Feminism and ecology

The failure to create a link between ecology and feminism is patent today: any correspondence between these two areas of questioning, both theoretical and political, is immediately suspected of bringing women into dubious proximity with nature – and ridiculed. Is it as simple as that? Rather than drawing on academic literature, which has focused on – or we might say exhausted itself in – trying to make this link legitimate, we preferred to start from the mobilisation of past or present feminists and ecologists, often little-known or forgotten, in an attempt to learn (or re-learn) what a feminist approach could contribute to ecological thinking. How can we benefit from what was said, thought, made and experimented with?

With: Lia Marcondes,Émilie Hache and Benedikte Zitouni

Lia Marcondes is a programmer and presenter for the "Tuesdays" of the Université Populaire de l’Eau in the Val-de-Marne. In this respect, she is also in charge of the associated publication, the Tout autour de l’eau collection published by La Dispute. In this collection, one volume is specifically devoted to ecofeminism: Eau et féminisme, petite histoire croisée de la domination des femmes et de la nature, Paris, La Dispute, 2010

Émilie Hache is a philosopher and lecturer in Philosophy at the Paris Ouest Nanterre University. Her research concerns ecological matters and pragmatic philosophy. She has written Ce à quoi nous tenons. Propositions pour une écologie pragmatique (La Découverte, 2011) and has edited and prefaced a collective book, Écologie politique. Cosmos, communauté, milieux (published by Amsterdam, 2012). She is finishing another collective book, coming out shortly: Du monde clos à l'univers infini... et retour.Essais cosmopolitiques (Éditions Dehors, April 2014). A member of the Sophiapol laboratory (Nanterre) and an associate member of GECo (ULB, Brussels), she is co-directing a seminar on political ecology projects at Nanterre with Pierre Charbonnier (LIER, CNRS) for the second year running. She is currently working on two new interrelated projects: one on the speculative dimension of ecological fiction, particularly feminist ecological science fiction; the other on the links between feminisms and ecology notably in her report on environmental justice.

Benedikte Zitouni teaches Sociology at Saint-Louis University, Brussels. She is currently working on the recent history of ecology movements in Belgium, and her article on American and English ecofeminists of the Eighties is currently being published. She has also written articles on urban ecology, situated knowledge and technical inventiveness in urbanisation processes. Her books include Agglomérer (VUB University of Brussels Press & ASP, 2010) and, with Rotor and Ariane d'Hoop, Usus/usures (CFWB, 2010). Generally speaking, she seeks to produce accounts about achievements and collective intelligence, working from archives.

In partnership with the Université Populaire de l’Eau and du Développement Durable (UPEDD) and the Val de Marne Departmental council