Being critical of animal studies
So-called ‘critical animal studies’ is the kind of disciplinary identification that just seems designed to irritate me from the get-go. I mean you have the usual collision of disciplines (according to Wiki, it includes “scholars from fields as diverse as art history, anthropology, film studies, history, sociology, biology, psychology, literary studies, geography,philosophy and feminism or queer theory“), a collection that could be applied to just about every newfangled discipline like this. Certainly everything that gets called “critical x studies.” Worst of all, you have an explicit political aim identified with the movement itself, something that almost always gets associated with something called ‘critical’ but which I think is anything but.
The first few tenets of their little manifesto aren’t hugely problematic, but eventually we get to stuff like this, saying that CAS as a field
5. Rejects apolitical, conservative, and liberal positions in order to advance an anti-capitalist, and, more generally, a radical anti-hierarchical politics. This orientation seeks to dismantle all structures of exploitation, domination, oppression, torture, killing, and power in favor of decentralizing and democratizing society at all levels and on a global basis.
6. Rejects reformist, single-issue, nation-based, legislative, strictly animal interest politics in favor of alliance politics and solidarity with other struggles against oppression and hierarchy.
7. Champions a politics of total liberation which grasps the need for, and the inseparability of, human, nonhuman animal, and Earth liberation and freedom for all in one comprehensive, though diverse, struggle; to quote Martin Luther King Jr.: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”
Anyway, this kind of stuff all really bothers me. Why can’t we just stick with the idea of ‘critical theory’ that’s served us well enough since Adorno? Why is it that every time a few good books are written by the usual suspects about a given topic (cf. Haraway’s When Species Meet, Derrida’s The Animal that, therefore, I am, Agamben’s The Open) a bunch of people feel the need to get together and imagine themselves a little disciplinary community? Why do we have to associate critique, not simply with a disciplined investigation of the status quo and its construction, but with a very specific and in many ways very problematic set of political aims? Anti-capitalistic and radical anti-hierarchical politics? Whatever one’s own vaguely-formulated political aims – and I should emphasize that I’m more than sympathetic to a critique of capitalism and of hierarchy – I think it’s pretty tendentious to include this kind of stuff in the formulation of what purports to be a field of study.
At the same time, I got to thinking about this so-called field by reading about no-kill shelters and the ethico-political implications of such (I was intrigued to find that PETA opposes such shelters, for instance), and certainly I think that there is a lot of valuable work to be done in this area. So I have to come around and say that I strongly support the aims of critical animal studies, even as I resent the kind of disciplinary fragmentation and knee-jerk radicalism that some of its practitioners’ approaches seem to imply. We have a frightening and indeed schizophrenic relationship with the many animals whose existences we have shaped and integrated into our society, and who have in turn come to structure the lives of humanity in so many ways. There are enough fragmentary disciplines already, though, involving agglomerations of fields like the one I listed off at the outset – many of which are themselves very interdisciplinary – that I think these questions can be treated in the existing frameworks of critical theory, ethics, and science and technology studies. I say the last because I just thought of a wondrous idea: in the spirit of Callon’s ‘Scallops of Brieuc Bay,’ a study of the trajectory of a GMO corn, from seed testing and production to cows and/or HFCS and/or ethanol, etc… It’s problems like these that make me think the questions surrounding animals demand a broader framework. You can’t really consider the ethics and the politics of industrial cattle production, for instance, without considering the whole corn economy in the United States and the way that plant has come to dominate the North American diet. Can critical animal studies be extended to plants?
In any case, whatever the tenor of this ramble might suggest, I don’t begrudge this group of scholars their identification; it’s just one that I personally, resist. Nevertheless I think the questions it addresses are important ones. The question of the animal is a crucial one that’s run through 19th and 20th century theory, and needs to be considered in that context: starting from Bentham and the question of utilitarian ethics as applied to animals, on through Heidegger’s famous analogy of the Holocaust and mechanized agriculture (one that makes one simultaneously question Heidegger’s ethics and the ethics of agriculture, especially if you’ve ever driven past a truck full of pigs on the highway), Singer’s Animal Liberation, Haraway, Derrida, and beyond.
Well, it’s amazing how this post comes back to one of the common questions asked of vegans by meat-eaters, “What about plants?” Why is it that the ethics of humans’ caring relationship to animals need always be cast into doubt by, “What about plants? What about unborn babies? What about rural Africans?” Of course critical animal studies can address the issue of plants. It is surprising you can ask that question so seriously. A less surprising question would be *will* it address the issue, which I can hope that it will early on as I’ve already been reading some ecofeminist perspectives on human-animal relationships which would fit right into CAS.
I actually don’t feel very comfortable with reading “anti-capitalist” or “anti-hierarchical” in there, but I don’t know much about the reasoning there. I can’t object, personally, but only hope to learn more. ICAS is not the first critical animal studies organization; that goes to Institute for Critical Zoologists. Also, the ICAS website seems to no longer list those goals on its website.
I am new to critical theory, but let’s say you are right and ICAS is mistaken to incorporate its politics so insistently into its goals. First of all, you can’t hold anyone accountable for anything you haven’t communicated to them, so unless you have taken this discussion up with the people leading the field, it doesn’t make sense to be irritated. Secondly, note that CAS exists in a world in which 99% of society is very and materially entrenched in the exploitation of animals and is reacting to the carnivorist hypocrisy of much of mainstream animal studies. While that doesn’t excuse CAS of responsibility in any way, it puts the field into context. When your field can so easily be taken over by those committed to perpetuating or excusing the exploitation of animals, due to their overwhelming numbers in virtually all pockets of society, you want to find a way to address that.
I agree with the comment that it’s important to view the context of CAS as a response to “animal studies” which has always involved animal exploitation.
ICAS recognizes that the field of human-animal studies is a false binary and repressive social construction which identifies and argues that human are not animals. As noted, CAS is opposed to hierarchy; for instance, opposing animal research because this creates a hierarchy of human being over nonhuman animals. On the other hand, the Institute for Critical Zoologists supports this hierarchy through invasive manipulation of nonhuman animals: http://www.criticalzoologists.org/mission/research.html.
CAS scholars I am familiar with do engage with Derrida, Foucault, Singer, Regan, Kant, Gandhi, Schweitzer, etc. in their classes and publications. In terms of plants, the mission statement addresses “the liberation of nature as part of a transformative project that seeks to transcend these limits towards greater freedom, peace, and ecological harmony.” Their journal and conferences have addressed numerous environmental concerns.
The Frankfurt School educated many critical theorists and scholars and demanded them to be engaged activists-academics challenging politics, society, and economics. Look at scholars such as Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis, Doug Kellner, Michael Foucault, Henry Giroux, Donna Haraway, Fredric Jameson, David Harvey, Paulo Freire, Erich Fromm, and bell hooks all challenging political systems and other forms of domination. And while many in the Frankfurt school did not provide an alternative, they challenged systems of domination (such as capitalism, sexism, racism, homophobia, and ableism) which critical theorists do today.
In my view, having the field of CAS, one of the fastest growing fields other than perhaps disability studies, is an effective way to engage in animal issues and unravel systems of domination.
I appreciate both of the above comments – though I’m awfully tardy in responding to them.
I agree with most of what you’ve said, and as I said in the original post, with the substance of CAS. (Though I don’t agree with the blanket dismissal of animal research, or even animal-product consumption, or, for that matter, manifesto-writing.) The root of my irritation, by contrast, I suppose comes down to the same issues I have with ‘feminism’ as such: 1) the valuable, radical arguments of the discipline tend to imply that the name of the field is itself a product of the problems it critiques (ie, feminism with naive masculine/feminine binaries, and ‘animal studies’ with naive human-nonhuman ones); and 2) the promised truly radical, ‘anti-hierarchical’ alternative to all extant forms of politics ends up resembling, with suspicious closeness, current day far-left-wing political views.
But none of this is directed against those doing truly good and interesting work in the field, of whom there are many (and many of whom reject narrow labellings like ‘feminist’ or ‘critical animal’ … uhh… ’studier.’ My irritation is caused only by the manifesto-writers and ideologically suspect hangers-on.