essay by VAL PLUMWOOD artworks by AUREL SCHMIDT Australian-born Val Plumwood (1939-2008) was an influential ecofeminist philosopher, activist, teacher, and the author of highly acclaimed books such as Feminism and the Mastery of Nature and Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason The story of a land where women live at peace with themselves and with the natural world is a recurrent theme of feminist utopias. This is a land where there is no hierarchy, among humans or between humans and animals, where people care for one another and for nature, where the earth and the forest retain their mystery, power, and wholeness, where the power of technology and of military and economic force does not rule the Earth, or at least that part of it controlled by women. For usually this state is seen as a beleaguered one, surviving against the hostile intent of men, who control…