Call Your "Mutha’": A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene
with Jane Caputi

Wednesday, October 7, 2020
3 pm Eastern Daylight Time 

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The Anthropocene is the term for our current geological era, during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Jane Caputi's new book examines two major "myths" of the Earth, one ancient and one contemporary, and uses them to devise a manifesto for the survival of nature--which includes human beings--in our current ecological crisis. The myth of Mother Earth personifies nature as a figure with the power to give life or death, and one who shares a communal destiny with all other living things. The Anthropocene myth sees humans as exceptional for exerting an implicitly sexual domination of Mother Earth through technological achievement, from the plow to synthetic biology and artificial intelligence.

"Much that we take for granted as inferior or taboo is based in a splitting apart of inherent unities: culture-nature; up-down, male-female; spirit-matter; mind-body; life-death; sacred-profane; reason-madness; human-beast; light-dark. The first is valued and the second reviled." This perspective provides the framework for any number of related injustices--sexual, racial, and ecological. Caputi resists this pattern, in part, by deliberately putting the "dirty" back into the mind, the obscene back into the sacred, and vice versa.

Jane Caputi, PhD is Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University. She is the author of The Age of Sex Crime; Gossips, Gorgons and Crones; and Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power and Popular Culture. She has also made two educational documentaries: The Pornography of Everyday Life and Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth. Jane is the winner of ASWM's Saga Award for Contributions to Women's History and Culture.

Save these dates for upcoming Salons

October 21 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time
When the Moon and the Sun are Daughters of Mother Earth. Analysis of Basque Cosmic Reality
Idoia Arana-Beobide

November 4 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time
Beyond the Trees: Ecofeminism and Connections to Current Movements for Change
Jeannette Kiel

November 18 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time
Hieroglyphic Thinking
Normandi Ellis

December 2 at Noon Eastern Standard Time
The Modern Matriarchal Gift Economy
Genevieve Vaughan

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event. Continue reading for this Salon's Zoom Registration information.