Abstract

This essay is an ecofeminist hunting manifesto: a defense of subsistence deer hunting as embodied, gendered, biophilic praxis, written from a rural queer ecological perspective. In part a response to reductive views of hunting and colonialist discourse within contemporary ecofeminist vegan theory, it is principally an argument for transition from anthropocentrism to a creaturely worldview, particularly a creaturely approach to eating, involving reverence for food as a sacred site of pleasure and connection with the land and its creatures. Imagining an ecofeminist hunting ethic that might be compatible with critical animal studies, vegan theory, material feminism, or any other philosophical enterprise where creatures are considered from post-humanist positions of care, compassion, and interconnection, it suggests ecofeminist hunting as transcorporeal/material feminist engagement with place, wherein the vulnerability of human and other creaturely bodies is recognized through visceral embedment in local/regional ecosystems; openness and awe replace categorical, taxonomic thinking about creatures and their lifeways; and decentering of the human means resistance to alienation and institutions of hierarchical domination in favor of an ecofeminist/queer ecological relational approach to places and creatures.