Being defined as nature means being passive, non-agent, and claimable land

Evidence

To be defined as ‘nature’ in this context is to be defined as passive, as non-agent and non-subject, as the ‘environment’ or invisible background conditions against which the ‘foreground’ achievements of reason or culture (provided typically by the white, western, male expert or entrepreneur) take place. It is to be defined as a terra nullius, a resource empty of its own purposes or meanings, and hence available to be annexed for the purposes of those supposedly identified with reason or intellect, and to be conceived and moulded in relation to these purposes. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 44

Categorization

• XREF: Terra nullius concept directly connects to the settler-colonial critique thread in Eco-Justice and to the Base Nation / colonial dispossession material in the library. — connects to: Nature is a political category defined by exclusion from reason — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 40; Respect for nature is an act of individuation, not of boundary-drawing — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 511; Relative and passive properties describe modes of being, never being itself (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Explicates what being ‘cast as nature’ functionally means: backgrounding, passivity, annexable resource.

Broader Connections

• Relative and passive properties describe modes of being, never being itself #contradicts (0.80)
• Respect for nature is an act of individuation, not of boundary-drawing #responds-to (0.75) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 511
• Nature’s agency need not be expressed through reason and speech #contradicts (0.72) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 515