Val Plumwood (11 August 1939 – c. 28 February 2008), formerly Val Routley, was an Australian ecofeminist intellectual and activist, who was prominent in the development of radical ecosophy from the early 1970s through the remainder of the 20th century.[1]
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Plumwood was active in movements to preserve biodiversity and halt deforestation from the 1960s on, and helped establish the trans-discipline known as ecological humanities. She married philosopher Richard Routley, and then separated in the early 1980s. Richard, who died in 1996, changed his name to Richard Sylvan in 1983, and Val then changed her name to Plumwood.
At the time of her death, Plumwood was Australian Research Council Fellow at the Australian National University, and in the past had held positions at North Carolina State University, the University of Montana, and the University of Sydney.
She was found dead on 1 March 2008 and is thought to have died about 28 February. The cause of death was originally thought to be a snakebite or spider bite, but her death was confirmed to be the result of natural causes.[2]
Plumwood's major theoretical works are her 1993 Feminism and the Mastery of Nature and her 2002 Environmental Culture: the Ecological Crisis of Reason. She has elaborated her views in four books and over one hundred papers.[3]
Plumwood critiques what she describes as "the standpoint of mastery," a set of views of the self and its relationship to the other associated with sexism, racism, capitalism, colonialism, and the domination of nature. She draws on feminist theory to analyze this standpoint, which she argues involves "seeing the other as radically separate and inferior, the background to the self as foreground, as one whose existence is secondary, derivative or peripheral to that of the self or center, and whose agency is denied or minimized."[4] She identifies the human/nature dualism as part of a series of problematic, gendered dualisms, including "human/animal, mind/body... male/female, reason/emotion, [and] civilized/primitive."[4] She argues for abandoning these dualisms, and correspondingly the traditional Western notion of a rational, unitary, Cartesian self, in favor of an ecological ethic based on empathy for the other. In doing so, she rejects not only the "hyperseparation" between the self and the other, and between humanity and nature, involved in the hegemonic view, but also postmodern alternatives based on a respect for absolute difference and deep ecological alternatives based on a merging of the self and the world, in favor of a view that recognizes and grounds ethical responsibility in both the continuities and the divisions between the subject and the object, and between people and the environment.[4]
Val Plumwood was a vegetarian.[5]
In her 2000 essay "Being Prey", Val described her near-death experience that occurred during a solo canoe trip she took in 1985 in Australia's rugged bush territory. She was alone on the river and saw what appeared to be a "floating stick" that she soon realized was a crocodile. Before she could get ashore the crocodile attacked her canoe and in her attempt to leap ashore to avoid being capsized, Val was seized by the crocodile. The essay describes the "death rolls" the croc put her through several times, though miraculously she escaped to crawl nearly two miles to a rescue point. From this experience, Val gained a perspective that humans are part of the food chain as well, and that our culture's human-centric view is disconnected from the reality that we also are food for animals.[6]
By Val Plumwood
About Val Plumwood