Should Animal Studies Scholars/Theorists Be Animal Advocates?
I have subscribe to the H-Animal mailing list, a great virtual conversation happening among multi-disciplinary scholars engaged in “the study of animals in human culture.” Lately the conversation has gotten more and more interesting as one member asked the question, should animal studies researchers also be animal advocates? Many people responded on both sides, often candidly. But today I read the most amazing response by Professor Steve Best, which bears repeating. In fact, it gave me chills as I read it out loud to J - and it may have influenced the course of my research irrevocably. I will quote extensively here, but I encourage everyone to read it in full.
I appreciate very much the concern to do theory apart from an explicit political agenda (we all recognize that we carry such an agenda no matter what we do). I also believe that scholars in animal studies can produce important work even if they eat meat, support vivisection, and take their kids to rodeos and circuses — although there are jarring inconsistencies here to the extent one professes to actually care about the animals we study and realize that they are real, living, sentient beings who suffer and die in the most hideous, appalling, and obscene ways, and that they are not merely discursive objects of nodes in our socially-constructed, postmodern, hyperreal, indeterminate, undecideable, self-referential webs of discourse.Where was it ever written down as law that one had to be consistent not only in one’s theory but in one’s life to do good theory? Liars, exploiters, racists, sexists, and violent abusers write ethical theory, and so it is true speciesists, carnivores, and welfarists can do good work in animal studies. I say this as a matter of logic and fact, not in judgment.
(…) I’m talking about the fact that while we all play our theoretical fiddles, the earth is dying. We live in this most incredible, singular, unprecedented, do-or-die era that places the most extreme obligations and demands on us that we cannot ignore. We live in the era of global warming, amidst the sixth great extinction crisis in the history of this planet (the last being 65 million years ago with the demise of the dinosaurs), during the rapid destruction of the rainforests, chronic resource scarcity and warfare, and unfortunately a quite lengthy list of severe ecological and social crises I could enumerate. Moreover, let us not forget, the enormity of animal suffering continues to mount and build to the most severe and dire levels, especially with the globalization of carnivorism and fast-food outlets, as up to 50 billion animals die every year on this planet for food consumption alone.
So I ask you, without pretension, without affectation to being pure or innocent, and with a burning urgency: In this era, in our age, in this moment right now, as we confront the decisive historical crossroads that stand before us where what we do or fail to do at this very time will determine the fate of biodiversity on the planet and whether or not the world for future generations will be not only challenging and oppressive, but outright nightmarish and dystopian, the question must surge forth: do we have the luxury to be “merely” theorists or academics when the practical and political demands on us are so great?
Of course theories are crucial for understanding the world, and a politics without reflexivity, study, and theory is no politics I want to advance. But I think it is pretty clear what the evil is, what the forces of destruction are, and what we have to do to fight, struggle, and resist the global juggernaut of capitalist, carnivorism, and speciesist omnicide.
One may argue we are not obliged to give up theory, research, and writing in order to spend all of our time in political meetings, demonstrations, actions, and litigations. But can scholars any longer be as isolated from politics and advocacy as they typically are? Can they be complacent about the severe crisis in the world playing out before their very eyes? Can they watch once more on the evening news as the Artic ice shelves crash into the sea, and retreat to their books and computers as if they saw another heartburn or scalpel itch commercial?
Adorno wrote that “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” Could we not pass the same judgment about academic immersion in animal studies or any other topic in this grim time of mass slaughter, global warming, and biological meltdown? Isn’t it already, in some profound sense we all want to hide from ourselves, too late for theory? Or at least, for theory not directly, intimately, and immediately connected to practice, politics, and struggles that must be as radical as the crisis and forces of destruction before us?
It is with such concerns in mind that a growing number of serious scholars and academics are forging a new path within animal studies, a critical animal studies. This is a distinction with a profound difference. Critical animal studies doesn’t shy from openly stating normative assumptions and commitments, it doesn’t run from the complexities of mediating theory and politics and politics and theory, it doesn’t wear rose-colored glasses when looking at the systemic forces of domination and oppression that control life on this planet, it doesn’t believe veganism and animal liberation are accidental or superfluous to doing animal studies in good faith, it doesn’t seek only to “study” animals but to work toward their emancipation, and it doesn’t fear taking controversial positions.
We seek to promote a diversity of method and viewpoint and an alternative to mainstream animal studies that before we formed our organization just a few years back didn’t exist. We welcome dialogue and debate, submissions to our journal, participation in our conferences, and membership in our dynamically growing organization.
Steven Best
Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy
University of Texas, El Paso
Chief Editor of the Journal for Critical Animal Studies
www.drstevebest.com
http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/
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