Ethics and the Environment, 4(1):79-84 0 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. ISSN: 10856633 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

Sister Woman Chainsaw II: Reading Chris Cuomo’s Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic

Kim Hall of Flourishing It is December, and it is cold. I am standing outside, but my

attention is focused on the light shining through cracks in the barn door. I can hear men shouting, exclaiming, laughing. A voice, rising above the whistles and shouts, hollers, “Get him!” I hear one woman cry, “Stop it! This is cruel! The poor things!” I move closer, but part of me wants to turn and walk away. The thought of what is hap- pening inside the barn upsets and disgusts me, and I’m not sure I will be able to stom- ach what I’ll see if I go inside. Another part of me is afraid because many of the men are drunk, and I don’t like the idea of a group of drunk men laughing and cheering excitedly at a violent spectacle. Still, another part of me is curious because I know some of the men who are there, and I want to witness what their behavior is like in this male-centered space.

In this space, one’s gender identity is defined by one’s reaction to and participa- tion in the spectacle. The men prove that they are men by laughing or chuckling ner- vously as the two roosters slash each other with pieces of sharp wire attached to their feet. The men prove their manhood by laughing and cheering as two men stand in the fenced-infighting area to prevent the two roosters from escaping. The fight will be en- couraged until one or both of the roosters is either dead or mortally wounded. In this space, many of the women prove that they are women by staying far away from the barn. Or, if some women happen to be inside the barn, they cover their eyes, cling to their boyfriends or husbands, express pity for the roosters, and exclaim that this is a horrible thing to do to these animals. The men (even those who don’t necessarily sup- port cockfighting) just laugh.

I am pushed toward the barn by my feeling of moral outrage and my sense of eth- ical and political responsibility to the wives, girlfriends, mothers, daughters of the

Direct all correspondence to: Kim Hall, Department of Philosophy and Humanities, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28608-0001; E-mail: hallkiQappstate.edu

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men inside the barn, and to the roosters who have no escape, who did not choose to be the evening’s entertainment. At the same time, I don’t want to be compliant in this cruelty. What will it mean for me to watch the cockfight if I cannot prevent the fight from happening? There are at least twenty men and perhaps five women in the barn. In the end, it is my rage at the men’s laughter that persuades me to go inside.

Standing in the doorway of the barn I see a gutted deer hanging upside down to allow its blood to flow on the ground. There are men standing on bales of hay trying to get a better view. A horrible wailing, a series of prolonged, faint cries comes from one of the roosters. The men continue to laugh. Then, one woman who is obviously drunk says, “This is cruel!” The rooster continues to wail as one man says, “Some- body had better get her out of here!”

I am standing, watching the men, the women, the roosters. I am watching because I don’t want this violence to pass unnoticed. I feel the need to witness this, to take note of the rooster’s death. Men tease the women, laugh at them, protect them from the sight of blood, put their arms around them. But, I want to see. I want to know. I want to remember how the men (especially the men I know) behave. Ifeel sick. My presence in the barn seems to make the men I know slightly uncomfortable. At the same time, these men seem to take some pleasure in teasing me about how I asked for it, how I shouldn’t be there if it’s going to upset me. And, like most male flesh-eaters I’ve en- countered, they seem to get some pleasure at the sight of the vegetarian woman who expresses disgust or anguish at the sight of cruelty to animals and/or the eating of non-human animals. Still, I remain standing. Then, a man walks past me clutching the wailing rooster. Once outside, he grabs the rooster’s neck and violently shakes. The cries stop, it’s over in a second. He places the rooster’s body in a cage while another man looks at me and jokes about how someone will probably eat that one later.

I am stunned and sickened. As everyone leaves the barn, I linger and wonder what I could have done differently. Did I do the right thing? What would the right thing be? I imagine my friends and wonder what they would say or do. Everyone at this party is white, and the majority are working class and proudly southern. I decide that many of my friends would probably be afraid to be in this space. The only reason I am here at all is because some of my relatives are hosting the party. I consider that maybe it was good that I did not simply, problematically look the other way. Still, I am troubled.

In her book, Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing, Chris Cuomo (1998) carefully and provocatively articulates the problems and meth- odologies of ecological feminist ethics and activism. She situates her discussion in re- lation to the limitations of much of Western ethical theory and the problems of an ecofeminist ethic that maintains allegiances to Universal Natural Woman. For Chris Cuomo, ecological feminism is distinguished from ecofeminism by its understanding of all categories of identity (such as woman and nature) as deriving meaning from his- torical and material realities. For an ecological feminist, the domination of women, poor people, and people of color and the domination of nonhuman nature are interre- lated not because they share certain essential natures. Rather, marginalized humans

Reading Chris Cuomo 81

and nonhuman nature are interrelated because they are similarly situated in the discur- sive universe of white, male, western hegemony as “Other” (p. 115). In drawing atten- tion to the construction of meanings attributed to human and nonhuman nature, Cuomo is able to move discussions of moral consideration of nonhuman beings from a tired focus on the similarities and differences between humans and nonhumans to- ward an awareness that respect for nonhuman beings requires paying attention to the ways in which they are constructed as nature (p. 102). Throughout her book, Chris Cuomo argues that ecological feminist ethics and activism must take as its point of departure a recognition of the discursive and material interdependence of human and nonhuman beings (p. 99).

As Chris Cuomo notes in her analysis, one of the challenges facing ecological feminists is the creation of spaces in which to address and live nature-woman connec- tions in ways that do not rely on purity, in ways that are not essentialist. She writes, “As scores of feminist theorists are currently working to maintain the feminist subject in the face of the demise of universal woman, ecological feminists want to claim a space in which to discuss the connections among whatever gets labeled ‘natural’ and human (women, people of color, the poor) who tend to be discursively, practically, and conceptually associated with the natural, and whose association with nature is detrimental to them”(p. 115). Ignoring or dismissing connections among humans and nonhuman beings as essentialist does not change the fact that lived experience is shaped by these material and discursive connections. In order to promote flourishing in herself and other beings, an ecological feminist must begin not only with the mere recognition of the interdependence among beings. Rather, an ecological feminist must also claim, inhabit, and negotiate spaces between nature/culture.

It is Chris Cuomo’s desire to understand how to live life as an ecological feminist, how to bridge ecological feminist ethics and activism, that leads her to questions con- cerning the possibility of ecological feminist identities. And, for Cuomo, the possibil- ity of lived ecological feminist identities will remain unrealized without images which make living one’s life as an ecological feminist meaningful. Cuomo stresses the need for “[iImages to encourage stretching into an ethic that both challenges and melds with my sense of myself here and now: body and mind, cultural product and main- stream outsider, intellectual and naked giggler”(p. 82). In her search for inspiration, for images of renegade ecological feminist ways of being in the world, Chris Cuomo creates Sisterwomanchainsaw.

Sisterwomanchainsaw is a multiplicitous being who, though troubled in her mul- tiplicity, summons the strength and courage necessary for her decisions to act in a messy, complex world. For Cuomo and for me, Sisterwomanchainsaw is an inspira- tion, a conception of embodied feminist flourishing, creativity, and resistance. Sister- womanchainsaw makes visible the possibility of acting responsibly in the midst of un- certainty. She has dynamic charm. And, importantly, she is neither a nice nor a pretty girl (Cuomo, 1998, p. 85; DiFranco, 1995).

The story of Sisterwomanchainsaw is located in the “Interlude” of Feminism and Ecological Communities. When I first heard Chris Cuomo present this chapter at a

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conference, she playfully announced that ‘interlude’ means “there’s no argument here!” Given the fact that she was speaking at a meeting of the Midwest Society of Women in Philosophy, her statement sparked much laughter! It makes sense to me that Sisterwomanchainsaw is found in the interlude, a space between. Sisterwoman- chainsaw exists on the edges of various worlds, realities, categories. She inhabits the spaces between nature/culture, humans/machines, human/animal bodies, gender and racial formations. For Chris Cuomo, Sisterwomanchainsaw provides a much-needed alternative to Donna Haraway’s feminist mythic figure of the Cyborg, while maintain- ing a self-reflexive and critical relation to the limitations of “a politics based in iden- tity”(Cuomo, 1998, p. 82; Haraway, 1991; Minh-Ha, 1989, p. 76). As Cuomo notes, while Haraway’s cyborg is “an instructive, motivating myth and the symbolic embod- iment of a renegade feminist perspective that deconstructs domination and breaks ta- boos that maintain dualisms, she remains fragmented, without any sense of loyalty to others, without connectedness”(Cuomo, 1998, pp. 83-89). Because Sisterwoman- chainsaw’s actions and self-understanding are infused with a sense of her connected- ness to other beings, she provides a more helpful model of ecological feminist identity and resistance.

Rather than reject all claims to identities in an attempt to be nonessentialist, Cuomo stresses the need for complex identities to motivate and inform ecological feminist ethics and activism. Her understanding of the possibility of these complex identities is influenced by Maria Lugones’s conception of a multiplicitious self, a self who inhabits many worlds at once and who struggles with the implications of her multiplicity for her living in the world (Lugones, 1994; 1990; 1987). Understanding oneself as a multiplicitious and embodied socio-ecological being informs, motivates, and directs subjectivity’ in contexts of oppression (Cuomo, 1998, p. 86; Lugones, 1997). For Chris Cuomo, meaningful action in the world stems from an understanding of identities as located in historical, social, and material realities (Cuomo, 1998, p. 86).

The story of Sisterwomanchainsaw begins with two women who are walking in the woods in late Fall. Both women are enjoying each other and the beautiful colors of the trees and the sky. However, their delight in each other and this place is suddenly interrupted by a gunshot in the distance. The women become afraid, remember it’s hunting season, and race out of the woods. As they hurry back to their truck, the women talk about the Klan chasing black men in the woods, about how one of them learned to shoot a gun, about a brother shot by a man who thought his brother was a deer. When the friends reach their truck, they reach for the chainsaw, start it, and let it roar, hoping to alert the deer. After they switch off the chainsaw, the women talk about how deer who are scared may not be as careful as they might otherwise be. They wonder if they did the right thing, but despite the impurity of their resistance to hunting as sport, both women are comforted by the awareness that they did some- thing. The women acted, they resisted (Cuomo, 1998, pp. 89-90). Cuomo’s story of Sisterwomanchainsaw reminds me of my experience at the cockfight.

Sisterwomanchainsaw is an image of how to promote flourishing given our locat- edness in oppressive, chaotic contexts. In telling the story of Sisterwomanchainsaw,

Reading Chris Cuomo 83

Chris Cuomo provides a way of thinking about how ecological feminists can promote the flourishing of ourselves and other human and nonhuman beings. I know whenever I walk in the woods, I am inspired and motivated by the image of Sisterwomanchain- saw grabbing her chainsaw from the back of her truck, alerting deer, and always ask- ing herself if she did the right thing.

Feminists need images like Sisterwomanchainsaw because they provide insight into the possibilities of resistance without romanticization. As bell hooks (1990) notes in Yearning: Race, Gender, -and Cultural Politics, resistance requires opposition to domination in all its forms, but it also requires the creation of different habits of be- ing, transgressive ways of living in the world (hooks, 1990, pp. 149-50). Sisterwom- anchainsaw is an ecological feminist image of resistance that provides Chris Cuomo with a model of ecological feminist identity, flourishing and resistance that “does not rest on purity” (Cuomo, 1998, p. 84). The image of Sisterwomanchainsaw inspires feminists to shift ways of thinking about and interacting with human and nonhuman beings.

In many ways, Sisterwomanchainsaw reminds me of Hothead Paisan, Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist. Hothead Paisan is Diane DiMassa’s comic representation of a les- bian avenger, a dyke who acts in solidarity with all who are oppressed. Hothead has changed into a wolf, and her arms have been known to turn into chainsaws (DiMassa, 1995; 1993). Like Sisterwomanchainsaw, Hothead is an image of feminist resistance that does not rest on purity. Hothead is violent when women are not supposed to be violent, and Hothead expresses her anger at men who harm and limit women when it is unacceptable and frequently unsafe for women to do this in the world. Hothead Pai- san exists alongside Sisterwomanchainsaw as an impure, multiplicitous, mythic fig- ure. And, as Bettina Aptheker notes, such figures of female strength, empowerment, and resistance are powerful historical forces whether or not they exist in the world (Aptheker, 1989, p. 134). The truth and force of images like Sisterwomanchainsaw, Hothead Paisan, and Fa Mu Lan (the legendary Chinese woman warrior who inspires Maxine Hong Kingston in The Woman Warrior) exist in their ‘power to remind’ women that resistance is possible and need not be pure (Aptheker, 1989, p. 127; King- ston, 1975, p. 20). These images encourage women to act, to change, to survive, and to participate in the creation of a world where the flourishing of all beings is a reality. Images of resistance have always served this purpose for those who are oppressed (Aptheker, 1989, p. 134). The image of Sisterwomanchainsaw is powerful because it provides ecological feminists with insight into what is not yet but could be.

NOTE

1. My decision to use “subjectivity” here rather than “agency” is influenced by my reading of Maria Lugones’s 1997 unpublished paper, “Streetwalker Theorizing.” Lugones argues that the notion of moral agency does not adequately describe what it means for one who is oppressed to act in a resistant way. An agent has access to various options and, through a process of delibera- tion, decides how to respond. Subjectivity, on the other hand, more accurately describes the ac-

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tions of those who are oppressed, who act in socially and politically restricted spaces, who do what they can with what is available to them. For Lugones, a subject is one who resists in con- texts of oppression.

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Lugones, M. (1987). Playfulness, ‘world’-traveling, and loving perception. Hypatia 2(2):3-l 9. Minh-Ha, T.T. (1989). Woman, native, other: Writing postcoloniality and feminism. Bloomington:

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