Theorizing the Earth: Feminist Approaches to Nature and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony

In popular culture, images of peaceful, traditional American Indians characteristically evoke ecological sentiment . . . . [M]any non-Indians see only this symbolic association and do not heed the importance of contemporary American Indians as agents and theorists of environmental concerns. In the mid-1970s, Leslie Marmon Silko, a woman of Keresan (Laguna Pueblo) descent, wrote Ceremony, a novel commenting on the death drive behind our modern technological culture and the need for a return to the feminine. At the same time white, middle-class feminists were making a connection between the technological exploitation of land and the oppression of women. Although the ground they cover is similar, ecofeminism could benefit from a close examination of Silko’s novel. She traces out a complex web of interrelations between her characters and the earth but manages to avoid the pitfalls of essentializing men and women, vilifying technology while romanticizing nature, and reproducing hierarchical ways of thinking, which weaken ecofeminism. One problem with ecofeminism is its unfortunate tendency to homogenize those who qualify as ecofeminists. Consider Charlene Spretnak’s discussion of the three ways in which women (no mention of men) have reached an ecofeminist philosophy. The first is that women who were exposed to political theory, particularly Marxism, “rejected the Marxist assertion that domination is based solely on money and class: if there is a universally dominated class, surely it is women.” Spretnak thus sweeps aside all other oppressions to enshrine women as the greatest victims, as well as to dilute all differences among women. She argues that these women, noticing that nature was similarly dominated, became ecofeminists. A second way that women became ecofeminists was that they became involved in Goddess worship, learned about ceremonies that celebrated nature, and then became activists to protect nature.The third means of entry into the ecofeminist movement, according to Spretnak, occurs when women with careers in environmentalism find themselves stalled in middle management because of their gender and become feminists