slaves and animals

Although we’ve read many compelling analogies to the suffering of animals and various instances of human suffering, I found the slavery analogy in “Am I Blue?” to be somewhat unpersuasive. This objection occurs mostly in the passages referring to Blue’s partner. “The children next door explained that Blue’s partner had been “put with him” (the same expression that old people used, I had noticed, when speaking of an ancestor during slavery who had been impregnated by her owner) so that they could mate and she conceive” (613). These relationships seem to be borne out of financial necessity, with no romantic fulfillment whatsoever. However, it is advanced in the passage as if they are similar. The difference occurs when Blue actually receives fulfillment from the relationship, when he has “a look of independence, of self-possession, of inalienable horseness” (613). This is where the problem occurs. In order for the analogy to work, either the slave relationships are temporarily fulfilling or the horse’s relationship wasn’t. When delving deeper, it is also worth noting that the problem with the original slave relationship is the lack of autonomy in the first place. However, the narrator’s treatment of Blue’s relationship objects to the removal of the partner, instead of the lack of autonomy in their initial pairing. I think that there are more fundamental questions about the freedom of Blue that must be critiqued that provides a more ambivalent description of his relationship with the brown horse.

One quotation that I found interesting in the Spiegel passage is the usage of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston writes, “So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He hand it to his womanfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see…” (635). In this passage, Hurston explicitly writes about the intersection of race and gender, which reminded me of many of our discussions that we have had in class (including the one last Tuesday). However, I’m not entirely sure how this applies to animals. If human beings, as animals, are able to develop oppressive attitudes towards other beings, do inter-animal hierarchies exist? Is it possible to theorize of other types of oppression that occur between various species (or in the intersection of species and another social category) that can be theorized in the context of the intersectionality that Hurston refers to? Could speciesism activists have their own second (or third) wave just as the feminists did themselves? I think that we have a lot of room to theorize about these possibilities in the humanities in the future.

zora neale hurston

being-with animals

While many have agreed to Fox’s claim that “every instance of this [patriarchal] linguistic practice brings us one step closer to an oppressive state,” I think it is important for us to be mindful of the author’s argument and not draw radical conclusions from the author’s observations. The author explicitly argues that “our language necessarily reflects a human-centered viewpoint more completely than a male-centered one” (589). The crucial verb in this sentence is ‘reflects’, implying that language is merely reflexive of preexisting social beliefs instead of actively producing the hierarchies that we are concerned with. Rather than these hierarchies being propagated through the language we use itself, instead they are the result of deeply invested mentalities and cultural beliefs that our language is merely symbolic of. I believe that Foucault is correct in noting that it is “necessary also to distinguish power relations from relationships of communication that transmit information by means of a language, a system of signs, or any other symbolic medium.” Just because “the production and circulation of elements of meaning can have as their objective or as their consequence certain results in the realm of power; the latter are not simply an aspect of the former” (Foucault 337). Wendy Brown implicates this by arguing that “moralistic reproaches to certain kinds of speech or argument kill critique not only by displacing it with arguments about abstract rights versus identity-bound injuries, but also by configuring political injustice and political righteousness as a problem of remarks, attitude, and speech rather than as a matter of historical, political-economic, and cultural formations of power” (Brown 30). By oversimplifying the problem of speciesism and patriarchy to mere rhetoric, we run the risk of trading off with genuine political progress. Moreover, this also implies that words have no authentic meaning. Foucault frequently writes of the ability to strategically reverse many power relations that exist, and I believe that the treatment of the word ‘foxy’ is an example of this. The example of the word “foxy” is given by the literature, with the author noting “the ambivalence of foxy lady. A man who labels a woman “foxy” admires her as stylish and attractive yet sees her largely as a sex object worth possessing” (588). This is not to say that words such as ‘bitch’ and other overtly derogatory terminology can ever have a positive connotation (although Lil Kim might beg to differ). However, I think that we need to be mindful of the mentality that shapes the language that we use instead of being asphyxiated with the language itself.

I found the inclusion of Alice in Wonderland in Derrida’s analysis on speciesism to be fascinating. The excerpts in the anthology were confusing to say the least. Derrida argues that it is impossible to presuppose certain relationships with animals “for I no longer know who I am (following) or who it is I am chasing, who is following me or hunting me” (598). Derrida approaches a reconfiguration with animals through a problematization of the Self. I think that Derrida is correct in focusing on a deeper interrogation. Contrary to the belief that Cartesian dualism is the cause of the exploitation of animals, Derrida believes that we need to look at something more intrinsic to the development of humans. Many argue that “Descartes internalized, within man, the dualism implicit in the human relation to animals. In dividing absolutely body from soul, he bequeathed the body to the laws of physics and mechanics, and, since animals were soulless, the animal was reduced to the model of a machine” (605). Derrida seeks to look past this arbitrary rise of speciesism and acknowledge that speciesism was likely borne out of pre-Enlightenment practices. Most confusing from the Derrida passage is his use of the famed Alice quotation regarding madness, “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad” (598). Out of context, it is pretty confusing to see how this is remotely relevant to Derrida’s argument. However, further reading of The Animal That Therefore I Am contextualizes this more. Derrida is attempting to undermine previous relations with animals in order to develop a new relationship with the Other. Derrida speaks from the “point of view of the absolute other, and nothing will have ever done more to make me think through this absolute alterity of the neighbor” (Derrida). After declaring one’s own madness, “I no longer know how to respond, or even to respond to the question that compels me or asks me who I am (following) or after whom I am (following), but am so as I am running” (Derrida). In doing so, Derrida is developing a new mode of Being with animals. Specifically, that is “Being after, being alongside, being near [pres] would appear as different modes of being, indeed of being-with. With the animal” (Derrida). While I admit, the Madness claims are still relatively abstract in this context, Derrida makes a little more sense. The declaration of one’s own Madness functions to dissolve the boundaries between animals and humans in order to develop a different mode of being-with animals. It is only through reconfiguring these relationships (as opposed to mere rhetoric) can hierarchies be challenged.

derrida

Wendy Brown. Politics Out Of History. Princeton University Press (2001): 30.

Jacques Derrida. The Animal That Therefore I Am. Fordham University Press (2008).

Michel Foucault. “The Subject and Power”. Power: Essential Works of Foucault Vol. 2. Ed. Colin Gordon.

western barbarism

Reading Kafka’s “A Report for an Academy” gave excellent context to earlier passages of Elizabeth Costello that directly refer to the short story and also about the most recent assigned reading. A particularly thought-provoking line of thought from Thomas O’Hearne revealed that the animal rights movement runs the risk of becoming “another Western crusade against the practices of the rest of the world, claiming universality for what are simply its own standards” (Coetzee 105). The delineation is subsequently made between treating animals compassionately because of an obligation to them or an obligation to ourselves. O’Hearne warns that “as long as we insist that we have access to an ethical universal to which other traditions are blind, and try to impose it on them by means of propaganda or even economic pressure, we are going to meet with resistance, and that resistance will be justified” (Coetzee 106). Although the animal rights movement would subsequently be defended as a worthwhile movement nonetheless, O’Hearne raises some important points. There is always a danger of imposing ideologies upon other individuals. This seems reminiscent of Red Peter’s proclamation that he has “attained the average education of a European” as a source of escaping the imprisonment of most animals (563). Literary analysis of this passage from Kafka argues that this comes at a high price, considering “Red Peter's claim to be human thus derives from his ability to invoke the "longtime corpse" of his animal being. To the extent that Red Peter learns how to inhabit a human body—by imbibing schnapps, for example—he is forced to give up the freedom of movement he formerly enjoyed as an animal” (Danta 729). However, Red Peter claims that it is not freedom that he seeks. Instead he merely seeks “a way out—to the right or left or anywhere at all” (560). Deleuze and Guattari read this passage as advocating that the “animal essence is the way out, the line of escape, even if it takes place in place, or in a cage” (Danta 729). Clearly these different perspectives paint an ambivalent picture of efforts to fight for animal rights. Imposing anthropocentric and Eurocentric values in any social movement could prove to be haphazard.

eurocentric epistemologies can skew world views

Although Elizabeth Costello wields fascinating comparative analysis between the poetry of Rilke and Hughes, I found myself focusing less upon Hughes’s poems and instead upon deciphering the meaning of Der Panther. Barranco’s translation caught my eye with the line, “Inside, a gigantic Will stands stunned and numb” (565). In an effort to determine why ‘Will’ is capitalized, I examined the original German translation. The line reads, “in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht” (564). Pending scrutiny from Spider, my understanding of Der Wille is having its origins in Wahl, which has a connotation of autonomy and determination. This can also be contextualized with other uses in German philosophical texts, such as Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s diverse writings on Will. This seems to add deeper meaning to the poem than is suggested by the English translations, which has implications for the Panther’s entire Being.


The analogy between the Holocaust and slaughterhouses has been the subject of much writing. Theodor Adorno notes that “Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals” (570). Although many object that such an appropriation of the Holocaust trivializes the event, such critics must be mindful of Adorno’s other writings. One of Adorno’s most famous yet misunderstood claims is that the act of writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. Rather than being read as a denial of the importance of art, Adorno’s claim should instead be understood as arguing that “not only would representation in aesthetic form as a matter of course shear away some of the horror, but the principle of aesthetic stylisation might attribute a sense of meaning to the fate of the victims in the sense that senseless mass murder would be given meaningful form” (Martin 9). It can be gathered from Adorno’s passionate reading of the Holocaust that his treatment of the event is far from trivial. Rather, Adorno’s somber treatment of such atrocities merely highlights the importance of Adorno’s comparisons with slaughterhouses. In the same way that Adorno fears the inadvertent attribution of meaning to the irrational violence of the Holocaust, no logical justification exists for the violence that is inflicted upon animals regularly.

adorno

Danta, Chris. “"Like a dog . . . like a lamb": Becoming Sacrificial Animal in Kafka and Coetzee”. New Literary History 38.4 (2007): 729.

Martin, Elaine. “Re-reading Adorno: The ‘after-Auschwitz’ Aporia”. Forum 2 (2006): 9.

tears of the carnivore

The first viewing of Earthlings left me relatively skeptical. Although the documentary certainly succeeded in evoking emotion, it left me feeling empty-handed. The narrator observes, “ordinary human beings (not a few exceptionally cruel or heartless humans, but the overwhelming majority of people), take an active part in, acquiesce in, and allow their taxes to pay for practices that require the sacrifice of the most important interests of members of other species, in order to promote the most trivial interests of our own species.” The moral claim made by the documentary is very clear: everyone is complicit in this suffering. Even citizens who unknowingly fund this treatment of animals through their taxes are partially responsible for these problems. I couldn’t help but recall a passage from Pascal Bruckner’s book The Tears of the White Man, in which he describes the methods used by “the prophets of guilty conscience” to “con¬front us via the media with all the suffering of the human race, in the face of which the slightest gesture of generosity is an in¬adequate act of charity” (Bruckner 63). This has the potential to be life-negating, if one reaches the conclusion that “our very existence is an insult to the human race. We have only one duty—to wipe ourselves off the face of the earth.51 The future of the West is self-destruction” (Bruckner 66). Considering individual citizens have no control over how their taxes are distributed, much of the suffering seems to function solely to create feelings of guilt for the viewer. I’m not entirely convinced that being confronted with this suffering is necessarily useful when one has no avenues to alleviate the pain.

am i to blame for the status quo?

Recognizing one’s complicity in a system of hierarchies is not inherently life-negating, however. Lecturer in Politics at Goldsmiths College Saul Newman argues that it is only “by acknowledging that we come from the same world as power, not from a 'natural' world removed from it, and that we can never be entirely free from relations of power, that one can engage in politically-relevant strategies of resistance against power” (Newman 30). I feel like Newman’s analysis holds true to the subject of animal suffering and Earthlings. By making me feel complicit in the suffering of animals, Earthlings was not necessarily crossing any lines. However, I do not think that the documentary achieved a useful purpose by situating my complicity in aspects of power relations that I have no control over. Instead, by providing many specific political alternatives to the problems that they are criticizing, Earthlings had the opportunity to open up avenues of resistance. However, without a documentary that leaves room for resistance to the awful treatment of animals, it seems that a change in social consciousness will never achieve material change.

we must search for new political alternatives

Pascal Bruckner. The Tears of the White Man: Compassion As Contempt. 1986. pp. 63-66.

Saul Newman. “Anarchism and the Politics of Ressentiment”. Theory & Event 4:3. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v004/4.3newman.html. Accessed: 17 November 2010.

becoming animal

When Elizabeth Costello mentions Thomas Nagel’s essay “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” I couldn’t help but be reminded of the experiential learning exercises we conduct in class and how we attempt to view the world from the eyes of our spirit animal. In this lecture, Costello draws an important distinction. Instead of merely being an imagining of how a bat lives, “what we really aspire to know is what it is like to be a bat, as a bat is a bat; and that we can never accomplish because our minds are inadequate to the task – our minds are not bats’ minds” (Coetzee 76). I can associate this with my own experiences trying to learn from the spirit energy of the Mantis. Rather than merely learning from the behavioral tendencies of the Mantis, I instead attempt to empathize with what it is like to exist as a Mantis. In this way, I am drawing lessons from the Mantis’s Being. Wendy Doniger also notes that Nagel was not the first to propose this type of empathic imagination. “Xenophanes, an ancient Greek philosopher, said, “If cattle and horses or lions had hands, or could draw with their feet, horses would draw the forms of god like horses” (519). Many consider this line of thinking the inspiration of Deleuze and Guattari’s recent writings on identity, who argue that “nonidentity is not a deprivation, not a negative, but a form of micropolitics whose structure is molecular, where nonidentity is difference in itself unrelated to the bipolarity (the “bipolar machine”) of identity/difference” (Bruns 713). This seems equally reminiscent of Ram Dass’s advocacy of a nomadic Self that can respond to multiple instances of suffering. Clearly these instances of empathy have also been proposed by other thinkers, giving greater weight to their validity. One can’t help but see similarities between the arguments presented by Costello and Xenophanes and the type of ethical exercises we conduct in Bump’s class.

deleuze and guattari advocate a form of intellectual nomadism where we can 'become animal'

David Sztybel’s analysis of the comparison between the treatment of animals and the holocaust was also remarkably provocative. Sztybel refutes the argument that comparing slaughterhouses with Auschwitz trivializes the holocaust in an interesting manner. Sztybel proposes an ethical framework where all lives are viewed equally, thereby justifying this comparison through a utilitarian calculus. He says, “We kill approximately five billion mammals and birds annually in the United States alone” (549). It is worth noting that this is “many times the number of women and people of color in the United States” in order to draw a comparison between different political goals that the Left pursues in the public sphere (549). Most fascinating is the decision to seize a utilitarian calculus, which is so often used to justify the experimentation upon animals to help the human race generally. Instead of opponents of animal rights being able to use utilitarianism to justify their positions, animal ethicists are able to seize utilitarianism for their own political goals.

Gerald Bruns. “Becoming-animal (Some Simple Ways)”. New Literary History 38.4. 2007. Pages 703-720.

sadism

It’s somewhat difficult to draw the correct implication from the Stanford prison experiment. It is safe to say that the experiments reflect an inherent tendency in human nature, considering the experiment was conducted in a “mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building” (486). Rather than being an examination of actual legal institutions, the experiment was merely a simulation of the different interpersonal relationships that many individuals have. The study concluded with the determination that “both prisoners and guards had become too grossly absorbed in their roles and terminated the experiment after six days” (486). This was due to the sadistic tendencies that many guards exhibited in their treatment of prisoners. It seems implied in the summary’s account of the experiment that the sadistic responses were the result of an inherent aspect of human nature that takes advantage of other human beings. The comparison to Abu Ghraib is particularly compelling, with the conductor of the Stanford experiment describing it as the result of “systemic problems of a formally established military incarceration system” (488). It is this comparison that I think makes the original Stanford experiment particularly useful. This is in line with analysis of Abu Ghraib provided by the social sciences, considering “Lynndie England was dubbed the ‘Trailer trash torturer,’ by British tabloids, while a reporter from the Daily Telegraph wrote that Americans were being shamed by ‘smirking jezebels from the Appalachians”” (Cowen). This discourse functioned as a “means of individualizing blame for US imperial violence, placing it at the feet of young rural soldiers” (Cowen). Only through recognizing that institutional roles have a tendency to create violence and abuse can we confront the types of roles that people play that could encourage them to exploit.

abu ghraib photos

Similar lessons can be learned from Hogarth’s “The Four Stages of Cruelty.” In this story, the killing of an animal initiated by boys is attributed to the “absence of parish officers,” implying that “one of the causes for the rising crime rate was the lack of care from the overseers of the poor, who were too often interested in the posts only for the social status and monetary rewards they could bring” (490). In some ways, this locates animal abuse as an institutional instead of personal problem. Just as the ultimate lesson of Abu Ghraib and the Stanford prison experiment was that certain institutional arrangements are uniquely conducive to exploitation and hierarchies, Hogarth uses emotional images to “heighten the fear for the audience” for the purpose of advocating certain political changes. The assigned reading even notes certain changes in common law as the result of the influence of Hogarth. The types of empathic connections established by Hogarth have also been supported by physical evidence. For example, many “brain-imaging studies have begun to reveal the physical evidence of empathy’s erosion” (501). This suggests that the belief that animal abuse is a natural human condition is relatively untrue, considering the brain has specific neurological pathways designed for empathy. The compassionate thoughts elicited by Hogarth’s writings can alter social consciousness, since the “mere act of thinking compassionate thoughts caused significant activity and physical changes in the brain’s empathic pathways” (501). Rather than resist the difficult nature of confronting the suffering of others, perhaps this can be a productive approach.

we must actively confront animal abuse

Deborah Cowen. “National Soldiers and the War on Cities.” Theory & event. 10.2: 2007.

on vivisection

I must admit, it is tempting to embrace Lewis Carroll’s reading of vivisection as being the product of recent developments in the history of humanity. Carroll does a great job in the beginning of “Vivisection as a Sign of the Times” responding to any readers who might feel defensive when their long-accepted social practices are challenged. Critical of the reader who is shocked that individuals so “full of noble sentiments, can be hardhearted,” Carroll seems well aware of the gut reaction that many individuals have to the suffering of others (460). Reminiscent of Ram Dass’s observations on reactions to suffering, proponents of vivisection may “feel a little nervous and tentative, even defensive, about responding to the needs of others—particularly of those in considerable pain, who may make demands on us” (Dass 24). While Carroll does indeed penetrate the emotional depths of the problem, he does provide a problematic historical narrative to describe the problem. Carroll attributes the prominence of vivisection to the demise of a focus on religion and humanism, and instead the “development of the most refined religion of all—the worship of Self” (461). However, this treatment of animals traces long before the development of most major world religions and Enlightenment thought. Professor of philosophy Steven Best observes, “Hierarchy emerged with the rise of agricultural society some ten thousand years ago. In the shift from nomadic hunting and gathering bands to settled agricultural practices, humans began to establish their dominance over animals through “domestication.” In animal domestication (often a euphemism disguising coercion and cruelty), humans began to exploit animals for purposes such as obtaining food, milk, clothing, plowing, and transportation” (Best). Perhaps it would be more useful to historicize the development of animal abuse as something that has existed far longer than for a few centuries. The long-established psychological and emotional tendencies to degrade animals have existed in human beings for thousands of years, and only admitting the magnitude of the problem can mobilize the change of consciousness necessary to reverse such exploitation.

Robert Titus’s personal account of vivisection was certainly fascinating. However, his account of the silencing of opposition to vivisection in Victorian England was relatively incoherent. In the conclusion, Titus summarized the scientific community’s marginalization of vivisection opponents as being the result of the deployment of “an ad hominem argument” (480). However, it is unclear in the body of the essay what ad hominem argument Titus is referring to. He even concedes that scientists “fought to establish a “distinction between inflicting pain during ‘justifiable’ experiments and mere cruelty”” (475). This argument seems to beg for a utilitarian calculus when evaluating animal suffering, instead of functioning as an ad hominem argument. Although the essay later says that such anti-vivisection activists were silenced in the public sphere, the author draws comparisons between them and “feminists” and “labor activists” (475). However this comparison seems to disprove the validity of his ad hominem analysis, considering both feminists and labor activists made significant political gains post-19th century. I also feel like my objection is not mere semantics. In order to sufficiently advance a position against vivisection, it seems as if animal rights activists must grant a reasonable amount of legitimacy to the opposition’s argument. Admittedly, a strictly utilitarian perspective might justify the use of vivisection. Nevertheless, this is still a morally repugnant procedure to defend. As advocates of abstinence-only education seem to prove, advancing simplistic yet incorrect positions seems to only hurt political mobilization in the long run. It is worthwhile for animal rights activists to grant their opponents legitimacy while simultaneously refuting the meat of their arguments, rather than misarticulating them.

Steven Best. “Review of Charles Patterson, The Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust New York: Lantern Books, 2002, 280 pp.” Journal for Critical Animal Studies. Volume 5. Number 2.