The Deconstruction and Connection of Nature-Women: The Perspective of Carolyn Merchant's Eco-feminism

• Main Authors: Huang,Yi-Ling, 黃懿翎
• Other Authors: Lin,Yih-Ren
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/30118653044371616912

碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 生態學系 === 100 === This study researches on the development and concepts of ecofeminism. The research and reflection of Carolyn Merchant’s ecofeminism are mainly based particarlary on the work of Carolyn Merchant’s work The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. Ecofeminism can be called “feminist ecology” as well, and was coined by Françoise d'Eaubonne（1920-2005）in 1974, who stated that environmental exploitation is similar to the ill-treatment of women and other minorities. Merchant is specialized in the American environmental history, cultural history, environmental philosophy, and ethics, etc. The Death of Nature argues that the connection of women and nature is both the result of social construction. Hence, the environmental exploitation and gender oppression share the same roots. On the one hand, Merchant discusses how the frameworks of the Francis Bacon-led classical science has accepted and reinforced the women-nature connection since Renaissance, and put both at the other end of the spectrum as opposed to the activity of men. On the other hand, by employing the method of Marxism that emphasizes the dialectic relationship between material production and ideologies, Merchant goes deeper with the perspectives of the female reproduction to illustrate how the development of capitalism has seen nature as resources to be exploited and made women subordinate to men in the process of material practice. While science sees nature as object and capitalism takes nature as mere possession to be plundered unrestrictedly, Merchant attempts to reconstruct the appropriate gender relationship with “partnership,” which is a kind of relational ethics. This research highly values Merchant’s critical analysis that highlights and deconstructs the traditional women-nature connection and her proposition of gender-neutral partnership to re-construct an egalitarian relationship in the face of today’s ecological crisis. Merchant’s contributions not only offer a whole new framework of understanding and solution to the environmental problems, but also encourage us to rethink the possibilities of women-nature relationship from more a new perspective.