Val Plumwood

In this first volume of The Sylvan Jungle, the editors present a scholarly edition of the first chapter, "Exploring Meinong's Jungle," of Richard Routley's 1000-plus page book,  Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond. Going against the Quinean orthodoxy, Routley’s aim was to support Meinong’s idea that we can truthfully refer to non-existent and even impossible objects, like Superman, unicorns and the (infamous) round-square cupola on Berkeley College. The tools of non-classical logic at Routley’s disposal enabled him to update Meinong’s project for a new generation.

This volume begins with an Introduction from Dominic Hyde, “The ‘Jungle Book’ in Context,” an essay that situates Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond historically. We provide the original Preface by Routley, followed by Chapter 1: “Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond.” In Chapter 2, Nicholas Griffin argues that Sylvan’s project was insufficiently radical with his essay, “Why the Original Theory of Items Didn’t (Quite) Go Far Enough.” Sylvan revisits his position from this time in Chapter 3, with his article, “Re-Exploring Item-Theory.” Filippo Casati, who has worked in the Routley Archives then takes up the question of the future of Sylvan’s research program in his essay, “The Future Perfect of Exploring Meinong’s Jungle.”

Iconic and iconoclastic Australian philosopher Richard Routley (né Sylvan) published Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond in 1980. This work has fallen out of print, yet without great fanfare it has influenced two generations of philosophers and logicians.

This article examines how Alice Oswald’s book-length poem Dart complicates and extends debates about the local and global. Aspects of environmentalism that focus on a physical connection with a local environment have been criticised by those such as Ursula K. Heise and Val Plumwood, who argue that such a connection is insufficient and stress the need for a greater understanding of global interconnectedness. Whilst Dart has a distinctly local emphasis in that it focuses on the river Dart in Devon and the landscape that it flows through, the poem’s envisioning of this specific geographical feature is far from being static or isolated. In addition to combining different spatial and temporal elements, Oswald’s poem transcends the physical through its engagement with the river’s spiritual and mythological aspects. The ‘fragmented’ structure used to achieve this is read as a literary example of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s ‘bricolage’ since the idea of bricolage is also relevant in relation to ideas of the self. Michael Leyshon and Jacob Bull’s work on ‘the bricolage of the here’ is used to examine the relationship between place and the identities of Dart’s characters. This enables the ‘local/global’ debate to be seen in the context of the relationship between self and world as discussed in the work of Charles Taylor and David Borthwick.

El objetivo del presente ensayo es explorar con mayor profundidad lo que considero una de las más promisorias rutas para rastrear un pensamiento y una prác- tica en relación con los animales de los cuales surja un completo cuestionamiento al antropocentrismo que abra nuevas posibilidades para el pensamiento y la vida. Usaré el término indistinción como el nombre para esta aproximación general a repensar la animalidad y las distinciones humano-animal; ofrezco aquí un breve resumen de este acercamiento a través de la lectura de partes de la obra de Friedrich Nietzsche y de Val Plumwood. Lo que los críticos del antropocentrismo pueden aprender del análisis de Nietzsche, entonces, es que el desplazamiento del antropocentrismo abre posibilidades afirmativas para otras formas de vida, frente a lo que tradicionalmente se ha acordado en llamar “humano” tanto como a lo “no-humano”. Se explorará cómo parte de estos mismos temas son desplegados en la obra de Val Plumwood y lle- van a desarrollar una práctica del veganismo como un modo de ser-para-la-carne.

En 1985, attaquée par un crocodile dans le parc national de Kakadu, Val Plumwood échappe à une mort a priori certaine. Pour l’écoféministe australienne, en une fraction de seconde, l’ordre établi entre humains et nature se renverse. Comment, en tant qu’être humain, peut-elle être reléguée au statut de proie ? Cette rencontre initiatique met au jour l’idée, enfouie dans une strate culturelle profonde de sa conscience, que l’humain est au-dessus et hors du reste de la nature. Débusquer les mécanismes régissant ce piège occupe dès lors toute la carrière de Val Plumwood. Elle nous lègue dans ce texte un diagnostic précieux et des propositions fécondes pour habiter la terre comme membre de la communauté écologique. Dans l’œil du crocodile, Val Plumwood n’a pas seulement éprouvé sa vulnérabilité, elle a pleinement mis à l’épreuve le fantasme de l’exception humaine et sa résistance.

Feminism and the Mastery of Nature draws on the feminist critique of reason to argue that the master form of rationality of western culture has been systematically unable to acknowledge dependency on nature, the sphere of those it has defined as 'inferior' others. Because its knowledge of the world is sytematically distorted by the elite domination which has shaped it, the master rationality has developed 'blind spots' which may threaten our survival. The future depends increasingly on our ability to create a truly democratic and ecological culture beyond dualism. The book shows how the feminist critique of dominant forms of rationality can be extended to integrate theories of gender, race and class oppression with that of the domination of nature. Val Plumwood illuminates the relationship between women and nature, and between ecological feminism and other feminist theories. Exploring the contribution feminist theory can make to radical green thought and to the development of a better environmental philosophy, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature challenges much existing work in green theory and environmental philosophy, and engages with the heavily masculine presence which has inhabited many accounts of the area. It will be essential reading for those working in these areas, and for all those seeking to understand the historical, philosophical and cultural roots of the environmental crisis and the culture of denial which blocks response to it. Val Plumwood teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania, Australia.

On the face of it, the conservation strategy of rewilding is inimical to human places and the histories and identities that constitute them. But the idea of rewilding (especially laden with the conceptual baggage attendant to questions of wilderness and wildness) is centrally non-human: it is about self-willed landscapes, the return of extirpated species, and the remaking of landscapes in their pre-agricultural forms. Thus, rewilding seems antithetical to the myriad ways humans appropriate the world: our landscapes, timescales, practices, and ways of inhabitation all are thereby challenged. Rewilding unsettles traditional landscapes in that it can exist only in the absence of human settlements, but further, the concept of place-as humanized and humanizing-seems called into question. Others have, in effect, argued against this stance on a practical level by pointing to rewilding projects that do not exclude but foster and even enhance a sense and understanding of place. I supplement these examples with a conceptual argument and argue that rather than undermining or unsettling the concept of place, rewilding itself is place-making.

Although animal advocacy and environmentalism have had a long association as social and political movements, the relationship has not been without conflict, both in theory and in practice. An opportunity to defuse such conflict is to be found in the ecological feminist analysis of Val Plumwood. The foundation of Plumwood's position is an ecological outlook which, consistent both with indigenous worldviews and with the modern scientific understanding of the natural world, sees nature in terms of a community of interdependent self-willed agents, who are owed ethical consideration along with the communities they form and the ecological processes and places they depend upon. Plumwood strongly opposed other theoretical approaches that led to universal duties to veganism, articulating a series of ways in which normative veganism is in conflict with a non-anthropocentric ecological outlook that 'situates humans ecologically, and nonhumans ethically.' A recent attempt by Esther Alloun to integrate Plumwood's insights into uncritically universalist veganism is therefore fundamentally ill-conceived. In this paper, I reiterate why an ecological outlook precludes any universal duty to veganism, and refute some of the counter-claims that have been made against Plumwood's repudiation of universalist veganism. I then outline how ecological nonanthropocentrism casts the eating of nonhuman persons (including animals) as potentially respectful use within an ecological network of gift exchange, and in fact restrains human interference with the more-than-human world-including with individual nonhuman animals-differently but even more strongly than veganism. In the longer term, we must move towards food production methods that can co-exist with intact, healthy wild ecosystems, upon which all wild organisms depend. To motivate such a shift will take radical cultural change, which begins with each of us correcting our worldview. Key to this process is embracing our ecological situatedness, which is best done experientially, by direct, visceral participation in the wild food web: by hunting, fishing or foraging.

Composting is a material labor whereby old scraps are transformed-through practices of care and attention-into nutrient-rich new soil. In this provocation, we develop "composting" as a material metaphor to tell a particular story about the environmental humanities. Building on Donna Haraway's work, we insist "it matters what compostables make compost." Our argument is twofold. First, we contend that certain feminist concepts and commitments are foundational to the environmental humanities' contemporary emergence. Second, we advocate for more inclusive feminist composting for the future of our field. We begin with a critical cartography of some of the field's origin stories. While we discover that feminism is named or not named in several different ways, what most interests us here is a particular trend we observe, whereby key feminist scholars or concepts may be mentioned, but their feminist investments are not incorporated as such. Following this carto-graphy, we dig into the stakes of these missed opportunities. A failure to acknowledge the feminist context that grows some of our field's foundational concepts neutralizes their feminist politics and undermines the potential for environmental humanities to build alternative worlds. To conclude, we propose feminist composting as a methodology to be taken up further. We call for an inclusive feminist composting that insists on feminism's imbrication with social justice projects of all kinds, at the same time as we insist that future composting be done with care. Sometimes paying attention to the feminist scraps that feed the pile means responding to feminism's own potential assimilations and disavowals, particularly in relation to decolonization. Like both the energy-saving domestic practice and the earlier social justice struggles that inspire it, composting feminism and environmental humanities involves messy and undervalued work. We maintain, however, that it is a mode of scholarship necessary for growing different kinds of worlds.

The paper considers how ecological feminist philosophies can enrich the animal advocacy movement and its liberatory politics and ethics. Building on existing literature, I argue that ecofeminist theories can help deepen our thinking about our relationship with animals and the more-than-human world; about our intersectional struggle to end oppression; and about putting this into practice, especially in relation to food. I focus on the work of Australian philosopher and feminist Val Plumwood to work through these issues. I examine Plumwood’s critique of dualism and anthropocentrism and how it reflects a particular Australian vision of nature. Her take on animal Others also challenges the way humans hyperseparate themselves from nonhuman animals, background, homogenise and instrumentalise them through the ‘the abstractly quantitative and commodified concept of meat’ (Plumwood, Environmental Culture 156). In this perspective, veganism emerges as an essential step on a long journey towards building ethical relationships with nonhuman others. However, as animal advocates, we cannot presume that veganism is sufficient in and of itself because the exploitation and commodification of nonhuman animals is just one expression (albeit large-scale and with very significant consequences) of dualistic and oppressive ideologies used to justify the brutal domination of nature. Following Plumwood, I argue that we need to challenge deeply our systems of knowledge and the logical features of dualisms to face animal exploitation and the current ecocide, and to inform our approach to social change and activism. This somewhat differs from popular analyses within critical animal studies that focus on the political economy of the animal-industrial complex and target capitalism in their fight for animal liberation. Yet, the choice between addressing ideologies and structures of oppression (including economic ones) seems to be a false one, so I propose to rethink veganism along both these lines to ground it in a more ecological way, embracing the more-than-human world at large, but also in a more political way.

I consider the interspecies political implications of Vienna, Austria's urban-dwelling European hamsters (Cricetus cricetus). In July 2020, the International Union for Conservation of Nature updated the status of the European hamster on its Red List of Threatened Species to 'critically endangered, ' warning that the species is likely to go extinct in the next 30 years. While anthropogenic factors are largely responsible for the current state of the species, the adaptability of these synanthropic hamsters has also led to a unique trajectory in their hope for survival; they have been successful as a liminal species inhabiting urban environments where they have also received prominent attention and protection. I look to the former disregard for their presence as laying the groundwork for closer contemporary ties between humans and hamsters in the city of Vienna. Through Val Plumwood's intentional recognition stance, I propose that the interactions between humans and hamsters in Vienna exemplify the recognition of hamster agency and their political claim on space. The story of the Viennese hamsters also pushes against conventional narratives that often fail to account for the dependence of liminal animals on humans, and it emphasises a call toward not just protecting the abstract category of species, but also the unique relationships between hamsters, humans, and the urban environment of the city.

The present world seems to address nature as ―mother nature‖. Perhaps it has always been so - nature has been feminized since many years mostly due to its life giving properties. This paper throws some light on why it has been so and how the same is represented in literature. Poems by feminist writers from three different parts of the world; ―Mushrooms‖ by ―Sylvia Plath‖, by ―Forough Farrokhzad‖, and ―The grass is also like me‖ by ―Kishwar Naheed‖ are interpreted through ecofeminist lens. This paper further illustrates the real impact of feminising nature through Ecofeminist movements in the country. In the end this paper suggests, to eliminate the dualism which is the root cause of the domination of both nature and women.

The worldview of Margaret Atwood's God's Gardeners accepts some ecological truths that are denied by the dominant Western  culture. However, Gardener doctrine ultimately fails in constructing a properly ecological outlook, because, like other universalist ethical vegetarian positions, it exceptionalises humans from animals, and animals from the rest of nature. This point is made by examining passages from Atwood's books, and comparing with the works of Val Plumwood, Paul Taylor and J. Claude Evans.

This is a PDF version of a blog post. References have failed to render in the PDF. They can be found by going direct to the blog post, http://bit.ly/1QxxHRN

Darjeeling, a district in the Himalayan foothills of the Indian state of West Bengal, is a former colonial " hill station. " It is world famous both as a destination for mountain tourists and as the source of some of the world's most expensive and sought-after tea. For decades , Darjeeling's majority population of Indian-Nepalis, or Gorkhas, have struggled for sub-national autonomy over the district and for the establishment of a separate Indian state of " Gorkhaland " there. In this article, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted amid the Gorkhaland agitation in Darjeeling's tea plantations and bustling tourist town. In many ways, Darjeeling is what Val Plumwood calls a " shadow place. " Shadow places are sites of extraction, invisible to centers of political and economic power yet essential to the global circulation of capital. The existence of shadow places troubles the notion that belonging can be " singularized " to a particular location or landscape. Building on this idea, I examine the encounters of Gorkha tea plantation workers, students, and city dwellers with landslides, a crumbling colonial infrastructure, and urban wildlife. While many analyses of subnational movements in India characterize them as struggles for land, I argue that in sites of colonial and capitalist extraction like hill stations, these struggles with land are equally important. In Darjeeling, senses of place and belonging are " edge effects " : the unstable, emergent results of encounters between materials, species, and economies.

Many environmental philosophers currently hold that animal liberation theories are not relevant to the development of the field of environmental ethics. Instead, they contend that the field is traversed most successfully within the context of ecocentric and/or wilderness perspectives.

In this thesis, I utilize textual and conceptual analysis to argue that animal liberation theories are vital to environmental ethics. I examine and critique the reasons given by prominent environmental ethicists—including, most notably, John Rodman, Baird Callicott, Robert Elliot, and Val Plumwood—for marginalizing animal liberation views within environmental ethics. While most of human-centered ethics has rested on a human/nature dichotomy in which the human side is overvalued, much of environmental ethics (especially that developed by ecocentric and wilderness proponents) rests on the same dichotomy, but weights the value on the nature side instead. I hold that many of the reasons for claiming that animal liberation theories fall outside of the scope of environmental ethics rest on a commitment to the nature/human dualism.

I maintain that our contemporary world is not divided into the natural and the human, but, rather, consists of an ongoing, shifting relationship between human and nonhuman nature. I claim that the appropriate aim of environmental ethics is to explore the human relationship to the nonhuman natural world, and that this aim cannot be accomplished by theories committed to a human/nature dualism. I conclude that, by focusing on the significance of our choices as human beings in relationship to morally considerable others, the animal liberation movement offers us a way to theorize about environmental issues that transcends the human/nature dichotomy.

This project is morally and politically compelling because the way in which environmental ethics as a field is defined has ramifications not only for the relationship of individual nonhuman animals to the natural environment, but for the relationship of humans to the natural environment as well. Looking at the relationship between human and nonhuman nature allows us to address the human roles and responsibilities not simply in the human community, but in the broader context of nonhuman nature as well.

RESUMEN Este trabajo se enfoca en mostrar la importancia de escuchar la voz de la filosofía aborigen australiana, como un pensamiento no occidental; esta no solo ofrece una manera distinta de abordar las problemáticas ecológicas, sino una forma diferente de comprender la democracia, para esto se debe comprender la importancia del Suelo en oposición a la Propiedad y del Otro en vez del Yo. Esto se enmarca en la capacidad democrática de la corrección (correctiveness) que en este escrito se relaciona con la capacidad de aprendizaje, se utilizan las filosofías de Val Plumwood y Mary Graham como ejes principales.

This paper is a preliminary treatment of the categories of agency and dependence in the context of ecosystem services discourse. These categories are discussed in terms of critical categorial ontology in order to articulate adequately the nature of humankind’s dependence upon the nonhuman natural world, inadequately captured by ecosystem services  discourse.  Following  Val  Plumwood,  this  essay  takes  ecosystems  services
discourse as an example of one type of failure to discern various forms of agency as well as dependence, and it goes on to define diffuse dependence as the relation that corresponds to the form of agency expressed through ecosystem services.

An ecopoem written as a creative response to Val Plumwood's works 'Being Prey' (2012) and Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993).

(2012) The Eye of the Crocodile, edited by Lorraine Shannon. Canberra: Australian National University E Press.
(1993) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London and New York: Routledge.

This chapter connects thinking, feminism, and place, to suggest a link between ecology and epistemology, between the environment in which we live our lives and the production of knowledge generated through those times, places, and lived bodily experiences. Val Plumwood's encounter with a crocodile, for example, was transformational in her life and thinking, and symptomatic of the intimacy between the corporeal and the conceptual in feminist thinking. Interested in how ideas move, how we're moved by ideas, and how social movements are made,

Originally published: Ethics, Place, and Environment, 8:2, 2005.

In the following essay, I argue for an alternative anthropocentrism that, eschewing failed appeals to traditional moral principle, takes (a) as its point of departure the cognitive, perceptual, emotive, somatic, and epistemic conditions of our existence as members of Homo sapiens, and (b) one feature of our experience of/under these conditions particularly seriously as an avenue toward articulating this alternative, the capacity for aesthetic appreciation. To this end, I will explore, but ultimately reject philosopher Allen Carlson’s ecological aesthetics, and I will adopt with modification aspects of the work of Ronnie Hawkins, Val Plumwood, and Donna Haraway. My central claim is that, equipped with a better understanding of our interdependent relationship to/within human and nonhuman nature, an understanding made especially available to those who occupy situations imbued by subjugation, we can come to understand our human- centeredness not as a justification of entitlement, but as an opportunity for critical self-reflection upon those actions which endanger the ecological conditions of human and nonhuman being. I suggest, then, that developing criteria for an aesthetic appreciation ground in such a centeredness can make a vital contribution to a more ecologically defensible moral and political activism.

Ekofeminizmin onemli isimlerinden olan ve ozellikle Feminizm ve Dogaya Hukmetmek kitabiyla taninan Val Plumwood, ilk donem calismalarinda  “hiper-ayrimlar” olarak adlandirdigi hiyerarsik karsitliklara odaklanirken,  sonraki calismalarinda  hiper-ayrimlara yonelik  elestirilerini tinsellik, olum, mekân gibi kavramlarla ayrintilandirmis  ve animist materyalizm gorusunu gelistirmistir. Bu makalede de ozellikle  Feminizm ve Dogaya Hukmetmek  sonrasinda  2009’a dek yayinladigi calismalar izlenerek Plumwood’un ekolojik sorunlara iliskin saptamalari ve onerileri degerlendirilmeye calisilacaktir.

The well-established mechanic within videogames which permits players to respawn immediately after an untimely death and try again is often characterised as definitive of the medium. Players become accustomed to the promise, and perhaps inevitability, of their ultimate victory. There are games, however, which do not operate according to this repeat-to-win formula. So-called “endless runners,” for instance, are, in truth, anything but. Players begin each play-through knowing that, no matter how many times they play and how proficient they become, they will always lose. Thus does the zombie runner Into the Dead require us to adopt what the environmental philosopher Val Plumwood called a “prey perspective,” an awareness that we are not destined always to be dominant, but are, in fact, merely food: juicy, nourishing bodies for others.

Environmental philosophers appear to have static understandings of human culture. Be they nature/culture monists, dualists, or something in-between, the relationship between ‘culture per se’ and ‘nature’ is not understood to be subject to shifts. I argue that this way of modelling the relation leads to anti-ecological social acquiescence. If we understand nature/culture relations as allowing for the possibility of rupture,  however, then monism, dualism, and intermediary/supernumerary positions can be seen in temporal and contingent terms. A metaphysic of crisis allows us to consider whether some forms of culture have gone bad while others may not have. Ultimately this leads to a kind of discomfort, for it undermines certain penchants for environmental pragmatism and exposes a radicality at the root of otherwise mainstream naturalistic environmental ethics.

Val Plumwood's 1993 paper, "The politics of reason: towards a feminist logic" (hence-forth POR) attempted to set the stage for what she hoped would begin serious feminist exploration into formal logic-not merely its historical abuses, but, more importantly, its potential uses. This work offers us: (1) a case for there being feminist logic; and (2) a sketch of what it should resemble. The former goal of Plumwood's paper encourages feminist theorists to reject anti-logic feminist views. The paper's latter aim is even more challenging. Plumwood's critique of classical negation (and classical logic) as a logic of domination asks us to recognize that particular logical systems are weapons of oppression. Against anti-logic feminist theorists, Plumwood argues that there are other logics besides classical logic, such as relevant logics, which are suited for feminist theorizing. Some logics may oppress while others may liberate. We provide details about the sources and context for her rejection of classical logic and motivation for promoting relevant logics as feminist. We begin with a discussion of various senses of "feminist logic" in order to position Plumwood's understanding of it with precision. Next, we examine Plumwood's motivation for promoting non-classical logic and connecting it with political ideology, contex-tualizing her ideas within the work of the Canberra Logic Group working in Australia. Unpacking what Plumwood means when she claims that classical logic is a logic of domination and her critique of classical negation requires examination of an overlooked, earlier publication, "Negation and contradiction" (NAC), co-authored with Richard Routley. This paper provides a much fuller account of classical negation and the liberation offered by relevant logics. We attempt to clarify their views through a perspective of "relevant

Normative discourses about higher education institutions may
perpetuate stereotypes about institutions. Few studies explore student
perceptions of universities and how transformative pedagogical
interventions in university classrooms may address institutional
stereotypes. Using Plumwood’s notion of dualism, this qualitative
study analyses unchallenged stereotypes about students’ own and
another university during an inter-institutional collaborative research
and teaching and learning project. The project was conducted over
3 years and 282 psychology, social work and occupational therapy
students from a historically black and white institution in South
Africa, participated in the study. Both black and white students from
differently placed higher education institutions display prejudices
and stereotypes of their own and other institutions, pointing to the
internalisation and pervasiveness of constructions and hegemonic
discourses such as whiteness and classism. It is important to engage
with subjugated student knowledges, in the context of transformative
pedagogical practices, to disrupt dominant views and cultivate
processes of inclusion in higher education.

In this paper I critically reflect on the sustainability potential of biomimetic technologies by focusing on writings of the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. Although I agree with Sloterdijk that biomimetic technologies - or, as he calls them, 'homeotechnologies' - offer specific opportunities for a more peaceful co-existence of humans and nature, I will argue that his reflections are based on a series of problematic assumptions. I will conclude by arguing that the 'homeotechnological turn' can be effected only if it is developed within the context of a different ecological ethos from the technocentric ethos that currently dominates our attitude towards nature.

Parmenides  has  been  criticized  as  denying  and  disparaging  human  diversity; anathematizing sex, reproduction, and bodies; supporting the suppres­sion of women and others outside the Greek ruling classes; and silencing important concerns by excluding certain kinds of thought and reasoning from philosophical and civil discourse. I argue that the fragments do not support these charges, and that  instead  Parmenides  provides  ideas  and  ways  of  thinking  that  subvert  the  kinds of doctrine and ways of philosophizing he is accused of promoting.