Call Your "Mutha'": A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene

Jane Caputi's book "Call Your Mutha" examines two major myths of the Earth, one ancient and one contemporary, to devise a manifesto for the survival of nature in our current ecological crisis. She rejects misogynist and colonialist stereotypes and examines the potency of the Earth Mother to deepen awareness of how our relationship to the Earth went astray. Caputi argues that the Anthropocene is not evidence of Man's supremacy, but a sign that Mother Nature-Earth is turning away and withdrawing the support systems necessary for life and continuance.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 324 pages
\n Publication date: 30 September 2020
\n Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
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The Anthropocene, characterized by the ecocide and domination of nature, does not represent the actions of all humans, but rather those of the Western and masculine identified corporate, military, intellectual, and political class that has long masqueraded as civilized and human. In this book, Jane Caputi examines two major myths of the Earth, one ancient and one contemporary, and uses them to devise a manifesto for the survival of nature, including human beings, in our current ecological crisis. These myths are the myths of Mother Earth and the Anthropocene. The former 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 latter 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 on 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 provides the framework for any number of related injustices, such as sexual, racial, and ecological.

This book resists this pattern, in part, by deliberately putting the "dirty" back into the mind, the "obscene" back into the sacred, and vice versa. Ecofeminism and Environmental Justice argue for the significance and reality of the Earth Mother. Caputi engages specifically with the powers of that Mother, ones made taboo and even obscene throughout heteropatriarchal traditions. Caputi rejects misogynist and colonialist stereotypes and examines the potency of the Earth Mother in order to deepen awareness of how the Earth Mother can be a source of strength and resilience in the face of ecological crisis.

In conclusion, this book offers a powerful and provocative exploration of the myths of Mother Earth and the Anthropocene, and provides a manifesto for the survival of nature, including human beings, in our current ecological crisis. By rejecting misogynist and colonialist stereotypes and examining the potency of the Earth Mother, Caputi offers a way forward for those seeking to deepen their awareness of the interconnectedness of all life and work towards a more just and sustainable world.

\n Weight: 406g\n
Dimension: 141 x 210 x 25 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780190902711\n \n