Re-Writing Corporate Environmentalism: Ecofeminism, Corporeality and the Language of Feeling

Citation:

Phillips, Mary. 2014. “Re-Writing Corporate Environmentalism: Ecofeminism, Corporeality and the Language of Feeling.” Gender, Work & Organization 21 (5): 443–58. 

Author: Mary Phillips

Abstract:

For ecofeminism, the rationalist and instrumentalist responses of most corporations to multiple ecological crises are characteristic of a ‘logic of patriarchy’ based on interrelated and cross-cutting dualisms that support the subordination of nature and other oppressed groups. Dualisms such as culture/nature, reason/body justify corporate denial or appropriation of the feminine, the maternal and nature. Combining ecofeminist philosophy and the work of Helene Cixous, the paper suggests that a subversive approach utilizing embodied, poetic writing could begin to move corporations, and those who work with and in them, to value feeling and organic embeddedness and encourage a more ecocentric engagement with the world.

Keywords: ecofeminism, Cixous, embodiment, nature, ecological crisis

Topics: Environment, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Gender Equality/Inequality

Year: 2014