FEMINISM AND ECOLOGY - REALISM AND RHETORIC IN THE DISCOURSES OF NATURE

Ecology and constructivism are motivated by broadly shared political aspirations and subscribe to similar critiques of technocratism, patriarchy, and ''instrumental rationality.'' But they diverge considerably in respect to the discourses they offer on ''nature.'' By staging an encounter between ecological argument and feminist constructivist theory, this article seeks to illuminate, and to indicate the means of resolving, the ontological tensions between these respective critiques of modernity. It recognizes that the constructivist emphasis on the ''discursivity'' of nature offers an important corrective to the more simplistic, and potentially reactionary, aspects of ecological rhetoric but defends a realist perspective as essential to the coherence of any gender theory and politics.