Hi ECOFEMers:
Since Merchant's book is so important, I thought I'd post this
review. Please note that it's part of a Retrospective Review Series
which pays special attention to books of note in the 20th century.
The review is x-posted with permission.
Stefanie Rixecker
ECOFEM Coordinator
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Date sent: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 21:41:48 -0400
From: Cynthia Richardson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Review: Armitage on Merchant's "Death of Nature"
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Send reply to: H-NET List for Environmental History
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H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [EMAIL PROTECTED] (September 2000)
(cross-post)
Carolyn Merchant _The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the
Scientific Revolution_ New York: HarperCollins, 1980. 348 pp.
Bibliographical references. ISBN 0-06-250595-5.
Reviewed for H-Ideas by Kevin C Armitage
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Department of History, University of
Kansas
A Dialectic of Domination: Carolyn Merchant's _The Death of
Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution_
[Note: This review is part of the H-Ideas Retrospective Reviews
series. This series reviews books published during the
twentieth century which have been deemed to be among the most
important contributions to the field of intellectual history.]
In their classic work _Dialectic of Enlightenment_, German
Critical Theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno argued
that the Western project of enlightened thought -- which they
distinguished from "the Enlightenment" as a historic period --
conflated the technical domination of nature with the social
domination of people. The values of calculation,
quantification, and exchange that form the heart of bourgeois
thinking are essential to social processes that seek to master
nature. Moreover, the drive for domination that Horkheimer and
Adorno found at the core of western reason contained a gendered
dimension. Enlightened man's quest to overcome the primitive
forces of nature demanded that he deploy entrepreneurial power
over men and patriarchal power over women and children.
Horkheimer and Adorno thus argued that critical investigations
into the western project of mastery of nonhuman nature must
recognize the dimensions of human domination intertwined into
the drive to subjugate the green world.
Carolyn Merchant's distinguished text _The Death of Nature:
Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution_ engaged in just
such a critical investigation as it endeavored to reveal the
historic connection between the domination of nature and women.
Merchant explained that her volume sought "to examine the values
associated with the images of women and nature as they relate to
the formation of our modern world and their implications for our
lives today" (p. xxi). The "implications for our lives today"
provided the moral grounding for this work in which Merchant
advocated the need to "reexamine the formation of a world view
and a science that, by reconceptualizing reality as a machine
rather than a living organism, sanctioned the domination of both
nature and women" (p. xxi). The core of the book, then, is a
"broad synthesis" that examined the social and ecological
changes wrought by the new images of nature associated with the
Scientific Revolution. The premodern, organic view of a
feminine natural world gave way to a mechanistic cosmology that
perceived the green world of nature as inert matter, a machine
available to human manipulation.
Some readers will remain skeptical at Merchant's compressed
depiction of a premodern European philosophical outlook that
unified nature and culture; however, Merchant acknowledged the
diversity of premodern thought and that early Europeans
"quarried the mountainsides, altered the landscape, and
overgrazed the hills" (p. 3). Yet Merchant persuasively argued
that the dominant feminine, organic theory of nature prominent
in many ancient systems of knowledge shaped the governing
metaphors that helped regulate human behavior toward the earth.
Thus writers such as the Roman compiler Pliny cautioned against
deep mining, citing earthquakes as Mother Nature's indignation
at such intrusive violations. Moreover, Pliny warned that the
mining of gold corrupted mankind thereby contributing to the
avarice that fueled robberies, murders and wars. Europeans still
followed Pliny's admonitions as late as the sixteenth century,
enough so that a proponent of mining such as Georg Agricola felt
it necessary to refute them in his 1556 work _De Re Metallica_
("On Metals").
Organic conceptions of nature that emphasized interrelationships
and organic unity rather than hierarchy and mastery lent
themselves to social ideologies based upon democratic values.
(Merchant noted that organicism and mechanism later fused in the
form of twentieth-century totalitarianism.) Thus the premodern
connection between women and nature infused utopian thought such
as Tommaso Campanella's 1602 work _City of the Sun_, which
envisioned an organic society characterized by communal sharing
of goods, property and knowledge. Conversely, when popular
images of the green world stressed the disorderly nature of
illnesses, storms and ruined crops, ideologies that emphasized
the need to control both nature and women rose to prominence.
Niccolo Machiavelli's injunction to conquer a wild and feminine
Fortune exemplified a philosophy of domination that encompassed
nature and women. The ideological conflation of social and
natural disorder similarly informed attitudes toward witchcraft.
Merchant argued that, "the disorder symbolized in the macrocosm
by the dissolution of the frame of nature and the uncivilized
wilderness of the new world, in society by the witch who
controlled the forces of nature and the women who overturned its
order...heralded the death of the old order of nature" (p. 148).
The death of the old order of nature came at the hands of the
newly developing capitalist economic system of the sixteenth
century and the mechanistic ideology that sanctioned its worldly
activity. The chief ideologists of the new program were Francis
Bacon and Rene Descartes. Bacon's view that religion and
science were engaged in a mutual effort to compensate for the
damage done to humanity by the expulsion from Paradise valorized
the tendencies toward growth and technological innovation
inherent in early capitalism. Descartes' mechanism furthered
the Baconian program by effectively removing spirit from nature
and the human body, positing that external objects consisted
solely of quantities.
Moreover, Merchant observed that "In France, the rise of the
mechanical world view was coincident with a general tendency
toward central governmental control and the concentration of
power in the hands of the royal ministers" (p. 205). The
relationship between mechanistic philosophy and hierarchical
social orders continued with the abstract materialism of Thomas
Hobbes, who relied upon mechanical models of society to solve
philosophical difficulties associated with disorder in his
_Leviathan_.
After assessing such ideas, Merchant contended that the
mechanistic philosophies of nature which easily associated with
hierarchy and social power "sanctioned the management of both
nature and society"(p. 235). Contemporary examples of
mechanism include the utilitarian conservation movement, which
Merchant characterized as an "adaptation of the rationalizing
tendencies inherent in mechanism applied to the natural
environment" (p. 238). Like its contemporary counterpart,
however, early modern mechanisms spurred countervailing
philosophies such as the vitalism of Anne Conway (1631-1679)
that remained rooted in an organic worldview and articulated no
essential differences between spirit and body. Indeed, Conway,
whose writings exerted a great influence on what Merchant termed
the "dynamic vitalism" of Leibniz, argued for the
interdependence of all creatures under God, unified in a central
spirit that governed all things. Merchant noted the many
philosophical deficiencies of vitalism, yet given contemporary
ecological dilemmas that arise in part from the lack of organic
value systems, concluded that "we might regret that the
mechanists did not take their vitalistic critics more seriously"
(p. 268).
Despite the originality and many successes of Merchant's book,
informed first-time and repeat readers will surely wish to
differ with some of its assertions. Merchant's reconstruction
of a premodern culture that posited an organic and harmonious
nature and culture remains problematic. Her depiction of
historical causality also feels simplified, even if one
acknowledges the need for concise representations of the complex
philosophical traditions that comprise the largest part of her
evidence. Too, other readers will surely quibble with the
interpretations of various figures and her perhaps excessively
ambitious thesis; for example, Merchant's assertion of
connections between mechanism and the social subordination of
women remains somewhat speculative, even to the sympathetic
reader.
Yet twenty years after its initial publication _The Death of
Nature_ continues to impress most readers with the vitality of
its argument and its sophisticated embodiment of the type of
historically and theoretically informed scholarship advocated by
thinkers such as Horkheimer and Adorno. Indeed, the strongest
parts of Merchant's message resonate now more than ever: surely
our current era of capitalist triumphalism and globalization
calls for both ecological analysis and thoughtful criticisms of
positivist models of knowledge. The ethical components of
Merchant's work also continue to demand our attention. Her
implication that holistic ecology can extend democratic
principles toward nonhuman life carries the reader directly into
the wide-ranging moral issues informing the human relationship
with nonhuman nature.
Finally, Merchant's book helped shape many of the core issues of
the two disciplines in which it is firmly canonized.
Environmental historians continue to investigate and debate the
role of ideas in shaping the human relationship with nature,
and, perhaps most importantly, continue to criticize economies
from an ecological perspective. Similarly, ecofeminists have
furthered Merchant's vital investigations into the gendered
interactions of people and nature and her moral concern with
participatory democracy. Such issues remain essential to these
and other disciplines, and thereby ensure the continued
relevance of _The Death of Nature_. Merchants ambitious text,
then, despite its shortcomings, continues to reward both new and
repeat readers because it speaks in a critical and engaging
manner to some of the most pressing intellectual, moral, and
political issues of our time.
Copyright (c) 2000 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work
may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit
is given to the author and the list. For other permission,
please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------- End of forwarded message -------
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Dr. Stefanie S. Rixecker, Senior Lecturer
Environmental Management & Design Division
Lincoln University, Canterbury
PO Box 84
Aotearoa New Zealand
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fax: 64-03-325-3841
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