D Author

Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism by Irene Diamond

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


"The Ecofeminist Movement represents the coming together of the environmental, feminist, and women's spirituality movements out of a shared concern for the well-being of the Earth and all forms of life that our Earth supports. Reweaving the World is a major resource on ecofeminism, gathering in a single volume articles, essays, and poetic prose pieces by the foremost writers, scholars, activists, artists, and spiritual teachers of this movement. Interweaving politics and philosophy, theory and activism, this provocative collection advocates a restoration of harmony in a global environment damaged by a devaluation of nature and women."
~~back cover

I wanted to read this book to learn more about the ecofeminist movement: what it was all about, what are the guiding principles, etc. I'm not sure I know any more now than I did before I read it. It's a very dense book -- actually an academic book, and the pieces are written for an audience that has already mastered the basics of the discipline. That isn't me.

I'm reminded of the time I took a graduate course on nomads from my mentor in college. The syllabus was thick, and composed entirely of that same kind of dense articles. I'd never studied nomadism before, so the nuances and references and basic ideas weren't familiar to me -- I grappled with them, and it took me hours to get the reading done. The mentor, in the meanwhile, tossed them off like so many pieces of candy. It took me a long while to figure out that of course she could gallop through them -- she was conversant with the discipline.

I'm sure some of these pieces were brilliant, but I think the brilliance escaped me. Nor do I have much of an idea about the warp and woof of ecofeminism. The most salient thing I learned is that Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home is an ecofeminist work. And it's one of my all time favorite books. Who knew? I'll have to go read it again, & compare it with the commentary in this book. Maybe then I'll finally get it!