metaphorical forest and trees
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Paper presented at the 2011 Thinking About Animals / 10th Annual North American Critical Animal Studies Conference at Brock UniversityAdherents to what is being (re)defined as ‘Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach’ focus on the use of animals — or animal exploitation — as the moral baseline for the issue of human-nonhuman animal relations. Based on, and shaped directly by, the ongoing work of Gary Francione, the abolitionist approach distinguishes itself from what has labelled as new welfarist: the actions of those who seek to work towards the end of animal exploitation through legislative changes that are not necessarily consistent with a total liberation perspective. A new welfarist approach would include campaigning for, or supporting, legislation that improved the lives of intensively (or other) farmed animals (i.e. their treatment) — as opposed to calling for an explicit end to the farming of animals.In seeking to provide a theoretically and, adherents would argue, morally consistent framework for working towards the end of animal exploitation we can ask ourselves whether Francione’s abolitionist framework has, unintentionally, turned the idiom that ‘one can’t see the forest for the trees’ around? Specifically, in focussing on the metaphorical forest of an overarching and consistent framework, have those working to define their approach lost sight of the immense and unbearable day to day suffering of individual animals within the machine of the animal-industrial complex? Central to the Abolitionist approach, as defined by Francione and adherents, what are labelled as new welfarist, and all other approaches to to the issue of animal use (and treatment) are a swathe of bad choices. In the context of the institutionalized suffering of animal, in which billions of animals are killed every year at the whim of human desire, can we move beyond the limitations of such choices and have a framework that both addresses the suffering and exploitation of animals today and is consistent in an overarching sense?Another, perhaps more critical way of reframing this—and more directly tying this to the metaphor of forests and trees, is to ask: for those seeking to end the use of animals, and to be consistent in their approach to total liberation, with the explicit focus on animal use, has the suffering of animals become relegated via non-consideration to a side issue. If so, what are the implications for the animals themselves?TRANSCRIPT
metaphorical forest and trees
Colin SalterCentre for Peace Studies, McMaster University
Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS)
Friday, 1 April 2011Thinking About Animals10th Annual Nth America ICAS Conference
animal use and animal suffering
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Overview
n Use and/both suffering
n The lives of individual (nonhuman) animals matter to themselves
n Can ‘rights’ ever be an adequate framework?
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welfare treatment=
abolition use=
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and/both
n Move beyond either/or
n Rationalist limitations
n Ones life matters to them
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Bad choices
n (rescued, companion) nonhuman animals
n farmed nonhuman animals
n exploitation and/both suffering
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ReferencesIen Ang (2001) On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West, London and New York: Routledge.
Elizabeth DeCoux (2009) ‘Speaking for the modern Prometheus: the significance of animal suffering to the abolition movement’, Animal Law Review, Vol. 16, pp. 9-64.
Josephine Donovan (1990) ‘Animal Rights and Feminist Theory’, Signs, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Winter, 1990), pp. 350-375.
Josephine Donovan & Carol Adams, Eds. (1996) Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals, New York: Continuum.
Gary Francione (1996) Rain without Thunder: the ideology of the animal rights movement, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
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ReferencesGary Francione (1996) Ecofeminism and Animal Rights: A Review of Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals, Women’s Rights Law Reporter, Vol. 18, pp. 95-106. Reprinted in Gary Francione (2008) Animals as Persons: essays on the abolition of animal exploitation, New York: Column University Press, pp. 186-209.
Haggis, J. 2004. 'Beyond race and whiteness? Reflections on the new abolitionists and an Australian critical whiteness studies', borderlands e journal. Vol. 3, No. 2.http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2_2004/haggis_beyond.htm
Melanie Joy (2010) Why we love dogs eat pigs and wear cows: an introduction to carnism (the belief system that enables us the eat some animals and not others), San Francisco: Conari Press.
Edward N. Luttwak (1999) ‘Five War a Chance’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 4, pp36-44
Kelly Oliver (2010) ‘Animal Ethics: Towards an Ethics of Responsiveness’, Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 40. pp. 267-80.
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ReferencesNathaniel P Rogers (1845) ‘The Rights of Animals’, Herald of Freedom, October 31. Reproduced in A collection of the miscellaneous writings of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, 2nd Edition (1849).
Peter Singer (2002) Animal Liberation, New York: Ecco/Harper Collins. Originally published 1975. Peter Singer (2002) Animal Liberation, New York: Ecco/Harper Collins. Originally published 1975.
Shannon Sullivan & Nancy Tuana (2007) Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, Albany: State University of New York Press.
David Sztybel (2007) ‘Animal Rights Law: Fundamentalism versus Pragmatism’, Journal for Critical Animal Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1.
David Sztybel (2006) ‘The Rights of Animal Persons’, Animal Liberation Philosophy and Policy Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1.
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Image sourcesDebora Durant (2011) ‘Annabelle (chicken), at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary’, Momentile, February 19.http://mtile.us/debiguity/02-19-2011/
Debora Durant (2011) ‘Marius (goat), at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary’, Momentile, January 22.http://mtile.us/debiguity/01-22-2011/
Debora Durant (2010) ‘Jake (deaf cat)’, Momentile, August 16.http://mtile.us/debiguity/08-16-2010/
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