I find it deeply troubling when I read various blogs concerned about animal rights that they have constant recourse to two main concepts: (1) animals did not give consent to procedure X and (2) animals did not choose procedure X. Both are closely related, but they are analytically distinct. Most recently, one animal blogger was upset by a news item – reporting on a promotion being done by an animal shelter – wherein cats’ paws were being used a paint brushes. I agree with the general sentiment: yes, this is ridiculous and animals should not be used in such ways. However, the standard – choice or consent – is rather odd. The same issue arose in relation to a blood drive for canine blood. Everyone was horrified that the dogs could not “consent” to give blood and that they surely would have “chosen” to spend their time otherwise. Again, the standard is odd: choice or consent.
We find this language primarily in the camp called liberationists. In essence, animals need to be “liberated” from human institutions, especially the institution of property because property relates to relative or market value and not to inherent value. For the liberationists, all life has an inherent value and this is obscured by property relations. (Oddly, they never seem to refer to Marx…) Further, the owner of property has the right – nearly absolute – to dispose of their property as they wish. That includes neglect, abuse, destruction, etc. This right is nearly absolute accept insofar as limited by law. (And property law is a huge body of law with intimate relations to all other sorts of law – especially tax and criminal.) Here we frequently see recourse to two tasteless examples: American slavery and the Holocaust.
There are three problems with all of this. First, liberating animals from property status in no way ensures that they will be given the opportunity to maximize the expression of “consent” or “choice.” Second, it isn’t even clear that the concepts of “consent” or “choice” are applicable to non-human animals as these categories presume a certain set of social relations and a certain type of consciousness. Third, it is even clear that these categories are unproblematically used by humans. Indeed, in many ways, the second problem is a great crime: acting as though non-human animals are just like humans. That is, that animals always seek their interest, that animals always act on their interest, that animals are able to rationally calculate relative advantages and disadvantages – that is, that animals are neo-liberals.
Setting aside the animals-as-neo-liberals problem, we quickly encounter another problem: animal rights advocates are almost always in favour of forced sterilization. Dogs and cats, especially, should not be able to reproduce at will. That the consent of animals is never sought – I’m willing to bet that most animals don’t choose surgery – does not appear to be a problem for them. Of course, they have recourse to another concept, it is in the best interest of the animals that they be sterilized. But, this is a choice- and consent-denying position: we, as humans, are better able to determine the best interest of animals than they are. Quite dubious.
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Innerestin’… the logic of hegemony reproduced for the animal kingdom!
Of course, animal “rights” (there’s your first problem, btw) needs to do something other than treat animals as though they were humans.
A start, I suppose, would be to think of humans as animals.
Robinson Devor’s Zoo is interesting in this respect. Aside from the squick of perversion, because the animal is, by definition, incapable of consent the events of bestiality keep appearing as rape, where sex without consent is automatically rape. Which opens up the whole register of sexual abuse. Ending in the rescuing of the horse from the abuse by putting it down.
Have you read Francione’s stuff, it sounds like he is one of your reference points for the liberationists, cause he is very fond of those two “tasteless” examples. If he is, I read him slightly differently. The aporia between the contractual heart of rights theory and the impossibility of animal consent seems to drive him towards a radical separatism. Whereby the dependency certain kinds of animals on human care threatens the possibility of a sensical animal rights, where animals are no longer property, so he advocates the sterilisation of most species of agricultural animals. In a sense he seems to parse choice/consent as merely ways of getting at the value of autonomy, hence with animals the right to choose translates into a mandatory right to be left alone, as the only guarantee of autonomy. So the apor, rather than strictly turning him into a mouthpiece for the interests of animals, turns his rights theory almost into a utilitarianism of autonomy rather than happiness.
Oh and Bob Torres’ “Making a Killing” takes Marx as a reference point for his discussion of liberationism.
Jon, yes, taking rights as the point of departure is a problem. I’ve discussed this in passing in previous posts. Rights seem to be taken by defenders of “animal rights” as an inherent and unproblematic good. There is little reason to believe that; as you know. Liberationists, at least, are firmly stuck in juridical categories (and the most prominent among them is a law professor).
Influxus, Francione is the background to this. With the exception of basing his position in property law and rights, I think the general thrust of his anti-welfarism and most of his veganism is correct. My partner and I were comparing Francione’s position to separatist feminism.
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