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By Karen Birkemeyer
To say the least, this is a humbly written book that embraces some very big ideas. A potent articulation of art and non - fiction, Carol Bigwood's Earth Muse deconstructs and reconstructs the question of"woman," the "feminine" and "nature" utilizing the insights of existential phenomenology. Earth Muse, therefore, is important and ground - breaking (no pun intended): there are not many scholars who combine feminist theory with this field of philosophy, recasting it with a perspective it currently lacks. Earth Muse not only yields such a connection, but applies it to the current debate surrounding the joint oppression and sometimes joint celebration of women and nature. Thus, Bigwood provides a voice for phenomenology (thereby bringing it to a wider audience), further transforms feminism in the process, and loosely lays out a framework which de - essentializes and thus enlivens the highly contentious claims of ecofeminists.
Chapter One, "Is 'Woman' Dead?" investigates the concept of "feminine presencing" as a means of subverting the phallocentrism of Western Being. For the most part, the focus of this section is on understanding the post - structuralist advocation of gender proliferation as useful and cautionary in displacing the compulsory heterosexuality of western metaphysics. Bigwood's concern is that the eternal deferring of subjectivity (as proposed by Derrida) is nihilistic (it has no ground) and by - passes the possibility of a female subject, thereby negating the existence of "women" once and for all.
As an alternative vision and project, Earth Muse explores the potential for a "groundless...