Nature is backgrounded through systematic moral exclusion, denial, and not-seeing.

Evidence

The denials of dualism have defined the meaning of the human/nature relationship in the western tradition. As many writers on environmental ethics have noted, nature in the west is instrumentalised as a mere means to human ends via the application of a moral dualism that treats humans as the only proper objects of moral consideration and defines ‘the rest’ as part of the sphere of expediency. The natural world and the biosphere have been treated as a dump, as forming the unconsidered, instrumentalised and unimportant background to ‘civilised’ human life; they are merely the setting or stage on which what is really important, the drama of human life and culture, is played out. In the dominant view, the biosphere forms the taken-for-granted material substratum of human existence, always present, always functioning, always forgiving; its needs do not have to be considered, just as the needs of other species generally do not have to be considered, except as they occasionally impinge upon or threaten the satisfaction of our own. Systematic devaluation and denial are perceptually ingrained in backgrounding, involving systematic not noticing, not seeing. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 269

Categorization

• XREF: Deepens the backgrounding concept from ch8 into its concrete environmental form; bridges to Merchant’s account of nature-as-resource and to eco-justice pedagogy’s attention to what is backgrounded. — connects to: Masters both rely on the dominated and deny that dependency through backgrounding. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 197; Nature is a political category defined by exclusion from reason — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 40; The concept of nature is a dumping-ground defined purely as reason’s excluded opposite. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 97 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Protection by exclusion reflects a worldview that sets humans apart from nature #corroborates (0.90) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 572
• Viewing humans as separate from nature enables resource exploitation without conscience. #corroborates (0.85) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1009
• Dualism renders the lower order a mere resource excluded from the moral sphere #corroborates (0.85) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 218
• Moral exclusion arises from a society’s own evaluative schemes #corroborates (0.80) — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 807