Undomesticated
Ground : Recasting Nature As Feminist Space by
Stacy Alaimo
From "Mother Earth" to "Mother
Nature," women have for centuries been associated with nature.
Feminists, troubled by the way in which such representations show women
controlled by powerful natural forces and confined to domestic space,
have sought to distance themselves from nature. In Undomesticated
Ground, Stacy Alaimo issues a bold call to reclaim nature as feminist
space. Her analysis of a remarkable range of feminist writings--as well
as of popular journalism, visual arts, television, and film--powerfully
demonstrates that nature has been and continues to be an essential
concept for feminist theory and practice.
Alaimo urges feminist theorists to rethink the concept
of nature by probing the vastly different meanings that it carries. She
discusses its significance for Americans engaged in social and political
struggles from, for example, the "Indian Wars" of the early
nineteenth century, to the birth control movement in the 1920s, to
contemporary battles against racism and heterosexism. Reading works by
Catherine Sedgwick, Mary Austin, Emma Goldman, Nella Larson, Donna
Haraway, Toni Morrison, and others, Alaimo finds that some of these
writers strategically invoke nature for feminist purposes while others
cast nature as a postmodern agent of resistance in the service of both
environmentalism and the women's movement.
By examining the importance of nature within literary
and political texts, this book greatly expands the parameters of the
nature writing genre and establishes nature as a crucial site for the
cultural work of feminism.
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