{"title":"Earth-Bodies as Re-Existence: Ana Mendieta's Siluetas Beyond the Limits of Ecofeminism","authors":"J. E. Jones","doi":"10.1353/ff.2022.0034","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article engages the earth-body, or Silueta (Silhouette) (1973–80), works of Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta to signal the Western limits of ecofeminist discourses and imagine a human-earthly relation beyond them. Ecofeminist thought has gained traction in feminist studies, especially given new materialist interventions which mark its ability to think a non-anthropocentric feminism in a time of environmental crisis. I recognize the potential of ecofeminism, and explore the ways it informed Mendieta's practice. Yet, drawing on decolonial feminist theory, I argue that a global South context and the \"coloniality of [her] being\" (Maldonaldo-Torres 2007) shifted Mendieta's engagement with the ecofeminist project. I read Mendieta as enacting an \"aesthetics of re-existence\" (Alban Achinte 2013) in response to a dehumanizing colonial context, using her art to \"re-member\" (Anzaldúa 2015) the negated dimensions of her existence in the Americas. Doing so reveals a persistent Western humanist lens that underwrites mainstream ecofeminist understandings of human-earthly relation, and also thinks with the African and Indigenous cosmologies Mendieta incorporated into her Siluetas about alternative modes of human relation to the earth. As Mendieta re-membered her own colonized being through her art, she helps us re-member ecofeminism's relation to the earth.","PeriodicalId":190295,"journal":{"name":"Feminist Formations","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Feminist Formations","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ff.2022.0034","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:This article engages the earth-body, or Silueta (Silhouette) (1973–80), works of Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta to signal the Western limits of ecofeminist discourses and imagine a human-earthly relation beyond them. Ecofeminist thought has gained traction in feminist studies, especially given new materialist interventions which mark its ability to think a non-anthropocentric feminism in a time of environmental crisis. I recognize the potential of ecofeminism, and explore the ways it informed Mendieta's practice. Yet, drawing on decolonial feminist theory, I argue that a global South context and the "coloniality of [her] being" (Maldonaldo-Torres 2007) shifted Mendieta's engagement with the ecofeminist project. I read Mendieta as enacting an "aesthetics of re-existence" (Alban Achinte 2013) in response to a dehumanizing colonial context, using her art to "re-member" (Anzaldúa 2015) the negated dimensions of her existence in the Americas. Doing so reveals a persistent Western humanist lens that underwrites mainstream ecofeminist understandings of human-earthly relation, and also thinks with the African and Indigenous cosmologies Mendieta incorporated into her Siluetas about alternative modes of human relation to the earth. As Mendieta re-membered her own colonized being through her art, she helps us re-member ecofeminism's relation to the earth.