Feminist Ecologies in Australia Symposium:

Abstract Program

Session One (9 – 10am)

Opening Keynote Address: Associate Professor Linda Williams

Jocasta’s legacy and Ecocritique in Australia

This keynote will begin the conference with a general discussion of the Anthropocene

and proceeds to questioning the role of ecofeminism in recent issues in ecocritical

theory. It then gives an introduction to the significant contribution made by several

Australian women in defining important debates in ecophilosophy and ecofeminism,

and concludes with examples of environmental artworks by Australian women.

Linda Williams is Associate Professor of Art, Environment and Cultural Studies in the

School of Art at RMIT University where she leads the AEGIS research network. She

supervises a number of research candidates and teaches art history and theory in the

undergraduate program.

Session Two (10:20 – 11:50am): Gender, Environment and Activism

Dr Lara Stevens

Stratiographic feminisms: An ecofeminist reading of Germaine Greer’s The

Female Eunuch and White Beech: The Rainforest Years

In an attempt to understand how we, as feminists of the twenty-first century, can

relate to the legacies of our foremothers, Claire Colebrook argues that we should

approach the past and historiography using ‘stratigraphic time’ (2009). Drawing from

the work of Gilles Deleuze, Colebrook explains that ‘stratigraphic time’ breaks with

chronology and privileges a time of ‘eternal return’ in which the past can be re-

examined through the lens of the present. Connecting present and past feminisms, this

paper reads Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch again, neither in context in which

it was published in 1970, nor as an attempt to reaffirm its well-established position as

a radical and groundbreaking critique of patriarchal oppression of women. Instead, I

consider what the text ‘might enable’ by analysing it alongside Greer’s most recent

book, a memoir entitled White Beech: The Rainforest Years (2014). Collapsing the

historical gap between these two books, I make The Female Eunuch a site of ‘eternal

return’, this time, re-framed through the most recent work of materialist ecofeminists.

Dr Lara Stevens is the Hugh Williamson Postdoctoral Fellow in the Australian

Centre at the University of Melbourne where she researches ecofeminist art and

performance and the writings of Germaine Greer. Lara’s research areas include

twenty-first century anti-war theatre and performance, feminist philosophy,

performance and ecology.

Ms Maryse Helbert

Women in the Oil Zones

As for the past decades in Australia, the engine of Australian economy is mining.

Indeed, from the gold rush to hydraulic fracturing, Australian economic growth has

been heavily dependent on its capacity to dig and extract natural resources for the

world market while living the environmental and social costs to the local populations.

The contradictions of the neoliberal approach are increasing the unsustainability of

the model of economy that Australia has followed. The Western model of economic

development is based on heavy reliance on natural resources. This heavy reliance has

produced contradictions, as there is an ever increasing demand of natural resources to

fuel the futility of neoliberalism (1) while there is consequently depletion of natural

resources availability and environmental degradation induced dangerous methods of

extraction. These contradictions lead, in the short term, to processes of extraction,

production and transport that require taking even higher environmental risks. Taking

the example of hydraulic fracturing, I will show how the end of conventional oil has

led to search for unconventional oil and consequently to higher environmental risks to

produce oil with an increase use of toxic chemicals. These higher risks threaten the

population living close to these extractive sites. Women are particularly impacted by

the mining. First, mining industry ‘displays traits of masculinity and dominance’ (2).

Hence women suffer particularly from the mining driven masculinity in their

communities through discrimination, social unrest, deprivation and insecurity.

Second, while men and women can suffer equally from the health consequences of

the highly risky processes of extraction, women run the risks of transmitting toxic

chemicals through for instance their breast milk. An ecofeminist ethic analysis will

help to find alternatives to a model of development based on dangerous extractive

mining processes.

1. Salleh A. The Meta-Industrial Class and Why We Need It. Democracy &

Nature. 2000;6(1):27-36.

2. Lozeva S, Marinova D. Negociating Gender: Experience from Western

Australian Mining Industry. Journal of Economic and Social Policy. 2010;13(2):177-

209.

Maryse Helbert’s research expertise includes women’s involvement in decision-

making processes related to development, specifically in the context of resource

exploitation. Her current PhD, Women in the Oil Zones: A Feminist Analysis of Oil

Depletion, Poverty, Conflict and Environmental Degradation, exposes the sidelining

of women from decision-making processes at local, national and international levels

on issues of energy security and challenges the paradigms of corporate social

responsibility in the extractive industries. Maryse has recently worked as a

researcher with the Association of Women’s Rights in Development on the

implications of the energy crisis for women’s rights.

Ms Emma Shortis

‘In the interest of all mankind’: Women and the ‘World Park’ Antarctica

Campaign

The 1959 Antarctic Treaty mandates that Antarctica ‘shall continue forever to be used

exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of

international discord’. This, the treaty makers assert, is ‘in the interest of all

mankind’. Scholars of the Antarctic, and environmental activists, have generally made

the assumption that ‘all mankind’ can be safely assumed to mean ‘all humankind’.

Historically, however, Antarctica has been the almost exclusive preserve of

‘mankind’ only, understood and constructed in gendered terms as a ‘virgin’ space in

which to test and demonstrate a particularly masculine (and Western) form of

heroism. Women-kind, at least until very recently, has been almost entirely absent

both from the continent and our study of it. This paper will explore the role of women

activists in the successful ‘World Park’ Antarctica campaign of the 1980s. In 1991,

the ‘World Park’ campaign culminated in one of the most significant international

environmental agreements in existence today; an indefinite ban on Antarctic mining

and the comprehensive environmental protection of an entire continent. Women

activists were one of the major driving forces behind the unprecedented success of

this campaign. An understanding of the central role of women in Antarctic history and

politics, and broader feminist and gender-based approaches, are crucial to

understanding the past, present and future of the continent.

Emma Shortis is a second year PhD Candidate in the School of Historical and

Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, researching the history of the

environmental protection of the Antarctic.

Session Three (11:50 –12:50pm)

Panel Discussion: Material Feminisms in Theology, Poetry and Political science

Professor Kate Rigby

Feminist Ecologies in Australian Literature: Remembering Judith Wright

In the introduction to their important volume, Material Feminisms (2008), Stacy

Alaimo and Susan Hekman acknowledge that the revaluation of other-than-human

material agency, communicative capacity and ethical considerability associated with

the “new materialisms” is not really so new, having been previously advanced by

several critical ecofeminist theorists. Among those whose work they highlight in this

context is Australian ecofeminist philosopher, Val Plumwood. Other Australian

ecofeminist forerunners of the ‘new’ materialism might include Ariel Salleh, Susan

Hawthorne, Patsy Hallen and Freya Mathews. Interestingly, of the fourteen

contributors to this volume, three are Australian, although none of these have hitherto

associated themselves with an ecofeminist agenda (Claire Colebrook, Elizabeth Grosz

and Vicki Kirby). There is a bigger story to be told here about the strength of non-

reductive materialist thought in Australia, and its importance within Australian

feminism in particular. This is not a story that can be told in detail in this paper; but I

do want to indicate how the current ‘material turn’ is opening a space in which new

connections are being made between different strands of feminist thought, enabling

earlier ecofeminist philosophies, which had hitherto been marginalised (not least by

other feminists), to be brought in from the cold and given a new lease of life. In this

paper, I want to reconsider especially the work of Australian poet, essayist and

activist, Judith Wright, from a material feminist ecocritical perspective. Drawing on

recent research by Jennifer Coralie, I will show how Wright’s poetic practice

answered in advance to Val Plumwood’s call for a “critical Green writing project”.

Kate Rigby is a professor at Monash University and Australia’s first Professor of

Environmental Humanities. She held a dual appointment in German and Comparative

Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University and was the director from

2004-2007. She was elected to the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2006,

and held the position of Deputy Head (Education) in ECPS from 2009-2011.

Dr Anne Elvey

Feminist Ecologies in Biblical Interpretation: An Australian Example

In 1991, Australian biblical scholar Elaine Wainwright, currently Professor of

Theology and Head of School at the University of Auckland, published an article: ‘A

Metaphorical Work through Scripture in an Ecological Age’. Wainwright’s early

work was in feminist hermeneutics and she has been a forerunner and mentor to many

in this field in the local region—Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, the West Pacific,

and Asia—as well as having a significant international presence. Her current

hermeneutic approach is multi-dimensional, bringing together feminist, ecological

and postcolonial concerns. Her ecological thinking is influenced both by Australian

ecological feminist philosophers such as Val Plumwood and international voices such

as Lorraine Code, but also in conversation with the Adelaide based Earth Bible

project, which developed ecologically-, or Earth-focused, ecojustice principles for

biblical interpretation, something that has been contentious for more conservative

biblically-focused Christian scholars and readers. The Earth Bible project developed

its principles and later ecological hermeneutics of suspicion, identification and

retrieval in dialogue with feminist and indigenous thinkers. An important aspect of

Wainwright’s current work, included in her forthcoming ecologically-focused

commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, is the notion of habitat, both in the way this

intersects with the textures of a text and with the new materialism. My presentation

describes the influences on Wainwright’s work and the way this notion of habitat is

being developed there.

Dr Anne Elvey is a researcher and poet with interests in ecological criticism,

theology and ecopoetics. Since completing her doctorate in 1999, she has taught in

biblical studies, ecological theology and women’s studies at MCD University of

Divinity (formerly Melbourne College of Divinity), particularly in the Theology online

programme, Australian Catholic University and Monash University.

Respondent: Professor Robyn Eckersley

Professor Robyn Eckersley taught political science at Monash University from 1992-

2001 before joining the University of Melbourne in 2002. She has published widely in

the fields of environmental politics, political theory and international relations, with a

special focus on the ethics and governance of climate change. Her book The Green

State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty (2004) won the Melbourne Woodward

Medal in 2005 for the best research in Humanities and Social Sciences and was

runner up in the International Studies Association’s Sprout Award for 2005 for the

best book on Environmental Studies.

Session Four (2 – 3:30pm): Ecofeminist Art and Literature

An experimental collaboration between Catherine Clover and Susan Pyke, in the

company of Grace Moore

Dreamers, splitters and murderous crows: feminist ramifications in attentively

responding to the unexpected avian

This collaboration gathers around an ecological feminism which values the work of

potentiality, as outlined in Karen Barad’s agential dynamism. We approach Barad’s

posthumanist perspective through the concept of active attention, drawing upon the

empathy in both Val Plumwood’s thick descriptions of human/nonhuman encounters

and Freya Mathews’ eco-philosophy of ontopoetics. Our response to these

investigations attends to the uncertainty in human/nonhuman relations, focusing on

the uncanny moment that disturbs the human psyche. Our opening will be

experimental, and performative. This will be followed by a textual consideration of

the sonic elements found in Barbara Baynton’s short story, ‘The Dreamer’ (1902). A

poem by Henry Lawson, ‘He Mourned his Master’ (1890), will provide a counter

example. Our presentation concludes with a contemporary field recording. The

direction of our investigation is toward how dynamic intra-actions might agentially

move human attentions in ecologically restorative radically feminist ways.

This collaboration draws on practice led research that explores humans’ complicated

relationship with common noisy wild birds in city environments. Through the birds’

voices the possibility of a shared language is explored. Our work responds to the

sonic component of a bird's call in ‘The Dreamer’, and the potentiality created

through this sudden explosion of uncanny sound. The final element of our

presentation is a field recording, made onsite at the University of Melbourne, that

materially parallels elements of Baynton’s story, including the process of walking and

listening from a contemporary perspective. This is a perspective that all attendees will

find sonically familiar by way of their chosen pathways through the university

grounds today. The presentation concludes with some contextual detail about what a

field recording offers the attentive listener, employing the perspectives of

contemporary sound artists and academics Salomé Voegelin and Peter Cusack.

Our consideration of the dynamism in attention paid to unexpected sounds, be they

heard in the bush or the city, inside or outside a lecture hall, works with the anxieties

that these sounds produce. We ask, to what extent does this fear relate to the position

of mastery critiqued by Plumwood? Further, and more provocatively, we ask, Does an

atmosphere of fear that eschews mastery bring about a certain kind of hysteria,

perhaps even an ontopoetic hysteria, that might be productive in the posthuman

paradigm? We will seek to bring together our collaborative responses with the

responses of the symposium participants to better understand these questions.

Dr Susan Pyke’s (PhD, University of Melbourne) critical publications focus on the

interaction between literature and ecology, and sometimes, theology. She also

publishes poetry, fiction and associative essays. Her most recent critical work is

found in Southerly, the Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology and

Text (Writing Creates Ecology and Ecology Creates Writing). She has reviewed

poetry for Plumwood Mountain, and has a short story in the recently released

Australian Love Stories, edited by Cate Kennedy.

Born and brought up in London in the UK, Catherine Clover trained as an artist at

Wimbledon School of Art and East London University. In the 1990s a residency

through Gertrude Contemporary in Fitzroy brought her to Melbourne. Her practice

explores communication through voice and language and the interplay between

hearing and listening – the vocal, the spoken – and seeing and reading – the visual,

the written. Using collaboration and performance with field recording, digital

imaging and the spoken/written word she is currently exploring an expanded

approach to language within species and across species, with a focus on common

noisy wild urban birds through a framework of everyday experience – the ordinary

and the quotidian. Recent projects include: Reading The Birds as part of

Trainspotters INC and MoreArt Public Art Show (2014); Melbourne SoundWords

(2014) collaboration with Salomé Voegelin for Liquid Architecture, Melbourne;

Perch (2014) collaboration with Vanessa Tomlinson and Alice Hui-Sheng Chang;

Invisible Places Sounding Cities (2014), Viseu, Portugal; Mid-morning, mild, some

clouds (2014) Art in Public Places Newport Melbourne; Now Hear This (2013-4) as

part of Melbourne Now National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne. She is completing

her practice led PhD (Fine Art) at RMIT University, completion expected 2015.

Dr Monique Rooney

Oikos (home) or geo (earth): melodrama and feminized dwellings in Elizabeth

Jolley’s The Well (1986)

Melodrama is a form commonly associated with women in houses and with such

feminized emotions and ontologies as pathos, suffering and disempowerment or lack

of agency. This paper reads Elizabeth Jolley’s The Well as melodrama not so much as

it pertains to the domestic sphere (the oikos/eco of feminized relations and

economies) but rather through its significance as a transmedial and transnational form

that, emerging out of Enlightenment era theatre, endures and re-circulates ideas about

geo, Gaia and Galatea. These earthy figures/motifs animate my paper and its

argument that Jolley’s book is preoccupied with terrestrial and sub-terrestrial life

forms. Focusing in particular on the significance of Galatea (both stone statue and sea

nymph) in Rousseau’s ur-melodrama Pygmalion, my paper draws on thinkers ranging

from Jacques Derrida to Stanley Cavell and Catherine Malabou to propose that

Jolley’s Australian melodrama engages with a politics of indifference and

philosophical scepticism that offsets the domestic melodrama’s feminized pathos. In

so doing, it offers a way of being that enables a concern for the place in which we

dwell that need not necessarily be impelled by attachments to national belonging and

postcolonial settlement.

Dr Monique Rooney’s current research project situates and analyses contemporary

film and television melodrama in the context of a long, post-enlightenment intellectual

and aesthetic tradition. Her book Living Screens: Contemporary Film and Television

Melodrama (contracted for the 'Disruptions' series, edited by Paul Bowman, Rowman

and Littlefield International) is currently in development and explores melodrama as

a highly adaptable and durable mode that brings together the affective and the

philosophical.

Professor Peta Tait

Carcass Smell to Skin Crawl: Sensory Confusions and Species Boundaries

This paper considers how performances by two Australian female artists engage with

species boundaries and impact on the phenomenology of the sensory body. It explores

ideas of embodied phenomenological (Merleau-Ponty 1995), and visceral sensory

responses to performing with dead animals. These works subvert and contest the

politics of speciesism by delivering sensory repulsion, disturbance and astonishment.

Speciesism has become interchangeable with “human chauvinism” arising from

“intrahuman prejudices” (Cavalieri 2001: 70 (Singer)).

I am haunted by the sensory impact of the bloodied bones and pieces of flesh, the

remnants of dead animal carcasses in Jill Orr’s ‘The Sleep of Reason Produces

Monsters – Goya’ (2003). Orr began making art works in the Australian environment

during the 1970s and this arts practice continues in her recent photographed

performances in extreme landscapes. But it is Orr’s performance series on species

from the 1990s–2000s that remains the most politically provocative. Does abject

animal flesh continue to be objectified in performance? As Steve Baker (2000) has

lucidly analysed in relation to postmodern visual art, there is a renewed effort by

artists to make animals visible or at least evoke animal presence by working within

the species own environment. In exploring a phenomenology of animal and human

bodies in shared space, Ralph Acampora argues for “our bodily participation as

animals ourselves operating on a zoomorphic register” to challenge our species

dominant values and behaviour (2006: 30 130-1).

Australian Nikki Heywood’s contemporary performance ‘Relic #5’ visually and

aurally evoked sensory disturbance and astonishment as if to ‘shape change’ bodily

sensory patterns. Charles Scott writes that astonishment is ‘ordinary but ‘occurs as a

physical event’ (2002: 25-16). Everyone is susceptible to being astonished because

this happens bodily. In ‘Animal Life’ Merleau-Ponty (2004) expands on his ideas of

the human capacity to watch other bodies in a seamless and invisible reaching-out

beyond skin boundaries, and describes crawling movement as having virtual matter.

How can performance that makes the skin crawl reconfigure human–animal

encounters in shared environments?

Session Five (4 – 5pm)

Closing Keynote address: Professor Alison Bartlett

Thinking–Feminism–Place: Situating the 1980s Australian Women’s Peace

Camps

At the heart of this paper is my current fascination with the 1980s women’s peace

camps, and especially the Pine Gap camp that took place in the central Australian

desert in the summer of 1983. Through this event, I want to make an argument for the

space and time of feminist ideas that entangles embodiment, ecologies, and

epistemology. I will draw loosely on Lorraine Code’s suggestion of ecological

communities, but more vigorously on Elizabeth Grosz’s work on corporeality, space

and time, to renegotiate the currency of the 1980s through its politics of location and

situated knowledge. Thinking–feminism–place conjoins these terms to anticipate the

potency of place, bodies, and ideas as mutually constitutive and transformational: as

an ecology of feminist epistemology.

Alison Bartlett teaches Gender Studies at the University of Western Australia. The

author of Jamming the Machinery: contemporary Australian women’s writing (1998)

and Breastwork: Rethinking Breastfeeding (2005), she has also edited books on the

public sphere, postgraduate pedagogy, breastfeeding ethics, and most recently on

feminist material culture in Things that Liberate: an Australian feminist

wunderkammer (2013) with Margaret Henderson.