Unearthed: Ecowomanism and Economies of Disposability

Sofia Betancourt

Sept. 24

In this chapter, I draw my framework from Natasha Trethewey’s rending poem, “Miracle of the Black Leg.” My argument questions religiously sanctioned violence against supposedly disposable bodies in the face of climate disruption.

“Unearthed” calls for ecowomanist analyses that engage Kathryn Yusoff’s understanding of the color line of the Anthropocene as a silencing of multiple human extinction level events caused by settler colonialism and chattel slavery. The economic impacts and realities of so-called disposable communities, those sacrificed as false cure as well as those silenced as (im)material witnesses to environmental devastation, require reconsideration of the questions raised at the intersections of religion, economics, and ecology.

Truly practical approaches to planetary flourishing must engage the legacies and lived realities of the ecological other.

Rev. Sofia Betancourt is a Ph.D. Candidate at Yale University in the departments of Religious
Ethics and African American Studies. Her work focuses on environmental ethics of liberation in
a womanist and Latina feminist frame. She served for four years as the Director of Racial and
Ethnic Concerns of the Unitarian Universalist Association, and her ministry centers on work that
is empowering and counter-oppressive. Betancourt holds a B.S. from Cornell University with a
concentration in ethnobotany, an M.A. and M.Phil from Yale University in religious ethics and
African American studies, and an M.Div. from Starr King School for the Ministry.