Nature

Capitalist accumulation, the subordination of women, and the degradation of nature are, throughout history, fellow-travelers. Yet, nature poses a quandary for feminist theory. On the one hand, feminism develops a critique of nature. The subordination of women has historically been justified by assumptions about the “nature” of their bodies (biological essentialism). Feminist theory has preferred treating the body, instead, as a social construction. On the other hand, in the face of climate change, feminism has a stake in granting nature some form of realness, autonomy, and agency. Feminist theory thinks about nature as integral to the reproductive economy, marginalized from social value and agency similarly to how women and bodies are also marginalized. For feminism, nature is not an exterior, dead object on which capital can relentlessly act with impunity, but rather it is inside the social relationships that make life possible. Feminism re-imagines nature as an ethical, animated principle underlying a non-instrumentalized view of relating to other organic and nonorganic beings. Recently, feminist theory has also expressed skepticism about the “Anthropocene” as a term designating our stage of ecological history as it returns to a universal, centered subjectivity that dominates nature and other people. This chapter assesses writings by Carolyn Merchant, Stacy Alaimo, Jack Halberstam, Rachel Carson, Val Plumwood, Kate Soper, Anne Lowenhaupt Tsing, Karen Barad, Hasana Sharp, Axelle Karera, Claire Colebrook, and Nancy Fraser.