Social Ecology & Feminist Utopia

“[T]he idea of dominating nature has its primary source in the domination of human by human and in the structuring of the natural world into a hierarchical chain of being” (Bookchin 1993).

Involved in some of the first anti-nuclear power campaigns in the ’50s, and beginning his career writing on overurbanisation, the role of the environment in disease, nuclear, and pesticides and other chemicals, the pioneering political philosopher and ecological thinker Murray Bookchin was preeminent in kickstarting the environmental movement in the 1960s. But it is his oeuvre-spanning theory of ‘social ecology,’ which he would develop over the following fifty years, that remains his most important contribution, elucidating the principally social roots of environmental crisis and demanding a complete overhaul of politics as we know it if we are ever to live in ecological harmony.

Still one of the most urgent interventions in the environmental humanities, the twin critique and utopian vision of social ecology is the focus of this class, from its roots in ecofeminism to its manifold diagnoses of hierarchy and power through to its nascent political vision. Across the term, we will unfold this theory together alongside two novels: Marge Piercy’s classic 1976 feminist ecotopia Woman on the Edge of Time and Ruthanna Emrys’ 2022 feminist diaperpunk/solarpunk A Half-Built Earth. Bookending the primary waves of both feminist and ecological utopia—the long 1960s, and the last fifteen years—these novels are not only invaluable for helping us to understand, problematise, and further the insights of social ecology, but will also leave you understanding the form and nature of the feminist utopia too.