An unfortunately longevous legacy of feminism--particularly its liberal brand from the 1970s--is a willful disregard for and violent erasure of ecological politics, specifically species justice. In her 2011 essay "Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Replacing Species in a Material Feminist Environmentalism", Greta Gaard surveys the rise and fall of ecofeminist scholarship and activism, noting its frequent clashes with the mainstream. Inspired both by her work and its references, as well as our own academic pursuits into the ecological critique of gender liberation, this is a conversation that has been long in the making. We hope that this serves as the first of many necessary entries for a series on "eco-social critique" (we just made that up).

Ecofeminism is not dead!

We would like to thank ZHRØ for their song, chill background music #2.wav.

References in the episode:

1) Ecofeminism and Climate Justice. Interview with Greta Gaard.

2) Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

3) Mind your Buffalo by Buffalo Intellectual.

4) #OilYouNeed on Nutrition and Flavour with Swetha Sivakumar.

Note: Please send us a message if you would like to read the paper!

We're back! It has been a while (here's hoping we stop saying this as often as we do) since we released an episode, and this is one we've wanted to record for so long now. We started this podcast in 2020 after completing our first year in university. Unsettled and fatigued as we were, the world of academia enticed and captivated us in unimaginable ways. Chasing belongingness in an unfamiliar academic world meant adapting to it and becoming 'academics' without ever truly knowing what that meant, a process augmented by an unfiltered (perhaps naive) desire for knowledge. However, a lot has happened in the years that have passed - for one, we have graduated. The charm and glamour long gone, it only feels right to turn our eyes to academia as an institution and examine it for what it is, and what it promises it be. In this episode, we talk about where we started and where we're going, expectations and reality, academic jargon and "canonism", privilege, power, postcoloniality, hermeneutical injustice and self-reflexive negations.

Here is a list of references made in the discussion (feel free to point out anything we have missed!):

1) Like a Savarna, by Ravikant Kisana

2) Hermeneutical Injustice, by Miranda Fricker

3) Paolo Freire - Pedagogy of the Oppressed

4) Walter Benjamin - Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

5) Chat Deni Maar Deli (for funsies)

We Might Be Tables now has a voice note feature! We'd love it if you left us a comment with your thoughts on the episode; click the link below to record a message.

Deep within a dilapidated building hidden away in a dark alley, one Saul Tenser lies in his LifeFormWare bed anticipating the growth of something new in his body. This growth, a new organ, does not come as a surprise to Tenser or his performance partner Caprice. Mutations and transformations of this kind have been around for a while in this seemingly drab world. But are these "inner beauties" anomalies, or an evolutionary gift? 

In this episode, we talk about Crimes of the Future, a body horror film directed by one of the principal originators of the genre. We present our critiques of the film, ask questions about human evolution and sexual desire, draw comparisons with the original Crimes of Future, and dive deeper into the social commentary of the film. Watch this film and share your thoughts about it with us! 

Mentioned in this episode:

Crimes of the Future - David Cronenberg

Not mentioned in this episode but worth checking out:

Why The Human Body Sucks, and How To Fix It (AsapSCIENCE)