Abstract

Today many feminists believe we are in a third wave of feminism, one that challenges the idea of dualism itself while recognizing diversity, particularity, and embodiment. By theorizing from the notion of embodiment, recent iterations of feminism are beginning to reweave the specific duality between culture and nature, an especially important endeavor in these environmentally disturbing times. These feminisms, rather than working from established and usually abstract foundational theories, begin from the situated perspectives of different(ing) women. Beyond this general congruence, however, there are several different foci in the feminisms seen as third wave today. In this work, I address the uneven movement from second-wave to third-wave feminism. I discuss three feminisms: youth feminism, postcolonial feminism, and ecofeminism, and the importance of each, in their current expression, to the present form of third-wave feminism. I suggest that while all these feminisms begin to reweave the nature/culture duality by theorizing from the notion of embodiment, ecofeminism is able to make a significant additional contribution in this regard. Besides reclaiming the female body, ecofeminism specifically includes nonhuman nature in its theorizing, an inclusion that enables it to engage in a more thoroughgoing analysis of the nature/culture dualism than other feminisms.

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