NB. Research into relevant artists/exhibitions is found in a separate post. please follow this link or see menu:
I thought about, and decided against using Animal Science to support my work – many studies now show that other animals are empathetic or kind, for example. However, Science and it’s (mis)use of other animals is problematic (for example vivisection). It is Science, that Descartes said would make Humans ‘the Lords and Possessors of Nature’. Olio (2016) writes in relation to research ethics and Science:
An ethicality resting on the immediacy of the empiric methodology has its epistemic root grounded in Enlightenment philosophy of scientific realism and cannot adequately support posthumanist/Animal Studies arguments. (Olio, 2016: 5)
- Critical Animal Studies.
Best, Nocella, II, Kakh, Gigliotti and Kemmerer (2007:5) explain why they have renamed the Center on Animal Liberation Affairs as ‘Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS)’. They write that their aim is to provide a space for the development of a critical approach to animal studies that views the relations between human and non-human animals as at a point of crisis which implicates the whole planet. They evidence this with reference to the billions of other animals slaughtered each year, the unfolding of the sixth great extinction crisis and monumental environmental ecological effects including the threat of global warming, rainforest destruction, desertification, air and water polution and resource scarcity, to which animal agriculture is a prime contributor (page 5).
Best describes Critical Animal Studies as follows (Best et al, 2007, Introduction: 2)
Critical animal studies has a broad and holistic understand of hierarchical power systems (e.g., racism, sexism, classism, and speciesism) and their intricate interrelationships. CAS explores the systemic destructive effects of capitalism on all life and the earth, and views animal liberation and human liberation as inseparably interrelated projects. Most generally, Critical Animal Studies uses theory as a means to the end of illuminating and eliminating domination.
CAS theorises our abuse and relationship to other animals with regard to intersectionality and other forms of social injustice, particularly those injustices resulting from late global capitalism. While recognising that the ending of violence to other animals is most important to the other animals themselves, CAS argues animal agriculture is the primary violent system underpinning all other violent systems. CAS is critical of much of the animal studies that can be found in university departments. They describe this as ‘abstract, esoteric, jargon-laden, insular, non-jnormative, and apolitical discipline, one where scholars can achieve recognition while nevertheless remaining wedded to speciesist values, carnivorist lifestyles, and at least tacit – sometimes overt – support of numnerous forms of animal exploitation such as vivisection. (Best et al. 2007: 5).
Importantly CAS is most concerned with linking theory to practice and the academy to the community. For example, CAS, supports activism for animal liberation. It advances a holistic understanding of the commonality of oppressions, such as speciesism, sexism, racism, ablism, classism and other hierarchical ideologies, all of which are viewed as parts of a larger, interlocking global system of domination. It argues for an anti-capitalist, and radically anti-hierarchical politics that dismantles all structures of exploitation, domination, oppression, torture, killing and power in favour of decentralising and democratising society at all levels on a global basis.
Clearly these are huge issues and call for the end of the global economy and political organisation as we know it. Personally, I agree with this goal. The direction Humans are heading is catastrophic, and only massive systemic change that overhauls consummerist values and lifestyles and replaces them with values based on caring, sharing and lower expectations for material goods, seems possible to avert the looming chaos. Most importantly, I’d argue, a challenge to the hierarchies of wealth and power is called for: both within Nations and between Nations: exploitation and brutality toward other animals is part of all kinds of hierarchical systems that justify and rationalise violence.
I was interested in the argument by Perlo (2007), for intrinsic over extrinsic reasons for promoting animal liberation. She argues that extrinsic reasons for plant based diets, for example – focus on better health or on environmental issues – lead to inconsistency, ethical ambiguity and speciesist biases. I agree with this argument, and that intrinsic reasons – animal liberation for the animals, not for human health or the environment, is in itself the first and most important reason because based on what is ‘good, just and right’: ‘health’ reasons for not eating animal flesh or excretions are very persuasive, but do not shift the notion that humans are superior to other animals (see post humanism below), nor do health or environmental arguments, shift the conversation away from an anthropocentic view that only considers what is ethical or ‘good’ in relation to whether it is good for humans. Importantly they focus on the food system. While the food system is at the bottom of much of the violence, environmental destruction, starvation, ill-health and other issues, focus on plant based diets still shifts attention from the main problem vis a vis our relationship with other animals – we consider them as objects for our own use and abuse and entertainment. A plant based diet alone, while essential, does not challenge all the other ways that humans exploit other animals – vivisection, zoos, entertainment, ‘work horses’ and so on.
2. Post Humanism
Post Humanism also adds weight to a critique of how Human animals have abused other animals for their own gain. Post Humanism is of course, a critique of Humanism. Humanism has provided a justification and rationale for abuse of other animals, as well as other ways of thinking that support the objectification and hierarchical systems that are normalised in our societies. Mellamphy (2021: 1) describes Humanism as follows:
A hallmark of humanism is that it established humanity’s separate and exceptional character and, purposely or not, led to the subjection of everything else to this alleged special status. Strongly anthropocentric, humanism posits a theory of “human nature” that is used as a basis for making various normative, moral, cultural, and legal claims that elevate humans to the status of moral and political agents while relegating nonhumans to a lesser more instrumental status. Humanism grounds its ethical claims in the human capacities for reason, autonomy, impartiality, and universality, which are then used as justifications for mastery and management of nonhumans who are considered to lack these capabilities. In the intellectual histories of Western thought, the view that humans possess unique capacities that make them exceptional and/or superior to others is often found. For instance, ancient Greek virtue-ethics, medieval humanism, early modern mechanism, and even contemporary philosophy of mind are grounded in anthropocentric terms that privilege the achievement of human ends by way of human rationality at the expense of nonhuman lives.
Mellamphy. 2021: 1
Pendersen (2011) explores some of the ways that Critical Animal Studies and Post Humanism are similar and different. She describes CAS as ‘activist scholarship’. Post humanism, she points out, addresses fundamentail ontological and epistemological questions about how we can define ‘essential’ human nature. It is also a critique of humanisms’ inability to meet its own criteria of value pluralism, tolerance and equality for all (Wolfe, 2008). Posthumanism points out the fallacy of the autonomous, self-determinint, rationale human, and suggests this is an ideal, and an ideology. Woolfe, (2009) argues that it is our death that is the defining feature of our relationship with other animals, therefore shifting her post humanist ethic from ableness to shared vulnerability. Pendersen (2011) points out that, if death is the defining feature in common, rathe rather than agency, this ‘brings us further to the deconstruction of the knowing subject’ that underpins humanist thought. CAS however is concerned not only with the killing of other animals but with their breeding – shifting the focus from mortality to natality. Holloway et al (2009) point out that killing and breeding are closely entangled and rest on an assumption of human absolute control of (other) animal life. Mortality and vulnerability on the one hand, and breading and production on the other create areas of tension between CAS and post humanism (Pendersen, 2011). CAS rejects a welfarist position that killing animals under the ‘proper conditions’ is justifiable, while post humanism does not take this position as central to its thinking. Another area of divergence is biotechnology. Posthumanism is not critical of biotechnical assemblages , while CAS points out that research and development into these technologies by agribusiness and pharmaceutical industries means increasingly sophisticated forms of hyper-exploitation, deprivation and complete physical and mental domination of other animals, for example to chickens in the poultry industry (Boyd, 2001).
Another issue relates to posthumanists focus on permeability of boundary identity and subject boundary dissolution. CAS points out that presumably other animals, who have experiences extreme violence from humans, have no desire to co-merge with them. ‘Theorising bounary dissolution is relatively unproblematic for those who never need to experience oppression.’ (Pendersen, 2011: 72 ). Crist (2004) point out that posthumanists focus on boundary dissolution bears an uncomfortable resemblance to ecological colonialism.
In CAS all research is a political act (Pendersen, 2011) because knowledge can never be divorced from politics. In posthumanism the role of politics is much less theorised and less clear. Even so, Pendersen points out, questioning subjectivities, what makes us human, biotechnical relations, are all inherently political. Pendersen then asks, ‘What exactly does Post Humanism do for the situation of ‘real’ animals. How does it intervene? Does it orient us toward action? Pendersen suggests that in fact post humanism might obscure, dilute or displace responsibility for the situation of other animals. Pendersen ends by suggesting that perhaps CAS can use the ‘space’ that post humanism opens up for critiquing the privileged position that humans have allocated themselves. She also suggests that posthumanism could learn from CAS by becoming rooted :
… in (un)firm political soil with consistent and committed critical attention towards any oppressive institutions, arrangements, and practices that regulate and exploit the life conditions of humans and nonhumans alike (Pendersen, 2011: 78).
Follow up in Unit Two: Add section on animal studies in visual art e.g Olio. More on post humanism and critical animal studies (on new materialism too?) Perhaps add research into the harm caused by the animal agriculture industry, including to the animals directly affected, as well as those indirectly affected by de-forestation, and harm to the land itself. Possibly research into an alternative food production system. How might it work? Draw on literature on art and politics of ecology (eg Demos, 2016 and 2017).
References
Best, S. (2007). Introduction. Animal Liberation Philosophy and Policy Journal, ‘Introducing Critical Animal Studies’, 5, 1. page 2.
Boyd, W. (2001). Making Meat: Science, Technology, and American Poultry Production. Technology and Culture, 42: 631–64
Crist, E. 2004. Against the Social Construction of Nature and Wilderness. Environmental Ethics, 26: 5–24
Demos, J. T. (2016) Decolonizing Nature. Contemporary Art and The Politics of Ecology. Sternberg Press.
Demos, J. T. (2017) Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today. Sternberg Press.
Holloway, L., Morris, C., Gilna, B. and Gibbs, D. (2009). Biopower, Genetics and Livestock Breeding: (Re)constituting Animal Populations and Heterogeneous Biosocial Collectivities. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 34: 394–407
Mellamphy, N. B. (2021). Re-thinking “Human-centric ” AI: An Introduction to Posthumanist Critique. Europe Now. Council for European Studies. https://www.europenowjournal.org/2021/11/07/re-thinking-human-centric-ai-an-introduction-to-posthumanist-critique (Accessed 2 November 2022)
Olio, G. (2016). Registering Interconnectedness. Antennae, No 37, pp – 5-22.
Perlo, K. (2007). Extrinsic and Intrinsic Arguments: Strategies for Promoting Animal Rights.’ Journal of Critical Animal Studies. Vol 5. pages 1-14.
Pendersen, H. (2011). Release the Moths: Critical Animal Studies and the PostHumanist Impulse. Culture, Theory and Critique. Vol 52. No 1. pages 65-81.
Wolfe, C. (2008). “Posthumanities”. Available online at http://www.carywolfe.com/post_about.html (accessed 24 November 2022)
Wolfe, C. 2009. Human, All Too Human: “Animal Studies” and the Humanities. PMLA, 124(2): 564–75.
Drawing As Critique 