Feminist Ecological Pacifism and Care in the Anthropocene

What is it about?

In a world plagued by melting ice caps, polluted waterways, deforestation, and extensive species loss, environmental alterations carry great potential for war, violent conflicts, and new forms of violence. Ecofeminism and feminist pacifism are political movements that denounces the degradation and exploitation of women, nature, animals, Indigenous populations, and other marginalised social groups. Although ecofeminists and pacifists have developed sophisticated views on violence, the Anthropocene compels us to ask the question: How can we think about violence when the older conceptions of violence do not capture all of its complex and inter-relational features? Whereas ecofeminism emphasises the continuity between humans and nonhumans, feminist new materialist thinking takes a step further by reflecting the complex entanglements among humans, nonhumans, things, and materials. Feminist new materialism moves away from anthropocentrism and offers an alternative trajectory for thinking about the environment and pacifism in light of environmental, slow, and epistemic violence. It suggests acts of earthly and mundane care that require active involvement in maintaining and improving the relational practices where the environment/nature is no longer an object target of, for example, pacifist action outside humans, but a partner in planetary co-existence.

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