Only Resist: Feminist Ecological Citizenship and the Post-Politics of Climate Change

Citation:

MacGregor, Sherilyn. 2014. “Only Resist: Feminist Ecological Citizenship and the Post-Politics of Climate Change.” Hypatia 29 (3): 617–33.

Author: Sherilyn MacGregor

Abstract:

European political theorists have argued that contemporary imaginaries of climate change are symptomatic of a post-political condition. My aim in this essay is to consider what this analysis might mean for a feminist green politics and how those who believe in such a project might respond. Whereas much of the gender-focused scholarship on climate change is concerned with questions of differentiated vulnerabilities and gendered divisions of responsibility and risk, I want to interrogate the strategic, epistemological, and normative implications for ecological feminism of a dominant, neoliberal climate change narrative that arguably has no political subject, casts Nature as a threat to be endured, and that replaces democratic public debate with expert administration and individual behavior change. What hope is there for counter-hegemonic political theories and social movements in times like these? I suggest that rather than give in and get on the crowded climate change bandwagon, an alternative response is to pursue a project of feminist ecological citizenship that blends resistance to hegemonic neoliberal discourses with a specifically feminist commitment to reclaiming democratic debate about social-environmental futures.

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gender, Governance

Year: 2014