On Feminism and Ecology: Kamanaka, Tomiyama & Ueno After 3.11

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

This panel addresses the theme of hope by revisiting a contested site of its production, the intersection of feminism and ecological activism. The papers address one another directly, with each taking as its main focus a figure who plays a supporting role for another.

We begin with Yuki Senda’s account of the way eco-feminism has been shunned within academic feminism in Japan for its perceived reliance on essentialist categories. Summarizing the 1980s debate between her mentor Ueno Chizuko and eco-feminist Aoki Yayoi, Senda updates the critique of bosei shinwa (“the myth of nurturing maternity”) from a post-3.11 perspective.

Ueno’s work is a point of reference for Margherita Long’s paper on Kamanaka Hitomi’s documentary Little Voices of Fukushima (2014). Reading Kamanaka’s account of the production of hope by mother-activists in Fukushima and Belarus, Long references Ueno’s The Sociology of Care (2011) to think about hope as a kind of affective labor.

Next, Rebecca Jennison’s reading of two artworks by Tomiyama Taeko, uses filmmaker Kamanaka’s anti-nuclear writings to discuss Tomiyama’s critique of official post-disaster narratives, and her commitment to an explicitly feminist position.

Papers are limited to 17 minutes to allow extended interaction with discussant Norma Field, whose work as an activist intellectual has redoubled during the ongoing political and environmental crises under discussion. We aim for passionate debate by combining two senior scholars for whom the urgency of 3.11 has opened a certain distance from academic feminism, with two mid-career scholars who defend the relevance of theory for activism.

Area of Study

• Northeast Asia

Session Organizer

• Margherita Long, University of California, Irvine

Individual Presentations

• Wherefore Ecological Feminism in Japan? - Yuki Senda, Musashino University

• Hope as Affective Labor in Kamanaka Hitomi’s Little Voices of Fukushima - Margherita Long, University of California, Irvine

• "What a Woman Artist Saw" - Tomiyama Taeko's Revelation from the Sea - Rebecca Jennison, Kyoto Seika University

Discussant

• Norma Field, University of Chicago