Val sent me a copy of a paper ( tasteless.doc) in which she speaks about death. The paper is titled Towards a Food-based Approach to Death, and for those who are working out how to manage Val’s funeral, relevant reading.
Is Ecological death (an animist narrative of death), and situated between “heavensim” and atheism (read human “exceptionalism”) a rich inquiry into our place in nature?
Remembering Val Plumwood 
13-Mar-2008 at 6:55 pm |
I wish to draw your attention to an article, ‘Revisiting the Fight for the Forests’, which was published in Dialogue, the journal of The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2004). It is available on the Academy’s website at http://www.assa.edu.au.
13-Mar-2008 at 7:24 pm |
I too have a copy of the draft of ‘Ecological Death – an emerging paradigm?’, and it is essential that funeral arrangements respect her views as far as possible.
19-Mar-2008 at 11:59 am |
I have a copy, perhaps not the final version, of “The Cemetery Wars” by Val. It is headed by a quote:
“It is a dark root groping in our death
To change dry silence into wine and bread;
To alter the long winter of the dead
Into the swinging vine, the flowering wreath”
– Judith Wright, “The Bones Speak”
I think this paper dates from a time
not long after the burial of Val’s son, John. It records her grief and the response to it, and says much about her developing view of death and life. Idon’t know where it was published, perhaps it is part of one of her books, but if you do not have access to this beautiful paper, I can provide photocopies.