I have been unable to decide if I should call it becoming-vegetarian or becoming-vegan. For me, the term would technically mean the same thing: a process of subjectivity that would at the same time be an ethical relationship with other animals. That would mean, at the minimum, that we probably didn't eat their flesh, put them in cages, take away their young, conduct violent and invasive tests, etc. But with that said, which term?
I like the term vegetarian a lot. I like the history of the term, that the vegetarian society claims it comes from the latin for lively. And, originally with the vegetarian society, vegetarian meant pretty much what vegan means today. But, the term vegetarian nowadays has some pretty specific eating criteria. You avoid flesh, but remain okay with eggs and milk. Furthermore, in general it is seen as a non-political term. You seldom meet a vegan whose primary concern is not an ethical relationship to other animals. The same cannot be said for vegetarians.
But my understanding about the history of the term vegan is the people who coined simply took the first and last parts of vegetarian, and they simply made the world because it felt right. Which is fine, but lacks the same sort of wordpoetry that vegetarian conjures up for me.
So, thoughts?
The agony of the rat or the slaughter of a calf remains present in thought not through pity but as the zone of exchange between man and animal in which something of one passes into the other. - Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Species Trouble
First, Greg, over at his new digs Animal Obscura (make sure to add it to your RSS feed/blogroll/whatever if you haven't already) makes an interesting post, that in fine Greg style manages to move from some thoughts about the movie Rachel Getting Married to Agamben to the proper way to historicize vegetarian/vegan politics. It is the last part of his argument I want to engage with this post.
To quote Greg:
This is not an unfamiliar argument, that if we are to destroy the anthropocentrism that justifies so much violence against animals we might have to allow humans to eat flesh because many animals eat flesh. I clearly don't agree with this position, and I believe this disagreement has some broader theoretical implications I want to explore now.
Species may be real, but they are not actual. That is to say the construction of species has obvious material consequences, and the policing of the boundaries of species are all very real. Species are therefore real, the effects of this reality is felt from animals in factory farms to the transatlantic slave trade, but this reality is virtual. That is to say, it doesn't exist even if it is real. As Craig likes to point out "According to Grene and Depew's textbook on the philosophy of biology, there are at least twenty-three distinct concepts of species presently being discussed in the literature." So, just as Derrida in The Animal that Therefore I Am points out that the problem with a term like the animal because it makes it seem as if all animals exist generically on one side, and that humans exist completely outside of the animal, arguments that privilege the coherence of "species" are certainly problematic. The result is that critical animal scholars are put in a similar position of earlier critical gender and race theorists (hence, the title of this post).
We cannot reduce difference. We cannot simply reject the constructed nature of species in return for some sort of generic animal. There are a wide variety of differences and commonalities among all animals (humans certainly included) and difference cannot be subordinated. As always we have to struggle for an egalitarianism that also doesn't reduce difference. So, while it is true that some animals eat flesh, it is also true that some animals don't. It is also true that some animals, like the gorilla, are fairly vegetarian (and I mean that word, not herbivore). There is obviously among other animals a strong degree of difference when it comes to flesh eating, and that certainly does not mean that a rejection of anthropocentrism means we have to act like certain other animals and eat flesh. I think that path follows a certain reductionism that we also need to struggle to avoid.
To quote Greg:
That is: removed from the class of animals where carnivorism might make sense for humans qua their animality.
This is in no way an apology for blue collar workers, or workers of any stripe, rolling out the hot dog and hamburger parade (this is the 4th of July). I am saying that if we can imagine a condition in which humans are on par with real animals, then we can imagine, as a subset of that, a social condition in which eating meat makes sense. The condition of humans among the rest of the animals is the starting point from which a non-negative ethos toward animals must emerge. Reconciling this with sumptuary politics is not impossible but it does require a proper understanding of historical method.
This is not an unfamiliar argument, that if we are to destroy the anthropocentrism that justifies so much violence against animals we might have to allow humans to eat flesh because many animals eat flesh. I clearly don't agree with this position, and I believe this disagreement has some broader theoretical implications I want to explore now.
Species may be real, but they are not actual. That is to say the construction of species has obvious material consequences, and the policing of the boundaries of species are all very real. Species are therefore real, the effects of this reality is felt from animals in factory farms to the transatlantic slave trade, but this reality is virtual. That is to say, it doesn't exist even if it is real. As Craig likes to point out "According to Grene and Depew's textbook on the philosophy of biology, there are at least twenty-three distinct concepts of species presently being discussed in the literature." So, just as Derrida in The Animal that Therefore I Am points out that the problem with a term like the animal because it makes it seem as if all animals exist generically on one side, and that humans exist completely outside of the animal, arguments that privilege the coherence of "species" are certainly problematic. The result is that critical animal scholars are put in a similar position of earlier critical gender and race theorists (hence, the title of this post).
We cannot reduce difference. We cannot simply reject the constructed nature of species in return for some sort of generic animal. There are a wide variety of differences and commonalities among all animals (humans certainly included) and difference cannot be subordinated. As always we have to struggle for an egalitarianism that also doesn't reduce difference. So, while it is true that some animals eat flesh, it is also true that some animals don't. It is also true that some animals, like the gorilla, are fairly vegetarian (and I mean that word, not herbivore). There is obviously among other animals a strong degree of difference when it comes to flesh eating, and that certainly does not mean that a rejection of anthropocentrism means we have to act like certain other animals and eat flesh. I think that path follows a certain reductionism that we also need to struggle to avoid.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
The role of 'phenomenology, hermeneutics, semiotics, or deconstructive textual analysis' in CAS
I'd like to thank both Levi Bryant and Graham Harman for their generous responses to my "10 questions for speculative realists." (If anyone else has responded and I have missed it, please let me know!). There are many potential blog posts I want to make in response to their responses, but for now I am going to stick to the role of 'phenomenology, hermeneutics, semiotics, or deconstructive textual analysis' in critical animal studies. But let me begin by retracing the parts of Bryant's arguments that matter for this post.
Bryant, in explaining what holds together the real but non-existent speculative realist movement he argues:
It seems to me this rejection of anthropocentrism is also the starting point for critical animal studies (And I should add I find Bryant's formulation elegant. Philosophy can always use more elegant formulations.), even if (most) CAS heads in some very different directions than (most) SR after this rejection of anthropocentric ontology. I think one of the ways to understand this difference is by examining another common opposition that Bryant posits for SR:
I am, in many ways, very sympathetic to this argument. In many ways also in strong agreement (this odd obsession with Greek as origin, and origin as the authentic and true seems relatively useless to me). But if we replace ecology with the systematic exploitation of animals (and of course, recognizing that the exploitation there is deeply implicated in the present ecological crisis), I doubt highly that "phenomenology, hermeneutics, semiotics, or deconstructive textual analysis" have exhausted themselves in changing the status of the animal. Not only have phenomenological moments with nonhuman animals been crucial for many people changing their views regarding animal exploitation, but it seems that humanism and speciesism are strongly powerful in maintaining the systematic exploitation of animals. If we are to change things, I feel that confronting how this humanism and speciesism is maintained from their roots to their present formulation is a necessary move, which means critique is a necessary tool for CAS. This critical element needs to be centered not just on political and philosophical texts, but also on present media and scientific texts. At the same time, I agree we need to pay more attention to some of the present movements in current scientific discourses. Indeed, CAS is also interesting as a philosophical movement because of its strong interest in things like current evolutionary discourses, primatology, cognitive ethology, etc. (And indeed, one of the few major continental philosophers that seemed to be particularly interested in these things was Derrida).
I should have a conclusion here, I know. But I don't, not really. I don't think my argument is against SR, and I don't think SR invalidates CAS. I am merely trying to create a dialogue with another intellectual movement that begins with a similar anti-anthropocentric position.
Bryant, in explaining what holds together the real but non-existent speculative realist movement he argues:
In short, all of the SR positions share the thesis that the human and human phenomena have no special place within being and are opposed to the thesis that we must start with an analysis of something pertaining to the human (mind, history, language, power, signs, etc.) to properly pose questions of ontology.
It seems to me this rejection of anthropocentrism is also the starting point for critical animal studies (And I should add I find Bryant's formulation elegant. Philosophy can always use more elegant formulations.), even if (most) CAS heads in some very different directions than (most) SR after this rejection of anthropocentric ontology. I think one of the ways to understand this difference is by examining another common opposition that Bryant posits for SR:
On the other hand, I think all of those in the speculative realist camp are deeply exhausted by styles of philosophy that begin from the standpoint of critique (in the Kantian sense), the phenomenological analysis of experience, hermeneutics, and textual analysis. There’s a sense that these approaches to philosophy, as powerful and valuable as they are, have exhausted their possibilities and are standing in the way of engaging with the sorts of questions demanded by our contemporary moment. For example, its difficult to imagine something less relevant than phenomenology, hermeneutics, semiotics, or deconstructive textual analysis to the sorts of issues posed by the ecological crisis. Ecology just requires a very different set of conceptual tools. Moreover, we are living in the midst of one of the most remarkable periods in scientific and mathematical development and invention, yet we have a group of philosophers continuing to pretend that the Greeks said it all and that philosophy largely ended at the beginning of the 19th century. It is also simply bizarre to think that these developments are adequately thematized through the resources of textual analysis or semiotics. We need to become a bit more pre-critical again, I think, to adequately discuss these sorts of issues.
I am, in many ways, very sympathetic to this argument. In many ways also in strong agreement (this odd obsession with Greek as origin, and origin as the authentic and true seems relatively useless to me). But if we replace ecology with the systematic exploitation of animals (and of course, recognizing that the exploitation there is deeply implicated in the present ecological crisis), I doubt highly that "phenomenology, hermeneutics, semiotics, or deconstructive textual analysis" have exhausted themselves in changing the status of the animal. Not only have phenomenological moments with nonhuman animals been crucial for many people changing their views regarding animal exploitation, but it seems that humanism and speciesism are strongly powerful in maintaining the systematic exploitation of animals. If we are to change things, I feel that confronting how this humanism and speciesism is maintained from their roots to their present formulation is a necessary move, which means critique is a necessary tool for CAS. This critical element needs to be centered not just on political and philosophical texts, but also on present media and scientific texts. At the same time, I agree we need to pay more attention to some of the present movements in current scientific discourses. Indeed, CAS is also interesting as a philosophical movement because of its strong interest in things like current evolutionary discourses, primatology, cognitive ethology, etc. (And indeed, one of the few major continental philosophers that seemed to be particularly interested in these things was Derrida).
I should have a conclusion here, I know. But I don't, not really. I don't think my argument is against SR, and I don't think SR invalidates CAS. I am merely trying to create a dialogue with another intellectual movement that begins with a similar anti-anthropocentric position.
Friday, July 3, 2009
10 questions for speculative realists (and a coda about my almost life as a speculative realist)
Graham Harman recently linked to this blog to talk about Greg's post on the midwest. Which reminded me of a blog post I had been meaning to make for about a month now.
Now, I recognize that many of the questions I ask would probably be answered if I read all your books and all your posts ever. But, that seems unlikely to happen right this second, and I am interested in things I have seen posted or in the books I have read, and hope that this will both clarify things and intensify my interests. If you want to link me to things where you feel some of these questions have already been answered, please feel free.
10 questions for speculative realists:
(1) For an intellectual movement that has such a strong internet presence, why do you all have such an unhelpful wikipedia entry?
(2) What are the major different currents of speculative realism? I just would not have thought to combine many of you together as part of a philosophical movement (school? gathering?). So, what holds you all together as an idea? What are the major different currents?
(3) I know not all of you have a beef with Foucault, but I have seen several vaguely dismissive comments from the object-oriented types about Foucault. So, what is the matter with Foucault?
(4) I have also seen responses from several of you against accusations that you don't have a politics. The responses have tended towards variations of "We have a politics, but we don't subvert our ontology to our politics." Which is fine, but for me raises far more questions than it answers: What are your politics? Are your politics separate from your ontology, or do you feel that your politics flow from your ontology?
(5) Question number four leads me to this question, which you might or might not want to group in with the last answer. Are you concerned with the question of first philosophy, or do you find such questions rather boring? Do you believe that you have to get your ontology right first in order to have a politics and/or an ethics, or do you feel that the domain of ontology has a certain separability from these other philosophical domains?
(6) Why did the speculative realist cross the road? Or, alternatively, how many speculative realists does it take to change a light bulb (please give number and reason for that number)?
(7) Can you suggest two books by Bruno Latour I should get around to reading sooner rather than later? I have read Science in Action, but that was several ago, and could be convinced to reread it.
(8) This is a blog dedicated, at least on some level, to critical animal studies. Obviously, speculative realism's anti-humanist and anti-anthropocentrist viewpoints are somewhat in line with the problematic of critical animal studies, however, what can you foresee as the relationship between speculative realism and critical animal studies, if any? Clearly, an ontology of generalized actors (whereby rocks and plants and machines are as much actors as humans and animals) might guarantee an non-anthropocentric ontology, but does not guarantee a non-anthropocentric ethics. Which is fine, but I am just pointing out that there seems to be no obvious connection between the two philosophical movements.
(9)Obviously there are some interesting questions about how speculative realism relates to the big branches of contemporary philosophy -- How does speculative realism relate to continental philosophy? How does speculative realism relate to analytic philosophy? -- but what I am really curious about is how does speculative realism relate to decolonial philosophy? I probably wouldn't even think about asking about this, except a recent post by k-punk that talked about how Badiou helped awaken him from a deleuzian slumber. For me, Badiou had nothing to do with my awakening from a Deleuzian slumber (if anything he only intensified my affection for Deleuze and Guattari, the same with Zizek), but decolonial philosophy and the philosophy of radical women of color completely changed my relationship with continental philosophy. Reza obviously has serious engagement with Iranian thought, but what about speculative philosophy in general?
(10) What is the difference between realism and materialism? Why are you speculative realists instead of speculative materialists?
A coda:
This part of the post might be rather self-indulgent, so feel free to stop reading. The thing that interests me about speculative realism is that I feel that I was well on my way to being a speculative realist when I was an undergrad. I was obsessed with Deleuze and Guattari (still am, really), and felt their work existed in tension with Heidegger and Derrida whom I was not particularly fond of (still anti-heidegger, but I have come to find Derrida very useful). Instead of Derrida and Heidegger, the language-oriented thinkers I found interesting were Bakhtin and Paul de Man. Bakhtin seemed committed to a strong materialism in his work, and I liked how de Man's view of inhuman grammar machines gave grammar its own agency outside of merely human agency. I had read Niklas Luhmann, and found him very helpful, as well as many essays by John Law. I read everything I could get my hands on by Delanda, and because of him read all three volumes of Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism. I read all of Grant's early essays, and also traded emails with Reza. My undergraduate thesis was on how Deleuze's notion of control was an assemblage that existed outside of an immediate human agency but instead was dependent upon a system of actors. So, my interest in speculative realism is because before it was a movement with a name was I very interested in it, and now it exists and it makes me realize how much things have changed for me (and how much they have stayed the same).
Now, I recognize that many of the questions I ask would probably be answered if I read all your books and all your posts ever. But, that seems unlikely to happen right this second, and I am interested in things I have seen posted or in the books I have read, and hope that this will both clarify things and intensify my interests. If you want to link me to things where you feel some of these questions have already been answered, please feel free.
10 questions for speculative realists:
(1) For an intellectual movement that has such a strong internet presence, why do you all have such an unhelpful wikipedia entry?
(2) What are the major different currents of speculative realism? I just would not have thought to combine many of you together as part of a philosophical movement (school? gathering?). So, what holds you all together as an idea? What are the major different currents?
(3) I know not all of you have a beef with Foucault, but I have seen several vaguely dismissive comments from the object-oriented types about Foucault. So, what is the matter with Foucault?
(4) I have also seen responses from several of you against accusations that you don't have a politics. The responses have tended towards variations of "We have a politics, but we don't subvert our ontology to our politics." Which is fine, but for me raises far more questions than it answers: What are your politics? Are your politics separate from your ontology, or do you feel that your politics flow from your ontology?
(5) Question number four leads me to this question, which you might or might not want to group in with the last answer. Are you concerned with the question of first philosophy, or do you find such questions rather boring? Do you believe that you have to get your ontology right first in order to have a politics and/or an ethics, or do you feel that the domain of ontology has a certain separability from these other philosophical domains?
(6) Why did the speculative realist cross the road? Or, alternatively, how many speculative realists does it take to change a light bulb (please give number and reason for that number)?
(7) Can you suggest two books by Bruno Latour I should get around to reading sooner rather than later? I have read Science in Action, but that was several ago, and could be convinced to reread it.
(8) This is a blog dedicated, at least on some level, to critical animal studies. Obviously, speculative realism's anti-humanist and anti-anthropocentrist viewpoints are somewhat in line with the problematic of critical animal studies, however, what can you foresee as the relationship between speculative realism and critical animal studies, if any? Clearly, an ontology of generalized actors (whereby rocks and plants and machines are as much actors as humans and animals) might guarantee an non-anthropocentric ontology, but does not guarantee a non-anthropocentric ethics. Which is fine, but I am just pointing out that there seems to be no obvious connection between the two philosophical movements.
(9)Obviously there are some interesting questions about how speculative realism relates to the big branches of contemporary philosophy -- How does speculative realism relate to continental philosophy? How does speculative realism relate to analytic philosophy? -- but what I am really curious about is how does speculative realism relate to decolonial philosophy? I probably wouldn't even think about asking about this, except a recent post by k-punk that talked about how Badiou helped awaken him from a deleuzian slumber. For me, Badiou had nothing to do with my awakening from a Deleuzian slumber (if anything he only intensified my affection for Deleuze and Guattari, the same with Zizek), but decolonial philosophy and the philosophy of radical women of color completely changed my relationship with continental philosophy. Reza obviously has serious engagement with Iranian thought, but what about speculative philosophy in general?
(10) What is the difference between realism and materialism? Why are you speculative realists instead of speculative materialists?
A coda:
This part of the post might be rather self-indulgent, so feel free to stop reading. The thing that interests me about speculative realism is that I feel that I was well on my way to being a speculative realist when I was an undergrad. I was obsessed with Deleuze and Guattari (still am, really), and felt their work existed in tension with Heidegger and Derrida whom I was not particularly fond of (still anti-heidegger, but I have come to find Derrida very useful). Instead of Derrida and Heidegger, the language-oriented thinkers I found interesting were Bakhtin and Paul de Man. Bakhtin seemed committed to a strong materialism in his work, and I liked how de Man's view of inhuman grammar machines gave grammar its own agency outside of merely human agency. I had read Niklas Luhmann, and found him very helpful, as well as many essays by John Law. I read everything I could get my hands on by Delanda, and because of him read all three volumes of Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism. I read all of Grant's early essays, and also traded emails with Reza. My undergraduate thesis was on how Deleuze's notion of control was an assemblage that existed outside of an immediate human agency but instead was dependent upon a system of actors. So, my interest in speculative realism is because before it was a movement with a name was I very interested in it, and now it exists and it makes me realize how much things have changed for me (and how much they have stayed the same).
Thursday, July 2, 2009
New Blog
After being Scu's fill-in for the last couple weeks I have taken his encouragement to heart and started my own blog, Animal Obscura. It will be similar to what I've done here: mostly relating my every day experiences to critical animal theory. It's a little rough on formatting but will probably get better!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Biblography on Derrida on animals
EJ on a recent post about early and late Derrida asked for more sources where Derrida talks about animals. I think that is something we could all benefit from. So, I am sure I have not tracked them all down, and hope some of you can add stuff I have missed. Also, Derrida frequently had small discussions of animals that don't exactly make into a sustained work (a long and interesting footnote in The Postcard, for example. A couple of references in Glas, etc.), and not to mention other works that are not specifically about animals but go out their way to refuse an anthropocentrism that another author might have created. I know I should work out all the listing by original publication date (or alpha by title), but I'm lazy and this is a blog post. So, I won't worry about it here for the rough draft, hopefully as we collect a fuller list, I will work it into a more useful format.
All works by Derrida:
"Eating Well" (an interview with Jean-Luc Nancy)
"On the Limits of Digestion" (an interview with Daniel Birnbaum and Anders Olsson, and I have to say I found out that Derrida used the trope of digestion in his later lectures only after I had always started to do so).
Aporias
"The Ends of Man"
The Animal That Therefore I Am
The Sovereign and the Beast
On Touching, Jean-Luc Nancy
Of Spirit
"Heidegger's Hand (Geschlecht II)"
"Heidegger's Ear: Philopolemology (Geschlect IV)"
The chapter "Violence Against Animals" in For What Tomorrow (with Elisabeth Roudinesco)
"Fichus"
Obviously his lectures on cannibalism and eating the other probably also contain some work on animals, but I have been unable to track down publications of those lecture series in either French or English, anyone know if they are somewhere?
Alright, what have I missed?
All works by Derrida:
"Eating Well" (an interview with Jean-Luc Nancy)
"On the Limits of Digestion" (an interview with Daniel Birnbaum and Anders Olsson, and I have to say I found out that Derrida used the trope of digestion in his later lectures only after I had always started to do so).
Aporias
"The Ends of Man"
The Animal That Therefore I Am
The Sovereign and the Beast
On Touching, Jean-Luc Nancy
Of Spirit
"Heidegger's Hand (Geschlecht II)"
"Heidegger's Ear: Philopolemology (Geschlect IV)"
The chapter "Violence Against Animals" in For What Tomorrow (with Elisabeth Roudinesco)
"Fichus"
Obviously his lectures on cannibalism and eating the other probably also contain some work on animals, but I have been unable to track down publications of those lecture series in either French or English, anyone know if they are somewhere?
Alright, what have I missed?
Can chimps dance to music?
So, I was watching Monday night's Daily Show, and Oliver Sacks made the odd claim that only humans keep rhythm to music. That chimps can't dance. http://www.hulu.com/watch/80421/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-oliver-sacks#s-p1-st-i1
That just sounds incorrect to me, but I don't actually know. Is Oliver Sacks correct, or did his mistook his humanism for a science?
That just sounds incorrect to me, but I don't actually know. Is Oliver Sacks correct, or did his mistook his humanism for a science?
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