Co-authored with Vittoria Ferri, Mariateresa Muraca, Chiara Zamboni, Giulia Testi and Anna Maria Piussi. Translated by Caterina Diotto.
This article was originally published in italian here.
We introduce ourselves to Ivone Gebara. We are Mariateresa Muraca, Chiara Zamboni, Caterina Diotto, Giulia Testi and Anna Maria Piussi. Vittoria Ferri cannot be here, but she is participating in the joint work. Mariateresa is conducting the interview, asking in portuguese the questions that we developed and written all together after reading and discussing Gebara’s work, and translating her answers. Some additional questions came up during the interview.
Ivone Gebara: I am at your disposal and very happy to be here with you.
Mariateresa Muraca: How did feminist theology become a gateway to ecofeminism for you? Our understanding is that it gave space to women’s experiences, which generated a different image of God, which in turn opened up other relationships and connections, resulting in new ways of understanding our relationship with the cosmos. Could you elaborate on this?
Ivone Gebara: Like most of you, I also have a mainly philosophical background, although I studied and did my doctorate in theology. Normally, when we talk about feminist theology or ecofeminist theology in Latin America, people always have the impression that we are a continuation of liberation theology, but they rarely mention the breaks we have made with it, even though I was part of it. It is as if there were a chronology: first classical theology, then a theology of earthly realities, which also includes liberation theology, and then us feminist theologians. I, on the other hand, like to say that it was above all the difficulties we experienced throughout our history within the Catholic and Protestant churches – these difficulties that generated discontent – that were the starting point for a different way of thinking and a different reaction on the part of many of us who are ecofeminists or feminists.
This also applies to other sciences and other fields of knowledge, including philosophy: philosophies developed by women are rarely cited, with a few exceptions such as Hannah Arendt. It is as if we women were merely reproducers of men’s thoughts, as if women’s thoughts did not exist. So, to pick up the thread of the argument, our thinking arises from ruptures. Mainly from all those phenomena such as the destruction of the countryside, forests and rivers, which harm all of humanity but mainly women. These phenomena cause death. So ecofeminist theology did not arise from liberation theology or philosophy, and its starting point is not primarily theory, which I believe is important, but rather an acute awareness of the reality in which we live. This model of development at any cost generates conflict, death and extreme hardship, particularly for women.
These processes of destruction have awakened women’s consciousness. Women have begun to pay more attention to their bodies, to their lives, and have begun to question the hierarchical system that is still very much in place. Here in Brazil, for example, women are rarely given the same consideration as men, even from a scientific and theoretical point of view. We women are still second-class citizens in politics, in terms of pay, etc. We have been living in this situation for a long time, but faced with this combination of oppressions, which affect the poor in general but also women and people on the basis of their cultural background, sexual orientation – and also on the basis of the strong conservatism that exists within the Church – women have organised themselves to voice their criticism publicly.
However, it should be specified that when we talk about women, we are not talking about a single category, much less a metaphysical category, as our academics often think. We are talking about a multiplicity of experiences. For example, I belong to a specific group of women who are also intellectuals. Working-class women and poor women have points of view that are similar to and at the same time different from mine. They have a pain that is similar but also different from mine, so they have a different way of reacting to the oppression they suffer.
Mariateresa Muraca: Have Afro-Brazilian theologies and the cosmologies of indigenous peoples had any influence on this alternative conception of the relationship with the cosmos, with the earth and with the world that has been developed by ecofeminism? And how have these influences manifested themselves concretely in your life as a woman and a thinker?
Ivone Gebara: I have had very little contact with Afro-Brazilian communities, only a little. Because the north-east of Brazil is very mixed, and I have had the opportunity, on several occasions, to attend meetings with these priests and intellectuals of the Afro religion. Less so with the indigenous world. However, my relationship with women from the working class, poor women, brought me face to face with a reality characterised by a mixture of roots.
Working-class women have multiple cultural references. And the great drama translates into material things. For example, lack of water. Where I lived, women had to wake up at three in the morning, because that was the only time there was water, to fill all the containers for the day. Then they would go back to sleep for a while, but then they would develop a series of health problems – headaches, high blood pressure, malaise – and this was a problem that mainly affected women, both because many families in Brazil are run by women alone – there are no men in the family – and because even when there are men, they do not take care of these kinds of tasks. This is why I discovered a very strong connection between social justice and ecological justice. Starting with water, but it wasn’t just water, because water is linked to hygiene, food and childcare. So I realised that there was a perspective on reality that was specific to women.
Annamaria Piussi: I would like to comment on this situation, which is particularly prevalent in north-eastern Brazil, where single-parent families headed by women take on all the responsibilities of the family, including material needs such as finding food and water, and even raising animals, etc. I remember that we did a research project at the University of Verona in the north-east, in the state of Piauí, in collaboration with the University of Teresina. We also visited the state of Maranhão… We spoke to many of these women. They were female heads of households and very strong women, yet they struggled to recognise themselves and be recognised as authoritative figures. The burden is effectively on their shoulders. Not only do their husbands – those who are there – not take much responsibility, but they told us that in general, husbands tend to leave for the south of Brazil, which is richer. Many move to São Paulo or other places, far, far away from their families. This confirms what you are saying.
Ivone Gebara: Interacting with what Anna Maria said, I observe that things have changed a little now. There is greater development and fewer people are emigrating to São Paulo or the south. However, migratory flows are changeable.
Let me return to the question of women from the working class. In their daily lives, they are confronted with the philosophical problem of the finitude of existence. They may not use this expression, they may not formulate the problem theoretically, but in practice they experience the difficulty of not being able to change this situation, for example, not being able to give their children what they would like to give them. And it is interesting that the first way out they find is a religious one. These women expect God to change things, to realise. I’ll give you an example of when I once went out for a walk and a woman I knew came up to me with all her clothes wet because she had been washing clothes. She said to me, ‘I have to go and pick up my grandchildren because they asked me to. No one knows about my suffering! Do you know who realises my suffering, Ivone? The one up there knows about my suffering’. What am I trying to say? I am saying that God and religion are small answers – I would even dare to say sometimes a little imaginary – that make up for the lack of political, social and effective answers that could help these women in their daily lives.
Mariateresa Muraca: We are very interested in your conception of transcendence as a subjective elaboration of that which transcends us. And also your understanding of nature as transcendent, because it goes beyond us and is not only good but also sets limits and is enigmatic. Can you tell us more about both the subjective elaboration of the transcendent and nature seen as transcendence, not only in terms of its positive aspects but also in terms of its negative aspects in our lives?
Ivone Gebara: Especially here in Brazil and Latin America, we have inherited a dualistic view, made up of oppositions, in which transcendence, and specifically the transcendence of God, is seen as a break with nature, animals and human beings. As if God were a totally other being, who does not mix with the limited and immanent reality in which we live. So, I have read, reflected, observed and thought that we are both the front and the back of all things. Therefore, I propose a completely different view: a view in which transcendence inhabits the materiality of life, because what would we be without water, without air, without the solar system, without the stars, without insects, without birds? In truth, this poor conception of immanence that we have is not enough in itself. The transcendence that religions have proposed as an answer is an imaginary transcendence: to think that there is a bearded God sitting on a throne, or Jesus crucified, or some other entity of the seas or rivers – always referring to the dualistic perspective, since there are many Afro-descendant conceptions that are not dualistic. On the contrary, I argue that we are a mixture of transcendence and immanence: my being needs other beings and other beings need my being. This changes the dualistic conception of human beings and the world, which is common especially in classical Christianity.
Mariateresa Muraca: Still on this theme, it would be interesting to return to the conception of nature as a multifaceted reality, which is quite different from a romanticised view that sees it as totally good, characteristic of a certain ecology.
Ivone Gebara: From an ethical point of view, even Good and Evil are not opposed but complementary. Something that is good for someone can be bad for someone else. Good exists only because Evil exists and vice versa. Any human reality that presents itself as possessing an understanding of Good as something absolute is pure fantasy. Good exists only because Evil exists, and vice versa. And we are this mixture, which cannot be fully expressed in words. We feel mixed, we feel contradictory, we are bound to certain ideas but at the same time we perceive the limits of these ideas. So this romanticised idea of Good is totally harmful, especially politically. There are no parties that only do good. There are no churches that only do good – that is, they may do good, but they are also interested in money, fame, miracles and appearances. I am not saying that human beings are bad, but I do not want to say that they are good either. I want to affirm mixture, blend, as a constitutive category of human beings.
And this mixture is not only found in human beings but concerns the entire universe. The universe is based on mixture, on the interdependence of differences. Science tends to distinguish, but life unites and mixes elements. We often find this vision, not in its pure form but impurely present in popular sensibility. Let me give you an example: I teach a philosophy course once every two weeks, where I meet people in situations of great poverty and hardship. Today there was a meeting and a man who had been heavily involved in drugs arrived, and I asked him how he was. He replied that he had found a job. But then he repeated some words I had said during the first lesson and asked me, “Do you want to know the truth or do you want me to lie to you?”. At the beginning of the course, I had tried to explain what philosophy is because no one knew what it was, and I had said that it is a form of knowledge that helps me to know myself better and not to lie to myself. So, by asking this question, he was repeating these words. I asked him to choose what he wanted to tell me. He told me that he had only worked one day because he got bored, because working is boring and he likes being on the street. In fact, capitalist society wants him to find a job, but what kind of job? A miserable job with very little pay, he couldn’t even buy bread. So you can understand his position.
But the central story I want to tell is another one. It’s about a lady I also met on this course. One day she was breastfeeding the son of another woman, a friend of hers. I didn’t know he was her friend’s son and asked her if she had another child. She replied that no, he wasn’t hers, she was looking after him because her son was one year old but she still had milk. She was breastfeeding him because her friend had found a boyfriend and was with him at the time, so she had asked her to look after the baby. The interesting thing is that when I asked the question “Who helps us?” during the lesson, no one could think of any examples like this. Everyone thought of the MP, who doesn’t help, the government, which doesn’t help, and God himself. When I asked, “And God, does he help us?”, the same woman replied immediately, “No, not even God helps, there’s no point in asking”. But then I pointed out to her that she herself was doing something concrete to help her friend go for a walk with her boyfriend, and that she was breastfeeding her baby. This was something that went beyond preconceived ideas about what was right or wrong, beyond any censorship. So she concluded, “If that’s the way it is, God helps”. God helps if I help. I mean that theological theories, the Trinity, transubstantiation, these things no longer touch the hearts of the very poor. I learn from them.
Caterina Diotto: It sounds like a saying we have in Italian: “Aiutati, che Dio ti aiuta” (Help yourself, and God will help you), it must be common popular wisdom.
Mariateresa Muraca: The same saying also exists in Portuguese.
Caterina Diotto: Can I ask a question about this concept of mixture? Because I understand it as a theological concept, this mixture of life, of good and evil, which are two parts of the same thing. But I wonder how this can be reconciled with social problems, with social struggle. How do you respond from within this idea that good and evil are ‘points of view’ to people who live in situations of great hardship and need, and who therefore experience evil ‘directly’ in a certain sense? Isn’t there a rejection of this idea? I wonder if it doesn’t become a reconciliation, when good and evil are always together, then isn’t there a risk that everything becomes a bit the same?
Ivone Gebara: What I want to highlight is the complexity of things. First: why does social evil exist? Why do some people give themselves the right to own a lot of land, a lot of houses, a lot of goods, knowing that the people who work in their own homes cannot eat enough and live with dignity, that they are practically slaves? I am not saying that good and evil are equivalent. But I am saying that the origin of good, the need for good, is present because I perceive a loss of life, the evil of hunger, the evil of ignorance. Is it possible to eliminate all ignorance? No. Is it possible to eliminate all good? No. But I am showing that from a philosophical point of view, there is no such thing as “good for everyone”. Rather, there is “good for a group”. Not destroying a forest is good for everyone. However, there are people who will devote themselves more to the struggle to defend this good. What I want to emphasise is an anti-dualistic/oppositionist attitude. Similarly, saying that the poor “don’t want to work because they are lazy” is a dualistic point of view. Maybe they want to work, but only if they can get a decent job. In this case, everyone wants to work. I understand what you are saying, Caterina, but I am not reconciling good and evil.
Why does nature degradation exist? Because I throw plastic in the river, I throw plastic in the sea, I use toxic products on plants… I am the one doing harm. And I – the same person who is doing harm – can give a large sum of money to a poor person. So I am also capable of doing something good. I cannot use the ethical category of “good” in a totalising sense, as religions do. For example, saying that “Jesus was a person who did only good” is not a statement I can accept. I don’t know if you understand me. In doing good, he harmed other people and other interests. And me too. If I fight against the destruction of the forest, I am doing harm to big business. I am persecuted by these big companies that would like to shut me up when I talk about ecofeminism.
If I am criticising the Church’s idea of an omnipotent God who forces me to obey laws that are completely outdated, to hate my body, to allow male violence against my body, I cannot say that I am doing good. This is to show that there is no such thing as conceptual purity. Every concept is mixed and impure. Think of the struggle for social justice, for example the struggle for effective agrarian reform: large landowners do not want agrarian reform because it is not in their interest. We are also fighting against agrotoxins, but agrotoxin producers say, “No, you are going against our financial interests!”.
I don’t know if I’m making myself clear, but it is not possible to clearly distinguish between good and evil. From the point ofview of global humanity, we must seek other ways to show the harm of certain attitudes and the benefits of others.
Mariateresa Muraca: Reading your writings, it seems that the deep connection between feminism and ecology, for you, is linked to the Sacred Body. We participate, together with all beings, in this Sacred Body. The first question is: do women have a particular sensitivity to participating in this Sacred Body? Second question: in your conception of the Sacred Body, have you been influenced by the worldviews of the indigenous peoples of South America?
Ivone Gebara: I think it is very important to understand what Sacred Body means, because it is somewhat reminiscent of the Body of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, of the Saints in the Christian tradition. I would like to move away from this concept, because it sanctifies certain people and makes them objects of devotion. I think the word Sacred can have another meaning, beyond the religious one. The Sacred Body is a body that I cannot use because I do not own it. I cannot even destroy it. It is sacred because it is part of a whole. The Sacred has to do with a dimension of interdependence, respect, necessity and mutual sustainability. Without water, the planet cannot live; without the cultivation of corn or rice, entire populations cannot live. So the Sacred Body is a sustainable body, a Body whose life transcends me. I am part of the Sacred Body because it encompasses everything. I do not know this everything, but I perceive myself as part of something greater than my individuality and my history.
I must admit that I have not studied indigenous or Afro-descendant worldviews in detail. My knowledge is almost encyclopaedic, nothing in-depth. However, I have had contact with people and read some books. But I feel called by life itself and by philosophy. I will give the example of some authors: Krishna Murti, an Indian philosopher; Paul Ricœur, whom I studied for a long time for my doctoral thesis. Another example is a Chilean group from the magazine Conspirando, of which I was a member and with whom we always discussed issues of interdependence.
I perceive this Sacred Body as the cosmic body, the body of the earth, the body of the forest, my body in all these bodies, the body of women, which cannot be violated, mistreated, raped. I cannot allow it. If someone asks me, “What are your sources?”, I don’t know, I probably have many sources, I don’t know. I have read a lot, I have just turned 80. But I am closer to a holistic and ecological view.
You asked me if I go beyond anthropocentrism. I do not go beyond the anthropocentric position, everything I say I say as anthropos, as a human being. But I recognise the partiality of this point of view. Every species – flies, birds, ants, bees – always sees reality from its own point of view. I cannot rid myself of my anthropocentrism, but I can be aware of its existence and therefore also mitigate it, accepting the fact that we live in a plural world, that life is plural. So we can no longer say that the centre of the universe is the human being, with its claim to dominion, with which we end up destroying our own source of life.
Annamaria Piussi: Can I ask you something? It’s a question that came to mind when I read your texts, and Ivone’s answer just now helps me understand better what you mean by not being able to give up this anthropocentric view. The problem is that the anthropocentrism we have inherited from our cultures, at least from Western cultures – which have also greatly influenced the views of other peoples – has historically gone hand in hand with androcentrism. This is an important point that we have worked on and need to continue working on, which is to give a different meaning to this anthropocentrism. Because I too believe that the various animal species are not all the same and that these differences are also a source of richness, a richness of our lives, of our universe. However, this historical connection between anthropocentrism and androcentrism needs to be revisited, broken, which is what feminism in general has done.
Ivone Gebara: I totally agree. Anthropocentrism generates androcentrism and ecocide, i.e. the death of nature, of the earth, of animals. I cannot completely overcome anthropocentrism, but excessive anthropocentrism, which claims to dominate everything else, must be avoided. I cannot renounce the anthropocentric view – we cannot stop being human – but we must take a more moderate stance in the face of the complexity of life. This is the issue that Anna Maria raised, and it is extremely important.
Mariateresa Muraca: From several of your writings, we understand how fundamental it has been for you – as you said several times during the interview – to have shared your life with women from poor neighbourhoods. To have lived alongside poor women in peripheral and marginalised neighbourhoods. It seems to us that this sharing has made you perceive both situations of oppression and situations of fidelity to the joy shared with others, in a communal way. Is this interpretation correct? Would you like to say anything more?
Ivone Gebara: Life has given me the opportunity to have this closeness, even if it is not what I would like. I would like to be closer, but now it is no longer possible. The poor women with whom I have shared and continue to share, and above all their suffering, have been a source of questions for me with regard to political and religious theories on human dignity. Often, it seems that they are part of a world that is not their world, of concepts that they do not understand. For example, you go to Mass and the content no longer touches the hearts of these women. Instead, if you form a small group of women, if you have something to explain or if you allow them to explain in their own way, you perceive another theory and another practice. This has greatly challenged my philosophy and my theology, so much so that I continue to be a member of the Catholic Church, but at the same time I feel outside Catholic theories, outside very dualistic, very exclusionary theologies. And then there is the other question: it is also interesting that the lives of these women are not only suffering; I also observe pleasure. Today we had a Christmas party, we bought a lot of beer, for the pleasure of drinking. It is rare to be able to eat meat all the time, so we bought some meat to make kebabs. What I mean is that the lives of the poor are not sad, as theoretical analyses sometimes claim. It is a life of deprivation, of course, but it also shows joy and fun. Take, for example, a street woman who wears new earrings every time I meet her. She really likes earrings. She says she is vain. Why not? I tell her, “You’re right to buy earrings if you like them”. These are ways of living that are not understood by the extreme left, which does not value the dimension of play and beauty. This reality, in which joy and sadness are mixed together, exists in every context, in different ways. I will also give the example of a child, about six years old, whom I met today. He had put the meat aside on his plate and was eating only white rice. When someone asked him, “Roberto, why aren’t you eating your meat?”, he said he had put it aside to take to his mother. I have never seen this kind of sharing among rich children. I thought it was so beautiful. They told him to eat it, that they would give him some to take to his mother. I see tenderness, friendship, closeness. When I go there, everyone calls me “granny” and it’s important for me to be their granny. And so oppression is never absolute, because it is mixed with joy, pleasure and sharing. Life does not allow oppression to be absolute, there is always a joy that comes, I don’t know, from a beer or a pair of earrings.
It can be said that oppression was absolute in concentration camps. But even in those cases, there could be something, a moment, a smile, any event that sparked a little hope. This is important. I have a friend who was imprisoned during the military dictatorship in Brazil, and he told me that when they brought him a piece of chicken, he would set aside the bone and give it to the ants. For him, it was a moment of distraction, of joy, when he could communicate and talk to the ants that gathered around that little bone.
Mariateresa Muraca: Last question: in today’s reality, some practices may seem fair and sustainable but, at the same time, present contradictory aspects. It is difficult to find ways that do not cause any harm. Can you elaborate on the concept of eco-justice, referring to specific practices that can be implemented at a personal and community level?
Ivone Gebara: There is no path that is free from harm; even these practices are fraught with contradictions. This is part of the human condition. The term eco-justice was not invented by me; it comes from the environmental movements of the great forums. What does “eco-justice” mean? It means thinking that we human beings are “murderers of the earth”, we are killing the earth, we are killing indigenous peoples, we are killing entire peoples through the colonialism we have developed throughout history. And we continue to kill not only human beings, but also nature, rivers, seas and forests with our wars. How many wars, official and unofficial, exist at this moment in history! Human action destroys not only human life but also the life of the planet, the history of different groups, and children. So when we talk about eco-justice, we are saying no to this destructive and warmongering model of society. We are saying no to bombs and missiles. We are saying no to the use of agrotoxins in the cultivation of rice, beans and coffee. These agrotoxins get into the water and we drink water contaminated with agrotoxins. Social justice is justice made up of concrete practices, practices that generate small transformations. I give the example of some young people in Recife who, when I lived there, used to clean up the two rivers that run through the city on Sundays. Again, how much pressure have we put on companies to denounce preservatives in food products or to reduce the use of plastic? Think about the practice of boycotting. So it is justice made up of practices that pursue small changes. Eco-justice also involves exposing the lies of large companies that use expressions such as “ecologically tested” or “agrochemical-free food”. It is a criticism of the current capitalist system, which simply kills to make money, so that a few minorities can barely survive and the privileges of the wealthy classes can be preserved. Eco-justice is opposed to war. It therefore has a social dimension, a political dimension and a dimension of preserving life, plants and forests, because everything is interconnected.
Originally published as:
Mariateresa Muraca, Chiara Zamboni, Giulia Testi, Caterina Diotto, Vittoria Ferri, Annamaria Piussi, Intervista a Ivone Gebara, in “Per Amore del Mondo” n. 20/2024-2025 Temporale, ISSN 2384-8944
Photographer: Rolands Varsbergs (2019)
Caterina Diotto 