The ecocide and domination of nature that is the Anthropocene does
not represent the actions of all humans, but that of Man, the
Western and masculine identified corporate, military, intellectual,
and political class that long has masked itself as the civilized
and the human. In this book, Jane Caputi looks at two major "myths"
of the Earth, one ancient and one contemporary, and uses them to
devise a manifesto for the survival of nature-which includes human
beings-in our current ecological crisis. These are the myths of
Mother Earth and the Anthropocene. The former personifies nature as
a figure with the power to give life or death, and one who shares a
communal destiny with all other living things. The latter myth sees
humans as exceptional for exerting an implicitly sexual domination
of Mother Earth through technological achievement, from the plow to
synthetic biology and artificial intelligence. Much that we take
for granted as inferior or taboo is based in a splitting apart of
inherent unities: culture-nature; up-down, male-female;
spirit-matter; mind-body; life-death; sacred-profane;
reason-madness; human-beast; light-dark. The first is valued and
the second reviled. This provides the framework for any number of
related injustices-sexual, racial, and ecological. This book
resists this pattern, in part, by deliberately putting the dirty
back into the mind, the obscene back into the sacred, and vice
versa. Ecofeminism and Environmental Justice argue for the
significance and reality of the Earth Mother. Caputi engages
specifically with the powers of that Mother, ones made taboo and
even obscene throughout heteropatriarchal traditions. Jane Caputi
rejects misogynist and colonialist stereotypes, and examines the
potency of the Earth Mother in order to deepen awareness of how our
relationship to the Earth went astray and what might be done to
address this. Drawing upon Indigenous and African American,
ecofeminism, ecowomanism, green activism, femme, queer and gender
non-binary philosophies, literature and arts, Afrofuturism, and
popular culture images, Call Your "Mutha" contends that the
Anthropocene is not evidence so much of Man's supremacy, but
instead a sign that Mother Nature-Earth, faced with disrespect, is
turning away, withdrawing the support systems necessary for life
and continuance. Caputi looks at contemporary narratives and
artwork to consider the ways in which respect for the autonomous
and potent Earth Mother and a call for their return has already
reasserted itself into our political and popular culture.
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