Eco-Feminism and Pandemic Narratives in Twenty-First Century Literature

Abstract

This study analyses the intersections of ecofeminism and pandemic narratives in selected 21st-century texts, including Severance by Ling Ma, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, and Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie. From a qualitative, interpretive, and textual analysis perspective, the study examines how pandemic narratives illustrate pandemics not only as ecological crises but also as gendered experiences that represent larger sociopolitical inequalities. As a result, elements of the analysis show that the texts do not focus on pandemics as only biological diseases but instead as a pushback to exploitative human relations with the natural and human world propelled by capitalist, imperial, and patriarchal forces. The novels privilege female protago nists whose embodied experiences of trauma, migration, and resilience resist dominant ideologies, and ecofeminist forms of resistance include care, memory, art, and healing relationships. Ultimately, by framing pandemics in the ecofeminist lens, the study illustrates the value of narratives as critiques of structural violence and reimagining other ways of being in alternative futures based on justice, interdependence, and ecological consciousness