Series 5 - 3.9.24 New Moon 🌑 Contemporary Ecofeminisms recovering the wands of faerie godmothers amid the shipwreck of 5th Industrial Automation.

Exiting the eye of a storm, navigating from Northern star within, in ☲Fireside☲ series 5, Jo Pollitt, Nancy Mauro-Flude and Leanda Mason share a glimpse into the Contemporary Ecofeminist Education (CEE) research project.

By wading through the legacies of ecofeminism, in conversation with ecofeminist philosopher Patsy Hallen, in South Yunderup, Western Australia, who led “Environmental Philosophy and Earth Education“ communally designed bush schools at the end of last century. The prolific set of experiential research pedaogies delivered by Patsy Hallen in the context of Australia’s first ‘Environmental Ethics’ (1981) and ‘Ecofeminism’ (1991) courses at Murdoch University included a number of exquisitely curated hefty course readers. In a bid to “situate these interdisciplinary knowledges within the direct experiencing of a more-than-human world” (Hallen, 2000, p. 153) to accompany the extensive field.[1]

Currently in phase 2, CEE investigates, analyses and responds to these legacies, we seek to expand the syllabus to reflect contemporary concerns, including the explicit recognition of Southern Oceanic Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS), as fundamental to the transdisciplinary research acts we perform in improvised webs of relation.

On these desolate shores where the shipwreck of the planetary catastrophe has cast us, we pick up the pieces of the wreckage and recover tote bags filled with pickles, plumbs, rummage through baskets of wands lovingly handcrafted from driftwood.

Ecofeminism Goes Bush Patsy Hallen
Purnululu Bungle Bungle Range Ecofeminism Goes Bush Patsy Hallen

“Being-there will allow subtle happenings that claim us” Patsy Hallen (2000). Series 5 - 3.9.24 @17hrs 5pm AEST | 15hrs 3pm AWST | 08.00 CEST | 09.00hrs GMT+1 | or Your timezone here. To attend Register on a low-traffic announcement list. A video link is shared shortly before the ☲fireside☲ talk commences via email.

The CEE Project is a contemporary syllabus for ecophilosophies of practice, addressing complex issues cooperatively, for intergenerational communities to learn, expand and build on. Besides cocreating a collaborative repository of open source content, nanocreds, and digital anchors (A/V, stills, scores, field notes) collected on a codesigned web-to-print archive). Together, we ask: What frameworks, theories and methodologies activate, support, hinder, reveal and/or erase?

Curiously, it is often the uncharismatic yet compelling elements of visceral philosophies that provide pathways to perceiving the multitude of wisdoms, intermediaries and clandestine actors that the researchers of CEE learn through, with and from.

longitudinal conversations addressing complex issues cooperatively
longitudinal conversations addressing complex issues cooperatively

Patsy Hallen states “As a result of some work I did in ecofeminism…I received a grant from – a fairy godmother – who wished to remain anonymous”. Guided by the communally designed bush school The Kurrabup Manifesto [1] implementing the “wish to encourage certain recognitions and remembrances: to own up to conflict, suffering and death, to recognize their role in the web of life, to challenge them when appropriate and to wisely negotiate them when not; and to remember the often erased histories of past generations (both human and non-human), to honour the lives that were often sacrificed to give us the present and to ensure that. these precious gifts are passed on”(Hallen, 2000, p. 156).

[1^]The Kurrabup Manifesto (The Bush School, South Coast of Western Australia, May 1997)

We recognise that:

  1. Earth is the ground of philosophy.
  2. Philosophy should foster the love of wisdom and a cooperative search for the good life.
  3. Good environmental philosophy should aim to provide ecologically self-reflexive practices and ecological literacy, attuning to the planet as part of a dialogue with place, presence and biosphere.
  4. Philosophy is lived through rather than despite the body, and should be expressed by social and political actions that can challenge the dominant presuppositions of societies.
  5. One of our central metaphysical purposes is to acknowledge our belonging within the eco-community (instead of seeking to own it), to relate communicatively with it, and discover its responsiveness.
  6. One of our central moral purposes is to supplant the dominant con- ception of human/nature relations as based upon a hierarchy in which all other species service humanity, and creatively to serve the entire earth community.
  7. One of our central epistemological principles is that a complete knowledge of nature as a whole and of its members will never be available to us and that we require humility, openness, and a beginner’s mind in our interactions with the universe.
  8. One of our central political purposes is to understand, oppose and resist oppression, whether it is of race, class, gender, species or other in form, and whether economic, political, cultural, or biological in character.
  9. Honour and remembrance are due to the forgotten and erased histories of human and non-human generations who were tested and often sacrificed to give us the present, and whose gift must be passed on to future earth generations.
  10. We acknowledge that conflict, suffering, and death also have their role in the web of life and need to be challenged where appropriate and wisely negotiated when not.
  11. We aim to respect our differences and celebrate one another and all of life through education, a cultivation of playfulness and creative participation.
  12. The members of Earth Philosophy Australia are entitled to discuss, revise and augment these principles as seems to them suitable.

Patsy Hallen (2000) Ecofeminism Goes Bush, Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 5, Spring.

Environmental Philosophy and Earth Education
Environmental Philosophy and Earth Education