Reconceptualising the vulnerability of Nature

Details

Supervisors

Botbol-Baum, Mylene

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master de spécialisation en études de genre

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the area of research surrounding Western modern dualism(s), with a specific focus on the contested Culture/Nature dyad in which my quest for re-conceptualising the vulnerability of Nature is situated. My research question methodologically fits within a critique to Western philosophy of mind – with particular reference to modern philosophy and the concept of dualism. Within this body or research, I will attempt to give my contribution to troubling the dyads of Human/Nature and Invulnerability/Vulnerability and their presumed dualist relationality. The goal of this thesis is therefore to (1) render visible how the apparatus of dualisms has provided a framework to naturalize and legitimize a specific system of domination imbued in patriarchal values; (2) deconstruct the conceptualization(s) of a series of categories of Other(s) created by Western dualist philosophy, with a focus on one particular Other: Nature; (3) deconstruct the conceptualization(s) of vulnerability which too exist in a dualist dyad of Invulnerability/Vulnerability; (4) propose a new conceptualization of vulnerability as material continuity between Human and Non/human living beings. This work is situated in a (queer)ecofeminist framework, as I believe in the inclusivity of ecofeminism to bring together multiple causes. By initially undercovering the mutual domination of Women and Nature, ecofeminism has gone past the boundaries of different oppressions, looking at the commonalities rather than at the differences of multiply dominated beings. I believe that it is only through reworking the concept of difference (as non-hierarchical) and by recognising the common roots of multiple oppressions that socio-political-economic transformation will be possible.