Carolyn Merchant : Feminism or Death

The English edition of Féminisme ou la Mort from Françoise contains a foreword by Carolyn Merchant, which I obviously read with great interest when I received the book.

Carolyn Merchant resituates the work in the history of feminism and ecofeminism. Going right back to the birth of patriarchy, she recalls its responsibility in creating the demographic problem (grow and multiply!) and gives the intellectual sources (Bachofen, Bebel, Engels, Briffault…) that made it possible to think about it.

She recalls a possible first use of the term “ecofeminism” in the USA in ’76, at Murray Bookchin’s Institute of Social Ecology in Vermont. This is followed by some key dates in the use of the concept (Inestra King, 1980, etc.) and the history of its exchanges with various currents led by Mary Griffin, Val Plumwood… up to the present day.

And she concludes that this thinking has its roots in Europe, in the early 70s, in the writings of Françoise d’Eaubonne:

All of these manifestations have their origins in the early 1970s mouvements in Europe on which d’Eaubonne drew and elaborated in her book Feminism or Death.

Philosopher and science historian Carolyn Merchant sheds light on the sources of ecofeminism. While this is obviously very useful scientifically, I see little point in discussing the subject outside this sphere.

Our struggle can very well do without a formal attribution of a prestigious title to this or that person, and Françoise’s immense talents will in no way be diminished. It doesn’t seem to me to be in the DNA of ecofeminism to build pedestals, if we consider that its project consists, among other things, in creating links and mutational collectives, beyond distinctions of gender, class, culture… and intellectual position.

…Qu’importe si chemin faisant vous allez m’abandonner comme une hypothèse…

Aragon, Épilogue

David Graebber tells us that he didn’t invent anything, any more than Marx or anyone else did. For him, the exercise of thought consists in capturing the debate of his time and restoring a situated synthesis that embraces as much of the living world as possible, giving our species an additional brick in the understanding of the world. So there’s no need to cry genius: our propensity to idolize doesn’t need that to give us masters to follow.

Finally, let’s not forget that this is a matter for the genz of the North. The South did not wait for our permission to wage ecofeminist battles long before the term was coined and conceptualized. To such an extent that, following contemporary anthropology, it is indeed in the immemorial roots of matriarchal societies that we must situate the origin, when it comes to finding one.