Theoria

“What’s So ‘Critical’ About Critical Animal Studies?”

Animals and Animality Across the Humanities and Social Sciences

Queen’s University, Kingston

June 26, 2010

(Edited June 30 to reflect what I actually said)

I have a bad joke I like to say far too often when people ask me ‘what I do’: I do critical animal studies and there are three major problems with this–the word ‘critical,’ the word ‘animal’ and the word ‘studies.’ The primary question I wish to begin discussing is the meaning of the adjective ‘critical’ in the term ‘critical animal studies.’ Needless to say, I’m not especially invested in the term–but it is a term that is used and thus needs to be addressed. My assumption is that the word ‘critical’ is doing some sort of theoretical work even though the meaning of the theoretical work may not be entirely clear to even those employing the term to describe their own activities. That is, the ‘critical’ in ‘critical animal studies’ must be opposed to other forms of ‘animal studies’–be they called human/non-human relations, or human/animal relations, and the like. My fear is that the word ‘critical’ is doing little more than signalling a broad range of affiliations–basically, liberal progressivism and identity politics. By this I mean that we, as academics, tend to overuse the word ‘critical’ to the point that it has lost any and all useful meaning. For instance, there is no shortage of academics claiming to do ‘critical’ work. People readily identify themselves as doing critical race theory, critical discourse analysis, critical food studies, critical security studies, critical legal studies, and critical social theory, among many others. And, as we know, there are all sorts of programs and departments with which we can affiliate ourselves (all found by Googling the term “critical studies”): Critical Studies in Improvisation, Critical Studies in Education, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Critical Studies in Television, and on it goes. Indeed, at UBC Okanaga there is even a department simply called Critical Studies. Despite the proliferation of ostensibly ‘critical’ commitments, the university remains quite mainstream in its political and social orientation.

To get to the point: while critical animal studies–whatever it is that we mean by this–is very exciting, we should not let out excitement get the better of us: there are manifold problems confronting us, both theoretical and practical. Given the extent of the obstacles, while I want to be optimistic, I fear there is little cause for hope–I apologize for beginning this weekend on such a pessimistic note.

I’ve titled this presentation “What’s so ‘Critical’ About Critical Animal Studies?” The point I want to get across with this title is that the word ‘critical’ encapsulates the theoretical problem while the words ‘animal studies’ encapsulates the practical problems.

Let’s start with the theoretical problem, which is revealed quite clearly and fortuitously in Steven Best’s article in the current Journal of Critical Animal Studies–“The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: Putting Theory in Action and Animal Liberation into Higher Education.” The shorter Steven Best is, more or less, what makes critical animal studies critical is its connection to activist practice. This connection to activism differentiates critical animal studies from what he calls mainstream animal studies, which is largely concerned with representations of animals–basically, mainstream animal studies brings animals into the existing disciplinary structure. Mainstream animal studies is “cultural studies + animals.” Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with mainstream animal studies as such (many of the presentations at this conference fall into this category and I expect that many of them will be very interesting), we just need to be clear that mainstream animal studies is not critical in the relevant sense being discussed. Whether one is better than the other is not a particularly interesting or fruitful question.

I should point out that Best is more dismissive of mainstream animal studies than I am: he writes, “The term ‘animal studies,’ in fact, is a misnomer that impedes understanding from the start, for the field is not about nonhuman animals in isolation from human animals, but rather about human-nonhuman animal relations.” To continue this aside: I think what Best says here is fundamentally incoherent–even when we are operating in the domain of ethics, such as with discussions of animal rights, we never ever encounter real, empirical animals and the same holds for ethnographies of the slaughterhouse or of bloodsports or whatever–the investigator may indeed encounter real, empirical animals, but in order for this encounter to be communicated, those real, empirical animals must be abstracted–animals will always become “the animal” when we are communicating with one another, whether we are communicating as scholars or activists.

To return to the main point. What distinguishes mainstream and critical animal studies? Or, what does Best mean by “critical”? The key is found in the Marxist concept of praxis, which points to the interconnection of theoretical and activist work. A conceptual problem emerges at this point. Best develops his concept of praxis with reference to Herbert Marcuse. In turn, Marcuse sensibly and understandably derives his own idea of praxis of praxis from Max Horkheimer. The relevant reference is to Horkheimer’s essay “Traditional and Critical Theory.” The problem with Horkheimer, and the tradition of critical theory as a whole, is that it is unabashedly humanist and anthropocentric. Some examples from Horkheimer’s essay:

1. critical theory “has for its object men as producers of their own historical way of life in its totality” (244)
2. critical theory is an “essential element in the historical effort to create a world which satisfies the needs and powers of men” (246)
3. lastly, “the good is man’s emancipation from slavery” (246).

The gist of my argument is that you can’t simply move from a humanist (i.e., history is the history of men) and anthropocentric (i.e., the world exists for the satisfaction of the needs of men) positions to non- or anti-humanist and non- or anti-anthropocentric positions without doing serious theoretical work. While Best is surely right that “it is not as if we need to work [out--sic] a detailed social ontology before we can proceed,” we need to, nonetheless, work out that detailed social ontology at some point. Indeed, it is likely the case that such an ontology is already implicit in activism. Pointing out, as Best does, that humans are animals and that freedom for humans entails freedom for animals is too simple and, worse, theoretically dubious.

Strangely, the very intellectual-activists he points to as examplars of praxis, presented in what he describes as “in sharp contrast to the effete and privileged academics”–namely, Karl Marx, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Jurgen Habermas–are all unabashed humanists, anthropocentrists and very manly-men. The only marginally non-humanist and non-anthropocentrist thinker is Michel Foucault, who is later dismissed because he is a favourite among those practicing mainstream animal studies. Even stranger, an opening (note: just an opening, not a solution) towards an anti-humanist and anti-anthropocentric theoretical discourse exists in many of the theorists Best dismisses out of hand, such as Jacques Derrida. It is also strangely problematic that despite his exhortations that critical animal studies be anti-racist and anti-sexist that there are no people of colour in his list of examplars and that women are only mentioned in order to be dismissed: e.g., Julia Kristeva, Anita Guerrini, and Susan McHugh. Carol Adams is the only woman to escape his wrath. I don’t mean to suggest that Best is sexist and racist or intends to be either, but he is certainly pursuing an odd rhetorical and argumentative strategy that is worthy of criticism and resistance.

To return to my point, critical animal studies needs to do serious theoretical work to overcome the legacy of humanism and anthropocentrism is has inherited from critical theory. This means that critical animal studies must take up the theoretical disourses inaugurated by theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett among many others. Further, it is imperative that critical animal studies not merely gesture towards feminism and anti-racism, but actively engage with those discourses.

While I’ve been somewhat critical of Steven Best and his recent essay, there are some points that he is correct on. He is correct that there seems to be a significant difference between critical animal studies and mainstream animal studies and I think that he is correct that there has been a general colonization of critial animal studies by mainstream animal studies in recent years. For instance, Cary Wolfe, in his recent book, What is Posthumanism? in a chapter titled “‘Animal Studies,’ Disciplinarity, and the (Post)Humanities,” a title which you have to see to believe–not only is animal studies in scare quotes, but the “post” in posthumanities is in brackets, points to the important role played by what he calls “animal rights” in the formation of animal studies, but also to a general desire to escape these same “animal rights.” That is, Wolfe appears to suggest that animal studies was originally constituted as an adjunct to a moral concern with animal protection (I use this ambiguous term to include both animal welfare and animal rights), but since then animal studies has managed to escape this narrow political focus. Wolfe, thus, appears to think that this is a good development while Best would think the opposite. For Wolfe, this means that animal studies has the opportunity to ingratiate itself into the existing disciplinary structure of the university (thus making it possible to establish programs and departments in animal studies) and presents an opportunity to develop his version of posthumanism and the posthumanities.

There are two points worth mentioning here:

First, I agree that critical animal studies must move beyond “animal rights”;
Second, moving beyond “animal rights” us to develop new ways to morally and ethically relate to animals.

My point here is that a committment to animal rights is a false start–and I say this as someone who believes that it is clearly the case that humans ought not to make instrumental use of animals–for two reasons. First, rhetorically, “animal rights” is not going to get animals anywhere; second, rights–whether they are animal rights or human rights–are concepts derived from liberal humanism: once again we bump up against a tradition that excludes animals from serious moral consideration. In effect, animals do not have rights because animals cannot have rights. Animals are the sort of beings that, by definition, cannot possibly have rights: it is nearly impossible to convince any serious supporter of the concept of rights–beyond those alread committed to animal rights–that animals are the sort of beings that have rights.

The strange result of this is that we have to move in a direction similar to Wolfe’s concept of posthumanism (although I’d prefer the term “inhumanism”) which posits a new moral theory that is not based upon rights. What it would be based upon is not entirely clear to me, but I think we could do worse than start with the feminist care ethic, as well as some of Jacques Derrida’s, Emmanuel Levinas’s, and Hannah Arendt’s works–although I expect we won’t find everything we are looking for there. A fringe benefit of this move is that it enables to escape an erroneous premise present in most animal rights talk: that is, the axiomatic belief in a fundamentalist pacifism. (Best is correct to make this criticism of the abolitionist strain of animal rights thinking.) The problem with this strain of thinking is that it negates political solutions because politics fundamentally presupposes the potential for violence and recognizes the morally complex relation between law, power and violence. While I don’t, as a matter of course, endorse killing humans or animals, I don’t, at the same time, rule it out entirely.

So, what does critical animal studies need to do? To begin, I’d suggest some of the following:

1. Develop an anti-humanist and anti-anthropocentric ontology that treats humans, animals, trees, and stones as objects existing among other objects differing only in their capacities to affect other objects and themselves which are not, in themselves, morally or political relevant–that a human can speak is no more ontologically, morally or politically relevant than that a groundhog can eat a lot of grass everyday;
2. Develop a moral theory that is able to justly organize the relations between objects beginning with their common capacity to suffer, to be subject to violence and death, their precarity, and their exposure;
3. Extend the ontological and moral theories into political and scholarly practice in order to effect widespread social change;
4. Stop using the words ‘animal’ and ‘human’ as theoretical concepts whenever possible.