Feminist Molecular Political Action in 5 Acts: An Imagistic Analysis of Chipko Movement in the 1970s

Abstract

The political action of women in conditions of subalternity has been increasingly discussed in works that address different feminist epistemologies. It is no coincidence that molecular political actions such as the Chipko movement, that is, those with little impact, daily and singular, gain strength in the discovery of a world where other ways of living are associated and intertwined with nature. This rediscovery of the world – a new association between existence and coexistence – starts with women in their everyday politics, generating cosmopolitical propositions, as suggested by Isabelle Stengers, in which life in its simplicity connects to the whole not by its greatness or universal identification, but, above all, by its singularity. In these small contexts of great impact, it is possible to analyze how the concept of alienation from the world, proposed by Hannah Arendt, is reinterpreted, promoting a rapprochement between the ways of living on planet Earth and the creations of human beings as part of this whole. This paper therefore aims to reflect and analyze the development of the Chipko movement throughout the 1970s, through 5 residual photographs taken from that context. Using as its main theoretical basis the ideas of 5 authors: the cosmopolitical propositions of Isabelle Stengers and the worldview of Hannah Arendt, the Three Ecologies of Felix Guattarri, the intellectual production of activist and scientist Vandana Shiva – who was in Chipko – and the imagery conceptions of Georges Didi-Huberman, a case study is proposed through Chipko to considering how singular political actions in the broader context of the political field can build new possibilities of relationship with the world, as well as with the political and development practices of the same.