Postponed: Feminist Underpinnings: The Movement of the Narratives of Life and Death in Val Plumwood’s Philosophical Thought - Codie Condos Distratis (Progress Review 2)

Toward the end of her career, Val Plumwood became increasingly preoccupied with elaborating a philosophical animist rethinking of death, one that ensures human continuity with the natural world through a recognition of the human body as food and nourishment for earth others. With attention to Plumwood’s earlier (eco)feminist writings, and especially her monograph Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993), my work investigates how the anti-dualism of Plumwood’s critical ecological feminism is present in her later philosophical animist approach to death, thus suggesting possible avenues of connection with surrounding contemporary feminist scholarship, especially on themes of life and death. In this presentation, I explore in depth how Plumwood understands dualism as the logic of domination, according to which systems of oppression intersect and overlap in such a way that they carry a similar structure or logic. I also discuss how she conceives of a liberatory, anti-dualist strategy beyond this logic of domination, and I interpret her idea of life- or nature-affirmation and death-acceptance as an important aspect (among many) of this strategy. This discussion has real-world relevance as it relates to the broader issue of ecological crisis, where death and dying have taken on significance at the planetary scale.