Val Plumwood

Val Plumwood (11 August 1939 – 29 February 2008) was an Australian philosopher and ecofeminist known for her work on anthropocentrism. From the 1970s, she played a central role in the development of radical ecosophy. Working mostly as an independent scholar, she held positions at the University of Tasmania, North Carolina State University, the University of Montana, and the University of Sydney, and at the time of her death was Australian Research Council Fellow at the Australian National University. She is included in Routledge's Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment.

Plumwood spent her academic life arguing against the "hyperseparation" of humans from the rest of nature and what she called the "standpoint of mastery"; a reason/nature dualism in which the natural world—including women, indigenous people, and non-humans—is subordinated.

Between 1972 and 2012, she authored or co-authored four books and over 100 papers on logic, metaphysics, the environment, and ecofeminism. Her Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993) is regarded as a classic, and her Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason (2002) was said to have marked her as "one of the most brilliant environmental thinkers of our time". The Fight for the Forests (1973), co-authored with the philosopher Richard Sylvan, Plumwood's second husband, was described in 2014 as the most comprehensive analysis of Australian forestry to date.

Plumwood's posthumously published The Eye of the Crocodile (2012) emerged from her survival of a saltwater crocodile attack in 1985, first described in her essay "Being Prey" (1996).

Early life and education

Plumwood was born Val Morell to parents whose home was a shack with walls made of hessian sacks dipped in cement. After obtaining a land grant, her parents had set up home in the Terrey Hills, near the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, north of Sydney. Her father worked at first as a hod carrier, then started a small poultry farm. According to Martin Mulligan and Stuart Hill, the beauty of the area made up for Plumwood's lack of toys. They moved again to Kogarah in southern Sydney. Offered a Commonwealth Scholarship to attend the University of Sydney, she turned it down for a Teacher's Scholarship instead, also at Sydney—her parents wanted her to do something practical—although she soon became interested in philosophy.

Plumwood's studies were interrupted in 1958 by her brief marriage to a fellow student, John Macrae, when she was 18 and pregnant, a marriage that had ended in divorce by the time Plumwood was 21. Plumwood resumed her studies at Sydney in 1962, this time with a Commonwealth Scholarship to study philosophy, and graduated with first-class honours in 1964. They spent time travelling in the Middle East and UK, which included living near a beech forest in Scotland for a year.

Commencing in 1975 the couple spent several years building their home near Plumwood Mountain on the coast, 75 km from Canberra, an octagonal stone house on a 120-hectare clearing in a rainforest. They divorced in 1981. Plumwood continued living in the house and changed her name again after the divorce, this time naming herself after the mountain, which in turn is named after the Eucryphia moorei tree. Routley changed his surname to Sylvan ("of the forest") when he remarried in 1983; he died in 1996.

Views Human/nature dualism

Plumwood's major theoretical works are her Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993) and her Environmental Culture: the Ecological Crisis of Reason (2002). During a visit to Kakadu National Park, Plumwood had camped at the East Alligator ranger station and borrowed a four-metre-long fibreglass canoe from Greg Miles, the park ranger, to explore the East Alligator Lagoon. The canoe is now in the National Museum of Australia.

The experience gave Plumwood a glimpse of the world "from the outside", a world that was indifferent to her and would continue without her: "an unrecognisably bleak order" – "As my own narrative and the larger story were ripped apart, I glimpsed a shockingly indifferent world in which I had no more significance than any other edible being. The thought This can't be happening to me, I'm a human being. I am more than just food! was one component of my terminal incredulity. It was a shocking reduction, from a complex human being to a mere piece of meat. Reflection has persuaded me that not just humans but any creature can make the same claim to be more than just food. We are edible, but we are also much more than edible."

Val Plumwood Memorial Lecture Series in Australia The Val Plumwood Memorial Lectures Series is biennial series of lectures that mark the contribution of Plumwood to the field of animal studies. The lecture series has consisted of the following speakers:

Deborah Bird Rose (2009) Freya Matthews (2011) Kate Rigby (2013) Anat Pick (2015) Fiona Probyn-Rapsey (2017) Patrice Jones (2019) Richard Twine (2022) Dr. Erika Cudworth (2024)

The 2024 event was organized by the Austalasian Animal Studies Association.

Selected works Books

(2012) The Eye of the Crocodile, edited by Lorraine Shannon. Canberra: Australian National University E Press. (2002) Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. Abingdon: Routledge. (1993) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London and New York: Routledge. (1982) with Richard Routley, Robert K. Meyer, Ross T. Brady. Relevant Logics and Their Rivals. Atascadero, CA: Ridgewood Publications. (1973) with Richard Routley. The Fight for the Forests: The Takeover of Australian Forests for Pines, Wood Chips and Intensive Forestry. Canberra: Australian National University.

Articles

(2009) "Nature in the Active Voice" . Australian Humanities Review, 46, May 2009. (2003) "The Fight for the Forests Revisited" , paper delivered to Win, Lose or Draw: the Fight for the Forests? A Symposium, Old Canberra House, Australian National University, 14 October 2003. (2003) "The Politics of Reason: Toward a Feminist Logic", in Rachel Joffe Falmagne, Marjorie Hass (eds.), Representing Reason: Feminist Theory and Formal Logic. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. (2003) "Feminism and the Logic of Alterity", in Falmagne and Hass, op cit. (1995) "Human vulnerability and the experience of being prey," Quadrant, 29(3), March 1995, pp. 29–34; also as "Being Prey", Terra Nova, 1(3), 1996. (1993) "The politics of reason: Towards a feminist logic". Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 71(4), pp. 436–462. (1991) "Gaia. Good for Women?", Refractory Girl, 41, pp. 11–16; also in American Philosophical Association on Women and Philosophy, April 1991. (1991) "Ethics and Instrumentalism: a response to Janna Thompson". Environmental Ethics, 13, pp. 139–149. (1991) "Nature, Self, and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism". Hypatia, 6(1), March 1991, pp. 3–27. (1989) "Do we need a sex/gender distinction?" Radical Philosophy, 51, pp. 2–11. (1988) "Women, humanity and nature". Radical Philosophy, 48, pp. 16–24, reprinted in S. Sayers, P. Osborne (eds.). Feminism, Socialism and Philosophy: A Radical Philosophy Reader. London: Routledge, 1990. (1986) "Ecofeminism: An Overview and Discussion of Positions and Arguments". Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 64, supplement 1, pp. 120–138. (1986) with Richard Routley. "The 'Fight for the Forests' affair", in Brian Martin et al. (eds.). Intellectual Suppression. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, pp. 70–73. (1985) with Richard Routley. "Negation and contradiction" . Revista Colombiana de Matematicas, 19, pp. 201–231. (1982) "World rainforest destruction – the social factors". Ecologist, 12(1), pp. 4–22. (1980) "Social theories, self management, and environmental problems", in D. S. Mannison, M. A. McRobbie & Richard Routley (eds.). Environmental Philosophy. Canberra: Australian National University, pp. 217–332. (1980) with Richard Routley. "Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics", in D. Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley (eds.). Environmental Philosophy. Canberra: Australian National University Department of Philosophy Monograph Series RSSS, pp. 96–189. (1978) with Richard Routley. "Nuclear energy and obligations to the future". Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 21(1–4), pp. 133–179. (1975) "Critical notice of Passmore's Man's Responsibility for Nature". Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 53(2), pp. 171–185. (1972) with Richard Routley. "The Semantics of First Degree Entailment". Noûs, 6(4), November, pp. 335–359.