ABSTRACT
The image of Gaia, often used to invoke an alternative to increasingly discredited western ways of viewing the biosphere, has helped to re-popularize the notion of Mother Nature, until recently regarded as somewhat quaint. Perhaps that very ease of conquest is a reason for suspicion: one feels that a real break with tendencies so deeply rooted in our culture would have to be harder to win. Given the often demonstrated capacity of western culture to construct supposed alternatives which reproduce in subtle forms the old dynamics of power we are trying to escape, feminists are right to be suspicious and critical. As Ecofeminists have claimed, the backgrounding and instrumentalization of nature and women have run parallel. Systematic backgrounding and systematic devaluation are perceptually ingrained, forms of not noticing, not seeing. A highly flexible model which seems to capture some of the advantages of the mother model and which allows for the mother relation as an element is that of kinship.
