Introduction

Welcome to the special issue of Frontiers called "Intersections of Feminisms and Environmentalisms." When the present Frontiers editorial collective took over the editing of the journal from the previous collective at the University of New Mexico, we planned several special issues, each organized around a set of interrelated questions and themes. Our first thematic issue was one interrogating the notion of "frontiers" (17:3, 1996), and the issue you hold in your hands is the second. More special issues, on women's oral history and on gender and the Pacific Rim, are in the works.

An issue addressing the intersections of feminisms and environmentalisms seems to us particularly timely. At this moment, both feminism and environmentalism are at interesting points in their histories. Both movements are more than twenty years past their contemporary emergence and are experiencing a combination of growth and retrenchment, diversification and solidification. For both movements, issues of sexism, racism, classism, neocolonialism, and heterosexism have unevenly and persistently challenged mainstream versions of activism, policy making, and theory building. There has also been increasing attention paid to the possible intersections between the two movements. What does feminism have to offer environmentalism, and vice-versa? How does bridging these internally diverse movements in dialogue and alliance require us to transform our usual ways of conceptualizing nature, politics, gender, race, and class. What kinds of theory will assist new activism in feminist environmentalist arenas?

Much work on these issues has been done under the name "ecofeminism." But, as several of our contributors to this volume point out, ecofeminism has been plagued by the racism and classism of many white ecofeminists, as well as by internal conflicts over the place of feminist spirituality within ecofeminist activism and theory. Further, ecofeminism has been burdened with the assumption that it is always essentialist, seeing women as somehow inherently closer to nature, increasing its failure to analyze the interaction of racism and classism with sexism and "naturism."' Yet, ecofeminism is a term that covers very different positions and arguments, and by no means are all of them essentialist in these ways. As I have pointed out elsewhere, essentialism in ecofeminism often arises strategically in moments of resistance to various hegemonic discourses and practices that exclude women from environmentalist movements, or in arguments that intend to convince feminists of the necessity of including environmentalist analyses in their scholarship and their political practice. Essentialism can be partially avoided by concentrating on connecting feminisms and environmentalisms, as political practices and theories, rather than trying to connect "women" and "nature. 2

The former effort, creating interconnections between the varied politics of feminisms and the multiple politics of environmentalisms, is the aim of this volume. In doing so, I particularly sought articles that used diverse approaches to feminist environmentalism and that promoted alliances between feminist, ecofeminist, and environmental justice movements. Thus, the reader of this volume will find a number of academic disciplines represented here (such as political science, literary criticism, history, and geography, to mention a few) as well as fiction and art. The authors of these articles certainly don't agree-about environmentalism, feminism, ecofeminism, or political strategies-but, in one way or another, they all bring feminist perspectives to bear on environmental questions. I find the disagreements, the contradictions, stimulating rather than frustrating, and I hope the reader will, too.

There are some common themes, however. One is the necessity of forming closer political alliances and shared theoretical frameworks among feminist, ecofeminist, and environmental justice positions. Another is the necessity to employ academic analyses that are useful to movement practice. All the articles interrogate concepts of nature in literature, art, politics, science, historical writing, and social norms that negatively affect the environment and women, especially women of color, indigenous women, and poor women. But the variety of ways this is done demonstrates the growing importance of such analyses in many arenas of scholarship and politics. It also points to the large number of thinkers, activists, and artists who are attempting to address these intersections in nonessentialist, politically useful ways.

The volume begins with Gwyn Kirk's history of particular branches of ecofeminist and environmental justice movements, identifying ways white ecofeminists have created barriers to alliances with working-class and women of color environmentalists. Even more usefully, Kirk makes some concrete suggestions for ways to form these alliances in the future. Meridel Rubenstein's art reflects the deep concern with militarism, intertwined with racism, sexism, and naturism, that Kirk identifies as one source of feminist environmentalism. Her missiles interfaced with women's bodies and landscapes remind us of the fatal intertwining of racism, sexism, militarism, imperialism, and environmental destruction that still faces us today. Karen T Liftin's article on the way in which the use of earth observation satellites have moved from militaristic goals to environmentalist goals, without changing rationales based on patriarchal science, also points to the importance of continuing to address militarism for feminist environmentalists. Kamala Platt, like a number of the authors, focuses on an example of environmental justice activism, examining the cultural poetics of the women in the organization Mothers of East Los Angeles, with an eye to presenting their feminism as a challenge to white mainstream versions of feminist practices. At the same time, Platt offers MELAs strategies as designed to bring to the fore environmental issues ignored by mainstream environmentalism. Krista Comer is similarly interested in challenging the "wilderness plot" of masculinist and racist American environmentalism while critically analyzing the appearance of the same narrative in feminist novels by Leslie Silko and Barbara Kingsolver. Like Platt and a number of our other authors, she focuses on the racism and classism embedded in dominant environmentalist concepts.