Diversity Reading List

Abstract

The ecofeminist discourse in India and the Global South needs to be understood somewhat differently from its western counterpart that is rooted in ideology. Emphasis needs to be laid in the everyday experiences and material contexts of struggles of daily life in the Global South. The ecofeminist discourse needs to be analyzed in the context of the growing protests against environmental destruction and the privatization of the Commons. In this paper I propose to analyse the Appiko Chaluvali that took place in the early 1980s in the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka, India. The movement emerged to protect the natural forests of the district on which the spice garden economy of the region depends. The creative resistance put up by the people of the region through Yakshaganas (traditional folk theatre of Karnataka), Bhavageethes (form of poetry set to music), posters and so on are analysed. Even at present times, the women of the region have tried to forge a sisterhood across lines of caste, class and ethnicity to come together to solve their problems and to take initiatives such as starting seed collectives, cultivating kitchen gardens and subverting the dominant betelnut economy. It is in this context that one would like to critically analyse the discourse on ecofeminism and see if there is a distinct Indian variant of ecofeminism.

Biography

Manisha Rao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Mumbai. An alumni of University of Pune, she is an expert in ecofeminist theory, gender theory, and women’s environmental movements in India. She is the author of several essays on these subjects, one influential paper being Theory and Practice of Ecofeminism in India. She was the editor of Reframing the Environment: Resources, Risk & Resistance in Neoliberal India, which was published by University of Mumbai Press in 2016. She has also undertaken research projects on related issues in various parts of India.

Abstract

SARS Covid-19 has broken up the prevailing western narrative of the rule of reason in societies, and its domination over bodies and nature. It has exposed the crisis of society-nature relations which is apparent in the destructive paradigm of the growth-obsessed, resource-intensive and extractivist development model, its depletion of the care labour force, resources and ecosystems, and the vulnerability of bodies and societies. This contribution starts with a brief review of different types of ecofeminisms, of feminist political economy and feminist environmentalism; the main point of critique is the former essentialist feature of some ecofeminists. The input then embarks on a time- and space-diagnostic analysis of the current modernization of the neoliberal capitalist mode of production and social reproduction, and of the appropriation of land, livelihoods and diversity. Finally it explores strategies of resistance. Recent changes of ecofeminism build on a more intersectional analysis which links feminist ecology and feminist political economics, and gears towards an emancipatory socio-ecological transformation. Care work and care ethics are pivotal in theoretical and practical concepts towards breaking up the productivity- and profit-oriented rationale of resource use instead of conviviality of humans and nature. The care approach in the framework of ecofeminism has to be critical of power structures, dualisms and hierarchies in the society-nature relations and needs commoning and resistance for (re)claiming of spaces and territories. Analyse, politicise, resist, transform and beware of romanticism.

Biography

Christa Wichterich is a scholar-activist, a Professor at the University of Kassel. She is a sociologist specialised in gender politics, women’s movements and feminist ecology. She is the author of the influential books The Globalized Woman: Reports from a Future of Inequality and The Future We Want: A Feminist Perspective. She also works as a freelance publicist, author, and as a consultant in development cooperation. She spent several years in India and Iran working as a university lecturer and in Kenya as an Africa correspondent. She is actively involved in the Scientific Advisory Board of attac Germany and in the Europe-based network Women in Development Europe (WIDE+).

Abstract

TBC

Biography

Lori Gruen is the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University. She is a leading scholar in animal studies and feminist philosophy. She is the author and editor of eleven books, including Ethics and Animals: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2011), The Ethics of Captivity (Oxford, 2014), and Entangled Empathy (Lantern, 2015) and the forthcoming Critical Terms for Animal Studies (2018). Most recently, she co-authored a book with Alice Crary entitled Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory. She is a Fellow of the Hastings Center for Bioethics and a Faculty Fellow at Tufts’ Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine’s Center for Animals and Public Policy and was the first chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Center for Prison Education at Wesleyan. Her research lies at the intersection of ethical theory, political philosophy, and social practice. She has written on a range of topics and her current projects include exploring ethical and political questions raised by captivity and carceral logics.

Abstract

We live in a time of renewed assaults on reproductive, transgender, and other human rights in the United States and elsewhere. But this is also a moment of possibility, when contemporary culturemakers are imagining new futures of cis-trans solidarity, cross-species sensitivity, and trans mutual aid. These imaginings respond to climate change and other environmental crises—thereby reminding us that these crises are driven in the first place by colonial cis-heteropatriarchy. My talk will focus on the work of three U.S. culturemakers: Latinx trans poet Oliver Baez Bendorf, white trans writer Callum Angus, and nonbinary Chinese-American artist Mary Maggic.

Biography

Nicole Seymour is Associate Professor of English at California State University, Fullerton, where she serves as the Graduate Advisor for the Environmental Studies Program.  Her research in the environmental humanities asks how literature and other cultural forms – from documentary film to standup comedy – mediate our relationship to environmental crisis. She is the author of three monographs, Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination (University of Illinois Press, 2013), Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) and her most recent publication Glitter (Bloomsbury, 2022). She is also a curator for NXTerra, an open-access repository of climate pedagogy materials developed by faculty across the California State University and University of California systems. In addition to her fellowship project, Dr. Seymour is currently working on topics including queer ecologies, feminist plastic art, vegan satire, and contemporary Indigenous poetry.

Abstract

This paper approaches the feminist backlash towards ecofeminism in the 1990s. Grounding their argument on the secular as the sphere of reason, Western feminists (e.g., Janet Biehl) discredited ecofeminism’s scholarship and political relevance to the feminist movement. In this paper, I reflect on the mastery dynamics of what counted as legitimate “analytical categories crucial for feminist thought,” and women’s liberation (Gaard 2011, 35) in the argument against ecofeminist spirituality. I ask, is there a correlation between the perspectives that led Western feminism to couple religion and spirituality with irrationality and the ones that historically justified colonial domination because reason had escaped those more primitive people? I use a decological perspective to demonstrate that reflecting upon this history today is important because it positions front and center the dominator-subordinated dynamics persisting in our modern modes of relationships. Decological is a portmanteau of the terms decolonial, ecological and pedagogical. It addresses the dominator-subordinated form of relationships and dialogue. Through this perspective, I argue that for feminists to mischaracterize ecofeminist dialogue with religion as undercutting reason, and women’s hope for freedom also represented to belittle religious women’s experiences as subsidiary forms of knowledge. Although spiritual ecofeminists’ proposal seemed for many to be regressive and insulting, I argue that the inability to sustain a more constructive form of dialogue, as well as to acknowledge those experiencing different forms of oppression as knowledge producers, is due to the unrecognized mastery dynamics in the self-other modes of relationships. I propose an alternative form of dialogue, a decological praxis.

Biography

Elaine Nogueira-Godsey is an Assistant Professor of theology, ecology and race at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. She is the author of a number of influential chapters and articles in ecofeminist scholarship including “A History of Resistance: Ivone Gebara’s Transformative Ecofeminist Liberation Theology” and “Tangible Actions Toward Solidarity: An Ecofeminist Analysis of Women’s Participation in Food Justice” in the book Valuing Lives, Healing Earth, edited by Lilian Dube, Teresia Hinga, Sarah E. Robinson-Bertoni and Theresa A. Yugar. Her expertise is in the development of decolonial methods of research and teaching in relation to the relationship between ecology, gender, race and religion, with a focus on advancing knowledge and experience from the Global South. Approaching ecological and ecofeminist theologies of liberation in conversation with the social-scientific study of religion.

Abstract

My talk will pose some questions about the conceptual and practical challenges for decolonising knowledge. The question about ‘what is left?’ confronts a fear that some may hold about a decolonising knowledge agenda but it also identifies the problem of framing our understandings of decolonising approaches. My talk begins with that question.

Biography

Linda is the author of numerous ground-breaking scholarly works which focus on critical epistemology and indigeneity. Most notably, her book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous People (1998) traces how Western scholarly research has facilitated the racist exploitation and colonization of indigenous peoples. This book remains today a core contribution to the study of coloniality in the academy and the process of indigenising research methodologies. 

Most recently, Linda was Professor of Indigenous Education and Māori Development, Pro-Vice Chancellor Māori and Dean of the School of Māori and Pacific Development as well as the founding Director for Te Kotahi Research Institute at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. She was also a founding Joint Director of New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence from 2002-2007 and a Professor of Education at the University of Auckland. 

Abstract

The call to decolonise knowledge is finally gaining deserved attention worldwide, in both academia and society more generally. But as the call’s popularity rises, so does scepticism about its benefits. In this talk, I develop a conception of epistemic decolonisation that is geared to withstanding such scepticism in the contemporary African context, rather than to engaging better established, more theoretical scholarship. I focus, in particular, on African philosopher Bernard Matolino’s recent paper ‘Whither Epistemic Decolonization?’. Matolino issues three challenges to the continued theorising epistemic decolonisation. First, it politicises the knowledge enterprise in an unacceptable way. Second, it seems to leave the black African forever stuck in a negative project of trying to define herself in contrast to the coloniser. Finally, dwelling on the epistemic wrongs of colonialism obscures important aspects of the African’s condition, such as her continued political and material disempowerment. If these challenges are on the right track, they threaten to derail the whole project of epistemic decolonisation. But I argue here that such pessimism is premature. I first offer a sketch of what I take epistemic decolonisation to involve. I then show how this sketch can help us defuse Matolino’s challenges.

Biography

Veli is Professor in Philosophy and Director of the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, at the University of Johannesburg. She is also the South African team leader for The Geography of Philosophy Project, and a PI for the Epistemic Injustice, Reasons, and Agency project funded by a Newton Advanced Fellowship.

Veli works at the intersection of epistemology, metaethics and the philosophy of action. At the moment, she is thinking about epistemic injustice and decolonising knowledge. She is the author of Believable Evidence (CUP 2017), and the editor of Epistemic Decolonisation (2020) and of The Factive Turn in Epistemology (CUP 2018).

Before joining the University of Johannesburg in 2015, Veli taught and researched at Universität Wien, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, Rhodes University (her alma mater), and Cambridge (where she obtained her PhD).

Abstract

The definition of Islam as submission, the claim that Islam needs a Luther, and the desire to identify jihād with private and spiritual struggle, all reflect a series of compulsions and elisions. The three idioms are fundamental to how Islam has been constituted in language as a subject and as a problem. They each also have forgotten genealogies. This project outlines these genealogies and their intersection through the politics of translating Islam as submission, peace, or salvation; of narrating its place and temporality in modernity; and of reinterpreting historical texts and exemplars through the prism of liberalism and toleration. These three moves take Islam out of history. The dislocation of Islam winds through three disciplinary moments that track political theory’s investments in philology, teleology, and philosophy. The seminar concludes by pointing toward critical possibilities and resources that emerge out of alternative discursive formations. In the process, it reflects on the implications of these genealogies for the project of decolonizing “Western thought” and “Islam”—whether as object or subject of discourse—and its limits.

Biography

Murad Idris is Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of Michigan. Before coming to Michigan in 2021, he held positions and fellowships at Cornell University’s Department of Government, Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton NJ, and the University of Virginia. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania.
Murad’s work focuses on Islamic political thought, Islam in political theory, empire and postcolonialism, global intellectual history, international political theory, the politics of comparison, and disciplinary history. He’s currently working on two books: one on constructions of Islam and another on Sayyid Qutb’s international political thought.
Murad is the author of War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought (2019), which won the David Easton Award from APSA and two Best Book Awards from the ISA. He co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory (2020) with Leigh Jenco and Megan Thomas.

Abstract

Recent calls to decolonize the curriculum of a variety of disciplines have rightly focused on the impact of European imperialism on what can be said and thought in the modern academy. But is this critique sufficient, even in its own terms, to fully capture the range of historically possible modes of thinking and being that should inform our contemporary politics? In this talk I argue that a more radical kind of curricular diversity is required to take account of premodern traditions of thought–to include not only those that exhibit continuity with contemporary forms of knowledge and experience, but also those that may have been marginalized and truncated by non-European practices of imperialism or forms of knowledge. I focus in particular on premodern Chinese thought, a multidisciplinary, internally self-referential intellectual ecosystem, with pervasive connections to questions of philosophy. Yet these connections are not readily visible within its corpus of texts spanning more than 2000 years, whose sheer abundance and linguistic distance from living languages inhibits easy navigation or comprehension. Being less subject to reorganization by modern European imperial power, its categories continue to animate certain forms of present-day knowledge, making its inclusion in curricula all the more urgent—even as its very breadth and complexity demand wide-ranging transformations in what we take philosophical knowledge to be. How are these challenges to be met, particularly if we recognize that this body of thought has sustained normative enquiry for centuries, in terms unrelated to more familiar commitments to freedom and justice?  How, moreover, can we comprehend the exclusions this body of thought has enacted over centuries, including the subjugation of non-Han Chinese and non-textual forms of knowledge and experience? 

Biography

Leigh is Professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics’ Department of Government. Before joining the LSE in 2012, Leigh taught and researched at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan; the Department of History, National Taiwan University; and the University of Heidelberg. She obtained her PhD from the University of Chicago. 

Leigh’s scholarship is focused on Chinese political thought, Taiwan studies, global intellectual history, comparative political theory, epistemology, and metahistory. One of her current research projects focuses on articulations of otherness and equality within late Ming neo-Confucian scholars including Jiao Hong and Chen Di. 
Leigh is the author of Making the Political: Founding and Action in the Political Theory of Zhang Shizhao (2010) and Changing Referents: Learning Across Space and Time in China and the West (2015). Leigh also co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory which compiles a series of articles paving the way towards establishing comparative political theory’s guiding principles and methodologies.