Žižek reading (pgs 37-47) & Environmental "Feminism"

I was recently introduced to Žižek about a year ago, and since then I have been voraciously devouring his work non-stop. In fact, I chose him as a subject for the culture exploration team project. Anyway, after having completed the readings for his book “Looking Awry”, what particularly interested me was his argument that nature, traditionally conceived as a harmonious “natural” phenomenon, is in fact intrinsically turbulent, violent and chaotic.

Before this reading, I have noticed that there is a trend within environmentalist discourse to absorb a kind of pseudo-feminist (rather stereotypical, and even sexist) ideology, in that nature is characterized as a passive victim of violence perpetuated by culture, traditionally (and by that, I mean stereotypically) regarded as belonging to the domain of masculinity. I have overheard radical environmentalists claim, for instance, that humanity is “raping the earth.” We are thus urged to remedy this by becoming cognizant of our corrupt and violent behaviour. This reflects Žižek’s observation that humanity perceives nature as an idealized site of perfection in contrast to the inevitable corruption of human society. In fact, it contains a kind of spiritual nostalgia for a paradisiacal environment before the “fall of man.”

On another somewhat unrelated note, our views on the environment tend to coincide and/or reflect our conceptions of archetypes of women: e.g. woman as a generous/life-giving/domineering Mother figure, etc. Many other examples of these can be found in Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex,” specifically in the chapter entitled "Myths: Dreams, Fears, Idols (139-198)." These ideas are sometimes adopted by environmentalists in order to compel people to develop an emotional connection with the earth in order to inspire guilt towards our environmentally-unfriendly ways, e.g. “The earth is our home which welcomes us with open arms (generous Mother), however it punishes us for our irresponsible behaviour (domineering Mother) through natural disasters, etc.” This also reflects a particularly interesting passage from the Žižek reading:

"our knowledge of the universe, the way we symbolize the real, is ultimately always bound, determined by the paradoxes proper to language as such; the split into 'masculine' and 'feminine,' the impossibility of a 'neutral' language not marked by this difference, imposes itself because symbolization as such is by definition structured around a certain central impossibility, a deadlock that is nothing but a structuring of this impossibility. Not even the purest subatomic physics can escape this fundamental impasse of symbolization." (Žižek 47)

Anyway, I hope this somewhat disorganized post can spark some debate. Here are some questions related to the ideas of this post: 1) Do you notice any evidence of gender stereotyping in environmentalist discourse? If so, how are men and women conceived? 2) Do you notice any evidence of pseudo-spiritual ideals in environmentalist discourse? Does it contradict or complement the traditionally secular nature of liberal (left-wing) politics, which seems to have absorbed environmentalist ideals into its ideology?

Don’t feel like you have to answer only these questions – if you have a random thought related to the ideas I’ve posted, feel free to post them in the comments section.

P.S.: Being my first attempt at a post, I worry a bit that this post does not fulfill the requirements for the blog assignment - I know that the issues pertaining to environmentalism, i.e. it's discourse, the ecological crisis it seeks to remedy, etc. are more political than 'every day life', i.e. 'banal' or 'popular'. However, I thought it may be worth posting because of the recent and ongoing popularity of the 'green' trend, which seems to be influencing a variety of aspects of Western society, to the extent that, ironically, it seems to have been heavily commercialized/commodified. This latter idea is nicely elaborated on in one of Žižek's lectures entitled "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce" (argument begins at approx. 1:45) in which he explains how consumerism has exploited the philanthropic tendency of bourgeois society, i.e. through the purchase of a Starbucks coffee, you not only get a tangible product (the coffee) but a certain amount of your money goes towards a 'Save the Rainforest' charity (I don't actually know if this specific example is true, but there are numerous similar real life examples.)

Therefore, because this environmentalist movement has been significantly absorbed into 'popular/consumer culture,' what specifically interested me was how its conception of the world as a gendered space influences every day life for its citizens.

Sources:

de Beauvoir, Simone. 1952. The Second Sex. 139-198.
Žižek, Slavoj. 2010. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce.
Žižek, Slavoj. 1992. Looking Awry: 37-47.