Abstract

In this dissertation, the writer presents the thesis that a new paradigm for thought exists in ecofeminism, one which provides a degree of unity and coherence to the ecofeminist movement. Issue is taken with assessments of ecofeminism as hopelessly divided, incoherent, irrationalist, and politically reactionary, a "movement" in name only. The argument is made that ecofeminists from diverse religious traditions share a common metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. Documentation focuses on Rosemary Ruether, a Christian, and Starhawk, a Wiccan. Main conclusions include the assessment of "new paradigm" ecofeminist ontology as nonessentialist, non-dualist, and relational, of ecofeminist epistemology as rethinking the traditional meaning of "rationality" and "objectivity," of ecofeminist ethics as liberative and contextual and at the same time newly pluralist in its inclusion of the non-human world within its relational framework, and of ecofeminist politics and economics as at once oriented towards justice and sustainability, in a framework which challenges traditional polities of both the "right" and "left." ;Focusing on two authors called "spirituality ecofeminists" by some in the movement the writer challenges the common assumption that ecofeminists who employ religious symbolism in their work derive their philosophical framework mainly from "cultural," as opposed to "socialist" feminism. Misconceptions about religious ecofeminists as "essentialist" where women's nature is concerned, as "literalist" in their theology, and as "atavistic" and "quietistic" in their ethics and politics, are also righted in the course of argument. ;Allowance is made for the difficulties of cross-cultural dialogue in the joint construction of theory in the ecofeminist movement, and the writer does not claim a complete theoretical relevance in the case of ecofeminists around the world who do not share a western historical background. Given the commonalities that nevertheless exist in the thinking of women from both East and West, both the North and the South, the suggestion is made that the ecofeminist movement is, in important ways, global in scope