5th Global Conference
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Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Monday 3rd July - Thursday 6th
July 2006
Mansfield College, Oxford
Session 13: Environmental Citizenship and Healing
Chair: Tania Sourdin
Reports from Session Chairs of 7(b) and 11(b)
Maie Kiisel and Martha Steigman
Environmental Grief®: Hope and Healing
Kriss
Kevorkian
The Center for Conscious Dying and Grieving, Los Angeles, CA USA
Scientists working among dwindling populations, devastated habitats and recovery efforts from natural disasters experience an array of emotions not often acknowledged or discussed. Many in science maintain the method of observation without becoming emotionally attached to the subject. Regardless of whether one is interacting or observing, a bond develops. Observing a subject or population for a long period of time, only to see its decline, has a profound effect on a researcher. When a new term was suggested to scientists working with particular declining ecosystems, an overwhelming sense of relief welled up that offered a validation and understanding that prior to this was unrecognized. Probing the emotions of these scientists led to the conclusion that each person was reacting to e nvironmental grief®: the grief reaction stemming from the environmental loss of ecosystems caused by natural or man-made events. This term builds upon disenfranchised grief: a form of grief not openly acknowledged or accepted in society. Considering the fact that scientists are trained observers, they will react on some level to the losses in nature that they observe whether consciously or unconsciously. Despite what some theorists believe about the plight of our environment, whether we are in some sort of natural cycle, or whether humans are the threat to the planet, grief issues should and can be acknowledged. Once a name is put to any type of symptom or feeling, people are generally able to move forward and begin the healing process. In the case of environmental grief, we can openly acknowledge our grief while educating ourselves and others about the grieving process. In so doing, we can begin the healing process. We only need to learn the skills to cope with grief in order to heal.
Gaia: The Politics of Love and the Globe’s
Future
Serena
Anderlini D'Onofrio
Department of Humanities,
University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, USA
This paper presents
a theory of love based on the proposition that to really get out of the
tunnel of modernity’s pressing energy questions,
erotic, as well as affectional love has to be recuperated under the aegis
of the healing and loving arts, rather than left under the normalizing
science of sexuality. The growing awareness of Gaia, the earth, as
a living planet under threat of extinction, indicates that a new notion
of love is necessary. The healing arts, I claim, offer a model since
they teach empowering techniques people can learn to regenerate their body
ecology and health. As the healing arts are bringing health back
into the realm of the arts and away form the more normativity-inclined
scientific realm, thus generating a more ecological culture of health,
so, I claim, the arts of loving can generate a healthier culture of love,
wit hits erotic and affectional forms of expression. Foucault’s
theory of “erotic art” and “pleasure,” with their “reverberation
in the body and the soul”, and of Irigaray’s contention
that the word philosophy means “the wisdom of love” just as
much as it means “the love of wisdom” provide the two main
theoretical bass for my argument. Other theorists whose work comes
into play are Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari, Walter Mignolo, and James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis.
The paper
outlines a utopian discursive space where the erotic arts complement the
healing arts is enabling the expression of erotic and affectional forms
of love that are as varied and imaginative as any art form can be. These
forms of love are apt to embrace non-conventional lifestyles and lovestyles;
they value people’s experience and their effort to learn how to love
better; and they are apt in generating the sense of abundance the world needs
to fund sustainable soutions to its current disquiets and ecological threats.