Ecofeminism and anti-racist politics in the work of Monica Sj\u04e7\u04e7<\/p>\n
This essay is concerned with how white ecofeminism, which is once again popular, might model actions and behavior that would make the ecofeminist movement more diverse and able to address issues around climate and the preservation of the Earth in such a way that diversity is honored, rather than ignored. For this essay, I propose to focus on the artist and author Monica Sj\u04e7\u04e7, a Swedish woman based in Bristol, England. British Feminism, although also dominated by white women, was from the onset rooted in socialist and Marxist theories, which in turn created an opening for anti-racist work that went beyond consciousness raising. Sj\u04e7\u04e7\u2019s best known book, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (co-authored with Barbara Mor), is not that much different from Gyn\/Ecology. Much of the Goddess herstory in the book is concerned with Southeast Europe and Avebury. What is not there, however, is a discussion, in Lorde\u2019s words, of \u201cnon-european women\u2026as victims and preyers-upon each other.\u201d Instead, the book honors indigenous knowledge and Goddesses from different countries and cultures.<\/p>\n
Sj\u04e7\u04e7\u2019s anti-racist approach to Goddess feminism was informed by her love of the Earth and her belief that caring for the Earth was an extension of honoring all women. In her lifetime, Sj\u00f6\u00f6 witnessed multiple forms of oppression, and came to believe that only a radical feminist revolution that embraced all women would create meaningful change. This change was closely aligned with the human relationship to the landscape, which Sj\u00f6\u00f6 believed was the sacred land of the Mother Goddess. Sj\u00f6\u00f6 was involved with the Greenham Common anti-nuclear protests in the eighties, and later worked with anti-racist activists. Sj\u04e7\u04e7 devoted much of her life making art work that interrogated whiteness by suggesting that all women, no matter their class, race, or religion, were part of the Goddess.<\/p>\n
Sj\u04e7\u04e7\u2019s egalitarian politics sprung from deeply personal reasons. She was the mother of a black son, Leif Sj\u04e7\u04e7-Jubb, who died in her arms after being struck by a car at the age of 14. After Leif\u2019s death, Sj\u04e7\u04e7 was undone by grief, unable to revise the second edition of her book The Great Cosmic Mother, which she co-authored with Barbara Mor. Sj\u04e7\u04e7 rallied, however. In 1989, along with Marianna Chapland and Ros Beuhill, Sj\u04e7\u04e7 founded AMA MAWU, an anti-racist group that protested against the Iraq war, globalization, and GM Foods. In 1993, AMA MAWU organized a conference with workshops against racism run jointly by African Caribbean and \u201cWhite\u201d Caucasian women.<\/p>\n
Sj\u04e7\u04e7\u2019s best known painting, God Giving Birth from 1968, depicts a Goddess with African features, her legs spread wide, pushing a child from her womb. Although framed by a night sky filled with planets, the Goddess seems to be both standing and lying down, a Goddess that remains rooted in the Chthonic Earth, even as Her head is framed by the Celestial Sky. Sj\u04e7\u04e7\u2019s life was one that was lived adjacent to the black and brown women who appeared regularly in her paintings and with whom she sought to achieve common cause.<\/p>\n
Bio: Ecofeminism and anti-racist politics in the work of Monica Sj\u04e7\u04e7 This essay is concerned with how white ecofeminism, which is once again popular, might model actions and behavior that would make the ecofeminist movement more diverse and able to address issues around climate and the preservation of the Earth in such a way that diversity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24650,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18063"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18064,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18063\/revisions\/18064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/span>Jennie Klein is a professor of contemporary art history at Ohio University. Her interests include gender and art theory, contemporary feminist art, and global performance and conceptional art. Dr. Klein has published numerous articles and edited books on these topics. She is the co-editor, along with Myrel Chernick, of The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art<\/em>, Demeter Press, 2011. Dr. Klein is presently working on a co-edited volume entitled The Routledge Companion to Performance Art<\/em> and a book project on Eco-Feminist Goddess art. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"