I submit my proposal as an individual paper proposal and I request an overhead projector.
Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism have been useful theoretical paradigms to consider the relationship between subordinated groups, linking them together in the structural hierarchy of Western dualisms. Scholarship in Latina/o Studies picks up where ecocritics and ecofeminist fall short—in the cultural realm. Carmen Flys-Junquera, for instance argues that the common theme of “la tierra” [the land or earth] is central in a majority of Chicano literature. Through her analysis of the novels of Rudolfo Anaya, for example, Flys-Junquera suggests that his literature emphasizes the Chicano worldview that is “based on community and the relationship to the earth” (2002, 120). Chicana/o scholars have further incorporated studies in environmental racism and environmental justice to analyze the particular ecological concerns of people of color in the United Sates and grassroots groups that challenge larger structures of privilege environmentalism that do not take racial segregation and systemic poverty into account. For example, in her article “Ecocritical Chicana Literature: Ana Castillo’s “Virtual Realism,” Kamala Platt emphasizes the role of environmental racism as an “outcome of colonialism and imperialist capitalism” (1998, 139). By focusing on the environmental racism inherent in environmental justice, Platt draws attention to the intersections of class, race, gender in relation to the study of human and nonhuman environmental habitats in order to bring a cultural perspective often absent in traditional ecocriticism and ecofeminism. Platt’s work demonstrates that race, poverty, and gender all affect the daily economic and ecological realities of marginalized communities in the U.S. As ecocritics in Latina/o Studies assert, the intersection of multiple categories and their relation to structural violence must be factored in an ecocritical analysis.
Although I am a literary scholar I step outside disciplinary lines to provide a Cultural Studies presentation about feminist activism and the environment, specifically in the urban space of East Los Angeles. In this presentation I use this intersectional ecocritical imperative concerning literary ecocritics and ecofeminists, such as Flys-Junquera and Platt, to examine social-justice organizations in Los Angeles that employ intersections of feminism, the environment, and (in)civility in their grassroots organizing and community activism. Specifically, I will discuss the Ovarian Psyco – Cycle Brigade as a self-designated “womxn of color” decolonial, feminist organization. This group rearticulates urban transportation and gendered discourses of hysteria and madness to assert an ecological activism founded on indigenous values, female empowerment, and to break oppressive, patriarchal norms in both language and everyday life practices. I also study the group Mujeres de Maíz, a non-profit organization aimed at empowering women through a variety of “ARTivist” multimedia community outreach programming. Both groups use environmental aesthetics and feminist knowledges to map the Los Angeles urban landscape through the lens of female bodies and non-Western epistemologies, emphasizing a focus on healthy women’s bodies and the natural aspects of urban landscape in Los Angeles. Both groups use a Latina environmental consciousness as the foundation to their activism and to build cross-racial solidarity with other urban activists.
Cultural Studies , Feminist and Women's Studies , Gender Studies , Chicano/a -- Mexican , Humanities
