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Feminist Ecologies in Australia Symposium:
Abstract Program
Session One (9 – 10am)
Opening Keynote Address: Associate Professor Linda Williams
Jocasta’s legacy and Ecocritique in Australia
This keynote will begin the conference with a general discussion of the Anthropocene
and proceeds to questioning the role of ecofeminism in recent issues in ecocritical
theory. It then gives an introduction to the significant contribution made by several
Australian women in defining important debates in ecophilosophy and ecofeminism,
and concludes with examples of environmental artworks by Australian women.
Linda Williams is Associate Professor of Art, Environment and Cultural Studies in the
School of Art at RMIT University where she leads the AEGIS research network. She
supervises a number of research candidates and teaches art history and theory in the
undergraduate program.
Session Two (10:20 – 11:50am): Gender, Environment and Activism
Dr Lara Stevens
Stratiographic feminisms: An ecofeminist reading of Germaine Greer’s The
Female Eunuch and White Beech: The Rainforest Years
In an attempt to understand how we, as feminists of the twenty-first century, can
relate to the legacies of our foremothers, Claire Colebrook argues that we should
approach the past and historiography using ‘stratigraphic time’ (2009). Drawing from
the work of Gilles Deleuze, Colebrook explains that ‘stratigraphic time’ breaks with
chronology and privileges a time of ‘eternal return’ in which the past can be re-
examined through the lens of the present. Connecting present and past feminisms, this
paper reads Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch again, neither in context in which
it was published in 1970, nor as an attempt to reaffirm its well-established position as
a radical and groundbreaking critique of patriarchal oppression of women. Instead, I
consider what the text ‘might enable’ by analysing it alongside Greer’s most recent
book, a memoir entitled White Beech: The Rainforest Years (2014). Collapsing the
historical gap between these two books, I make The Female Eunuch a site of ‘eternal
return’, this time, re-framed through the most recent work of materialist ecofeminists.
Dr Lara Stevens is the Hugh Williamson Postdoctoral Fellow in the Australian
Centre at the University of Melbourne where she researches ecofeminist art and
performance and the writings of Germaine Greer. Lara’s research areas include
twenty-first century anti-war theatre and performance, feminist philosophy,
performance and ecology.
Ms Maryse Helbert
Women in the Oil Zones
As for the past decades in Australia, the engine of Australian economy is mining.
Indeed, from the gold rush to hydraulic fracturing, Australian economic growth has
been heavily dependent on its capacity to dig and extract natural resources for the
world market while living the environmental and social costs to the local populations.
The contradictions of the neoliberal approach are increasing the unsustainability of
the model of economy that Australia has followed. The Western model of economic
development is based on heavy reliance on natural resources. This heavy reliance has
produced contradictions, as there is an ever increasing demand of natural resources to
fuel the futility of neoliberalism (1) while there is consequently depletion of natural
resources availability and environmental degradation induced dangerous methods of
extraction. These contradictions lead, in the short term, to processes of extraction,
production and transport that require taking even higher environmental risks. Taking
the example of hydraulic fracturing, I will show how the end of conventional oil has
led to search for unconventional oil and consequently to higher environmental risks to
produce oil with an increase use of toxic chemicals. These higher risks threaten the
population living close to these extractive sites. Women are particularly impacted by
the mining. First, mining industry ‘displays traits of masculinity and dominance’ (2).
Hence women suffer particularly from the mining driven masculinity in their
communities through discrimination, social unrest, deprivation and insecurity.
Second, while men and women can suffer equally from the health consequences of
the highly risky processes of extraction, women run the risks of transmitting toxic
chemicals through for instance their breast milk. An ecofeminist ethic analysis will
help to find alternatives to a model of development based on dangerous extractive
mining processes.
1. Salleh A. The Meta-Industrial Class and Why We Need It. Democracy &
Nature. 2000;6(1):27-36.
2. Lozeva S, Marinova D. Negociating Gender: Experience from Western
Australian Mining Industry. Journal of Economic and Social Policy. 2010;13(2):177-
209.
Maryse Helbert’s research expertise includes women’s involvement in decision-
making processes related to development, specifically in the context of resource
exploitation. Her current PhD, Women in the Oil Zones: A Feminist Analysis of Oil
Depletion, Poverty, Conflict and Environmental Degradation, exposes the sidelining
of women from decision-making processes at local, national and international levels
on issues of energy security and challenges the paradigms of corporate social
responsibility in the extractive industries. Maryse has recently worked as a
researcher with the Association of Women’s Rights in Development on the
implications of the energy crisis for women’s rights.
Ms Emma Shortis
‘In the interest of all mankind’: Women and the ‘World Park’ Antarctica
Campaign
The 1959 Antarctic Treaty mandates that Antarctica ‘shall continue forever to be used
exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of
international discord’. This, the treaty makers assert, is ‘in the interest of all
mankind’. Scholars of the Antarctic, and environmental activists, have generally made
the assumption that ‘all mankind’ can be safely assumed to mean ‘all humankind’.
Historically, however, Antarctica has been the almost exclusive preserve of
‘mankind’ only, understood and constructed in gendered terms as a ‘virgin’ space in
which to test and demonstrate a particularly masculine (and Western) form of
heroism. Women-kind, at least until very recently, has been almost entirely absent
both from the continent and our study of it. This paper will explore the role of women
activists in the successful ‘World Park’ Antarctica campaign of the 1980s. In 1991,
the ‘World Park’ campaign culminated in one of the most significant international
environmental agreements in existence today; an indefinite ban on Antarctic mining
and the comprehensive environmental protection of an entire continent. Women
activists were one of the major driving forces behind the unprecedented success of
this campaign. An understanding of the central role of women in Antarctic history and
politics, and broader feminist and gender-based approaches, are crucial to
understanding the past, present and future of the continent.
Emma Shortis is a second year PhD Candidate in the School of Historical and
Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, researching the history of the
environmental protection of the Antarctic.
Session Three (11:50 –12:50pm)
Panel Discussion: Material Feminisms in Theology, Poetry and Political science
Professor Kate Rigby
Feminist Ecologies in Australian Literature: Remembering Judith Wright
In the introduction to their important volume, Material Feminisms (2008), Stacy
Alaimo and Susan Hekman acknowledge that the revaluation of other-than-human
material agency, communicative capacity and ethical considerability associated with
the “new materialisms” is not really so new, having been previously advanced by
several critical ecofeminist theorists. Among those whose work they highlight in this
context is Australian ecofeminist philosopher, Val Plumwood. Other Australian
ecofeminist forerunners of the ‘new’ materialism might include Ariel Salleh, Susan
Hawthorne, Patsy Hallen and Freya Mathews. Interestingly, of the fourteen
contributors to this volume, three are Australian, although none of these have hitherto
associated themselves with an ecofeminist agenda (Claire Colebrook, Elizabeth Grosz
and Vicki Kirby). There is a bigger story to be told here about the strength of non-
reductive materialist thought in Australia, and its importance within Australian
feminism in particular. This is not a story that can be told in detail in this paper; but I
do want to indicate how the current ‘material turn’ is opening a space in which new
connections are being made between different strands of feminist thought, enabling
earlier ecofeminist philosophies, which had hitherto been marginalised (not least by
other feminists), to be brought in from the cold and given a new lease of life. In this
paper, I want to reconsider especially the work of Australian poet, essayist and
activist, Judith Wright, from a material feminist ecocritical perspective. Drawing on
recent research by Jennifer Coralie, I will show how Wright’s poetic practice
answered in advance to Val Plumwood’s call for a “critical Green writing project”.
Kate Rigby is a professor at Monash University and Australia’s first Professor of
Environmental Humanities. She held a dual appointment in German and Comparative
Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University and was the director from
2004-2007. She was elected to the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2006,
and held the position of Deputy Head (Education) in ECPS from 2009-2011.
Dr Anne Elvey
Feminist Ecologies in Biblical Interpretation: An Australian Example
In 1991, Australian biblical scholar Elaine Wainwright, currently Professor of
Theology and Head of School at the University of Auckland, published an article: ‘A
Metaphorical Work through Scripture in an Ecological Age’. Wainwright’s early
work was in feminist hermeneutics and she has been a forerunner and mentor to many
in this field in the local region—Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, the West Pacific,
and Asia—as well as having a significant international presence. Her current
hermeneutic approach is multi-dimensional, bringing together feminist, ecological
and postcolonial concerns. Her ecological thinking is influenced both by Australian
ecological feminist philosophers such as Val Plumwood and international voices such
as Lorraine Code, but also in conversation with the Adelaide based Earth Bible
project, which developed ecologically-, or Earth-focused, ecojustice principles for
biblical interpretation, something that has been contentious for more conservative
biblically-focused Christian scholars and readers. The Earth Bible project developed
its principles and later ecological hermeneutics of suspicion, identification and
retrieval in dialogue with feminist and indigenous thinkers. An important aspect of
Wainwright’s current work, included in her forthcoming ecologically-focused
commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, is the notion of habitat, both in the way this
intersects with the textures of a text and with the new materialism. My presentation
describes the influences on Wainwright’s work and the way this notion of habitat is
being developed there.
Dr Anne Elvey is a researcher and poet with interests in ecological criticism,
theology and ecopoetics. Since completing her doctorate in 1999, she has taught in
biblical studies, ecological theology and women’s studies at MCD University of
Divinity (formerly Melbourne College of Divinity), particularly in the Theology online
programme, Australian Catholic University and Monash University.
Respondent: Professor Robyn Eckersley
Professor Robyn Eckersley taught political science at Monash University from 1992-
2001 before joining the University of Melbourne in 2002. She has published widely in
the fields of environmental politics, political theory and international relations, with a
special focus on the ethics and governance of climate change. Her book The Green
State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty (2004) won the Melbourne Woodward
Medal in 2005 for the best research in Humanities and Social Sciences and was
runner up in the International Studies Association’s Sprout Award for 2005 for the
best book on Environmental Studies.
Session Four (2 – 3:30pm): Ecofeminist Art and Literature
An experimental collaboration between Catherine Clover and Susan Pyke, in the
company of Grace Moore
Dreamers, splitters and murderous crows: feminist ramifications in attentively
responding to the unexpected avian
This collaboration gathers around an ecological feminism which values the work of
potentiality, as outlined in Karen Barad’s agential dynamism. We approach Barad’s
posthumanist perspective through the concept of active attention, drawing upon the
empathy in both Val Plumwood’s thick descriptions of human/nonhuman encounters
and Freya Mathews’ eco-philosophy of ontopoetics. Our response to these
investigations attends to the uncertainty in human/nonhuman relations, focusing on
the uncanny moment that disturbs the human psyche. Our opening will be
experimental, and performative. This will be followed by a textual consideration of
the sonic elements found in Barbara Baynton’s short story, ‘The Dreamer’ (1902). A
poem by Henry Lawson, ‘He Mourned his Master’ (1890), will provide a counter
example. Our presentation concludes with a contemporary field recording. The
direction of our investigation is toward how dynamic intra-actions might agentially
move human attentions in ecologically restorative radically feminist ways.
This collaboration draws on practice led research that explores humans’ complicated
relationship with common noisy wild birds in city environments. Through the birds’
voices the possibility of a shared language is explored. Our work responds to the
sonic component of a bird's call in ‘The Dreamer’, and the potentiality created
through this sudden explosion of uncanny sound. The final element of our
presentation is a field recording, made onsite at the University of Melbourne, that
materially parallels elements of Baynton’s story, including the process of walking and
listening from a contemporary perspective. This is a perspective that all attendees will
find sonically familiar by way of their chosen pathways through the university
grounds today. The presentation concludes with some contextual detail about what a
field recording offers the attentive listener, employing the perspectives of
contemporary sound artists and academics Salomé Voegelin and Peter Cusack.
Our consideration of the dynamism in attention paid to unexpected sounds, be they
heard in the bush or the city, inside or outside a lecture hall, works with the anxieties
that these sounds produce. We ask, to what extent does this fear relate to the position
of mastery critiqued by Plumwood? Further, and more provocatively, we ask, Does an
atmosphere of fear that eschews mastery bring about a certain kind of hysteria,
perhaps even an ontopoetic hysteria, that might be productive in the posthuman
paradigm? We will seek to bring together our collaborative responses with the
responses of the symposium participants to better understand these questions.
Dr Susan Pyke’s (PhD, University of Melbourne) critical publications focus on the
interaction between literature and ecology, and sometimes, theology. She also
publishes poetry, fiction and associative essays. Her most recent critical work is
found in Southerly, the Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology and
Text (Writing Creates Ecology and Ecology Creates Writing). She has reviewed
poetry for Plumwood Mountain, and has a short story in the recently released
Australian Love Stories, edited by Cate Kennedy.
Born and brought up in London in the UK, Catherine Clover trained as an artist at
Wimbledon School of Art and East London University. In the 1990s a residency
through Gertrude Contemporary in Fitzroy brought her to Melbourne. Her practice
explores communication through voice and language and the interplay between
hearing and listening – the vocal, the spoken – and seeing and reading – the visual,
the written. Using collaboration and performance with field recording, digital
imaging and the spoken/written word she is currently exploring an expanded
approach to language within species and across species, with a focus on common
noisy wild urban birds through a framework of everyday experience – the ordinary
and the quotidian. Recent projects include: Reading The Birds as part of
Trainspotters INC and MoreArt Public Art Show (2014); Melbourne SoundWords
(2014) collaboration with Salomé Voegelin for Liquid Architecture, Melbourne;
Perch (2014) collaboration with Vanessa Tomlinson and Alice Hui-Sheng Chang;
Invisible Places Sounding Cities (2014), Viseu, Portugal; Mid-morning, mild, some
clouds (2014) Art in Public Places Newport Melbourne; Now Hear This (2013-4) as
part of Melbourne Now National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne. She is completing
her practice led PhD (Fine Art) at RMIT University, completion expected 2015.
Dr Monique Rooney
Oikos (home) or geo (earth): melodrama and feminized dwellings in Elizabeth
Jolley’s The Well (1986)
Melodrama is a form commonly associated with women in houses and with such
feminized emotions and ontologies as pathos, suffering and disempowerment or lack
of agency. This paper reads Elizabeth Jolley’s The Well as melodrama not so much as
it pertains to the domestic sphere (the oikos/eco of feminized relations and
economies) but rather through its significance as a transmedial and transnational form
that, emerging out of Enlightenment era theatre, endures and re-circulates ideas about
geo, Gaia and Galatea. These earthy figures/motifs animate my paper and its
argument that Jolley’s book is preoccupied with terrestrial and sub-terrestrial life
forms. Focusing in particular on the significance of Galatea (both stone statue and sea
nymph) in Rousseau’s ur-melodrama Pygmalion, my paper draws on thinkers ranging
from Jacques Derrida to Stanley Cavell and Catherine Malabou to propose that
Jolley’s Australian melodrama engages with a politics of indifference and
philosophical scepticism that offsets the domestic melodrama’s feminized pathos. In
so doing, it offers a way of being that enables a concern for the place in which we
dwell that need not necessarily be impelled by attachments to national belonging and
postcolonial settlement.
Dr Monique Rooney’s current research project situates and analyses contemporary
film and television melodrama in the context of a long, post-enlightenment intellectual
and aesthetic tradition. Her book Living Screens: Contemporary Film and Television
Melodrama (contracted for the 'Disruptions' series, edited by Paul Bowman, Rowman
and Littlefield International) is currently in development and explores melodrama as
a highly adaptable and durable mode that brings together the affective and the
philosophical.
Professor Peta Tait
Carcass Smell to Skin Crawl: Sensory Confusions and Species Boundaries
This paper considers how performances by two Australian female artists engage with
species boundaries and impact on the phenomenology of the sensory body. It explores
ideas of embodied phenomenological (Merleau-Ponty 1995), and visceral sensory
responses to performing with dead animals. These works subvert and contest the
politics of speciesism by delivering sensory repulsion, disturbance and astonishment.
Speciesism has become interchangeable with “human chauvinism” arising from
“intrahuman prejudices” (Cavalieri 2001: 70 (Singer)).
I am haunted by the sensory impact of the bloodied bones and pieces of flesh, the
remnants of dead animal carcasses in Jill Orr’s ‘The Sleep of Reason Produces
Monsters – Goya’ (2003). Orr began making art works in the Australian environment
during the 1970s and this arts practice continues in her recent photographed
performances in extreme landscapes. But it is Orr’s performance series on species
from the 1990s–2000s that remains the most politically provocative. Does abject
animal flesh continue to be objectified in performance? As Steve Baker (2000) has
lucidly analysed in relation to postmodern visual art, there is a renewed effort by
artists to make animals visible or at least evoke animal presence by working within
the species own environment. In exploring a phenomenology of animal and human
bodies in shared space, Ralph Acampora argues for “our bodily participation as
animals ourselves operating on a zoomorphic register” to challenge our species
dominant values and behaviour (2006: 30 130-1).
Australian Nikki Heywood’s contemporary performance ‘Relic #5’ visually and
aurally evoked sensory disturbance and astonishment as if to ‘shape change’ bodily
sensory patterns. Charles Scott writes that astonishment is ‘ordinary but ‘occurs as a
physical event’ (2002: 25-16). Everyone is susceptible to being astonished because
this happens bodily. In ‘Animal Life’ Merleau-Ponty (2004) expands on his ideas of
the human capacity to watch other bodies in a seamless and invisible reaching-out
beyond skin boundaries, and describes crawling movement as having virtual matter.
How can performance that makes the skin crawl reconfigure human–animal
encounters in shared environments?
Session Five (4 – 5pm)
Closing Keynote address: Professor Alison Bartlett
Thinking–Feminism–Place: Situating the 1980s Australian Women’s Peace
Camps
At the heart of this paper is my current fascination with the 1980s women’s peace
camps, and especially the Pine Gap camp that took place in the central Australian
desert in the summer of 1983. Through this event, I want to make an argument for the
space and time of feminist ideas that entangles embodiment, ecologies, and
epistemology. I will draw loosely on Lorraine Code’s suggestion of ecological
communities, but more vigorously on Elizabeth Grosz’s work on corporeality, space
and time, to renegotiate the currency of the 1980s through its politics of location and
situated knowledge. Thinking–feminism–place conjoins these terms to anticipate the
potency of place, bodies, and ideas as mutually constitutive and transformational: as
an ecology of feminist epistemology.
Alison Bartlett teaches Gender Studies at the University of Western Australia. The
author of Jamming the Machinery: contemporary Australian women’s writing (1998)
and Breastwork: Rethinking Breastfeeding (2005), she has also edited books on the
public sphere, postgraduate pedagogy, breastfeeding ethics, and most recently on
feminist material culture in Things that Liberate: an Australian feminist
wunderkammer (2013) with Margaret Henderson.