When I was about 16 years old, I bought a copy of the book Healing the Wounds: the promise of Ecofeminism, edited by Judith Plant at the now closed Macondo Bookstore in Guelph, Ontario. It blew my mind and set the foundations for my future activism and intellectual explorations. Although I become a Marxist a few years later, and remain one right to the present, I am always thinking about the important insights of ecofeminists. In fact, a (personal) side project throughout my PhD is to be part of crafting a Marxist eco-feminism.
What is especially exciting is that I have had chances over the past decade to listen to, meet, and learn from some of the women in that anthology that so inspired me as a teen (Vandana Shia, Starhawk, Carol Adams…). This continues next week as I head to the Minding Animals conference in Mexico City where some very important ecofeminists, animal rights theorists, critical animal researchers, and activists will be gathering including Greta Gaard (who was in the anthology), Carol Adams, Jody Emel, Jennifer Wolch, and Donna Haraway! I will be delivering two papers – one critical of the concept of ecosystem services as applied to bees and the other pondering if bees have right to the city. I will post versions of those paper on this blog. I will be taking in the wealth of knowledge and experiences of animal activists and thinkers and eating some delicious vegan food. I hope to make it to a couple museums: Frida Kahlo’s house Casa Azul and the house where Leon Trotsky was murdered. I also hope to do a couple bike tours around what sounds like an amazing and vibrant city. It truly seems, in some ways, that I am living out my teenage dreams (I clearly was not a typical 90s teenager). Pictures and papers to be posted…
The Re-enchantment 