BARBARA T. GATES

A Root of EcofeminismEcofeminisme

Sitting on my deck translating Franchise d'Eaubonne, one of theearly exponents of ecofeminism, with the help of a French exchangestudent, Roxanne, I felt I had found the appropriate outdoor spacefor the enterprise.1 The phone rang. It was Michiyo, a young Japa-nese scholar whom I once taught, calling from Tokyo. "Should I," sheasked, "translate Terry Tempest Williams, or is it better to rewritemy dissertation on modern drama for publication? I think Williamsis an ecofeminist." I advised the former; everything was pointing toan international movement whose moment had come. And Roxanneand I had set out to recapture a moment of its past.

If ecofeminism as a movement has indeed come into its own inthe United States in the 1990s, ecofeminist historians have mostoften given credit for its intellectual and theoretical spadework toa Frenchwoman writing in the early 1970s. Generally they cite aword or two about the books of Franchise d'Eaubonne, and then goon—as they should—with the agendas of their own work.2 Butnow, some twenty years after the publication of d'Eaubonne's firstbook on ecofeminisme, time seems overdue to pause for a momentand more closely review d'Eaubonne's contribution to ecofeministthought in an effort to trace one of the central European roots of agrowing world movement. I would nevertheless like to reemphasizethe often-repeated fact that ecofeminism involves activism as well asideology and that both of these aspects of ecofeminism arose simul-taneously worldwide. As d'Eaubonne was publishing her books,

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women in the United States were protesting the atrocities at LoveCanal and analyzing the shock waves of the nuclear leak at ThreeMile Island, and still others, in Northern India, were initiating theChipko movement, hugging trees to save them from felling.

This essay is not, then, a "culturist" attempt to privilege Europeanwritten discourse or theory over political activism or other legiti-mate manifestations of ecofeminism. Rather it aims to give more ac-cess to d'Eaubonne's pioneering work by offering a summary, a com-mentary, and a brief repositioning of d'Eaubonne's work in thecontext of 1990s ecofeminism. D'Eaubonne's books are hard to findand her work all but inaccessible to those who do not read French.My hope is to provide something more wide-ranging than the brief,translated selection from d'Eaubonne frequently quoted from NewFrench Feminisms: An Anthology, but not to fulfill a need for a full-fledged translation. This essay may also serve to remind those of uswho use English readily just how anglicized ecofeminist writing hasbecome; English is the current lingua franca of ecofeminism. Finally, Ihope the essay will be a small contribution to the enterprise thatPatrick Murphy called for in the special Ecological Feminism issueof Hypatia: the need to "refine our conception of ecofeminism's rela-tionship to literature" (154). After all, writing is the medium throughwhich many of us continue to learn about the cultural complexitiesof ecofeminism.

What d'Eaubonne's writing was suggesting in the Europe of the1970s was what others, like Rosemary Radford Ruether in NewWoman/New Earth (1975), were also recognizing as a new way of see-ing old problems: the linking of the devaluation of women and theearth. "Practically everybody," d'Eaubonne claimed, "knows that to-day the two most immediate threats to survival are overpopulationand the destruction of our resources; fewer recognize the completeresponsibility of the male System, in so far as it is male (and not capi-talist or socialist) in these two dangers; but even fewer still have dis-covered that each of the two threats is the logical outcome of one ofthe two parallel discoveries which gave men their power over fiftycenturies ago: their ability to plant the seed in the earth as in women,and their participation in the act of reproduction."3 This excerpt, theone most quoted from d'Eaubonne, directly joins women and theenvironment, in this case through reproduction. D'Eaubonne, as allacknowledge, also coined the word ecofeminisme.

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In the 1970s, d'Eaubonne wrote two books that dealt with aspectsof ecofeminisme. The first, Le Feminisme ou la mort (1974), set out tooffer a background and explanation for her newly coined word.D'Eaubonne begins her book and prepares the stage for her theoriz-ing by summarizing the central European political movements re-lated to ecofeminism. The first, the Front Reformiste, developed anecological component in 1973, basing this in part on ShulamithFirestone's allusions to the ecological context of U.S. feminism men-tioned briefly in The Dialectic of Sex (1970). The Front soon re-nounced its ecological manifesto, however, and concentrated on itsoriginal interests—abortion, divorce rights, and equal opportunity.Some of its members then split off to found a second group andsponsored the Ecologie-Feminism Centre. Work at the center led tothe movement I'ecologie-feminisme. What d'Eaubonne set out to dowas to refine and redefine this movement, hence ecofeminisme.

Le Feminisme ou la mort offers a capsulized view of many of theissues later discussed and developed in greater detail in EcologieFeminisme: revolution ou mutation? (1978). Women, the earlier booksuggests, have been reduced to the status of a minority by a male-dominated society, although their importance in terms of numbers,and even more significantly in terms of reproduction, should havepermitted them a dominant role in society. Nevertheless, womenhave not even been allowed to control births without hindrancefrom men, in particular male theologians and legislators. Through-out most of recorded time, men have consistently desired powerover women's reproductive functions. Even male scholars have col-luded in this. They have, for example, paid little attention to the con-juring rites ancient women evolved to stop conception and birth buthave overemphasized ancient fertility rites. Now it is imperative tostop this fallacious thinking. Overpopulation is ruining both hu-manity and the earth, for the earth is treated with the same disre-gard as are women. Urbanized, technological society, which is male-driven, has reduced the earth's fertility while overbreeding, alsomale-driven, has increased the population. Women must act to savethemselves and the earth simultaneously. The two needs are inti-mately linked.

D'Eaubonne describes that linkage in terms of both the past andthe present. In the past, women gathered from and tilled the earth;they were the world's gardeners. Unlike many contemporary, non-

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organic agriculturalists, they used methods that were ecologicallysound. D'Eaubonne suggests that this bond between women andearth remains and frequently manifests itself in the present, as whenwomen have taken the lead in protests against nuclear power. Yetsuch women do not demand personal power when they protest.They are concerned with others: other people, other women, otherspecies, the planet itself. Their work, their protests also cross genderlines in ways that men's work, men's protests usually do not. LikeCarol Gilligan in In A Different Voice (1982), d'Eaubonne believes thatwomen have historically been wedded to other people and naturethrough a social imperative requiring caring and consideration andthat this acculturation in caretaking persists. Give ecofeminists whatthey are asking for, says d'Eaubonne, and "human beings wouldfinally be regarded as persons and not first and foremost as males orfemales. And our planet, close to women, would become verdantagain for everyone" (251).

These thoughts form the backbone of d'Eaubonne's arguments inboth of the texts I have mentioned, although in Ecologie Feminismethey are more carefully spelled out. The book's subtitle, revolution oumutation?, suggests d'Eaubonne's deepening concern by the later1970s. Mutation—alteration through time—seems insufficient to ef-fect what needs to be done. The pressing problems raised by inatten-tion to women's and the earth's well-being demand a revolution inWestern thought. According to d'Eaubonne, "Since 1974, that iswhen I started to write [this book], the events that have followed oneanother in the field of ecological struggle—as well as women'sstruggle—have confirmed—more than I thought—the emergencyof the double problem" (11). She goes on:

I am far from writing something trendy in juxtaposing thesetwo questions, two problems, two struggles. . . . I am also farfrom putting together, in an uncertain way, two myths—thatof the eternal woman and of the inexhaustible Earth, or aim-ing at a mere romantic idealism, or at an unrealizable Utopia,or demobilization of violence. It is important to establish howdeeply revolutionary the link [between feminism and ecology]can be, and I mean revolutionary in the word's most authenticsense. (13)

What d'Eaubonne questions here is the failure of nineteenth- andearly-twentieth-century political movements, like socialism, to truly

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alter the state of things. "The aim," she states about the necessity foran ecofeminist revolution, "is not that of 'building a better and afairer society.' It is that of living, of allowing history to continue,rather than our disappearing like some of the ante-diluvian animalsdid, or like certain species of birds, whose spermatozoic capacitywent on decreasing because of overpopulation" (14). Thus, extinc-tion of people and planet is at stake, and only a revolution inthought and action can prevent this.

D'Eaubonne does not follow a Marxist line in her arguing. Pollu-tion is attributable not only to capitalism but to communism as well.To her mind, the governments of both the United States and the So-viet Union have been motivated by profit and have polluted and de-stroyed to implement this motivation. The Russians must buy wheatfrom the Americans because they can no longer produce enough ontheir land to sustain their population. According to d'Eaubonne, thisis a perfect example of the intimate link between reproduction of hu-mans and the destruction of the earth. Moreover, "classic" Marxistsrefuse to grant women the status of a social class. Yet because ofthe ways in which Western (including Russian) cultures function,women must be considered as a class in order to redress the world'scurrent condition.

D'Eaubonne believes that Russia and the United States have stillmore in common, particularly with respect to researching and im-plementing birth control. If in the Soviet Union the government ap-proved of abortion, little research was done on contraception. If inthe United States women are proud of their freedom in comparisonwith Europeans, they should recall that they could have had a con-traceptive pill more than a century ago. Research in this area wasdone in the nineteenth century, but then foregone. Native Americanswere also known for their ability to control birth, but white malesseem not to have been interested in this.

Yet, d'Eaubonne recalls, the American government has tried tostop reproduction in developing countries. "How," she wonders,"can they talk about the dangers of overpopulation when the Ameri-can people are known for consuming 45 percent of the natural re-sources of the planet?" (45).

Such contradictions between stated attitude and policy make upthe bulk of d'Eaubonne's examples in the first part of Ecologie Femi-nisme, which finds the profit motive inherent in the policy of mostgovernments. "The problem," d'Eaubonne posits, "is that govern-

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ments take into account the economy but nothing more. They thinkthat if it is flourishing, people will have access to happiness. Why,"she queries, "don't they care about the destruction of nature, the in-equality of rights?" (72). Her conclusion is predictable: such thingscan only be "realized by ecological and feminist parties whichwould allow society to get into the 'post-industrial era'" (83).

The second part of Ecologie Feminisme retraces the history of whywe have not moved into this kind of post-industrial era. Here d'Eau-bonne briefly reviews the history of domination of women and planetfrom Paleolithic times to the 1960s. In rediscovering ecologicallysound practices like ecobuage—the ancient burning of shrubs andreturning their ashes to the soil—d'Eaubonne wonders at the dis-carding of such practices in favor of fertilization with chemicals. Inreexamining the work of nineteenth-century Swiss anthropologistJohann Jakob Bachofen on matriarchy, she queries the rush by hiscontemporaries to discredit his theories by suggesting that matri-archy was merely a legend. Her final expression of disgust is re-served for what she calls "unlimitism" {"i'illimitisme," 172), which,she considers, typifies male-dominated political systems and institu-tions. Unlimitism sets no bounds to patriarchal power—power overother countries and other people. It will, d'Eaubonne believes, con-tinue unchecked until the planet runs out of food or a new move-ment like ecofeminism effects a revolutionary change in mentalitiesor attitudes.

This briefly summarizes d'Eaubonne's message in two of the firstbook-length considerations of the necessity for ecofeminism. How,then, do they square with directions the movement has taken in the1990s? In some ways they still seem fully central. Many of the prob-lems d'Eaubonne saw and foresaw remain—particularly the depthof resistance of patriarchal political and cultural structures tochange with regard to women's rights and to the environment. Andd'Eaubonne's initial diagnosis of the "double problem" is of coursethe reason she is so often cited as a founder of ecofeminism. Yet inother ways d'Eaubonne's work seems passe. D'Eaubonne was writ-ing not long after the student riots and political ferment of the 1960s.Her concerns and her language, especially the desire for revolution,are in part related to the discourse of that time. So, too, is her preoc-cupation with the population explosion and reproductive rights. Re-call the work of Barry Commoner, and the 1970s feminist focus onthe right to abortion. Contemporary ecofeminists, for all their con-

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cern with reproductive choice, have focused far more on other is-sues: establishing a theoretical base for ecofeminism, healing thebreach between theory and practice, looking more deeply at com-plex, local issues in all parts of the world rather than attempting tosolve global issues through reductivist overviews or even earthsummits.

In addition, the global nature of 1990s ecofeminism has madesome of d'Eaubonne's 1970s ideas seem culturally confined. Her in-sistence, for example, on the nonorganic nature of contemporaryagriculture was not based upon a consideration of Third Worldmeans of production and consumption nor on a consideration of theimportance of Third World peoples to the success of First Worldconsumerism. Reminding us that "development" has been a patriar-chal project, Vandana Shiva has subsequently shown how womenhave suffered as a result of what she calls "maldevelopment." Ifd'Eaubonne saw women's work with the soil historically, as havingbeen replaced by contemporary agriculture, Shiva shows how in theThird World it continues to be supplanted by systems that both splitthe family and impoverish the land. In Shiva's words: "The ideologyof development is in large part based on a vision of bringing allnatural resources into the market economy for commodity produc-tion. When these resources are already being used by nature tomaintain her production of renewable resources and by women forsustenance and livelihood, the diversion of resources to the marketeconomy generates ecological instability and creates new forms ofpoverty for women."4

Moreover, contemporary ecofeminism has itself had to face sev-eral significant challenges that have evolved since d'Eaubonne'stexts were written. The first has been a challenge to ecofeminist phi-losophy. Primarily through misconceptions of its intent, critics ofecofeminism have insisted that it is essentialist, that it purports thatwomen have a biological closeness to nature that men do not have.Most ecofeminists do not believe this; on the contrary, inherent inecofeminism is a belief in the interconnectedness of all living things.Since all life is nature, neither gender of human beings can be closerthan the other to "nature." A second challenge to ecofeminism hascome through dissension in the ranks of the various components ofthe contemporary environmental movement. Deep ecologists, pro-ponents of altering the anthropocentric view of nature who are hop-ing to alter human thinking to become more biocentric, have ques-

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tioned the feminist bias in ecofeminism; ecofeminists have in turnfaulted deep ecologists for retaining androcentrism while claimingto have discarded anthropocentrism. And as I indicated at the out-set, women involved in the environmental movement have them-selves been at odds when defining the parameters of the movement.Janet Biehl, for example, a Bookchinite social ecologist, has criticizedecofeminism for being so diverse as to have no center.

Although I strongly disagree with Biehl, I must say that when Ibegan teaching ecofeminist literature, my students for weeks questedfor a firm definition of the word ecofeminism. Then they built theirown definitions, eclectically taken from their own perceptions ofreadings in the subject. Soon they came to argue vehemently withone another over literary texts: whether or not any given text couldbe called ecofeminist. They then began to form a workable within-the-class definition of the concept. Was only a poem like JaniceMirikitani's "Love Canal"—about the dying of the land in upstateNew York and the simultaneous dying of a woman poisoned by herproximity to Love Canal—to be considered ecofeminist? Or couldan older piece, like Sarah Orne Jewett's "A White Heron," be eco-feminist, too? After all, it was about women and nature and speciespreservation, and against hunting and killing beautiful specimens ofnonhuman nature in the name of science.

Nevertheless, like my students by the end of their course, ecofemi-nists have come to share a number of beliefs, and some of them dohark back to d'Eaubonne. Janis Birkeland has put forth a kind ofcredo of factors that she thinks ecofeminists have in common andthat I believe help circumscribe a contemporary ecofeminist ideol-ogy. They include the necessity for social transformation by movingbeyond power politics, and an equivalent necessity for less "man-agement" of the land—both central ideas in d'Eaubonne's work.They also include an appreciation of the intrinsic value of every-thing in nature—a biocentric rather than an anthropocentric view-point; an end to dualisms like male/female, thought/action, andspiritual/natural; and a trust in process, not just product (20). Fu-ture ecofeminist literature will, I believe, be most deeply concernedwith these issues. As I write these words, I must admit to a strongpull to join ranks with anyone working to effect such changes. Norcan I help recalling d'Eaubonne, with her earnestness: "I am far fromwriting something trendy in juxtaposing these two questions. . . . Iam also far from putting together, in an uncertain way, . . . a mere

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romantic idealism, or . . . an unrealizable Utopia" (Le Feminisme ou lamort, 13). Now, more than twenty years after d'Eaubonne publishedher first book on ecofeminisme, her desires have found company inecofeminists around the globe who are working diligently to effectchanges in attitudes toward women and nature that may in turn pro-mote the survival of all people, other living creatures, and the earthitself.

N O T E S

1. With special thanks to Roxanne Petit-Rasselle for a semester's hardwork with unfamiliar texts.

2. See, for example, Carolyn Merchant, "Ecofeminism and EcofeministTheory," in Diamond and Orenstein, 100, or Carol J. Adams, "Ecofeminismand the Eating of Animals," in the Ecological Feminism issue of Hypatia,126, in which d'Eaubonne comes to us via a Boston classroom, or MariaMies and Vandana Shiva, in the introduction to their Ecofeminism, 13.

3. Quoted in New French Feminisms: An Anthology, ed. Marks andCourtivron, trans. Schmitz, 66. The remainder of the translations in my textare courtesy Roxanne Petit-Rasselle and are paginated according to the origi-nal French texts.

4. Shiva's work here, in "Development as a New Project of WesternPatriarchy," in Diamond and Orenstein, 196-97, and in her newer bookwith Maria Mies, Ecofeminism, has completely revisioned development froman ecofeminist perspective. She and Mies both recapitulate and extendd'Eaubonne's ideas about population in their informative essay "People andPopulation," chapter 19 of their joint book.

R E F E R E N C E S

Adams, Carol J. "Ecofeminism and the Eating of Animals." Hypatia 6, no. 1(1991): 125-45.

Biehl, Janet. Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics. Boston: South End Press, 1991.Birkeland, Janis. "Ecofeminism: Linking Theory and Practice." In Ecofemi-

nism: Women, Animals, Nature, edited by Gaard, 13-59.Commoner, Barry. The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology. New

York: Knopf, 1971.d'Eaubonne, Franchise. Ecologie Feminisme: revolution ou mutation? Paris: Les

Editions A.T.P., 1978.. Le Feminisme ou la mort. Paris: Femmes en Mouvement, 1974.

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Diamond, Irene, and Gloria Feman Orenstein, eds. Reweaving the World: TheEmergence of Ecofeminism. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990.

Firestone, Shulamith. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution.New York: Morrow, 1970.

Gaard, Greta, ed. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Philadelphia: TempleUniversity Press, 1993.

Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Develop-ment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Marks, Elaine, and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds. New French Feminisms: AnAnthology. Translated by Betty Schmitz. Amherst: University of Massa-chusetts Press, 1980.

Merchant, Carolyn. "Ecofeminism and Ecofeminist Theory." In Reweavingthe World, edited by Diamond and Orenstein, 100-105.

Mies, Maria, and Vandana Shiva. Ecofeminism. London: Zed Books, 1993.Murphy, Patrick. "Ground, Pivot, Motion: Ecofeminist Theory, Dialogics,

and Literary Practice." Hypatia 6, no. 1 (spring 1991): 146-61.Ruether, Rosemary Radford. New Woman/New Earth: Sexist Ideologies and

Human Liberation. New York: Seabury, 1975.Shiva, Vandana. "Development as New Project of Western Patriarchy." In

Reweaving the World, edited by Diamond and Orenstein, 189-200.