“I Invoke Cunt”: Ecofeminist Manifestos and the Pains and Pleasures of the Female Earth

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Abstract

The polycrisis of Global Warming has established ecocriticism as a major research field for the humanities and simultaneously founded many avenues of literary expressions. However, even as their formalization of an aesthetic-political critique offers alternatives to techno-optimist escapism and the omnipresent narratives of succumbing into despair, manifestos as literary forms have not been centered in ecocritical discourses. Drawing from Indigenous thinkers, Jane Caputi states that the earth, rendered femme as ‘Mutha’” is thoroughly fucked by technologies, ideologies, norms and values rooted in oppressive systems of exploitation. In a comparative close reading of the femme understanding of Caputi and the ecolesbian text “The Anthropussy” by Isabella Blea Nuñez, Beverley Choo, Yasmin and Eqtaffaq Saddam Hussain, this paper argues that ecofeminist manifestos present new strategies of theorizing the femme, non-human Earth. Their calls for environmental justice diversify ecocritical scholarship and cultural production in their radically dirty-minded, loving-nourishing, polemical and engaging feminist practice, linking environmental and social justice irrevocably together. By manifesting a “witchy” break from heteronormativity and patriarchy, they answer calls for more nuanced approaches in the Environmental Humanities. As this paper models, this also requires new reading strategies that honor the manifesto’s positions between academic and public communication in times of exacerbated future uncertainty.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationReconnections
EditorsThomas Mantzaris
PublisherHellenic Association for American Studies Digital Publications
Chapter9
Pages157-173
Number of pages17
ISBN (electronic)978-618-85422-2-8
Publication statusPublished - 2025
Peer-reviewedNo

External IDs

ORCID /0009-0005-7856-5700/work/229893997

Keywords