Val Plumwood (11 August 1939 – 29 February 2008) was an Australian

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

and

ecofeminist Ecofeminism integrates feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyze relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her 1974 ...

known for her work on

anthropocentrism Anthropocentrism ( ) is the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity on the planet. The term can be used interchangeably with humanocentrism, and some refer to the concept as human supremacy or human exceptionalism. From a ...

. From the 1970s, she played a central role in the development of radical ecosophy. Working mostly as an independent scholar, she held positions at the

University of Tasmania The University of Tasmania (UTAS) is a public research university, primarily located in Tasmania, Australia. Founded in 1890, it is Australia's fourth oldest university. Christ College (University of Tasmania), Christ College, one of the unive ...

North Carolina State University North Carolina State University (NC State, North Carolina State, NC State University, or NCSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. Founded in 1887 and p ...

, the

University of Montana The University of Montana (UM) is a public research university in Missoula, Montana, United States. UM is a flagship institution of the Montana University System and its second largest campus. Fall 2024 saw total enrollment hit 10,811, marki ...

, and the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

, and at the time of her death was Australian Research Council Fellow at the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

."Val Plumwood (11 August 1939 – 29 February 2008)"
''International Society for Environmental Ethics''. She is included in Routledge's ''Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment'' (2001).Griffin, Nicholas (2001). "Val Plumwood, 1939-", in Joy Palmer (ed.). ''Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment''. London: Routledge, pp. 283–288. Plumwood spent her academic life arguing against the "hyperseparation" of humans from the rest of nature and what she called the "standpoint of mastery"; a reason/nature dualism in which the natural world—including women, indigenous people, and non-humans—is subordinated. Between 1972 and 2012, she authored or co-authored four books and over 100 papers on logic, metaphysics, the environment, and ecofeminism.
Social and Political Theory Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, archived 21 November 2008. Her ''Feminism and the Mastery of Nature'' (1993) is regarded as a classic, and her ''Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason'' (2002) was said to have marked her as "one of the most brilliant environmental thinkers of our time". ''The Fight for the Forests'' (1973), co-authored with the philosopher

Richard Sylvan Richard Sylvan (13 December 1935 – 16 June 1996) was a New Zealand–born philosopher, logician, and environmentalist. Biography Sylvan was born Francis Richard Routley in Levin, New Zealand, and his early work is cited with this surname. H ...

, Plumwood's second husband, was described in 2014 as the most comprehensive analysis of Australian forestry to date. Plumwood's posthumously published ''The Eye of the Crocodile'' (2012) emerged from her survival of a

saltwater crocodile The saltwater crocodile (''Crocodylus porosus'') is a crocodilian native to saltwater habitats, brackish wetlands and freshwater rivers from India's east coast across Southeast Asia and the Sundaland to northern Australia and Micronesia. It ha ...

attack in 1985, first described in her essay "Being Prey" (1996). The experience offered her a glimpse of the world "from the outside", a "

Heraclitean Heraclitus (; ; ) was an ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Persian Empire. He exerts a wide influence on Western philosophy, both ancient and modern, through the works of such authors ...

universe" in which she was food like any other creature. It was a world that was indifferent to her and would continue without her, where "being in your body is—like having a volume out from the library, a volume subject to more or less instant recall by other borrowers—who rewrite the whole story when they get it".

Early life and education

Plumwood was born Val Morell to parents whose home was a shack with walls made of hessian sacks dipped in cement. After obtaining a land grant, her parents had set up home in the Terrey Hills, near the

Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park is a national park on the northern side of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia. The park is north of the Sydney central business district and generally comprises the land east of the Highway 1 (New South Wales ...

, north of

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

. Her father worked at first as a hod carrier, then started a small poultry farm. According to Martin Mulligan and Stuart Hill, the beauty of the area made up for Plumwood's lack of toys. The poultry farm failed, and when she was ten the family moved to

Collaroy Collaroy may refer to: *Collaroy Plateau Collaroy Plateau is a suburb of northern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Collaroy Plateau is 22 kilometres north-east of the Sydney central business district, in the Local govern ...

, another northern Sydney suburb, where her father found work in the civil service.. They moved again to Kogarah in southern Sydney. Plumwood attended St George Girls High School in Kogarah, where she was

dux ''Dux'' (, : ''ducēs'') is Latin for "leader" (from the noun ''dux, ducis'', "leader, general") and later for duke and its variant forms (doge, duce, etc.). During the Roman Republic and for the first centuries of the Roman Empire, ''dux'' coul ...

of the school. Offered a Commonwealth Scholarship to attend the

, she turned it down for a Teacher's Scholarship instead, also at Sydney—her parents wanted her to do something practical—although she soon became interested in philosophy.. Plumwood's studies were interrupted in 1958 by her brief marriage to a fellow student, John Macrae, when she was 18 and pregnant, a marriage that had ended in divorce by the time Plumwood was 21. The couple had two children, both of whom died young. Their son, John Macrae, was born when Plumwood was 19 and died in 1988 after an illness. Their daughter, Caitlin Macrae, born in 1960 and given up for adoption when she was 18 months old, was murdered in her teens.. Mathews, Freya; Rigby, Kate; Rose, Deborah (2012). "Introduction", in . Plumwood resumed her studies at Sydney in 1962, this time with a Commonwealth Scholarship to study philosophy, and graduated with first-class honours in 1964.

Personal life and activism

Soon after commencing postgraduate studies in Logic at UNE in Armidale, Plumwood married the philosopher

(then known as Richard Routley), whom she had met while in Sydney, and changed her name to Val Routley. They spent time travelling in the Middle East and UK, which included living near a beech forest in Scotland for a year. Returning to Australia, they became active in movements to preserve

biodiversity Biodiversity is the variability of life, life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and Phylogenetics, phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distribut ...

and halt

deforestation Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal and destruction of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. Ab ...

, and helped establish the trans-discipline known as ecological humanities. Referred to as Routley and Routley, from 1973 to 1982 they co-authored several notable papers on logic and the environment, becoming central figures in the debate about

or "human chauvinism". Together they wrote the influential book ''The Fight for the Forests'' (1973), which analysed the damaging policies of the forestry industry in Australia. The demand for the book saw three editions published in three years. Commencing in 1975 the couple spent several years building their home near Plumwood Mountain on the coast, 75 km from Canberra, an octagonal stone house on a 120-hectare clearing in a

rainforest Rainforests are forests characterized by a closed and continuous tree Canopy (biology), canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforests can be generally classified as tropi ...

. They divorced in 1981. Plumwood continued living in the house and changed her name again after the divorce, this time naming herself after the mountain, which in turn is named after the Eucryphia moorei tree. Routley changed his surname to Sylvan ("of the forest") when he remarried in 1983; he died in 1996. Plumwood held positions at the

, the

, and the

. At the time of her death, she was Australian Research Council Fellow at the

. She was found dead on 1 March 2008 in the house she had built with Sylvan; she is believed to have died the previous day, after suffering a stroke."Snake blamed as academic found dead"
Australian Associated Press, 3 March 2008

Australian Associated Press, 6 March 2008. Woodford, James (8 March 2008)

''Sydney Morning Herald''.

Views

Human/nature dualism

Plumwood's major theoretical works are her ''Feminism and the Mastery of Nature'' (1993) and her ''Environmental Culture: the Ecological Crisis of Reason'' (2002). She critiqued what she called "the standpoint of mastery", a set of views of the self and its relationship to the other associated with

sexism Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but primarily affects women and girls. It has been linked to gender roles and stereotypes, and may include the belief that one sex or gender is int ...

racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...

colonialism Colonialism is the control of another territory, natural resources and people by a foreign group. Colonizers control the political and tribal power of the colonised territory. While frequently an Imperialism, imperialist project, colonialism c ...

, and the domination of nature. This set of views, she argued, involves "seeing the other as radically separate and inferior, the background to the self as foreground, as one whose existence is secondary, derivative or peripheral to that of the self or center, and whose agency is denied or minimized." She identified human/nature dualism as one of a series of gendered dualisms, including "human/animal, mind/body ... male/female, reason/emotion, ndcivilized/primitive", and argued for their abandonment, as well as that of the Western notion of a rational, unitary, Cartesian self, in favour of an ecological ethic based on empathy for the other. In doing so, she rejected not only the "hyperseparation" between self and other, and between humanity and nature, but also

postmodern Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...

alternatives based on a respect for absolute difference and deep ecological alternatives based on a merging of the self and the world. Instead, she proposed a view that recognises and grounds ethical responsibility in the continuities and divisions between subject and object, and between people and the environment. Plumwood was a vegetarian, her affirmation of the ecological significance of

predation Predation is a biological interaction in which one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common List of feeding behaviours, feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation ...

notwithstanding, on account of her objection to

factory farming Intensive animal farming, industrial livestock production, and macro-farms, also known as factory farming, is a type of intensive agriculture, specifically an approach to mass animal husbandry designed to maximize production while minimizing co ...

. She advocated a semi-vegetarian position she labelled Ecological Animalism, in opposition to the

animal rights Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all Animal consciousness, sentient animals have Moral patienthood, moral worth independent of their Utilitarianism, utility to humans, and that their most basic interests—such as ...

platform of Carol J. Adams, which Plumwood called

ontological Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every ...

veganism Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products and the consumption of animal source foods, and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. A person who practices veganism is known as a vega ...

and which she criticised for its endorsement of human/nature dualism.

Crocodile attack

In "Human vulnerability and the experience of being prey" (1995), Plumwood describes how she survived an attack by a

on 19 February 1985, and the radical change this experience brought about in her view of the world, from what she called the "individual justice universe", where humans are always the predators, to the "

universe", where we are just another part of the food chain.Plumwood, Val (March 1995). "Human vulnerability and the experience of being prey", ''Quadrant'', 29(3), pp. 29–34
courtesy link
. Also published as During a visit to

Kakadu National Park Kakadu National Park is a protected area in the Northern Territory of Australia, southeast of Darwin. It is a World Heritage Site. Kakadu is also gazetted as a locality, covering the same area as the national park, with 313 people recorded l ...

, Plumwood had camped at the East Alligator ranger station and borrowed a four-metre-long fibreglass canoe from Greg Miles, the park ranger, to explore the East Alligator Lagoon.

When I pulled my canoe over in driving rain to a rock outcrop rising out of the swamp for a hasty, sodden lunch, I experienced the unfamiliar sensation of being watched. Having never been one for timidity, in philosophy or in life, I decided, rather than return defeated to my sticky caravan, to explore a clear, deep channel closer to the river I had travelled along the previous day. ... I had not gone more than five or ten minutes back down the channel when, rounding a bend, I saw ahead of me in midstream what looked like a floating stick – one I did not recall passing on my way up. As the current moved me toward it, the stick appeared to develop eyes.

Crocodiles do not often attack canoes, but this one started lashing at it with his tail. Plumwood grabbed some overhanging branches, but before she could pull herself up, the crocodile seized her between the legs and dragged her under the water, a "centrifuge of whirling, boiling blackness, which seemed about to tear my limbs from my body, driving waters into my bursting lungs." The crocodile briefly let her go, then seized her again, subjecting her to three such "death rolls" before she managed to escape up a steep mud bank. Despite severe injuries – her left leg was exposed to the bone, and she found later that she had contracted

melioidosis Melioidosis is an infectious disease caused by a gram-negative bacterium called ''Burkholderia pseudomallei''. Most people exposed to ''B. pseudomallei'' experience no symptoms, but complications can range from fever and skin changes to pneumon ...

– she began walking, then crawling, the three kilometres to the ranger station. The park ranger had gone searching for her when she failed to return by nightfall and heard her shout for help. She underwent a 13-hour trip to the hospital in Darwin, where she spent a month in intensive care followed by extensive skin grafts.. The canoe is now in the

National Museum of Australia The National Museum of Australia (NMA), in the national capital Canberra, preserves and interprets Australia's social history, exploring the key issues, people and events that have shaped the nation. It was formally established by the ''Nation ...

."Val Plumwood canoe"
National Museum of Australia. The experience gave Plumwood a glimpse of the world "from the outside", a world that was indifferent to her and would continue without her: "an unrecognisably bleak order" – "As my own narrative and the larger story were ripped apart, I glimpsed a shockingly indifferent world in which I had no more significance than any other edible being. The thought ''This can't be happening to me, I'm a human being. I am more than just food!'' was one component of my terminal incredulity. It was a shocking reduction, from a complex human being to a mere piece of meat. Reflection has persuaded me that not just humans but any creature can make the same claim to be more than just food. We are edible, but we are also much more than edible." She argued that our anthropocentric view, the "individual justice universe", is disconnected from reality:

the individual justice universe the individual subject's universe is like the person-as-the-walled-moated-castle-town. It is under constant siege and desperately, obsessively seeking to keep the body—this body made out of food—away from others and retain it for ourselves alone. Of course we know the walled-moated castle will fall in the end but we try to hold off the siege as long as possible while seeking always more and better siege-resisting technology that will enable us to remain self-enclosed. In the individual/justice universe you own the energy volume of your body absolutely and spend much of that energy defending it frantically against all comers. Any attempt by others at sharing is regarded as an outrage, an injustice, that must be resisted to the hilt (consider our reaction to the overfamiliar gatecrashers at our high-class feast—mosquitoes, leeches, ticks. These outrage our proprietary sensibilities). In the other, Heraclitean universe, being in your body is more like having a volume out from the library, a volume subject to more or less instant recall by other borrowers—who rewrite the whole story when they get it..

S5002083.jpg, Plumwood's burial, 30 March 2008 S5002094.jpg, Her grave on Plumwood Mountain

Val Plumwood Memorial Lecture Series in Australia

The Val Plumwood Memorial Lectures Series is biennial series of lectures that mark the contribution of Plumwood to the field of animal studies. The lecture series has consisted of the following speakers: * Deborah Bird Rose (2009) * Freya Matthews (2011) * Kate Rigby (2013) * Anat Pick (2015) * Fiona Probyn-Rapsey (2017) * Patrice Jones (2019) * Richard Twine (2022) * Dr. Erika Cudworth (2024) The 2024 event was organized by the Austalasian Animal Studies Association.

Selected works

Books

*(2012
''The Eye of the Crocodile''
edited by Lorraine Shannon. Canberra: Australian National University E Press. *(2002) ''Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason''. Abingdon: Routledge. *(1993
''Feminism and the Mastery of Nature''
London and New York: Routledge. *(1982) with Richard Routley, Robert K. Meyer, Ross T. Brady. ''Relevant Logics and Their Rivals''. Atascadero, CA: Ridgewood Publications. *(1973) with Richard Routley. ''The Fight for the Forests: The Takeover of Australian Forests for Pines, Wood Chips and Intensive Forestry''. Canberra: Australian National University.

Articles

*(2009

''Australian Humanities Review'', 46, May 2009. *(2003
"The Fight for the Forests Revisited"
paper delivered to ''Win, Lose or Draw: the Fight for the Forests? A Symposium'', Old Canberra House, Australian National University, 14 October 2003. *(2003) "The Politics of Reason: Toward a Feminist Logic", in Rachel Joffe Falmagne, Marjorie Hass (eds.), ''Representing Reason: Feminist Theory and Formal Logic''. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. *(2003) "Feminism and the Logic of Alterity", in Falmagne and Hass, ''op cit''. *(1995) "Human vulnerability and the experience of being prey," ''Quadrant'', 29(3), March 1995, pp. 29–34; also a

''Terra Nova'', 1(3), 1996. *(1993) "The politics of reason: Towards a feminist logic". ''Australasian Journal of Philosophy'', 71(4), pp. 436–462. *(1991) "Gaia. Good for Women?", ''Refractory Girl'', 41, pp. 11–16; also in ''American Philosophical Association on Women and Philosophy'', April 1991. *(1991) "Ethics and Instrumentalism: a response to Janna Thompson". ''Environmental Ethics'', 13, pp. 139–149. *(1991) "Nature, Self, and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism". ''Hypatia'', 6(1), March 1991, pp. 3–27. *(1989) "Do we need a sex/gender distinction?" ''Radical Philosophy'', 51, pp. 2–11. *(1988) "Women, humanity and nature". ''Radical Philosophy'', 48, pp. 16–24, reprinted in S. Sayers, P. Osborne (eds.). ''Feminism, Socialism and Philosophy: A Radical Philosophy Reader''. London: Routledge, 1990. *(1986) "Ecofeminism: An Overview and Discussion of Positions and Arguments". ''Australasian Journal of Philosophy'', 64, supplement 1, pp. 120–138. *(1986) with Richard Routley

in Brian Martin et al. (eds.). ''Intellectual Suppression''. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, pp. 70–73. *(1985) with Richard Routley
"Negation and contradiction"
''Revista Colombiana de Matematicas'', 19, pp. 201–231. *(1982) "World rainforest destruction – the social factors". ''Ecologist'', 12(1), pp. 4–22. *(1980
"Social theories, self management, and environmental problems"
in D. S. Mannison, M. A. McRobbie & Richard Routley (eds.). ''Environmental Philosophy''. Canberra: Australian National University, pp. 217–332. *(1980) with Richard Routley. "Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics", in D. Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley (eds.). ''Environmental Philosophy''. Canberra: Australian National University Department of Philosophy Monograph Series RSSS, pp. 96–189. *(1978) with Richard Routley. "Nuclear energy and obligations to the future". ''Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy'', 21(1–4), pp. 133–179. *(1975) "Critical notice of Passmore's ''Man's Responsibility for Nature''". ''Australasian Journal of Philosophy'', 53(2), pp. 171–185. *(1972) with Richard Routley. "The Semantics of First Degree Entailment". ''Noûs'', 6(4), November, pp. 335–359.

References

Notes

Citations

External links

"'Part of the feast': The life and work of Val Plumwood"
National Museum of Australia, 7 May 2013.
"Your Worst Animal Nightmares: Crocs 2"
part of a reconstruction of the crocodile attack, '' Your Worst Animal Nightmares'',

Animal Planet Animal Planet (stylized in all lowercase since 2018) is an American multinational pay television channel focusing on the animal kingdom owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks unit of Warner Bros. Discovery. First established on June 1 ...

, 2009. *Saunders, Alan
"Philosophy and the Natural World - Val Plumwood"
"The Philosophers Zone," ABC, 15 March 2008
audio
. *Gelonesi, Joe; Hyde, Dominic
"Two lives, green and logical"
"The Philosophers Zone," ABC, 20 April 2014
audio
. {{DEFAULTSORT:Plumwood, Val 1939 births 2008 deaths 20th-century Australian philosophers Reptile attack victims Australian environmentalists Australian feminist writers Australian women philosophers Australian women environmentalists Ecofeminists Scholars of feminist philosophy Feminist studies scholars University of Sydney alumni Academic staff of the University of Sydney 20th-century Australian women 21st-century Australian women