Yasmeen Farooq Khan
Associate Professor
Govt. College for Women Nawakadal, Srinagar Kashmir, India.
Ecofeminism is as multihued, multi-located as feminism but more oriented towards praxis. Ecofeminism, as such makes a major contribution to ‘decentring’ by providing a conceptual connection between all oppressions and includes multiple interpretations of reality and knowledge. The shift of focus to a feminine principle is vital because the emerging paradigm attempts to remedy the way in which women and Others have been historically and discursively marginalised by a patriarchal centre. Ecofeminism based on ‘Earth Spirituality’ has become more diverse as ‘Women of Color’ articulate a powerful survival based feminism emerging from their experiences in the crucible of multiple oppressions.
Alice Walker, the New Age visionary, novelist and poet has declared herself committed ‘to exploring the oppressions, the insanities, the loyalties and triumphs of black women’. She emphatically states ‘earth itself has become the nigger of the world’ and warns ‘while the earth is poisoned and everything it supports is poisoned. While the earth is enslaved, none of is free…..while it is treated like dirt, so are we.’ In The Temple of My Familiar, Walker attempts to reconstruct matriarchal values and the vital but obscured links between man and animals and the rest of nature. She transcends binary oppositions and constructs a complex holistic triad of time, nature and self in which humans, animals and the whole ecological order co-exist in a unique dynamics of symbiosis.
This paper attempts to delineate the contours of ecofeminism in the novel The Temple of My Familiar and how Walker rejuvenates the ominous but forgotten link between man and the environment.
Feminism cannot be regarded as a monolithic movement. It encompasses within its ambit diverse viewpoints which can be diametrically opposite to each other. This diversity of thought can indeed be regarded as one of the strengths of this multi-hued, multi-dimensional movement. Ecofeminism is as multi-hued, multi-faceted and multi- located as feminism but it is more oriented towards praxis. Ecofeminism can also be labelled as a new name for an ancient wisdom, uniting woman and nature in its struggle against the patriarchal affirmation of man/woman, culture/nature oppositions and against the abuse of woman and nature. It makes a major contribution to ‘decentering’ by providing a conceptual connection between all oppressions and includes multiple interpretations of reality and knowledge. The shift of focus to a feminist principle is vital because the emerging paradigm attempts to remedy the way in which woman and nature have been historically and discursively marginalised by a patriarchal centre. Ecofeminism based on ‘earth spirituality’ has become more diverse as ‘Women of color’ articulate a powerful survival based feminism emerging from their experiences in the crucible of multiple oppressions. It means to be a more holistic feminism linking all issues of personal and planetary survival.
Starhawk, an ecofeminist sums up the vast canvas of ecofeminism in Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism as-
“The shift from the Western theological tradition of the hierarchical chain of being to
an earth-based spirituality begins the healing of the split between spirit and matter. For ecofeminist spirituality, like the traditions of Native Americans and other tribal peoples sees the spiritual as alive in us, where spirit and matter, mind and body are all part of the same living organism.” (P.113)
She emphasises on the implicit and the explicit spiritual base of ecofeminism where the spiritual traditions of Native Americans, Africans and other tribal peoples as well as pre-Christian traditions share a common world view. The sacred is seen as immanent in the living world. Ecofeminism per se, connects all feminist perspectives which include a concern for both women and ecology.
Black feminist writings have been subjected to many a misreading by scholars and critics alike which has lead to a warped perspective. As black woman’s writings stem from a synergistic mixture of realistic and lyrical narrative modes, it expresses a new literary language which has its own timbre, topoi and tropes. There is a sense of historical community in their writings and their peculiarities can be sometimes grim or antic. Their writings can never be quite reducible to a master plot of victim and victimizer. Their texts inevitably posit a re-articulation of power which is more decentered than what most of us are used to. Afro-American literature, as such has given voice to the infinite complexities of black women’s lives as Creators, leaders and Mothers. Their experiences express a unique form of oppression both in discursive and non discursive practices as they are triply jeopardised by race, gender and class. Bell Hooks appropriately explains this unique position of the black woman as-
“It is essential for continued feminist struggle that black women recognise the special vantage point our marginality gives us and make use of this perspective to criticise the dominant, racist, classicist, sexist-hegemony as well as to envision and create a counter hegemony.” (Hooks,2000:16.)
As an Afro-American woman, Alice Walker views nature as being linked to the historical experience of enslavement based on the identification of blacks with nature. Again, the pattern primarily serves more as a critical comprehension of Man’s relationship with Nature. Yet, as Walker intensely connects her observations in nature to the historical experience of racist oppression, she does more than merely employ the analogy in order to promote a more critical ecological consciousness. Rather from a historical distance, she points to the pervasiveness of the formula without repeating the triply oppressive identification and thus effectively criticises America’s continued collective abuse of Nature as the dark ‘Other’. Her texts offer an example in which the racially oppressed black Other can speak and highlight what we call ecocentric practices of relating to the earth. Texts like The Temple of My Familiar grant the natural environment a significant textual presence wherein the specific interaction of blacks and nature at the periphery of America’s cultural landscapes challenge the social and political practices of domination as well as highlight the widely accepted forms of ecological exploitation. When Lissie talks of her past lives and seeks refuge in the forest in order to escape the overt, racial and gender oppression, she hopes to reaffirm her ties to the environment. As Bell Hooks re-affirms- “It is a necessary reconfirmation of Black people’s relationship to the Earth, a move back to Nature that will promote collective black self recovery.” (Hooks,1999:53) Alice Walker schematizes her works in a ‘quilt’ like pattern both in structure and subject. Quilting represents the matrilineal heritage of aesthetic creativity and serves as a model for Womanist writing of reconciliation and connection. She makes every text a context of another text and it through this intertextuality and intra-textuality we realise the relation of the smallest part to the whole. Alice Walker makes the quilt an
emblem of universalist inter-racial traditions. In The Temple of My Familiar, multiple voices interact in a dialogic manner promoting a systemic thinking which forms the essence of ecocentric practices of relating to the earth. Walker insists that we must restore our primary spiritual connection to the earth, without which we cannot experience our original wholeness. She constructs in her texts a unique ecological vision of egalitarian co-existence in which all living entities share the earth.
Her literary and theoretical writings form two sides of the same coin. She expresses her inability to identify with mainstream (predominantly white) feminism. She has created her own brand of black feminism labelled as ‘Womanism’. Through her ‘Womanist ideas’ she seeks to distinguish black feminist’s many sided offensive against patriarchy. She believes that white feminists bulwark against oppressions falls short of the intrepidity that compels the womanist to turn every stone in the complicated masonry of power relations. Although she professes a special preference for the oppressions, the insanities, the loyalties and the triumphs of black women (ISMG; 1984, 250) she is also ‘pre-occupied with the spiritual survival, the survival whole of her people.’ (ISMG, 250)
Alice Walker and other writers of color committed to environmental issues have labelled themselves as ecowomanists. As she states in Living by the Word–
“Some of us have become used to thinking the woman is the nigger of the world, that a person of color is the nigger of the world….. But in truth, Earth itself has become the nigger of the world. It is perceived ironically as other, alien, evil and threatening.” (147)
In her writings, Walker exposes the global scope of the objectification of women’s bodies, while differentiating the racialized exploitation of woman’s bodies under slavery. In The Temple of My Familiar through Lissie many lives she enumerates the physical horrors of the female slave experience, their hair being chopped off, their bodies branded with pieces of hot iron and put on display as well as being subjected to repeated violation, physical punishment and endless breeding leading to death.
The Temple of My Familiar is a literary ‘crazy quilt’ embedded with her Womanist vision of relating Black Women experiences. It reflects the powers of relationship which call for a re-mapping. The voices are poly-vocal, multi-gendered, cross cultural and multi -dimensional. It encompasses stories by weavers, artists, painters, healers for whom art represents a means of wholeness. Through their experiences and emotions, they create a wonderful web of relationships in which Msukta, the ancient weaver assumes a pivotal position.
Through this relational web which reflects Walker’s vision of transformation and healing, the individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds connect with each other drawing on ancestry and sacred feminine symbols. The Temple of My Familiar retells a story often misrepresented by colonial literature, the story of African people who were stripped off their land, culture and transported to America as slaves where they seek to restore the remains of their lost ancestry. Walker recovers stolen African goddesses such as Isis and Medusa and invokes their power to assist in creating a synergistic world view of healing and connectedness. She tracks how ancient African goddesses were an embodiment of earth based spirituality. She states- “The Goddess, who long before she became Isis, was known all over Africa as simply the Great Mother, Creation of All, Protector of All, the Keeper of the Earth.” (The Temple of My Familiar:269)
The Temple of My Familiar is a critique as well as a vision. It raises up what we as human beings in the contemporary era have to work through in order to restore a compassionate humanism as well as seeks a revisit to gender oppression. Walker calls
it ‘a romance of the last half million years’ and has portrayed her female characters capable of breaking the bonds of oppression and discovering diversity in all human and non human elements.
Resurrecting the notion of earth based spirituality or animism shared by Native and Afro-American she states in ISMG–
“If there is one thing African-American and Native Americans have retained of their African and ancient American heritage, it is probably the belief that everything is inhabited by spirit.” (252)
This notion is reiterated in The Temple of My Familiar in which Walker enjoins the ecofeminist web of connectedness to the concerns she raises. In an interview to Justin and Michael Toms, she expresses her views- “The Temple ……represents my great vision. The great vision is a Native American notion of earth people’s notion that everybody has a great vision….At some point in your point in your life, you begin to feel and see in yourself, in your own being how it all comes together and how you’re connected not only materially but through time.”
An ecofeminist analysis would encompass how ancestor worship, goddess worship, Native American Spirituality and a search for wholeness highlight the intersecting oppressions. The text abounds in instances where the intersecting oppressions of race, ideas and gender are highlighted along with desacralisation of the environment. Walker traces how women’s role in society had undergone a devastating change, of how she enjoyed supreme status as goddesses and priests. Walker succinctly brings to the fore how role reversals took place and women were absolved of the duties assigned to them. Lissie exclaims-
“The men had decided that they would be Creators, and they went about dethroning women systematically. To sell women and children for whom you no longer wished to assume responsibility….became a new tradition, an accepted way of life.” (T0MF:64) Through her revival of African ancestry, Walker relates the story of ecocide committed on the African people. She explains how matriarchal societies gave way to patriarchal ones and how the universal oppression of women is highlighted by Zede and Lissie. Lissie’s many lives represent Walker’s voice of concern over the multiple oppression afflicting women and subsequently nature as well. Lissie explains how in one of her past lives, she had been sold into slavery and states- “There were men sold into slavery because of their religious beliefs…..they carried on the ancient tradition of worship of the mother and to see a mother sold into slavery…was a great torture to them.” (63)
Walker has delineated Mary Anne Haverstock as a strong votary for ecofeminist practices. She is a white, radical American who flees the US to Africa. Walker through her portrayal highlights how Americans have collectively abused nature. Mary Anne, while talking about her parents states- “people who had personally assassinated six rivers and massacred twelve lakes, because they manufactured a deadly substance that was always swimming from them.” (TOMF:78)
Through Lissie’s many lives and characters from the CP, Walker weaves a pancosmic world in which humans, animals and the whole ecological order co-exist in a unique dynamics of symbiosis. Alice Walker quoted in World views,4. by Amanda Greenwood-
“Nature (to) be conceived of as more than inert matter….that it has metaphorical status as a speaking, feeling, alive subject.” (168)
There can be a myriad member of ecofeminist readings to this spiritual pancosmic text by Alice Walker. I’ve attempted a sort of collage of some of the key ecofeminist
features present. As writers like Alice Walker don’t write political theory but through their texts seek to imagine new solutions and make us realise that it is imperative ‘now’ to value Nature over Culture. For Walker, the feminist struggle against oppression must become a part of the larger global struggle for the future of the planet.
The Gospel, According to Shug represents what I posit to be the core of ecofeminist concerns of Alice Walker. She states-
“Helped are those who love the earth, their mother and who willingly suffer that she may not die, in their grief over her they will weep rivers of blood, and in their joy in her lively response to love, they will converse with trees.
Helped are those whose every act is a prayer for harmony in the Universe, for they are the restorers of balance to our world.” (TOMF: 288)
Hence under the pretext of greening the ‘Canon’, literary texts can be re-interpreted for their potential of cultivating the ecological consciousness of readers. We cannot shuttle back to primitive life (Lissie’s dreams) but it is texts like The Temple of My Familiar which strengthen our ties to the vision of a harmonious relationship with nature.
Works Cited:
Greenwood, Amanda. ‘The animals can remember: Representations of the non-human other in Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar, Worldviews, 4, 2000.
Hooks, Bell. Feminist Theory (From Margin to Centre) London: Pluto Press, 2000. Hooks,Bell. ‘Touching the Earth’.David Landis. Ed. At Home on the Earth: Becoming Native to Own Place. A Multi-cultural Anthology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Plant, Judith. Ed.. Healing the Wounds (The Promise of Ecofeminism). Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1989.
Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens. London: The Women’s Press,1984.
–Living by the Word: Selected writings (1973-1987). San Deigo: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1980.The Temple of My Familiar. New York: Pocket Books, 1990.