerability Studies. She is now currently interested in the resistance to biopower through the difference and dependency inherent in the mortal body. Jai Singh, PhD. Is Associate Professor, Department of English Literature, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He had a research stay at Central European University funded by Balassi Institute Hungarian Scholarship Board Office and the UGC India, and a research stay at University of Turku, Finland, funded by UGC India and CIMO Finland. He was also awarded an AISU-Italy Fellowship in the field of Digital Humanities. He works in the fields of Indology, Orientalism, Gender Studies, Digital Humanities, and Postmodernism. He has books published by Cambridge Scholars’ Publishing and Routledge, and work in SCOPUS listed journals of international repute. He is also a member of the Research Panel at Yonphula Centenary College, Royal University of Bhutan. Jaouad Achtitah is a doctoral candidate in the field of Environmental Psychology in the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences - Mohammed First University – Oujda -Morocco. He earned his MA in Green Cultural

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Studies from the same faculty. He is a teacher of English employed by the Moroccan Ministry of Education. He is also a writer, translator (EnglishArabic), and Chair of the Association of Cultural Ecology and Communication (ACEC) in Morocco. Julia Margarete Puaschunder, PhD. studied Philosophy/Psychology (MPhil), University of Vienna, 2003, Business (MBA), Vienna University of Economics and Business, 2007, Public Administration (MPA), Maxwell School, 2008, Social and Economic Sciences (Doctorate), Vienna University of Economics and Business, 2006, Natural Sciences (Doctorate), University of Vienna, 2010, and Law and Economics (qualification pending). Throughout her academic career, she has been invited to present her research at Harvard University, Princeton University, Columbia University, Brown University, Oxford University and Cambridge University, as well as The Academic Council in the United Nations System. She has published with Harvard University, Columbia University, and Oxford University, among other distinct journals and international publishing houses (e.g., Emerald, Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge, Springer International & Nature, Vernon, Wiley). Nicholas Birns, PhD. teaches at New York University. His co-edited Companion to Anthony Trollope is recently published by McFarland, and he is the author of many books and articles, including an analysis of Brian Castro’s verse fiction, published in the Antipodes. He is currently co-editing The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel. Prasun Banerjee, PhD. is a Senior Assistant Professor at Kabi Joydeb Mahavidyalaya, Birbhum, West Bengal, India. He has more than fifteen years of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching experience in colleges and universities. He has written his Doctoral dissertation on Postmodern Metafiction. He has several publications in national and international journals, and has delivered invited talks in seminars in colleges. He co-edits an international peer-reviewed journal, Polyphony, which is listed by the UGC as a referred journal. His areas of interest are Postmodernism, Narrative Studies, Metafiction, Post-fifties British & American Literature, Phonetics and Linguistics, Comparative Literature, and Translation Studies. He is a Research Supervisor at Magadh University, Bodhgaya, Bihar. Rossella Marzullo holds a PhD. in Civil Law, PhD, in Humanistic Studies and Education, and is a Senior Researcher, qualified as Associate Professor of General and Social Pedagogy at Mediterranea University of Reggio, Calabria. She has been published in Italy and abroad on the issues of the

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educational rehabilitation of minors, the female condition, femicide, and criminal organizations. She has been Speaker and Chair in sessions at international and national conferences on her main line of research. She was a judge at the Juvenile Court of Catanzaro (Italy) and a Consultant of Authority for Children and Adolescents in Calabria Region. She is currently Scientific Director of the II level Master’s on the rehabilitation of minors from deprived environments, and mafia families, at Mediterranean University of Reggio, Calabria. Sharon L. Snyder is an author, artist, activist and filmmaker. Her scholarly books include Narrative Prosthesis: Discourses of Disability (University of Michigan Press, 2000), Cultural Locations of Disability (University of Chicago Press, 2005), and The Biopolitics of Disability: Neoliberalism, Ablenationalism, and Peripheral Embodiment (University of Michigan Press, 2015). As an editor, she published The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability (University of Michigan Press, 1997), The Encyclopedia of Disability (Volume 5): A History of Disability in Primary Sources), The Matter of Disability: Materiality, Biopolitics, Crip Affect (University of Michigan Press, 2018) and Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury Press, 2020). She is the author of more than 35 journal articles and chapters. She has curated a museum exhibit on disability history at the National Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Museum, organized disability film and arts programming for festivals and conferences, and created four award-winning documentary films: Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back (1995), A World Without Bodies (2002), Self-Preservation: Art of Riva Lehrer (1995), and Disability Takes on the Arts (1996). Along with her partner, David T. Mitchell, she has authored more than 65 essays and chapters. Susanta Kumar Bardhan, PhD. is Associate Professor of English, Suri Vidyasagar College, Birbhum. Dr Bardhan completed a RELO Sponsored Certificate Course in TEYL from the Oregon University, USA. He is associated with EFLU as a Member of its External Faculty. His areas of interest are Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, ELT, Stylistics and Modern British, Indian English Literature and Cultural Studies. Dr. Bardhan has published more than 80 research papers in the fields of Linguistics, English Language Teaching, Literature, and Culture, in leading national and international journals and books, and has presented more than 40 research papers in several national and international seminars and conferences. He did his post-PhD. research during 2010-2013 as an Associate at UGC Inter University Centre for Higher Research in Humanities, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Dr. Bardhan is the Editor-in-Chief of the journals

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Polyphony and The Contour. He has authored five books and edited a further five. Tanbir Shahnawaz is presently working as Assistant Professor in Department of English at Rishi Bankim Chandra College (affiliated to West Bengal State University), West Bengal, India. Apart from teaching, at present he is pursuing a PhD from Raiganj University, West Bengal and working on postcolonial and diaspora literature. His research area is travel literature and Indian culture. He has published many research papers in peer-reviewed and UGC CARE journals, has published and edited books with national and international publishers, and participated in many national and international seminars, workshops and literary conferences. He is interested in studying and analyzing Indian and African Literature and critical concepts.