***This is the second half of the review ***
Please see the first half for a discussion of CAS as an alternative form of research and education than HAS and the Posthumanities.


VEGANISM as part of CAS
Veganism (and vegan education) is a critical component of CAS that most explicitly distinguishes CAS from HAS and the Posthumanities, wherein veganism draws sympathy, but, not uncommonly, also rolling eyes. So significant is veganism that Glasser and Roy recommend adding a twelfth principle of CAS to the original ten that (more-or-less) requires those in CAS to practice vegan in order to be accountable to their research subjects: "scholars must not abuse, injure, degrade, exploit, cage, denigrate, or kill humans, nonhuman, animals and the earth."(p. 100)

However, just because CAS appraises veganism does not mean it is (ironically) uncritical of the politics surrounding it. While editors call it a "moral baseline," they acknowledge that structural conditions such as a lack of geographic, financial, and educational access obstruct many people from practicing veganism (p. xx). Along these lines, Grubbs and Loadenthal also raise judgement of mainstream veganism, following Dr. Harper, as a “providence of a moneyed minority who can afford expensive foods in which "sizist, racist, and classist discourse [...] replace ideological critique with green capitalism" (p. 187).


In Chapter 4, Stephanie Jenkins and Vasile Stanescu likewise critique "vegan lifestyle" discourse which complicity operates within the neoliberal framework of privatizing moral problems through markets and placing full moral accountability on individuals rather than institutions and social structures:

Boycott veganism conflates conspicuous consumption with ethical action and political change… limiting activism to an economic boycott undercuts the moral force of veganism by reducing it to an individual lifestyle. (p. 78)

Richard White and Erika Cudworth alternatively conceptualize veganism as a micro-resistance, through French anarchist Elisee Reclus' theory of "microgeographies" which privileges practice in the "here and now" (p. 203). Jenkins and Stanescu call this "engaged veganism":

[E]ngaged veganism refuses complicity with and symbolically disrupts the instrumentalization and hierarchialization of animal life [necessitating] a micro-political revolution at the level of embodied perception, aesthetics, taste, and affective responses (p. 76)

Engaged veganism is thus similar to what I have previously called social veganism (as opposed to diet, lifestyle, boycott, pragmatic, and ethical veganism), an alternative to what I call consumption veganism.

I understand veganism as a social modality, an affiliation and solidarity with others beyond (species) boundaries, in which animal others are regarded as someones, not somethings... Exploiting animals may not terminate conversations absolutely, but enables and is enabled by an emotional [ignorance] to their resistance whenever it becomes inconvenient to using them.

In other words, veganism is an embodied perception of animals as fellow social creatures whom we have an inherent curiosity for and permeating compassion for through our nature as social beings. Veganism is a recognition of something already there, not an additive ideology or identity politics.

Critically, Adam Weitzenfeld and Melanie Joy state that the consumption of nonhuman animal bodies, far from a matter of personal choice, is at the heart of speciesist narratives and institutions:

Of all the ways humans are subject to speciesism, carnism—the unrecognized ideology that legitimates the killability and edibility of animal others—is arguably the deepest, most pervasive and catastrophic in modern Western cultures. Vegan praxis is one means of embodying critical animal theory and challenging the hegemony of speciesist institutions and anthropocentrist ideology that keep the human-animal binary and hierarchy alive. (p. 1-2)

As a result Weitzenfeld and Joy, recommend shedding light on flesh-consumption practices as not "normal, natural, and necessary," but a biased schema (a way of perceiving the world) in order to expose carnistic affects as social and political intuitions. While carnism is based upon post-hoc disavowals of animal subjectivity and personal accountability for the consequences of choices, veganism is "based on empathy, authenticity, reciprocity, justice, and integrity—the principles that underscore true freedom" for nonhumand and human animals (p.25).

Decolonization and CAS
As the above quote implies, Critical Animal Studies is not only committed to animal liberation, but human liberation. CAS scholars argue that one cannot be had without the other for both liberations are obstructed by the violent construction of human identity as "something superior and opposed to animals and animality" (p. 3).

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John L Wiks

08.25

[H]uman being is not so much a value-neutral biological fact as a violent political fiction. (p. 8)

-Weitzenfeld and Joy 2013

Just before the eve of 2014, Peter Lang International published the first anthology explicitly dedicated to "Critical Animal Studies." (See my resource list for some close predecessors). Given I have yet to see a review of the book online and that many CAS folk across the world are interested in the book but may not have access to the book or time to read it, I've written one myself!

My purpose is not to judge the book so much as reflect upon and reorganize its themes around questions concerning what CAS is, why it is a significant site of resistance in the university, and what it can contribute to animal advocacy beyond the university. The review is divided into four sections: (1) why CAS is an important field, (2) what CAS research and teaching involves, and CAS's commitment to (3) veganism and (4) decolonization.


WHY CRITICAL ANIMAL STUDIES
Fittingly, the book opens with a Forward by David Nibert, author of the canonical text Animal Rights / Human Rights, and a Preface by Ronnie Lee, co-founder of the Animal Liberation Front. In a matter of a several pages, Nibert and Lee concisely provide the historical and political context for the value of Critical Animal Studies. Historically, writes Nibert, the domination of human and nonhuman animals have gone chain-in-chain. Since the institution of animals as property,

[t]he possession of large numbers of these other animals became a sign of wealth and dominance, and elite male’s treatment of them as property was extended to women and devalued people. (p. ix)

The result of cattle ownership? Thousands of years of military invasion, cultural destruction, human slavery, zoontic disease, gender warfare, and more. Even the contemporary military and animal industrial complexes function interdependently, with military expenditures and campaigns to capture more animal capital in Latin America (and elsewhere), and the exploitation of animals in military training and testing.

So how does one respond to these twin industrial machines of violence? The Animal Liberation Front may have been an appropriate response to the industrialization of animal exploitation in the 1980s and 90s, however, after spending nine years in prison, Ronnie Lee has suspicions that its efficacy has declined.

Although it is my belief that ALF actions have contributed significantly to a huge reduction in the fur trade and a  big decline in animal experimentation here in the UK, I now have doubts as to the value of this type of activity in terms of bringing about widespread animal liberation. (p. xiii)

Under new legislation such as the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act and state Ag-Gag initiatives, ALF, if it were to ever achieve more influence, would be crushed by the State. In addition, despite its success, such direct action bypasses the public rather than engaging with it to transform its consciousness and behavior. Without transformation and solidarity, change will not be sustainable. Critical Animal Studies thus serves as a conduit for understanding the interdependence of liberatory movements and the value of education as a vehicle for transformation and resistance to oppression. 

Beyond serving as a conduit of knowledge production and dissemination, why is the university an important site of resistance for nonhumans and their allies? Universities are incorporated in the animal industrial complex, providing space, funding, technology, and training to present and future generations of animal exploiters and the innovation of new forms of torture and massacre. As Glasser and Roy state,

the university is a space hostile to nonhuman animals, who are welcomed onto campus only insofar as they are used for food, research tools, or to assist the disabled. (p. 90)

It is thus not surprising that those who research and advocate the animal liberation movement's tactics and actors are surveyed, requested to reveal the identities of anonymous research subjects, prevented from accessing public documents on those who dissent to animal exploitation, and even fired and barred to enter foreign countries. Animal activists live in countries whereby decent has become criminalized (what Will Potter calls the Green Scare), and scholars and students are not somehow removed from this public situation because of their private pursuits (p. 184). Recent legislation such as AETA demonstrate a convergence of “the institutions of speciesism, the protection of private property, and the state’s regulation of dissent” (p. 193). CAS thus provides a site of resistance not only for nonhuman animals incarcerated by universities, but also human allies (and humans generally) incarcerated within the prison industrial complex (p. xxx). 


WHAT IS CRITICAL ANIMAL STUDIES
Given the magnitude of human-induced animal suffering and the complicity of the university, the founders of Critical Animal Studies sought to create a distinct field of study fromless political orientations to "the animal question," Human-Animal Studies and the Posthumanities. In the introduction, the book editors argue that just as nonhuman animals are objects callously and physically cut apart for the sake of knowledge in the natural sciences ("animal studies"), so nonhuman animals are symbolically dissected in the humanities. The editors suggest that many in "mainstream animal studies" may very well earn the title "theoretical vivisectors" (p. xiv).

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John L Wiks

12.52

HEALTH is an organizational paradigm for Food Justice

Introduction: 
HEALTH has now been up and running for 5 years. Yay!
 
Okay, now that I've gotten the obligatory anniversary announcement out of the way, I want to draw attention back to a topic deserving of its own post:

What is "health"? What work does the acronym HEALTH perform?

In this post, I will elaborate a little bit on how I understand HEALTH after many additional years of life experience as an educator and activist, and why this understanding is preferable to the accepted definition and practice of "health." First, I will discuss the evolution of HEALTH from an organization to a blog to an experimental paradigm for coalition building. Second, I will juxtapose the self-centered normativity of "health" to the socialist politics of HEALTH. Third, I will break down HEALTH into several prerequisites and organizing points. I will conclude with acknowledging the difficulties of navigating this comprehensive vision of HEALTH and invite y'all to chime in with comments as to whether advocating HEALTH is as useful and un-problematic as I suggest.

1. The Evolution of a Vision (2005-2008)
Way back in 2005 I founded an organization on my college campus dedicated to addressing the intersections of oppressions. The club existed, on the one hand, to operate as an independent project for a course on Sustainable Buildings, and, on the other hand, to provide a much needed outlet for animal advocacy on campus. According to the original constitution submitted on April 5, 2005:

H.E.A.L.T.H. is dedicated to ecological sustainability and conservation, the adoption of compassionate and ecologically responsible lifestyles, and global awareness through activism and education. The club will work to develop an environmental taskforce for Beloit College, create and enforce environmentally sound policies, and educate the campus and community about ways to live more harmoniously with the Earth, nonhuman animals, and humans in developing countries. H.E.A.L.T.H. will be involved with nonviolent, grassroots environmental and animal activism 

HEALTH was founded upon ecofeminist philosophy, which I had begun studying independently a year before. Ecofeminism, in a nutshell, is a body of work that purports that the domination of nature (at least in the Western tradition) are entangled with the domination of women (as well as poc, working class, queers, and animals) historically, materially, conceptually, and mythologically. Ecofeminists valuably demonstrate, like other radical theories, that the oppression of humans and nonhuman beings mutually reinforce one another, and that liberation is only possible when all are free of injustices. HEALTH was conceived of this intersectional analysis.

Originally designed to address the unhealthy relationships between humans, animals, and the Earth, HEALTH would take on new meaning as an acronym during research for my interdisciplinary capstone project when I discovered the work of agrarian writer Wendell Berry and ecofeminist Chris Cuomo.

Wendell Berry's essays exemplified what thinkers like Fritjof Capra and David Orr called systems thinking. Systems thinking took into account the process, relationship, dynamism, wholeness, and complexity of "problems" (in contrast to mechanistic thinking which addressed problems by dissecting them into static, discreet parts with simple, predictable, linear cause and effect relationships. The problem with mechanistic thinking (in modern, industrial science, economics, politics, and technology) is that it often creates new problems and so it doesn't "solve for pattern."

In "Health is Membership," Berry wishes we return to the etymological root of  "health" as the whole-ness of belonging:

The word "health," in fact, comes from the same Indo-European root as ‘heal,’ ‘whole,’ and ‘holy.’ To be healthy is literally to be whole; to heal to make whole... our sense of wholeness is not just a sense of completeness in ourselves but also in a sense of belonging to others and to our place; it is an unconscious awareness of community, of having in common. (144)

[The contemporary] view of health that is severely reductive. It is, to begin with, almost frantically individualistic... One may presumably be healthy in a disintegrated family or community or in a destroyed or poisoned ecosystem.” (146)

In another essay, "Solving for Pattern," Berry discusses more concretely the destructive logic of providing health care for one group of a system at the expense of others who belong to that community in agriculture:

Our dilemma in agriculture now is that the industrial methods that have so spectacularly solved some of the problem of food production have been accompanied by ‘side effects’... the irony of agricultural models that destroy, first, the health of the soil and, finally, the health of human communities. (267)

The real problem of food production occurs within a complex, mutually influential relationship of soil, plant, animals, and people. A real solution to that problem will therefore be ecologically, agriculturally, and culturally healthful... [I]t is impossible to sacrifice the health of the soil to improve the health of the plants, or to sacrifice the health of plants to improve the health of animals, or to sacrifice the health of animals to improve the health of people. (269, 274)

Chris Cuomo provided more depth to Berry's arguments, in part by coming out of an ecofeminist tradition critical of the pastoral romanticization of the heteronormative family and settler colonialism. Cuomo offered an alternative route to addressing ecological ethics that wasn't based in mechanistic utilitarian, individualistic deontological, and apolitical care ethics. Cuomo proposed an eudaimonian ethic, based on the ancient Greek concept of flourishing, but applied to community as a social and ecological construct.

Humans cannot flourish without other humans, ecosystems, and species, and nothing in a biotic community can flourish on its own. Likewise, communities (both social and ecological) depend on the existence of other communities. Ethical objects therefore flourish as both social and ecological entities. To be extracted from community, human or otherwise, is to lack relationships and contexts that provide the meaning, substance and material for various sorts of lives.[*]

My ambition to build a coalition between clubs on campus and develop a sustainability taskforce, however, did not materialize. Several years organizing campus events and actions brought me to appreciation of how difficult it was to put this holistic perspective into practice. Such a comprehensive message and focus was naturally complex to deliver and we HEALTH spread itself thin attempting to address issues such as animal liberation and indigenous sovereignty (which I had come to appreciate after studying in Australia). Under the lack of general interest in and availability for advocacy on campus, HEALTH could not sustain itself after I graduated.

2. The Evolution of a Vision (2008-2013)
 

South Central Farm (1994 - 2006) was the largest urban farm and CSA in the USA.

When I returned home from a summer working as an educator at an animal sanctuary, I was inspired to keep my holistic vision and advocacy alive by creating a blog. Having learned from the past of how difficult it was to manage an organization that had potentially infinite possibilities, I narrowed the focus of HEALTH to a food justice blog that would encompass not only food sovereignty (which I learned the importance of through a sustainability project in my community), but also ecological sustainability, and animal liberation. The devotion of HEALTH to food justice seemed a natural fit since food is a site at which so many discourses of health (e.g., bodily, animal, ecological, communal, national) collide.

The original mission statement for HEALTH was posted on September 8, 2008:

HEALTH advocates ecological and social justice through campaigns in which the intersection of multiple oppressions in the production, distribution, and consumption of “food" can be addressed simultaneously... Health in its fullest sense cannot be achieved alone.

Over the next year, I would compile an array of resources, spanning form introductory web sites, documentary videos, peer-reviewed articles, academic journals, non-profit organizations, blogs, and books covering animal, agricultural, ecological, and social justice. Although I attempted to avoid doing so, the blog has admittedly leaned harder on the animal justice side of things. In the first two years, however, I did address matters of gender, race, class, and sexuality injustices in food production, consumption, and distribution.

One post I'm particularly fond of is "Skinny Bitch and Bulimic Vegetarians" published in April of 2009. Of all my posts, this one most directly addressed the limits of advocating personal "health" (or at least the superficial performance of health). After diagnosing the fat-shaming elements of vegan outreach (particularly the aesthetic appeal of Skinny Bitch and the PETA's campaign media), I shared my perspective on "health":

HEALTH cannot be achieved by individuals alone; true health is the consequence of an entire community flourishing mutually together. Modern reductionist approaches to health define "health" as something that can be achieved independent of Others and often at the expense of them (e.g., (over)fishing to consume more fish oil, enslaving people to pick tomatoes, wiping out wildlife to grow organic leafy greens, "curing" diseases by giving them first to millions of "animals"). Within this outlook, veg*n outreach that promotes veg*nism as good for "one's health" is playing into the liberal, antagonistic discourse of self-interest.

Since HEALTH must be achieved together it ought not, as much as possible, come at the expense of the health of Others. In this sense, appropriating mainstream means of advertising (i.e. using the promise of becoming a conventionally sexy and beautiful women) so as to exploit common insecurities over body-image (o)pressed into the minds of young women is not healthy. Exploiting, and thus perpetuating, oppression as a means to a "good" end can never be healthy, even if it promotes "health," because it ultimately subordinates the health of Others.

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John L Wiks

11.32

Juan Karita / AP

When you transform a food into a commodity, there's inevitable breakdown in social relations and high environmental cost - Tanya Kerssen



Quinoa
A gluten-,soy-, GMO-free, complete plant protein. Half of the world's quinoa export comes from Bolivia, where 90% of the crop is grown organically, mostly on small family farms, and where growers' unions protect their livelihoods from the appropriation by multinational corporations. Beyond being an allergen-free, fairly traded, nutritional powerhouse, the increase in demand on the global market is funneling wealth into one of the poorest regions in South America. Families are being able to purchase new technologies that can reduce the stress and increase the efficiency of their farms as well as afford to send their children to university. Superfood indeed!

As successful as quinoa has become as a replacement for grains and a go-to answer to "where do you get your protein?," its success is beginning to come at a cost to indigenous ecological and cultural sustainability. In a Time article published earlier this year, Jean Friedman-Rudovsky reported a breakdown in community, "the traditional relationship between llama herding and soil fertilization," and children's SOLE food consumption.

With its entrance into the global market, quinoa has become a force of globalization. Globalization isn't merely a process that attracts wealth, it's also a process that creates an entry for western culture and technology--the good, the bad, and the ugly. The expanse and intensification of quinoa on the Andean high plains disrupts the communal grazing land of llama's, a cameloid who nourishes the harsh earth with their nitrogen-rich guano. Farmers are now competing to establish plot ownership over what has for millenia been 90% communal grazing land, with the result of seasonal kidnappings and violence as well as an increase in soil erosion and use of finite water sources. The rising affluence from the crop also leads to access to media and food once unavailable, corresponding to a change in food preferences away from the indigenous crop toward processed, malnutritious commodities. Further, the tripling of quinoa's market value may make this once local, nutritious, "mother grain" less accessible to locals not directly reaping the economic benefits.*

(Quinoa is of the most benign "cruelty-free" foods when compared to palm oil and chocolate)


"Beyond Veganism"
These less than ideal consequences that trail the otherwise mutual benefits of the global consumption of quinoa is no reason to cut the crop out of vegan diets, but it does offer an opportunity to reflect upon the limits of a consumption-centered vegan ethic (a discourse primarily about what we eat and don't eat rather than the restoration of the social responsibility we feel with all sentient beings).

While the institutional killing of chickens in the US and llamas in Bolivia go against vegan values, so perhaps too does the undercutting of food sovereignty and and biocultural diversity. There is no need to conclude that US vegans ought to condemn international food ways, nor should they finger-wag at the desire of people in the global South to share in modern technologies and western culture. What is important is to be critically engaged with the real impact our lives have on (human and animal) others, to understand that foods do not fit naturally and firmly into categories such as "good" and "bad."

The just production, distribution and consumption of certain foods vary by the methods, the place, and the time for each food. For instance, rice may a have smaller water-footprint when grown in southeast Asia and a than in California; the carbon-footprint may be higher for growing tomatoes in a local greenhouse than on a farm in Florida, but Florida tomatoes may be picked by wage slaves; people living in tundra and desert often depend upon the exploitation and killing of animal others, but by advocating an animal-free diet would force them into dependency on expensive and/or malnutritious outside food and undermine their food sovereignty. In the case of quinoa, a internationally-desired food that at first provided great benefits to Andean farmers may turn into a food that comes at the expense of the local ecology and culture.

Food is complex. General rules (like eat vegan, seasonal/local, fair, permacultural, and organic food) are important for keeping us sane, productive people. But not everyone has the privilege of living in a California vegan cooperative where SOLE food is accessible and abundant year-round. If you live in a food desert or an isolated part of the world unconductive to sustainable agriculture, one is institutionally constrained into prioritizing certain food values over others (such as cost-effectively meeting one's caloric needs with non-toxic food). Rather than simply asking those with less privilege to work towards a vegan practice, vegans can work in solidarity with other people to transforming present food systems away from not only a species hierarchy, but also class, gender, race, and national hierarchy as well. As I wrote before, "[v]eganism will have limited success so long as it remains a luxury reserved for those with privilege, independent of human liberation movements."


Food Empowerment

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John L Wiks

17.54

INTRODUCTION: The mainstream discourse and practice of veganism as an individual’s (abstention from the) consumption of animal products, I believe, is problematic in three interrelated ways: practically as an economic boycott, socially as a privileged consumerism, and philosophically as an equivocation with a vegetarian lifestyle. I propose a new understanding of veganism as a social modality with and in regard to animal others which can be distinguished from and exist independently of vegetarian consumption. However, this distinction does not so much as invalidate vegetarian consumption so much as place it in a dialectic relationship with veganism, in which it can be regarded as a valuable means, but not an end.


PRACTICALLY, positioning veganism as an economic boycott is a very limited tactic given the prevalence of global capitalism. Mainstream veganism only addresses the content (i.e. animal products) and not the form/structure (i.e. capitalism) of the global market that facilitates the exploitation of animals as commodities and obstructs people from transforming society. This is evident in several ways.

First, many mainstream vegans tend to regard the very culprits of animal exploitation as the remedy. Veganism is now sold to people in the form of products (sometimes explicitly labeled “vegan”) by the very corporations (i.e. Kraft, Dean, Con-Agra, Burger King, etc.) that exist and profit off the exploitation of animals. While the availability and convenience of these products is celebrated as “victories,” their support only sediments the control these corporations have over the market and government. These agri-businesses that own, produce, and distribute most of our food supply have tremendous political power winning government subsidies and combating policy changes that would abolish animal exploitation practices..

Second, even if consumer vegans extend their boycott from the individual product consumed to the company who profits from it, without also challenging the present political-economic order of capitalism in which the interests of corporations persistently trump the interests of the general public, vegans remain complicit in the system that entitles businesses to exploit animal others (and human others as well). Besides, it’s not as if animal agribusiness is an isolated phenomenon; it is sustained by what Barbara Noske calls “the animal industrial complex”—an amalgamation of feed and chemical companies, the pharmaceutical industry, representatives and officers in government, public research and educational institutions etc. that are all mutually dependent upon one another through capital. Animal agribusiness will not be overthrown until these regimes and what gives them power are transformed. Even if consumer vegans were able to make significant dents in the national market, all this will be reversed by the rise of the affluent animal-eating class in the developing world to whom animals raised nationally will be exported, or—in “a race to the bottom”— to where the industry will be exported—displacing farmers and wildlife and externalizing production costs upon their communities.

Third, veganism as an economic boycott does not even universally enable people to practice veganism. Since wholesome food is regarded as a commodity rather than a socio-political right, large populations of disadvantaged people have little to no financial and/or geographic access to vegetarian food and goods, and thus are severely disadvantaged from living a secure vegan life. Food will continue to be grown for profits before people’s needs and preferences so long as food remains a commodity. A vegan world will not be brought about by the asocial, amoral market but by people in what Vandana Shiva calls “food democracy”—when food production and access is determined by people, not the imperialism of the market. In sum, mainstream vegan discourse and activism's focus on economic boycott is problematic not because it is ineffective, but because it is insufficient. Without challenging the political, economic, and social structure of society, veganism as a movement will make little progress reducing and abolishing animal exploitation.

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John L Wiks

11.17

3. The Animals Film (Beyond the Frame 1981, 137min)

To my knowledge, The Animals Film was the first documentary to me made on the animal protection movement and the first to be aired on public television--an amazing feat given that it was released just 6 years after the publication of Animal Liberation, 1 year after Henry Spira's ad campaign against Revlon, 2 years before The Case for Animal Rights, and 3 years before Unnecessary Fuss. Filmed in the United States by an Israeli and released in England, TAF had been the most comprehensive film on animal welfare up until the release of Earthlings 16 years later. Yet, despite its age, sadly, little has changed since its release except that industry practices and problems have increased in magnitude and extended into other countries. (In 1980, about 5 billion animals were slaughtered in America annually compared to nearly 9 billion by 2000). In fact, it is my opinion that despite the praise for Earthlings and the absence of knowledge about this film, TAF is better. (Whether it is more effective at recruiting vegans--Earthlings supposedly is nicknamed "the Vegan maker"--, that is for empirical studies to determine).

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John L Wiks

14.43

Sue Coe. 2004. "Ox Pull." From "Bully!: master of the Global Merry-go-round" Source: http://www.graphicwitness.org/coe/bullya.htm

"However, even vegetarianism in your hands, would make a capital article...  its connection with modern socialism, atheism, nihilism, anarchy and other political creeds... Brussels sprouts seem to make people bloodthirsty, and those who live on lentils and artichokes are always calling for the gore of the aristocracy and for the severed heads of kings... in the political sphere a diet of green beans seems dangerous." -Oscar Wilde, The Complete Letters, p. 334, from a letter dated Nov. 12, 1887.

Introduction
Ten months ago, Paul D'Amato's article  "Socialism and 'animal rights'" sparked a small controversy that fizzled out within a month of its release. Unfortunately, out of the dozen responses only two or three were more argument than opinion. My aim here is to provide a more rigorous and comprehensive critique of D'Amato's article absent in the responses in order to better reconcile the perceived tension between socialistm and animal rights.

In "Socialism and 'Animal Rights'," D'Amato's reasoning starts off strong, making critical and important insights on the idea of animal liberation; however, it soon strays into weak, dangerous, and unnecessary territory. D'Amato comes to several conclusions (not presented in this order):

1. "There is a clear connection between how a rapacious capitalism mistreats animals... environment... [and] human[s]"
2. "Non-human animals are helpless… incapable of organizing and fighting for their rights"
3. "To compare the condition of animals to that of... [humans] for freedom and equality is to view the latter through a paternalistic lens, rather than a lens of human liberation"
4. "we need to insist on the essential differences between human beings and other animals, and reject the idea of 'animal liberation.'"
5. "seeking more humane treatment of animals is not the same as calling for 'animal rights'"

In the first conclusion, he displays sympathy for nonhuman animals and their human allies. In the second, D'Amato properly points out the obvious but sometimes overlooked fact that no other (with a possible exception of a few) species can and/or is capable of politically organizing to declare their rights. This point leads into the subtitle and thesis of D'Amato's piece: to compare the animal liberation movement to human liberation movements is paternalistic (and reeking of white, middle-class, male privilege).

I'm totally on board with D'Amato's thesis if we are only discussing movements and not also mental, material, and legal outcomes. But he does not enclose his argument to his thesis; he continues on to argue that humans are essentially different from all other animals (despite being careful to say that humans are only "qualitatively" different"), and that the "liberation" and rights of nonhuman animals be rejected in favor of merely "more humane treatment." It is these last two conclusions, I find objectionable and weakly argued.

In this response, I will critique four positions D'Amato either asserts or  ignores. First, he implicitly argues that one cannot have rights unless one asserts one has them, a contractualist argument that would exclude many humans from possessing rights. Second, he explicitly draws on evolutionary biology to make arguments for an essential difference between humans and other animals that contradict themselves and are analogous to arguments that have been used to rationalize racism. Third, D'Amato misses how worker and animal exploitation are not only  increased by capitalism, but that they are intersecting oppressions that mutually reinforce one another just as socialism and animal rights are ethico-political positions that intersect and mutually reinforce one another. Finally, he is naive to the historical, cultural, and ecological ties between the exploitation and well-being of human and animal.


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John L Wiks

02.50

"$uper Cow", $uper Profits: Cyber Chattel, $ex Exchange, and $perm Banks
In a recent National Geographic program on the technoscientific management of "nature," we get a glimpse at a very much neglected element in contemporary animal agribusiness, the sperm banks by which, animals are, according to Jacques Derrida (1997), "exterminated by means of their continued existence or even their overpopulation”:

Selective breeding is the first stop on our tour of how man is using science to control nature... In fact, selective breeding is all about managing sex...Over a hundred years, Farmers have only allowed the cows and bulls with the largest muscle mass to mate

The technoscientific sacrifice of animal heathcare for economic welfare is explained:

There is a gene that regulates the growth of muscles in cattle. These cows have been selectively breed from animals that contain a copy of this gene that doesn't work. As a result their muscles grow far larger than normal. To insure that the effective gene is passed on, sex for the Belgian Blues has been replaced by technology in the form of artificial selection

The men in the video discuss the homoerotic, predatory gaze:

The bulls are shaved to best display their muscles... so you can see where all the meat is...  because when you look at him, you cannot help but think of lunch

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John L Wiks

02.20