Ecofeminism and Relatedness: Ivone Gebara’s Pragmatic Inheritance

While highly sympathetic to the many advances of Latin American liberation theology, Brazilian ecofeminist theologian Ivone Gebara offers some of the most trenchant and productive critiques of the tradition. In her estimation, early proponents of liberation theology fell short of proposing a new epistemology, often falling back on more mechanistic and anthropocentric assumptions. In response, Gebara develops an ecofeminist theology, in which the concept of “relatedness” is central. However, Gebara presents this term at face value, sidestepping questions of its intellectual inheritance. In this chapter, the author explores the likely sources of this idea and the ways in which it could be developed further through sympathetic discourses such as process thought and pragmatism. The author gives special attention to the pragmatic inheritance of Gebara’s thought through the work of North American pragmatic feminist theology. The chapter concludes by underscoring how pragmatism and process thought could benefit greatly from Gebara’s courageous and unwavering preferential option for the poor.