Refuge and Ecofeminism: The Possibility of a Strategic Essentialism

This thesis describes the current state of ecofeminist theory as dominated by a body of disciplinary meta-commentary; ecofeminist scholars, mired in a self-scrutiny that hinges on the issue of essentialism, have pivoted their critical attention to a defense of their field. The first part of this study offers a proposal as to how ecofeminists might revive the field from its creative stasis: locating the essentialist/constructivist debate as the theoretical framework wherein essentialism attracts suspicion and ecofeminism has acquired its discrediting, I argue that ecofeminists should challenge the terms of the debate as tenuous, rather than help uphold them. The second part of this thesis reads Terry Tempest Williams's <italic>Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place</italic> as a literary mobilization of the argument presented in the first chapter. I consider <italic>Refuge</italic> a topical representation of ecofeminist politics as the narrative contains essentialist passages, whereby women are naturalized and nature is feminized, while maintaining an overall constructivist bent, identifying culture and not essence as the source of the women/nature parallel. I argue, then, that as a narrative instantiation of a collapsed essentialist/constructivist dichotomy, <italic>Refuge</italic> makes a critical exemplar for contemporary ecofeminist theory, challenging the proposed polarity between essentialism and constructivism, and furthermore incorporating essentialism as both a political and narrative strategy.

Grantor dc:publisher

Wake Forest University

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Pladus, Mallory

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/38582

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:wakespace.lib.wfu.edu:10339/38582