THE VENTRILOQUIST’S BURDEN? ANIMALS, VOICE, AND POLITICS

LAUREN E. J. CORMAN

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO

June 2012

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Voice is a significant metaphor within national and international animal rights and liberation movements, including in their associated literatures. Phrases such as the “voice of the voiceless,” for example, are ubiquitous. Despite heavy reliance on the trope, however, little scholarship exists about the meanings of voice within the movements.

Concurrently, critics charge activists with arrogantly representing nonhuman animals while remaining woefully detached from their material lives. Such condemnation is well summarized by Richard Horwitz who accuses animal rights activists of adopting the

“ventriloquist’s burden,” a phrase that invokes Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White

Man’s Burden,” which helped frame U.S. imperialism as a noble pursuit. While some within the movements challenge those who claim to be animals’ voices and to speak for

“those who cannot speak for themselves,” there is a dearth of sustained and rigorous discussion about these suppositions. Drawing primarily on feminist, animal rights, and posthumanist theory, I employ critical discourse analysis to explore metaphorical uses of voice within a larger investigation of the politics of representation, particularly in relation to the question of “speaking for” animals. I centrally posit that a nuanced analysis of voice is necessary to more adeptly navigate the difficult terrain of animal representation.

First, I show the failure of identity politics to address the problems of voice and representation within the animal movements. Second, I trace the development of voice within feminist theory and critical pedagogy, two major sets of discourses that have profoundly shaped the voice metaphor, in order to detail contemporary meanings of political voice. I conclude that the dynamics of political voice (including subjectivity, relationality, experiential knowledge, and resistance) are all deeply informed by humanism. Third, in relation, I examine the ways in which Western understandings of both politics and voice are crucially defined by interpenetrating ideas about humanity and animality. I then investigate how anthropocentric understandings of voice are both reproduced and challenged by the animal movements. Last, alongside a critique of

Donna Haraway’s work on “companion species,” I consider how certain activists disentangle the dynamics of political voice from legacies of humanism in order to foreground animal voices. Dedication

Dedicated to Mark Karbusicky (1972-2007) Acknow ledgem ents

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Cate Sandilands, my outstanding

Ph.D. Advisor and Dissertation Supervisor. Her unfaltering support and skilled guidance helped me find my voice in the most profound way. It was a tremendous honour to work with such a brilliant scholar and wise mentor. Thank you to members of my excellent

Ph.D. Advisory Committee: Harriet Friedmann, Roger Keil, and Leesa Fawcett. 1 would also like to thank Leesa Fawcett and John Sorenson, members of my Dissertation

Supervisory Committee. Their feedback was invaluable. Leesa’s influence, in particular, on my scholarship was enormous throughout my graduate studies. She taught me about animals in ways that deeply affected me and continue to touch all of my scholarship. I would like to extend my appreciation to my Defense Committee: Greta Gaard, Leesa

Fawcett, Joan Steigerwald, John Sorenson, Peter Timmerman, and Cate Sandilands. I would also like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

(SSHRC) for awarding me a Doctoral Fellowship. Thank you to the entire Faculty of

Environmental Studies, especially the administrative staff.

Thank you to my dear friend, Jane Marion, who made completing this work possible. You are my heart. Special thanks to the intrepid Rebekka Augustine for her incredible attention to detail and vast copy-editing superpowers. Thank you to my supportive family: Cary Hamilton, Sean Corman, Barry Hamilton, Emmalee Hamilton,

Alexis Hamilton, Julian, Frank, and Kristy. Thank you to my wonderful friends and colleagues: Krishna Mercer, Sarah Pinder, Nicola Brown, Francisca Lanthier, Connie

Russell, Sherri Manko, Bruce Erickson, Bevin Shores, Dino Paoletti, Mark Karbusicky,

Catherine Brigantino, Lisa Kretz, Ebru Ustundag, Sue Sinclair, Jacqueline Kennedy, Mike Hoolboom, Jill DiTillio, Dylan Powell, Nadine Flagel, Siue Moffat, Susan Moore,

Jodey Castricano, Jenny Kerber, Jeannette LeBlanc, Graeme Scott, Shauna Pomerantz,

Jon Eben Field, Michelle Webber, Greg Jackson, Gail Mooney (Auntie Mooney), Ken

Bjomson, Neil Harvey, Erin O’Sullivan, Jaimie Godard, Keri Cronin, Laurie Morrison,

Daria Richards, Brian Gasbarini, Kelsey Cheslock, Terrance Luscombe, Joanna

Adamiak, Karol Orzechowski, Zofia and Wojciech Orzechowski & Family, Traci

Warkentin, Kevin Tillman, Pablo Bose, Rich Oddie, Kerianne Dechamais, Wade Hunt,

Kyle Paton, Rob MacNinch, Lamia Gibson, Nadja Lubiw-Hazard, Michael Smith, Peter

Pritchard, Jan Oakley, Piotr Pawlowski, Lenore Newman, Shannon Blatt, Dennis Soron,

Mary-Beth Raddon, Nancy Cook, Kate Bezanson, Jonah Butovsky, Jane Helleiner, Linda

Landry, Elizabeth Maddeaux, Julia Gottli, Viola Bartel, Jill DeBon, Tamari Kitossa,

Ifeanyi Ezeonu, Margot Francis, Kevin Gosine, Hijin Park, Janet Conway, Ann Duffy,

Nikita Cox, Sara McLean, Ray Godin, Cheryl Koller, Dane Clark, Adam Weitzenfeld,

Mirha-Soleil Ross, Ken Stowar, Andrew Chambers, Denver Nixon, Steve Romanin,

Helen Pracnic, Levi Waldron, Brandy Humes, Richard Brooks, Tim Leduc, Christina

Lessels, Cary Wolfe, Anthony Nocella II, Sarat Colling, Steve Best, John Sanbonmatsu,

Richard Kahn, Richard White, Gavan Watson, Martha Jecmen, Carol Glasser, Daria

Richards, David Sztybel, Kristyn Dunnion, Allison Noble, and Rob Moore. Thanks also

to Animal Voices, guests of the Animal Voices radio show, Propagandhi, Rise Above

(Restaurant), Fine Grind Cafe, Mahtay Cafe, and the many excellent students I have

worked with over the years. TABLE OF CONTENTS

A bstract...... ii D edication ...... iv Acknowledgements...... v Table of Contents ...... vii P relu de...... 1 Introduction ...... 12 Chapter Summaries...... 14 Chapter I: Voice and the Human Subject...... 19 Introduction ...... 19 The Sexual Politics of Voice ...... 22 Pornography and Prostitution: The Terms of the (Feminist) Debate ...... 39 Transsexual Feminists for Animal Rights?...... 48 Transition ...... 52 Disqualified Knowledges...... 54 Strategic Essentialism & The Limits of Identity Politics...... 59 Transsexuality, Sex Work, and the Construction of “Women’s Experience”...... 66 A Different Starting Point...... 68 Chapter II: Reading for Voice...... 78 Introduction ...... 78 Voice within Critical Pedagogy...... 88 Voice within Feminist Theory...... 113 Concluding Reflections: Critical Pedagogy and Feminist Theory...... 144 Chapter III: Voice and Animality...... 149 Introduction ...... 149 Voice and Animality in Historical Context...... 158 Western Thought, Animality, and Voice...... 166 Voice and Animal Advocacy...... 184 Disruption ...... 195 Voiceless? ...... 201 Chapter IV: Animal Voices ...... 213 Introduction ...... 213 Animal Voices ...... 217 A Search for Voice ...... 220 The Presence of Voice ...... 222 Enter Donna Haraway...... 283 C onclusion...... 315 Bibliography...... 323 The Ventriloquist’s Burden? Animals, 1 Voice, and Politics

Prelude

To have a voice is to be human. (Gilligan, 1993, xvi)

But whether the “ventriloquist” is an academic authority speaking for the oppressed subjects or a writer putting contemporary attitudes into the mouths o f historical personages, the trope o f ventriloquism has come to stand for the postmodern mistrust o f both mimetic and sociopolitical representation. (Davis, 1998, p. 133)

Richard Horwitz (2002) draws a parallel between “animal liberators” and “pro­ lifers” in Hog Ties: Pigs, Manure, and Mortality in American Culture. In his chapter

“Swine Rights, Liberation, and Welfare,” Horwitz criticizes both groups for adopting what he calls the “ventriloquist’s burden,” which entails “speaking for creatures that cannot speak for themselves” (p. 45). His primary critique, though, is really aimed at animal activists, not pro-lifers. What bothers him is the myriad assumptions animal activists make about nonhuman animals’ feelings and experiences.

Horwitz, professor of American Studies at Iowa University, argues that pro-lifers’ conclusions about foetus personhood are based on natural rights syllogisms or observers’ projections. To illustrate the type of “if-I-were-one” projection-based logic that he claims characterizes the pro-life movement, he offers the following rhetorical example: “I may not be a foetus, but I sure would not want to be sucked out [of] a hose” (p. 45).

1 While I do not mean to elide the fact that humans are also animals, unless otherwise stated, I use the word “animal” throughout the dissertation to denote nonhuman animals as a matter o f both convention and avoidance of overly cumbersome language. The term “nonhuman animals,” which 1 also frequently use, does a better job of flagging us as animals. However, “nonhuman animals” does not seem like an ideal fit either: Those not belonging to our species are still primarily defined in relation to us, as being “non” to who we are. Nonetheless, I have yet to find a more appropriate linguistic solution.

1 Similarly, he maintains that animal activists enact the ventriloquist’s burden through their polemics.2 “Hogs present an additional challenge in that they plainly are different enough from people that projections of the ‘if-I-were-one’ sort are a radical stretch” (p.

45).

If the problem with both animal liberators and pro-lifers is one of faulty projection, a matter of never being able to anticipate fully or interpret the experiences of others who are seemingly so different than oneself, as Horwitz suggests, then it seems to follow that no human would be able to speak accurately on behalf of either foetuses or nonhuman animals. All human claims about animals’ experiences would be considered ventriloquism and, as such, damningly anthropocentric. For Horwitz, though, an unabashed hog industry sympathizer, the question of what animals feel, and more precisely what bothers them, is available to people who “well know pigs” (p. 46). He points to animal scientists, animal behaviourists, and farmers, or more succinctly, “people who have anything to do with them” (p. 49). Placed at extremes, Horwitz positions animal rights activists as informed by a “bourgeois, anti-urban, and anti-industrial bias”

(p. 43) while those directly involved in farming and farm animal science are understood as the legitimate spokespeople for animals’ feelings and experiences.

If we accept Horwitz’s arguments, animal activists are certainly doomed in their advocacy efforts, as they are understood as too far removed from the food production

2 The similarity Horwitz finds between pro-life and animal rights activists’ “if-I-were-one” projections suggests little recognition o f the different contexts in which animals and foetuses reside, and the implications of these contexts: Namely, animals exist independently, and foetuses are dependently located within independently existing bodies. As Francione (1995) notes, foetus protection laws could only be enforced through an egregious invasion of women’s personal privacy, via a direct state intervention and manipulation of women’s bodies. However, in the case of animal protection laws, an animal may be taken away without any intrusion into the personal privacy o f another. “When a vivisector seeks to exploit a nonhuman in a biomedical experiment, the situation is much more analogous to one of child abuse, not abortion,” argues Francione (1995, p. 150).

2 chain to accurately comment on contemporary animal agribusiness and thus animal treatment within those industries. According to Horwitz, only those who are directly involved with the production and profit aspects of animal agribusiness can legitimately comment on the texture and meaning of animals’ lives. Activists’ concerns about animal treatment or commodification are interpreted as an affront to farmers:

Why would anyone think that getting [animals] sick, crippled and hooked on

drugs saves labor and makes money? Only, I would think, if they assume that

farmers are, as a rule, sadistic or stupid or both. The insult so strongly implied is

awfully hard to accept, especially when it comes from some do-gooder who does

not know the first thing about caring for animals as a matter of daily toil as well

as self-righteous sentiment. (Horwitz, p. 42)

What seems puzzling is that people outside of the farm industry who care for animals “as a matter of daily toil” (p. 42), including farmed animal shelter and sanctuary workers, ex­ farmers, veterinarians, trainers, and animal guardians, among others, are excluded from

Horwitz’s analysis. Yet using his epistemological criteria, we might guess that these people, too, would be in a position to speak about animals’ feelings and experiences due to their direct, daily contact with them. Still, they are subject neither to his praise nor to his condemnation: They are simply absent from his text.

Within Horwitz’s occasionally vitriolic commentary exist two discrete groups: legitimate knowers (farmers and animal scientists) and ignorant activists. Therefore, for

Horwitz, it is not so much that direct, daily experience is a prerequisite to know animals and thus to speak on their behalf, rather that only a very select type of experience with animals counts as legitimate grounds for advocacy. That is to say, only those within the

3 industry are the authentic representatives of animals’ experiences. Thus, the implication of Horwitz’s argument is that the agricultural industry must be necessarily self-regulated, wherein only those who have a stake in production and profit are able to represent animals’ experiences and feelings. While the public is generally prevented from knowing the animals they consume, this same lack of daily access is counted as an automatic strike against animal activists.

Horwitz implies that it is only those who have a financial interest in farmed animals who are able to know them in any kind of meaningful way. In opposition to the

“if-l-were-one” logic, Horwitz draws in part upon another equally precarious line of reasoning to support what 1 characterize as his “industry-knows-best” position. Namely, he points to the relationship between animal welfare and animal productivity, and thus profit: “Up until the moment the hogs leave the farm, well-being and profit are allied interests,” states Horwitz (p. 47). His claim is based on the observation that stress in pigs diminishes feed consumption and the efficiency of the feed to marketable flesh conversion. For example, Pork ‘93’s producer’s guide to hog-house flooring begins with what Horwitz considers a truism: “Pig comfort is no longer a secondary consideration.

An uncomfortable pig is a stressed pig. And a stressed pig is a non-productive pig” (as cited in Horwitz, p. 47).4

Horwitz’s claim begs the question, “What is stress?” While Horwitz argues chemical analyses still cannot clearly distinguish between “good” stress and “bad” stress

3 Arguably, most North Americans do not clamour for the opportunity to meet the individual animals they eat. 4 Fox (1990) problematizes the term “productivity,” as used by many animal scientists. Despite what the rhetoric implies, “productivity” is not simply an individual’s “conversion efficiency in relation to its rate o f growth or egg or milk yield per day per unit o f food consumed” (p. 33). Instead, “productivity” o f a pen or cage of animals is determined in conjunction with costs related to labour, equipment, and feed. Fox also argues that often efforts used to reduce animals’ physical expression of stress do not address the psychological distress (p. 32).

4 in animals, he writes that “stress is readily visible in the cutting room, and packers will dock you severely for it” (p. 47). The appearance of PSE (Pale Soft Exudative), mushy pig flesh that results in a tasteless consumer product, is a result of “stressed-out” pigs.

Before slaughter, pigs who have been abused, are hungry, feel scared, etc., will begin to accumulate lactic acid between their muscle cells. Once slaughtered, regardless of the stress experienced prior to death, the animal’s body’s pH level begins to drop.

Slaughtering pigs in the midst of a “lactic acid storm” leads to rapid drop rates. Because acidity denatures protein, the faster the pH drops below normal levels, the more likely the flesh will show signs of PSE. Horwitz turns to PSE as a marker of animal stress to illustrate his point that animal welfare and economic interests are aligned. PSE has numerous causes, as Horwitz acknowledges, but he argues that all the causes can be adequately lumped under the term “unhappiness.” The “animal that [sic] is challenged”

(p. 47),5 the unhappy animal, is one who is high-strung, abused, or struggles to adjust to a new environment, among other difficulties. His reasoning quickly slips from the point that “hog happiness” is difficult to measure (i.e., it is difficult to discriminate between

“good” versus “bad” stress on a chemical level) to a discussion of what indicates hog

“unhappiness.” The argument is constructed in such a way that the reader is meant to infer that an absence of unhappiness as Horwitz defines it (demonstrated through a lack of PSE) logically indicates hog happiness. It does not follow, however, that the absence of unhappiness signals the presence of happiness.

51 use [sic] here to interrupt the speciesist assumption that the appropriate pronoun for animals is one that defines them as objects (signalled by “that”), while the appropriate pronoun for human beings is one that defines them as subjects (signalled by “who” or “whom”). My contention is that animals are also “who” and “whom.” While some grammar sources indicate that “that” can also be an acceptable pronoun for human beings, “who” and “whom” are used exclusively in reference to people.

5 Further, definitions of happiness, which are based solely on some empirically measurable absence of pain or stress, neglect pleasure as a relevant factor in determining such a state. The bias of Horwitz’s argument is thrown into sharp relief when the experience of pleasure is understood as indicative of happiness. “Hedonic ethology,” a term coined by Jonathan Balcombe (2007), is the study of animal pleasure. This type of ethology moves beyond behavioural studies that focus on nociception,6 or even studies of animals’ experiences of pain. Balcombe’s Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the

Nature of Feeling Good offers a comprehensive survey of numerous studies and anecdotal evidence to persuasively demonstrate that many nonhuman animals experience, and are motivated by, pleasure.7 He concludes, “If animals feel, then we have a responsibility towards them. And if they feel more than just pain - if they are capable of pleasure - then that responsibility is greater than if they did not” (p. 209). For Horwitz, advocates and consumers should be satisfied with industry definitions of animal happiness that focus on physical signs of stress and tend to ignore animals’ capacities for positive experiences.

Still, Horwitz concedes, “There may, for example, be a chasm between the conditions that make a hog profitable and the ones that serve its spirit, in understandable even if immeasurable ways” (p. 48). Who might be able to make such assessments? For

6 Nociception does not imply the experience o f something adverse, only that an animal’s nervous system is stimulated in a way as to prompt a reflex to avoid the stimulus. 7 Balcombe emphasizes that evolution and experience are compatible not only for humans, but also for animals. To exclude one from the other is to create a false dichotomy, one too often made by the scientific community. Concentrating on pleasure, Balcombe describes multiple studies that show the many ways animals seek out and experience pleasure, including through food, sex, play, and others. Keeping in mind the individual differences among animals, Balcombe points to the continuity between humans and other animals: experience and evolution are wedded. He states, “The physical pleasures of life - like the pain - are current, even though they have evolutionary significance. It is these experiences, not the evolutionary forces underlying them, that put wind in the sails o f a raccoon’s existence. And a mouse’s. And a pigeon’s” (p. 8).

6 Horwitz, the answer is “old timey operators” (p. 48) who can sense that pigs are overcrowded, for example, even without confirmation from any official “herd health,”

“carcass quality,” and profit records (pp. 48-49). Concomitantly, though, calls for the return of the family farm and small-scale production methods, which might afford some animals the luxury of such attentiveness, are dismissed by Horwitz:

Wouldn’t it be nice, progressives seem to say, if those people would only stay on

the farm with their cute animals, content to bolster primitivist fantasies about

latter-day yeomen? While we ride the Fortune 500, you can be our pet

premodems ... and make sure we do not hear of any pain and suffering in the

process. Something must be turning horribly wrong out there, if we hear that pigs

do not live like Babe. (p. 43)

The very people Horwitz claims could navigate the chasm between empirical evidence and the nourishment of animals’ spirits are the same ones pressured to industrialize, which effectively divorces them from regular, direct contact with individual animals.

Rather than romanticize the past and mourn the loss of the family farm (hardly a paragon g of independence or virtue, according to Horwitz), he rallies against activists who oppose farmers who choose to “go big” to survive, and to thrive within the current economic environment. In effect, Horwitz rescues animal scientists, industrial farmers, and “old timey operators” from the trap of the ventriloquist’s burden. To claim that animal activists commit such an offence is an attempt not only to expose the underlying pretentiousness of their advocacy, but also to increase the accusation’s negative impact.

The phrase “the ventriloquist’s burden” invokes Rudyard Kipling’s famous 1899 poem, “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands,” which

8 See Chapter 9, “Meet the Big Guys” (pp. 66-76).

7 framed the imperialist project as one of noble obligation and justification. According to

Brantlinger, “[The poem] has served as a lightning rod for both supporters and opponents of imperialism, as well as of racism and white supremacy” (2007, p. 172). Though varying interpretations exist, including arguments that the poem is satirical (e.g.,

Snodgrass, 2002), critics have largely agreed that the poem’s import is both patronizing and racist. In the poem, “Kipling appealed to the American people, as he saw it—-the other great half of the English-speaking race and true ‘white men’ as well—to share

Britain's global civilising mission,” writes Judd (1997, p. 42). “The White Man’s

Burden” positioned British and American imperialists as benevolent actors who took upon themselves the burden of spreading civilization (and Christianity) or who, perhaps, even saw the uncivilized people as a kind of burden themselves. To this end, colonization is cast throughout the poem not as wanton conquest and appropriation for the colonialists’ gain, but instead as the virtuous, even altruistic, work of imperialists who believe themselves more enlightened than those subjected to their rule.

In Kipling’s poem, American forces are urged to help those who supposedly cannot help themselves, namely, the people of the Philippine Islands. Like a parent who delivers bitter medicine to a sick and reluctant child, Americans are encouraged to bear the responsibility of civilizing the Filipino people:

To wait, in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild --

Your new-caught sullen people,

Half devil and half child. (Kipling, 1899)

8 The condescending attitude apparent within the phrase “the white man’s burden” is similarly implied through the phrase “the ventriloquist’s burden,” except instead of taking upon the burden of “the White Man’s work, the business of introducing a sane and orderly administration into the dark places of the earth” (Kipling as cited in Brantlinger,

2007, p. 178), activists focus on animals as recipients of their benevolence. Read within the context of Horwitz’s (2002) chapter, with its overt disdain for “PETA people” (p. 47), vegetarians, and their ilk, those who take upon themselves the ventriloquist’s burden are compared to imperialists, while Horwitz is aligned with the critics of racism and colonialism. From Horwitz’s perspective, animal activists also arrogantly presume to know what is best for others, just like imperialists.

The same kind of self-congratulatory and self-pitying tone of the “white man’s burden” is also reflected in the phrase “the ventriloquist’s burden.” Notably, as

Brantlinger (2007) posits, “the white man’s burden” finds echoes within contemporary discourse in relation to the invasions, or so-called “liberations,” of Iraq and Afghanistan, through such neoimperialist works as Max Boot’s (2002) The Savage Wars o f Peace,

Robert Kaplan’s (2005) Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground, or Niall

Ferguson’s (2003) Empire: The Rise and Demise o f the British World Order. Referring to Ferguson’s text, Brantlinger contends,

He doesn’t quite say that America should now “Take up the white man’s burden,”

as Kipling advised the U.S. to do during the Spanish-American War: “No one

would dare,” he writes, “use such politically incorrect language today.”

Obviously he is tempted to use that language, but doesn’t for fear of being

accused of the racism that Kipling and British imperialists expressed. In any

9 event, Ferguson argues that “just like the British Empire before it, the American

empire unfailingly acts in the name of liberty, even when its own self-interest is

manifestly uppermost.” (2007, p. 186)

Likewise, it is possible that some animal activists understand themselves as animals’ heroes, perhaps particularly those who identify as “animal liberationists,” those who literally liberate animals through rescue or support the goal of animal liberation, namely,

“to free animals to allow them, as far as possible, to lead autonomous lives without artificial restrictions” (Bernstein, 2004, p. 98).9

Horwitz marshals both the shameful legacy of colonialism and critiques of its propaganda in order to admonish animal activists for adopting “the ventriloquist’s burden,” a slogan that signals the same corrupt underbelly as “the white man’s burden.”

In each case, critics attempt to reveal the colonizers’ and advocates’ perceived altruistic heroism as self-aggrandizing delusion. Horwitz’s phrase serves as an important starting point for the following work. He figures animal rights activism as sheer humanist ventriloquism, rather than as any kind of valid attempt to align with animals’ interests.

He points to the supposed total failure of animal rights activists to accurately represent animals. Condensed within his phrase, “the ventriloquist’s burden,” is a multiplicity of

9 According to Best (2004), animal welfare colludes with animal exploiting industries through their joint acceptance o f the property status o f animals. Animal rights and animal liberation are more closely aligned to each other than to animal welfare. Best argues that animal rights provides the philosophical foundation for the Animal Liberation Front, and therefore, in his view, animal liberation in general. For Best, the crucial distinguishing feature between rights and liberation is the use o f direct action by the latter. “While those who adopt the animal welfare position seek merely to reduce animal suffering,” explains Best, “supporters o f animal rights aim to abolish it, demanding not bigger cages and ‘humane treatment,’ but rather empty cages and total liberation. Animal welfare philosophy accepts the property status o f animals, but animal rights philosophy insists that animals are subjects o f their own life and no one’s to own. Whereas animal welfare philosophy reinforces the moral gulf between human and nonhuman animals and allows any use o f animals so long as it furthers some alleged human interest, animal rights theory puts human and nonhuman animals on an equal moral plane and rejects all exploitative uses o f animals, whether human beings benefit or not. Clearly, animal rights is the guiding moral philosophy o f the ALF, but whereas animal rights often is a legal fight without direct action, animal liberation is an immediate confrontation with exploiters” (pp. 26-27).

10 assumptions about who does and does not have the right to represent animals, and about the legitimate grounds for such representations.

Significantly, too, Horwitz’s phase “the ventriloquist’s burden” explicitly relies on a voice trope (i.e., ventriloquism). He suggests that there is an abuse of power implied through the act of speaking for someone or for a group, especially when that is done outside of direct engagements with those one claims to represent. Typically, debates about voice representation have centred on the politics of speaking for certain marginalized human groups (e.g., Collins, 1990; Keeshig-Tobias, 1990; Lugones &

Spelman, 1983; Rowell, 1995). These discussions have largely related to heated debates about how people in positions of power represent those who have been marginalized, oppressed, and colonized. The language of voice has been key to expressing these concerns. What is interesting about Horwitz’s condemnation is that he directly drives typically anthropocentric critiques about voice and representation into the realm of animal rights politics. While others have raised similar concerns about animal rights (e.g,

Haraway, 1992; jones, 2005), Horwitz’s phrase vividly points toward central questions of the dissertation: How have activists spoken for animals and represented their voices?

What is at stake regarding animality and humanity in ethical and political voice discourses? Further, what role does (and should) direct, face-to-face engagements with animals play in informing activists’ efforts, as the epistemological grounding for their representations? In this sense, while I show that Horwitz’s critique is overly simplistic and unfairly dismissive of animal rights, it is nonetheless useful for raising questions about activists’ engagements with voice, politics, and representation.

11 Introduction

This work uses voice to explore “the question of the animal.”10 Symbolically and materially rich, voice is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that offers a set of provocative entry points into an examination of animals and politics. The study of voice provides

insight into the contemporary status of nonhuman animals, the interconstitution of animality and humanity, the history of Western politics, new social movements, (post-)

identity politics, and the construction of human and non-human subjectivities. Overall, drawing primarily on feminist, posthumanist, and animal rights theories, as well as critical discourse analysis (CDA)11 as a methodology, I use voice as my main organizing

principle to investigate the politics of representation, particularly in relation to the

question of “speaking for” animals. 1 centrally posit that a nuanced analysis of voice is

necessary to more adeptly navigate the difficult terrain of animal representation.

This document is partially bom of my own concern about the ways in which

animal advocates represent animals within their political work. In part, such concern

stems from the political and academic debates that informed my emergence as a political

10 While Matthew Calarco (2008) defines “the question o f the animal” in a number of ways— not the least of which is articulated by Derrida’s original philosophical formulation of the question, signalling a critique of Heidegger’s rendering of animal life— my meaning relates most distinctly to his political framing of the question: Calarco states, “Whereas pro-animal discourse is often presented as an extension and deepening o f liberal humanism, I attempt to recast this discourse as a direct challenge to liberal humanism and the metaphysical anthropocentricism that underlies it. In making these points, I am explicitly aligning myself and theorists in animal studies who are doing similar work with the new social movements that are seeking to develop a postliberal, posthumanist approach to politics” (p. 6). " McGregor (2003) summarizes CDA as “concerned with studying and analyzing written texts and spoken words to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality, and bias and how these sources are initiated, maintained, reproduced, and transformed within specific social, economic, political, and historical contexts. It tries to illuminate the ways in which the dominant forces in society construct versions of reality in favor o f their interests. By unmasking such practices, CDA scholars aim to support the victims o f such oppression and encourage them to resist and transform their lives...The objective of CDA is to uncover the ideological assumptions that are hidden in the words o f our written text or oral speech in order to resist and overcome various forms o f power over or to gain an appreciation that we are exercising 'power over,’ unbeknownst to us. CDA aims to systematically explore often opaque relationships between discursive practices, texts, and events and wider social and cultural structures, relations, and processes.”

12 actor within the women’s movement in the late 1990s. Debates about cultural appropriation (at times rendered as “voice appropriation” [Rowell, 1995]), prolific at that time, marked both my academic and political pursuits. One the one hand, standpoint epistemology and identity politics were privileged (one could only “speak” from one’s particular social location) while on the other hand, the notion of any type of unitary or

fixed identity itself was being challenged (i.e., one was always positioned in multiple ways and there was no such thing as an essential “core” identity).

Following Haraway (1992), who is dedicated to “striking] up a coherent

conversation where humans are not the measure of all things, and where no one claims

unmediated access to anyone else” (p. 84), 1 argue that analysing voice is part of the

useful metaphor-work that she claims we “might need for a usable theory of the subject at the end of the second Christian millennium” (p. 93). As Russell (2005) notes, while

Haraway’s ideas about partial perspectives and situated knowledges have been taken up

by feminist poststructuralist approaches to education, unfortunately there has been little

attempt to grapple with Haraway’s desire for ‘“ learning to converse’ with the world

beyond humans” (p. 434). However, Russell and others (e.g. Fawcett, 2000) have begun

this important work. For example, Russell (2005) addresses the failure of feminist

poststructualist theories of voice and representation to adequately recognize the agency of

non-human nature. Indeed, Russell “crave[s] environmental education research

representations, which, in their multi-vocality, create space for the ‘voices’ o f‘nature’ to

be more audible, and in their polyvocality, take into account our own animality, and

doing both, trouble the ‘nature’/culture divide” (p. 439). 12

12 While Russell’s theory is incredibly useful for the present study, which endeavours to take seriously the agency of animals and analyse voice in relation to non-human Others, my overall focus is animal advocacy,

13 As activists and academics of various stripes continue to rely on voice and other metaphors to express their desires for inclusive, radical, and diverse politics and practices, 1 want to ask questions not only about the meaning of these metaphors, but also about the embodied voices that haunt such metaphorical clusters, and thus better understand how voice features into politics and ethics. Part of my goal, then, is to demonstrate the ways in which voice resonates in Western culture, and in politics more particularly.

Chapter Summaries

Voice intersects with “the question of the animal” at a variety of angles throughout the dissertation. Chapter One analyzes a frictional exchange between animal rights activist,

sex worker, and transsexual woman Mirha-Soleil Ross, and feminist vegetarian theorist and cissexual13 woman Carol Adams.14 The narrative offers a springboard into the

dissertation’s major themes, especially the ways in which (human) subjectivity,

experiential knowledge, and agency permeate contemporary discourses about voice

generally, and animal rights politics more specifically. Chapter One shows in concrete terms some of the dangers of voice representation, and contextual izes those dangers

within feminist debates about prostitution and pornography in particular, and debates

concerning what Deleuze (1977), summarizing Foucault, calls “the indignity of speaking

not environmental education. Further, domesticated animals (including “food animals”), a major concern of animal advocates, are often not adequately accounted for within theories o f ‘nature,’ or frequently when they are addressed, they are positioned as “de-natured” or otherwise described in reductive or degrading terms (e.g., Callicott, 1989; Livingston, 1994; Shepard, 1996). 13 Julia Serano, author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, defines “cissexuals” as “people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their subconscious and physical sexes as being aligned” (2007, p. 12). 141 am also a cissexual woman. In addition, 1 am white, able-bodied, and from a middle class background.

14 for others” (p. 209)15 and Alcoff (1991) calls “the problem of speaking for others” (p. 6).

The story points to some of the limits of “voice discourse” (Moore & Muller, 1999),16 including the persistent assumption that voice is always human. In relation, Chapter One highlights the inability of identity politics to adequately address questions of human and nonhuman representation, which are so acutely illustrated through Adams’ and Ross’ use of voice. Constructions of certain subjects as victims, and corresponding resistance to those constructions, are central to these debates.

Chapter Two provides a genealogy of contemporary voice discourse.

Specifically, I examine the discursive baggage packed into the “politics of voice”

(Giroux, 1986). Given that the Academy has been a major site where voice discourse has developed, I consider the role of voice within contemporary (political) academic writing, especially as evidenced within two major fields where voice resides: critical pedagogy and feminist theory. Through a discourse analysis of key texts within these fields, I distil what I call the “dynamics of political voice” in order to assess how voice is deployed and what investments are involved in its articulation. (The dynamics of voice are most strongly revisited in the final chapter when I use them as a theoretical lens to interpret the

Animal Voices archive. Chapter Two also demonstrates that despite the critical thrust of much of this work, which eloquently challenges the racialized, gendered, and classed

15 In a conversation between Deleuze and Foucault, originally published in 1972 inL ’Arc, Deleuze reflects on Foucault’s efforts to establish the conditions where, through the information group for prisoners (G.I.P.), prisoners could speak for themselves: “In my opinion,” states Deleuze (1977), “you were the first— in your books and in the practical sphere— to teach us something absolutely fundamental: the indignity o f speaking for others. We ridiculed representation and said it was finished, but we failed to draw the consequences o f this ‘theoretical’ conversion— to appreciate the theoretical fact that only those directly concerned can speak in a practical way on their own behalf’ (p. 209). 16 Moore and Muller (1999) coined the term “voice discourse” to describe a postmodern approach to knowledge, which emerged as part of the “New Sociology of Education” debates that emphasized identity, experiential knowledge, and subjectivity. Voice discourse was constructed in opposition to more hegemonic “objective” forms of knowledge production. Chapter Two provides an in-depth analysis of the discourse and its associated use o f the voice metaphor.

15 marginalization of certain subjects and which self-reflexively employs the voice metaphor, critical pedagogy and feminist theory overwhelmingly subscribe to and entrench the assumption that voice is human. In other words, despite the authors’ careful attention to power and their efforts to centralize and engage the voices of those who have

been oppressed, their scholarship does not transgress human species boundaries. We see that Adams’ and Ross’ use of voice, despite their interests in animal rights, resonates with the humanism of these theoretical orientations.

Chapter Three illustrates, though only briefly and selectively due to the scope of the project, how ideas about voice entangle human and animal subjectivities within the

West, and in relation, influence the very constitution of Western politics. First, I trace voice through the writings of three major Western thinkers: Aristotle, Montaigne, and

Descartes. Second, I critique the ways in which animality is figured within a sample of

contemporary works about human voice as an embodied phenomenon. These texts

betray a persistent Western cultural assumption that animals lack voice: This assumption

is enacted not only through anthropocentricism, but also through the active negation of

animality. Third, I consider the role of voice within animal rights and welfare advocacy,

particularly the tendency for advocates to also explicitly construct animals as “voiceless,”

through repeated aphorisms such as “the voice of the voiceless.” Significantly, certain

advocates have resisted these expressions and their implications (e.g, Bekoff, 2000; jones, 2005). Their discursive disruptions of the voice metaphor open into the final chapter, which shows how some advocates retain the progressive dynamics of political

voice while also disentangling them from humanism.

16 In Chapter Four, I use the Animal Voices radio show as a case study to argue that, despite advocates’ frequent claims to be the “voice of the voiceless,” they also unsettle such humanist metaphorical constructions by highlighting the dynamics of political voice. That is, 1 address activists’ commitments to foregrounding (a construction of) animals as voiced subjects. I offer this investigation, in part, as a critique of Donna

Haraway’s (2008a) scholarship on “companion species.” Haraway, a major interlocutor in the field of animal studies/human-animal studies, privileges particular kinds of face-to- face17 encounters as a methodology for human-animal relationships (within the context of domestication); in contrast, she largely figures the work of animal rights activists as profoundly flawed, and as based on abstract ethical paradigms rather than on embodied and specific encounters. Through an examination of political voice within the radio archive, I demonstrate the complexity of activists’ representations of, and relationships with, animals. 18 Moreover, I argue that the complexity of these representations points to some of the most inspiring forms of animal rights activism today. These are precisely the

17 Haraway emphasizes “face-to-face” encounters throughoutWhen Species Meet as a key aspect o f companion species, the central figure and methodology o f the text. Her focus on these encounters, and her intentional and repeated use o f the phrase “face-to-face,” perhaps suggests a contestation and reworking o f Emmanuel Levinas’ humanist philosophy of the face and face-to-face relations. (For Levinas, the face-to- face encounter is the nexus and origin of ethics, “the intersubjective relation at its precognitive core; viz., being called by another and responding to that other” [Bergo, 2012].) Specifically, early in Chapter One of When Species Meet, Haraway considers Jacques Derrida’s descriptions o f being caught one morning standing naked in front o f his cat. Derrida writes about the experience in “The Animal that Therefore 1 am (More to Follow).” While Haraway states that “[u]like Emmanuel Levinas, Derrida, to his credit” recognized the Otherness of the cat and “gave us the provocation of a historically located look” (p. 23), she nonetheless critiques Derrida for not being more curious about his cat and responding to her. (That is to say, he does not write about response to the cat in his philosophy.) He neglects the immediate invitation of response, precipitated through the cat’s gaze, and instead chooses to write about shame: “Even if the cat did not become a symbol of all cats, the naked man’s shame quickly became a figure for the shame of philosophy before all of the animals” (p. 23). Derrida’s failure to respond to his cat helps Haraway stage the theoretical intervention of companion species, which partially serves as a kind of gentle coaxing of Derrida, and this particularly rich moment, to open up a discussion of relations among species wherein each party is in dynamic response to the other. 18 Although excellent scholarship exists regarding the visual and textual representations o f animals (e.g., Burt, 2002; Fudge, 2002; Rothfels, 2002), including activists’ representations, overall little attention has been paid to oral representations.

17 sorts of approaches (which foreground a range of animal subjectivities, agencies, and relational capacities) that I hope the movements increasingly cultivate as part of a larger posthumanist19 turn.

191 am relying on Wolfe’s (2010) description and development o f “posthumanism,” elegantly summarized by Pollack (2011) as, “[T]he set of questions confronting us, and way of dealing with those questions, when we can no longer rely on ‘the human’ as an autonomous, rational being who provides an Archimedean point for knowing about the world (in contrast to ‘humanism,’ which uses such a figure to ground further claims)” (p. 235). Notably, there are multiple and competing definitions of posthumanism, which are (as Wolfe notes [2010]) sometimes at odds with each other. These versions are detailed in W olfe’s introduction to What is Posthumanism? For my purposes, it is most important to underscore that my understanding and use of posthumanism is very much resonate with Wolfe’s: He carefully distinguishes between posthumanism as an interrogation o f human supremacy and its particular intellectual strongholds, as well an investigation into the “specificity the human” (meaninghomo sapiens’ particular ways o f knowing and being, etc.) from a different form of posthumanism, namely, “transhumanism,” which is a movement based on exceeding current human capabilities, made possible through various engineered advancements. Like Wolfe, I am interested in the first rather than the second, given that the latter, as he observes, actually offers an intensification of humanism. Wolfe writes, “[P]osthumanism in my sense isn’t posthuman at all— in the sense o f being ‘after’ our embodiment has been transcended— but is only posthuman/5/, in the sense that it opposes the fantasies o f disembodiment and autonomy, inherited from humanism itself...” (p. xv).

18 Chapter I: Voice and the Human Subject

Introduction

The following chapter begins with a story about feminism, transsexuality, animal activism, and voice. The story details frictional interactions between feminist and animal ethics scholar, Carol Adams, and sex worker and animal rights activist, Mirha-Soleil

Ross. It is an important story to tell here for a number of reasons. First, practically, it is important because the story provides useful context for the dissertation’s case study, the

Animal Voices radio program. 20 Second, it illustrates in potent terms some of the negative consequences of essentialism and the failure of certain feminisms (despite their often inclusive rhetoric) to build viable coalitions. In relation, Ross and Adams’ exchanges, and my own encounters with Feminists for Animal Rights (FAR), spurred a political reorientation that greatly shaped Animal Voices throughout my nine-year tenure with the show. Third, the following story offers a salient example of how the voice trope functions within political discourse.

Overall, the questions raised in the following narrative—questions related to voice, including who has a voice, who is considered voiceless, who has the right to speak for a particular group, and the underly ing anthropocentric assumptions that shape the

“politics of voice”—are critical not only to the formation of the entire Animal Voices archive but also to this dissertation more generally. My aim is to show, through the focus

20 Animal Voices is an animal rights and liberation radio show that began broadcasting in 1996 on CIUT 89.5 FM (University of Toronto’s campus and community radio station). The show is now broadcast through CFBU 103.7 FM in St. Catharines (Brock University’s campus radio station), but is syndicated on CIUT 89.5 FM. The show “covers local, national, global, and politically diverse campaigns, struggles and victories of the animal liberation movement” (Animal Voices, n.d.). Animal Voices focuses on interviews with “a broad spectrum o f activists and academics working toward the liberation of animals, social justice, and environmental health” (Animal Voices, n.d.).

19 on a particular example, the powerful influence of the voice metaphor in naming and structuring debates about animals, particularly representations of their pain and suffering.

Ross and Adams’ argument, which plays out through discourses about voice, occurs within the larger context of identity politics. Indeed, we witness a dramatic collision between animal advocacy and identity politics, with the latter typically preoccupied with “shared experiences of injustice of members of certain social groups”

(“Identity Politics,” 2012). Despite both activists’ dedication to animals, the humanist logic of identity politics—articulated here through voice—holds throughout the unfolding of their debate. Resonating with Cary Wolfe’s (2003) critique of the liberal humanism that ironically informs certain major animal rights philosophies, such as Tom Regan’s neo-Kantianism, 21 Ross’ and Adams’ personal claims to marginalized experience—as a grounds to speak on behalf of animals—are also informed by humanism. For both

Adams’ and Ross’ respective claims to marginalized experience, voice (which in this instance names marginalized experience and subjectivity) is assumed to be human. By paying attention to voice in this way, we can see the inability of identity politics, and its associated voice discourse, to develop a more radical form of animal politics that centralizes animals’ experiences and subjectivities. Drawing on the feminist theory of

Donna Haraway and other scholars, 1 address this final point in the latter portion of the chapter.

In addition to identity politics, Adams’ and Ross’ debate is situated both inside and adjacent22 to a larger context of “animal ecofeminism,” a subsection of ecofeminism

21 Wolfe states that within Regan’s animal rights philosophy, “our responsibility to the animal other is...in the fact that it exhibits in diminished form qualities, potentialities, or abilities that exist in their fullest realization in human beings” (2003, p. 10). ‘ It is adjacent in the sense that their debate is not exclusive to ecofeminism, or even feminism more

20 that scholar Gaard (1996) characterizes as a tributary flowing from a broader stream of radical feminism. Ecofeminism primarily focuses on critiquing, dismantling, and actively resisting interconnected and mutually-reinforcing forms of oppression and domination, particularly the oppression and domination of women and the oppression and domination of nature. As Kemmerer (2011) quoting Kheel notes, “Ecofeminists are aware that ‘the perpetrators of violence throughout the world are, by and large, men, and the victims of this violence are primarily women and the natural world”’ (p. 14).

As we see in the events described below, who is considered a victim of violence—and how one is constructed as such— is a pressing concern. Who can speak from direct experience as a victim, and consequently, who can legitimately speak to similar kinds of victim experiences, perpetually turns around the question of voice. As I show in detail in Chapter Two, feminists in particular have long been preoccupied with this question. Ecofeminists share this legacy. For example, in Sister Species: Women,

Animals, and Social Justice, a recent ecofeminist anthology, editor Lisa Kemmerer

(2011) maintains,

Authors in this anthology recall a past tendency toward silence and describe their

struggles to find voice. They explain the importance of honesty, of speaking up,

of using voice to keep us all ‘uncomfortably conscious’ of oppression, asking

tough questions—even when we don’t have all the answers.... These authors

provide insights into the links that connect empathy and silence on the one hand,

with trauma and voice on the other, (pp. 25-26)

As I argue throughout the dissertation, voice is salient to both scholars and activists alike because its presence continually signals subjectivity while its absence generally, as the dissertation demonstrates.

21 (often constructed as “silence”) signals objectification. 23 That is to say, what it means to be a subject is frequently articulated through discourses of voice. Ecofeminists’ and others’ calls for social justice, including for animal rights and liberation, are infused with this language. Consequently, the metaphor of voice, and our investments in that metaphor, should be carefully parsed and evaluated. The uses and implications of the metaphor—descriptions of subjectivity—take on particular complexities in relationship to animal politics, given that animals are largely conceived (by Western definitions) as outside the domains of speech, language, and other forms of “voice” representation especially valued in the West. Indeed, it is animals’ very exclusion from these (and other) capacities that signals them as animals and us as humans (see Oliver, 2009).

The Sexual Politics of Voice

Toward the end of my degree in Women’s Studies in 1999, my political commitments had precipitated into recognizable forms (as coordinator of the University of Manitoba’s

Womyn’s Centre, organizer of International Women’s Day events, dedicated Take Back the Night marcher, etc.), while my scholarly affections continued to revolve around postmodernist and poststructuralist theories, especially to the extent that they might ameliorate feminism’s sins of essential ism.24 In the midst of such organizing and academic invigoration, I unexpectedly learned of the twin horrors of industrial animal

23 Unsurprisingly, Kemmerer (2011), drawing on Kheel, combines her discussion of voice with her description of ecofeminists’ struggle against interlocking forms of objectification and oppression. She writes, “Objectification is a defining aspect of linked oppression.... Objects ‘do not speak, objects do not feel, and objects have no needs. Objects exist only to serve the needs o f others’” (p. 26). 24 In her article “Anti-Essentialism in Practice: Carol Gilligan and Feminist Philosophy,” Heyes (1997) notes the multiple meanings associated with the term “essentialism,” but concludes, following Martin, that “the term nonetheless captures certain widely accepted feminist concerns. Thus any feminist theory that is variously determinist, exclusionary, ahistorical; that fails to recognize diversity among women; that falsely generalizes, reifies femininity, or commits any other related methodological sin tends to be dubbed essentialist” (p. 144).

22 agriculture and vivisection. 1 flailed. Searching for feminist theories that would illuminate these practices, Carol Adams’ (1996) The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist

Vegetarian Critical Theory appeared like a lifeboat in a sea of unapologetic humanism.

Smoothly grafted onto my understandings of violence against women, Adams’ analysis of violence against animals as a symptom of a racist patriarchy made a kind of logical, lock-in-key sense.

Upon my arrival in Toronto in 1999,1 had purchased and distributed so many copies of The Sexual Politics o f Meat that, in retrospect, I ought to have bulk-ordered the book. Yet despite my enthusiasm for Adams’ theory, which is greatly informed by radical and cultural feminism, the political landscape (or at least the feminist political landscape as 1 experienced it) was rapidly shifting, even as my mini not-for-profit distro was thriving. In the throes of “third wave feminism,” my understandings of sex work and pornography were such that the single anti-pornography workshop I conducted at the end of my undergraduate degree was facilitated with little gusto. Spurred as much by classroom discussions as larger political debates, I had a growing sense that these issues were more complex than 1 had previously concluded. 25

As my various political allegiances and theoretical positions were undergoing upheavals, I was also geographically uprooted. I moved from Osbome Village in

Winnipeg into a North York apartment in Toronto with three other women, including one who had been a political ally at the University of Manitoba and who was also a close friend. By the time I arrived in Ontario to begin my Masters in Environmental Studies,

25 The “sex positive” writings of Susie Bright (e.g.Susie Sexpert's Lesbian Sex World, 1998), Annie Sprinkle (Annie Sprinkle: Post-Porn Modernist, 1998), and Shannon Bell(Whore Carnival, 1995) were particularly informative at the time, offering an alternative feminist analysis to that of such authors as Andrea Dworkin (Pornography: Men Possessing Women, 1989) and Robin Morgan (“Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape,” fromGoing too Far: A Personal Chronicle of a Feminist, 1978).

23 my position on pornography had coalesced into a vague pro-labour stance, as I remained uncertain about the images’ meanings. That is to say, regardless of the semiotics of pornographic images and potential corresponding social impacts, I felt that women 26 involved in the production of pornography should be treated fairly, paid well, and have legal recourse.

Alongside my increasingly agnostic position on pornography swirled debates about the exclusion of transgendered and transsexual people, specifically trans women, from the annual Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. The controversy had recently reached a fevered pitch with the return of “Camp Trans” in 1999. 27 I felt strongly that trans women should be welcomed at the Festival. My knowledge of transgender and transsexual politics was practically non-existent at the time, but the exclusion of trans women from the Festival struck me as biologically essentialist, conservative, and transphobic. On a personal level, 1 felt increasingly pushed to feminism’s fringes, given my interest in including animals within feminist theories of oppression, a desire that had been greeted with varying degrees of scepticism while 1 was in Women’s Studies; I was cautious of what seemed to be reactionary gate-keeping gestures, ones that perpetuated

261 had not yet critically thought about men and boys in pornography, and so largely conceived o f the debates as a question of women’s and girls’ experiences. 27 At the time, “Camp Trans” had been on a five-year hiatus. Camp Trans indicates that the annual gathering is dedicated to, “Protesting the exclusion of trans women from women-only spaces, most notably the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival; Building a trans-inclusive community that is welcoming and safe for all; Empowering the next generation o f activists to fight for trans issues locally through organizer trainings, workshops, and leadership development; and Advocating [bold in original] for the inclusion o f trans issues in progressive, queer, and feminist movements by building coalitions with supportive organizations and bringing attention to local campaigns” (“Camp Trans” website link is broken; original statement can be found on the “Alliance: Valparaiso University’s LGBT Community - ‘Events’” site, 2012).

24 the exclusionary and biased tendencies that had already negatively marked the history of

Western feminism.28

It was the desire for more holistic, inclusive feminist theories and practices that prompted me to cofound the Toronto chapter of Feminists for Animal Rights (FAR) 29 in

2000. Our small group consisted of my roommate, an acquaintance, and me. During our second FAR-Toronto meeting, Mirha-Soleil Ross, a performance artist, animal rights and sex workers’ rights activist, arrived to discuss the possibility of us organizing an event by sex workers about animal issues. At the meeting, Ross described her encounters with

Carol Adams (a FAR advisor) that had occurred at the World Vegetarian Congress on

July 15, 2000. The set of incidences occurred after Ross and her partner, Mark

Karbusicky, attended Adams’ “Sexual Politics of Meat Slideshow” at the Congress. The slideshow offered a condensed overview of Adams’ feminist theory, replete with numerous striking visual images.

Specifically, Adams (1996) examines the oppression of women and animals as intertwined phenomena, demonstrating a link between violence against animals and violence against women. The notion of the “absent referent” and the “cycle of objectification, fragmentation and consumption” represent two foundational principles of her theory. Adams points to the connection between these concepts during an interview for the Abolitionist-Online: A Voice fo r Animals, in which she describes her book, The

28 See, for example, Audre Lorde’s (1996)Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, originally published in 1984, which eloquently details the texture and effects of racism within and by the feminist movement in the United States. See also, bell hooks’ Ain’t I a woman: Black women andfeminism (1981) andTalking back: Thinking feminist, thinking black (1989). 29 For clarity, the Toronto chapter is referred to as “FAR-Toronto,” while the larger U.S.-based parent organization is simply referred to as “FAR.”

25 Pornography o f Meat (a text that grew out of “The Sexual Politics of Meat” slideshow).

She reflects,

I show that women are animalized and animals are feminized. In that conjunction

of women and animals is the intersecting point of the absent referent. It’s an

interlocking oppression in a patriarchal world in which the objectification,

fragmentation, and consumption of women and animals works together to

intensify both oppressions. (Adams, 2010)

In her chapter “The Rape of Animals, the Butchering of Women” from The

Sexual Politics o f Meat, Adams (1996) explains her interpretation of the absent referent at length, taking meat as her central figure, specifically illuminating the language, visual imagery, material techniques and implements involved in the butchering of animals and the rape of women. According to Adams, animals become absent referents in three primary ways: literally (through meat-eating), in definition (through the concept of

“meat”), and metaphorically (through language that alludes to animals’ treatment but erases the animals themselves). First, for animals to be meat they must stop existing as animals as such (living beings), and become dead bodies. In other words, to become dead bodies, a necessarily prerequisite for meat-eating, live animals are necessarily made absent. Second, animals are absented through definition. Animals’ dead bodies are renamed meat, and other gastronomic language is also culturally employed (e.g., cows’ flesh is called “beef’). Third, animals are made absent referents through metaphors.

When women say they “felt like a piece of meat” in reference to violent or degrading experiences, the treatment of animals is recalled. “Specifically in regard to rape victims and battered women, the death experience of animals acts to illustrate the lived

26 experience of women,” argues Adams (p. 42). Further, she claims, “Cultural images of sexual violence, and actual sexual violence, often rely on our knowledge of how animals are butchered and eaten,” (p. 43). She points to the “bondage equipment of pornography”

(p. 43) including dog collars and cattle prods, as one example of how women’s victimization is imbued with animalized undertones.

As noted above, Adams frames the oppression of women and animals, and

“problems of metaphor and the absent referent” (p. 47) within a theoretical cycle of objectification, fragmentation, and consumption. The literal process by which animals are transformed into dead bodies is mirrored by a conceptual process in which animals become “meat.” Thus, the physical process of butchering is reiterated linguistically through “words of objectification and fragmentation” (p. 47).

Adams’ claim that animals are objectified, fragmented, and consumed is perhaps more readily tenable than the claim that women are objectified, fragmented, and consumed, because animals are industrially bred as commodities, butchered, and eaten.

Prostitution and pornography, often addressed in tandem through Adams’ work, suggest two primary foci in which the cycle of objectification, fragmentation, and consumption culturally manifest. In The Pornography o f Meat (2003) Adams’ interpretation of prostitution is one significant way she bridges abstract discussions about pornography

(which she argues reduces women to body parts, and thus strips women of their subjectivity and individuality) to women’s lived experiences. More importantly, though,

Adams positions prostitution as a kind of zenith of women’s exploitation and oppression

(see also, Hammer, 2010a). For instance, in what appears to be a culminating moment in

The Pornography o f Meat, Adams asks, “Is the hooker the paradigmatic consumable

27 female?” (p. 108).30 Given that the central question of the book is, “[H]ow does one become a piece of meat?” (p. 13), the fact that “the hooker” (like the farmed animal) is portrayed as the representative, consumable female is significant. All stages of the cycle of objectification, fragmentation, and consumption are, apparently, inherent to prostitution. Below I briefly examine some of the contexts in which ideas about prostitution (and, in conjunction, pornography) emerge in Adams’ text, and the content of her related points, in order to illuminate how Adams’ influential arguments about sex work31 are crucial to her theory about the mutually-reinforcing oppression of women and animals.

Although multiple references to prostitution appear as early as the first page of

The Pornography o f Meat, 32 the theme moves more definitely into the foreground at the text’s mid-way point. Specifically, in the chapter “Body Chopping,” Adams addresses prostitution within the context of a discussion about advertisers’ frequent use of images of isolated “sexualized body parts” (p. 75). Her observations about prostitution lend weight to her arguments about the fragmentation of women’s and animals’ bodies. Her textual account of prostitution is situated in the midst of advertising images that feature various parts of women’s bodies. (Ostensibly, none of them portray actual prostitutes.)

In one image, for example, a restaurant advertisement shows a drawing of a headless

30 Adams’ language mirrors that o f Evelina Giobbe, founder o f the advocacy project WHISPER (Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt), who argues, “[T]he prostitute symbolizes the value of women in society. She is paradigmatic of women’s social, sexual, and economic subordination in that her status is the basic unit by which all women's value is measured and to which all women can be reduced” (as cited in MacKinnon, 1993, p. 29). In this way, for both Giobbe and Adams, “the hooker” or “the prostitute” exemplifies women’s degraded status in a patriarchal culture. 31 Adams prefers the term “prostitution.” 32 Prostitution or prostitutes are mentioned five times on the first page o f the text alone. By sentence three, Adams writes, “In France,maison's [sic] d'abattage (“houses of slaughter”) involve the prostitution of young women— six or seven girls each serving 80 to 120 customers a night” (p. 11). Soon after, she states, “A young prostitute is known asfresh meat\ an older prostitute, dead meat. At one point, mutton meant prostitute, as in Shakespeare’s reference in Measure for Measure..." (p. 11).

28 woman in a Victorian-style dress. The restaurant is called “The Silent Woman.”33 The featured images, argues Adams, utilize the same cues that are the regular stock of pornography. To the left of these visual representations runs Adams’ written commentary about advertisers’ reliance on pornographic tropes. “Meat companies, newspaper illustrators, advertisers, and restaurant owners show us how pornography works to construct ‘consumable’ women by using those constructs to promote their product—a sliced, slashed, dead body part,” writes Adams (p. 77). From here, Adams swiftly connects the pornographic cultural iconography of the advertisements to the fragmentation of female prostitutes’ bodies. In the following excerpt, both clients and prostitutes are presented as participants in the fragmentation of women’s bodies. The implication is that these processes of fragmentation facilitate sexual interactions between clients and sex workers; to wit, for Adams, fragmentation facilitates consumption. Her analysis presents a fluid interplay among advertising, pornography, and prostitution:

Again advertisements suggest, pornography portrays: women not only have

‘cunts’ they are cunts that exist for male masturbation. In the book Backstreets, a

prostitute’s vagina is described ‘as a garbage can for hordes of anonymous men’s

ejaculations.’ Prostitutes evolve a survival strategy for differentiating parts of the

self that are available for sexual consumption. ‘The vagina is rented out. But

nothing more. You never get my thoughts. Not my mind, not my soul, not my

mouth. There’s something that’s mine alone and that you’ll never get a hold of.

33 Another image features a hand-drawn image of a miniature woman sliced into sushi-sized pieces, her torso pinched between a pair of chopsticks as if it were a morsel of food. Above, one meat industry advertisement for hog food features a woman’s shoulder, her eyes outside of the photo’s frame. The text promises, “Leaner pork for leaner people.” In another advertisement, the same woman is shown twice. In each shot she barely conceals her breasts: once with a piece o f fabric, in another, with a hat. The image promotes “Shellbuilder,” which is supposed to “cover your requirements for better eggs and better gain” (p. 77).

29 I’m not really there.’ With this division, they can protect parts of themselves

from destruction. Their day-to-day survival requires the long-term rendering of

their humanity; a fragmented being can face the day’s work. (p. 78)

Adams’ chapter “Hookers” also directly takes up the theme of prostitution.

Adams draws connections between the ways animals are literally hooked as bait and used to lure other animals and the ways prostitutes hook clients and women are generally conditioned to hook to attract men. Again referencing prostitution, Adams emphasizes how men conceive of prostitutes as objects, and how prostitutes participate in their own disembodiment, and as we are likely meant to infer, their own objectification.

Pornography and prostitution are again analyzed in concert:

When men go to prostitutes they often want to try out “ideas” they have gotten

from pornography.

Prostituted women34 have to dissemble involvement and interest in men.

Their “luring” is within the framework that men need to believe that they are

being lured, that the object wants to be an object. Kathy Barry explains that sex

in prostitution involves “Distancing oneself in order to become disembodied and

then acting as if the experience is embodied.” The result is that “Men buy not a

self but a body that performs as a self.” (p. 100)

In the chapter immediately following “Hookers,” Adams points to the extent to which pornography and prostitution have defined an idealized female image. The signifiers of these industries are presented as ubiquitous aspects of contemporary culture,

34 It is perhaps telling that Adams uses the phrase “prostituted women,” as opposed to “women who are prostitutes” or “women who are sex workers.” In Adams’ construction, women are prostituted, implying an external imposition and coercion, a process to which they are subjected. From this perspective, prostitution is figured as something that is necessarily imposed.

30 one that reflects and promotes the sexual objectification of women. Women are so utterly immersed in these representations and their associated “cues of violability” (p.

106) that recognition of their presence becomes difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain.

A famous quote by radical-cultural feminist Catharine MacKinnon sets up the chapter:

“All women live in sexual objectification the way fish live in water” (as cited in Adams, p. 103). Adams includes pictures of women and one of an effeminate, sexualized pig.

The subjects in the images appear in almost identical poses.

The Venus ofUrbino, placed near the beginning of Adams’ “Hookers” chapter, historicizes the contemporary poses and gestures toward a founding iconographic moment. Titian’s painting portrays a nude woman reclined on a bed, her hand curved over her genitals. Her head tilted, she gazes side-long toward the viewer. A sleeping dog appears to doze behind her. On this point, Adams notes, “Recall that one aspect of pornography is to install a nonhuman animal in the scene to suggest the animalizing of the woman” (p. 104). By the mid twentieth century, it was generally assumed that the model was a prostitute (Adams, 2003).

Yet it is not just women in advertisements who will later come to adopt Venus’ prostitute-invoking pose. According to Adams, animals also swim in sexual objectification when they are used as substitutes for women. She highlights two examples, one of a pig and the other of a turkey. First we witness a picture of “Ursula

Hamdress,” the sexualized self-pleasuring “pin-up” pig of the magazine Playboar.

Adams contends that the position of the pig’s body imitates the Venus pose. However, from her perspective, there are additional cues that suggest a pornographic shot, such as the luxury of the photo, which, speculates Adams, suggests a Victorian brothel.

31 Sandwiched between the animal images, Adams includes a visual analysis of a Versace advertisement. The image from the 1980s exemplifies the contemporary moment wherein “prostitute style” became “high fashion”: “Versace’s ‘high prostitute style’ of clothing is a reminder that women are socialized to act and dress like whores” (p. 106).

The posture of the woman in the advertisement, as with the other featured images,

strongly resonates with Venus’ posture. Adams contends that the accented body parts of the woman in the Versace advertisement also suggest fragmented body parts, in which

each part represents the “whole, available, ‘fuckable’ woman” (p. 107). Thus, these

common Western representations typified in the Versace advertisement recall both

prostitution and pornography: “I proposed that nonhuman animals become absent

referents through the institution of meat eating. Through social to sexual objectification,

women become absent referents as well” (p. 107). 35

We are then told to consider an illustration of a large-breasted, high-heeled,

anthropomorphized turkey with a come-hither look. The image is part of the “Turkey

Hooker” product package that contains a metal hook—the turkey illustration obviously

serves as an intentional pun—that is designed to lift turkey carcasses from “pan to

platter.” Adams informs us that these images, too, possess the pornographic cues of

violability (as “cues of inequality” [p. 106]), which indicate availability. Adams queries,

“What do the pose of the turkey and the pose in the Versace ad share in common? Both

are the pose of a hooker...a purchasable commodity....Is the hooker the paradigmatic

consumable female?” (p. 108).

35 The absent referent does not necessarily require the invocation o f an Other, such as an animal, to function. In the example of the Versace advertisement, all that is required is the combination of a woman plus the “cues o f violability” to result in the sexualization of dominance and inequality, and the obliteration o f the woman’s subject status (p. 107).

32 After establishing a singular meaning of pornography and its interrelationship to prostitution, and demonstrating how women and animals are symbolically and materially subordinated through their logic, Adams turns her attention specifically to

“anthropomography” (a self-coined term), which means “the depiction of nonhuman animals as whores,” in a chapter by the same name (p. 110). In a later chapter that describes the feminization of nonhuman animals, and the particular plight of female nonhuman farmed animals, Adams includes an advertisement for “Redneck Rampage” that features a slightly stylized but nonetheless real pig who wears a pair of panties and whose gaze meets the viewer. Adams remarks, “When advertisers portray the living animal, they draw on the pornographic position of women as whores” (p. 157).

In sum, Adams hinges much of her feminist theory on particular constructions of women and animals as victims. Indeed, the analogy between the exploitation of animals in the meat industry and women’s exploitation within patriarchy (exemplified by women’s social construction as “hookers” and “whores” inside and outside of sex work) only holds if both groups are understood as similarly regarded and treated. It was the latter claim that Ross, herself a prostitute, vehemently refuted. Five years after Adams’ presentation of “The Sexual Politics of Meat Slideshow,” on June 17,2005, Ross would deliver the keynote address, entitled “Carol Adams & Feminists for Animal Rights: A

Hodgepodge of Bad Theory, Exclusion, Prejudice and Transphobia Practiced Through an

Eco-feminist Lens,” for the second annual Ontario Institute for Studies in Education conference on “Queer Communities and Controversies.” The speech details her interactions with Adams and her subsequent analysis of the evening’s occurrences.36

36 On October 13, 2007, the administrator for the website VegPorn.com posted a lengthy excerpt o f the keynote address, with Ross’ permission. “Furrygirl,” the site founder and administrator, writes, “I’m

33 Ross’ (2007) speech critiques Adams’ failure to contexualize the slideshow images she uses to illustrate “the animalizing of women in contemporary cultural images and the sexual izing of animals used for food” (Adams, 2012); a disengagement with decades of “critical and sophisticated feminist, lesbian and queer thinking on issues such as pornography and sexual representation” (Ross, 2007); the exclusion of sex workers’ perspectives from her analysis; Adams’ transphobic treatment of Ross; and finally,

FAR’s refusal to endorse an event that would feature sex workers’ analyses of their labour and animal issues.

Before continuing, I want to acknowledge that most of the information I have regarding Ross’ and Adams’ interactions is told from Ross’ perspective. As mentioned, the content of their exchange is described in Ross’ conference presentation “Queer

Communities and Controversies,” while no similar document about the incident exists by

Adams. However, as discussed in the first portion of this chapter, Adams has written extensively about pornography and prostitution. I have provided a detailed overview above of Adams’ analyses in order to map her arguments, particularly her points about the overlapping oppression of women and animals, before providing critique. To a large degree, it is Adams’ analyses of these industries, and their impact on women, that Ross challenges.

posting this piece written by Mirha-Soleil Ross that doesn’t seem to exist online. I’ve tried to go through and retain all the italics and underlining, so hopefully I’ve got this right. I’ve been fighting with some anti- pom activists on another vegan board, and posted this, so I figure I ought to post it here, as well, since it’s a great piece.” According to the “About” (2012) section of the site, “VegPorn.com is the first and only adult site made by and for plant-eaters! This is a very unique site in that the theme isn’t based on size, age, weight, color, etc, it’s based on lifestyle/ethical choices.”

34 Adams’ views on transsexuality, the other major focus of Ross’ critiques, are less well documented. Currently, Ida Hammer’s “The Vegan Ideal” blog serves as the most extensive resource for commentary on transsexuality, transphobia, and Carol Adams.37

Adams has largely not elaborated on her interaction with Ross. However, in her essay,

“Thinking about Anthropomorphism and Social Justice Movements,” posted to her blog on March 11, 2011, Adams states, “After showing The Sexual Politics of Meat Slide

Show (probably version 3.2; I laughingly say I am now on version 7.1), a trans activist and I had an interesting conversation.” Adams’ (2011) discussion of their conversation is situated within an analysis of how anthropomorphism (“attribution of human form or character”)—which typically names the attribution of human qualities to nonhuman animals—is also used in reference to humans. She argues, “The traditional definition of anthropomorphism ignores that we use anthropomorphism toward human beings— usually non-dominant individuals.” Later Adams notes that Ross (presumably the person whom Adams is referencing in the “interesting conversation”) balked at Adams’ analysis of dualisms, suggesting that she was not situated (exclusively?) within either category of the “A”/“not A” of Western dualist thought:

In this earlier version of the Sexual Politics of Meat Slide Show, I referred to the

dominant side of the dualism (i.e., human, male, straight, culture, etc.) as the “A”

side. And the nondominant side (i.e., animal, female, people of color, nature, etc.),

as “Not A.” The activist said, “But you see I was not ‘A ’ (1 wasn’t on the

dominant side) and I was not ‘Not A.’” It’s an important point that shows how

37 See n. 46 for further references.

35 anthropomorphism forces and pummels people into restrictive categories that are

false.

It’s one reason activists for justice benefit from a transpecies framework

that decenters the human form. And it requires making connections—racism,

sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, and speciesism are

interconnected, intertwined. My goal is not merely to valorize the not-A side of

the dualism (that is, the animal, female, people of color, nature, etc. side). Such a

reversal adheres to a dualist worldview that is antiquated and harmful.

A five-year old report on a conversation that occurred more than 10 years

ago that accuses me of transphobia has its own life on the Internet. I have read it; 1

remember it differently, and there was no intended harm or disrespect.

1 think we do not even know how deeply anthropomorphism shapes our

views of others, how it imbricates what we believe about what we know, and how

we know it. How many experiments on the other animals arise from deeply held

beliefs about socially-constructed notions of sexual orientation and sexual

identity?

While much could be said about this excerpt, and Adams’ essay more generally, I want to briefly highlight Adams’ framing of her discussion with Ross. There is a discrepancy between Adams’ positioning of Ross as a “trans activist,” and Ross’ claim she did not identify as transsexual until she was later outed to the group that had been speaking with

Adams. Ross (2007) recounts, “I calmly said that I resented being forced to divulge very private information about my medical history to people I didn’t know at all.” In fact,

Ross’ critiques of The Sexual Politics of Meat Slide Show were directed at Adams’

36 erasure of sex workers’ voices. Ross identified herself to Adams as a prostitute; she did not feel her transsexuality had bearing on this particular issue when she approached

Adams.

1 spend the remainder of this chapter discussing Ross’ account and contextualizing Adams’ responses (as described by Ross) within larger radical (and other) feminist discourses. I theorize this because, as will become clear, the interaction between Ross and Adams was catalytic both in my subsequent development as a host and producer of the Animal Voices radio show and in my personal development as a feminist scholar engaged in animal rights theory and politics. It attuned me more greatly, and in new ways, to the exclusion of voices within social justice movements, including animals’ voices. Ross and Adams’ encounters, as was recounted to me by Ross, helped inspire an alternative theoretical trajectory than Adams’, despite my ongoing appreciation for certain groundbreaking aspects of her work. 38

Ross was both frustrated and upset not only by how Adams treated her, but also by what she understood as larger systemic biases in schools of feminist theory that exclude certain voices, namely those of sex workers and transsexuals. Ross is adamant that Adams’ views are symptomatic of larger ideological biases within ecofeminist and certain other streams of feminist theory. Specifically, Ross argues that after Adams’

“Sexual Politics of Meat” slideshow presentation in 2000, Ross approached Adams to ask for clarification about her position on pornography. Was Adams opposed to all

38 For example, I continue to find Adams’ notion of the “absent referent” to be extremely useful in naming the erasures o f animal subjectivities within certain oppressive anthropocentric and speciesist discourses. Her observation that “farm animals” are feminized and sexualized, and women and animalized, for example, provides insight into mutually reinforcing forms of objectification and commodification. Adams was also the first theorist I encountered who included critiques o f animal exploitation in her intersectional politics. Adams and other early ecofeminist scholars were among the first to argue that animal oppression is a feminist issue.

37 pornography, or just heterosexual pornography that depicts non-consenting women involved in degrading and violent acts? How did she feel about pornography made by gays and lesbians, people with disabilities, transgender and transsexual people, created for educational purposes, such as HIV/AIDS prevention and community empowerment, for example? According to Ross (2007), Adams replied that all sexual images are harmful to women because of the social, cultural, and patriarchal contexts in which the images exist.

Ross then told Adams that she was a long-time prostitute whose history had included work for a hardcore pornography Internet site. She expressed anger at Adams’ interpretation of the slideshow images, namely, that Adams’ analysis did not attempt to include the voices of women featured in the images. 39 As Ross recounts,

I told her that I had found her use of naked women in sexually suggestive and

explicit situations offensive. I was shocked by the way she deconstructed,

analyzed and interpreted them to profit her theories and political agenda. I was

particularly enraged because I knew she had never attempted—probably never

even had thought of it!—to bring in the voices of the women who appeared in the

images of her slide show....If Adams does not include the voice of the woman

whose ass she shamelessly puts on display for her audience to use as a subject of

feminist inquiry, if Adams does not include that woman speaking on how she

experienced the production of the image, how she now sees it, then it is Adams

who is dehumanizing her, it is Adams who is turning that woman into an

inanimate, lifeless object. (2007)

39 Ross contrasts Adams’ lack o f engagement with the Internet site clients w ho had frequently taken an interest in her as a whole person.

38 Ross took particular issue with Adams’ invitation to her audience to critique “and even crack ‘feminist’ jokes” about an image of a woman’s buttocks. She claimed that Adams’ commentary (and that of her audience) participated in the very cycle of objectification, fragmentation, and consumption that the slideshow attempts to elucidate.

Ross’ proposition that Adams’ theories about prostitution and pornography exclude women’s voices and participate in the very cycle she opposes suggests a serious challenge to some of the foundational assumptions of Adams’ work. In other words, the meaning and consequences of pornography and prostitution are major points in her theory. A great deal is wagered on the interpretation of these industries as inherently oppressive and victimizing for women and animals. For Adams, and other major anti­ pornography advocates, such meanings are fixed.40

Pornography and Prostitution: The Terms o f the (Feminist) Debate

For Ross, it is not simply that the problems associated with Adams’ research are unfortunate benign oversights. Instead, from Ross’ perspective, Adams’ work and the work of other anti-prostitution and anti-pornography feminists in general deeply affects the lives of sex workers. She argues that their theories contribute to a dangerous cultural environment in which violence against prostitutes is understood as morally justifiable.

Quoting a conversation between herself and Nadja Lubiw-Hazard, a FAR-Toronto member, Ross (2007) states trenchantly,

40 Comparatively, while anti-pornography forerunners Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon used language such as the “sexually explicit subordination of women” in their legislative proposals, groups such as the Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce (FACT) argued that these types o f phrases had no context-free, fixed meaning (Tong, 1998).

39 It’s the feminists who are anti-prostitution who objectify us and reduce us to tits

and asses by perceiving us that way and by propagating the myth that in

prostitution this is all we are as prostitutes: vulgar orifices, and that this is all

we’re really worth...I say, ‘You think that our clients or men who watch pom are

treating us like animals and pieces of meat?’ Then if that’s what you think, you

are the ones who can’t see further than tits and asses and fuck holes. You are the

ones [animalizing us and] treating us like animals and pieces of meat and your

discourses, your campaigns, your theorizing are hurting us and helping create a

context where prostitution is seen as a social evil to be eliminated, a context that

makes it possible for people to kill prostitutes and think they are doing a service to

the community.

Drawing on her experiences working for a pornographic Internet site, Ross (2007) alternatively contends that the pornography consumers she encountered there are “rather extremely interested in the real flesh and blood human beings who are featured in the images they look at.” She notes the hundreds o f emails she and others received from viewers while employed by the site: “They interacted with me and the other models and very much knew we were real people. They wanted to know more about us, wanted to find out what we liked, disliked, what we did besides pom in our lives.” Ross contends that this type of observation, or any observation by women engaged in sex work, is missing from Adams’ analysis. Indeed, the lack of consultation between Adams and women sex workers, and the subsequent exclusion of their viewpoints within her theories, are the backbone of Ross’ critique. In particular, the commentary on certain underlying hidden meanings or “cues” within Adams’ featured set of images, and by association, the representation of women within the images, is executed without input from the women who were involved in the image production.

How Ross expresses her critique of Adams is significant, especially because

Ross’ terms are almost identical to the feminist discourse she attempts to confront.

Specifically, she repeatedly returns to voice, speech, and related tropes to articulate her points. For example, Ross argues, “[Adams] never attempted to speak or give voice to the women whose bodies she claims are ‘objectified, fragmented, and consumed’ through sexually suggestive or explicit imagery;” “Our conversation had focused exclusively on her slide show and on her exclusion of the voices of sex working women in the theoretical work....”

It is important to note here that the pornography debate has frequently been organized through voice-related discourses. West (2004) observes that one of the three major ways liberals have defended a right to pornography is on the grounds of freedom of

speech or expression, in which freedom has most typically been understood as negative freedom (i.e., non interference by others).41 Following John Stuart Mill,42 liberals typically stipulate that the only grounds for state restriction of individual freedom (in this case, the censorship of pornography) would be if such measures would prevent harm to others. “Harm” is typically defined as either physical violence, or the violation of certain rights or interests of others (West, 2004). Consequently, in order to address the liberal arguments against censorship, the onus has rested on the opposition to prove that

41 The two other main grounds used in liberals’ defense o f a right to pornography include a right to privacy, and the assertion that pornography is relatively harmless (West, 2004). However, some liberals are willing to support censorship if the production and consumption of pornography, especially violent and degrading forms, may cause sufficiently significant harm to others. 42 “The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way,” argues Mill, “so long as we do not attempt to deprive others o f theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it” (cited in West, 2004).

41 pornography causes significant harm to others, therefore justifying state interference with

an individual’s right to freedom of speech. As West argues, liberals particularly value the

right to freedom of speech, which tends to have priority when rights conflict.

Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon are two of the most well known

feminists to challenge (traditional) liberals’ appeals to “freedom of speech” in the

pornography debates. These authors have written influentially about how women are

silenced by pornography (e.g., Dworkin, 1979/1993; MacKinnon, 1993). Famously,

MacKinnon argues that pornography, which is treated as speech by the courts and is

protected as speech under the First Amendment, conflicts with women’s freedom of

speech and deprives them of their right to free speech (McGowan, 2005). Thus,

MacKinnon draws upon the First Amendment to support her anti-pornography position

(i.e., pornography itself constitutes harm) by arguing that the legislation actually

establishes the grounds to prohibit pornography rather than to protect it. MacKinnon’s

argument attempts to show that pornography does not merely express ideas about

women, but pornography “is speech that says things and—given its authority—does things” (Langton & West, 1999, p. 16).

A major aspect of MacKinnon’s argument is the claim that pornography silences women. 43 MacKinnon thus inverts the traditional liberal position (censorship of pornography constitutes a violation of pomographers’ civil right to freedom of speech) by arguing that pornography violates women’s right to freedom of speech. By framing the

43 First, according to MacKinnnon, pornography silences women by forming a hostile social environment in which women feel reluctant to speak out against abuse. Second, pornography creates a social context in which women’s opinions, when expressed, are often trivialized or disregarded, especially when their opinions do not resonate with the portrayal o f women in pornography. Last, pornography may help establish situations wherein women’s speech is not understood, for example, when a woman says “no” to sex, her intentions can and may be misconstrued to mean the opposite (West, 2004).

42 debate this way, “[w]e now seem to have a conflict of rights: not simply between pomographers’ right to freedom of speech and women’s right to equal civil status,” concludes West (2004), “but within the right to freedom of expression itself—between pomographers’ right to freedom of speech and women’s right to freedom of speech.”

MacKinnon similarly conceives of prostitution as a violation of women’s civil rights, and also as an institution that silences women. In her article “Prostitution and Civil Rights,”

MacKinnon (1993) declares,

Prostitution as an institution silences women by brutalizing and terrorizing them

so horribly that no words can form, by punishing them for telling the truth about

their condition, by degrading whatever they do manage to say about virtually

anything because of who they are seen as being. The pornography that is made of

their violation—pimps’ speech—is protected expression.

Silence also figures strongly into Dworkin’s arguments about women and pornography. Again, the traditional liberal position that pornography would violate

(pomographers’) right to freedom of speech is challenged. Silence, rendered as the opposite of speech, is invoked by Dworkin to name women’s oppression. Consider, for example, Dworkin’s (1979/1993) essay “For Men, Freedom of Speech; For Women,

Silence Please,” which draws on the discourse of silence not only to show the impacts of pornography on women, but also to show how women have been historically treated by men, and how they have experienced that treatment:

[Men] argue that feminists really must shut up about pornography—what it is,

what it means, what to do about it—to protect what they call “freedom of speech.”

Our “strident” and “overwrought” antagonism to pictures that show women

43 sexually violated and humiliated, bound, gagged, sliced up, tortured in a

multiplicity of ways, “offends” the First Amendment. The enforced silence of

women through the centuries has not.

Returning to the arguments against Adams, we can reasonably assume that Ross’ use of voice, speech, and silence tropes represents a strategic disruption of certain feminist and anti-pornography (and anti-prostitution) discourses, such as those of

Dworkin and MacKinnon.44 Ross turns feminist anti-pornography discourse against

Adams to argue that such rhetoric silences women and excludes their voices.

We can also understand Ross’ rhetoric as a response to certain feminist discourses within the animal rights movement. Rather than an anomaly, Ross (2003) suggests that

Adams’ refusal to incorporate the sex workers’ perspectives on pornography and prostitution is typical of other writers within the “animal rights community”:

Unfortunately the animal rights community has been one social justice movement

where the voices of prostitutes have been painfully absent and this in the presence

of very disparaging and hurtful attitudes and propaganda. Writers like Carol

Adams, Gary Francione, and Jim Mason all regurgitate old seventies misinformed

radical feminist ramblings around prostitution and pornography. They make

offensive and trivializing comparison[s] between consenting adult women

working in the sex trade and non-consenting animals murdered by the meat

industry. And they do so without ever speaking to us.

44 See also, for example, Griffin’s ( \9S2) Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge Against Nature.

44 Ross intervenes in feminist theory’s “voice-speech-speaking”45 practice and concept, which according to Luke (1994), is always contrasted against silence, wherein silence signals “the historical silencing of women’s voices and experiences by patriarchal discourses on the one hand, and the re-presentation of women as other, by male-authored discourse” (Luke, 1994, p. 211). Yet Ross employs the notion of silence differently, by directing her critique, along with authors such as Wendy McElroy (1995) and Lugones and Spelman (1983), to the ways in which feminist discourse silences certain women. In other words, critiques of the historical silencing of women by “patriarchal discourses and the representation of women as other by male-authored discourse” are supplanted by critiques of feminist discourse itself.

For Ross, resistance is understood as enacted through speech. In her email to

FAR-Toronto, Ross proposed a panel event, or what she described as an “animal rights- feminist-sex worker ‘speak out!”’ She explained her motivations and intentions:

[Sex workers] would speak about the problems with anti-pom and anti-prostitute

propaganda, speak about the tragic consequences it is having on the lives of

women working in the sex industry, and about the patronizing, silencing, and

harassment we face as sex workers from some sectors of the feminist movement.

Her logic implies that by speaking out against what is perceived as a misrepresentation, sex workers can represent themselves and thus present a self-defined interpretation of

45 Although Luke never explicitly defines her phrase, “voice-speech-speaking,” in her scholarship on the politics of women in the Academy (where she employs the expression), Luke implicitly blends together notions of voice, speech, and language. Specifically, after she first uses the term voice, she immediately qualifies it within parentheses: “women’s speech and language” (1994, p. 211). Nonetheless, in a different work she states succinctly, “[v]oice has always been equated with a politically positive and empowering move: a statement of assertion of one’s position on an issue, or the ‘naming’ of one’s identity” (1992, p. 2). Consequently, we can deduce that her “voice-speech-speaking” phrase relates to politics involving women’s claims to their positions and identities, and the issues involved in making such claims.

45 their experiences of pornography and prostitution. Wendy McElroy (1995) echoes Ross’

sentiments in XXX: A Woman’s Right to Pornography. She writes,

Anti-pornography feminists try to silence any real discussion of pornography.

Catharine MacKinnon, for example, flatly refuses to debate women on this

subject. Feminists who disagree are treated as traitors. Their bottom line is:

Individual women must not be allowed to question the sexual interests of women

as a class, (vii)

McElroy takes up this point again in “Interviews with Women in Pom” (1995, pp. 146-

191):

With all the voices shouting about pornography—pro and con—the ones least

heeded are those of women who work in the industry. Usually, when you want to

know about something, you ask people who had first hand experience of it. With

pornography, most of the theories come from people who are “outsiders,” with no

direct knowledge of the industry, (p. 146)

According to McElroy (1995), her interviews with women “provide something anti-pom

feminists attempt to suppress: a forum for women in pornography” (p. x).

In response to Ross’ request that FAR-Toronto host a “Speak Out,” our collective

wrote to FAR about our desire to host an event under the banner of the organization,

which would create a forum in which women sex workers with “an animal rights

consciousness” could share their thoughts on their labour, animal issues, and their

representation by feminists and society at large. FAR flatly refused to endorse the event.

In an email to our Toronto chapter, FAR’s anonymous “Core Group” stressed that the organization needed to

46 ensure that members do not campaign or publish materials that support the trade

in women’s bodies any more than we would support campaigns or publish

materials supporting the trade in the bodies of other animals...In summary, to

support or condone pornography or prostitution is antithetical to the most basic

purpose and mission of FAR...Convening a panel of sex workers who are

vegetarians or who have some strong animal rights consciousness, discussing

harassment in the industry, the decriminalization of prostitution, etc. could not be

done under the auspices of FAR. (as cited in Ross, 2007)

Disappointed and angry, Nadja Lubiw-Hazard, Nicola Brown, and I penned our response to FAR. Our FAR-Toronto group wanted to be part o f a feminist practice that allows dissent, self-representation, and self-definition, not as a way of discovering the Truth of

women’s experiences, but as a means of cultivating polyvocality within feminist discourse. We replied,

Regardless of our stance on pornography/prostitution, the panel is not about

unequivocally supporting either industry. Nor is the panel about debating these

issues—ones that are explosive and that divide many feminists. This panel is

about coalition-building—about making links between the many faces oppression

shows in our society. This panel is about listening to the voices of women; it is

also about being put on by self-identified feminist women who believe in

feminists for animal rights—that \s, feminists fo r animal rights. These women are

part of our political community and we support their activism, and most certainly,

as women who have been particularly stigmatized and silenced, we support their

right to speak to their own experience. We need and want to hear these voices.

47 (As cited in Ross, 2005)

Clearly, our own dissent to FAR was also articulated through voice tropes, that—like the claims of Adams and Ross—suggest a particular feminist cultural currency (which also resonates within larger political frames, as detailed in Chapter Two) in which the assertion of resistance, experience, and marginalized subjectivity is repeatedly attached to the voice-speech-speaking concept and practice. FAR-Toronto sought to facilitate the inclusion of certain marginalized voices within feminist and animal rights debates about representation. The oppression of women involved in prostitution and pornography was at the centre of the debate, which was depicted by Carol Adams and certain other feminists for animal rights as parallel and co-constitutive of the oppression of animals within the meat industry. The erasure (or silencing) of subjectivity was at stake in all accounts: how one is objectified in the meat/dairy industries and in the sex work industries, or how one is objectified by certain feminists who oppose these industries.

Who and how women are presented as victims was of central concern to everyone involved in the discussion. In contrast, the representation of animals’ subjectivity rendered as pure victimhood was not explicitly raised by anyone in the context of the debate, the implications of which I discuss later.

Transsexual Feminists for Animal Rights?

FAR-Toronto bristled against the larger organization not only because of their refusal to support our proposed panel, but also because of their unwillingness to challenge the transphobic sentiments held and publicly disseminated by prominent members of FAR, including Mary Daly (e.g., 1990) and Robin Morgan (e.g., 1978), who sat on the

48 organization’s Advisory Board. We were concerned about FAR-Toronto’s affiliation with a larger organization that appeared unconcerned with the well-documented transphobic theory of some of its key members, which had been brought to our attention by Ross. Rather than a seemingly small side issue, particular renderings of transsexuality are integral to some radical-cultural feminist theory, a body of work upon which (as noted earlier) Adams draws. In this light, Carol Adams’ personal treatment of Ross as a transsexual, as Ross describes below, is not simply an unfortunate personal bias, but one that resonates within certain broader feminist discourses that refuse to acknowledge transsexual and transgendered women as women (e.g, Raymond, 1979).46

According to Ross, after she and Karbusicky departed from their original conversation, a person standing with Adams disclosed that Ross is transsexual.

Consequently, later in the evening Adams beckoned Ross back to her and her surrounding group. Once her transsexual status was confirmed, Ross states that Adams said (perhaps alluding to MacKinnon’s fish analogy) that they had not “[swum] in the same water” (2007): Ross argues that Adams disregarded her previous arguments about pornography and sex work because, from Adams’ point of view, she was no longer considered a legitimate representative of women’s experiences. Ross recalls that before

Adams was informed of her transsexuality, Adams seemed open to Ross’ critiques. Ross writes,

46 See also Ida Hammer’s “The Vegan Ideal” blog, which provides anti-cissexist analyses of the encounter between Ross and Adams in posts entitled, “Transphobia and Carol Adams” (2008a) and “The Oppression of Universal Assumptions: Rhetoric vs. Reality” (201 la). She also provides sustained critiques o f Adams’ theory in her posts, “Feminism Beyond Transphobia” (2008c), “The Sexual Politics o f Carol J. Adams” (2010b) and “Carol Adams and the Annihilation o f Trans People” (201 lb). Additionally, Hammer examines cissexism and transphobia as manifest within Feminists for Animal Rights and ecofeminism more generally in other posts, including “Transphobia and Animal Rights” (2008b), and in herBitch Magazine interview, “The Biotic Woman: Talking About Transphobia and Ecofeminism with Ida Hammer” (2010a).

49 [Adams] had acted as though she understood my position—that as a prostitute, I

had more knowledge and expertise on the issues than her and that she was in no

position to invalidate my experiences. She remained respectful in the midst of a

very tense conversation.

In Ross’ account, Adams claimed that Ross’ transsexuality should have been disclosed at

the onset of their conversation, as Adams believed it bore heavily on Ross’ analysis of

women’s experiences of prostitution and pornography. Ross states that Adams

interpreted her lack of disclosure as an intentional act of concealment. Yet Ross recounts

that their discussion “had focused exclusively on her slide show and on her exclusion of

the voices of sex working women in her theoretical work—it had absolutely nothing to do

with [her] transsexual history.”

Ross claims that Adams accounted for their disparate opinions based on the fact

that Ross had not been raised as a girl within a patriarchal culture. As she reflects,

“[Adams] explained that I didn’t have a problem with men buying my body and abusing

me sexually through prostitution because I had not grown up as a girl in a patriarchal

culture.” On the surface, in Ross’ telling, Adams appeared to couch her critique of Ross

within the realm of social construction rather than biological essentialism: Ross might be

a woman now (apparently framed by Adams as her “choice” to transition from male to

female), but she has not always been, and it is the experience of being a girl within a

patriarchal society that ultimately gives one the right to speak as a woman. Considered

more deeply, in this account, Adams’ reductive and ultimately essentialist view of

women is apparent. Her cissexist47 argument against Ross presupposes that only by

47 According to trans activist, spoken word performer, writer and biologist Julia Serano, cissexism relies on the “assumption that the trans person’s gender is not authentic because it does not correlate with the sex

50 being genetically female can one have those necessary experiences that enable one to represent women.48

Such an appeal to experience is similar to arguments made by Vancouver Rape

Relief (VRR), which sought to exclude Kimberly Nixon, a male-to-female transsexual, from participating in the organization’s counseling program. Adams’ and the VRR’s arguments about violence work from similar assumptions. Specifically, the VRR argues that the life experience of being raised as a girl “functions as the mitigating difference between women who are transsexual and those that are not” (Namaste & Sitara, 2004, p.

362).

The VRR claimed that Nixon would be unable to counsel women affected by domestic violence or sexual assault because she did not share the life-long experience of being a woman. It is that particular experience, as if distillable from other experiences, that the VRR suggests establishes both the trust and rapport necessary in an effective counseling relationship within the context of the organization. Centrally, as Namaste and

Sitara note (2004), the spectre of “experience” is only raised by the VRR when transsexual women want to volunteer. Namaste and Sitara illuminate the exceptionalism that surrounds VRR discourse regarding transsexuality:

There is no similar appeal to common experience of volunteers with other kinds

of differences. VRR does not require, for instance, that volunteers have lived for they were assigned at birth. In making this assumption, cissexists attempt to create an artificial hierarchy. By insisting that the trans person’s gender is ‘fake,’ they attempt to validate their own gender as ‘real’ or ‘natural’” (2007, p. 13). 48 Adams does not acknowledge that “women bom women” have also waged serious attacks against feminist theories (and those purported by various conservative communities) that claim that pornography and prostitution are inevitably degrading or oppressive to women. Many have argued that both pornography and sex work can be empowering for women (e.g., Bell, 1995; McElroy, 1995; Sprinkle, 1998). Adams does not address these counterpoints within her scholarly or activist work, likely because her theories are crucially hinged on the presupposition that these practices are necessarily harmful to women.

51 their entire lives as prostitutes in order to effectively counsel clients who are

prostitutes. Nor does VRR demand that volunteers have been physically disabled

since birth as a precondition to counseling women who are physically disabled

and who have been sexually assaulted. Presumably, it is only the difference of

transsexuality that seems to matter to VRR. (p. 363)

The VRR’s understanding of “womanhood,” argue Namaste and Sitara, is related to a perceived connection among all women, “defined as the common experience of living under sexism” (p. 364). In other words, solidarity among women is perceived by the

VRR as related to the experience of being victims of male violence. 49 “Sisterhood” (an implicit appeal made by the VRR, according to Namaste and Sitara) is made possible through both a common experience of living under sexism, and in tandem, a shared resistance to male violence. Thus, within VRR’s framework, violence must be conceptualized as organized around and through gender. Such a belief in a homogenous, universal experience downplays the complicated ways women experience violence, which is clearly influenced by other dynamics, such as race and class (Namaste & Sitara,

2004). From this perspective, too, transsexual women are understood as, a priori, other than women.

Transition

When we wrote to inform them of our intentions to organize a sex worker panel under the banner of FAR, we also asked for clarification regarding the organization’s position on

49 In turn, suggest Namaste and Sitara, one of the effects of this argument is that it makes it more difficult for feminists to respond sufficiently to women’s violence against other women, or women’s violence against their own children: “[I|f some women can abuse other women, this means that women as victims of violence and as service providers or as volunteer counsellors do not, a priori, share any essential connection, regardless of the fact that they may have been raised since birth as girls and women” (p. 364).

52 transsexual issues. Given that FAR identifies50 as a “non-profit national educational organization dedicated to ending all forms of abuse against women, animals and the earth” (“Feminists for Animal Rights”), our continued affiliation with FAR rested on the organization expressing a clear commitment against transphobia. FAR’s anonymous

“Core Group” replied that there was no consensus regarding support (or lack thereof) for transsexual and transgender rights, unlike their “uncompromising position about the

issues of pornography and the sex trade.” We replied to their ambiguity with the following:

We are saddened and confused when groups do not take a stand against

transphobia (would groups not take a stand against any other oppression, such as

racism or homophobia?), and particularly so in this case when we see special

connections between feminist and queer and trans- movements. Besides members

inherently overlapping, the movements have much in common politically and we

can learn from and enrich each other’s struggles. (As cited in Ross, 2007)

Given the Core Group’s refusal to associate the FAR name with the sex worker panel, in

addition to their weak position on transsexual and transgender issues, we ended the

Toronto chapter.

At the same time, Ross was hosting the weekly radio program “Animal Voices”

and wanted to pursue other projects. She felt that the FAR-Toronto members would be

good candidates to take over the show, perhaps because of Ross’ own efforts to work

across and in between various movements, as strongly evidenced through the many

50 The organization is now defunct.

53 Animal Voices shows that refused a single-issued animal politics.51 Lubiw-Hazard and I accepted her offer to host and produce the show.

Disqualified Knowledges

There are a few observations I would like to make before proceeding with the next chapter, which offers a detailed analysis of contemporary political voice discourses. As mentioned earlier, in many ways, the concerns raised by Ross provide the groundwork for the entire dissertation. At the centre of Adams and Ross’ dispute are questions encompassed by what I call the “dynamics of political voice,” such as subjectivity, experience, and resistance. More specifically, the question of whose experiences are considered legitimate, and who has a right to speak for whom, structures the previous narrative.

While Ross and Adams present seemingly oppositional views, at least as represented by Ross, they share the common assumption that one’s social location and

(by association) the experiences generated through location provide the epistemic basis to speak on behalf of the group to which one belongs. Their mutual assumption resonates with one of the most significant feminist political debates of the 1990s. 52 In her astute article, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” Linda Alcoff (1991) notes the growing sense within social theory, and feminist theory in particular, that a speaker’s social location (or social identity) is considered “epistemologically salient” (p. 7). Additionally,

51 For example, see Ross’ interviews with AIDS and animal rights activist Steven Simmons (1996) and self-described “Indigenous traditionalist” Rod Coronado (2000). ‘ Although Alcoff (1991) discusses the assumptions associated with “the problem of speaking for others,” particularly in relation to the debates of the late 1980s and early 1990s, she also notes that women’s studies and African-American studies were founded on the very idea that advocacy and study o f oppressed peoples ought to be conducted by those who are oppressed.

54 she obverses an increasing belief that it is “discursively dangerous” (p. 7) for people who occupy certain privileged social locations to speak on behalf of those who inhabit less privileged ones. In such instances, speaking on behalf of others can actually reinforce oppression rather than disrupt it.

Although I will address debates about representation and “speaking for others” more thoroughly later, for now it is adequate to underscore that the two assumptions outlined by Alcoff inform the debate between Ross and Adams. According to Ross’ rendering of Adams’ perspective, Adams believes that being a woman, specifically being

raised as a girl within a patriarchal culture, provides the insight to authoritatively comment on issues affecting women as a group, such as violence against women. Ross

similarly positions herself as a legitimate representative of women, in this case women

sex workers. Both women appear to agree that Ross’ experience as a “woman sex

worker” carries more epistemological weight than Adams’ experience as a woman who is

not a sex worker. Recall Ross’ assertion that Adams has “acted as though she understood

[Ross’] position—that as a prostitute, [Ross] had more knowledge and expertise on the

issues than her and that she was in no position to invalidate [Ross’] experiences.”

We can ascertain from Adams’ alleged responses to Ross that “sex worker” serves

as a modifier for what is conceived as the general, foundational term “woman.” It is only

once Adams discovers Ross’ transsexuality that her legitimacy as a speaker, which was

directly attached to her experience as a woman who engaged in sex work, is discounted.

In other words, Ross’ critiques were considered legitimate by Adams until she was

perceived as outside the privileged social location (i.e., woman). Prostitution and pornography must always entail subjugation in order to affirm what Adams calls the cycle of objectification, fragmentation, and consumption. Animals and women can thus be analogized through shared victimization. For Adams, the processes involved in women and animals “becom[ing] a piece of meat” (2003, p. 13) share overlapping and reinforcing forms. “Before someone can be consumed or used,” posits Adams (2003), “she has to be seen as consumable, as usable, as something instead of a someone'''1 (p. 14). Yet by speaking about her positive experiences of sex work, and emphasizing the ways in which her clients engaged with her and her coworkers as “real people,” Ross challenges Adams’ claim: Neither she nor her clients regarded her as an object nor did they “consume” her as a set of fragmented parts. Instead, in relation to prostitution, she and her clients understood Ross as a subject. As she (2002) maintains,

I find that they, the feminists, are the ones who are objectifying us. If I was not

Mirha-Soleil with my personality and my face and charm and wit and everything

that makes me Mirha-Soleil, my clients wouldn’t see me. They see me because

there’s a certain personality and a particular sex appeal that’s part of my whole

package. They’re not coming to see a pair of tits or a nipple or a butt cheek for

Christ’s sake. (Ross, p. 84)

Only once Ross is revealed as a transsexual does Adams attempt to reaffirm her model of objectification, fragmentation, and consumption: “[Adams] explained that I didn’t have a problem with men buying my body and abusing me sexually through prostitution because

1 had not grown up as a girl in a patriarchal culture,” states Ross (2007).

We can understand Ross’ critiques of Adams, and her desire for a sex worker panel, as an attempt to make feminist discourse accountable to sex workers as subjects

56 who do not understand themselves as objectified, silenced, or victimized by their work

(although they may feel abused or mistreated by individual clients or the state). An aspect of such attempts is efforts to make sex workers’ experiences part of the political and theoretical landscape. As McElroy (1995) argues, “Usually, when you want to know about something, you ask the people who have first-hand experience of it. With pornography, however, most of the theories come from people who are ‘outsiders,’ with no direct knowledge of the industry” (p. 146). Ross shares McElroy’s dismay. Her central frustration with Adams and other anti-pornography and anti-prostitution feminists

is that sex workers are consistently not consulted about their experiences; instead, feminists not involved in sex work elect themselves to speak on behalf of women

involved in prostitution and pornography. During an Animal Voices interview with

Nadja Lubiw-Hazard, Ross (2002) commented,

What’s happening in the case of pornography and in the case of prostitution is that

we as women who are supposedly being oppressed in these industries, we are

there and we have voices and we can speak for ourselves. The women are there.

We have sex workers rights organizations all over the world and we have been

speaking on our own behalf for two decades now. (p. 85)

Lubiw-Hazard further extrapolates on Ross’ point:

And 1 think what people really need to understand is that people have to speak for

animals because at this point we can’t understand everything that animals are

saying to us. But people don’t have to be the voices for sex workers, they have

their own voices and we can hear them. (p. 85) Let us briefly return to Alcoff s (1991), “The Problem of Speaking for Others.”

Alcoff s article, which is not just an analysis but also is a reflection of the debates about the “crisis of representation” (p. 9), presupposes that Others are human. Similarly, following in the liberal humanist tradition, Alcoff implies that only humans occupy social

locations (albeit in complex and non-fixed ways) and that only humans are speakers, in the sense of being able to represent their own experiences. Likewise, despite Lubiw-

Hazard, Ross, and Adams’ role as animal advocates, they do little (discursively speaking) to disrupt the idea that the subject is always, necessarily, human. The “voices” at stake

for Adams and Ross are human voices: The debate relates the interpretation of human experiences, i.e., the experiences of women sex workers and women in general who may or may not be affected by pornography and prostitution. The debate’s driving question

becomes, “Who is an authentic representative of the voices of women sex workers in animal ethics theory and beyond?” Ross’ narrative presents a dichotomy: On the one

hand, there is the claim that one’s experience as a biological woman “raised a girl within a patriarchal culture” creates the grounds for authentic representation. On the other hand, there is the suggestion that one’s experience as a woman sex worker legitimates a

speaker, while a lack of such first-hand experience as a prostitute or producer of

pornography delegitimizes it.

That animals do or could represent themselves does not enter into the debate.

That animals may “speak” on their own behalf, or possess their own voices, especially in a way different than either Ross or Adams, is not raised as a possibility. Ross does not

protest Adams’ interpretation of animals or ask how their voices might be excluded from

her work. In Ross’ version, they shared a claim to lived experience as the grounds for

58 authentic speech. The possession of voice remains tethered to the human subject. It seems that neither Adams nor Ross believes that she needs to have the experience of a nonhuman animal in order to speak on his or her behalf.

Consider again Lubiw-Hazard’s point that “people have to speak for animals because at this point we can’t understand everything that animals are saying to us. But people don’t have to be the voices for sex workers, they have their own voices and we can hear them.” By definition, the experiences of nonhuman animals are not ours; they cannot provide an authenticating or legitimizing platform from which to speak.

Therefore, the logic of identity politics appears to falter in the face of the non-human. Or does it?

Strategic Essentialism & The Limits o f Identity Politics

Deep ecologists and certain ecofeminists, in their efforts to shift “nature” from object to active subject within politics of representation, attempt to speak from a “natural standpoint” or “natural identity” (Sandilands, 1999). Deep ecologist Arne Naess calls it the “ecological self’ (1984). Joanna Macy (2007), for example, urges the “greening of the self,” which involves a conceptualization of the self not just as profoundly integrated with nature, but as nature. This process involves the outward extension o f the self, an

“ever widening process of identification” (p. 156). Such efforts to represent nature as an identity are not without their critics, though. For example, in part Sandilands (1999) is wary of these gestures because of the authoritarian naturalism they can perpetuate. As

Sandilands notes, similar “claims to nature” (p. 82) have helped justify the supposed naturalness of patriarchy and other social relations.

59 Environmental identity politics, which attempts to represent nature fully, appeal to a “foundational experiential (prepolitical) truth” (Sandilands, 1999, p. 82) that renders nature as a singular, bound, coherent, and ultimately speakable entity that transcends the trappings of the social. She argues against environmental identity politics because of the reductive and totalizing containment logic that it imposes, a logic that simultaneously denies itself as a construction:

The fact that the environmental subject can never be that speaking “I” not only

calls into question the applicability of identity politics to ecological struggle, but

reaffirms the idea that this identity is not the only possible form of political

subjectivity and that the subject is always more complex than this singular form of

representation admits, (p. 82)

The failure of environmental identity politics demonstrates not only the inadequacy of

such a political mode for the representation of nonhuman nature, but also points to the

ultimate failure of identity politics in general. That is to say, it is not that identity politics falters in the face of the nonhuman, though perhaps this is one of the horizons where its

limits become most clearly visible, but that any politics based on a notion of a complete, unitary, non-contradictory, stable “speaking subject” is a fiction.

Adams’ alleged claim to authentic speech as a woman is—at the very moment that she attempts to naturalize it—revealed as a fiction: Ross maintains that Adams attempted to reaffirm her legitimacy as a representative for women by stating that Ross had not “grown up as a girl in a patriarchal culture.” What does this mean, though, to grow up as a girl in a patriarchal culture? Would any one woman ever be able to speak on behalf of all girls everywhere who are raised in patriarchal cultures? How do one’s

60 experiences as a young white girl, for example, elide the possibility of representing various experiences of girls of colour within a patriarchal culture? What is it about one’s

(actually very particular) experience “as a girl” that allows one to pretend that other dynamics of identity would not bear influentially on other girls’ experiences growing up within a patriarchal culture? Feminist theorist Diana Fuss (1989) asks the question this way: “Can we ever speak so simply of ‘the female reader’ or the ‘the male reader’, ‘the woman’ and ‘the man,’ as if these categories were not transgressed, not already constituted by other axes of difference (class, culture, ethnicity, nationality...)?” (p- 28).

In other words, there is no one “women’s experience.” Similarly, as Haraway (1991) attests, “there is nothing about being ‘female’ that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as ‘being’ female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices,” (p. 155).

Yet the notion that there is shared experience that unites women, and that this experience creates an epistemological ground for feminist theory, is not new. For example, in her comments on “Feminism and the Power of Interpretation,” which deals with feminist literary criticism, Fuss critiques the reliance on “the experience of real women” as the constitutive basis for what Modleski calls “genuinely feminist literary criticism” (p. 27). According to Fuss, Modleski uses “the experience of real women” to signify the authentic and the real, and to “naturalize and authorize the relation between biological woman and social women” (p. 27). The signifiers “woman,” “female,” and

“feminist” are collapsed.

Nonetheless, Fuss (1989) does not dismiss Modleski’s (biologically) essentialist logic out of hand, as she is equally cautious of essentialism as “the essentialism in anti-

61 essentialism” (p. 28). Fuss, largely following Gayatri Spivak, is careful to note that essentialism can be an important and powerful political strategy, which can be effectively deployed in certain contexts for specific goals. What is most useful here to highlight about Fuss’ scholarship is her application of poststructuralist critiques of experience to particular essentialist and essentializing tendencies in feminism. She suggests, “the

poststructuralist objection to experience is not a repudiation of grounds of knowing per se

but rather a refusal of the hypostatization of experience as the ground (and the most

stable ground) of knowledge production” (Fuss, 1989, p. 27). The dangers of essentialism—strategic or otherwise—are clearly illustrated through Adams’ essentialist deployment of “women’s experience” in the context of the conversation between herself

and Ross. The exclusion and negation of such modes entail real and potentially quite

damaging consequences.

The recognition of the limitations of identity politics suggests a promising turn for

animal advocacy, feminist or otherwise. If direct experience is not the only grounds for

knowing, other possibilities for legitimate knowledge production become possible. (That

is to say, one does not have to be a nonhuman animal to engage in meaningful or truthful

knowledge production about nonhuman animals and their interests.) At the same time,

experience as a basis for epistemology need not be discounted. As Alcoff (1991)

explains, “To say that location bears on meaning and truth is not the same thing as saying that location determines meaning and truth. And location is not a fixed essence absolutely authorizing one’s speech...” (p. 16).

In light of Alcoffs assertion, Ross is correct to critique Adams’ exclusion of sex workers’ voices from her theory, because Ross’ position as a sex worker provides insight

62 that Adams does not have as someone outside of that particular social location. If we take Ross’ critiques seriously, as I think we should, then by extension feminist analyses of sex work should be generated through (or in concert with) a plurality of sex workers’ accounts. No one gets to have an absolute monopoly on truth, though, even when essentialism is deployed strategically as a political intervention and there is a temporary illusion of coherence. As Haraway (1991) reminds us, “the standpoints of the subjugated are not ‘innocent’ positions” (p. 191).

Any evaluation of strategic essentialism should be power-sensitive. Fuss looks to social location as a way of determining the allowance of essentialism by dividing

“speakers” (perhaps a little too neatly) into either hegemonic or subaltern groups. When practiced by a hegemonic group, essentialism can serve to impose ideological domination. When practiced by a subaltern group, essentialism can disrupt hegemony

(even as it mimics oppressive tropes). Thus, a consideration of the motivations that inform the deployment of essentialism is paramount. “The question of permissibility, if you will, of engaging in essentialism is therefore framed and determined by the subject- position from which one speaks,” suggests Fuss (1989, p. 32).

In this particular rendering of the debate between Adams and Ross, I think it is fair to say that Ross occupies a “subaltern” position.53 Ross’ main concern with Adams’ theory is her exclusion of sex workers’ voices. Ross’ direct presentation of anecdotal

53 My claim that Ross’ subject-position is “subaltern” would be challenged by those who agree that Ross lacks the lived experience to comment on women, and violence against women as it relates to prostitution and pornography in particular. For some, even despite the fact that Ross often failed to pass as a boy and she understood herself as female from a young age, life-long membership within the category “girl/woman” (or, more precisely, generally being recognized as such) would be required for one to speak about wom en’s experience as a class. While I disagree with such interpretations, they gesture toward the messiness involved in the simple bifurcation o f the “subaltern” from the “hegemonic group.” Who decides who is “subaltern” and who is “the hegemonic group”?

63 evidence during their exchange offers a “voice” otherwise not engaged in Adams’ activism or scholarship. Ross does not explicitly state that she speaks for all sex workers, but she implies that her perspective aligns with other sex workers while Adams’ does not; in this way, she suggests that she is a representative of sex workers as a group. Ross

(2007) declares, “1 had spoken about sex work from a point of view that was personal, yes, but also political. My arguments and political demands were completely aligned with the arguments and political demands of sex working women, transsexuals and non­ transsexuals alike, internationally.”

Ross contends that prostitution and pornography are not inherently exploitative.

Speaking specifically about her encounters with other Toronto prostitutes, Ross has little patience for women who have “internalized their victim status” (p. 66); indeed, according to Ross, the prostitutes whom she encountered might publicly claim to be victims who needed to “resort to ‘selling’ their bodies in order to ‘survive’” (Ross, 2002, p. 58), but privately they would admit that they were happy with their employment. We might reasonably conclude that Ross wants to foreground perspectives that do not contribute to the vilification of the industries as such or those directly involved. It is difficult to say whether Ross would ever consider the voices of disgruntled sex workers as legitimate.54

54 Ross acknowledges that her interpretation o f sex work is greatly informed by her particular experiences within a French working class community. It was within this specific context that Ross became exposed to prostitutes and prostitution. According to Ross, prostitutes were “familiar people” who were part o f her “urban and cultural landscape” (pp. 58-59). The prostitutes she encountered were “strong and grounded women” (p. 59), the type o f women she hoped to emulate as an adult both in terms of attitude and employment. Her experiences contrast with Anglo-America’s “pathetic, prototypical portrayal of the prostitute as victim” (Ross, 2002, p. 59). Ross attributes sex workers’ negative accounts o f prostitution, which she encountered when she moved to Toronto from Montreal, as an achievement o f feminist and social worker propaganda. For her, their “oh, poor little miserable me” (Ross, 2002, p. 58) attitude is indicative of political ventriloquism. Ross (2002) states, “I quite rapidly realized that these [long-time working] prostitutes were repeating the lines that social workers and feminists were feeding them. For years and years they had been listening to these manipulative twits telling them they were victims. They were told that because o f their social locations— being working class and poor, being women, being people o f colour, being transsexuals, being queers— they had to resort to ‘selling’ their bodies in order to

64 Ross (2003) insists, “If anyone is going to start writing articles and developing theories linking meat to pornography and prostitution and the so-called objectification of women’s bodies, then 1 insist that we—as women and as prostitutes and as sex workers— be the first ones consulted regarding these matters!” Ross is justified in making this demand, given the larger context of what she calls “feminist animal rights theory,” which despite its contributions has done little to directly engage with women involved with pornography or prostitution. That is not to say that sex workers, even animal rights sex workers, possess the truth about sex work or animal issues for that matter, yet sex workers produce “subjugated knowledges” (Foucault, 1976/1997) that ought to be taken seriously in the Academy and beyond. Foucault (1976/1997) defines subjugated knowledges in one sense as “a whole series of knowledges that have been disqualified as nonconceptual knowledges, as insufficiently elaborated knowledges: naive knowledges, hierarchically inferior knowleges, knowledges that are below the required level of erudition or scientificity” (p. 7).

The idea of subjugated knowledges is particularly useful for navigating the exchange between Adams and Ross because Foucault distinguishes “subjugated knowledges,” or “disqualified knowledges,” from scholarly knowledge. Feminist animal rights theory has largely emerged from within rather fixed radical-cultural feminist paradigms and has become, to some degree, codified as the feminist position on “animal rights” issues. Carol Adams is by far the most widely recognized theorist working in this

‘survive’” (p. 58). Here Ross’ rhetoric sounds similar to some feminists’ claims that women who choose or enjoy sex work have fallen under the spell of false consciousness. A major concern raised by Ross is that anti-prostitution sentiments generated within Anglo-America threaten working class French culture, where prostitutes are understood as legitimate and integral aspects o f society and prostitution is considered a viable employment option (Ross, 2002). However, regardless of her social location as a working class “primary” transsexual woman from Quebec and whatever particular perspective that location affords her, Ross’ analysis is consistent with the international prostitutes’ rights movement, which advocates that prostitution should be (among other things) decriminalized and recognized as work.

65 area, despite the significant contributions of other feminist scholars such as Karen Davis,

Josephine Donovan, and Lynda Birke, among others. In part, it is this homogenization of feminist theoretical perspectives against which Ross (2002) rallies: “I know tons of feminists who are involved in the animal rights movement who do not share these views

[about prostitution and pornography] but they are not starting a new wave of feminist animal rights theory and politics” (p. 81). Carol Adams’ feminist theory is frequently regarded as the feminist interpretation of issues commonly associated with animal rights, such as those related to industrial animal farming.

Transsexuality, Sex Work, and the Construction of “Women's Experience"

If the experience of growing up as a girl within a patriarchal culture authorizes one to speak for women as a group, and pornography and prostitution are two key means in which patriarchy is enacted, then by extension we can conclude that pornography and prostitution are constructive forces in the creation of the subject-position

“woman/women” within Adams’ paradigm. In other words, if women are constituted as a group through a shared subjugation under patriarchy, and prostitution and pornography are two paradigmatic manifestations of this subjugation, Adams’ commitment to her argument is crucial not only for her theory of violence against women, but also for her theories about “women” as a group.

Adams incorporates animals, but her radical feminist framework remains fundamentally unaltered. On the heels of a discussion about how Marxist/socialist feminisms, which privilege the category “labour” as both the epistemological and constitutive ontological ground for the subject, Haraway (1991) shifts from a critique of

66 the Marxist/socialist feminisms’ essentializing configuration of “women’s activity” (as

labour) to a veritable skewering of radical feminism. She argues, “Catherine

MacKinnon’s (1982, 1987) version of radical feminism is itself a caricature of the

appropriating, incorporating, totalizing tendencies of Western theories of identity

grounding action” (p. 158). Haraway’s potent insights are worth quoting at length given their ability to illuminate Adams’ logic:

MacKinnon’s ontology constructs a non-subject, a non-being. Another’s

desire, not the self s labour, is the origin of woman. She therefore develops a

theory of consciousness that enforces what can count as ‘women’s’ experience -

anything that names sexual violation, indeed, sex itself as far as ‘women’ can be

concerned...

Perversely, sexual appropriation in this feminism still has the

epistemological status of labour; that is to say, the point from which an analysis

able to contribute to the changing world must flow. But sexual objectification,

not alienation, is the consequence of the structure of sex/gender. In the realm of

knowledge, the result of sexual objectification is illusion and abstraction.

However, a woman is not simply alienated from her product, but in a deep sense

does not exist as a subject, or even potential subject, since she owes her existence

as a woman to sexual appropriation. To be constituted by another’s desire is not

the same thing as to be alienated in the violent separation of the labourer from his

product.

MacKinnon’s radical theory of experience is totalizing in the extreme; it

does not so much marginalize as obliterate the authority of any other women’s

67 political speech and action. It is totalization producing what Western patriarchy

itself never succeeded in doing - feminists’ consciousness of the non-existence of

women, except as products of men’s desire, (p. 159)

In sum, victimization under patriarchy (read: men’s objectification and violence)

constitutes the essence of “women’s experience” within radical feminism, and thus the

essence of “woman.” Lacking the life-long experience of being subjugated as a female,

Ross does not possess “women’s experience,” thus she is not—and cannot be—a woman

and thus cannot comment as a woman. The internal logic of the theory (at least in this

form) dictates that Ross be cast outside the privileged category (radical feminism’s very

baseline for political change), which is, as Haraway notes, actually a non-existence of

women. Ross’ transsexuality serves as a convenient ground for Adams’ dismissal, but it

is not merely convenient, as the two threads of Ross and Adams’ exchange (that is,

whether pornography and prostitution are inherently oppressive and paradigmatic tools of the patriarchy, and later, whether Ross’ transsexuality delegitimizes her as a speaker)55

are in fact profoundly interdependent.

A Different Starting Point

Some of the most damning critiques of animal rights by animal studies scholars are

authored by feminists, including Barbara Noske and Donna Haraway. Indeed, in her

broad backhand against “animal rights discourse” (1992, p. 86), Haraway comes razor

55 It is interesting that Adams focused on Ross’ transsexuality as a way o f delegitimizing her claims, as she might have alternatively countered Ross’ perspective by arguing that she is a victim of false consciousness, as other feminists have argued (Jeffreys, 2009). Perhaps Adams’ initial openness is a testament to the historical potency of feminist consciousness-raising efforts where every woman’s voice was to be heard and validated.

68 close to Horwitz’s ventriloquist’s burden critique, despite their different disciplinary starting points and political allegiances.

In the midst of her famous essay, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” Haraway (1985/1991) comments: “Movements for animal rights are not irrational denials of human uniqueness; they are a clear-sighted recognition of connection across the discredited breach of nature and culture” (p. 152). Such sympathetic conclusions give way to blunt and consistent critiques that continue directly into her most recent text, When Species Meet (2008a). For example, in her article “Otherworldly Conversations, Terran Topics, Local Terms”

(1992) Haraway draws heavily on Noske to forcefully condemn animal rights discourse.

She contrasts slave liberation, a move from the status o f fully alienable property to one of human subjecthood, against similar efforts to attain rights for nonhuman animals. If we grant animals human subject status, she argues, they are merely cast within the “human family drama” (p. 86): “That is the problem with much animal rights discourse. The best animals could get out of that approach is the ‘right’ to be permanently represented, as lesser humans, in human discourse, such as the law—animals would get the right to be permanently ‘orientalized’” (p. 86). As such, animals are destined to be forever represented as “lesser humans,” not recognized as “other worlds,” a term coined by

Noske and celebrated by Haraway. Efforts to give animals human subject status, no matter how seemingly empowering, will always ultimately negate the fullness of animal life. Haraway echoes Noske’s strong caution against legal-based animal rights campaigning, in particular. She contends that these efforts can amount to

69 anthropocentric colonizing, where everything and everyone is measured by a

human Western yardstick. In attempts to grant animals legal rights, animals are

bound to appear as human underlings. However animals are not lesser humans,

[Noske] writes, they are other worlds whose other worldliness must not be

disenchanted and cut to our size but must be respected for what it is. (p. xiii)

In light of such claims, Horwitz and Haraway make unlikely bedfellows, as they share a similar critique of what Horwitz calls “all that ‘rights’ talk” (p. 44).56 Indeed, although

Haraway (2008a) is staunchly against factory farming (which Horwitz condones), she employs the same analogy as Horwitz to illustrate this “problem with much animal rights discourse” (1992, p. 86), drawing a comparison between animal rights discourse and the

“pro-life/anti-abortion question” (p. 86):

“Who speaks for the foetus?” The answer is, any but the pregnant woman,

especially if that anybody is a legal, medical or scientific expert. Or a father.

Facing the harvest of Darwinism, we do not need an endless discourse on who

speaks for animals, or for nature in general. We have had enough of the language

games of fatherhood. We need other terms of conversations with animals, a much

less respectable undertaking, (pp. 86-87)

Horwitz turns to people who “well know pigs” (Horwitz, p. 46) and “people who have anything to do with them” (p. 49), which includes the scientists, animal behaviourists, and specifically farmers, who “[care] for animals as a matter of daily toil”

(p. 42). Haraway would likely be more interested in a conversation with those who

56 Heame (1986/2007) also discusses the deep scepticism that animal trainers experience when “‘speciesism’ talk gets going” (p. 62). Specifically referring to Australian theorists, Heame argues that the philosophers (aka the logicians) who project “the incredibly complex syntax o f rights, duties and the like into our various ways of discoursing with and about animals” (p. 62) have actually contributed very little to “imagining the personhood of any animal” (p. 62).

70 directly interact with pigs,57 such as those who made Horwitz’s list, rather than an animal rights pamphleteer who has perhaps never met a pig. “The point is not new representations, but new practices , other forms of life rejoining humans and non­ humans.. ..There is specific work to be done if we are to strike up a coherent form of life, a conversation, with other animals,” she maintains (1992, p. 87).

I do not doubt Haraway’s commitment to new practices, as opposed to new representations, but it seems that her writing betrays an interest in perhaps not new representations but different representations. Her most recent text, When Species Meet, is undeniably actively involved in the practice of animal representation. The text is filled with descriptions of animals, with entire chapters dedicated to the critique of their portrayal.58 Further, she continually represents (often in poignant detail) the various practices she engages in with her dogs. Haraway (1992) argues that “we do not need an endless discourse on who speaks for animals, or for nature in general” (p. 86). I agree.

My contention throughout this chapter and the rest of the dissertation is that the study of how people speak for, as, with, or about animals is vital work. In relation, I want to

show—in illuminating and hopefully useful ways—how animal and human politics

intimately inform each other. Carrying forward the insights from feminist, postcolonial,

57 Ideally, one could guess, Haraway would prefer to personally interact with the pigs. 58 Consider, for example, Haraway’s chapter about the National Geographic’s television series,Crittercam. She discusses how the series promises viewers the opportunity to fully inhabit the sensory experiences of nonhuman animals, as if unmediated by human perception or technology. She laments, “Reading these promises, I felt as if I were back in some versions of consciousness-raising groups and film projects of the early 1970s women’s liberation movement, in which self-reporting on unmediated experience seemed attainable, especially if women had cameras and turned them on themselves. Become self by seeing self through the eyes of self. The only change is that National Geographic’sCrittercam promises that self becomes other’s self. Now, that’s point of view!” (p. 253). Such access is facilitated by what she calls the “compound eyes of the colonial organism called Crittercam” (p 261), a camera which is glued to various animals’ bodies.

71 and posthumanist critiques, I am interested in a politics based more on affinity than

identity.

My project is not to determine a perfect (human) revolutionary subject who can

somehow fully represent animals. It is that kind of totalizing and colonizing move that I

would not only like to avoid, but that I would also hope to swiftly identify in the gestures

of others. It is that kind of move that ignores particularity and reduces Others and

otherness into digestible (though always fictional) coherence that obscures the insight of

local, subjugated knowledges, both human and nonhuman. I am also not seeking to find

a coherent, unitary, universalist, and ultimately homogenized form of animal subjectivity

that can then be inserted as another voice into various ethical and political realms.

Philosopher Matthew Calarco (2008), in his introduction to his text, The Question o f the

Animal From Heidegger to Derrida, clearly expresses a similar concern. He argues that

“much of contemporary animal rights discourse and politics is in fact another form of

identity politics...” (p. 7). As such, he states,

Many animal rights theorists and activists see themselves as uncovering some sort

of fundamental identity (for example, sentience or subjectivity) shared by all

animals (or, rather, the animals they believe worthy of ethical and political

standing) in order to represent that identity in the political and legal arena. It is

precisely in these forums that the interests of animals compete for attention with

the interests of individuals represented by various other kinds of identity-based

movements. Inasmuch as the lives and deaths of animals figure minimally, if at

all, within much of current political and legal debates, 1 am certainly inclined to

support the efforts by animal rights theorists and activists to provide a “voice” for

72 and represent the “interests” of animals. But this approach to animal ethics and

politics is fraught with considerable theoretical and ethical difficulties. Not only

does it make the claims of animal rights discourse appear as a kind of distinct

politics unrelated to other progressive, leftist issues, but it also proceeds on a set

of assumptions about what constitutes the proper scope o f “animal ity” and what

the “interests” of animals are—both of which are highly contentious issues.

Furthermore, much of animal rights discourse labors under the tacit (and

contentious) assumption that the fundamental channels of change regarding

animals are to be found in existing legal and political institutions. (Calarco, 2008,

p. 7)

Calarco uses his brief critique of (what he sees as) animal rights identity politics as a

foundation to set up his subsequent analysis, which is primarily a challenge to the

anthropocentrism within the Continental philosophical tradition, and an attempt to

highlight those posthumanist philosophies (such as Derrida’s) that disrupt the human-

animal divide and cast animals and humans together within a greater ontological whole.

His point is to present some potentialities for enacting forms of politics and ethics that do

not reproduce anthropocentric constructions of animal subjectivity, which he understands as enacted within much animal rights philosophy and politics. Moreover, necessarily in tandem, he confronts universalist constructions of human subjectivity, which have been reliant on the disavowal of all kinds of human and animal Others. His efforts thus

involve a twofold interruption of constructions of human and animal subjectivity, which he argues are both ultimately anthropocentric and exclusionary:

73 The problem with the “solution” to the proliferation of identity-based political

movements and the left hegemony is that it remains, at bottom, anthropocentric.

The universal and that which is abject from the universal is almost always

presented and understood in these debates as revolving around the human. The

abject here are those human beings who have been prejudicially excluded from

the realm of the universal and the concern for the abject and the universal never

extends beyond a simple and rather uncritical anthropocentrism. There is in these

arguments no parallel analysis of how the universal functions (falsely) to exclude

not only those human beings who are not recognized as such but also those

“nonhuman” animals who are figured by and excluded from the universal, (pp. 9-

10)

While I generally agree with Calarco, his engagements with actual animal rights

politics are limited, as he chooses to primarily focus on the philosophical writings of

Peter Singer and Tom Regan, though he does occasionally touch on Gary Francione,

Carol Adams, and a few others. Animal rights politics are much bigger and more diverse.

In a certain sense, Calarco’s critiques are valid, but I think he misses the richness of

animal rights politics and its possibilities for rethinking human and animal subjectivity by

not more thoroughly engaging with those outside of philosophy and by not considering a

wider variety of others who practice animal rights activism as a lived phenomenon.

Unsurprisingly, Calarco relies on the voice metaphor to name animal

representation by animal rights activists. My hope is that this dissertation about voice can help us bridge posthumanism and animal rights, and can help us think carefully about the politics of animal representation. I am interested in holding on to some posthumanist

74 critiques of subjectivity, while also continuing to theorize and engage in the animal rights movements. For example, I wonder, in our efforts to represent animals voices and interests, how can we resist the large-scale, systemic torture and slaughter of animals for a variety of purposes (and the objectification and instrumental use implied therein), and do so in a way that does not anthropocentrically construct them as simply “similar enough” to human beings to deserve rights and respect? At the same time, how do we do this while also resisting the tendency to present animals as entirely helpless, such that their entire subjectivity is reduced to one of pure suffering and victimhood?

That is, how can we refuse the public representation of animals’ victimhood as being the one “fundamental identity... shared by all animals” (Calarco, 2008, p. 7)? (In other words, how can we publicly expose and forcefully condemn animals’ victimization, while not allowing such representations to stand as the entirety of their ontologies?) Here

I am following Derrida (2006/2008) who rejects the collapse of all of animalkind into a single signifier set against humanity, and who proposes the term “animot” to indicate “an irreducible living multiplicity of morals” (p. 41).

Strongly influenced by authors such as Donna Haraway (1991) and Chandra

Talpade Mohanty (1988), I am cautious of theories or political practices that reduce any subjugated group to “victims,” as Western feminism has tended to regard “Third World women,” for example. Regarded as such, their place becomes fixed to a certain objectified position, ironically reinforced through some of “our” advocacy efforts. In terms of animal politics, this insight means appreciating animals as agents, resisters, and

“other worlds,” with their own ways of actively participating within and across species. “Innocence,” comments Haraway (1991), “and the corollary insistence on victimhood as the only ground for insight, has done enough damage” (p. 157).

Unlike Haraway who separates representations from practices, I conceive of representation as practice; despite the “orientalist” (1992) and “calculus” approaches

(2008a) she accuses animal rights discourse of enacting, this varied set of discourses seems not quite so stagnant to me, but negotiated at different times and places and often with animals themselves, a point Haraway seems to ignore or not publicly acknowledge.

Taking a cue from postcolonial and animal studies scholar Philip Armstrong (2002), who argues that “[encountering the postcolonial animal means learning to listen to the voices of all kinds o f ‘other’ [sic] without either ventriloquizing them or assigning to them accents so foreign that they never can be understood” (2002, p. 417), I understand the purpose of this dissertation to be about listening closely to all kinds of Others, and

ideally, listening well.

The study of voice offers a fruitful way into the problematics of representation and “the question of the animal.” Voice, then, is not a way out of the challenges of representation, but a way in to a deeper appreciation of the workings of Western politics, which includes animal rights advocacy. As Ross’ narrative attests, voice remains an important site for the construction and contestation of political subjectivity at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

As Haraway moves toward a critical engagement with vision in her chapter,

“Situated Knowledges,” in order to grapple with feminist questions related to identity, epistemology, and politics, I move toward voice as a way of understanding how it circulates within political discourse, and ask what this understanding might imply for

76 questions of subjectivity and agency, particularly in relation to the politics of animal advocacy. I believe that questions of voice are extremely relevant to the work of

“striking] up non-innocent conversations” (Haraway, 1991, p. 199), which Haraway

promotes.

To recapitulate, my point is to pay attention to voice as both an embodied and

metaphorical phenomenon because it can tell us something important about the socio­

cultural construction of humans and animals, and perhaps lead us in some generative

directions for more positive human-animal relationships. In the following chapter, I

specifically consider how voice circulates in contemporary political writing. In light of

its overwhelming humanist bias, I wonder, what are the ramifications of voice

discourse—considering its enormous cultural currency—for animals and the development

of animal politics?

77 Chapter II: Reading for Voice

Each new ‘voice ’ is celebrated as another emancipation. (Moore & Muller, 1999, p. 201)

Introduction

Various areas of contemporary scholarship rely heavily on notions of voice, including frequent reliance on the voice trope, particularly within politically-oriented writing; indeed, voice is frequently tied to the promotion of various political projects. Such an observation is unsurprising given the extensive historical linkage between voice and politics. As Jonathan Ree, author of the insightful text I See a Voice: Deafness,

Language, and the Senses-A Philosophical History (1999) explains,

The idea of being heard, of possessing a voice or having it ignored or suppressed,

of demanding, validating, giving or offering a voice—the voice of the people, the

voice of God—nearly coincides with that of human and civil rights. Having a

voice is much the same as having a vote, it seems, and some languages use the

same word for both. Voices could almost be seen as part of the constitution of

representative government, or even the meaning of politics itself, (p. 2)

Dictionary definitions of voice—and there are many—provide some indication of their political import, but do not fully reflect the depth of the meaning nor the potency of the idea. In the OED, as a noun, voice is first defined as

Sound, or the whole body of sounds, made or produced by the vocal organs of

man or animals in their natural action; esp. sound formed in or emitted from the

human larynx in speaking, singing, or other utterance; vocal sound as the vehicle

78 of human utterance or expression. Also occas., the faculty or power of producing

this; or concretely, the organs by which it is produced.

This first major definition is additionally subdivided, gesturing in some uses toward the relationship between voice and politics. For example, voice is further described as

“utterance or expression (of feeling, etc.). Chiefly in phrases as to give voice to, to fin d voice in" [bold in original]. The second sub-set of definitions demonstrates an explicit relationship between what we might call formal, or statist, politics and voice. Agency is a key aspect of this particular definition. According to the OED, voice also indicates

The right or privilege of speaking or voting in a legislative assembly, or taking

part in, or exercising control or influence over, some particular matter; part or

share in the control, government, or deciding of something. Chiefly in phr. to

have (or bear)..voice in [bold in original].

Particularly relevant to the present study because of its specific connection to radio, voice is also described as

The expressed opinion, judgement, will, or wish of the people, a number of

persons, or corporate body, etc., occas. as indicated or shown by the exercise of

suffrage; now freq. in the names of radio stations supposedly representing

national or local opinion.

The second major definition links voice with ideas about singularity and uniqueness of the individual. Perhaps not immediately recognizable as related to politics, this definition of voice is perhaps even more greatly invoked within political manifestations that are not explicitly or conventionally formal (such as “identity politics”). Specifically, the OED also states that voice is

79 In a limited sense: The sounds naturally made by a single person or animal in

speech or other form of vocal utterance; these sounds regarded as characteristic of

the person and as distinguishing him from another or others; also freq., the

individual organic means or capacity of producing such sounds, a. In usages

where this sound is taken to represent the person or being who utters it, or is

regarded apart from the utterer. Freq. with verbs of saying, introducing the words

uttered.

Also included as related to the above definition, the OED states that voice is “used in reference to the expression or opinion or protest, or the issuing of a command.”

Similarly, voice refers to

An expression of opinion, choice, or preference uttered or given by a person; a

single vote, esp. one given in the election of a person to some office or position or

on a matter coming for decision before a deliberative assembly.

Further related to the above definition, the OED maintains that voice also means “a right or power to take part in the control or management of something. Chiefly in the phr. to have a voice in” [bold in original].

Of course, dictionaries provide denotations, but the practical uses of terms offer insights not fully captured in formal definitions. Consequently, the following chapter traces some of the major ways voice circulates within politically-oriented scholarship, a key site where ideas about voice have been developed and shaped. I seek to (at least tentatively) answer the multipronged question, “What does voice mean in these works, how is the idea employed, and to what ends?” To do this, I analyze the ways in which the voice metaphor and the “voice discourse” (Moore & Muller, 1999) feature within a

80 number of texts by a collection of key contemporary scholars. Moore and Muller (1999) describe what they term “voice discourse” (p. 190) as an approach to knowledge that is indicative of the “New Sociology of Education” and other postmodern areas of inquiry.

Primarily, voice discourse, as characterized by Moore and Muller, arose in response to scepticism about the objectivity of knowledge and “the status of science, reason, and rationality, more generally” (p. 189). As such, politically-charged voice discourse centralizes subjectivity, experience, discourse, and identity. Following Maton, they argue that through voice discourse, “Knowledge is dissolved into knowing and priority is given to experience as specialized by category membership and identity” (p. 190). It is an approach that is frequently juxtaposed against (and in response to) “so-called ‘dominant’ or ‘hegemonic’ forms of knowledge” (p. 190).

While I do not agree with Moore and Muller’s largely polemical critiques of voice discourse (as I address below), their work is useful for my purposes because they name

“voice discourse” as such, and provide some indication of the types of work I closely analyze here. In other words, the voice discourse offers a helpful label or umbrella term, including some of its general defining characteristics, which collectively link the texts discussed throughout this chapter.

The voice trope is most frequently invoked within political writing that—not surprisingly— falls within Moore and Muller’s (1999) understanding of voice discourse.

I focus on the voice trope, in particular, as deployed within voice discourse in order to grasp the kinds of investments people have in the metaphor. The voice trope is a central and defining metaphor within the writing. I have chosen to “read for voice” because, despite—or perhaps because of-—its ubiquity, voice is so commonly invoked that its

81 meanings are largely presupposed: Voice is so enmeshed in political discourse that its specific meanings are often taken for granted, as if its mere repetition is somehow explanation enough.

Throughout the chapter I concentrate on two major fields that heavily rely on voice: critical pedagogy and feminist theory. Of course, these two commonly related

spheres (with their mutable and permeable boundaries) are not the only academic areas in which voice discourse, including the voice trope in its various incarnations, is employed.

However, I highlight examples from these areas based on the great extent that voice explicitly features within the fields’ defining works and/or within the scholarship of some of its most influential authors. The frequent use of voice within these texts suggests the

potency of the idea for articulating various political claims.

The chapter first offers a brief introduction to the relevance of voice within

critical pedagogy and feminist theory, followed by an examination of the voice discourse

within the writings of Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, Carol Gilligan, Maria Lugones and

Elizabeth Spelman, bell hooks, and Patricia Hill Collins. In both sections—critical

pedagogy and feminist theory—the texts are arranged chronologically, in part to draw

attention to each text’s particular historicity. As such, the order strongly suggests

(though cannot definitively prove) a response by the later authors to those preceding.

Carol Gilligan’s (1982/1993) extremely influential text In a Different Voice is a key

example of this: Her perspective on “women’s voice” arguably typified some of the

dominant themes of Western second wave feminism. In particular, her generalizations

about women throughout the text were thoroughly attacked as essentialist by third wave

feminists (Heyes, 1997). The impact of In a Different Voice within moral philosophy and

82 the feminist movement was enormous (see Friedman, 2000). It seems quite probable that the voice discourse of well-known feminist theorists Lugones and Spelman (1983), hooks

(1989), and Collins (1990), serves as at least a partial response to Gilligan’s use of the trope and related arguments.

To this end, in the beginning of Black Feminist Thought, Collins (1990) directly names Gilligan’s (1982/1993) In a Different Voice (and Chodorow’s [1979] The

Reproduction o f Mothering) as exemplary of the tendency within U.S. White feminist theory to universalize the experiences of all women, while actually only representing a select group who are White, middle-class, and of Western origin.5960 Although she acknowledges Gilligan’s contribution to feminist theory, Collins also argues that the classic work “promoted the notion of a generic woman who is White and middle class”

(1990, p. 8). I suggest it is very plausible that Collins employs the notion of voice so extensively in part as a deliberate contestation of the ways in which Gilligan and various others within the U.S. feminist tradition have (quite centrally) employed the idea.

Collins’ marked efforts to centralize and contextualize black women’s voices as such throughout Black Feminist Thought, and specifically her deliberate gestures throughout the text to articulate the very particular meanings of voice in relationship to black women, likely serves as a challenge to Gilligan and her contemporaries who called for the inclusion of women’s voices yet in practice neglected their heterogeneity.

It is reasonable that the central tropes of feminist theory are reworked and

59 Collins’ (1990) critique of Gilligan occurs within a discussion about the ways in which Black women’s ideas have been suppressed. According to Collins, one manifestation of that suppression has been omission, as is so starkly evidenced in Gilligan’s (1982) research on moral development. Her research sample omitted Black women, yet was generalized within the resultant theory to supposedly represent all women. As Collins notes, these sorts of omissions have clearly influenced the development of feminist theory. 50 Whether the latter is even accomplished is, in my opinion, quite suspect: White, middle class women o f Western origin are hardly a homogeneous group.

83 refigured as part of the engagement with those discourses. Voice suggests a rich ground for contestation. Indeed, and this must be underscored, Lugones and Spelman (1983) claim that the particular quest for the “woman’s voice ” is central to feminist methodology, while Grumet (1990) argues that voice serves as a metaphor for feminist theory and pedagogy. Additionally and more specifically, hooks (1989) argues that

feminists have used voice as a “metaphor for self-transformation” (p. 12).61 It is not

surprising that Collins’—and even more pervasively— hooks’ (1989, 1990, 2004),

Stack’s (1986), and Lugones and Spelman’s (1983) critiques of feminism would be in

part articulated through an engagement with its most common terms. I dedicate most of

this chapter to a detailed distillation of those engagements.

I would like to offer a few important caveats before proceeding: First, despite the

popularity of the voice trope within academic scholarship, especially within political

discourse, it would be incorrect to suggest that ideas about voice originate within the

Academy and flow uni-directionally to the public. Consider, for example, Luke’s (1994)

claim that “the concept of voice as a means of empowerment for women” (p. 211) has

been a major element of feminist theory since the beginning of the “women’s movement”

in the 1960s. Indubitably, instead there is a dialogical relationship between the Academy

and the public in respect to the “voice discourse” (Moore & Muller, 1999) and “the

politics of voice” (Giroux, 1986) that should not be elided.

Second, arguably, voice discourse cannot be separated from the larger context of

identity politics and standpoint theory in North America. Indeed, identity politics,

standpoint theory, and voice discourse (including the voice trope as featured within the

61 Grumet parallels hooks’ language and sentiment when she claims that, during the 1970s, “voice carried with it the promise o f cultural transformation” (p. 278).

84 discourse) share numerous themes, including perhaps most distinctly, a common privileging of marginalized experience (see Janack, 2004; Moore and Muller, 1999).

This politically-inflected discourse, including the voice trope, richly develops and spreads through identity politics, standpoint theory, and social movements, but it certainly cannot be said to only proliferate in these major areas.

While authors examine the voice metaphor (e.g., Applebaum, 1990; Watts, 2001), much (but not all) of such commentary is situated within composition and literary studies

(e.g., Bowden, 1995; Bowden, 1999; Elbow, 2007; Snaza & Lensmire, 2006). Less common are studies that analyze the meanings associated with explicitly political uses of the voice metaphor (e.g., Clair, 1997; Huspek, 1997). Granted, my separation of the literary or compositional discussions from the political ones that employ and sometimes self-reflexively analyze the voice metaphor is somewhat arbitrary given their overlaps, hooks’ (1989) writing on voice, which I discuss below, is a clear example of theory that draws attention to voice in both literary/compositional and political registers. My decision not to concentrate on works about writing that employ or directly interrogate the voice metaphor is admittedly a limiting, but I think necessary, criteria. The analysis of both is simply beyond the scope of this dissertation.

Snaza and Lensmire (2006) observe an important difference between the two registers in the article, “Abandon voice? Pedagogy, the body, and late capitalism.” In particular, Lensmire’s 62 analysis is informed by a larger project that tackles progressive approaches to the teaching and learning of writing. That project, which he uses to frame the arguments in his essay with Snaza, addresses two major conceptions of voice: “voice

62 Although the article is written by both Snaza and Lensmire, after the introduction, Lensmire introduces his scholarship in the first person.

85 as individual expression” as developed by writing workshop or process writing approaches (e.g., Calkins, 1986; Graves, 1983) and “voice as participation” as cultivated by critical pedagogues. His immediate references are Freire (1970), Giroux (1988), and hooks (1994). He contrasts these two approaches, noting,

...in critical pedagogy, voice signals participation, emphasizes playing an active

part in the social production of meaning. In contrast to writing workshop

advocates, critical pedagogues assume a social self, assume that the self is in-

process, embedded in social context, and created out of the cultural resources at

hand.(p. 2)

Lensmire argues that what he names as the “workshop version” of voice subscribes to a notion of subjectivity—or, rather, the self—aligned with traditional Enlightenment understandings, namely, the self as autonomous, stable, and unitary. In this sense, these two main conceptualizations of voice are at odds. We see the “workshop version” of voice, offering a view of the self as atomistic and autonomous, set against what he calls the “critical pedagogy version” of voice, offering a view of the self as social. The first encourages a kind of individual internal excavation that allows one to arrive at his or her authentic and unique nature, while the second proposes a self that never arrives, but emerges necessarily in context and in process. The “critical pedagogy version” of voice characterizes the self as always in relation. According to Lensmire, the major similarity between these versions is

[bjoth seek to humanize teaching and learning in schools and the acceptance and

affirmation of student voice. Both encourage the active exploration by students of

their worlds, rather than passive submission in the face of teacher control and

86 knowledge, (p. 2)

A similarity Lensmire fails to acknowledge is that these two conceptions of voice are also united by a humanizing impulse. To “humanize” is assumed as a positive gesture, something both conceptions of voice aspire to. As we see in this chapter, voice signals both a mode and an achievement of human actualization. Voice is both a description of human subjectivity, and a process by which one comes to realize that full human subjectivity. Though Lensmire recognizes the vital intermingling of voice with ideas about human subjectivity, he does not critique the assumption or even note it as an assumption at all, one that crucially binds ideas about voice.

Lensmire also neglects to discuss feminists’ sustained and vigorous uses and debates about voice. Further, meanings surrounding voice do not always occur in relationship to writing, and feminists’ discussions of voice are often a testament to this, as are many critical pedagogues’. The gap in analysis about feminist contributions suggests a rather large lacuna in Lensmire’s (and Snaza’s) work, despite their inclusion of hooks.

Further, as is strongly shown below, voice is not always tethered to writing, even within the critical pedagogues’ scholarship he notes to illustrate the “critical pedagogy version,” namely that of Freire, Giroux, and hooks.

The major contribution of the next two sections, “Voice Within Critical

Pedagogy” and “Voice Within Feminist Theory,” is a detailed and sustained reading of the voice metaphor within overtly political writing. While some authors observe the political implied through the voice trope (e.g., Alexander, 1989; Lensmire, 1998;

Lensmire and Snaza, 2006; Ree, 1999), none provide a detailed profile of voice based on extended discourse analysis, as I do below. My approach provides a more thorough and

87 nuanced mapping of the voice metaphor, and its manifestations within voice discourse, which I believe helps more precisely answer the question, “What investments do we have in voice?”

Voice within Critical Pedagogy

In this section I consider the relationship between critical pedagogy and voice. I begin by examining the roots of “voice discourse” (Moore & Muller, 1999) per se, and then I move into an examination of Freire’s work followed by an analysis of Giroux’s scholarship, hooks is then taken up as a central contributor to voice discourse, and as one who clearly bridges both critical pedagogy and feminist theory.

Writing at the end of the 20th century, Moore and Muller (1999) contend that

“voice discourse” is currently the most common form of the sociology of education approaches that challenges epistemological claims about the objectivity of knowledge, as related to critiques of science in particular and reason and rationality in general.

Unsurprisingly, the “voice discourse” centralizes a pursuit for “voice”:

Today, the most common form of the approach is that which, drawing upon

postmodernist and poststructuralist perspectives, adopts a discursive concern with

the explication of ‘voice’. Its major distinction is between the dominant voice and

the (‘Others’) silenced or marginalized by hegemony. As Philip Wexler has

recently observed: ‘The postmodern emphasis on discourse and identity remains

overwhelmingly the dominant paradigm in school research, and with few

exceptions, gives few signs of abating’. The main move is to attach knowledge to

categories of knowers and their experiences and subjectivities. This privileges

88 and specializes the subject in terms of its membership category as a subordinated

voice. Knowledge forms and knowledge relations are translated as social

standpoints and power relationships between groups. This is more a sociology of

knowers and their relationships than of knowledge, (p. 190)

A form of perspectivism, “voice discourse” or “the discourse of voice” suggests that knowledge claims are relative to a culture, form of life, or standpoint. Moore and Muller

(1999) argue that within the approach, knowledge becomes subsumed under knowing, as experience is privileged and attached to category membership. Greatly influenced by postmodern and poststructuralist theory with its emphasis on both discourse and identity, this type of approach takes voice as its central metaphor.

According to Moore and Muller (1999), “voice discourse” was spurred by those seeking progressive reforms to pedagogy. Initiated through New Sociology of Education debates, as exemplified by the “new” sociology of Young (1971) on the one hand and the philosophical perspectives of Peters and Hirst (1970) on the other, the “voice discourse” approach is now often associated with anti-sexist, multi-cultural, and postcolonial education and various postmodern critiques of the Enlightenment Project and grand narratives. Specifically, Moore and Muller (1999) trace the history of “voice discourse” from the New Sociology of Education arguments in the early 1970s, which in conversation with “sociology of knowledge” illuminated the latent class base and form of

“insulated knowledge codes” (p. 190). Such analyses helped prompt feminist critiques in the late 1970s regarding the gendered nature of educational relations and masculinist biases of previous class analyses. These critiques were followed by race-based analyses.

Soon the primary identity categories linked to these critiques, including “women” and

89 “blacks,” splintered. Diversity and difference were lauded, and identity politics emerged with its various hyphenated selves in tow. No longer given special status, universalism and objectivity were instead conceived as but the standpoints and interests of dominant groups. Within the sociology of knowledge framework “the voice of reason (revealed as that of the ruling class white heterosexual male) is reduced simply to one among many, of no special distinction,” contend Moore and Muller (p. 191). In sum, the birth of “voice discourse” corresponds with the emergence of the “phenomenologically inspired New

Sociology of Education in the early 1970s to postmodernism today” (p. 189).

Freire is recognized as a key theorist in development of the Sociology of

Education (Demaine, 1980), and as such, I find a noteworthy resonance between Freire’s distinct interest in and sustained discussion regarding dialogue—“dialogical education”

(2007, p. 97) in particular, within his most famous text Pedagogy of the Oppressed

(1968/2007)—and the simultaneous focus on voice within the New Sociology of

Education more generally. While it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to trace all the pathways in the development of metaphors and organizing principles within movements and areas of inquiry, we might reasonably assume some relationship between the distinct concern for voice within the New Sociology of Education and Freire’s theoretical discussions concerning dialogue, which are part of that body of pedagogical and epistemological literature that emerged within the early 1970s. Indeed, I would argue, dialogue implies the presence of voice, either literally or metaphorically, or both.

My suggestion is that Freire’s emphasis on dialogue likely contributed to an interest in, and language regarding, voice that proliferates within the New Sociology of Education.

Given this, I include a discussion of Freire as a way of both elucidating his understanding

90 of dialogue and providing some theoretical context for Giroux’s voice-related theory.

(As mentioned, Lensmire and Snaza [2006] also directly name Freire as a major contributor to the development of the voice metaphor.) Certainly Giroux, potentially more than any other New Sociology of Education theorist, has developed and centralized

ideas about voice. Not incidentally, I think, one of Giroux’s greatest influences is Freire, and Freirian understandings of dialogue run through much of his work.

Paulo Freire63

While Giroux was the first to use the term “critical pedagogy” (Simandan, 2011), Freire

is considered the founder of the field (Guilherme, 2002; Kincheloe, n.d.). He is a major

figure not only in the development of educational discourse, but also, as I argue (in

relation), in the development of contemporary voice discourse. Consider, for example,

Macedo’s (2007) testimony as articulated within his introduction to Freire’s most popular

book, Pedagogy o f the Oppressed (originally published in 1968), regarding the

transformative effect of the text on his life. Macedo confesses that, before his exposure

to Freire’s theory, he lacked a language to critically analyze his own colonized cultural

experience. Reflecting on Freire’s critique of the “‘banking’ concept of education” (p.

72)64 and his transformative problem-posing alternative, Macedo comments, “This

offered to me—and all of those who experience subordination through an imposed

assimilation policy—a path through which we come to understand what it means to come

to cultural voice” (p. 12). Although Freire rarely directly uses the voice metaphor per se

631 recently published a longer version o f the following Freire section as an article entitled, “Impossible Subjects: The Figure o f the Animal in Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (Corman, 2011). 64 The “banking” concept of education refers to the “scope of the action allowed to...students [that] extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing deposits” (Freire, 2007, p. 72).

91 in Pedagogy o f the Oppressed , the related idea of dialogue serves as the central organizing principle of the entire text, and given his great influence on a number of major theorists who have developed voice discourse, such as hooks and Giroux, his work is especially important to examine.

Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed lays out a pedagogical methodology for liberation that is defined by and grounded in dialogue. This practice is necessary to

Freire’s central goal: the actualization of the fully liberated, and, thus, fully human

Subject. The notion of the Subject is inseparable from Freire’s conceptualization of humanity, such that “subjectivity” and “humanity” can easily be understood as synonyms throughout the text. In this way, his pedagogical approach not only precludes nonhuman animals from liberation, but also from any consideration of their subjectivities. Animal subjectivities become unthinkable within his paradigm. The Subject is an agential, transforming, and communicative being: These are capacities that are essential to what it means to be human, according to Freire.

Throughout Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire’s dialogical education, or

“problem-posing education” (p. 40) is set against what he calls the fundamentally flawed

“antidialogical and non-communicative ‘deposits’ of the banking method of education”

(p. 109), which supports the polarization of students from teachers. It is this fundamental contradiction that Freire seeks to redress; he argues, “banking education maintains and even stimulates the contradiction...which mirrors oppressive society as a whole” (Freire, p. 73).

Macedo (2007) observes that critique rests at the heart of Freire’s “dialogical education” or “dialogical practice,” the pedagogical approach that is explained

92 throughout Pedagogy o f the Oppressed. Macedo emphasizes this point in response to educators within the United States who he claims, despite their allegiance to the pedagogy, ultimately misinterpret Freire’s approach, such that they disproportionately celebrate lived experience while neglecting its relationship to history, agency, and power:

“[E]ducators who misinterpret Freire’s notion of dialogical teaching also refuse to link experiences to a politics of culture and critical democracy, thus reducing their pedagogy to a form of middle-class narcissism” (Macedo, 2007, pp. 17-18). Conversely, dialogue

(in the Freirian sense of the term) is a continual process intended to produce a fuller

understanding of the object of knowledge, which is named and engaged by a given

learning community. As part of that process, Freire’s pedagogical orientation values lived

experience, yet the public articulation of experience is not regarded as an end goal

(Macedo, 2007).

As alternatives to oppressive banking-style education, Freire discusses both

subjectivity and humanization at length, establishing a stark contrast between his

proposed pedagogy and the banking model he rejects, wherein the dialogical model—an

instrument of liberation—treats the oppressed as Subjects, while the banking model—an

instrument of oppression—regards them as objects. Crucially, instead of natural, fixed,

and inevitable, through dialogical pedagogy, oppressed people come to view reality as

transformable. Freire states, “To resolve the teacher-student contradiction, to exchange

the role of depositor, prescriber, domesticator, for the role of student among students

would be to undermine the power of oppression and serve the cause of liberation” (p. 75).

In Freire’s view, dialogue is the antidote to oppression. It serves as the catalytic

practice that enables the oppressed to become liberated. Whereas the banking model of

93 education dehumanizes the oppressed, the dialogical model humanizes them. It is through dialogue that people—“dialogical man [sic]” and “dialogical human” (p. 168)— become fully actualized as human beings. Consequently, Freire states that “[dialogue is thus an existential necessity” (p. 88). He advises,

The earlier dialogue begins, the more truly revolutionary will the movement be.

The dialogue which is radically necessary to revolution corresponds to another

radical need: that of women and men as beings who cannot be truly human apart

from communication, for they are essentially communicative creatures. (Freire,

2007, p. 128)

Centrally, for Freire, as suggested above, dialogue is the practice that allows people to become more fully human. Indeed, dialogue enables the oppressed to fulfil their true ontological vocation, which is, according to the author, the pursuit of a fuller humanity (p. 85; see also pp. 44, 47, 48, 55). For Freire, “An act is oppressive only when

it prevents people from being more fully human” (pp. 56-57). He also states,

To surmount the situation of oppression, people must first critically recognize its

causes, so that through transforming action they can create a new situation, one

which makes possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity. But the struggle to be

more fully human has already begun in the authentic struggle to transform the

situation. Although the situation of oppression is a dehumanized and

dehumanizing totality affecting both the oppressors and those whom they oppress,

it is the latter who must, from their stifled humanity, wage for both the struggle

for a fuller humanity; the oppressor, who is himself dehumanized because he

dehumanizes others, is unable to lead this struggle, (p. 47)

94 Freire repeats this particular understanding of oppression throughout the text; such dehumanization and oppression are presented as existing concurrently (e.g., pp. 44, 48,

54, 66-67, 145). Freire’s methodology for shifting from oppression to liberation necessarily mirrors a shift from dehumanization to actualization of the (always assumed, and by definition, human) Subject.

In contrast, animals are conceived as incapable of such a shift: They cannot transcend, because it is their very ontological state that represents human non­ actualization. Their environments and species ontology are distinctly and inescapably prescriptive, defined as they are by Freire as lacking the capacities to communicate and to labour: “Animals, which [sic] do not labour, live in a setting which they cannot transcend. Hence, each animal species lives in the context appropriate to it, and these contexts, while open to humans, cannot communicate among themselves” (Freire, p.

125). For Freire, nonhuman animals are never individuals; instead they are defined strictly in terms of species membership: Variability among individuals and group-specific differences among populations within species are flattened. They simply do not exist within Freire’s theoretical paradigm. For humans to remain at the debased animal/object state is to stay dehumanized and oppressed.

Freire’s critiques of leadership provide another example of his dehumanization/oppression pairing. Leadership, even that which is meant to positively serve people for liberatory purposes, reproduces the conditions of oppression by ultimately dehumanizing those it hopes to liberate. Subsequently, liberation must be led from below, motivated and informed by the conscientiza 9ao (critical consciousness) of the oppressed:

95 ...not even the best-intentioned leadership can bestow independence as a gift.

The liberation of the oppressed is a liberation of women and men, not things.

Accordingly, while no one liberates himself by his own efforts alone, neither is he

[sic] liberated by others. Liberation, a human phenomenon, cannot be achieved

by semihumans. Any attempt to treat people as semihumans only dehumanizes

them. When people are already dehumanized, due to the oppression they suffer,

the process of their liberation must not employ the methods of dehumanization,

(pp. 66-67)

Liberation is achieved through true dialogue, which is reflected in the shift from object to Subject, from “beings for others” to “beings for themselves” (p. 74). This is, crucially, a process in which one becomes fully human. Liberation is exclusively available to humans, as only humans can participate in dialogue. Indeed, the essence of humanity lies in this capacity for dialogue: Again, we must remember Freire’s claim,

“[W]omen and men...are essentially communicative creatures. To impede communication is to reduce men to the status of ‘thing’” (p. 128). Further, Freire maintains,

[Dialogue is the essence of revolutionary action. In the theory of this action, the

actors intersubjectively direct their action upon an object {reality, which mediates

them) with the humanization of men [sic] (to be achieved by transforming that

reality) as their objective [italics in original], (p. 135)

Communication is specifically rendered as the critical defining capacity of humanity, as that which differentiates humans from all that is not human. There is a sharp cleavage between “dialogical man” and the rest of nature, which is cast as passive detritus, whose

96 ontology is (constructed by Freire as) predetermined rather than developed and transformed:

Men who are bound to nature and to the oppressor...must come to discern

themselves as persons prevented from being. And discovering themselves means

in the first instance discovering themselves as Pedro, as Antonio, or as Josefa

[italics in original]. This discovery implies a different perception of the meaning

of designations: the words “world,” “men,” “culture,” “tree,” “work,” “animal,”

reassume their true significance. The peasants now see themselves as

transformers of reality (previously a mysterious entity) through their creative

labor. They discover that—as people—they can no longer continue to be “things”

possessed by others, (p. 174)

Succinctly, Freire’s pedagogical method is structured around two major sets of polarized dualisms. On the one side exists oppression, dehumanization, and objectification; on the other side exists liberation, humanization, and Subjectivity.

Dialogue is the necessary catalyst that transitions the oppressed from the first state into the second. Given that the capacities for dialogue and communication are defined exclusively as human capabilities and, crucially, ones which rest at the heart of what it means to be human, we can understand Freire’s pedagogical method as essentially and primarily a humanist discourse.

Related to their inability to communicate and dialogue, another central motif

indicative of animals’ impoverishment, as defined by Freire, relates to their supposed

inability to act as agents or transformers in and of the world (Bell & Russell, 2000).

They are portrayed in strictly passive terms, beings of stimulus and reaction rather than

97 beings of active engagement and response. For example, Freire begins Chapter Four, a chapter dedicated to analysis of the “theories of cultural action which develop from antidialogical and dialogical matrices” (p. 125), with a description of the essential ontological difference that distinguishes humans from nonhuman animals. His differentiation is grounded in an assumption regarding the type of activity in which each respective group can engage: He names animals “beings of pure activity” (p. 124) who do not have the capacity to transform the world, while he names humans as “beings of the praxis ” [italics in original] (p. 125), who, through a combination of action and reflection, transform the world.

Indeed, according to Freire, the “world” does not even exist without human beings to name it as such. He highlights this point through his retelling of a story in which “the peasant” has the epiphany that without human beings to name the world, there is no world. The “world” is made possible only through consciousness, and humans alone have this capacity within Freire’s schema. He recalls,

In one of our culture circles in Chile, the group was discussing (based on a

codification) the anthropological concept of culture. In the midst of the

discussion, a peasant who by banking standards was completely ignorant said:

“Now I see that without man there is no world.” When the educator responded:

“Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that all men on earth were to die, but that the

earth itself remained, together with trees, birds, animals, rivers, seas, the

stars...wouldn’t all this be a world?” “Oh no,” the peasant replied emphatically.

“There would be no one to say: ‘This is a world’.”

The peasant wished to express the idea that there would be lacking the

98 consciousness of the world which necessarily implies the world of consciousness,

(p. 82)

Consequently, we can logically conclude that animals are understood as world-less and without consciousness.

Likewise, we can see Freire’s speciesist bias and his reductive and biologically deterministic construction of animals in his descriptions of the possibility of human development and transformation. Animals and other nonhuman life, such as seeds, develop but they do not transform. Following a discussion of the impacts of cultural invasion, in which oppressors impose their values and understandings onto the oppressed,

Freire offers the following argument. The passage is worth quoting at length due to its revealing layered assumptions regarding nature, animals, and animality:

Thus, while all development is transformation, not all transformation is

development. The transformation occurring in a seed which under favorable

conditions germinates and sprouts, is not development. In the same way, the

transformation of an animal is not development. The transformations of seeds

and animals are determined by the species to which they belong; and they occur in

a time which does not belong to them, for time belongs to humankind.

Women and men, among the uncompleted beings, are the only ones which

develop. As historical, autobiographical, “beings for themselves,” their

transformation (development) occurs in their own existential time, never outside

it. Men who are submitted to concrete conditions of oppression in which they

become alienated “beings for another” of the false “being for himself’ on whom

they depend, are not able to develop authentically. Deprived of their own power

99 of decision, which is located in the oppressor, they follow the prescriptions of the

latter. The oppressed only begin to develop when, surmounting the contradiction

in which they are caught, they become “beings for themselves.” (p. 161)

Stripped of capacities to dialogue, communicate, possess consciousness, transform, and actively transcend their prescribed natural destiny, nonhuman animals are constructed by Freire as ahistorical; this equally negating argument overlaps with themes

I have just discussed, particularly in relationship to transcendence and consciousness.

Occurring just after the text’s midway point, Freire’s diatribe on the ahistoricity of animals acts as a fulcrum for his previous and subsequent speciesist arguments; he

leverages his argument against this central hinge to reinforce the inferiority of animals, and in relation, the unique superiority of humans. Although there are numerous sections throughout Pedagogy o f the Oppressed in which Freire discusses animals, the following

passage certainly offers one of his most sustained and detailed descriptions:

Unable to decide for themselves, unable to objectify either themselves or their

activity, lacking objectives which they themselves have set, living “submerged” in

a world to which they can give no meaning, lacking a “tomorrow” and a “today”

because they exist in an overwhelming present, animals are ahistorical. Their

ahistorical life does not occur in the “world,” taken in its strict meaning; for the

animal, the world does not constitute a “not-I” which could set him apart as an

“I.” The human world, which is historical, serves as a mere prop for the “being in

itself.” Animals are not challenged by the configuration which confronts them;

they are merely stimulated. Their life is not one of risk-taking, for they are not

aware of taking risks. Risks are not challenges perceived upon reflection, but

100 merely “noted” by the signs which indicate them; they accordingly do not require decision-making responses.

Consequently, animals cannot commit themselves. Their ahistorical condition does not permit them to “take on” life. Because they do not “take it on,” they cannot construct it; and if they do not construct it, they cannot transform its configuration. Nor can they know themselves to be destroyed by life, for they cannot expand their “prop” world into a meaningful, symbolic world which includes culture and history. As a result, animals do not “animalize” their configuration in order to animalize themselves—nor do they “de-animalize” themselves. Even in the forest, they remain “being-in-themselves,” as animal-like there as in the zoo.

In contrast, the people—aware of their activity and the world in which they are situated, acting in [the] function of the objectivities which they propose, having the seat of their decisions located in themselves and in their relations with the world and with others, infusing the world with their creative presence by means of the transformation they effect upon it— unlike animals, not only live but exist; and their existence is historical. Animals live out their lives on an atemporal, flat, uniform “prop”; humans exist in a world which they are constantly re-creating and transforming. For animals, “here” is only a habitat with which they enter into contact; for people, “here” signifies not merely a physical space, but also an historical space.

Strictly speaking, “here,” “now,” “there,” “tomorrow,” and “yesterday” do not exist for the animal, whose life, lacking self-consciousness, is totally

101 determined. Animals cannot surmount the limits imposed by the “here,” the

“now,” or the “there.”

Humans, however, because they are aware of themselves and thus of the

world—because they are conscious beings [italics in original]—exist in a

dialectical relationship between the determination of limits and their own

freedom. As they separate themselves from the world, which they objectify, as

they separate themselves from their own activity, as they locate the seat of their

decisions in themselves and in their relations with the world and others, people

overcome the situations which limit them: the “limit situations.” Once perceived

by individuals as fetters, as obstacles to their liberation, these situations stand out

in relief from the background, revealing their true nature as concrete historical

dimensions of a given reality. Men and women respond to the challenge with

actions which Vieira Pinto calls “limit-acts”: those directed at negating and

overcoming, rather than passively accepting, the “given.” (pp. 98-99)

Freire’s denunciation of animals continues further, seemingly unencumbered by any

critical reflection on whether his claims are actually true. Animals are reduced in such a totalizing manner that the richness and agency of their lives is wholly obliterated within

his theoretical framework.

In conclusion, humanist and speciesist65 bias runs throughout Pedagogy o f the

Oppressed. Freire’s text rests upon a foundational anthropocentric prejudice, which

65 According to Ryder (n.d.), who coined the term “speciesism,” “The word refers to the widely held belief that the human species is inherently superior to other species and so has rights or privileges that are denied to other sentient animals....‘Speciesism’ can also be used to describe the oppressive behaviour, cruelty, prejudice and discrimination that are associated with such a belief. In a more restricted sense, speciesism can refer to such beliefs and behaviours if they are based upon the species-difference alone, as if such a difference is, in itself, ajustification.”

102 conceives of humanity’s liberation (the only kind of liberation possible; only humans can be oppressed) as a process of transcending the status of Object, animal, and nature more generally through a dialogical method. Lamenting his anthropocentric “discursive frame of reference,” Bell and Russell (2000) state that according to Freire,

We have the edge over other creatures because we are able to rise above

monotonous, species-determined biological existence. Change in the service of

human freedom is seen to be the primary agenda. Humans are thus cast as active

agents whose very essence is to transform the world—as if somehow acceptance,

appreciation, wonder, and reverence were beyond the pale. (p. 192)

Part of what is troubling is not only his oppressive characterizations of nonhuman animals, but also Freire’s seeming lack of compulsion to justify his ubiquitous normative statements. There is no attempt to “dialogue” with animals, to humbly open to who they are and how they experience their worlds as other scholars attempt (see, for example,

Smuts 2006), for animals are already determined to be incapable of dialogue.

I highlight Freire’s acute disavowal of “the animal” throughout Pedagogy o f the

Oppressed in order to draw attention to the intermingling of his ideas about animality/humanity with his central conceptualization of dialogue, which catalyzes humans into full humanity. Although the obvious humanism within the following authors’ works is also certainly evident, none more pervasively and damningly than

Freire particularly marks and metaphorically sacrifices “the animal” as an essential aspect of their argumentation. While the other authors disregard nonhuman animals by default

(i.e., their ideas about voice are inextricably bound to the human subject), the rampant anthropocentricism and speciesism that infects Pedagogy o f the Oppressed is noteworthy

103 in part because these forms of prejudice and oppression are not critiqued by Giroux and hooks who expressly draw upon this text and Freire more generally in their anti­ oppression theory. Freire’s Pedagogy o f the Oppressed and his ideas about dialogue directly inform key social theorists who articulate ideas about social change through understandings of dialogue and, in relation, voice. Freire’s conceptualization of dialogue is indivisible from his debasement of nonhuman animals. While hooks and Giroux’s writings on voice and dialogue obviously resonate within a larger cultural milieu beyond

Freire, his specific form of humanism is discursively reinforced and perpetuated by these authors by virtue of not questioning his essentialist, prejudicial, and oppressive constructions of animals as they enthusiastically apply Freireian theories of dialogue within their own texts.

Henry Giroux

Critical education scholar Henry Giroux is greatly recognized as working within and building upon the Freirian tradition. He acknowledges that Freire was the first person to give him a language to articulate and subsequently justify the kinds of alternative pedagogy he was enacting as a teacher during the 1960s (Kincheloe, 2007). It was his introduction of Pedagogy of the Oppressed that inspired Giroux to write a review of the text, which was then passed along to Freire, who then contacted Giroux. Thus began

Giroux’s intimate engagement with Freire’s scholarship through research, collaboration, and friendship. As “The Freire Project: The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy” proclaims, “No understanding of critical pedagogy is complete without insight into the seminal role of Henry Giroux” (“Henry Giroux,” n.d.). Not

104 coincidentally, Giroux explicitly places voice at the centre of his arguments (e.g., 1986,

1988, 1991, 2005), though voice discourse also continues to more generally inform educational studies today (e.g., Batchelor, 2006; DePalma, 2008). Indeed, Giroux has written for decades about the “politics of voice” (Giroux, 1986, p. 48), but in a more nuanced way than the “the voice discourse” as characterized by Moore and Muller.

Aligned with the New Sociology of Education, which Moore and Muller (1999) so adamantly dismiss, Giroux contributed to critiques of the traditional or dominant curriculum paradigm and its technocratic rationality (reminiscent of the scientific management) early in his career. He and other critical education theorists pressed questions about empiricism, positivist ideology, rationality, science, and the objectivity of

knowledge (Giroux, 1979).66 For example, as Giroux argues in “Toward a New

Sociology of Curriculum” (1979), within the traditional curriculum paradigm

knowledge appears “objective” in that it is external to the individual and

“imposed” on him or her. As something external, knowledge is divorced from

human meaning and intersubjective exchange. It no longer is seen as something

to be questioned, analyzed, or negotiated. Instead, it becomes something to be

managed and mastered. In this case, knowledge is removed from the self-

formative process of generating one’s own sets of meanings, a process that

involves an interpretive relationship between knower and known....Questions

such as “Why this knowledge?” are superseded by technical questions such as

“What is the best way to learn this given body of knowledge?” (p. 250)

66 Giroux (1979) is careful to acknowledge the early educators who, since the turn of the 20th century, have questioned the ways in which schools and curriculum help reproduce and maintain society’s dominant values. The “new sociology o f curriculum movement” is marked both by increased scope and additional questions rather than the emergence of a novel paradigm.

105 Giroux’s theoretical and practical conceptualization and centralization of voice can be understood as a response to his driving epistemological critique (specifically in relation to curriculum models) as summarized above, which marks his entire career. Namely, his reliance on voice, as he suggests in “Border Pedagogy and the Politics of

Modernism/Postmodernism” (Giroux, 1991), demonstrates an effort to affirm individual and social agency within a postmodern understanding of subjectivity. Pointing directly to voice, Giroux (1991) explains,

To invoke the issue of voice within the politics of difference is not to suggest that

teachers or students speak from a unitary and noncontradictory position. I have

been arguing for years that the category of voice points to a notion of subjectivity

that is contradictory and multiple, produced rather than given. I have insisted on

the notion of voice as a central category in my work because it posits the notion of

subjectivity in postmodern terms without giving up the possibility of individual

and social agency. The category of voice as a referent for both a complex,

contradictory, and multilayered notion of subjectivityand [italics in original] a

view of agency as a practice of self-reflection and social action that is constructed

within but not eliminated within such contradictions have been largely lost on

some of my critics, (p. 79)

In his “Border Pedagogy” essay quoted above and elsewhere (e.g., Giroux, 1986),

Giroux raises the issue of voice specifically (though not exclusively) in relation to students. Voice emerges out of, and is constituted by, students’ knowledge and experience, which is created through an accumulation of collective memories and stories.

Giroux is interested both in affirming and critically interrogating students’ experiences as

106 part of the practice of border pedagogy. The confirmation and examination of students’ voices is significant not only because it illuminates how students identify and make meaning of their lives, but also because it offers a ground (albeit one that shifts) from which to link personal voice to broader historical and social phenomena and to criticize the dominant culture.67 In this way, Giroux’s interpretation of voice is situated rather than free-floating or atomized; yet, importantly, individual voice is never erased or dissolved within the collective.

Border pedagogy is distinctly set against what we might call an “add voice and stir” approach to education, which attempts to simply open a space that permits the inclusion of myriad voices. We hear obvious echoes of Freire here, with Giroux’s notion of voice similarly strongly attached to critique and self-reflection rather than straightforward and uncritical celebration. Giroux (1991) repeatedly underlines this point:

[I]t is not enough for teachers merely to affirm uncritically their students’

histories, experiences, and stories. To take students’ voices at face value is to run

the risk of idealizing and romanticizing them. The contradictory and complex

histories and stories that give meaning to the lives of students are never innocent,

and it is important that they be recognized for their contradictions as well as for

their possibilities, (p. 77)

Giroux strives to acknowledge students’ voices, while simultaneously encouraging a

67 It is easy to corroborate Giroux’s argument that critics fail to appreciate the nuance o f his voice discourse. Even as early as “Radical Pedagogy and the Politics of Student Voice,” Giroux (1986) discusses voice in the context of an “interrogative framework” in which the “knowledge of the ‘other’ is engaged. ..not simply to be celebrated but also to be interrogated with respect to the ideologies it contains, the means of representation it utilizes, and the underlying social practices it confirms” (p. 64). Giroux’s (2005) recent scholarship on voice again demonstrates his textured understanding of voice: “To focus on voice is not meant to simply affirm the stories that students tell, nor to simply glorify the possibility for narration” (p. 73).

107 social and historical critique wherein those same voices are understood as infused with contradictions and absences. The key is to enact a pedagogy that shows how they are

“forged in relations of domination and opposition to the existing structures of power” (p.

77). According to Giroux, his “border pedagogy of postmodern resistance” (p. 72) enacts the most transformative aspects of critical pedagogy. Further, he claims that border pedagogy bridges the emancipatory notion of modernism with a “postmodernism of resistance” (p. 70), and connects pedagogy with a larger struggle for a democratic society.

One of the earliest and most sustained examples of Giroux’s voice discourse and his use of the voice metaphor, the “category of voice” as he writes, is evidenced through his article, “Radical Pedagogy and the Politics of Student Voice” (1986). In this article, as noted above, voice serves as a foundational figure of speech. His voice discourse is ultimately directed toward the development of a more fully realized democratic society.

Heavily informed by Freire and Bakhtin, Giroux’s (1986) article builds toward a discussion of radical pedagogy, with an emphasis on the analysis of what he calls

“student voice,” “school voice,” and “teacher voice.” Before elaborating on these concepts, Giroux offers a critique of conservative and liberal discourses of education, which he argues are joined in their failure to address gender, race, and class discrimination. Considered together, they constitute what he calls the dominant educational discourse. In contrast, Giroux expands on his understanding of radical pedagogy, in which liberatory understandings of voice are nurtured.

Giroux’s (1986) radical pedagogy is forged within a theory of cultural politics.

He endeavours to bring questions of power back into discussions about culture within the

108 context of pedagogical theory. In this way, radical pedagogy attempts to make dominant educational discourses accountable for the oppressive social dynamics that they perpetuate. In service to dominant society’s needs, the dominant educational discourses of schooling neglect to acknowledge how those not served through such processes both mediate and challenge schooling as “an agent of social and cultural control” (p. 57).

Giroux is subsequently interested in theories that will foster the development of schools as “democratic counterpublic spheres” (p. 67).

Within Giroux’s pedagogy, schools are understood as historical and social constructions embedded within a larger social fabric, conceived neither as neutral sites of learning nor as dominant ideology’s acquiescing servants. That is, schools are “places where dominant and subordinate voices define and constrain each other, in battle and exchange, in response to the socio-historical conditions ‘carried’ in the institutional, textual, and lived practices that define school culture and teacher/student experience”

(Giroux, 1986, p. 59). Thus, for Giroux, the construction of a politically-accountable pedagogy that is sensitive to the ways in which language produces student subjectivities and experiences is crucial. Giroux’s radical pedagogy strives to articulate itself as a form of cultural politics, which entails an analysis of how “cultural production is organized within asymmetrical relations of power in schools” (p. 60) and an analysis of the construction of “political strategies for participating in social struggles designed to fight for schools as democratic public spheres” (p. 60). To do this, Giroux focuses on what he calls the discourse of production, the discourse of text analysis, and the discourse of lived cultures, which are three interrelated “fields of discourse” (p. 60) where cultural processes are produced and transformed.

109 Giroux directly addresses voice in his description of “the discourse of lived cultures” (1986, p. 60), which is ultimately oriented toward the creation of a language of possibility. First, through an analysis of lived cultures, radical pedagogues encourage students to attend to the ways in which power and knowledge intersect to diminish subordinate groups. Centrally, students are taught to examine how they are positioned and constituted through the social domain. Second, the discourse of lived cultures also stresses the need for radical pedagogues to conceptualize schools as culturally and politically charged places where students struggle for voice. The purpose of this approach is to place the dominant ideology, and its manifestation through dominant school culture, under a critical pedagogical lens. Such an approach enables dominant school culture to be treated as a set of discourses, a construction composed of privileged voices, which otherwise remain unmarked:

In many cases, schools do not allow students from subordinate groups to

authenticate their problems and experiences through their own individual and

collective voices. As I have stressed previously, the dominant school culture

generally represents and legitimates the privileged voices of the white middle and

upper classes. In order for the radical educators to demystify the dominant culture

and to make it an object of political analysis, they will need to master the

“language of critical understanding.” (Giroux, 1986, p. 65)

Awareness of “the school voice,” “the student voice,” and “the teacher voice,” three ideological spheres and settings, is essential for this demystification process. Giroux argues that the aim is not to obliterate any of the voices and their associated interests, but to critically appreciate their interplay. Taken together, these voices continually collide in

110 the struggle over power, meaning, and authorship. With greater understanding of this voice triad, Giroux suggests that there is greater possibility of positive intervention into

school outcomes, which are related to the dominant school culture, a culture which

privileges certain voices and silences others.

Within Giroux’s theory, the student voice is conceived as a layered collection of varied discourses that radical educators must both legitimate and critically engage by

learning the “polyphonic languages” of their students (Giroux, 1986). This work cannot

be accomplished within the school alone, but must involve an understanding of those

languages as communication practices that are necessarily enmeshed in wider social and

community relations that imbue these multiple languages with dignity and meaning.

School voice includes the “directives, imperatives, and rules that shape particular

configurations of time, space, and curricula within the institutional and political settings

of schools” (Giroux, 1986, p. 65). In Giroux’s framework, radical educators must learn

the intricacies of school voice, and observe the interaction between the dominant school

culture, evidenced through school voice, and the varied aspects of student voice. Such

efforts would mean attending to the ways in which classrooms are arranged and what

curriculum is taught, for example, and how these aspects dynamically combine with

student voice. It is within the interplay between these two disparate voices that one can

gain an understanding of the friction between dominant and oppositional ideologies, and

their mutual shaping.

Finally, teacher voice represents a kind of hinge between student voice and school

voice. Teacher voice refers to educators’ self-awareness of their own positions, values,

histories, cultures, and subjectivities that come to bear on their daily pedagogical

111 interactions. It is through the teacher voice that schools ultimately serve liberatory or oppressive ends; that is, teacher voice determines whether schooling processes are either challenged or reinforced. Depending on its direction, teacher voice can empower or marginalize students. Ideally, teacher voice offers a positive authority that helps students to develop critical consciousness. At worst, even with the best of intentions, teacher voice can be a destructive force that silences students.

For Giroux, teacher voice is positively realized once teachers link their pedagogy to those social movements that are actively involved in the transformation of those ideologies and practices that negatively inform schools and broader society. Thus, in this sense, teacher voice also implies collective efforts for change. In this way, schools can become the “democratic counterpublic spheres” (p. 66) that Giroux wishes them to be:

The notion of voice in this case points to a shared tradition as well as a particular

form of discourse. It is a tradition that has to organize around issues of solidarity,

of teacher and student voice to gain the most emancipatory expression. Thus the

category of teacher voice needs to be understood in terms of its collective political

project as well as in relation to the ways it functions to mediate student voices and

everyday school life. (p. 66)

When analyzed together we can see that within Giroux’s writing, voice is typically figured as a critical orientation directed toward hegemonic forms of knowledge, particularly as manifest within schools and pedagogical paradigms. Yet voice is also a metaphor of self-reflection, a referent to signify the valuation of experience as a ground for knowledge but one that necessarily must also be interrogated. Drawing on postmodern theory, Giroux conceives of voice as a poly-vocal and contradictory notion

112 of subjectivity. Centrally, voice is a bridge that connects the individual to the social sphere, as indicative of larger collective action in service of democracy.

Voice within Feminist Theory

Only as subjects can we speak. As objects, we remain voiceless—our beings defined and interpreted by others, (bell hooks, 1989, p. 12)

In the introduction to Who Can Speak?: Authority and Critical Identity, Roof and

Wiegman (1995) state that although the anthology includes a variety of critical perspectives on the authorization of academic speech, they note that feminism is a common thread running through many of the collection’s essays. The editors name feminists as leaders in the contestation of the “white, middle-class, heterosexual ethos of authority that governs institutional speech” (p. x). Indeed, according to Roof and

Wiegman (1995), as of the mid 1990s, what qualifies a critic to speak about or from a particular position had become the central concern of feminism. Still, feminist theory’s

“voice-speech-speaking” concept and practice, to use Luke’s (1994) phrase, predates these more specific debates. As stated previously, Luke argues that “the concept of voice as a means of empowerment for women” (p. 211) has been a chief aspect of feminist theory since the emergence of the women’s movement in the 1960s.

Some examples of major works within feminist thought on “voice-speech­ speaking” include Lorraine Code’s “Voice and Voicelessness: A Modest Proposal?”

(1998), Carol Gilligan’s (1993, originally 1982) In a Different Voice: Psychological

Theory and Women’s Development, Maria Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman’s (1983)

“Have We Got a Theory for You! Cultural Imperialism, Feminist Theory and the

Demand for the Woman’s Voice,” bell hooks’ Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking

113 Black (1989) and “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness” (1990, 2004),

Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the

Politics of Empowerment (1990), Diana Fuss’ (1990, originally 1989) Essentially

Speaking: Feminism, Nature & Difference), Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s “On Race and

Voice: Challenges for Liberal Education in the 1990s” (1990), and Linda A lcoffs (1991)

“The Problem of Speaking for Others.”

Among the earliest and most widely-recognized feminist contributions to ideas about voice is Carol Gilligan’s (1982) ground-breaking work, In a Different Voice:

Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Alexander, 1989). Although not explicitly stated, in “Voice: The Search for a Feminist Rhetoric of Educational Studies,”

Madeleine Grumet (1990) implies that Carol Gilligan borrowed (and elaborated upon)

Grumet’s use of “voice” in the writing of Gilligan’s essay, “In a Different Voice:

Women’s Conceptions of Self and Morality,” published in 1977 in the Harvard

Educational Review, later developed into the longer book-length text. Grumet’s (1976)

“Another Voice,” the final chapter of her Toward a Poor Curriculum, was published a

year prior to Gilligan’s article. Co-authored with William Pinar, the text argues for

autobiographical studies of educational experience.

Grumet’s (1990) autobiographical narrative within “Another Voice,” which offers

reflection on teaching a seminar, signals a move away from the theoretical and discursive

styles indicative of the previous chapters within the text. As observed by Grumet, she

uses the title to mark “a shift from the expected discourse” (p. 278), the same gesture that

later “reappeared” (Grumet’s word) in Gilligan’s 1977 essay (p. 278). Gilligan’s use of

voice elaborates on Grumet’s, as it also employs “voice” to differentiate between studies

114 that use either male or female subjects in their research regarding the development of conceptions of morality (Grumet, 1990). While Grumet recognizes that she cannot speak for Gilligan, she details her own attraction to voice:

Voice promised presence, contact, and relations that would take place within a

range of another’s hearing. And in that proximity the sound of the voice, the

movement of breath, of teeth and tongue and lips carried the promise of speech.

After all, consciousness raising was never a silent levitation but always grounded

in talk, and in the relations of women who ‘opened up to each other’ and through

‘disclosure’. And so, in the 1970s voice carried with it the promise of cultural

transformation, as it announced resistance to a distant, universalistic knowledge,

and as it provided conversations that generated collective action, (p. 278)

Grumet also describes some of the accomplishments associated with feminists’ use of the term:

It has challenged the methods of social science, literary criticism and history, of

scientific method by reminding us all that texts are generated by speakers hoping

to be heard by imagined listeners. Drawn from the body and associated with

gender, voice splinters the fiction of an androgynous speaker as we hear rhythms,

relations, sounds, stories, and style that we identify as male or female, (p. 278)

Gilligan’s In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development

(1982/1993) had enormous academic and popular impact. 68 In a Different Voice is

68 Ms. named Gilligan “Woman of the Year, 1984,” while both the Democratic and Republican parties used her arguments to explain the gender disparities of various social and behavioural phenomena (Auerbach et al, 1985). “On ‘In a Different Voice’: An Interdisciplinary Forum,” inSigns (1986, pp. 304-333) provides a solid overview of some of the earlier academic responses to Gilligan’s research, including the limitations of her interview sample (i.e., Stack, 1986). Stack alternatively suggests an African-American model of moral development based on her return migration study, which considers the migration o f Black people in

115 primarily occupied with revealing the biases of psychologists who presumed that their theories of human moral development, though based on male accounts, were actually universal human descriptions. Responding in particular to the research of her previous teacher, Lawrence Kohlberg, Gilligan resists studies that repeatedly indicated women’s failure to progress through the scale of moral development. From her point of view, the failure rests not with women but with her predecessors’ skewed theoretical frameworks.

Based on her interviews, Gilligan instead proposes that women have a different conception of morality, and pass through a different but equally valid set of stages in their moral development. She contrasts men’s “ethic of justice” with women’s “ethic of care” as two different, yet interconnected, modes of experience. She explains, “While an ethic of justice proceeds from the premise of equality—that everyone should be treated the same— an ethic of care rests on the premise of nonviolence—that no one should be hurt”

(p. 174). Gilligan describes these two disparate modes as two different voices, while emphasizing that women’s voices have been excluded from theories of human

the United States from the urban Northeast back to the rural South. Gilligan’s notion o f “the different voice of women” (Gilligan, 1993, p. 173) is challenged through Stack’s findings, as they show African-American men and women employ a similar mode of moral reasoning and relatedness. Notably, Stack also uses voice to illustrate her argument, perhaps as a resistant move against Gilligan’s employment o f the term: “Men and women alike redefine and recontextualize moral dilemmas and the principles they use to think about them. These women’s and men’s voices, in unison with one another, appear to be very different from those on which Gilligan and Kohlberg based their models of relatedness and moral reasoning” (1986, p. 324).

For an excellent reflection on the earlier responses to Gilligan’s writing, and a critique o f her later research, particularly Gilligan’sBetween Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationship (co-authored with Jill McLean Taylor and Amy Sullivan, 1997), see Cressida Heyes’ (1997) “Anti-Essentialism in Practice: Carol Gilligan and Feminist Philosophy.” Heyes contends that Gilligan’s readers have often dismissed her work out of hand as essentialist without specific explanation about how her methods or conclusions fit the critique, nor have various critics offered suggestions about how Gilligan might avoid such trappings in the future. Heyes understands the essentialism critique as a necessary corrective to the limitations o f second wave feminist theory, rather than (as purported by many third wave feminists) a vice in itself. According to Heyes, too often when a text suffers the charge of essentialism, the entire project is also disregarded. She laments, “Many third wave feminists tend to throw the baby of political efficacy out with the bathwater o f essentialism. Nowhere is this trend more apparent than with regard to Carol Gilligan’s projects in feminist psychology and politics over the past fifteen years. Gilligan seems quintessentially second-wave in her theory, method and aspirations” (p. 145).

116 development. The inclusion of “the different voice of women” (p. 173) in psychology would provide a fuller, more accurate, and insightful description o f human life. In the final pages of her text, she concludes,

As we have listened for centuries to the voices of men and the theories of

development that their experiences inform, so we have come more recently to

notice not only the silence of women but the difficulty in hearing what they say

when they speak. Yet in the different voice of women lies the truth of an ethic of

care, the tie between relationship and responsibility, and the origins of aggression

in the failure of connection. The failure to see the different reality of women’s

lives and to hear the differences in their voices stems in part from the assumption

that there is a single mode of social experience and interpretation. By positing

instead two different modes, we arrive at a more complex rendition of human

experience which sees the truth of separation and attachment in the lives of

women and men and recognizes how these truths are carried by different modes

of language and thought, (pp. 173-174)

Not only does Gilligan link “voice” to both (modes of) experience and truth, as

noted above, but tied in with these themes, she also intimately links voice to the self.69

For example, in her chapter “Images of Relationship,” Gilligan considers two different

children’s interpretations of responsibility, which were provided during an interview with

Kolhberg. Gilligan argues that if a moral development trajectory were drawn through

both children’s narratives, each would follow a unique path, inextricably bound to their

alternative notions of the self. She subsequently argues that a single account of

69 She surmises that women make moral decisions differently than men because of women’s different conception of the self: Men tend to conceive o f the self as an autonomous and separate being, while women conceive of the self as an “interdependent being whose identity depends on others” (Tong, 1989, p. 162).

117 adolescent growth cannot adequately account for both trajectories. Specifically, Gilligan

states that their differing experiences of connection and separation (key dynamics in their

interpretations of responsibility) align with each child’s “voice of the self’ (p. 39).

Gilligan later connects the “voice of the self’ to “inner judgement” (p. 82), in the context of a discussion about one woman’s transition from a concern for goodness to a concern for truth, which was precipitated by her decision about a second abortion.

“Because the morality of self-sacrifice justified the previous abortion, she must now

suspend that judgement if she is to claim her own voice and accept responsibility for choice,” notes Gilligan (p. 82). Key to this transition is the separation of the voice of the

self from the voices of others; the morality of actions becomes determined not by the judgements of others, “but in terms of realities of its intention and consequence” (p. 83).

As Gilligan reflects,

When I have spoken with women about experiences of conflict, many women

have a hard time distinguishing the created or socially constructed feminine voice

from a voice which they hear as their own. And yet women can hear the

difference. To give up their voice is to give up on relationship and also to give up

all that goes with making a choice. It was partly because of the link between

voice and choice that the Roe v. Wade decision initiated and legitimized a process

of psychological and political growth for many women and men. (p. xvii)

In the original text, Gilligan characterizes the voice of self-sacrifice as “the

conventional feminine voice” (p. 79), which delimits the self and “proclaimfs] its worth on the basis of the ability to care for and protect others” (1993, p. 79). Gilligan does not entirely dismiss this voice, though, as she recognizes its capacity to care for others, yet

118 she also notes its price: suppression of direct expression. In the 1993 edition of In a

Different Voice, she revisits this theme and again underscores the dangers of “the conventional feminine voice,” but in stronger terms. She writes of “false feminine voices” (p. x), typified so well in the image of the Angel of the House (the Victorian ideal of feminine goodness) who is embodied in the woman who speaks and acts only for others. Yet, the Angel’s voice is actually ventriloquized:

The voice of the Angel was the voice of a Victorian man speaking through a

woman’s body. Virginia Woolfs realization that she had to strangle this Angel if

she were to begin writing illuminates women’s need to silence false feminine

voices in order to speak for themselves, (p. x)

According to Gilligan, by speaking for themselves, women release their voices as they shift from selfless discourse to reclamation of the self and an articulation of their own knowledge.

Influenced over the years by the work of voice teachers such as Kristin Linklater

(1976), Gilligan remarks in the anniversary edition of In a Different Voice that she can now more easily explain her meaning of voice. She again explicitly relates voice to the innermost aspect of the self, but she also speaks of voice in increasingly relational and embodied terms. Notably, she also affirms the decidedly humanist project that undergirds her research:

To have a voice is to be human. To have something to say is to be a

person. But speaking depends on listening and being heard; it is an intensely

relational act.

When people ask me what I mean by voice and I think of the question

119 more reflectively, I say by voice 1 mean something like what people mean when

they speak of the core of the self. Voice is natural and also cultural. It is

composed of breath and sound, words, rhythm, and language. And voice is a

powerful psychological instrument and channel, connecting inner and outer

worlds. Speaking and listening are a form of psychic breathing. This ongoing

relational exchange among people is mediated through language and culture,

diversity and plurality. For these reasons, voice is a new key for understanding

the psychological, social, and cultural order—a litmus test of relationships and a

measure of psychological health, (p. xvi)

Although Gilligan’s research is not explicitly addressed by Spelman and Lugones’

(1983) “Have We Got a Theory for You!: Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the

Demand for ‘The Woman’s Voice’”— indeed, the article mentions few feminist theorists by name—the major academic criticisms directed toward Gilligan’s work suggest that the assumptions and assertions of her earlier scholarship were emblematic of a kind of feminism that the authors hoped to challenge. More specifically, while Gilligan (1993) from the onset claims that what she calls a “different voice” is “characterized not by gender but theme” (p. 2), critics contend that regardless of intention, her use of literary examples and research data encourages readers to generalize about men and women.

“Thus,” states Tong (1989), “Gilligan must take some responsibility for the passionate debates occasioned by the publication of In a Different Voice” (p. 166). Similarly, a major debate generated by the text relates to Gilligan’s neglect of racial, class, and various individual differences, despite the fact that the women in her abortion study came from a diversity of backgrounds (Tong, 1989).

120 Maria Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman

Maria Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman dispute feminist theory that postures as representative of all women, while actually being grounded in particular white/Anglo women’s experiences. Throughout their writing voice signifies experience, while race and ethnicity are foregrounded in their arguments. In part, they problematize feminist theory’s use of “the woman’s voice” by writing in “two voices” to acknowledge the differences between the authors: “[W]e saw that the differences between us did not permit our speaking in one voice” (p. 573).70

According to Spelman (“/« the voice o f a white/Anglo woman who has been teaching and writing about feminist theory" [italics in original] [p. 573, 1983), feminists’ demand that “the woman’s voice be heard and attended to” (p. 574) is bom of the desire for more accurate accounts of women’s lives (accounts which have traditionally been excluded from or distorted by male accounts of the world) but also bom of the conviction that articulation of experience is a key indicator of both a self-determining individual and a community. “It has...been claimed that talking about one’s life, telling one’s story, in the company of those doing the same (as in consciousness-raising sessions), is constitutive of feminist method,” remarks Spelman (p. 574).71 Recall, for example,

Grumet’s assertion that “consciousness raising was never a silent levitation but always grounded in talk, and in the relations of women who ‘opened up to each other’ and through ‘disclosure’” (1990, p. 278).

70 The authors flag the beginning of each section with a short description of whose voice is featured below, at times writing in a singular voice and in portions including both authors. 71 Recall, for example, Gilligan’s claim that the “failure to see the different reality of women’s lives and to hear the differences in their voices stems in part from the assumption that there is a single mode o f social experience and interpretation” (1993, p. 173).

121 Spelman acknowledges that historically no women have had a voice, regardless of their race, class, ethnicity, religion, where they live, and independent of era. However,

she underlines that the argument that “women as women” have been silenced and that

“women as women” be heard presumes a woman who does not feel “vulnerable” in

respect to other aspects of her identity, such as ethnicity and sexuality, so that she may

“conceive of her voice simply or essentially as a ‘woman’s voice’” (Spelman, p. 574).

In relation, the demand that “women as women” be heard neglects how some

women’s voices will be heard more than others by those who produce and silence

accounts of women’s lives. Spelman also argues that much of feminist theory is

generated from a select number of women’s experiences or voices. Furthermore, when the experiences of women who are not white or middle-class (and presumably any other privileged social location) do not find resonance within feminist theory, they are not

positioned under the signifier “woman,” rather “they are the voices of the woman as

Hispana, Black, Jew, etc.” (p. 575).72

Lugones (“In an Hispana voice ” [p. 575]) writes specifically about the way

women of colour are simultaneously excluded from and silenced within feminism, and in

relation, how they are “included in a universe [they] have not chosen” (p. 575). For

women of colour, silence stems not just from a lack of presence within the discourse of

white/Anglo women, but from the inadequacies of feminist theory to articulate non­

white/Anglo experiences, so that only expressions of exclusion become possible; under

such circumstances, even these complaints signal silence:

72 Spelman (1983) writes, “feminist theory has not for the most part arisen out of a medley of women’s voices; instead, the theory has arisen out of the voices, the experiences, of a fairly small handful of women, and if other women’s voices do not sing in harmony with the theory, they aren’t counted as women’s voices— rather, they are the voices of the woman as Hispana, Black, Jew, etc.” (p. 575).

122 We and you do not talk the same language. When we talk to you we use your

language: the language of your experience and of your theories. We try to use it

to communicate our world of experience. But since your language and your

theories are inadequate for expressing our experience, we only succeed in

communicating our experience of exclusion. We cannot talk to you in our

language because you do not understand it. So the brute facts that we understand

your language and that the place where most theorizing about women is taking

place is your place, both combine to require that we either use your language and

distort our experience not just in the speaking about it, but in the living of it, or

that we remain silent. Complaining about exclusion is a way of remaining silent,

(p. 575)

bell hooks

bell hooks (1989, 1990) shares many of the same critiques as Lugones and Spelman

(1983) in her writings about voice, including concerns over some feminists’ claims that

all women share a common speech and single voice, concerns over the ways in which women of colour have needed to articulate themselves in a language that is not their own

in order to be heard by white feminists, and concerns over the failure of feminists’ conscious-raising efforts to attend to axes of difference beyond gender, as if gender can ever be a pure category, uncomplicated by other forms of difference. Yet hooks also

writes about voice in other ways, not always directing her critiques at feminism per se. In

Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black 1989),{ for example, hooks additionally discusses voice in her reflections on writing and childhood, particularly meanings

123 associated with speech and voice within certain southern black communities and the gendered and sexualized politics of the family. While voice remains an important concept for hooks (e.g., 2010), Talking Back represents one of her earliest and most sustained commentaries on the idea.

hooks’ “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness” (1990) also draws on similar themes and offers a similar rendering of voice as appears in Talking Back.

Originally published as part of her text Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, her chapter “Choosing the Margin” was later reproduced elsewhere, including within The

Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, edited by

Sandra Harding. The anthology explicitly foregrounds seminal works in feminist standpoint theory. Also, notably, David Harvey (1996) critiques “Choosing the Margin” in his chapter “Historical Agency and the Loci of Social Change,” within Justice, Nature

& the Geography o f Difference. Given that hooks’ chapter is specifically recognized as a key piece of feminist theory and that Harvey directly addresses her use of voice within the piece (especially in his section entitled “voices from the margins” [p. 100]), 1 also offer an analysis of voice construction within “Choosing the Margin.” As noted earlier,

Lensmire and Snaza (2006) also name hooks as a central figure in the development of the

“critical pedagogy version” of the voice metaphor.

Overall, hooks’ uses of voice and particular forms of speech are invariably attached to ideas about resistance to oppression. In other words, resistance and—in intimate conjunction—the full realization of subjectivity/the self binds together all of her voice discourse. For example, the move from object to subject, which hooks (1989) suggests is essential in any liberation struggle, is bound to the articulation of defiant

124 speech or “talking back” (p. 9). Indeed, it is precisely this type of speech that forges social change, and provides a salve for those wounded by oppression, hooks affirms that certain types of speech are action: “It is that act of speech, of ‘talking back,’ that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject—the liberated voice” (p. 9).73

hooks returns to voice to elaborate upon her dismissal of atomized constructions of the self, constructions which are understood as forged in opposition to a negated other.

Alternatively, she stresses the importance of the “collective voice” (p. 31). Challenging individualistic notions, hooks writes of southern black folks’ understanding of the self as dependent and in relation. She was taught to think of the self

not as a signifier of one “I” but the coming together of many “P’s, the self as

embodying collective reality past and present, family and community. Social

construction of the self in relation would mean, then, that we would know the

voices that speak in and to us from the past, that we would be in touch with what

Paule Marshall calls “our ancient properties”—our history. Yet it is precisely

those voices that are silenced, suppressed, when we are dominated. It is this

collective voice we struggle to recover. Domination and colonization attempt to

destroy our capacity to know the self, to know who we are. We oppose this

violation, this dehumanization, when we seek self-recovery, when we work to

reunite fragments of our being, to recover our history, (hooks, 1989, p. 31)

73 Although hooks had neither claimed that black women have not been silent within their own communities, nor that their goal is the emergence from silence, she nonetheless configures the object to subject transition as a move from silence to speech.

125 The understanding of the self as in relation is well illustrated through the practice of dialogue, which hooks calls “necessarily a liberatory expression” (p. 24). Dialogue for hooks, perhaps more than any other action, is key to “education for critical consciousness,” a central theme of Talking Back. Though absent in relations between mother and child, or mother and male authority figure, dialogue (which hooks defines as the sharing of speech and recognition) did occur among black women throughout her childhood, hooks enthusiastically writes about the dialogue she witnessed in her younger years, and her strong urge to participate in these interactions. Recalling the lively exchanges among women, she writes,

The intimacy and intensity of their speech—the satisfaction they received from

talking to one another, the pleasure, the joy. It was in this world o f woman

speech, loud talk, angry words, women with tongues quick and sharp, tender

sweet tongues, touching our world with their words, that I made speech my

birthright—and the right to voice, to authorship, a privilege that would not be

denied, (hooks, 1989, p. 6)

The conversations that took place in the “church of the home” (p. 5), the “world of woman talk” (p. 5), differed from the male-dominated church. Here it was women who preached and determined how life was to be conducted. As a child, hooks yearned to establish her place within this discourse:

It was in that world of woman talk (the men were often silent, often absent) that

was bom in me the craving to speak, to have a voice, and not just any voice but

one that could be identified as belonging to me. (p. 5)

126 Such an achievement would not come without significant struggle. As a child,

hooks’ earliest articulations of resistance were actively suppressed. The expression

“talking back” and “back talk” referred to the act of speaking to an authority figure as an equal (hooks, 1989, p. 5). Such courageous behavior, given that children (especially

girls) were meant to be seen and not heard, was often met with physical and verbal punishment:

To make my voice, I had to speak, to hear myself talk—and talk 1 did—darting in

and out of grown folks’ conversations and dialogues, answering questions that

were not directed at me, endlessly asking questions, making speeches. Needless

to say, the punishments for these acts of speech seemed endless. They were

intended to silence me—the child—and more particularly the girl child. Had I

been a boy, they might have encouraged me to speak believing that I might

someday be called to preach. There was no “calling” for talking girls, no

legitimized rewarded speech, (pp. 5-6)

Throughout hooks’ theory, the struggle for voice is set against resistance to

silence, as touched upon in the previous quotes. Silence, figured as the converse of

voice, is disciplinary. For example, according to hooks, as a child she was taught a talk that was actually a kind of silence. That is, certain types of talk were acceptable and

others were dangerous. She explains that she was encouraged to speak, but only within

certain defined boundaries. “1 was never taught absolute silence, I was taught that it was

important to speak but to talk a talk that was in itself a silence,” she explains (p. 7). More

precisely, some speech and writing might be rewarded, such as the recitation of a poem at

church, but the questioning of authority invariably returned punishment; further, talking

127 about topics deemed inappropriate raised the specter of madness (and institutionalization) for girls who disobeyed. In this way, hooks again distinguishes between ordinary talk and “defiant speech” (p. 7), which posed both physical and mental risks. Her parents rendered their punishments of defiant speech as necessary actions to break her spirit.

The speech associated with talking back was actively suppressed by others so that it would be replaced with the “right speech of womanhood” (hooks, 1989, p. 3). Yet unlike women from WASP backgrounds, contends hooks, the “right speech of womanhood” does not equal silence for women within black communities. From her perspective, black women struggle not against silencing, but the ways in which their voices have been ignored. She argues, “Certainly for black women, our struggle has not been to emerge from silence into speech but to change the direction and nature of our speech, to make a speech that compels listeners, one that is heard” (hooks, p. 6).

Rather than silence, hooks maintains that black women’s “right speech of womanhood” was more akin to the soliloquy, in which their speech is not truly received or acknowledged. “Unlike the black male preacher whose speech was to be heard, who was to be listened to, whose words were to be remembered,” insists hooks, “the voices of black women—giving orders, making threats, fussing—could be tuned out, could become a kind of background music, audible but not acknowledged as significant speech” (p. 6).

Still, for hooks, much depends on context: Although she maintains that black women’s struggle has not been to emerge from silence into speech within black communities, she often expresses resistance to colonialism, white patriarchy, and oppressive forms of feminism, in exactly these sorts o f terms. For instance, in Talking

Back, hooks positions herself alongside various so-called Third World writers, such as

128 Alicia Partnoy, Nawal el Sa’adawi, and Theresa Had Cha, who emphasize the primacy of speech and voice as resistance to being silenced. She writes, “Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, and those who stand and struggle side by side a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible,” (p. 9). In her reflections on so-called Third World literature, specifically in response to reading One Day o f Life by El Salvadoran writer Manlio Argueta, she

underscores that “speaking freely, openly has different meaning for people from exploited and oppressed groups” (1989, p. 13).

Not surprisingly, hooks (1989) names writing as a major means by which she personally came to voice. Although she argues that the experience of “talking back” as a child prepared her for the challenges she would face as a writer, these earlier efforts could

not fully stave off the impacts of harsh critiques of her work, and the accompanying

silence that then threatened to descend upon her (hooks, 1989). After her first book A in ’t

I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism was so negatively received, hooks again felt her

spirit threatened, her being pushed into silence. She came to realize that her feelings

were not uncommon. Pointing to nervous breakdowns, emergent unproductiveness, and the silence experienced by other black women and women of colour writers, hooks notes the particular risks (and benefits) that can occur when a writer from an oppressed group

speaks:

For us, true speaking is not solely an expression of creative power; it is an act of

resistance, a political gesture that challenges the politics of domination that would

render us nameless and voiceless. As such, it is a courageous act— as such, it represents a threat. To those who wield an oppressive power, that which is

threatening must necessarily be wiped out, annihilated, silenced, (p. 8)

As illustrated above, while some of hooks’ (1989) most concentrated ruminations on voice and speech appear in regards to her reflections on childhood and writing, her interpretation of these sites or homes of voice are invariably informed by a feminist analysis. Yet importantly, too, feminism itself is a major site where hooks critically engages ideas about voice, noting feminists’ particular preoccupation with the idea.

Though not unsympathetic to their attraction, she is ultimately dissatisfied with the ways in which many have employed voice. Consequently, while significant portions of

Talking Back, for example, are grounded in arguments related to coming to voice, she sharply distances herself from some feminists’ interpretations, which she states can be quite cliche, particularly when they presume that all women share a common speech or that “all women have something meaningful to say at all times” (p. 12). hooks distinguishes the “liberatory voice,” “defiant speech,” “back talk,” and “radical voice” (p.

28) from such feminist efforts, which have tended to prioritize the act of speaking over the content of speech. In response, at the end of her chapter, ‘“When I was a Young

Soldier for the Revolution’: Coming to Voice” from Talking Back, hooks (1989) emphasizes the importance of content over form, especially given the historical and political context of the feminist movement in the late 1980s. While hooks is clearly glad that women of colour are being asked to share their experiences within feminist circles— indeed, she strongly encourages them to do so— she also offers a caution:

It is important that we speak. What we speak about is more important. It is our

responsibility collectively and individually to distinguish between mere speaking

130 that is about self-aggrandizement, exploitation of the exotic ‘other,’ and that

coming to voice which is a gesture of resistance, an affirmation of struggle, (p.

18) hooks argues that “coming to voice” is different for women from oppressed groups

(implying that not all women are oppressed?), again emphasizing that such expressions are acts of resistance. Writing specifically in reference to such women, hooks suggests,

Speaking becomes a way to engage in active self-transformation and a rite of

passage when one moves from being object to being subject. Only as subjects can

we speak. As objects, we remain voiceless—our beings defined and interpreted

by others, (p. 12)

Similar to Lugones’ (1983) contention that women of colour are forced to use the

language of white/Anglo women to describe their experiences, because where “most theorizing about women is taking place is [their] place” (p. 575), hooks critiques the ways in which voice can be usurped and diluted by powerful groups. Writing at times more generally than Lugones and Spelman, though still implicitly offering a critique of feminist discourse, hooks challenges “the appropriation of the marginal voice” (p. 14) by the “majority group” (p. 14). Longing to be heard, the marginal voice modifies itself in an effort to be understood and to placate, yet this process inadvertently reaffirms oppressive epistemologies. Considered this way, the use of the dominant language not only distorts experience, as Lugones argues, but actually reinforces domination.

hooks (1990) directly critiques some of the dominating tendencies within feminist theory in “Choosing the Margin” within her discussion on appropriation, which she

suggests is (in such manifestations) a kind of colonization disguised as liberation. Her

131 critiques are articulated in part, again, through a contestation of the voice metaphor within feminist theory. Specifically, according to hooks, many feminists’ attraction to voice and their desire to highlight the voices of the oppressed, have legitimated only certain kinds of voices, only certain kinds of stories. These voices are only allowed to speak within the paradigm of victimization and suffering. The voice of the oppressed is frequently co-opted by colonizers, as when various feminists appropriate this voice in their discourse about the “Other,” while simultaneously naming themselves as radical critical thinkers (1990):

Often this speech about the “Other” annihilates, erases: “No need to hear your

voice when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No

need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. 1 want to know your

story. And then 1 will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such

a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you, I write myself anew. I

am still author, authority. I am still the colonizer, the speaking subject, and you

are now at the centre of my talk. (p. 158) hooks pushes back against these sorts of gestures, re-articulating the ways in which those who, in the name of liberation, have refused the agency and resistance of the oppressed, seemingly for their own good:

Silenced. We fear those who speak about us, who do not speak to us and with us.

We know what it is like to be silenced. We know that the forces that silence us,

because they never want us to speak, differ from the voices that say speak, tell me

your story. Only do not speak in a voice of resistance. Only speak from that

132 space in the margin that is a sign of deprivation, a wound, an unfulfilled longing.

Only speak your pain. (p. 159)

As a method of liberation, as a means of resistance, and a constructive response to such appropriation, hooks supports the resurrection of small-scale consciousness-raising groups, whose popularity has waned within the feminist movement. Like Giroux’s (e.g.,

1986, 1991, 2005) interpretation of voice as inseparable from a practice of self-reflection, hooks also emphasizes that personal expression must be coupled with reflexive critique, one that entails a dialectical process. This mode of critical dialogue helps realize the radical potential of the feminist axiom “the personal is political,” which hooks claims has largely failed to link women with a larger, constructive politics:

Longing for self-recovery, not simply the description of one’s woundedness,

one’s victimization, or repeated discussion of the problems, many women simply

became disillusioned and disinterested in feminism, uncertain about whether

feminism was really a radical movement, (pp. 32-33)

Naming one’s pain in the absence of a greater over-arching “education for critical consciousness” fails to adequately situate women’s individual experiences within larger complex structures of domination, and fails to provide “substantive models and strategies” (p. 33) for social change. Such a process frustrates rather than empowers. As hooks explains in her meditations on identity politics, she does not deny the usefulness of

“giving voice to one’s experience” (1989, p. 180) as an initial stage in the politicization process, but such efforts must necessarily be linked to the examination of structures of domination and their function. The formation or discovery of identity for oppressed people should not be an end goal. “To reaffirm the power of the personal while

133 simultaneously not getting trapped in identity politics,” concludes hooks, “we must work to link personal narrative with knowledge of how we must act politically to change and transform the world” (p. 111).

Although it is clear that hooks’ emphasis on voice and speech tropes do not solely stem from a desire to challenge certain feminists’ use of the term, the ways in which she writes about voice are meant in part to squarely challenge feminists’ particular celebration of the idea, specifically in relation to consciousness-raising as a (at one time) key practice in the women’s movement and other scenarios in which women are encouraged to speak, hooks’ insistence on the valuation of different kinds of voices, ones not exclusively rooted in victimization (which is later re-presented to black women in an appropriated form), is apparent in her reclamation of the idea, through intentionally modified forms, such as in her descriptions of “voices[s] of resistance,” etc. Indeed, as hooks notes, “language is also a place of struggle” (p. 153), as is evidenced in her critiques of feminism and its appropriating incarnations. In hooks’ theory, feminist dedication to voice is maintained, but refigured (according to the author) in more empowering terms.

In summary, hooks’ “voice discourse” is foremost associated with notions of resistance. Specifically, such repeated phrases and central tropes including “defiant speech,” “talking back,” “radical voice,” “voice of resistance,” etc. (as but a few salient examples)74 name resistance not only to white patriarchy and hegemony writ large, but

74 hooks’ discourse enacts a slippage among the signifiers “language,” “speech,” “talk,” and “voice,” paired with various qualifiers (such as in “radical” voice and “defiant” speech): These terms are often used interchangeably. Such expressions are continually juxtaposed against silence, as discussed previously, as those gestures which confront its disavowal.

134 also specifically to patriarchy within black communities and those who appropriate, colonize, and (attempt to) silence the voices of marginalized girls and women.

Patricia Hill Collins

Like hooks, Patricia Hill Collins is also a central figure within U.S. black feminist theoretical traditions, and also feminist standpoint traditions (Bowell, 2011). She articulates a variety of political and social concerns through her ruminations on voice.

For example, Collins’s Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the

Politics of Empowerment (1990) arguably not only made a significant contribution to feminist theory, but also greatly developed a feminist understanding of voice, especially in relationship to black women. For Collins, voice is foremost indicative of self­ definition and the articulation of a black feminist standpoint, two interrelated and key themes throughout the text, which are detailed throughout the following section.

The similarities between the ways in which Collins and hooks engage voice are striking. For example, additional shared discursive themes within Collins’s Black

Feminist Thought and hooks’ Talking Back, include (but are not limited to) discussions about voice in relationship to notions of reclamation, the particularity of black women’s voices (and how their struggle for voice is different than white women’s and black men’s struggles), resistance to oppression/hegemony, specific resistance to the particular marginalization and appropriation of black women’s perspectives within white feminism, the disruption of victim narratives (in which only stories of suffering are heard by white feminism), spatiality (i.e., voice is found, articulated, and cultivated in particular spaces, such as the “space on the margins” [hooks, 1990] and “safe spaces” [Collins, 1990]),

135 writing as a key site or mode for the expression of black women’s voices, relationality and dialogue, the need for self-representation and standpoint, which centrally relate to their theory about the self (in which the self is defined relationally and collectively, rather than in atomistic and strictly-individualistic terms), and the desire for voice in relationship to the individual and collective, and the personal and political.

Voice frames the entirety of Collins’s Black Feminist Thought. Indeed, voice reclamation is named as its over-arching purpose. She begins by tracing the erosion of her own voice, of a voice that once flourished but was worn down over time: Similar to hooks, she opens her text with reflections on childhood and her personal relationship to voice. Here she describes herself as a confident child who masterfully delivered lines for a school play.75 Praised for her accomplishment, she felt that who she was and what she thought mattered; yet as she grew older and as her world grew larger, she felt smaller and became quieter, almost to a point of total silence. She explains that the dominant culture aggressively and severely devalued her as an African American, working class woman.

Subsequently, reflecting on her past, she writes, “This book reflects one stage in my ongoing struggle to regain my voice” (p. xi). Yet although Black Feminist Thought was sparked by Collins’s own desire for voice, she soon realized her experiences echoed beyond an individual level, and sounded in the lives of other African American women:

“[T]he voice that 1 now seek is both individual and collective, personal and political, one reflecting the intersection of my own unique biography with the larger meaning of my historical times” (Collins, p. xii).

Mirroring Lugones and Spelman’s (1983) and hooks’ (1989, 1990) similar

75 In contrast, it is interesting to note that for hooks (1989), a similar sort o f childhood recitation is discussed early within Talking Back as a kind o f talk “that was in itself a silence” (p. 7), whereas Collins describes such a practice as an expression of confidence.

136 observation, Collins argues that oppressed groups are often only heard when they use the language of the dominant group, but by doing so, the meaning of the oppressed groups’ ideas are often distorted, while the work of the dominant group is promoted.

Consequently, she grounds her analysis within “multiple voices” (p. xiii) of African

American women, placing their experiences, ideas, and words at the heart of the text.

She deliberately uses direct quotes extensively throughout in an effort to foreground this multiplicity. According to Collins, her approach highlights the long history o f their intellectual community and disrupts the tendency to canonize a few black women as spokespeople (Collins, 1990).

Despite Collins’ methodological inclusion of many voices, she acknowledges her strategic choice not to stress the contradictions, disagreements, and inconsistencies within black feminist thought given the political and intellectual forces that challenge such theory’s very existence. Thus, she positions her “overly coherent” (p. xiv) presentation of ideas as a response to a particular historical moment. Nonetheless, she grapples with her representation of such a vast community. As she began to write, she wondered,

‘“How can I as one person speak for such a large and complex group as African-

American women?”’ (p. xiv). In response, she stresses the need for self-representation and standpoint, and maintains that she not speak for the entire group because “each of us must leam to speak for herself’ (p. xiv). Thus, she situates her work as part of a larger process, “one voice in a dialogue among many people who had been silenced” (pp. xiv- xv). She ends the book’s preface with the hope of recapturing elements of her voice, but also with the greater hope that those who were and are silenced will find their voices: “I, for one, certainly want to hear what they have to say” (p. xv).

137 In addition to the preface, Collins addresses voice most consistently and directly

in the chapter “The Power of Self-Definition” (pp. 91-114). Here she again describes the particular importance of voice to black women, and to the creation of a black feminist standpoint. Collins maintains that black women have historically turned inward toward their own communities and toward their own consciousness in their search for voice, in contrast with black men who tend to journey outside of their communities in their searches. The process of finding a voice, of becoming self-defined, is enacted through active opposition to the many negative “controlling images” (p. 92), such as those of mammies and matriarchs, which the dominant culture portrays.

Concomitantly, while finding voice is figured as an act of resistance by Collins and arguably by some other black women, Collins suggests that silence is not synonymous with submission within the “tradition of a self-defined black women’s consciousness” (p. 92). For example, she includes an anecdote by Marita Bonner who describes the act of quietly sitting, her public exterior masking a rich inner world: ‘“ Like

Buddha—who brown like I am—sat entirely at ease, entirely sure of himself; motionless and knowing....Motionless on the outside. But inside?’” (as cited in Collins, p. 92).

According to Collins, consciousness itself has been a place of freedom for black women.

From Collins’ (1990) perspective, most African-American women refuse to define themselves by the dominant culture’s controlling images and do not regard themselves as helpless victims of oppression. An appreciation of the contradictions between the controlling images and black women’s self-definition helps reveal the former as constructions. Even though black women are often considered outspoken and assertive speakers,76 finding a voice to express a self-defined black Women’s standpoint nonetheless occupies a central position in black feminist thought (Collins, 1990). Collins contrasts black women’s search for voice as different from white women’s struggle; for example, unlike white women who may find positive images of themselves reflected within “the cult of true womanhood” (p. 95), the consistency of negative images associated with black women necessitates that positive images be found outside of dominant cultural frames.

In the section, “Safe Spaces and Finding a Voice,” Collins (1990) outlines three major sites where black women have spoken freely, and are thus able to self-define and draw strength to resist the controlling images perpetuated by oppressive dominant ideologies: within black women’s relationships with one another, within black women’s blues tradition, and within the voices of black women writers. “By advancing Black women’s empowerment through self-definition, the safe spaces housing this culture of resistance help Black women resist the dominant ideology promulgated not only outside

Black communities but within African-American institutions,” argues Collins (p. 95).

Echoing hooks (1989), Collins (1990) first focuses on black women’s relationships with each other in her analysis of what she calls safe spaces, or locations of safe discourse, where black women have found a voice. She writes about the self- affirming role that friends, mothers and daughters, and women within the broader black community provide. Here Collins discusses voice in relational terms, contrasting voice against writing. In writing, one can assume an anonymous “nameless, faceless audience”

(p. 98), whereas using one’s voice requires a listener. Black women are in the best

76 Collins (1990) ties this phenomenon to the Afrocentric expectation that men and women should contribute to the public sphere.

139 position to listen, “to see and hear the fully human Black woman” (p. 98), and thus enable transcendence above society’s objectification of black women as the Other.

Following the scholarship of Mary Helen Washington, Collins also asserts that the tendency among African American women, such as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, to write literature about the relationships between African American women further

illustrates her point.

Music is a second major site where black women have self-defined and developed

a culture of resistance, particularly within the black women’s blues tradition (Collins,

1990). Collins repeatedly ties the significance of this site back to Afrocentric oral

tradition and communication. She highlights the symbiotic relationship between the

individual and collective, as the individual integrity of the personal voice is nourished

within the context of music as a group activity. In particular, she notes that the blues has

been especially vital for black women’s self-definition, whereby the singer opens a space

for analysis while she also foregrounds her personal expression.

According to Collins, the classic blues singers of the 1920s, most of whom were

women, extended the reach of traditional Afrocentric oral culture, where songs were

“originally sung in small communities, where boundaries distinguishing singer from

audience, call from response, and thought from action were fluid and permeable” (p.

100). The recordings from the early 1900s offered other black women access to a black

women’s standpoint at a time when literacy among African Americans was especially

low, and thus helped to disseminate information otherwise not readily available. Honing

in further, Collins considers how the lyrics of a number of black women blues singers,

including Ma Rainey, Sara Martin, and Billie Holiday, countered prevailing stereotypes

140 about African American women, validated their own perspectives, and at times directly

engaged with political issues such as racial conflict. However, as the blues is

increasingly commodified, appropriated, and divorced from the African American oral

tradition, Collins argues that literature is emerging as an ever larger third location where

black women can represent a self-defined standpoint. Increased literacy rates among

African Americans helped black women remold “former institutional sites of domination

such as scholarship and literature into institutional sites of resistance” (Collins, 1990, p.

102).

The third site of voice, the black women’s writing community, carries forward themes and approaches developed by blues singers and by earlier black women writers

(Collins, 1990). Firmly established since 1970, and oriented toward other black women, this literary community frequently tackles taboo topics, such as those relating to

lesbianism, incest, and interracial relationships, etc. Despite the development of the community, including the emergence of black feminist literary theory, Collins notes that

some critics charge that black women writers are not “using the full range of their voices to create safe spaces” (p. 103). For example, black literary critic Sondra O ’ Neale maintains that contemporary black women’s literature has not emphasized those strengths key to black women’s survival, as women represented within the literature still tend to be portrayed in roles imposed upon them by the dominant culture, “always on the fringes of society, always alone” (as cited in Collins, p. 103). Consequently, Collins calls on black women writers to create progressive art, taking inspiration from the “Afrocentric tradition of struggle,” with the goal of social emancipation (p. 103). Collins directly returns to voice in the book’s conclusion within the context of a discussion about black feminist thought, epistemology, and empowerment. In the final pages, she contrasts her description and analysis of black feminist thought against both positivist science and earlier standpoint theories (grounded in Marxist positivism), which professed one universal truth, and relativism, which presumed the equality of all competing knowledge claims. Drawing on Michel Foucault and Donna Haraway’s theories of subjugated knowledge, she suggests black feminist thought provides a third approach to ascertaining truth, whereby black women’s perspectives are privileged as an act of de-centering dominant group ideology and valued for their insight into “the matrix of domination” (p. 234), including their knowledge regarding empowerment and

resistance.

However, again drawing on Haraway, Collins also underscores that subjugation

itself is not the basis of an epistemology and subjugated knowledge is not beyond critical

analysis. She claims that black women’s knowledge of domination is “only one angle of

vision” (p. 234) and represents a “partial perspective” (p. 234). She states succinctly,

“Partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard; individuals and groups

forwarding knowledge claims without owning their position are deemed less credible than those who do” (p. 236). In the section “Dialogue and Empathy,” Collins’

interpretation of voice helps to reinforce her argument:

Dialogue is critical to the success of this epistemological approach, the type of

dialogue extant in the Afrocentric call-and-response tradition whereby power

dynamics are fluid, everyone has a voice, but [everyone] must listen and respond

to other voices in order to be allowed to remain in the community, (pp. 236-237)

142 Relational and community-based, voice is understood by Collins as a situated phenomenon. In this way, her treatment of voice eloquently mirrors her contextualization of Afrocentric feminist thought, which she demonstrates as situated within particular political and economic realities.

Notably, Collins (2000) returns to the language of voice in the preface of the 2nd edition of Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics o f

Empowerment. She shifts from wanting to “regain [her] voice” (1990, p. xi) to the useful mobilization of voice. Reflecting on the difficulties she faced when writing the first edition, she remarks, “Then my concerns centered on coming to voice, especially carving out the intellectual and political space that would enable me to be heard” (Collins, 2000, pp. xii-xiii). She concludes her 2nd preface with the following re-articulation of her project, again relying on voice to express the objectives of her work:

1 remain less preoccupied with coming to voice because I know how quickly

voice can be taken away. My concern now lies in finding effective ways to use

the voice that 1 have claimed while 1 have it. Just as I confront new challenges,

new challenges also face U.S. Black women and Black feminist thought as our

self-defined knowledge. Because Black feminist thought is created under greatly

changed conditions, 1 worry about its future. However, as long as Black feminist

thought, or whatever terms we choose in the future to name this intellectual work,

remains dedicated to foster both Black women’s empowerment and broader social

justice, I plan on using my voice to support it. (2000, p. xiii)

143 Concluding Reflections: Critical Pedagogy and Feminist Theory

Although voice certainly resonates outside of both critical pedagogy and feminist theory, the idea has served as a vital connective tissue within these disparate yet overlapping sets of discourses. In terms of the Academy, perhaps no contemporary socio-political theories have relied more extensively on voice: its meanings so hotly contested, thoroughly worked over and often reclaimed by its authors. There is much at stake in voice, as the previous writings attest. These texts give us a strong indication of the meanings attached to voice and its political imports. An analysis of the ways in which the authors develop and rely on voice gives us a richer understanding of the idea, one which cannot be surmised through standard definitions alone. Through an examination of the previous works, we can begin to at least provisionally answer the questions, “What does it mean to have a voice and not have a voice? What kinds of investments are implied through contemporary uses of voice?”

Collectively, as the previous examples indicate, voice is most frequently attached to four major and interpenetrating themes: self/subjectivity (including ideas about self­ definition), experience (specifically the valuation of experiential knowledge), relationality (including ideas about dialogue and bridging the personal with the political, the individual with the collective), and resistance to oppression. Additionally, an implicit, and sometimes explicit, commitment to humanism invariably marks these works, such that voice expression is understood as indicative of realizing one’s humanity.

Despite their divergent theoretical foci, these themes suggest an overall coherence within voice discourse.

144 The kinds of critical pedagogy and feminist theory that are preoccupied with voice are deeply interested and invested in valuation of experience as both an affirmation of the self/the subject and as a valid seat of knowledge. Their mutual dedications to experience, to the self as a legitimate knower based on that experience, runs (as Moore and Muller

[1999] rightly note) counter to abstract universalizing conceptions of knowledge, which are only constructed by a select few and disseminated to the public.

In contrast, “voice” in its political register belongs to someone, or someones; it originates from somewhere. It is necessarily not free-floating, but is strongly indicative of a unique body (individual or collective) who is expressing something specific related to a particular experience. Feminist theorists and critical pedagogues continually point to a relationality implied through voice, a notion that inherently seems to refuse isolated knowledge production. Recall, for example, Grumet’s musing that voice “promised presence, contact, and relations that would take place within a range of another’s hearing” (1990, p. 278), while Gilligan states more strongly, “To have a voice is to be human. To have something to say is to be a person. But speaking depends on listening and being heard; it is an intensely relational act” (1993, p. xvi). For Gilligan, women’s voices are tied to an ethic of care that is largely defined through an interest in relationship.

Similarly, voice is repeatedly invoked in discussions about particular relationships. For hooks, black women have a voice in relationship with each other, while Collins also names the relationships black women forge with each other and the broader black community as key sites for finding voice. Collins also writes of black women’s blues tradition where black women have found a voice through symbiotic

145 relationship made possible through music, where personal expression is fostered within the larger context of music as a group activity. In other words, relationship (often

expressed through descriptions of dialogical exchange) makes voice possible.

For Freire, Giroux, hooks, and Collins, dialogue is indispensable to any liberation

struggle, a driving motivation behind their scholarship. For example, hooks and Giroux,

profoundly influenced by Freire and his theories of “dialogical education,” specifically

discuss the achievement of voice as necessarily taking place within the larger context of

group-facilitated critique. Indeed, Giroux (2005) directly draws upon hooks’

understanding of voice, and its actualization through critique in his chapter, “Crossing the

Boundaries of Educational Discourse: Modernism, Postmodernism, and Feminism”:

The call to simply affirm one’s voice has increasingly been reduced to a

pedagogical process that is reactionary as it is inward looking. A more radical

notion of voice should begin with what bell hooks calls a critical attention to

theorizing experience as part of a broader politics of engagement....For hooks, the

telling of tales of victimization, or the expression of one’s voice is not enough; it

is equally imperative that such experiences be the object of theoretical and critical

analysis so they can be connected rather than severed from broader notions of

solidarity, struggle, and politics, (pp. 73-74)

Collins, too, directly points to the necessity of dialogue, again stressing that voice is realized within the context of community. Voice realized within the context of community is one embedded within, and constituted through, relationship: To make one’s

voice heard without also listening and responding to others is to risk membership within that community.

146 As noted, humanism underpins the dynamics of voice elaborated upon above.

The centrality of humanity in the voice metaphor is ubiquitous and unabated throughout these key scholarly works. The relationality implied through voice is restricted to human

subjects alone. The experiential knowledge valued through the trope is only human

knowledge. (All knowledge is assumed to be human-generated.) The sociality and

dialogical aspects of voice are also assumed to be human, as are the forms of oppression

and the kinds of resistances named though its use.

Despite its pervasive humanism, I believe the voice metaphor offers great

potential. The work that it does within these texts, for example, illustrates positive

alternatives to the liberal humanist subject. The voice metaphor is itself in-process,

refigured and negotiated, in appreciation of heterogeneities, which are marginalized by

dominant discourses, specifically those that claim universality (in knowledge and

experience, etc.). Political uses of voice have been particularly good for laying claim to

subjectivity by those objectified as Other. My hope is that with increasing awareness

about the meanings associated with voice, and the critical and self-reflexive impulses so

often entailed through its political uses, we might engage a more holistic and humble

understanding of voice that does not preclude nonhuman subjectivities—their

knowledges, experiences, and resistances.

As part of posthumanism’s call for a radical deconstruction of liberal humanist

subjectivity, I hope the animal movements might further emphasize those aspects of the

voice metaphor that acknowledge nonhuman animals’ sociality, relationality, resistances,

and multiple forms of subjectivity, especially given how greatly the voice trope circulates

within these discourses. As we continue to fight against the objectification of human and

147 nonhuman animals, there is an urgent need to recognize a multiplicity of open-ended forms of subjectivity that do not demand that anyone be measured by limited criteria lauded through the liberal humanist paradigm. The next chapter explores the intimate entanglements of animality and humanity within ideas about voice. I focus on the history of voice in the West, and demonstrate how voice has historically been figured through notions of “the animal” and “the human.”

148 C hapter III: Voice and Animality

The whole gulf between reason and sense, between moral obligation and instinct, yawns between speaking man and speechless brute. (De Laguna, 1970, p. 7)

I suggest that, instead o f considering ourselves “the voice o f the voiceless, ” we think harder about how to listen to the animals for whom we purport to speak, (jones, 2005, “The Power o f Grassroots Movements”)

Introduction

While there are many striking common themes evidenced within the works discussed in

Chapter Two, I argue the overarching theme of voice discourse and voice metaphor is humanism. Voice is relentlessly attached to an assumed human subject. The humanism of the voice metaphor is rarely noticed, even while (paradoxically, perhaps) part of the role of the voice metaphor is to highlight difference (see Alexander, 1989). That difference is nonetheless overwhelmingly contained within a humanist framework, as difference among people. In other words, those authors who most thoroughly depend on the voice metaphor hermeneutically seal the trope within a humanist discourse.

So pervasive is the assumption that voice is human, scholars of the voice metaphor (likely so enmeshed in humanist thinking themselves) and those who heavily rely on the voice metaphor frequently fail to acknowledge the assumption as an assumption, or as something that might be legitimately questioned (i.e., is ‘voice’ necessarily human?) and critiqued. Humanism encompasses the other thematic aspects of voice evidenced below, including the self/subjectivity, experience/knowledge, relationality/dialogue, and resistance. That is, ideas about the self and subjectivity

invoked through the voice metaphor are ideas about human selves and subjectivities.

149 Ideas about experience and its relationship to knowledge are about human experiences

and their knowledges, and so on.

Simply stated, humanism underpins and shapes the entirety of the voice metaphor.

This observation is particularly relevant as we notice the sorts of investments made

through its articulation. Voice is centrally a way of expressing ideas about human

subjectivity. It is a discourse of human subjectivity, a popular and deeply meaningful

way of speaking about the subject. Yet, it is not only human social movements and social justice theories that so pervasively draw upon voice in their struggles, but as we see in

this chapter, voice is also a main—if not the main—metaphor of the animal rights and

liberation movements. Part of my argument, which I address here, is that the animal

movements may partially undermine their own efforts by drawing on a metaphor that

ultimately precludes nonhuman animal subjectivities. This sort of danger is evidenced

through ubiquitous phrases within the movement, and similar variations, such as when

activists claim to be the “voice of the voiceless.”

The main goal of the animal rights and liberation movements, unlike the animal

welfare movements, is to conceptually shift animals from the position of objects into the

position of subjects. (Or, to use the language of one of its most famous authors, Tom

Regan [2004], from resources to persons. Or, also to use the language of perhaps the

most famous contemporary animal rights scholar, Gary Francione [2009], from property

to persons.) Below I continue to pursue deconstruction of the voice metaphor as part of a

posthumanist turn, as described by Cary Wolfe (2010), to “engag[e] directly the problem

of anthropocentricism and speciesism and how practices of thinking and reading must

change in light of their critique” (p. xix).

150 Voice is precisely the sort of “privileged term” (Wolfe, 2010, p. xix) that begs

serious interrogation by those who wish to make visible and unsettle the workings of power within humanist discourses, and their hegemonic modes of thought that continue to deny and disavow “the animal.” Thus, my research works at the uncomfortable but I believe fruitful juncture between posthumanist theory and animal rights and liberation

politics. While posthumanist theory, as developed by authors such as Wolfe and Derrida,

is critiqued by some Critical Animal Studies scholars as “more curious about human artifacts than actually existing nonhumans” (Pollock, 2011, p. 239), I am directly offering a posthumanist analysis in service of a less anthropocentric and speciesist conceptualization of the subject. My orientation is explicitly political. (I believe Wolfe’s

is too, though it has largely not been received as such, possibly due to the inaccessibility of his prose for a non-academic audience.) Posthumanism is generally not understood as

relevant to the animal rights and liberation movements, and its language has largely not

penetrated Western animal rights and liberation politics. My hope is to gain a greater

understanding of how the key voice metaphor shapes not only language and thought, but

also in turn, Leftist movements. Posthumanism, far from being necessarily apolitical,

offers a set of necessary critiques that might allow us to more radically deepen our

political projects.

In part, Wolfe’s posthumanist theory is cautioning us against the reproduction of

“the subject” as figured within liberal humanism. The promise of posthumanism, which

Wolfe argues is suggested by both animal studies and disability studies, is that it can

show us something about the limitations of this model [i.e., the subject as

modelled in liberal humanism] and in doing so call on us to rethink questions of

151 ethical and political responsibility within what [Wolfe has] been characterizing as

a fundamentally posthumanist set of coordinates. (2010, p. 127)

What is so fascinating about the voice metaphor is that it sits uncomfortably at the intersection between liberal humanist subjectivity and a notion of subjectivity that is profoundly relational, phenomenologically-inspired, non-unitary, and often, in a perpetual state of becoming. Of course, this is in contrast to the stable, unitary, fixed, autonomous notion of the subject that postmodernists and poststructuralists have so thoroughly interrogated. The voice metaphor in many ways works against the typical assumptions of the liberal humanist subject, as demonstrated in Chapter Two; it undoes

(or at least attempts to resist) many of the assumptions that tie that particular rendering of the subject together at the very moment that it also reinforces that notion of the subject by continuing to centralize humanity as only capable of subjectivity. Such insights are important to the animal rights and liberation movements because, as we can see through

Chapter One and then more distinctly in this chapter, people involved in these struggles are heavily invested in the voice metaphor. While the language o f subjectivity per se is still largely cloistered within the Academy, the widespread claims regarding voice suggest both a scholarly and a highly popular way of expressing ideas about the subject and/or the self.

Collectively, those interested in changing large-scale exploitative relationships with nonhuman animals are primarily interested in wresting animals from their categorization as objects. In many ways, the problem, which is consistently described and resisted, is that animals are understood and treated as things, resources, (live)stock, capital, property, etc. Consequently, we are at a vital crux. How do we move forward

152 from this point? Wolfe is asking us to seriously reconsider adopting a notion of subjectivity that contains within it the anthropocentric and speciesist trappings of humanism. For example, as Wolfe (2003) notes, the push for animal rights is fraught given that the Western construction of rights is predicated on the exclusion and differentiation of human from nonhuman animals. The achievement of rights has been the achievement of (necessarily) human rights. Those included within the Western sphere of rights-holders are permitted due to their human species membership. The wish for various marginalized others to be included in this sphere is the desire to be recognized as fully human and thus rights-holding subjects. Indeed, the boundaries that define rights

(i.e., who is entitled to them) are based on the exclusion of nonhuman animals. We can clearly hear Audre Lorde’s claim that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (1996, p. 110) in Wolfe’s (2003) critique.

In his most recent text, What is Posthumanism?, Wolfe (2010) elucidates the potential of disability and animal studies to expose the limitations of the liberal humanist model:

I am not suggesting that working to liberalize the interpretation by the courts of

the Americans with Disabilities Act is a waste of time, or that lobbying to upgrade

animal cruelty prosecutions from misdemeanour to felony status is a bad thing.

What I am suggesting is that these pragmatic pursuits are forced to work within

the purview of a liberal humanism in philosophy, politics, and the law that is

bound by a historically and ideologically specific set of coordinates that, because

of that very boundedness, allow one to achieve certain pragmatic gains in the

short run, but at the price of a radical foreshortening of a more ambitious and

153 more profound ethical project: a new and more inclusive form of ethical pluralism

that is our charge, now, to frame. That project would think the ethical force of

disability and nonhuman subjectivity as something other than merely an

expansion of the liberal humanist ethos to ever new populations, as merely the

next room added onto the (increasingly opulent and globalizing) house of what

Richard Rorty has called “the rich North Atlantic bourgeois democracies.” (pp.

136-137)

Wolfe is advocating for a serious critique of humanism within the animal and disability movements, which also prompts questions about the validity of the liberal humanist subject more generally. The point should not be the shift of nonhuman animals from object to subject when the framing of both is firmly entrenched within a liberal humanist paradigm. Initiatives such as the Great Ape Project, which advocate for a recognition of nonhuman ape personhood, largely through discourses of what legal scholar Bryant

(2007) calls the “similarity argument” (i.e., those who are most like us are seen as most deserving of rights), are the sorts that continue to subscribe to a very narrow conceptualization of subjectivity. She writes,

If humans are defined in some significant measure by a particular characteristic

(such as tool making ability, self-awareness, or the capacity to suffer), questions

of justice arise when animals are sufficiently similar to humans as to the

characteristic and justice is defined as requiring like entities be treated alike, (p.

207)

As Bryant contends, the similarity argument has been a key strategy of the animal rights movements; it is precisely this argument that drove the Western civil rights movement,

154 the feminist movement, and the disability rights movement. She acknowledges that this

orientation is an important first step for these movements, but that ultimately, asking

potential rights holders to possess similar characteristics of existing rights holders is a

limiting gesture that flattens, rather than celebrates, respects, and actually benefits from

difference and diversity. Wolfe’s desire for a “new and more inclusive form of ethical

pluralism” (p. 137) shares a similar starting point with Bryant, one that values diversity

and questions the conventional measuring sticks used to deem one a worthy recipient of justice, and necessarily the very meaning of “justice” (legally defined as treating like

entities alike [Bryant, 2007]).

While Wolfe’s arguments regarding subjectivity and justice are astute,

particularly as they help describe an orientation and set of (what I also believe are) useful

“coordinates” under the banner of “posthumanism,” others not working within this

particular language are nonetheless very much engaged in the kind of intervention that he

proposes. On the one hand, Wolfe turns to philosophers such as Derrida as crucial

interlocutors for posthumanism. For example, he takes guidance from Derrida’s eloquent

assertion (one that I think largely summarizes much of Wolfe’s argument): “there is not

one opposition between man and non-man; there are, between different organizational

structures of the living being, many fractures, heterogeneities” (as cited in Wolfe, p. 139).

On the other, I turn toward Smuts’ (2006) research on embodied communication with

nonhuman animals, and other similar projects, which are also directly and centrally

involved in the appreciation of nonhuman subjectivities that very much run counter to a

liberal humanist one.

Smuts’ (2006) article, “Between Species: Science and Subjectivity,” for example,

155 describes a version of subjectivity that is constituted in relation (as opposed to atomized individuality), and that recognizes elements of subjectivity outside of typical linguistic modes so highly valued within Western philosophical traditions. I recognize that Wolfe is primarily engaged in conversations with philosophy, literature, and cultural studies, but

I find a perplexing absence in his exclusion of Smuts’ research, particularly as he is provisionally responding to the question, “What is posthumanism?” Haraway is very much part of his discursive landscape, perhaps because she, too, is dialoguing with philosophers such as Derrida. Yet, it is people like Smuts who so strongly influence

Haraway in texts such as When Species Meet, and Haraway’s (2008a) descriptions of

“companion species” are very much inspired by (and modelled on) the kinds of relationships forged within Smuts’ grounded research with dogs and other nonhuman animals. Haraway’s understanding of companion species is primarily based on relationality, and it points to ethical responsibilities that are borne out of relations between (and among) human and nonhuman beings.

Haraway’s theory is rightfully acknowledged by Wolfe as part of an emerging posthumanist literature. However, I want to petition for Bryant (2007), Balcombe (e.g.,

2007), Bekoff (e.g., 2006, 2007), Smuts (e.g., 2001, 2006), and Noske (e.g., 1997), among others, to also be recognized as part of this posthumanist turn. Not only does it help balance what seems dangerously like an old boys club o f posthumanist scholars

(Haraway excepted, of course) counted within Wolfe’s (2010) What is Posthumanism?, but because these authors have long been involved in describing (and engaging in) human and nonhuman subjectivities quite contra to the liberal humanist subject constructed in the West, one which is relentlessly predicated on the disavowal of “the animal” (Oliver,

156 2 0 0 9 ).

More than just a rallying cry for inclusivity, though, my point here is that we ought to pay close attention to these alternative versions of subjectivity because, I believe, they can be enormously helpful to the animal rights and liberation movements.

They can help foster a deeper and more radical animal politics. This assertion returns me to voice, the central focus of the dissertation. Given that voice is a powerful metaphor within Western social and environmental movements, including the animal movements, part of what I find exciting about the voice metaphor is its dedication to and articulation of a kind of subjectivity also grounded in relationality. Further, the relationality implied through the voice metaphor is intimately tied to a project that recognizes and values difference. Recall Alexander’s (1989) contention, too, that part of the role of the voice metaphor is to highlight difference. Bekoff (2006, 2007), Haraway (2003, 2008a), and

Smuts (2001, 2006) to name a few ground-breaking academics, are working with precisely such differences—heterogeneities—that both intensely acknowledge individuality and recognize the subject as never divorced from or defined outside of sociality. (Smuts [2001], for example, writes extensively about “intersubjectivity” among and between species.) This is the version of voice so strongly illustrated in the previous chapter. Yet, for aforementioned animal-focused authors, the social sphere is not understood as strictly the province of humanity, as is incorrectly assumed by many social scientists and others (Noske, 1997).

Aspects of the voice metaphor in its political register (that indicate non-unitary subjectivity, experience, relationality, and resistance) are clearly evidenced in Balcombe,

Bekoff, Haraway, and Smuts’ descriptions of nonhuman animals’ lives and human-

157 nonhuman animal relations, but in ways that do not simply swap old characteristics for new ones, which nonhuman animals are demanded to possess in order not to be objectified. These authors share a desire to refigure the liberal humanist subject in ways that find much in common with the scholars featured in the previous chapter. Yet scholars such as Balcombe, Bekoff, Haraway, and Smuts are also vigorously trying to unsettle the anthropocentrism and speciesism inherent in Western humanism. This is vital work.

The case study for the last chapter, the Animal Voices radio archive, which

includes interviews with both academics and activists (certainly, not mutually exclusive categories), also demonstrates a range of representations of nonhuman animal subjectivities that reverberate within, and depart from, Wolfe’s writing on posthumanism.

The animal rights and liberation movements, at least as represented within the approximately three hundred and sixty-five episode archive, is actively negotiating voice.

At times, it reproduces humanist constructions; at others, it powerfully disrupts them.

The animal rights and liberation movements have something important to say about voice, but in their growth and maturity they also have something to learn from researchers such as Smuts who, while working outside of a formalized discourse of rights and liberation, nonetheless offer brilliant ways forward that absolutely refuse the reification of animals.

Voice and Animality in Historical Context

Before turning to an analysis of the Animal Voices’ archive in the final chapter, I offer below an historical mapping of voice to show the profound intermingling of voice with

158 notions of animality. The construction of animals as voiceless and humans as voiced can partially be understood as symptomatic and indicative of humanism, which has heavily relied upon disavowal of the animal in order to define and maintain its coherence. The disavowal is sometimes implicit, as noted in the previous chapter, such that subjectivity and humanity are understood as synonymous. In addition, as clearly seen in such works as Freire’s Pedagogy o f the Oppressed, there is sometimes an explicit metaphorical sacrifice of the animal throughout the discourse to signal the differentiation, superiority, and actualization of humanity. For Freire, for example, human actualization is realized through dialogical engagement, defined as strictly a human capacity. His argument centrally relies on the speciesist abjection of animality. This casting off of animality is not a neutral gesture: rather, there is an active negation of the animal essential to Freire’s humanist theory.

We can situate Freire, and others who deny animals a capacity for voice, within a broader historical context of Western thought. That is to say, we can understand their conceptualizations of voice, dialogue, and other associated ideas as arising from historical precedents that have denied animals these capabilities. The main contemporaneous developers of the voice metaphor, such as Gillian, Giroux, and hooks, continue to reproduce a version of voice that precludes animal voices, and indivisibly, their subjectivities. Nonetheless, despite the humanism that pervades much of contemporary uses of voice, backed by considerable historical inertia, humanism is never able to fully colonize the idea. As we see below in the writings o f Michel Eyquem de

Montaigne (1580/2003) and contemporary animal advocates such as Marc Bekoff (2000,

2006) and pattrice jones (2005), for example, the assumption that voice is necessarily

159 human has never been wholly accepted.

At its heart, the Western history of voice has included interconstituted ideas about humanity and animality and in relation, ideas about knowledge and truth. As Appelbaum

(1990) argues,

History identifies the spoken voice as the outer agent of thought in whose being

resides judgement, truth, and knowledge. Thus, voice not modified and

modulated by speaking, wild and woolly voice, supplies a crucial first test for

hiding by speech. History claims that “crude,” unspeechified voice is incapable

of articulating truthfulness. Slurred, improper, churlish, animal, or demonic, such

voicings that escape our lips unframed, themselves betray a lapse in or weakening

of cognition, (p. x)

Here Appelbaum broadly outlines the interlocking ideas about speech and voice and their relationship to notions of humanity and animality/nature within Western thought, wherein historically voice outside of speech is considered inhuman or subhuman. From

Appelbaum’s perspective, the interrelated figures of the animal and madness haunt the human voice, forever threatening to unravel the disciplinary technologies of speech, namely phonemics and grammar. He declares, “The history of voice has been told by thinkers who live in fear and trembling of insanity” (p. 9).77

As Appelbaum hints, “voice” tends to be a more inclusive term than “speech.”

77 Indeed, as Foucault (1988) demonstrates, animality and madness are tethered together, such that during the classical period “madness is the incarnation o f man in the beast” (p. 82). Or, stated more forcefully, “Madness borrowed its face from the mask o f the beast” (Foucault, p. 72). He continues, “Those chained to the cell walls were no longer men whose minds had wandered, but beasts preyed upon by a natural frenzy: as if madness, at its extreme point, freed from that moral unreason in which its most attenuated forms are enclosed, managed to rejoin, by paroxysm of strength, the immediate violence of animality. This model of animality prevailed in the asylums and gave them their cagelike aspect, their look o f the menagerie.... For classicism, madness in its ultimate form is man in immediate relation to his animality, without reference, without recourse” (p. 72, p. 74).

160 Speech has largely been considered the exclusive province of “the human,” or more

precisely, the province of man (e.g., Aristotle, trans. 1958; De Laguna, 1970; Fry, 1977;

Heidegger, 1971; NIDCD, 2010). It has typically been understood as an aspect of voice,

so that voice can exist without speech, but speech rarely exists without the presence of

the human voice, although notable figures such as Montaigne (1580/2003) certainly

challenge such a position, as discussed below.

Voice is frequently thought of as a vehicle or medium for speech (Locke, 1995;

Karpf, 2006, respectively). In other words, voice is often used as a more general term than speech, wherein the speech is included under the umbrella of voice. Also,

importantly, voice is also often used as a synonym for speech, such that the two are

equated (Appelbaum, 1990; Karpf, 2006). While the definition of speech tends to entail a

more rigid, anthropocentric meaning than voice, voice is, at times, described in an equally rigid and anthropocentric way. Karpf (2006), for example, conceives of the voice as necessarily either the speaking voice or singing voice, primarily as expressed by people.78

Though animals are sometimes said to speak (e.g., Montaigne, 1580/2003), speaking is still overwhelmingly considered a human capacity. Further, speech remains a significant defining characteristic for humanity (see Heidegger, 1971). For many, speech

781 have tried to be meticulous about the differences among the terms “voice,” “speech,” and “language” in this chapter and throughout the dissertation. Nonetheless, I recognize that there are slippages that occur between these terms at times, despite my efforts. While I do bear ultimate responsibility for this lack of precision, in part, the slippages are also a reflection o f the fact that these terms are often used interchangeably in the works I analyse and in common discourse. Indeed, the treatment o f voice and speech as synonyms is, for sociologist Anne Karpf (2006), a major focus o f her critique in The Human Voice: How This Extraordinary Instrument Reveals Clues About Who We (She Are. stresses that there are significant differences between voice and speech, despite the linguistic obfuscation. She is particularly concerned with the relative devaluation o f voice in comparison to speech. I address KarpFs arguments more fully toward the end o f the chapter.) In some cases, the slippage is a matter of translation, in which there are discrepancies among the terms used depending on the version of the text (such as Aristotle’s Politics).

161 is what allows humanity to transcend our animality (Appelbaum, 1990). For example, in his review of George Yule’s authoritative linguistics text, The Study of Language, Binoy

Barman (2007) reflects,

After sometime [sic], you feel you are a human being because you can speak.

That is, in your most prominent identity you arehomo loquem - speaking man,

not simply homo sapiens - wise man. Many other animals have intelligence,

albeit to a lesser degree, but it is only humans that have language to its fullest

potential. Humans are uniquely distinguished from other animals, with the

language they use. Stripped of your language, you are nothing but an animal,

mere flesh without thought and meaning. You talk in words, think in words and

even dream in words. Human history is accumulated in words. Human

civilization has been built upon language, the symbols we meet in books and

tongues.

Barman collapses speech into language in one broad stroke, implicitly dismissing debates about animal language and the ways such debates might call such a boundary between humans and animals into question (see, for example, Savage-Rumbaugh et. al, 1998).

Not just one in a constellation of characteristics that the West traditionally positions as

‘“properties’ of man” (Derrida, 2006/2008, p. 5), Barman elevates speech as humanity’s central defining feature. While seemingly just idle musing, or even species ego stroking, such elevation of humanity based on the criterion of speech has wreaked enormous consequences for nonhuman animals.

Consider, for example, Leahy’s Against Liberation: Putting Animals in

Perspective (1991), which deals specifically with animal ethics. Leahy attempts to

162 debunk the scholarship of such authors as Clark, Regan, Rollin, Singer, Midgley, and their “devotees” (p. 2). The direction of their work, “despite its warm-hearted and often

intuitive appeal” (p. 2) is nonetheless misguided, according to Leahy. His claims repeatedly underscore what he (along with much of modem Western philosophy) considers the ethically-relevant differences between humans and animals; heavily

informed by Wittgenstein, his arguments largely centre on language and its relationship to self-consciousness. Leahy quickly points to what he and philosopher Max Black contend is the sharp difference between “animal ‘signals’” and speech:

Man [sic] is the only animal that [sic] can talk (homo loquens). More generally,

he is the only animal that can use symbols (words, pictures, graphs, numbers,

etc.). He alone can bridge the gap between one person and another, conveying

thoughts, feelings, desires, attitudes, and sharing in the traditions, conventions, the

knowledge and superstition of his culture: the only animal that can truly

understand and misunderstand. On this skill depends everything that we call

civilization. Without it, imagination, thought - even self-knowledge - are

impossible. (As cited in Leahy, 1991, p. 33)

As we will see in the following section, the persistent tendency to separate out and

privilege speech as a mark of human uniqueness and superiority is an entrenched pattern

throughout Western history. Philosophically, much is wagered on the meanings attached

to speech, and by close and often interchangeable association, language: It is often

considered the foundation of civilization and it engenders humans’ elevated status. More

specifically, humans, as language-users, are frequently understood as conceptual thinkers

(see Leahy, 1991; Fry, 1977). The consequences of this argument continue to ripple

163 through academic discussions about animal ethics. “Man’s particular position in organic life on earth must be attributed largely to his use of speech and language and to his capacity for both concrete and abstract thought,” states phonetician Dennis Fry (p. 2).

Likewise, some who wish to blur the boundaries between animals and humans have also put language at the centre of their arguments, challenging the conventional definitions of language as an exclusively human domain. In particular, some arguments in favour of granting personhood and legal standing to the great apes (and other animals, such as dolphins) rely on the research that suggests language capacity in these non­ human animals (e.g., Patterson & Gordon, 1993). These challenges not only question typical definitions of language, but also a certain human hubris. Such boundary blurring can help to prompt a re-evaluation of humans’ responsibilities toward animals, or can possibly provide an ethical impetus for the development of alternative, and perhaps more humble, relationships with non-human Others. Noske illustrates this position well:

An anthropologist hearing a human ‘click’ language for the first time, such as

spoken by certain African tribes, may fail to distinguish between different types of

clicks, and when we Europeans hear tonal languages for the first time we do not

grasp the tones as conveying meaning. Such human sounds may just be ‘noise’ to

us, like our own sounds may first be ‘noise’ to the dolphin. There is a way things

look, taste, smell, feel or sound to an animal, a way of which we will have no

ideas as long as we insist that the only things worth knowing about are our own

social constructions of the world. Although I do acknowledge that there is a sense

in which we cannot know the Other (whether it be other species, other culture, the

164 other sex or even each other) we must remind ourselves that other meanings exist,

even if we may be severely limited in our understanding o f them. (1997, p. 160)

While I find the debates about nonhuman animal language to be fascinating, I am wholly unconvinced that they should have any bearing on whether animals should be treated ethically and regarded as subjects, or whether they should be considered resources, etc.

That is to say, whether they are deemed objects or Subjects should not be contingent upon their language capacities or capabilities. To use Francione’s (2000) terminology, language should not be considered a “morally relevant criterion” (p. xxix).79 It is unsurprising that Western thought, and its widespread claims of human superiority, yet again, tends to find that nonhuman animals are lacking in this particular prized cognitive aspect.

My purpose here is not to argue that nonhuman animals do or do not possess language, speech, or voice. Such a venture places me as a scholar and as an activist on the defensive, forever running after some previously-decided anthropocentric criterion that supposedly indicates animals’ value. Rather, my point here is to illuminate the ways in which ideas about voice function. How does “voice” work? In the next section, I specifically consider how ideas about voice are directly interconstituted with ideas about animality.

79 Francione (2000) regards sentience as the only criterion necessary to be considered part o f the moral sphere. He argues that to be sentient is to have interests, because if one is sentient, one has an interest in not suffering. Thus, animals, by virtue of having interests deserving protection, ought to gain the one most crucial right: The right not to be property.

165 Western Thought, Animality, and Voice

A number of key influential philosophers within the Western tradition have engaged with ideas about voice, speech, and language, especially as they relate to notions of animality and humanity. Indeed, these ideas often emerge interdependently, appearing perennially like tangled shirts against a washing machine window. Given Western thought’s obsession with defining “Man’s” ontology, it is significant that thinkers such as Aristotle,

Montaigne, and Descartes position some of their key arguments about humanity not only within discourses on language writ large, but also specifically within discourses relating to speech and voice. 1 try to show that the study of voice and speech within the Western philosophical tradition can tell us something important about the interconstituted constructions of humanity and animality, which have so strongly informed ethics and politics as we know them today.

To be clear, it is not my intention to argue that voice, speech, and language are the only relevant characteristics within philosophical debates about the ontology of humanity and animality. As Preece (2005) notes, historically philosophers have lauded a host of different defining characteristics between humans and animals in their efforts to determine humanity’s essence. 80 For example, Cicero, Wollstonecrafit, and Mill concentrated on reason, while Augustine and Hobbes chose individuality, Burke selected religion, and Marx privileged creative labour. Underlying these efforts was the belief that humans could be fully realized precisely through those characteristics that nonhuman species lack (Preece, 2005). Yet, given that my dissertation is primarily an examination of voice in relation to animal advocacy, which is indivisibly bound to the worlds of ethics

80 According to Preece (2005), the tendency to define humanity’s essence through a process of differentiation from other species, centring on those characteristics which nonhuman species are believed to lack, has lessened since Marx.

166 and politics, an appreciation of the West’s philosophical legacy (though clearly only partial) regarding voice, speech, and language is obviously important. Here, in necessarily broad strokes, I highlight a collection of writings by Aristotle, Montaigne,

and Descartes and attempt to show some salient interrelationships among voice

(including speech and language), animals, ethics, and politics as forged in the West.

Aristotle is included in my analysis because of his enormous impact on Western thought in general, and his enormous influence on the development of politics itself. For

example, Lord describes the contribution of Aristotle’s Politics (which 1 discuss below) thus,

The Politics is a product of that singular moment in the history of the West when

traditional modes of thinking in every area were being uprooted by the new mode

of thinking that had made its appearance in the Greek world under the name of

philosophy. It was in and through the elaboration of the philosophic-scientific

approach to natural and human phenomena by the ancient Greeks—above all, by

Planto and Aristotle—that the intellectual categories of the Western tradition took

shape. The significance of Aristotle’s Politics lies in the first instance in the fact

that it represents the earliest attempt to elaborate a systematic science of

politics. ...Politics is an original and fundamental book—one of those rare books

that first defines a permanent human possibility and thereby irrevocably alters the

way men understand themselves, (pp. 1-2)

Those of us engaged in animal politics are well served by the recognition that certain foundational texts within the Western tradition, such as Aristotle’s Politics, are premised on an ideological cleavage of humanity from the rest of animalkind. Aristotle argues

167 very early inPolitics that humans are by nature “political animals.” As discussed below, such ideas are profoundly fettered to certain normative suppositions regarding human and nonhuman animals’ capacities for speech, voice, and language. It is important to realize that the Western animal rights movement inherits a humanist notion of politics that is predicated about animals’ exclusion from this sphere. In what ways do we carry forward

Aristotle’s intellectual inheritance in our own political work?

Montaigne is included in my analysis because, as the famous founder of the literary essay form, his ideas (including those about animals) became widely known not only throughout France, but also later throughout the West (Preece, 2005). Further, as

Fudge (2006) argues, Montaigne’s views about animals were likely drawn upon by a number of writers in England. As he takes on the ethical orthodoxy of his era—Fudge remarks that his ideas about the status of animals were quite radical, a point his critics tend to ignore—Montaigne also helps to highlight some of the major assumptions about animals that were typical of the time, precisely because they are the focus of his critique.

He explicitly addresses questions of animals, language, and speech in his writing.

As a testament to Montaigne’s influence in “Discourse V” of Discourse on

Method, Descartes responds directly to claims about animals’ language and speech as described within Montaigne’s “Apology for Raymond Sebond” (Senior, 1997). As a result of such texts, Descartes is recognized as adding significant weight to the commonly held belief that animals could not use signs to communicate. According to Serjeantson

(2001), “Descartes does not so much set out a new position as amplify one that already existed” (p. 436).

168 In sum, the following genealogy is specifically offered in service to, and as part of

a conversation with, contemporary animal advocacy movements. By tracing voice

through Western thought in this way, by paying attention to this constellation of

influential thinkers (i.e., Aristotle, Descartes, and Montaigne), we can begin to

understand more fully that the disavowal of animal subjectivities, as well as the struggle

to acknowledge them, predate and help shape the texture of current debates about human

and animal voices. Armed with such understanding, we can more deeply ascertain

certain humanist legacies bound to discourses of voice, and I hope, consequently

recognize these legacies more swiftly and resist them more effectively when they

reappear within our (and others’) own discourses.

We can also take heart in Montaigne’s efforts to challenge human exceptional ism,

our species hubris so influential and persistent within Western thought. Perhaps, as part

of our political work, we might more greatly appreciate Montaigne’s writings as

articulations of solidarity with animals. We might pay homage and further cultivate

political and ethical continuities with Montaigne by also emphasizing nonhuman forms of

reason and speech that do not conform to human forms, but that are still valuable.

Aristotle, Descartes, and Montaigne

In his text, On the Way to Language (1971), Heidegger describes the central role speech

served in the construction of human identity within the ancient world. To the ancients,

speech is what makes humanity unique:

According to ancient understanding, we ourselves are after all those beings who

have the ability to speak and therefore already possess language. Nor is the

169 ability to speak just one among man’s many talents, of the same orders as the

others. The ability to speak is what marks man as man. This mark contains the

design of his being. Man would not be man if it were denied him to speak

unceasingly, from everywhere and every which way, in many variations, and to

speak in terms of an “it is” that most often remains unspoken. Language, in

granting all this to man, is the foundation of human being. (Heidegger, 1971, p.

112)

In relation, Aristotle (384-322 BC) draws a strong distinction between voice and language. In his view, voice is possessed by all social animals, but the psychosocial state and attitudes expressed by animals point to their mechanistic nature (Sparshott, 1997, p.

201). Elucidating Aristotle, Sparshott writes,

Vocal signs are causally determined indications of the condition and situation of

the emitting organism, and other organisms respond to them no less automatically,

so that they perform the function of correlating the behaviour of individuals that

make up animal groups or societies. (1997, p. 201)

While Aristotle acknowledges some admirable traits in other animals, speech and reason make the human species superior; indeed, importantly, speech and reason allow for such

(believed) superior motives as the pursuit of justice and morality (Preece, 2005). From his perspective, animals’ sounds are instinctual.

Human vocal signs transcend the “mere makings of sounds” (Aristotle, 1958, p. 6) that indicate pleasure and pain; significantly, for Aristotle, speech creates the potential for politics itself. In comparison, animals’ voices are inadequate for naming what is just or unjust, good or evil, among other key distinctions. In this way, speech (or depending on

170 the translation, language81) is crucial to formation of cities and families (Aristotle, 2005).

Speech, humans’ natural birthright, makes possible a truly lofty purpose. Early in his

Politics, Aristotle writes,

Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious

animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the

only animal she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is

but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other animals (for

their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of

them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth

the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and unjust. And it

is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and

unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense

makes a family and a state. (Aristotle, 2005, p. 4)

For Aristotle, speech allows political association, the very expression of man’s nature.

Indeed, as Hobbes would later concur, the capacity for language produces a superior life

(Preece, 2005).

Heavily influenced by Aristotle, formal discussions about language during the early modem period treated the mind as the central player in speech. Though there were

81 Here is a slightly different translation o f the same passage by Aristotle, as featured below. Notably, Barker (1958) uses the term “language” as opposed to “speech,” as featured above. In place o f the word “voice,” he translates it as “the mere making of sounds”: “The reason why man is a being meant for political association, in a higher degree than bees or other gregarious animals can ever associate, is evident. Nature, according to our theory, makes nothing in vain; and man alone o f the animals is furnished with the faculty o f language. The mere making o f sounds serves to indicate pleasure and pain, and is thus a faculty that belongs to animals in general; their nature enables them to attain the point at which they have perception o f pleasure and pain, and can signify those perceptions to one another. But language serves to declare what is advantageous and what is the reverse, and there serves to declare what is just and what is unjust. Is it the peculiarity o f man, in comparison with the rest o f the animal world, that he alone possesses a perception o f good and evil, o f the just and the unjust, and o f other similar qualities; and it is association in [a common perception of] these things which makes a family and a polis” (Aristotle, pp. 5-6).

171 numerous debates about whether or not animals possessed reason, intelligence, language, and various other capacities, the attribution of human-like language to animals was not treated as a matter of serious investigation (Serjeantson, 2001, p. 441). Still, animal communication was treated as an important subject within the sciences, including logic and natural history. While the consensus remained that animals could not speak nor did they possess language as humans do, 82 “this still left a great deal of scope for considering the extent of their capacities for expression and communication” (Serjeantson, p. 427). 83

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592), considered the most famous of all the theriophilists (Preece, 2005, p. 249), emphasized sentience over reason; what mattered most was “not the ability to rationalize the world but the capacity to feel in it” (Fudge,

2006, p. 103). In his essay “Of Cruelty,” for example, Montaigne challenged the orthodox ethical framework of the early modem period, which prized reason. According to Fudge, the centrality of sentience (as opposed to reason) within Montaigne’s conceptualization of ethics necessarily leads him into a discussion about animals. His opposition to cruelty entailed a shift in ethical focus from the self to the Other. He was interested in the individual upon whom the cruelty had been inflicted. Such a stance represented a radical move: Whereas many classical and Christian thinkers had concentrated on the negative effects of animal cruelty on humanity, Montaigne was

82 According to Serjeantson, medieval thinkers also believed that animals’ use of language did not significantly parallel human’s capacity (2001, p. 427). 83 The debates about language, writes Serjeantson (2001), were largely informed by semantic conventionalism, which relied upon Aristotle’s verbal signification schema: As described in Aristotle’s De Interpretatione, things give rise to mental conceptions, and conceptions give rise to verbal utterances, and written words signify these spoken words. Humans were said to signify conventionally, with words, while animals signified naturally, with their voices. Animals could not signify conventionally because, while they possessed sensitive souls (anima sensitive), they did not possess rational or “intellective” souls(anima rationalis), which included intellect, memory, and will. Still, Aristotle does not entirely dismiss animal reason: Animals do have some capacity for calculative reason, yet they cannot comprehend “universals” or surmise speculative abstractions (Preece, 2005, p. 52).

172 concerned about the experiences of the victims themselves (Fudge, 2006; Melehy, 2006).

Further, his understandings of animals harmonized within with his larger epistemological approach to the world, which was grounded in skepticism, as his personal motto—“What do I know?”— so firmly attests.

Montaigne’s writing is imbued with humility toward animals and a critique of human hubris, a position well represented through his “Apology for Raymond Sebond”

(Book Two, Chapter Twelve of the Essays). Importantly, as Melehy (2006) argues,

Montaigne’s aim in “Apology” is less about generating a definitive list of animal attributes or capacities, and more about an illustrative argument regarding the limits of human reason. Montaigne’s positions toward animals were largely based on allegorical reasoning, wherein the outward signs of humans lend insight into the internal world of animals who exhibit similar signs. For example, he writes,

...what sort of capacity of ours do we not recognize in the actions of animals? Is

there a polity better ordered, with more varied positions and offices, and more

constantly maintained that that of the honeybees? Can we imagine that this so

well-ordered disposition of actions and functions can be conducted without reason

and foresight? (p. 17)

Significantly, as noted above, his positions openly acknowledge the inability of humans to fully know the internal lives of animals:

It is through the vanity of that same imagination that he equates himself with God,

that he attributes divine attributes to himself, picks himself out and separates

himself from the crowd of other creatures, allots their shares to the animals, his

brothers and companions, and distributes among them such a portion of faculties

173 and powers as he sees fit. How does he know the internal movement and secrets

of animals by the effort of his intelligence? By what comparison between them

and us does he infer the stupidity that he attributes to them? When I play with my

cat, who knows if she is making more a pastime of me than I of her? (p. 15)

Similarly, our inability to understand animals’ communications does not imply that they do not communicate amongst their own species or even across species.84

The horse recognizes anger in a certain bark of a dog. It is not frightened at

another of the dog’s sounds. Even in the case of beasts that have no voice, we

easily recognize, through the social ties we observe among them, that they have

some other means of communication. Their movements converse and negotiate.

(p. 16)

Importantly, Montaigne breaks with the conventional wisdom of his time and claims that animals possess speech:

For what is speech other than the capacity we see in them of complaining,

rejoicing, summoning one another for help, inviting each other to love, as they do

by the use of their voice? How could they fail to speak among themselves? They

speak to us and we to them. In how many ways do we speak to our dogs? And

they answer us. We converse with them in a different language, with other words,

from those we use with birds, with swine, with cattle, with horses. And we

change our idiom according to the species, (p. 21)

Unsurprisingly, Montaigne did not privilege human speech per se, unlike many of his

85 contemporaries, asserting instead that animals used signs much as many deaf people

84 Montaigne states, “Meanwhile, we discover quite plainly that there is full and complete communication between them and that they understand one another, not only within the same species, but also across different species” (p. 16).

174 do. He suggested that the sign system of animals was just as rich as the sign system of the deaf, and these gestural systems were equivalent to speech in their ability to communicate (Ree, 1999, p. 121; Montaigne, 2003, pp. 16-17).

Part of Montaigne’s criticism was directed at philosophers who believed that human reason not only separated “Man” from his fellow creatures as a difference of kind, but that reason also made them superior creatures. Montaigne thought that animals perhaps have forms of reason outside the limits of human apprehension. In the

“Apology,” he writes of honeybee reason (p. 17), fox reason (p. 23), dog reason (p. 25), and elephant reason (p. 29), among others. While he does not claim that human reason and animal reason are the same (Melehy, 2006), he also does not deny animals the possibility of having a rational soul:

Shall we say that we have seen in no other creature but man the use of a rational

soul? Well! Have we seen anything like the sun? Does it stop existing because

we have seen nothing like it? And do its moments cease to exist because there are

none like them? If what we have not seen does not exist, our knowledge is

wonderfully reduced: “How narrow are the limits of the mind!” (p. 14)

In contrast, speech carries great ontological weight for Descartes (1596-1650), reinforcing the human/animal divide: Like Aristotle, he believes that it is an exclusive

85 The language debates of late Renaissance Europe centrally hinged upon notions of speech. Writers largely conceived of speech in bifurcated terms, each of equal importance (Serjeantson, 2001). On the one hand, there was the “internal speech of reason,” and on the hand, there was the “external speech o f voice.” External speech was sometimes conceived as “the messenger or ‘interpreter’” o f this internal discourse (Serjeantson, p. 431). The external speech of voice was connected with the body, while the internal speech o f reason stemmed from the rational soul or the mind. Voice, external or outward speech, was shared by both humans and animals and was considered animals’ and humans’ “basic unit of vocal expression” (Serjeantson, p. 428). It had a rudimentary, basic nature, and in part was conceived as an animal sound generated by the body, specifically by the lungs through the windpipe (Serjeantson, 2001). Pierre Chanet, for example, explicitly linked external speech to internal discourse. Animals’ lack of speech organs indicated that they also lacked the internal discourse o f reason. He concluded that if animals possessed reason, “nature” would have provided them the means to express it (Serjeantson, p. 431).

175 and defining human capacity. As such, he sternly responds to Montaigne’s position on

animals and language, as represented in the “Apology of Raymond Sebond” (Senior,

1997). According to Senior, within Descartes’ paradigm, human identity is “wagered

entirely on the use of ‘words,’ while the animal body, with all of its inarticulate sounds, is

relegated to the mechanical universe of automatons and chiming clocks” (1997, pp. 61-

62). He adds, “This new definition of language would remake the world” (1997, p. 62).

Unlike Montaigne, Descartes firmly closes off the possibility that animals have

language (Senior, 1997). In “Discourse V” (1637), Descartes affords speech special

human status. For him, speech is an essential distinguishing feature between humans and

animals, and humans and machines, analogously. To illustrate his position regarding the

different natures of humans and animals, Descartes outlines two ontological tests that he

claims will invariably group people on one side, and animals and machines on the other.

Through his dialectic, he asserts that the absence of speech would reveal the most

elaborately human-masquerading machine 86 as not human at all. According to Descartes,

any machine, and thus too any “brute” confronted by his tests would fail, while even the

“men of the lowest grade of intellect” (2008, p. 44) would surely succeed, in turn laying

bare the true nature of each. The first test of Descartes’ twofold approach centres on

speech, specifically word use. According to Descartes, machines may utter “vocables”

but these would never match the aptitude of human word use, specifically our capacity to

reply. He posits,

We may easily conceive a machine to be so constructed that it emits vocables, and

even that it emits some correspondent to the action upon it of external objects

86 The impersonating impostor would have similar human physical attributes and a similar repertoire o f actions, “as far as it is morally possible” (Descartes, 2008, p. 44).

176 which cause a change in its organs... but not that it should arrange them variously

so as appositely to reply to what is said in its presence, as men of the lowest grade

of intellect can do. (Descartes, 2008, p. 44)

Descartes’ second test relates to anatomy and the most prized capacity, reason.

Specifically, any examined machine (and thus from Descartes’ point of vantage, any animal) would be shown to “not act from knowledge, but solely from the disposition of their organs” (p. 45). “[F]or while reason is an universal instrument that is alike available on every occasion,” explains Descartes,

[animals’] organs, on the contrary, need a particular arrangement for each

particular action; whence it must be morally impossible that there should exist in

any machine a diversity of organs sufficient to enable it to act in all the

occurrences of life, in the way in which our reason enables us to act. Again, by

means of these two tests we may likewise know the difference between men and

brutes, for it is highly deserving of remark, that there are no men so dull and

stupid, not even idiots, as to be incapable of joining together different words, and

thereby constructing a declaration by which to make their thoughts understood;

and that on the other hand, there is no other animal however perfect or happily

circumstanced, which can do the like. Nor does this inability arise from want of

organs; for we observe that magpies and parrots can utter words like ourselves,

and yet are unable to speak as we do, that is, so as to show that they understand

what they say.... (p. 45)

Still, despite his emphasis on speech, Descartes (quite progressively for the time) thought of the gestures of “the deaf and dumb” to be akin to speech and indicative of reason

177 (2008, p. 45). 87 Indeed, he maintains, unlike animals such as parrots who have the anatomy for speech but do not use it as we do, “the deaf and dumb” lack functioning

organs for speech, yet nonetheless rely on gestures to communicate their thoughts to others. Herein lies the rub: For Descartes, the lack of words, or gestures in place of

words (expression of thought), demonstrates the utter and complete lack of reason of non­

human animals. Animals’ lack of speaking skill—“very little is required to enable a

person to speak,” notes Descartes (p. 45)—suggests a difference in kind rather than

degree between humans and animals, such that he concludes that “the soul of brutes were

of a nature wholly different than ours” (p. 45). Gesturing to Montaigne, he then attempts

to abrogate debates about the meaning of animal gestures:

And we ought not to confound speech with the natural movements which indicate

the passions, and can be imitated by machines as well as manifested by animals;

nor must it be thought with certain of the ancients, that the brutes speak, although

we do not understand their language. For if such were the case, since they are

endowed with many organs analogous to ours, they could as easily communicate

their thoughts to us as to their fellows, (p. 45)

No matter how elaborate various animals’ utterances might be, from Descartes’

perspective, they are not genuine speech (Cottingham, 1978).

Descartes contends that animals have no genuine language, and from this

assumption he implies that they also do not think. This is the crucial difference between

humans and animals: For Descartes, “[a]nimals do not penser or cogitare; they are not

endowed with a mind (mens, esprit); they lack reason (raison); they do not have a

87 Descartes, like Montaigne, also believed that signs used by the “born deaf and dumb” made up a fully human language; however, unsurprisingly, he drastically diverged from Montaigne’s position that the signs of animals also indicated language of the depth and capacity held by deaf people.

178 rational soul (ame raisonnable)” (Cottingham, p. 554). Yet, even though babies do not speak, he argues that they do think. Consequently, Cottingham (1978) rephrases

Descartes’ famous position. Instead of the common rendering of Descartes’ perspective as, “He does not speak therefore he does not think,” Cottingham clarifies: “He does not

speak and has no capacity for language acquisition, therefore he does not think” (p. 556).

Unlike humans, according to Descartes, animals’ sounds are always motivated by

and toward a particular “natural impulse” (Cottingham, 1978, p. 555). As noted earlier,

even the magpie who says “good-day” to her guardian does not challenge Descartes’

schema. He surmises that the greeting is but an expression of a feeling, in this case, the

hope of eating “if you have habitually given it a tidbit when it says the word” (Descartes

in Cottingham, p. 556). 88

Senior (1997) is careful to note that Descartes’ philosophy emerged from a

broader intellectual and cultural context, specifically related to the history of mechanical

engineering and biology. However, according to Senior, the arguments perpetuated by

Descartes were indicative of the Age of Reason, a Western episteme that negated the

animal so severely that he concludes,

The technological world was bom when animals were silenced and only the poets

still imagined a time “when the beasts spoke.” Animal language had been an

open question to Montaigne, much as it is becoming today. He could not say with

certainty where animal language ended and speech began. The Age of Reason

88 Descartes’ stark contrast between human and animals carries ramifications beyond our earthly existence. Descartes conceived o f the human rational soul as immortal, “wholly independent o f the body” (p. 46), raised from the depths o f mere animal existence. If our souls were not immortal, Descartes seems to shudder, “consequently that after this life we have nothing to hope for or fear, more than the flies and the ants” (2008, p. 46). Fortunately, declares Descartes, “we are not liable to die with the latter” (p. 46). Our rational souls offer transcendence from the death o f the body, from animal death.

179 dawned when this uncertainty was divided into science and fiction. Real animals

vanished. They became the machines of the scientist and the fantasy of the poet.

(p. 62)

Contemporary meanings of voice suggest strong continuity with philosophers such as Aristotle and Descartes. In part, voice is rendered to describe human uniqueness, centrality, and superiority. Indeed, voice treatises are often predicated on humanism; as such, they can also involve the explicit and implicit disavowal of animality. Even texts that are critical of common assumptions regarding voice, such as Anne K arpf s The

Human Voice: How This Extraordinary Instrument Reveals Essential Clues about Who

We Are (which argues that voice is an embodied phenomenon rather than solely an articulation of signs), 89 nonetheless construct voice as a marker of our elevated human status.

Early in her substantial text, Karpf (2006) claims that voice is a “distinctive human feature” (2006, p. 18). Although animals are paid relatively little attention throughout the text, it is precisely her lauding of difference between humans and animals that crucially underscores and bolsters a major theme of the book (i.e., the text serves as an exploration of our “humanness”) and provides a key impetus for her research (p. 18).

While she acknowledges that other animals express various “vocal utterances” (p. 18) and are “vocally skilled” (p. 18), she defines voice fairly strictly:

89 Karpf greatly laments the absent discourse on the body within philosophy about “phonocentricism” (Derrida, 1998) and orality: “All this talk o f orality remains surprisingly mute about the real, embodied voice. Despite eloquent descriptions of its transitory qualities... the scholars of orality still equate voice mostly with speech, the acoustic with the spoken word. In one o f the most important texts ‘voice’ simply doesn’t appear in the index, as if orality were a phenomenon without agency or medium. These scholars, all too often, wed voice to language: while it’s hard to divorce them, we limit our understanding of the voice if we’re unable, even temporarily, to think about it without immediately focusing also on its language partner. And when these scholars finally attend to acoustic matters, they usually concentrate on how sound shapes speech and thought, as if voice and sound were interchangeable” (Karpf, p. 205).

180 No vocal learning by imitation takes place in mammals below humans; apart from

some birds, only humans have voluntary control over the acoustic nature of their

own vocal utterances, can leam vocal patterns by imitation, and even invent new

ones. This means there’s something quintessentially human about the voice, and

understanding it enables us to peer more deeply into the unique, complex

properties of our own species. So in some important sense, an investigation into

voice becomes an exploration of our humanness, (p. 18)

Later in her text, Karpf again stresses the difference between humans and animals, and the elevated vocal abilities of humans. While “complex communication sounds” (p.

48) are emitted by various animals, what seems significant for Karpf is whether learning is required to produce such sounds. Only a handful of mammal and bird species, namely humans, cetacea, and bats; parrots, hummingbirds, and songbirds, respectively, need to leam complex communication sounds, rather than producing such sounds innately.

Despite such feats, even those mammals and birds who leam complex sounds over time do not impress Karpf enough to challenge her position that voice is strictly humanity’s domain. In this way, her understanding of voice is similar to Descartes’ understanding of speech. Animals’ “vocables” (Descartes, 2008, p. 45), “vocal utterances” (Karpf, p. 18), and “vocal sounds” (Karpf, p. 51) are unmatched by human speech, or to use Karpf s terminology, human voice.

According to Karpf, nonhuman animals’ vocalizations (with the exception of songbirds) 90 lack the complexity and precise modulation made possible through a period of gradual vocal development:

90 See Karpf, p. 49.

181 Humans are the only primates to [go through such a period], and even though

whales and dolphins are vocal mimics and some bats can leam to vocalize, none

of the few non-human mammal vocal learners is as consummately gifted as we

are. (p. 49)

Karpf presents similarities between our voices and the “vocal sounds” of animals as minimal and exceptional (p. 51); she maintains that those sounds that we share with apes, monkeys, and “other creatures,” including “screams and groans, growls and whimpers” are generally edited from our vocal repertoire, such that these sounds “only survive in rituals or reappear when we’re in extremis - for example, in pain or grief’ (p. 51).

For Karpf s purposes, animals primarily serve as a useful backdrop against which ideas about the human voice are projected and to which they are compared; animals offer indicators of our evolutionary development, as a kind of living archaeology, which, combined with human fossils and (human) brain research, provides insight into the origins of voice and who we are today (p. 48). Yet, Karpf contradicts herself and muddies her own boundaries (and argument) concerning voice. We are told, two chapters after “What Makes the Voice Distinctly Human,” that a human baby’s first cry signifies entry into “the community of humanity” (p. 94). She maintains that babies have

“voices,” a word she immediately applies to their first cries. Notably, their cries are not conceived as mere “vocal sounds” or “vocal utterances.” Emphatically, she writes that a baby’s first cry is a “rite of passage, through which it is conferred membership of the human species” (p. 94). The fact that “babies are born with voices that they immediately know how to use” is a point of admiration for Karpf (p. 94). Importantly, nonhuman animal cries do not elicit similar homage for Karpf. Thus, her earlier definition of voice,

182 tied to learned complex communication sounds, falters under her new descriptions of babies’ cries. On the one hand, humans always have voices, even when they are expressing something innate, such as their first cries. On the other hand, animals may only be said to have voices if their ability to produce complex communication sounds emerges from a period of gradual vocal development.

Karpf praises human babies’ cries, specifically because they are “bom with voices that they immediately know how to use” (p. 94). Her astonishment is perplexing in light of her previous claims. Are we to be impressed primarily because babies cry at birth (or

shortly thereafter), demonstrating that they know how to use their voices without

instruction? Or, is the baby’s cry, his or her “voice,” to be celebrated because of the great

potential that it represents, wherein she will gradually develop her voice through

learning? Or perhaps we are to praise the worthiness of the human cry, because

according to Kant, we are the only species to emit a sound at birth (Karpf, 2006, p. 95),

as if we are to implicitly interpret this difference between human and animals as a mark

of status, such that specialness means superiority (p. 95)? Regardless of her intent, her

discussion (and associated astonishment) moves quickly into a discussion about the

acquisition of human language, as the baby’s first cry fades into the background.

Overall, what Karpf refers to as “voice” is largely the “speaking voice” (p. 20),

and both voice and speech are largely presented as human phenomena. Centrally,

though, Karpf rallies against the assumption that voice and speech are synonymous (p.

205), as linguists and scholars of orality often do (p. 13, p. 205): Indeed, she laments,

“We raid speech for its semantic meaning, and then discard the voice like leftovers,

detritus” (Karpf, p. 13). Within linguistics, according to Karpf, voice is largely thought

183 of as a vehicle for words (p. 13). Voice and speech are mined for semantic meaning, while voice is treated as some kind of neutral ether, devoid of meaning itself or influencing effect. Language is considered the primary carrier of meaning. For Karpf, voice is a medium, yes, but one highly imbued with meaning, and speech is more than just spoken language. The treatment of voice as a throw-away of language is not solely a problem of linguistic studies, however, but perhaps points to a more epistemic, particularly modernist, relationship to voice: “It is a point of scientific honour to be unimpressed by invocations, mantras and prayers,” contends Ree (1991), “and science prides itself on knowing how to abstract from fine-sounding words, how to sift fact and concept from the vocal noises by which they happen to be conveyed” (p. 3).

One area in which we might anticipate finding alternative understandings of voice, ones not predicated on humanism, is within discourses of animal advocacy. The denial of animals’ capacities for language, reason, sentience, etc. has been used to construct and maintain the solidity of the human/animal divide. As such, advocates have attacked on all of these fronts, either to show that these criteria are irrelevant to animals’ exclusion from the moral sphere or to argue for continuity between humans and animals in these regards. As is evidenced below, the voice metaphor within the animal movements in certain ways reproduces humanist assumptions, but such tendencies are not without their significant detractors.

Voice and Animal Advocacy

Voice and speech-related phraseology operate as key tropes within the Western animal movements. Claims to be “the animals’ voice” or “animals’ voices,” and advocates’ calls

184 to be “their voice” suggest an important way advocates 91 and academics express their struggle to represent animals’ interests and perspectives. Particularly, the aphorism, “the voice of the voiceless” repeatedly appears in both popular and academic work about animal advocacy. For example, consider the impassioned plea of the U.S.-based organization Compassion Over Killing:

With so many willing to exploit animals and support their abuse, animals have

few friends. We are their only advocates. It’s up to each one of us to provide a

voice for the voiceless and demand their freedom just as vigorously as they

would could they themselves speak [bold in original]. (“Thoughts on Animal

Advocacy,” n.d.)

Similarly, well-known philosopher Tom Regan, author of The Case for Animal Rights, describes his role as an advocate in terms of being animals’ spokesperson and their voice.

In the 2004 Satya magazine online interview with Regan entitled, “Giving Voice to

Animal Rights,” the influential writer states,

I obviously feel these things with great passion. My reason for being in this world

is to be a spokesperson for those who cannot speak for themselves. I am

absolutely certain about this. It’s nothing exceptional in my case. It is true of

91 The term “advocate” finds its etymological roots within voice. As a noun, advocate is contemporarily defined as “One called in, or liable to be called upon, to defend or speak for” (Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2008). From Middle English via Old Frenchadvocat, advocate ultimately stems from the Latin advocatus, which means one summoned or “called to” another, especially one called in to aid one’s cause in a court o f justice (OED Online, 2008). Advocatus is the past participle o f advoca-re, which combines ad “to” andvocare “to call” (Oxford Concise Dictionary, 1995). “Advocate” remains the Roman law courts’ technical title for a person who pleads someone’s cause in a court of justice. Notably, advocate finds a shared etymological root with voice through vocare. Voice defined as a “sound made by the human mouth,” stems from Old French voiz, from the Latin voc-em (nom. vox) “voice,” sound, utterance, cry, call, speech, sentence, language, word,” related tovocare (Online Etymological Dictionary). A shared relationship between “advocate” and “voice” is explicitly shown through the contemporary definition of “advocate” as a transitive verb: “To plead or raise one’s voice in favour of; to defend or recommend publicly” (OED Online, 2008).

185 every other animal advocate. This is why we are in the world....As animal

advocates, we have a reason to get up in the morning. A reason to rest at night.

And that is to be a voice for the voiceless.

It is impossible to definitely say why various advocates use such voice-saturated discourses; however, a few intersecting factors seem likely. First, the popularity of such discourses likely stems in part from the ways in which animals have been considered speechless and voiceless, “mute” and “dumb,” throughout Western thought. In this way, advocates are building upon certain cultural assumptions, while simultaneously challenging others, such as the disregard for animals’ interests or suffering. Second, the expression “voice of the voiceless” also circulates outside of animal advocacy, and its use within the movement may partially be a testament to its more general popularity. Third, the ways in which animals have been situated outside of both the political and public spheres, major sites of “voice” within Western culture, have most likely prompted activists to note animals’ political “voicelessness” and, in turn, to consider themselves animals’ voice or voices in these areas. Fourth, the internal rhetorical inertia of the animal movement (under the influence of the other factors) has undoubtedly helped perpetuate the discourse. For instance, a classic example of animal advocates’ voice discourse is located within American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s popular piece “Voice of the Voiceless,” from her collection Poems o f Experience (1915), which continues to be a commonly referenced work within the animal movements. Consider the following excerpt from Wilcox’s poem, which appears on the inside cover of each The Animals ’

Voice magazine:

I am the voice of the voiceless: Through me, the dumb shall speak;

186 Till the deaf world's ear be made to hear The cry of the wordless weak.

From street, from cage, and from kennel, From jungle and stall, the wail Of my tortured kin proclaims the sin Of the mighty against the frail.

Oh, shame on the mothers of mortals Who have not stooped to teach Of the sorrow that lies in dear, dumb eyes, The sorrow that has no speech.

I am my brother’s keeper, And 1 shall fight his fight; And speak the word for beast and bird Till the world shall set things right.

Occasionally reproduced within academic writing and other printed sources, such as

Beers’ (2006) For the Prevention o f Cruelty: The History and Legacy o f Animal Rights

and Kheel’s (1995) “License to Kill: An Ecofeminist Critique of Hunters’ Discourse,”

Wheeler Wilcox’s “Voice of the Voiceless” now enjoys considerable currency on the

Internet, through such sites as all-creatures.org, animalliberation.com, International

Vegetarian Union, Brightside Farm Sanctuary, Pakistan Vegetarian Society, Jack Pine

Guinea Pig Rescue, Colorado German Shepherd Rescue, and Harborough Animal

Concern, among others. These sites tend to present the poem with little explanation,

frequently quoting it somewhere on the main page, presumably as a statement about the organization or individual’s guiding values, or as a submission on the site’s poetry page.

Additionally, many other animal advocacy organizations reference voice within their names, though it is unclear whether they are allusions to Wheeler Wilcox’s famous poem. Certainly not an exhaustive list, here is a partial sample of myriad organizations that draw on voice as part of their official designation: Voiceless: A Fund for Animals

187 (Australia), Abolitionist-Online: A Voice for Animal Rights (Australia), Animals

Australia: The Voice for Animals, The Canadian Voice for Animals Foundation, Voice

for Animals Humane Society (Canada), Animal Voices (Canada, Toronto), Animal

Voices (Canada, Vancouver), Animals’ Voice (official magazine of the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), No Voice Unheard (United States), VOCAL:

Voice of Compassion for Animal Life (United States), Voices for Animals (United

States), Voices for Animals of Western Pennsylvania (United States), VOICE for

Animals (Texas, United States), Voice for the Animals Foundation (United States),

Alabama Voice for Animals (United States), DePaul Voice for the Animals (United

States), SPEAK: The Voice for Animals (United Kingdom), VERO: Voice for Ethical

Research at Oxford (United Kingdom), Animal Voice (magazine published by the

Humane Education Trust in South Africa), Viva! Vegetarians International Voice for

Animals (United Kingdom), and Serbian Animals Voice (SAV, Serbia).

Similarly, activist-oriented scholarship is often permeated with voice-related rhetoric. Particularly, again, the insistence that animals are voiceless and that humans are their voices weaves throughout a variety of contemporary texts dedicated to animals. For example, in Making a Killing: The Political Economy o f Animal Rights, author Bob

Torres (2007) uses “voicelessness” both to name animals’ experiences of suffering at human hands (i.e., voiceless suffering), and to name their ontological position as an exploited group under capitalism (i.e., as voiceless beings).

In one instance, Torres critiques analogies between human slavery and animal exploitation under capitalism. He argues that “human slaves can resist, plan, revolt, and even struggle for their own freedom in some cases; nonhumans cannot meaningfully do

188 any of these things. They are exploited and suffer voicelessly, and we rarely hear their cries” (Torres, 2007, p. 39). For Torres, the key difference between exploited humans and animals relates to their experience of suffering and exploitation: While humans are exploited and suffer, they possess “voice”—as we might reasonably infer from Torres’ statements—given their ability to mobilize and effect change, whereas animals

(according to Torres) cannot meaningfully do this, and thus they are exploited and suffer voicelessly as a consequence of their utter powerlessness to intervene in their conditions.

Whereas human slaves can “resist, plan, revolt, and even struggle for their own freedom,” animals lack the ability to meaningfully engage in these activities and alleviate or escape their situation, and thus unlike human slaves, they ultimately suffer without voice. In this sense, animals’ voicelessness relates not to their inability to audibly express pain, but their inability to meaningfully convey that suffering to others and personally change their circumstances. For Torres, voice possession and being heard (by humans) are bound concepts.

Torres also uses “voiceless” to name animals’ position as an exploited group under capitalism. Following a summary of Noske’s analysis of animal subjectivity, in which animals are perceived as “total beings” who are in relation to both physical and social environments, Torres (2007) concludes, “How we relate to animals as voiceless beings suffering under the forces of capital becomes an ethical question, much as the question of how we relate to any other group that suffers under the exploitative forces of capital” (p. 39). The understanding of animals as voiceless appears finally in the text’s

“Acknowledgements,” as Torres recognizes lawyer and Professor Gary Francione for

“his decades of activism, writing, and speaking for the voiceless—even when it was

189 unpopular to do so” (p. iv). As such, Torres constructs Francione’s role as an academic and author vis-a-vis a (presumed) voiceless Other.

Of course, Torres is certainly not the only contemporary scholar to draw upon voice and voicelessness to construct arguments about animals and advocacy. For example, author Diane Beers (2006) extensively relies on notions of voice and voicelessness throughout her history of animal advocacy in the United States. Beers’

(2006) ends the “Acknowledgements” of her inspired text, For the Prevention o f Cruelty:

The History and Legacy o f Animal Rights in the United States, with a dedication to her companion animals: “Their spirits light every page. This book is their voice” (p. xii).

Particularly, references to animals’ voicelessness sprinkle the entire text (pp. 7, 11, 30,

40, 56, 58, 59, 60, 134, 155, 196, 198). Frequently, these references appear as part of the expression “voice of the voiceless” (e.g., pp. 7, 30) or variants of the expression, such as to “give a voice to the voiceless” (e.g., pp. 134, 196).

In Beers’ writing, the “voice of the voiceless” signifies animal advocates. Implied through the aphorism, the “voice” is the activist or activists, and the “voiceless” are the animals, specifically animals who are abused or exploited. For example, Beers reflects,

During the early years, those who spoke for animals had to shout to be heard

above the cacophony of their many contemptuous opponents. But as the

advocates, the voice of the voiceless, increasingly gained respect and acceptance,

their message edged toward the mainstream, and they pursued goals that appealed

to the interests of the more receptive public, 92 (p. 11)

92 Beers’ study spans the years from 1865 to 1975.

190 Likewise, in her descriptions of the elation experienced by advocates in response to

Darwin’s research, which showed continuity between humans and animals, Beers remarks,

For movement advocates, evolution validated the rights of animals. Although

those who were the voice of the voiceless still relied on moral and emotional

arguments to promote the ethical consideration of animals, Darwin’s concept of

the tree of life cloaked such positions with the prestige and authority of science,

(p. 30)

Alternatively, for Beers, the “voice of the voiceless” does not always refer to advocates per se, but to the materials they produce on behalf of animals. For instance, Beers argues that Mark Twain’s acclaimed antivivisectionist story “A Dog’s Tale,” which is written from a dog’s perspective, was a “deceptively simply little tale [that] gave a powerful voice to the voiceless and laid bare human cruelty and arrogance” (p. 134). What is significant here is the idea that, within this construction, advocates are positioned as giving a voice to animals. The presupposition is that without these humans, animals have no voice.

Beers (2006) similarly returns to voice in her concluding statements, again emphasizing the way activists bequeath voice to animals: “After one hundred years

[1865-1975] of hardscrabble activism, those who had given a voice to the voiceless arrived at an ideological crossroads. It would be left to the next generation to continue the journey and advance the cause in a new direction” (p. 196).” (Recall, too, that she positions her book as her companion animals’ voice.)

As the early publication date of Wheeler Wilcox’s poem suggests, the roots of

191 such voice-related discourse run deep within the history of animal advocacy. Beers

(2006) argues that the birth of the organized animal advocacy movement in the United

States began in April 1866, with the inauguration of the American Society for the

Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in New York. Henry Bergh declared at the

end of the first meeting, “The blood-red hand of cruelty shall no longer torture dumb

beasts with impunity” (p. 3). Founded in 1869, the oldest animal welfare society in

Canada, the Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (CSPCA), has claimed for over a hundred years to have fought for “those who cannot speak for themselves” (Johnston, 1970, p. 1). Even today the organization rallies volunteers to

“forge ahead with [its] human mission to be the voice of those who cannot speak for themselves” (CSPCA, “Volunteer’s Comer”). Similar organizations, such as the “Dumb

Friends League,” invoke speech through their name. The official website explains that

“Our Dumb Friends League” was named in 1910 after an animal shelter in London,

England. Choosing to retain the outmoded nomenclature, “dumb,” the organization

states, “In those days, the term ‘dumb’ was often used to refer to those who were unable to speak. Although the term ‘dumb’ is not generally used with that meaning today, we’ve

kept our name, because it has significant recognition among Colorado residents.” The

mission statement of the Dumb Friends League includes “‘speaking for those who cannot

speak for themselves,’ meaning our companion animal friends” (Dumb Friends League,

“Who We Are”).

As the above examples illustrate, there are common themes evidenced through animal advocates’ use of voice and voicelessness. First, some advocates understand themselves as conduits or translators for animals, as Compassion Over Killing, Regan,

192 Wheeler Wilcox, and Torres’ usages suggest. Wheeler Wilcox declares, “I am the voice of the voiceless:/Through me, the dumb shall speak;/Till the deaf world’s ear be made to hear/The cry of the wordless weak.

Torres professes, “They are exploited and suffer voicelessly, and we rarely hear their cries” (p. 39). There is a sense that without human interveners, animals’ suffering in particular remains meaningfully unintelligible/inaudible to many human beings and therefore unable to effect change on their behalf. Second, related to the first, voice is indistinguishably melted into a capacity for human speech and language. It is through human speech and language that animals’ experiences of suffering are made meaningful to humans who otherwise ignore or simply fail to recognize these experiences. The conduit is then specifically human speech and language, made possible and enacted through the activists. The “hearing” discussed by authors such as Torres and Wheeler

Wilcox implies being understood by humans, rather than simply reception of sound.

Voice possession and being heard are bound concepts, and often appear in conjunction with discussions of voice. Third, voice and voicelessness are ways of describing unequal positions of power, specifically as they relate to victimhood and agency/resistance.

Voicelessness describes the experience of being a victim, while advocates’ voice represents resistance to the abuse meted upon animals and agency to effect meaningful change (or at least, meaningfully challenge those who harm animals).

We see a similar collection of voice meanings manifest in feminist debates about research and representation of the Other. In these debates, voice is unmistakeably about power as much as it is about subjectivity. Perhaps we might understand voice as the ability to define and assert one’s subjectivity, or the power to have one’s subjectivity

193 recognized by those refuse it. According to some, it is simply not enough to speak one’s experience because the speaking itself does not guarantee truly being heard. Language and speech also become metaphors for agency and resistance. As such, only those privileged enough to actually be heard can effect change, because they are able to speak a language that is heard. For example, in her essay, “We are Different, but Can We Talk?”

Saraswati Raju (2002) confronts the difficulty of speaking on behalf of others, particularly as suggested by postmodernist feminist discourses that challenge universalizing theories and meta-narratives. Specifically, Raju considers the problem of

First World women speaking on behalf of so-called Third World women, herself identifying as the latter. Cautious of treating either category as monolithic (she qualifies both groups as composed of women who are disparately oppressed), she argues,

The point that speaking for others is often value-laden and amounts to

epistemological violence and that speaking for those who are less privileged may

be a way to get out of guilt are well-taken. But then what?....Ideally, the

researched should speak for themselves, but what if they cannot? Not because

they do not have knowledge, but because they are not equipped with the language

that can be heard and responded to by those who make the decisions. Do the

privileged remain silent even if their speaking, however tinted and biased their

voices might be (assuming that they would be), makes a difference? (Raju, p. 174)

I find Raju’s imperative quite compelling. I am especially struck by her assertion that sometimes the researched cannot speak for themselves: “Not because they do not have

knowledge, but because they are not equipped with the language that can be heard and

responded to by those who make the decisions” (p. 174). This sentiment well

194 summarizes the briar-patch of ethical and political questions about representation that permeate the animal movements, which are indivisibly also shot through with questions of power. Perhaps the question is not, “Do they have a voice?” but instead, “Are their voices heard?” Or, more precisely, “Are their voices heard by those in power?” In absence of an affirmative answer, they are largely voiceless in that respect. In absence of reception and response by those in power to “make the decisions” that help animals, their subjectivity is not recognized, but that is much different than the assumption that it does not exist.

Voice functions paradoxically because it both attempts to highlight subjectivity at the same moment that it inadvertently erases it (through the proclamation that animals are voiceless and advocates alone are their voices). Indeed, it is the animals’ expressions of suffering that have inspired advocates to “be their voice.” Recall Wheeler Wilcox’s poetic lament, “From street, from cage, and from kennel,/From jungle and stall, the wail/Of my tortured kin proclaims the sin/Of the mighty against the frail.” Wheeler

Wilcox did hear their voices. The animal advocates discussed below explicitly grapple with the complexity of voice and the potential dangers it encompasses.

Disruption

Animal advocate and scientist Marc Bekoff, author of Strolling with Our Kin: Speaking

Out fo r Voiceless Animals (2000), offers at times a paradoxical and contradictory understanding of animals as both voiceless and voiced: “We must continue to be the voices for voiceless animals and add to their ‘vociferous voices of suffering’ as

195 philosopher Graham Harvey puts it. Numerous animals are really crying for help and they are not truly ‘voiceless’” (Bekofif, 2006, p. 38).

Similarly, pattrice jones more directly critiques animal activists’ use of voice in her presentation at the Grassroots Animal Rights Conference in 2005 93 She questions the language that superficially appears benevolent but perhaps, in a deeper sense, points to both a latent arrogance and paternalism that ought to be challenged. As one of few

documented instances of an activist critiquing other activists’ use of voice, jones is worth

quoting at length:

We must take responsibility for ending human exploitation of the earth and other

animals, just as men must actively support women in the struggle against sexism

and white people must work hard to divest ourselves of the illegitimate power and

privilege that come with being white. Of course, feminists would never tolerate

men trying to run the movement against sexism. And, could you imagine what

would have happened if, when 1 was doing anti-racist work, I had run around

saying “I am the voice of the Black man”!?

There are no such natural checks on self-importance in the animal

liberation movement. We have people running around claiming to be “the voice

of the voiceless” as if animals don’t have voices of their own. That heroic attitude

makes it easy to assume that you know what’s best for the animals without

stopping to wonder what they might say if you asked them and were able to

understand their answers. (2005)

Bekoff s and jones’ challenge to activists’ seemingly uncritical use of voice as a

signifier of (a lack of) political power and agency prompts questions not only about the

93 The conference was held in Manhattan, New York City, in the spring o f 2005.

196 strategic use of language, but also perhaps more importantly, highlights animals’ subjectivities and provides a re-configuration of “the animal” within the movement and larger public. Both authors position animals as active agents rather than passive victims.

Bekoffs claim that “We must continue to be the voices for voiceless animals” is held in tension with his proceeding statement that “Numerous animals are really crying for help and they are not truly ‘voiceless’” (2006, p. 38). How do we reconcile these positions?

Bekoff seems to be wrestling with different understandings of voice. Embodied and metaphorical voice (in this case, political voice) rest against each other like layered sheets of coloured paper. Where does one hue begin and the other end? Or, to use an auditory metaphor, the metaphorical and the material are two notes harmonizing. They resonate together, almost indistinguishably. When he writes that “we must continue to be the voices for voiceless animals,” Bekoff acknowledges the lack of animals’ political voice, but the material or embodied voice of animals seems to bleed into his first interpretation (i.e., “We must continue to be the voices for voiceless animals”). From

Bekoffs standpoint, animals do indeed have voices (i.e., “Numerous animals are really crying for help...”) such that, seemingly, he recognizes how their embodied voices haunt the phrase “the voice of the voiceless.”

Birke and Parisi (1999) also gesture toward a distinction between political voice and embodied voice regarding animals when, in “Animals, Becoming,” they write,

“Nonhumans may not have a political voice in Western culture; but they have political interests and can form alliances. We must pay more heed to the deep interconnections between many kinds of politics” (p. 71 ).94 Here, voice is qualified. It is not that animals

94 This statement follows their discussion of feminism, animals, and science, which is informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s notion o f “becoming.” Through their piece, Birke and Parisi offer critiques o f feminism,

197 do not have voices, but that they do not have political voices, or to use their phrasing, “a political voice,” perhaps implying a collective and singular voice. Differentiating between political voice and embodied or material voice seems useful because it offers an approach for thinking through activists’ claims to be animals’ voices, or calls to be animals’ voices.

However, there are potential problems with such neat bifurcation between political voice and embodied voice. First, the assumption that animals do not have

political voices (or a political voice) forecloses the possibility that they do participate or

influence political realms. Additionally, the denial of animals’ political voices perhaps

also forecloses an appreciation of the dynamics of political voice, as outlined in Chapter

Two, that animals do possess and enact. Specifically, is the denial of animals’ political

voices tantamount to a denial of their subjectivity, experiential knowledge, capacity for

relationships/dialogue, and ability to actively resist? Second, it also implies that their

embodied voices and potential political voices do not overlap or blur together.

Scholars and advocates such as Marc Bekoff point to a discursive tension between

an appreciation of animals’ embodied voices and the possibility of political voice or

voices. It is unclear if Bekoff (2006) is referring to either a metaphorical (i.e., political)

or an embodied voice when he states, “Numerous animals are really crying for help and

they are not truly ‘voiceless’” (p. 38). The phrase “cry for help,” in reference to humans,

is not always associated with a physical cry (such as when self-damaging behaviours are

termed a “cry for help”), although it certainly can be. Yet Bekoff, a cognitive ethologist,

animal rights, and biology. They look to “becoming” as a move toward respecting heterogeneous difference, challenging the extensionist tradition of animal rights (where boundaries themselves are not challenged), and calling for a “nondeterminist science” (p. 71).

198 is very much interested in the emotional and cognitive experiences for animals. Given the disciplinary context from which he writes, it is quite likely that he wants us to attend to the physical cries (and other vocalizations or voices) of animals, so that we may ask questions about the motivations and meanings involved in such expressions. For him, the physical cry and metaphorical cry merge. A “cry for help” can literally be a cry for help.

Still, legitimate questions might be posed about whether the presence of an embodied voice (or a particular kind of embodied voice) is necessary for one to be acknowledged as having a political voice. Is it correct to say that when an animal cries that he or she is asking for assistance or reaching out in some way? Does one (human or nonhuman) ever cry just for the sake of expression rather than the elicitation of response?

1 think there is a real danger in suggesting that embodied voice, when defined as the audible production of sound, is understood as the prerequisite for political voice. If this is the case, all sorts of speciesist oversights will certainly be committed in the name of animal advocacy. What about animals who never “cry” or “cry out”? What about injured animals who stay silent to avoid predators? What about animals who seemingly do not produce sound, or sounds that we can hear and recognize as voice? For example, humans cannot hear certain whale sounds either because they are too high or too low

(Rothenberg, 2008).

Further still, as some have claimed, silence can also be a voice. For example, consider Bauman and Drake’s (1997) essay “Silence Is Not Without Voice.” The essay describes a course taught by Bauman and Drake entitled “Narratives of Struggle,” which was part of the Binghamton Enrichment Program in 1994. The course showed how “the

Deaf are a ‘real’ cultural community” (p. 310), such that Deaf identity was taught as an

199 integral aspect of multi-cultural curriculum development. Within “Narratives of

Struggle,” Deafness is positioned as culture in contrast to deafness as disability. (The authors distinguish between Deafness and deafness, where the latter refers to the repressive education models based on medical views of deafness and the former refers to bilingual/bicultural education):

For the Deaf, recontextualizing Deaf identity in a cultural framework alongside

Latinos, African-Americans, Chinese-Americans, gays and lesbians, and other

cultural/racial/ethnic groups represents significant advancement toward the

recognition that the Deaf community is a linguistic minority in the United States.

In addition, hearing students introduced to the relevant historical, political, and

social issues surrounding Deaf culture are encouraged to expand and to challenge

their existing notions of multiculturalism, disability, and language, (p. 311)

It seems significant that the essay, which focuses on the importance of including Deaf culture within multicultural education, uses the trope of voice in its title. The voice trope seems to offer a way of acknowledging “Deaf persons as cultural subjects” (p. 310), although the title is not explicitly explained in the essay. Cultural subjectivity gestures toward voiced subjectivity, and vice versa. Notably, class discussion of Deaf culture first occurred during the “Resisting Silences/Finding Voices” week. A paper by Youlla, a student in the class, is summarized by the authors, who write, “Youlla continued to connect the inability to ‘hear’ with the inability to listen and to empathize in order to argue that the dominant culture is ‘disabled’ by its inability to listen to the ‘voices’ of different communities” (p. 310). The conventional meanings associated with language,

(multi-)cultural identity, voice, and silence are intentionally troubled within the course,

200 “Narratives of Struggle.” Those who are silent, or are understood as silent, are not

without voice, in the sense that they are expressive and cultural beings.

Voiceless?

Karen Davis’ (1995) polemical essay, “Thinking Like a Chicken: Farm Animals and the

Feminine Connection,” disputes the epistemological assumptions of Western science, and

deep ecology in particular, and conceives of voice as neither strictly metaphorical nor exclusively embodied. Her questions challenge not only what experiences count within these frameworks, but in correlation, whose voice counts. Her aim is both to reveal the epistemological assumptions of certain modes of ecological thinking, and simultaneously to represent those experiences (and beings) that are elided, specifically those of chickens

and other farm animals. Against the powerful voice of the scientific expert is—within

her understanding—the ignored voice of the chicken.

Although her critique also extends to science and environmental ethics more

generally, Davis takes specific aim at J. Baird Callicotf s (1980) influential essay,

“Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair,” which extensively draws on Aldo Leopold’s

famous “Land Ethic.” Leopold’s ethic prioritizes the biotic community, wherein species

have greater moral value than individuals, and wild animals have greater moral status than domesticated animals. An individual “nonhuman natural entity” is valued to the extent that it contributes to the “integrity, beauty, and stability” of the community

(Leopold in Davis, 1995, p. 193).

Callicott applies Leopold’s moral framework, which strongly delineates between things that are “unnatural, tame, and confined” and things that are “natural, wild, and

201 free,” to discount arguments for animal liberation (Davis, p. 193). Callicott claims that farm animals have been “bred to docility, tractability, stupidity, and dependency,” and similarly, like tables or chairs, they are “creations of man” (Callicott in Davis, p. 194).

Consequently, animal liberation is understood to be as preposterous as efforts to free furniture. Against Callicott’s sweeping generalizations, Davis introduces Viva, a hen who recently escaped slaughter. She discovered the partially deformed and filthy animal within a chicken shed. In the months before her death, Viva lived at Davis’ house.

The appearance of Viva’s story in Davis’ text also signals the appearance of voice. Davis’ description of voice, in relation to the hen and elsewhere throughout the piece, suggests a clear challenge to Callicott’s reification of farm animals. In the following passage, Viva’s voice exemplifies her expressivity and responsiveness, which in terms of Davis’ argument, helps shift the portrayal of farm animals from objects to active subjects:

One of the most touching things about her was her voice. She would always talk

to me with her frail “peep” which never got any louder and seemed to come from

somewhere in the center of her body which pulsed her tail at precisely the same

time. Also, rarely, she gave a little trill. Often after one of her ordeals, in which

her legs would get caught in her wings, causing her terrible confusion and

distress, I would sit talking to her, stroking her beautiful back and her feet that

were so soft between the toes and on the bottoms, and she would carry on the

dialogue with me, her tail feathers twitching in a kind of unison with each of her

utterances. (Davis, 1995, pp. 194-195) Davis’ positioning of Viva as a being who talks and who participates in dialogue seems particularly significant. Consider again hooks’ (1989) supposition that dialogue is

“necessarily a liberatory expression” (p. 24) because it indicates a recognized voice as opposed to a soliloquized voice. If we apply hooks’ interpretation of dialogue to the above account, which seems reasonable given Davis’ argument, Viva is shown not to engage in “the mere making of sounds,” as Aristotle would contend, but to be a subject in responsive relation to another subject. “Only as subjects can we speak,” contends hooks

(1989, p. 12). As Gilligan (1993) suggests, “[Sjpeaking depends on listening and being heard; it is an intensely relational act” (p. xvi). For hooks, Gilligan, and Davis, voice is about being subjects in relation; Davis goes further than either Gilligan or hooks through her representation of animals as voiced subjects.

Returning to the oral and aural again, Davis moves from descriptions of dialogue to a musical metaphor, again emphasizing Viva’s voice, and that of other farmed animals.

Notably, in the following excerpt, Davis does not suggest that chickens are voiceless, only that their voices become obscured within the cacophony of certain environmental discourses:

I think to myself, listening to the trumpet blasts and iron oratory of

environmentalism, how could the soft voice of Viva ever hope to be heard here?

In this world, the small tones of life are drowned out by the regal harmonies of the

mountain and their ersatz echoes in the groves of academe, (p. 198)

As hooks (1989) emphasizes and Davis implies, the possession of voice alone is not sufficient for liberation; the struggle for voice is to be heard.

203 The importance of voice is further made clear through Davis’ essay within an essay, “Clucking Like a Mountain.” Davis’ employment of voice, though directed

toward deep ecology and environmental ethics generally, offers a specific response to

Leopold’s wish that we “think like a mountain” and identify with the ecosphere.

Particularly disturbing for Davis is the recognition that Leopold’s plea for ecoholistic thinking, which she agrees with in sentiment, has provided a rationale for some environmentalists to exclude farmed animals from moral consideration. Davis further

laments that Leopold likely would have denied domesticated animals such as chickens a voice at the Council of All Beings, a popular exercise inspired by his work.95 In response, keeping with the exercise form in which “beings are invited to tell how life has changed for them under the present conditions that humans have created in the world”

(Seed in Davis, p. 200), Davis writes from the perspective of an imaginary factory farmed

chicken. 96 Her testimony is divided into two paragraphs: one detailing her current

conditions experienced as a battery hen, and in contrast, another describing how she

would have lived “[i]n nature or even a farm yard” (p. 200). The paragraphs’ juxtaposition emphasizes the abject conditions experienced by most “layer” hens. 1

provide an abridged excerpt of the speech below:

Megaphone please.

I am a battery hen. I live in a cage so small I cannot stretch my wings. I

am forced to stand all night and day on a sloping wire mesh floor that painfully

cuts into my feet. The cage walls tear my feathers, forming blood blisters that

95 The Council o f All Beings is a ritual designed by John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess to encourage humanity’s reconnection with a larger “ecological se lf’ (1988, p. 20). For more information, see Thinking like a Mountain: Toward a Council of All Beings(Seed et. al., 1988). 96 Typically, the Council is a spoken and collective exercise, conducted in a group of people.

204 never heal. The air is so fu ll o f ammonia that my lungs hurt and my eyes burn

and I think I am going blind....

My mind is alert and my body is sensitive and I should have been richly

feathered.... Free, I would have ranged my ancestral jungles andfields with my

mates, devouring plants, earth-worms, and insects from sunrise to dusk. I would

have exercised my body and expressed my nature, and I would have given and

received, pleasure as a whole being. la m only a year old, but I am already a

“spent hen. ” Humans, I wish I were dead, and soon I will be dead. Look for

pieces o f my woundedflesh wherever chicken pies and soups are sold [italics in

original], (p. 200)

In one of the more poetic sections of “Thinking like a Chicken,” Davis again returns to the auditory, comparing environmentalists’ disregard for individuals to the dismissal of individual notes in a song. Yet, none who love music negate individual

notes; like William Blake who inspired his readers to see the universe in a single grain of

sand, Davis urges,

We must learn with equal justice and perception to hear the music of the spheres

in the cluck of a chicken, starting with the hen who, historian Page Smith says, ‘is

rich in comfortable sounds, chirps and chirrs, and, when she is a young pullet, a

kind of sweet singing that is full of contentment when she is clustered together

with her sisters and brothers in an undifferentiated huddle of peace and well-being

waiting for darkness to envelop them.’ If I think like a mountain, will I be able to

hear this hen singing? (p. 203) Davis further pairs voice with individuality in the Epilogue. First, in response to

Callicott’s argument for a single ethic, which appeared in his later conciliatory piece,

“Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Back Together Again,” she writes, “I believe that we need a single ethic in which we are a voice not only for life but for lives—for all the soft and innocent lives who are at our mercy” (Davis, 1995, p. 206). 97

Davis expresses her discontent at the rejection letter authored by the

Environmental Ethics’ editor, regarding her submission “Clucking like a Mountain.” In the letter, the editor turns to the work of professor of Christian theology, John Cobb, to argue that the “right to life” principle applies more to certain animals than others; namely, the principle applies less to animals such as chickens and veal calves and more to gorillas and dolphins. From Cobb’s perspective, whereas the potential experiences of gorillas and other animals presumed within their class are particularly distinctive, the lives of animals such as chickens are not. Additionally, neither these animals, nor others, are greatly concerned with their deaths. According to Davis, the editor’s arguments precisely enact the type of positions she critiques; subsequently, she concludes that the letter

seeks to shout down the voice of the individual animal and author and to

delegitimate me as a speaker who knows chickens in deference to the “experts”

with whom the world order and divine mind just happen to agree that animals

humans like to eat (such as chickens, veal calves, and tuna) and animals who like

97 However, Davis (1995) does not concede Callicott’s point that fanned animals’ ontology is tied to the roles humans have ascribed to them, nor does she support Callicott’s position regarding the conscience- soothing belief of an unspoken evolutionary “social contract” between humans and domesticated animals. In effect, suggests Davis, Callicott’s application of social contract theory legitimates unequal social relations between humans and animals, and ignores hierarchies o f power.

206 to eat humans (such as sharks) have less valuable personal and interpersonal

experiences and a lesser part in the universe. How do the experts know? They

decided. (Davis, 1995, p. 208)

Davis’ jab at “expert knowledge,” characterized in what she later calls the “voice of the expert” (p. 209), relates to her earlier critiques of deep ecology, specifically the great extent that it adheres to the prevailing scientific worldview. According to Davis, this “domineering construct of our era” (p. 208) eschews personal experience as legitimate grounds for knowledge. For example, her years running a chicken sanctuary and her many personal relationships with chickens were dismissed by the article’s reviewers. As one of the “Clucking like a Mountain” referees (whom Davis speculates is a poultry scientist) chastised, “too much first person singular” and “sixteen billion chickens cannot tell me the psychic price of scientific enlightenment” (p. 208). Davis queries, “Where is the voice of the voiceless in the scientific literature, including the literature o f environmental ethics?” (p. 208).

In other words, Davis’ argument maintains that science is not the sole purveyor of truth. Following Adams and Proctor-Smith’s claim that “the voice of the voiceless offers a truth that the voice of the expert can never offer” (p. 208), she posits that the language of science is unable to represent the “truths of subjugated knowledge” (Adams and

Proctor-Smith in Davis, 1995, p. 208). Instead, she calls for the realization of a different voice:

This voice requires a different language from the language of experts, a verbal

and lyrical equivalent of the subjective and intersubjective experiences linking

207 humans to one another and, through an epistemology rooted in our evolutionary

history, to other animals and the earth, (p. 208)

In conclusion, Davis contrasts “the expert’s” voice with Viva’s voice, and Viva comes to represent an ambassador for all farmed animals. In this sense, she is both acknowledged as an individual and as a species representative.

Davis directly enters the sticky terrain of representation of the (animal) Other throughout her essay: She gestures toward Viva’s own voice as a way of unseating not only Callicott and other environmentalists’ claims about farm animals, but also unseating the assumption that her (human) voice alone can represent Viva’s subjectivity. I appreciate the self-consciousness of her attempt. Davis’ “voice” claim to her own experiential knowledge, resistance to hegemonic discourses, and emphasis on dialogue reverberates with the previous chapter’s descriptions of voice in its contemporary political register. She goes beyond such descriptions, though, by disrupting the humanism of political voice through her attempt to include Viva’s embodied voice. We can understand that gesture also as an effort to acknowledge her political voice, and in relation, her subjectivity. It is this latter voice that is so often lacking within social justice and even animal advocacy texts, such as Torres’ (2007) Making a Killing: The Political

Economy o f Animal Rights. My argument is not to undercut the significance of the texts and their myriad contributions. Crucially, we hear of animals’ suffering within advocates’ work, and in this sense, we do undoubtedly achieve some insight into and description of their subjectivity. However, Davis deepens these kinds of efforts by providing a more extensive “voice” of nonhuman animals within her writing, including not only a representation of their abject suffering but also their capacity for dialogue,

208 complex emotionality and sociality, including the reciprocal giving and receiving of pleasure.

Of course, Davis’ approach does not immunize her from accusations of adopting the “ventriloquist’s burden” (Horwitz, 1998, p. 45). Yet, Davis grounds her efforts to

speak on Viva’s behalf within experiential knowledge generated in relationship with her

and other chickens. Recall Davis’ question, “Where is the voice of the voiceless in the

scientific literature, including the literature of environmental ethics?” (p. 208). While she

employs the phrase “voice of the voiceless” in regards to animals, she does not simply

substitute herself as their representative without trying to bring their “voices” centrally

into her discourse. In this sense, she acknowledges that animals are “voiceless” only in

some contexts, but not all, and their construction as “voiceless” is not inevitable.

Generally, for animal advocates, voice is linked to an ethical imperative to act on

behalf of those who are suffering. Advocates, aware of animals’ suffering and also

animals’ inability to end this suffering, are motivated to speak out about this otherwise

unheard (and, synonymously, unacknowledged) pain. Advocates’ descriptions of animals

as “voiceless” are ways in which they attempt to name not only animals’ suffering, but

also to name the general human ignorance and/or dismissal of such suffering. As much

as they position themselves and their work as animals’ voices (in the sense that advocates

enable public recognition [i.e., hearing] of animals’ suffering), they likewise necessarily

position animals as being unheard, which signals their condition of suffering as one of

profound victimhood. Animals are understood as unable to politically express their

suffering and meaningfully intervene to stop it: They are seen as helpless. In this sense,

voice is wedded to political agency and resistance; animals’ suffering prompts an ethical

209 response from advocates who are motivated to politically act on their behalf. How discourses of voice (and voicelessness) function in such instances is clearly articulated, as previously mentioned, by Birke and Parisi (1999) who state that animals do not have a political voice in Western culture. In part, voicelessness names political impotence; voice names the capacity to affect political change. (The change being demanded often relates to the alleviation and end to animal suffering and use.)

At the same time, some advocates’ critiques of voice relate to a concern about the erasure of animal subjectivity that is (potentially) implied through phrases such as “voice of the voiceless.” Such concern makes particular sense when considered within a broader cultural context of voice, as detailed in the previous chapter: A major dynamic of political voice is subjectivity. In its political register, voice typically signals the presence and assertion of subjectivity. In certain activists’ constructions (e.g., Bekoff, 2000;

Davis, 1995; jones, 2005) there is a tension between the recognition that animals are often unable to affect change in their lives (especially, in regards to escaping or alleviating their suffering), while there is also a discomfort in the presumption that they lack subjectivity and agency. When activists such as Bekoff and jones attempt to disrupt discourses of voice in the animal movements, they articulate a form of coalitional politics that suggests a shift away from a construction of animals as passive victims to a foregrounding of animals as subjects, and in relation, as agents who can also resist. Birke and Parisi’s claim that animals can build alliances suggests a similar orientation; Davis’ repeated various highlighting of Viva’s (and other farmed animals’) voice offers a view of animal activists more as partners than as (entirely) saviours.

210 Nonetheless, Bekoff pragmatically realizes that advocates are ethically required to be the “voice of the voiceless,” being that animals are voiceless in a major sense because they are not “heard” (i.e., do not have their suffering recognized) by the majority of people. As demonstrated in Chapter Two, political voice is frequently figured as relational and dialogical; its presence is made possible only in the context of reception.

Consequently, based on the advocates’ rhetoric presented throughout this chapter, we can conclude that in a significant way, animals are voiceless in the sense that their suffering is not heard by humans. However, we can also say that they are not voiceless in the sense that they are also seen by advocates as subjects (regardless of human recognition of this fact) who have desires, perspectives, and interests.

While most animal advocates are quick to point to animals’ interests in not suffering, others (such as Davis and Bekoff) go further, and simultaneously offer fuller descriptions of their subjectivities, as evidenced in their more nuanced constructions of voice. Their claims about animal voices (and, necessarily, their subjectivities) confront the humanist assumption that subjectivity is strictly a human phenomenon. In other words, what is so striking about Bekoff, jones, Davis, and Birke and Parisi’s discourse is their explicit challenge to the humanism that typically undergirds the political register of voice. Unlike the scholars analyzed in Chapter Two who centralize the voice metaphor in their political work, and also unlike those highlighted above who define animals as voiceless, these authors do not presume that voice is necessarily human. Indeed, they actively and overtly work against that supposition. Despite their understanding of animal suffering, and the lack of political will directed to that issue, they are unwilling to simply argue that animals are voiceless and that advocates ought to be their voices. They are

211 unsatisfied with conventional constructions (by both animal advocates and others, ostensibly) that suggest voice is only human. As such, they also offer interpretations of animal subjectivity that are often only afforded to (certain) human beings. They share an ethical and political lineage with earlier advocates such as Montaigne who explicitly refused to frame animals as voiceless.

Although these particular interventions into the humanist politics of voice are important, they are not the only ways in which some animal advocates attempt to

“decentre[-...] the human subject” (Baker, 2001, p. 26). Advocates’ critical engagements with the voice metaphor are only one way to confront the anthropocentrism that is so frequently conveyed with its use; however, those within the movements also employ a variety of other strategies that suggest an understanding of animals as voiced, as I consider more closely in the following chapter. Intermingled within the animal movements, which often metaphorically position animals as voiceless, there is also a counter-tendency that implicitly emphasizes those dynamics that constitute the political register of voice (subjectivity, relationality, experiential knowledge, and the capacity to resist). While 1 agree with jones (2005) about the lack of “natural checks on self- importance in the animal liberation movement,” and her point that claims to be the voice of the voiceless, “[make] it easy to assume that you know what’s best for the animals without stopping to wonder what they might say if you asked them and were able to understand their answers,” nonetheless many activists actually do stop to wonder. They subsequently construct their representations of animals with intentional humility and make considerable efforts to foreground their voices.

212 Chapter IV:

Animal Voices

"... it must be admitted that ‘animal exploitation cannot be tolerated without 98 damaging the principle of inter-subjectivity ’. Here we are getting to the heart o f the matter. What is inter-subjectivity between radically different kinds o f subjects?" (Haraway, 1992, p. 89)

But none of it can be approached if the fleshy historical reality o f face-to-face, body-to-body subject making across species is denied or forgotten in the humanist doctrine that holds only humans to be true subjects with real histories. (Haraway, 2008a, p. 67)

Animals hate captivity; they tell us all the time. We just aren’t listening. (Hribal, 2012)

Introduction

This chapter applies the voice-related theory discussed within the previous chapters to an

analysis of Animal Voices’ radio program archive. Specifically, 1 argue that despite

many activists’ and scholars’ discursive rendering of animals as “voiceless,” and the

erasure of nonhuman subjectivity and agency potentially implied through such

construction, they nonetheless also implicitly foreground animals’ metaphorical voices as

key foci in their political efforts. In other words, the animal rights and liberation

movements do not exclusively figure animals as “voiceless.” Indeed, many within these

movements offer diverse and compelling representations of animal voices, which include

but also—crucially—extend beyond constructions of animals’ victimization. These

gestures suggest richer and more nuanced public representations of animal subjectivity

than those which wholly concentrate on animals’ experiences of pain and suffering.

98 Haraway is quoting Noske (1997), from her text (1997)Beyond Boundaries: Humans and Animals.

213 In order to structure the following analysis and to offer something meaningful about the presence of animals’ political voices within discourses of animal rights, I focus on interviews with people whose advocacy and scholarship either explicitly works against instrumental use of animals or at least does not actively support such use: While the category of animal rights is complex, it does share a common rejection of animal use.

That is, discourses of animal rights do not promote improved forms or conditions of animal use, unless such improvements are explicitly conceived as steps leading toward the eventual dissolution of such use. Such orientation is situated in opposition to those approaches that accept animals’ property status, and various kinds of objectification justified within that category (see Francione, 2000, 2009).

Using critical discourse analysis,99 I focus on twelve interviews that highlight activists’ and scholars’ efforts to foreground animal voices. I have chosen to focus more deeply on some salient examples from the archive rather than provide a wider (but shallower) survey of more shows; this choice represents my effort to engage more fully with the guests’ discourse. In other words, 1 attempt to listen closely and in a sustained way to the voices represented here. We hear within each of their accounts the constellation of dynamics that constitute the political register of voice.

The collection presented here is largely composed of interviews with people from

North America, but there are also selections from Turkey, Spain, and Costa Rica.

Additionally, they are drawn from a diversity of contexts and suggest a variety of modes of engagement with a range of different kinds of animals, including cats, dogs, sloths, pigs, chickens, ducks, and elephants. I have selected these interviews as examples

qq See n. 11, Chapter 1.

214 because they offer rich and unique constructions of animal subjectivity. Further, the accounts actively challenge the humanist assumption that only humans are subjects, and that we alone among all animals possess experiential knowledge and agency, including a capacity to resist (i.e., that we alone have voices). In other words, they help interrupt conventional understandings of animals as objects and humans as subjects. They also challenge the liberal humanist figuration of human subjectivity as atomized, for example, showing rather that it emerges within the context of relationality, including relationality with nonhuman animals.

My aim is to provide a tapestry of voice as evidenced within contemporary animal rights discourse. In part, this mapping provides a timely contribution to posthumanist literature that largely rejects animal rights discourse based on what is seen as its categorical anthropocentrism (particularly its persistent centralization of human subjectivity) (e.g., Calarco, 2008; Haraway, 2008a; Wolfe, 2003, 2010). At the same time, the interviews also offer important counterpoints in particular to Haraway’s recent posthumanist scholarship that suggests animal rights discourse not only offers little of value regarding the production of more positive human-animal relations, but that it also actively precludes the kinds of interspecies co-flourishing she promotes.

As part of my analysis of the radio archive and my interview with Haraway, I return to her critiques of animal rights discourse, introduced in Chapter One, specifically as they relate to questions of animals, representation, and voice raised throughout the dissertation. Despite Haraway’s attention to practice within her two major recent texts,

The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (2003) and

When Species Meet (2008a), I argue that she fails to recognize animal rights as a lived

215 phenomenon. Following others within the emerging field of Critical Animal Studies, such as Anthony Nocella (2007), Kim Socha (2012), and John Sorenson (2010), 1 argue that scholars working on animal ethics and politics should stay in critical conversation with on-the-ground animal rights activism and acknowledge the vital contributions it can and should make to animal-focused theory (see Best, 2009). This bridge-building seems especially important if one is going to make claims about animal rights discourses, as various posthumanist theorists do (e.g., Calarco, 2008; Haraway, 2008a; Wolfe, 2003,

2010).

Locating his theory as sympathetic toward but largely adjacent to contemporary fields of animal ethics and politics, posthumanist philosopher Matthew Calarco states,

Whereas pro-animal discourse is often presented as an extension and deepening of

liberal humanism, I attempt to recast this discourse as a direct challenge to liberal

humanism and the metaphysical anthropocentrism that underlies it. In making

these points, I am explicitly aligning myself and theorists in animal studies who

are doing similar work with the new social movements that are seeking to develop

a postliberal, posthumanist approach to politics, (p. 6)

While Calarco does much to illuminate the question of the animal in Continental

philosophy, I wish that he and other posthumanist scholars (who centrally endeavor to

critique Western notions of “the subject” and the essentialist “human-animal distinction”

[Calarco, 2008, p. 4]) would dig more deeply into fields outside of Continental

philosophy, and also consider more closely the work of advocates who create pro-animal

discourse. In some very important ways, animal advocates’ discourse is creatively and

radically challenging liberal humanism and the metaphysical anthropocentrism that

216 underpins it. “Philosophy, and perhaps philosophy alone at this point,” writes Calarco,

“is able to hold open the possibility that thought might proceed otherwise in regard to

animals, without assurances of traditional conceptions of animality and the human-animal

distinction” (p. 4). While I applaud Calarco’s efforts, animal rights advocacy and

scholarship is actually making major contributions to the project he outlines. Some

recognition of these efforts could enhance his and other posthumanists’ theory. In the

following chapter, 1 highlight posthumanist forms of animal rights discourse through an

examination of political voice within the radio archive.

If we understand political voice as constituted by and through the dynamics of

subjectivity, relationality, experience, and resistance, as discussed in Chapter Two, it is

clear that many activists within Canadian and international movements for animal rights

and liberation continually gesture toward and attempt to highlight nonhuman animals’

political voices. In the following chapter, I analyze the radio show archive in order to

further explore the relationship of voice to animal politics. I use the dynamics of voice to

“read” for the ways animal voices appear through the interviewees’ speech.

Animal Voices

Susan Hargreaves, the director of Toronto’s ARK II (Animal Rights Kollective), founded

the Animal Voices radio show in 1996. According to Ted Grand (2006), a member of the

animal rights organization, many of the members at the time were more interested in

protests, civil disobedience, and direct action than radio programming. Yet Hargreaves, a

“go-getter” according to Grand, nonetheless approached CIUT 89.5 FM (the University

of Toronto’s campus and community radio station) about including an animal rights

217 program in the schedule. The response was positive, and ARK II was granted a thirty- minute afternoon timeslot. Hargreaves asked Grand to co-host, and he happily agreed.

He muses, “Just consider how many people out there you’d like to interview that you haven’t interviewed already, and we had a field of dreams” (Grand, 2006). Some of the initial guests included activists such as ex-cattle rancher Howard Lyman, while Grand also mentions speaking to scientists about AIDS and animal testing earlier in the show’s history. When asked by Rob Moore, an Animal Voices co-host from 2003 to 2008, whether there was anything like the radio show available at its inception, Grand states,

“Absolutely not. It was really great; we were really breaking ground.”

During the first six months, the Animal Voices audience was primarily drawn from Toronto’s small animal rights community (Grand, 2006). Interest in the show then began to snowball. Over the next year and a half, Animal Voices started to receive mail from across Canada. As Grand speculates, the listenership likely broadened through the

University community, to the CIUT audience, and spread throughout the country to

listeners’ friends who were already involved in animal rights. In addition to the unique content offered by Animal Voices, Grand partly attributes the success of the program to

its “very laid back kind of feel.” “We were just wingin’ it and having a blast, and I think that’s what people responded to,” reflects Grand. (Over the years, the show has become much more structured, though the friendly and conversational tone of the program remains.)

The Animal Voices’ online archive currently consists of over three hundred and sixty-five shows.100 In terms of size, the publicly accessible animal rights radio archive is

100 The show tally number is valid as o f today’s date, March 19, 2012.

218 unprecedented. Yet the number of interviews provided through the show’s website do not, by any means, reflect the complete archive. When the show began in 1996, the

Internet was not nearly as widely used or as publicly accessible within Canada as it is today. For example, when I became involved with the show in 2001, CIUT was not yet offering a podcast version of its live radio broadcasts. Nadja Lubiw-Hazard and I began recording live shows on cassette tape soon after our tenure with the show began in

February 2001, but our efforts were often thwarted by technical difficulties, including phone sound quality or studio equipment failures. Sometimes, we simply forgot: Cassette recording was not a priority for us because the show seemed to be very much about a live radio experience. While the recordings might have been helpful to us personally, as aids to improve our interviewing styles, we did not imagine these shows as having any significance beyond the day. We had little vision about the creation of a public archive or the extent that it might be accessed by an international audience in the future.

Nonetheless, 11 programs from 2001 are currently offered as part of the archive.

The shift to offering a podcast version of the radio show in 2004 also marked the beginning of a more complete weekly online archive of Animal Voices, thanks largely to the considerable efforts of Neil Harvey, who painstakingly converted our shows from cassette-recorded audio to MP3 format for the podcast. In an attempt to create as complete an online archive as possible, Harvey asked us to gather all our old cassette recordings. Lubiw-Hazard and I handed over our somewhat haphazard collection, and we asked Mark Karbusicky (show technician and producer) and Mirha-Soleil Ross (host), who had produced the show immediately before our involvement, to give us what they had as well. Over the course of more than a year, I handed small batches of two or three

219 recordings to Harvey every few months and he did the necessary technical wizardry to

archive them on the Animal Voices website. Consequently, the archive features shows

that date back as early as the show’s inception, including one from 1996. There are also

four shows marked “unknown date,” which constitute pre-2001 interviews.

A Search for Voice

In terms of show content, questions of voice have been central to Animal Voices since I

have been involved with the show. Indeed, my tenure with Animal Voices from 2001 to

2011 (serving as a primary host and producer from 2001 to 2009) emerged out of

questions related to voice, as detailed in Chapter One of this dissertation: To recap

briefly, Mirha-Soleil Ross approached the recently formed Toronto chapter of Feminists

for Animal Rights (FAR) following her experience with Carol Adams, wherein Adams

had questioned Ross’ capacity to speak legitimately to issues related to the oppression of

women and animals, and their interconnections, given that Ross is genetically male and

was socially regarded as a boy throughout her childhood and youth (that is, regardless of

Ross’ personal identification as female).

Ross’ and Adams’ debate was articulated through “voice discourse” (Moore &

Muller, 1999), which included a reliance on the voice metaphor as a way of describing

who is best positioned to represent sex workers, women, and animals.101 Adams regarded

101 Adams was a member o f the now disbanded U.S.-based FAR group. Ross argued that Adams’ perspectives on sex work and trans issues epitomized similar theoretical orientations within ecofeminism, specifically including the writings of some well-known members of FAR. Ross asked our tiny burgeoning collective of three to host a panel discussion featuring sex workers’ views on animal rights, pornography, and sex work more generally. (Ross’ 2002 performance, “Yapping Out Loud: Contagious Thoughts from an Unrepentant Whore,” addresses, through a series o f monologues, both anti-prostitution and anti-animal [specifically, anti-coyote] discourses. Ross states, “This organization still exists now with chapters all over the United States. There are several stories about why the name COYOTE was chosen but the most popular one is that there was a parallel to be drawn between how coyotes are used as ‘scapegoats’ by ranchers and

220 Ross as lacking an authentic woman’s voice, and thus as lacking the ability to represent

an experience of being a woman and female sex worker, the essence of which (as implied

by Adams) is informed by the experience of growing up female within a patriarchal

society. Consequently, from Adams’ perspective, Ross’ unfamiliarity with oppression

under patriarchy denies her the necessary insight to intimately understand and represent

not only the oppression of women but also the linked oppression of animals within a

patriarchal society.

Considering how 1 came to be involved with Animal Voices, in the wake of the

incident between Ross and Adams and FAR’s refusal to lend its name to FAR-Toronto’s

proposed sex-worker panel discussion on animal rights, I began my work with the radio

show greatly enmeshed within voice politics. Yet these politics weighed heavily on me

not only because of the way I became involved with the show, but also because of the

academic and activist background and contexts that had so intensely shaped my

scholarship and politics to that point. Particularly, I became a serious student and an

activist throughout my undergraduate degree in Women’s Studies and throughout my

concurrent experience as a member and then coordinator of the University of Manitoba’s

Womyn’s Centre, immediately before I moved to Toronto in 1999 to pursue my Masters

degree in Environmental Studies. In the final two years of my degree, I also launched

others - and nowadays even in cities like Toronto and Vancouver - for everything that’s going wrong and also how prostitutes are blamed for everything that’s going wrong in our neighborhoods. So a year ago 1 just felt this coyote presence crawling into my life and I decided that I had to explore that metaphor more profoundly. 1 think there is a link between how coyotes are treated and how prostitutes are treated and perceived” (Ross, 2002). Ross’ performance included a scene in which a feminist spoke at a podium about the oppression of women sex workers, while a line of blow-up dolls with ball gags sat in chairs immediately next to her, strongly illustrating her point about sex worker representation within som e aspects o f Western feminism.) FAR refused our request to host such an event under the umbrella o f FAR. Out o f that context, Ross asked the Toronto chapter o f FAR, which dissolved in the wake of FAR’s decision about the panel, to produce and host the radio show “Animal Voices.” She told us that she wanted people who would bring an intersectional analysis to the program. Lubiw-Hazard and I decided to pursue the show.

221 and co-hosted the first feminist program (“Eve’s Third Wave”) on the new University of

Manitoba radio station, UMFM 101.5 FM.

No controversies seemed more significant or urgent within the women’s movement and Women’s Studies in Winnipeg during the 1990s than those related to voice: My introduction to feminist theory from 1995-1999 repeatedly returned to questions of voice, as Second Wave analyses of women’s experiences had been undergoing intense scrutiny and theoretical deconstruction. As discussed in Chapter

Two, feminist theory and rhetoric were greatly challenged by those who did not see their subjectivities and experiences reflected in the literature and politics, especially as they related to race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. Throughout my academic courses there was certainly an acknowledgement that feminism had created positive change, but these efforts had nonetheless profoundly failed to address women’s diversity and had largely presented a small collection of privileged perspectives as universal. So profound were the theoretical and political failures that these efforts were understood as often undermining a greater struggle for women’s liberation (see Spelman, 1988).

The Presence of Voice

Greta Gaard

My academic and activist background, combined with the FAR-Toronto situation, helped directly influence my and my co-host’s choices regarding whom we interviewed on

Animal Voices and the sorts of questions we asked. For instance, our interview with ecofeminist scholar and activist Greta Gaard exemplified some of our pressing political concerns about voice and speaking for Others, particularly nonhuman animals. Lubiw-

222 Hazard and I spoke with Gaard in May 2001, four months after we began our tenure with the show. We were both enormously excited about the interview because of Gaard’s

intersectional analysis, especially in relation to her work on queer ecofeminism. She was

also an advisory member of FAR. We admired her deeply and felt she could provide

guidance for the kind of coalition-building work we hoped to do with Animal Voices.

She brought a multi-dimensional analysis to her research and activism that we aspired to

cultivate through FAR-Toronto and, later, through the new platform of the show.

Early in our interview with Gaard, Lubiw-Hazard asked how ecofeminists

understand the connections among different forms of oppression. Drawing on Val

Plumwood’s scholarship, Gaard describes ecofeminism as an analysis of “structures of

oppression” (Plumwood, 1993, p. 1) and argues that this orientation marks a shift away

from similarity-based arguments that feminism had relied upon prior to the mid-1980s

and the birth of an ecofeminist movement:

And after a while... feminists realized that they were replicating the structure of

the dominant culture that said, “We’re not going to respect you unless you’re like

us.” And so there began a movement to look at the structures of oppression, and

when you look at structures then, what you can see is a relationship across

difference. And it gives rise to a political sympathy and a movement that allows

others to be different and yet looks at matters of justice and democracy, and how

beings are treated within a system. And builds a movement for freedom, rather

than just a movement based on similarities and likenesses. Does that make sense In response, Lubiw-Hazard turned to questions of representation of marginalized perspectives within the feminist movement, and specifically, of nonhuman animals within ecofeminists’ analysis. She pointed to a quote from a book review by Gaard:

[There] was a quote just about the feminist movement and just what you were

speaking about, people, you know, groups of people sort of having to almost

apply to the feminist movement and say, you know, “What about us?,”

marginalized groups each making their voice heard. You know, lesbian women

and differently-abled women, and the fact that animals can’t really speak up and

say, “Hey, what about us?” And 1 think part o f my concern, our concern with

ecofeminism is that even in the analysis, the oppression of animals isn’t always

central to the analysis and the issues.

Later in the interview, following a discussion about coalition-building and the importance of “border crossers” who are defined as “[persons] who hold multiple identities, membership in multiple communities” (Gaard, 2001a), Lubiw-Hazard returned to our concern about nonhuman animal representation, particularly as it relates to the border crossers concept. We had both recently read Gaard’s (2001b) “Tools for a Cross-Cultural

Ecofeminist Ethics: Exploring Ethical Contexts and Contents in the Makah Whale Hunt,” which discusses border crossers in relation to the Makah First Nations’ whaling controversy. We were compelled by the idea and wondered how it might apply across species. Lubiw-Hazard ponders,

We were talking about this, the idea of border crossers, and [Lauren] said, “Well,

who can be the border crossers for the animals? Who has the right to speak for

the animals?” And we just thought it was interesting, you know, the idea of

224 speaking for others, and who has the right. What do you see as the strategy to get

around that?

Gaard then immediately moves into a discussion of identity politics and radical

democracy. Like Lubiw-Hazard, her commentary also draws upon voice discourse:

Well, I see a couple of strategies. I mean, the idea of border crosser of course

keeps us within the realm of identity politics, and right now as sort of a radical

community, we are moving forward from identity politics, which keeps us all

separate, because I can never be like you in enough ways, you know, for us to

share an identity, into a more radically democratic movement that looks at a chain

of equivalences among our struggles that preserves our identities, but allows us to

work in coalition. So I think that’s one thing.

If we can look at the structure and see those animals that inhabit the

structure, who are not speaking in English, but we can see that structure and the

similarities between our oppression, their oppression and the patterns of

domination, they don’t need to say anything. We can respond to that structure.

They do speak, of course, in many different ways. They do speak, but

philosophically, the arguments about interpreting that speech are so numerous and

varied, it’s hard to fight. I think another thing that we can do as human allies is to

reconceive our own self-identity and quit thinking about ourselves as humans that

are other than animal. We are one form of animal, and so when we look at animal

as the broader category, it allows us to establish a kind of solidarity across

species, thinking of ourselves as political animals, perhaps. But animals within a

larger family.

225

L Gaard begins by noting how her border crosser idea is bound to identity politics, something she suggests that we as a “sort of a radical community” are shedding (2001a).

She pushes beyond identity politics that “keeps us all separate, because 1 can never be like you in enough ways” (2001a). Instead, Gaard petitions us to ground our efforts within an analysis of structures of oppression and patterns of domination. This strategy recognizes difference but allows us to collaboratively engage in political work with those who do not share the same identity. The emphasis is on recognizing continuities among structures of oppression rather than continuities among identities. This sort of political orientation is important for the animal movements because it does not require us to be nonhuman animals, to inhabit that category, in order to act. According to Gaard, when we work to address the structures of oppression and domination, which take similar forms across identities and species, nonhuman animals “don’t need to say anything” (2001a).

Yet, importantly, despite this claim, she does not deny them speech.

Gaard then urges us to recognize ourselves as fellow animals, as part of a re­ conceptualization of our own self-identity. She is explicit about our need to signify as animal. As much as nonhuman animals are Others, it is inaccurate and politically unwise to ignore or deny our animality. Consequently, our question, “[W]ho can be the border crossers for the animals? Who has the right to speak for the animals?” is somewhat nonsensical to Gaard. In part, our question belies the problem: the arrogant and delusional humanist separation of people from the rest of animalkind. The ethical and political quandary about speaking for animals is to some degree dissolved through

Gaard’s discursive and paradigmatic shift. Animals are not fully “Other.” They are family. Gaard uses the language of “human allies” to define a coalitional stance toward a

226 politics that includes nonhuman animals. It is from this paradoxical position, she suggests, that we move forward.

Gaard’s use of the term “family” is important, not only because it refuses humanism’s distancing from animality (our own or that of nonhuman others), but also because its situates our interactions with nonhuman animals within the context of connectedness and relationship. Gaard maintains that we are but one form of animal within a larger family. Such a discursive gesture attempts to wrest nonhuman animals from their outsider status as objects and instead situate them within the moral realm of fellow subjects. Such orientation suggests an intentional blurring of the “human-animal distinction” (Calarco, 2008, p. 4). Further, Gaard’s (2001a) assertion that “[nonhuman animals] do speak, of course, in many different ways” suggests that she does not deny animals the capacity for voice. Indeed, she foregrounds it: By describing activists as

“human allies” and calling for “solidarity across species,” she again points to nonhuman animal subjectivity, and also, animals’ agential capacity for resistance. When considered collectively, Gaard’s arguments implicitly acknowledge nonhuman animals’ political voices, despite her claim that we might differentiate ourselves as “political animals.”

Relationality is a major constituent of voice in its political register, and also appears within Gaard’s speech. Indeed, Animal Voices interviewees often intimately and passionately speak about their relationships and sense of connection with nonhuman animals, and about their witnessing of nonhuman animals’ relationships with each other.

These (interspecies) “intersubjective relationships” (Smuts, 2001) often serve as a source of inspiration and an epistemological grounding for their activist work. Gaard (2001a), for example, grounds her sense of relationship and interconnection with nonhuman

227 animals in an appreciation of shared vulnerability among species. She suggests that her orientation is indicative of ecofeminism and feminism more generally:

...ecofeminism like other kinds of feminism draws on both rights, ethics and care,

but I would like to think that we are moving, and some of us are moving in a

direction that goes beyond both of those arguments and takes very seriously this

idea of interconnections, inter-identity and interdependence so that our movement

is based on compassion and based on connections. And this means being able to

be compassionate and connected with those denied and devalued parts of

ourselves so that we don’t turn away from the denied and devalued animals

outside of us. If you think about the average dinner party when people sit down

to a meal of animal flesh, it’s very important that they not make the connection

that this could be someone’s leg. The vulnerability in that is profound. We think

of ourselves as predators, but rarely as prey. So it’s being aware of our

vulnerability and I think this was the doorway for those feminists who first began

defending animals, is a real awareness of our vulnerability, and realizing that

we’re not the only group that’s vulnerable. And looking at a society that treats

others in a particularly violent way and knowing that we are the Others, and not

severing that connection.

For Gaard, connections with animals are, necessarily, not solely extrinsically oriented.

We are not just connecting with others outside of ourselves: Genuine interconnectedness is achieved by connecting with those “denied and devalued parts of ourselves so that we don’t turn away from the denied and devalued animals outside of us” (2001a). As much as Gaard wants us to turn towards animals and to address the violence they experience,

228 this orientation must be paired with a profound connection with negated parts of ourselves. The identification with prey means identifying as potential prey ourselves. It is from that vantage point that animal flesh is disentangled from its purely objectified state. By identifying more deeply with ourselves, claims Gaard, we identify with nonhuman others. No longer mere flesh, mere dead matter divorced from life histories, we recognize that leg on the plate belonged to someone, a subject. We could have been that someone. This could be us: “...w e are the Others” (Gaard, 2001a). Gaard’s emphasis on continuities between humans and other animals refuses the latter’s construction as objects.

Gaard’s recognition of the corporeality and mortality that connects all living beings also helps drive her discourse into the realm of voice (particularly in regards to her descriptions of their subjectivity and experiential knowledge) through her consideration of humans’ and animals’ shared vulnerability as prey: The shared experience of vulnerability points to the subjectivity of nonhuman animals, while it also points to a more complex notion of human subjectivity, one that (through recognition of our bodily existence) challenges illusionary constructions of ourselves as predators but not as prey, and situates us within ecological webs of life and death. Thus, she unsettles the Western human/animal dualism that conceives of humans and animals in ranked and hierarchical terms; instead she suggests a much more horizontal understanding of animal life.

For Gaard, human and animal subjectivity is attached to embodiment. This suggests a potent interconnectedness between humans and animals. Her discourse explicitly confronts Western society’s tendency to relate to animalsonly as objectified bodies rather than as subjects. Yet, as she makes clear, it is these bodies that (by virtue of

229 their existence) engender the experience of subjectivity. While Gaard gestures to animals’ voices by showing that all animals (human and nonhuman) are subjects, as mentioned, it is the earlier interview excerpt that indicates most strongly her belief in animal agency and resistance, and thus rounds out the collection of political voice dynamics: She maintains that animals do speak in their own ways, and that we ought to conceive of ourselves as animals’ allies who are in solidarity with them.

Eddie Lama

Eddie Lama, the main subject of the documentary The Witness and founder of the Oasis

Sanctuary, related a story similar to Gaard’s during an Animal Voices interview. In the following excerpt, 1 asked Lama (2002) to reflect on a powerful scene from The Witness

in which he talks about petting one of his late cats, Bagel, as his brother calls and invites him to dinner. Speaking about his relationship with Bagel, he recalls that fateful phone call:

Lama: He indeed was the catalyst to me becoming vegetarian.

Corman: You said you were feeling Bagel’s leg?

Lama: Yeah, his hind leg.

Corman: And you were thinking, this is like a chicken leg.

Lama: Exactly. Even the shape and everything. I held his leg, and it looked like

the drumstick I was holding.

Lauren: So it was, I guess, an important moment for you.

Lama: It was an epiphany, a moment of clarity that people have in life. Pre-dating his epiphany, though, was Lama’s somewhat accidental encounter and subsequent relationship with a cat. This relationship precipitated a major ideological and ethical shift in his consciousness. He muses,

Lama: In a nutshell, I was smitten by a kitten. Really, the vehicle for that was my

lesser self [laughs] because I had ulterior motives. Let me make it clear — there

was this woman that had come up to me and asked me if 1 would hold this kitten

for her that she had found, and I graciously obliged her. She was a very pretty

woman and I figured I’d get a date out of the deal.

So I held onto this cat, held onto this little critter, and a bond developed

beyond my wildest dreams. Because all the myths of animals and all the

misconceptions of animals just fell by the wayside. I saw this animal as more

than an ambulatory organism. This animal did indeed have rights. She had likes,

desires, wants, predilections. She felt pain, she felt joy, she played. She was

more complex than just a biological entity. Her emotions were very clear to me.

Then one day I saw her yawn, and I always attributed a yawn just to

humans. I saw many more similarities than differences between humans and

animals. I couldn’t deny that, I couldn’t say no, she doesn’t have these things,

because she did. I’m not a scientist, I’m not an ethologist, I’m just a casual

observer, casually observing an animal. You have to come to that conclusion, that

they do indeed have feelings and emotions, and have a thinking process.

Lama’s direct relationship with the cat prompted a reevaluation of her object status.

Indeed, their relationship was facilitated by Lama’s recognition of her subjectivity: “I saw this animal as more than an ambulatory organism.... She had likes, desires, wants, predilections. She felt pain, she felt joy, she played” (2002).

We hear epistemological claims regarding the cat’s subjectivity mixed within

Lama’s discourse. He remarks, “I’m not a scientist, I’m not an ethologist, I’m just a casual observer, casually observing an animal. You have to come to that conclusion, that they do indeed have feelings and emotions, and have a thinking process.” Lama offers a dual acknowledgement of experiential knowledge in his account. First, he trusts his own observations regarding her subjective experience in the world. While he alludes to his lack of official scientific knowledge, commonly assumed as the sole legitimate source of knowledge regarding nonhuman animals (see further, Bekoff, 2007), he also dismisses its monopoly on the truth. His direct relationship with the cat produces a knowledge of her subjectivity that, for Lama, is undeniable. Second, as part of his acknowledgement of her subjectivity, he points to the cat’s experiential capacity. Beyond a recognition of her capacity for pain, he alludes to her capacity for joy: She plays. Indeed, his particular assertion that she has “.. .likes, desires, wants, predilections,” implies agency, or at least the aspiration for agency, to act on one’s dispositions. The word “predilection” denotes the preference to favour something over something else.

Lama returned to descriptions of interspecies intersubjective relationships and the agential capacity of nonhuman animals later in the interview. As is clear within many of the Animal Voices interviews, the ability of nonhuman animals to influence people’s lives is enormous. Lama’s recognition of this inspired him to found the Oasis Sanctuary, which fosters mutually beneficial relationships between people and animals who need help.

232 Lama’s creation of the sanctuary was based on his belief in the synergistic potentiality of interspecies relationships. His descriptions disrupt discourses of nonhuman animal victimhood that are often reproduced within the animal movements; instead, he implicitly highlights animals’ political voices. Specifically, he discusses how the Oasis sanctuary involves a synthesis of his passions for helping people who are

“disempowered and disenfranchised, to wit, recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, which [he has] a lot of connection with” (Lama, 2002) and helping nonhuman animals.

Originally, he had hoped to open a rehabilitation centre and potentially become a counselor after he was initially introduced to what he calls the “recovery community”

(2002). According to Lama, his dream did not materialize for some time. The relationships between humans and animals that are cultivated through the Oasis sanctuary represent mutually-reinforcing care. He reflects,

Then years later 1 got instilled with this vision of animals, and I started rescuing

animals on [construction] job sites, and we started not having space [laughs], and

kind of called all my favours in from different friends to adopt the animals that I

found. I knew a place had to be created to bring these critters to. So what

happened is, Oasis is kind of a synthesis of both of these passions. What we have

there are basically people in recovery that work and get a salary and free room

and board in a vegan environment, and work alongside the animals. It’s been a

wonderful symbiosis between rescued humans and rescued animals, and this

interaction has been just really wonderful. You see how one helps the other.

One of the main characteristics of addiction is its self-centeredness. What

happens with interacting with animals that are more needy that you are, and

233 giving of yourself, it kind of gets you out of that. We’ve seen that, we’ve seen

people rise from the mire of self-centeredness into really giving of themselves and

selflessness. It’s been great, and the sense of responsibility and good work ethic

and sense of achievement that you’re helping, it’s a wonderful thing and the

animals benefit by it, by having caring individuals tend to them. It’s just been

wonderful.

Lama’s testimony demonstrates nonhuman animals’ agential capacity to change people’s lives. (In his own life, he credits Bagel as the inspiration for becoming vegetarian.) His discourse suggests a mutually-beneficial exchange between human and nonhuman subjects within the context of sanctuary. Animals are not described as passive recipients of charity. They do not appear “voiceless” within his discourse; rather, he stresses the interactions between humans and animals at the sanctuary. It is that process of interaction, grounded in interspecies relationship, that enables the Oasis members to thrive. In this case, even people who are otherwise plagued by (anthropocentric) self­ centredness due to addiction and mental health issues are positively influenced by animals. (Implicitly, Lama’s account also challenges stereotypes about the inability of people with addiction and mental illness to meaningfully contribute to society, which also strips them of subjectivity.) It is precisely their ability to change each other that enables the sanctuary’s success. The facilitation of relationships between humans and animals represents the foundation of Lama’s activism. The enactment of these human-animal relationships constitutes community-building among various kinds of subjects, as voiced participants. Such an orientation provides a radically different model than conventional

234 notions of shelter and aid, which are typically understood as handed out to supposedly passive and helpless victims.

Gamze Erkok Neer

Other activists, too, continually point to the ability of humans and animals to significantly impact each other’s lives. For some, such capacity is received as guidance. That is, nonhuman animals, their unique subjectivities and ways in which they act in the world, serve as teachers for those who know them and who are willing to pay attention. This suggests an important representation of animals’ voices. They possess the agency to change us. Gamze Erkok Neer, Vice President of the Animal Protection Society of

Turkey, poignantly expresses how her observations and interactions with nonhuman animals shaped her ethical development. In the following excerpt, Erkok Neer (2007) responded to my request to share a story about an animal who had personally affected her, either through her work with the HAYKOD rehabilitation and no-kill shelter (which at the time of the interview housed six hundred animals) or elsewhere. She recalls,

There are so many, so many stories but I can tell you that since I have been

involved with animals, I mean—since my childhood—I can say that 1 learned

how to become a nice human being from animals. As I observed their loyalty,

their love, their appreciation, they give to us— I remember a very, very sad

story—a dog was brought to our shelter, saying that—it was a little terrier—they

said that, “Well, we have twins now, our doctor said that we shouldn’t have any

pets in the house and we want to get rid of this dog,” and we had to accept him—

he quit eating and drinking. After the third day our vet said that this dog is under

235 very, very deep depression and he started giving IVs to the dog and in the fifth

day the dog both eyes get blind. He refuse to eat, he refuse to drink, he refuse to

take any kind of treatment and we were begging the owners to come and visit this

dog or let us bring your dog to you—they refused—and, in the end, he committed

suicide and it was such a sad experience I went through. Later on, I saw cases

like that by those giving up on his life for the people who he loved that much, but

he was not loved as much— it was very sad. 1 always remember the loyalty and

love of that dog.

It is striking that Erkok Neer chose this particular story to recount about an animal who

had a profound impact on her life. Hers is not a common shelter story of an animal who

has been neglected or severely abused, who arrived at the shelter starving or injured.

This is also not about an animal she had healed, or some other “success” story. Rather, it

is explicitly the emotional complexity of the dog and his depression and grief, presented

here as the shadow side of his loyalty to and love of his guardians, which touched Erkok

Neer most deeply. Her conclusion, “in the end, he committed suicide,” is a painful

acknowledgement of the agency of the dog. He is explicitly positioned as making an

intentional decision to end his life. She does not say, “ ...in the end, he died.” This is not

a passive wasting away: “[H]e quit [italics added] eating and drinking,” she says. We

hear in her retelling of this story an expression of the complexity and depth of the dog’s

subjective experience. Her description of what Marc Bekoff (2007) describes as

“secondary emotions” (which the scientific community has been more reticent to

acknowledge), including depression and grief, suggests a more nuanced interpretation of an animal’s subjective experience than is often granted. Bekoff argues in The Emotional

Lives o f Animals,

Secondary [italics in original] emotions are more complex emotions, and they

involve higher brain centers in the cerebral cortex. They could involve core

emotions of fear and anger, or they could be more nuanced, involving such things

as regret, longing, or jealousy. Secondary emotions are not automatic: they are

processed in the brain, and the individual thinks about them and considers what to

do about them—what action is the best one to perform in a certain situation.

(2007, p. 8)

Erkok Neer’s recognition of the emotional complexity of the dog, clearly falling within

the realm of “secondary emotions,” points to subjectivity, experience, relationality

(between the dog and guardians), and resistance, which are all key elements of voice.

Repeating again his unwillingness to eat or to drink, she speaks of refusal. He does not just quit, but in her proceeding articulation, he refuses: “He refuse [sic] to eat, he refuse

to drink, he refuse to take any kind of treatment.”

As demonstrated throughout Chapter Two, voice is often linked to processes of

empowerment, but Erkok Neer’s narrative demonstrates an alternative version of voice that is also relational, agential, resistant, and grounded in experiential knowledge, yet that

promotes a conceptualization of the idea beyond liberatory fulfillment. This seems particularly important because it asks us to consider the possibility that in some instances,

choosing death, as much as choosing life, can be an act of agency and can signal voice.

While I am extremely cautious of presenting Erkok Neer’s account of the dog’s

life as necessarily right or true, her story is grounded within direct and close experiential

237 knowledge of him. For me, that counts. Acts of conscious and intentional self-harm, including suicide, are generally not considered something that animals enact, perhaps outside of occasional false accounts of lemmings collectively jumping to their deaths.

We might legitimately question whether human suicide is, ultimately, an intentional choice, but Erkok Neer’s claims gesture toward depths of grief and despair (usually only afforded to humans) that could inspire the intentional taking of one’s own life.

Facilitated by her empathy, it is the dog’s emotional intensity and complexity and his choice to die that stays with her most strongly. Indeed, this is the story that she tells to illustrate how animals have taught her to be a nice human being. She remembers the loyalty and love of that particular dog. His death—his suicide— changes her life. Her own subjectivity is shaped by her attention and attunement to this dog. We hear an appreciation for the inter-constitution of subjectivity that can occur within the context of human and animal relationships.

Barbara Smuts

During my interview with Barbara Smuts, Professor of Psychology at Michigan State

University, we also discussed some negative consequences that can occur when people fail to closely pay attention to the sociality of nonhuman animals (including our relationships with them), as the dogs’ owners in the previous story did. Notably, Smuts framed such failure as a failure to listen. All of the dynamics of political voice mark her discourse. We repeatedly hear descriptions of animal subjectivity, relationality, agency, and experiential knowledge.

238 The following excerpt specifically illustrates Smuts’ resistance to predetermined anthropocentric scripts used to interpret animals’ behavior. Discipline, for example, can be harshly and unfairly meted out as a response to so-called “behavioral problems” of nonhuman animals. These behaviors can be an animal’s attempt to reasonably communicate a concern or discomfort. They demonstrate agency, and a capacity to resist certain conditions and treatment. In particular, Smuts (2009) outlined how popular prescriptive dog training advice harmed her relationship with Safi, one of her dogs. She recounted that her relationship with Safi, a black female German Shepherd, was generally very harmonious. She was easy to train and quickly picked up on Smuts’ cues about how to act in certain situations. There were times when their relationship was strained, though: A few times Safi growled when Smuts was sitting on the couch, and once when she approached Safi while she was lying on the floor. She mentioned this in passing to a friend who was also a dog trainer, who then directed Smuts to immediately “squash this behaviour.” The trainer insisted that Safi’s behaviour was an attempt to dominate Smuts.

The trainer warned that without fast and forceful correction, Safi’s behaviour could escalate into something quite dangerous:

And they suggested that I do this thing that is now on some popular TV programs:

It’s called “the alpha roll” and supposedly it’s something a high-ranking wolf

might [do to] interact with a subordinate wolf in a way where the subordinate

wolf ends up rolling over on the back and exposing the belly, and that ritual

communication between wolves where the one who is on the bottom is

acknowledging the higher status of the one on the top. So people have sort of

taken this behaviour in wolves and tried to translate it whole to the human/dog

239 relationship where the human, they say, has to act like the alpha wolf in order to maintain control over their dog and control is really emphasized.

So I’ve lived with dogs but Fd never had an experience with a dog of mine growling at me and so 1 didn’t really know how to respond to this behaviour of

Safi. And so, once, 1 actually tried the alpha roll on her.... So, I, when she growled at me I kind of took her body and rolled her over and held her down and then 1 looked into her face. And I was supposed to stare at her scarily and hold her down until her body sort of went limp, supposedly acknowledging my superior status. But as soon as I looked into her eyes I let her go because I just - 1 saw surprise, and fear, like, “Why is this person, who I get along with so well suddenly doing this horrible thing to me?” And I never tried it again.

So, instead, I just tried to pay more and more attention to the situations in which Safi growled or even just kind of looked at me in a way that indicated that she wasn’t happy with something that I was doing and it didn’t take too long to figure out that it always had to do with me moving toward her (toward her quickly and moving very closely toward her quickly) so walking up to her really fast or sitting down next to her on the couch with, you know, a kind of “ommph.”

And it was as if she had some residual fears or concerns about a human moving up to her quickly like that and I think these were from her former existence - whatever it was; I have no information on what it was but it became clear over time that she had been hit and she had been kicked, at least, by people in the past so she was understandably nervous and by growling at me she was essentially, she was saying to me “Don’t move like that” and so I started approaching her more

240 slowly. I would talk to her from across the room before I started moving toward

her. 1 just tried to avoid those quick, abrupt movements, particularly when she

was resting and as soon as I got that, she stopped growling and she never tried to

quote-unquote “dominate” me in any other way.

It wasn’t about dominance. It wasn’t about control. It was her way, in her

language, of communicating to me that she was uncomfortable with something

that I was doing and I think it’s really important that our dogs be allowed to

communicate with us, in their language, and that we try to understand what that

individual is saying... That particular individual in that particular context as

opposed to saying that every time a dog growls at a person it’s because they want

to dominate them and the appropriate response is control. Dogs are so - there’s so

much more going on - and they say so much to us with their bodies and their

sounds and 1 think so much of it just flies right by the average dog owner. They

just don’t even notice and so, eventually, the dog has to do something, you know,

really - that you have to notice because nobody’s been listening. (Smuts, 2009)

A profound shift in intimacy was predicated on shedding the rigidity of the advice, and learning directly from her dog. Smuts is willing to see her dogs as teachers whose behaviours provide pedagogical instruction. Consequently, her story offers a radical paradigm shift in regards to the dominant Western human-animal dualism, which positions animals as subordinate, irrational, and instinct-driven Others. Her central dedication to recognizing and treating Safi as an individual, not merely an embodied manifestation of a particular species or breed, is significant. Indeed, we might say this step is the first necessary in any relationship. She regards this nonhuman animal as a

241 subject, as an individual who is not a shallow caricature or a mere representative of an entire species, somehow made fully comprehensible through manuals: “That particular individual in that particular context....” The general dog training advice will not suffice, certainly not if the goal is an improved relationship rather than simply the achievement of control.

Smuts must be willing to let the generalized training advice fall away, and move distinctly intospecific relationship; that is, she must be willing to see herself in relation with Safi. In addition she must understand Safi as having the capacity to be in relation and, implicitly and necessarily, she must recognize that Safi is attempting to communicate with her. By opening up to Safi as a subject, with a particular history, she approaches her dog with radical humility. She conceives of Safi’s behaviour not as a sign of obstinacy or dominance, but as a legitimate and reasonable attempt to communicate.

This interpretation is much more consistent with their relationship, as strongly indicated by Safi’s response to Smuts’ “alpha roll.”

Infused throughout Smuts’ narrative is her commitment to dialogical exchange, which clearly points to the relational aspect of political voice. She and Safi are in response to each other. Smuts is specific about this, and it is important to observe that her diction reflects this. Smuts discusses Safi’s “embodied communication” (Smuts,

2001) as language. An expert in animal behaviour, Smuts is well aware of the debates regarding nonhuman animals and language; nonetheless, she does not qualify her descriptions or question whether Safi’s behaviour constitutes true language. That is, she does not mince words: She does not say such behaviour “resembles language.” What might typically be conceived as a behavioural problem is instead interpreted by Smuts as

242 a communicative gesture. The problem, if there is one, lies with Smuts’ reception of the message and not with the behavior of her dog.

Similar to Erkok Neer and Lama, Smuts notes the tremendous ability for nonhuman animals to improve our own skills in social relationships. We can allow them to positively change us. For Smuts, relationships with nonhuman others centrally hinge

upon paying attention. Without this dedication, truly being in relationship is not possible.

The deep sense of presence with nonhuman animals defines Smuts’ methodology and permeates her research. As part of such presence, Smuts stays open to and fosters two- way communication between herself and nonhuman animals. It is here in that place of presence, of paying attention, of embodied listening, that people actually hear the voices of nonhuman animals. Smuts’ capacity to listen well to nonhuman others also enables her to represent animals as voiced. In her life and in her research, animals are understood as specific individuals, with particular pasts that inform their experiential knowledge, which they then bring into their social engagements with others, including herself. Smuts suggests a connection between Safi’s past experience and the request that her current behaviour implies: Although Smuts does not know Safi’s history, Safi certainly knows.

Because Smuts is willing to pay attention, she hears and then shapes her own behaviour accordingly. Part of what is so remarkable and poignant about Smuts’ account of Safi is her emergent recognition that Safi had been physically abused; yet, in the midst of such knowledge, Smuts does not render her as a helpless victim. Her appreciation of Safi’s trauma instead shapes how their relationship unfolds. Safi’s past—actively expressed

(though also seemingly with some restraint!)— informs Smuts knowledge of the present.

Smuts does not position herself as the voice of the voiceless. Safi speaks; Smuts listens.

243 Yet, it is not just Smuts who changes; Safi also modifies her behaviour. It is not as if Smuts is bullied into submission. Receiving the communication of a valid concern,

Smuts realizes that the onus is upon her to actively interpret Safi’s growls. By dropping the training advice and the associated dominance narrative, Smuts comes into relationship with Safi, and Safi then changes her behaviour towards Smuts once the message is received and action is taken. This is the dialogical dance of deep relationship, precisely the kind of relationship and exchange that humanist voice scholars deny. We see here that animals, when given the opportunity to engage across species, also participate in dialogue. They have voices. Their respective subjectivities are constituted through their relationship. Moreover, the anthropocentrism of the liberal humanist subject does not hold, and cannot hold, in the context of such profound interspecies relating. The Western notion of the human subject acting upon a passive world, where humans alone are subjects, is clearly a ruse.

Smuts’ approach has far-reaching ramifications not only for our relationships with domestic animals in our immediate contexts, but also for animals outside of these more proximate settings. Indeed, Smuts concludes her article, “Between the Species,” with a plea that we will generalize her methodology to our thinking and relating with other animals:

We humans relinquish personhood over and over due to our failure to recognize

the subjectivity and individuality of members of other species. To take back our

personhood in relation to other animals changes everything. Anyone who

seriously engages in this task comes to realize that our planet is replete with

opportunities to form personal relationships with many different kinds of beings.

244 Even if most of us end up forming bonds only with domestic animals, it is

important to fully digest the fact that millions and millions of potential nonhuman

friends exist in our forests and oceans, savannas and swamps. Radically

rethinking our relations with other species can change the future; for example, in

the context of an endangered species, what if we expanded our concerns about the

disappearance of an abstract category to include the concrete reality of death by

starvation or disease or poaching of multitudes of feeling, thinking, relational

[italics in original] beings? (2006, p. 125)

There is a resonance between Gaard’s language of family and Smuts’ language of friendship that points to an underlying equanimity in the way they think about and approach animals and human-animal relationships. In both instances, they use terms of

intimacy and familiarity (which are grounded in relationship) and they generalize the potential for deep human-animal relationships beyond those in their immediate daily

lives. Interpreting this language within the larger context of their work, such discourse signals political voice.

Rod Coronado

Smuts, a white Western scholar, would likely share a sense of solidarity with Rod

Coronado, an indigenous activist and convicted member of the Animal Liberation Front

(ALF). Coronado, in his Animal Voices interview with Mirha-Soleil Ross, described animals on fur farms and caught in steel-jaw leghold traps as “nations” and “relations.”

For Coronado (2000), what is at stake is human and nonhuman cultural survival. In the

245 following excerpt, he responded to Ross’ question about why he has focused his activism on fur issues:

I’m a member of the Pascua Yaqui Nation and as an indigenous person, the fur

trade represents so much more to me than animal abuse. It represents cultural

genocide. [Trappers and hunters] were the foot soldiers of an invasion and

conquest in the “new world.” They were the ones who introduced disease. They

were the ones who introduced alcoholism. They were the ones who introduced

gunpowder and many, many things that led to our decimation. So for me the

extension of the fur trade into the 20th and 21st century is a continuation of that

genocide. But now that its impact has been so detrimental to the indigenous

human people, it is continually being directed towards indigenous animal people.

So every bit as much as its damage was in the 14, 15, and 1600s, it is now

continuing that damage today, threatening the very last nations of wild beings

who just happen to be four-legged. So [animal liberation] is a continuation of a

centuries’ old resistance to conquest and colonialism and imperialism. So for me,

I have an incredible empathy with the animals that are on fur farms and in the

wild in steel-jaw leg hold traps because they are my relations and they are

suffering just as my ancestors suffered.

Coronado not only uses the language of relations to describe animals on fur farms and leg hold traps, but he also uses the terms “indigenous animal people” and “nations.” Such language powerfully foregrounds continuity between indigenous humans and wild animals. He underscores the significance of nonhuman animal suffering and decimation, calling the contemporary fur trade a continuation of the genocide experienced by his

246 human ancestors. The cornerstone of Coronado’s discourse is identification and empathy with those he considers relations: The relationality and shared experience between his ancestors (who suffered and died under colonialism) and animals (who are suffering and dying because of the fur trade) provides the moral impetus and justification for

Coronado’s direct action.

We hear within Coronado, Erkok Neer, Smuts, and Lama’s discourse a deep sense of connection and continuity with animals, which emerges out of direct engagements with them and, in the case of Coronado, out of a belief in shared ancestral lineage. The focus on relationality and orientation toward animals as relations inspires their ethical commitments not only with the animals inside their immediate contexts, but also—vitally and necessarily—with those outside these contexts. Within their language of relationality, we also hear the dynamics of political voice, particularly subjectivity and experience. These human-animal relations are made possible through human recognition of animals’ subjectivities and experiences. We also hear within these interviewees’ narratives an intentional appreciation of animals’ points of view and desires, combined with a willingness to deliberately consider them as subjects.

Sharon Nunez

Sharon Nunez (2009), cofounder of the large abolitionist Spanish organization, Igualdad

Animal (Animal Quality), speaks about the deep impact of her unique relationships with three rescued pigs. Like Coronado, Nunez is an animal liberationist who directly enters animal exploitation facilities and removes animals from captivity. Igualdad Animal has done a number of high profile open rescues: These involve documenting industries such

247 as factory farms, and freeing animals while the activists (unlike those of the Animal

Liberation Front) make no attempt to conceal their identities.

1 provide a lengthy interview excerpt here because Nunez’s testimony offers a powerful example of the ways in which animal rights and liberationists bring animals’ suffering and pain into public discourse, while they also value the specificity and unique subjectivities of animals as a vital part of that discourse. Indeed, that specificity vitally enriches their advocacy, and consequently, their representations. In this example, the pathos of the wide scale and general suffering of pigs within factory farms is made that much more potent when considered alongside the individuality of those who were rescued. Nunez’s account demonstrates a layered representation of animal voices that makes visible the intense victimization of pigs within factory farming, while also presenting a more complex image of their unique subjectivities:

Nunez: I became vegan in 2001, basically once 1 heard that vegans existed and

that there was a possibility of living without animal products. And 1 started

working and helping out in different groups I’d say in about the year 2002-2003,

but I was never... I was passionate. I knew that animal rights was something very

important, but I wasn’t as passionate as I am now about dedicating my life to

animals. And I’d say a major change for me, for example, has been going to the

factory farms and seeing images, real images of what real animals are undergoing

today. And a major change for me was the rescue of six piglets. Three of them

unfortunately died, because they were... when we took them out of the farm, they

didn’t survive. They were very sick. But three of them are still alive. And these

three piglets are now three pigs that weigh about 200 kilograms each, and they are

248 amazing individuals, each one with their personality. And they are wonderful beings that deserve respect. I love them and 1 see them weekly, and they have changed my life. I mean, knowing them, knowing what individuals that are just the same as them undergo and suffer every day has made me understand that some people must dedicate their lives, or dedicate most o f their time to changing the plight of animals.

Corman: Would you tell us more about the conditions that they were coming from? I’m imagining some people listening to this program maybe just don’t know about those conditions, what a factory farm looks like, and why it would be important to take piglets out of a place like that.

Nunez: Well, I mean, when we... we investigated the area for several days, and the piglets were... all the mothers of the pigs were in crates where they could hardly move. They couldn’t turn around. They couldn’t even touch their babies.

And the piglets, I’d say there were about... the part of the farm that I saw, there was about six mothers in crates, and I’d say there would be about from fifty to eighty little piglets that were going to be used for meat consumption, obviously.

Some of them were very sick. Some of them were about to die. They had... we’d been looking at the different sicknesses that pigs suffer when they are being exploited. Most of them had signs of being very sick or going to be very sick soon, and we didn’t really have much time to choose, but we did kind of really choose the healthy ones, because we wanted them to live as long as possible. And

249 there wasn’t really healthy ones, because we rescued six, and three of them died due to the sicknesses and the infections they had from coming from a farm. So I mean, and that is just one farm in the centre of Madrid where the conditions weren’t really that terrible. I mean, somebody would... somebody seeing them would say, “Well, I’ve seen worse!” 1 mean, Campofrio, for example, the investigation I talked about before was much worse. And free range farms, we’ve carried out investigations on free range farms, and free range pig farms are just the same. I mean, they have more space, but you still have animals with tumours, animals with infections, animals dying, mothers separated from their babies. So, I mean, it’s just... it’s terrible, terrible.

Corman: Would you tell us about the three that survived? You obviously have a personal connection and relationship with each of them. What are they like? For people who have maybe never met a pig, and certainly haven’t met these pigs, can you tell us who they are, a bit?

Nunez: Well, I mean, this is something that changed, as I said, something that was a huge change for me, because although you understand that animals are persons, and I’ve lived with cats and I’ve lived with... I take care o f a few cats, it’s very important for, I think, activists and people in general to get to know individual animals. And, well, there’s not really a common characteristic for these three pigs. They’re three different individuals. One of them is very social, and likes to be around people, and likes to be with the other pigs. The other one, for example,

250 Gracie isn’t - one’s Gracie, Mark and Marion are their names. Mark is very shy.

He loves to be around people also, and he loves to get people’s attention. And

Gracie is... well, she isn’t very shy. She’s always the first one to go to the food, and she’s a bit of a... a bit violent with the other pigs, because she always wants to get her way, and do what she wants. And getting to know them from the time they were babies to now, as 1 say, they weigh 200 kilos, they’re about a year and a half old. June 2007 - I’d say they’re about a year and a half old. And it’s something amazing. It’s something that’s changed my life. And I know for real that people after... some friends, or some people after meeting these pigs have decided to stop eating meat, and some of them have decided to take animal rights activism more seriously.

Corman: We’re just down to the last minute, but you were already passionate about animals before you met these three. And you say it changed your life, though. How did it change it more so than it was already changed being vegan?

Nunez: Well, you see, I think it’s surprising when... how a person who is passionate about animals can become even more passionate about animals. I mean, every different individual I meet makes me more passionate about fighting for animals, and about the whole idea that animals are individuals, and they have their own personalities. So it’s not something that I can really explain. It’s something that is away from rationality. It’s something I feel. I mean, obviously we have the arguments on our side, and we have... we’ve won the debate, even if

251 we haven’t had a debate sometimes. But I mean, it’s very important to feel

compassion and love for animals, and I think this is one of the most important

things for an activist, because that’s what gives you strength to work on a daily

basis, or at least that’s what happened to me.

Resonating with Smuts’ work, Nunez also stresses the importance of face-to-face and embodied relationships with nonhuman animals not only as inspiration for herself, but also (hopefully) as a directive in the lives of others. It is these relationships, which are shaped through the individual subjectivities of the animals, that powerfully inform her.

She repeatedly claims that these relationships changed her life. They deepen her commitment to and involvement in animal rights activism.

Nunez’s relationships with the rescued pigs are intensely dialogical. The recognition of pigs’ subjectivities, described by Nunez as their personalities and individualities, inspires her to act. In other words, Nunez’s recognition of these nonhuman subjectivities, distilled through weekly, direct interactions with three survivors, serves as an important ground to deepen her awareness of the suffering of others who are exploited. Nunez’s embodied knowledge of pigs emerges within the context of face-to-face encounters; these relationships further invigorate her activism.

She experiences that knowledge as something emotional rather than rational, and as something beyond intellectual argument. She understands such knowledge as a valid source of inspiration for hers and other activists’ work.

Nunez overtly recognizes the rescued pigs’ influence on her life, expressed as a kind of two-way dynamism that can occur within the context of rescue. Not only do these pigs possess the agential capacity to influence Nunez, but they also actively seek

252 out human and nonhuman social relationships. This is either fostered, as with Mark who loves (and receives) human attention, or frustrated, as with the caged pigs who cannot reach their babies, for example. Nunez’s attention to these sorts of social relationships fuels her activism. It is not just that pigs physically suffer within factory farms due to intense confinement and disease, but that their subjective desire for social engagement is profoundly refused. Their will to enact such desires motivates Nunez both through the witnessing of its denial within factory farms and through the witnessing of its actualization within sanctuary. Considered together, her representations of pigs clearly point to key aspects of political voice: subjectivity, experiential knowledge, relationality, and agency. For Nunez, rescue and sanctuary involve the engagement of human-animal social relationships. Humans and animals are actively co-constituting each other through these engagements.

pattrice jones pattrice jones, author of Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World - A Guide for Activists and Their Allies (2007a) and long-standing animal activist, shares a similar understanding of human-animal relationships as Nunez. Further, jones situates agency and subjectivity, which can be forged within relationships among animals, and between humans and animals, as part of a broader force of nature. In the following excerpt, I asked jones (2007b) to comment on what animals have taught her about trauma:

jones: Well, 1 run a sanctuary for chickens and ducks, and living here at the

sanctuary are birds who have been previously imprisoned on factory farms,

including egg factories. So these are among the most traumatized animals around,

253 and I learned from them something that I was already starting to know, but it’s really beautiful to see it in them as well, and I’m glad I get the chance to say this... I was just talking about how formidable the powers that we’re struggling against are, and what I’ve learned from the animals who manage to survive, come out of these horrific experiences, with their selves intact. [They retain] their ability to greet each new day as a new day, and to seize a little bit of happiness from each day, and to behave towards one another with remarkable compassion at times, even across species; ducks showing compassion to chickens, and vice versa. What they’ve shown me is that the power of... I don’t know what you want to call it. You can call it nature if you want. The power that you see when you see a tree trunk breaking up the concrete. It’s the power that allows the plants that feed us all to create calories out of sunshine. That power, that force, the same force that allows weeds to evolve, so-called weeds to evolve and to beat every new pesticide, every new herbicide that the chemist come up to kill them, that power is more formidable, more powerful, stronger than all the guns and money of all the governments and corporations there are. And that tells me that the better able we are to bring ourselves back into balance, so that we can align ourselves with that power, so that we can draw upon that power, so that we can work in concert with animals and in concert with nature rather than seeing ourselves as their heroic rescuers, then the better able we will be to do what we need to do to heal ourselves and the world. And I do believe that’s absolutely possible.

Change goes on every moment. We have been changing as we’ve been talking; you can’t stop change. It’s always happening. Change will happen. The only

254 question is in what direction will it happen, and what we choose to do can and

will determine what will happen.

Two remarkable and interrelated themes are evident within jones’ discourse: First, animals clearly demonstrate their own wills to survive and thrive. Second, animal activists are not animals’ saviours. The point of animal activism is not to rescue others, but to align ourselves with the power of nature in general, jones’ orientation is figured much more as coalition-building than as saving. Like Smuts, jones actively learns from the animals at her sanctuary who continually assert themselves, who have selves that have remained intact despite egregious treatment. Her use of active language to describe animals, who “greet each new day as a new day, and toseize a little bit of happiness from each day, and to behave towards one another with remarkable compassion at times, even across species; ducks showing compassion to chickens, and vice versa” is striking [italics added].

It is unsurprising that jones’ discourse is infused with humility, and with the recognition of nonhuman animal subjectivity and agency, when considered adjacent to her critique of tropes such as “voice of the voiceless.” The major dynamics of political voice appear powerfully during our interview through both jones’ figuring of animals and her figuring of human-animal relationships, jones highlights nonhuman animal subjectivity and agency, describing animals as having selves, who form relationships within and across species, possess emotional complexity, and fight for their lives.

The work described by jones is the kind that occurs when humans work in concert with animals and nature, which—in the sanctuary scenario— is divorced from instrumental use of animals, jones’ political and ethical discourse might be more

255 immediately identifiable as ecologically-minded rather than conventionally (animal) rightist, despite her commitments to domestic animals, veganism, and animal liberation.

She describes a deep sense of humans’ and animals’ embeddedness within larger ecological networks. She represents nature more generally as voiced, and the animals at the sanctuary are represented as enacting and embodying that larger agential and powerful life force. Nonetheless, jones does not erase the specificity of these particular animals: It is the animals she encounters at the sanctuary who have shown her that, despite incredible trauma, they still seek out pleasurable experiences and treat each other with compassion. In contrast to certain environmental discourses that construct domesticated animals as artifacts (e.g., Callicott, 1980), jones understands domesticated factory farmed chickens and ducks as part of nature. Jones learns from the animals at the sanctuary; she emphasizes the ways in which these subjects engage with each other and the world as survivors. These non-anthropocentric forms of subjectivity are represented as in process, rather than as static and based on some unchanging essence.

Judy A vey-Arroyo

Such embeddedness is reflected within the discourse of other sanctuary owners, such as

Judy Avey-Arroyo, co-founder of the Aviarios Del Carribe Sloth Sanctuary in Costa

Rica. Proceeding Avey-Arroyo’s (2007) description of the evolutionary genealogy of sloths, she offers a vivid appreciation of sloths as deeply immersed within a larger, complex ecological relationship:

They eat basically leaves, and most of the leaves in the rainforest are toxic.

That’s how they protect themselves from predation, so a sloth mother has to teach

256 the baby sloth the leaves it needs to eat so it won’t overintoxicate itself on one particular leaf. So going back to why we’re having problems with introducing the babies, because we can’t teach them how to be very careful about the leaves they eat....

They also get a covering of algae on their hair. Both sloths have algae that is found nowhere else in the rainforest. It’s the sloth’s moss, we call it, sloth algae. This provides camouflage. It also provides...the algae gets its home, and when the sloth goes up into the sunshine to bask, the algae gets its dose of sunshine for its photosynthesis. So it’s a symbiotic relationship with the sloth and the algae. The algae helps him to...the sloth itself, the animal doesn’t have a distinctive animal odour, or a sloth smell, as we like to say... When an animal is hunting by scent, it won’t detect the sloth. It’ll smell like a bunch of vegetation.

The sloth also has as a symbiotic relationship with an arthropod, what looks like a sloth moth, we call it, and it lives on the sloth only, on both kinds of sloth, and it eats the algae to keep the algae under control, but it also needs the dung of the sloth, or the poop, the sloth poop...to lay its eggs. So the sloth has a very curious way of helping the moth to live its life cycle. The sloth only goes to the bathroom once a week or so, and to make that.. .to go to the bathroom he has to go to the bottom of a tree, make that dangerous journey down to the bottom of the tree and deposit his dung or his poop at the base of the tree. Scientists think that he is actually fertilizing his favourite tree, ensuring that those trees get the nutrients that he can’t utilize. Also, the moth flies down and lays its eggs on the dung, and the larvae, when they hatch, use that as their food source. And then as

257 they hatch, they fly up and look for another sloth in the trees. So it’s an

enormously important part of the rainforest.

If we lose the sloth, which, you know, they're in trouble, obviously, since

we have ninety sloths here at the centre, we’ll lose a very important part of the

rainforest, because as a biomass in the rainforest, the sloth are larger than all of

the other biomass combined that eat the leaves. So they’re the major recyclers of

the nutrients in a rainforest. They’re very, very important.

She describes sloths’ relationships with their environment, including with other animals, as profoundly symbiotic. Like other animal advocates who straddle both

(conventionally-defined) animal rights and environmental concerns, such as Marc Bekoff

(e.g, 2007, 2010), she is concerned with the preservation of the species, but she is also concerned with the individual suffering of sloths who are harmed by cars, telephone poles, aerial pesticide spray, etc. Her concern with individual suffering is readily identifiable as part of the animal welfare or rights movements, paired with an equally impassioned environmental interest in species preservation. The dual focus on both species preservation and individual pain and suffering emphasizes the importance of flourishing on individual and ecological scales. Below she explains the impact of habitat destruction on individual sloths:

Avey-Arroyo: Of course the problems that they’re facing are man-made, man-

inflected, obviously, because in nature their predators are the large cats, jaguars,

ocelots, pumas, the large snakes in South America, the anacondas or the boas here

in Central America. (Inaudible) eagles also will predate on the sloths, and those

are basically their enemies, but those natural enemies are quickly disappearing as well.... Most of the sloths [who are coming to the sanctuary are] power lines

victims. When we move into their territory, the sloth doesn’t abandon that

territory and look for a new one. He just doesn’t. He stays right there. He stays

in a village if a new village is built up. So we put power lines in and a sloth will

climb a power pole because it looks like a tree to him. He doesn’t have that

concept of something dangerous. Or an overlying branch will fall onto the power

lines and he will climb onto the power lines and burn their hands. Usually when

they do that, they survive incredible jolts of power, but they bum their hands so

badly that most of them lose their tendons and.. .they’re survivors. The sloths are

so incredibly willing to fight for their lives if we give them half a chance. We

have right now five sloths that are unable to go back out into the wild, that came

as adults burned by power lines.

Avey-Arroyo’s claim that sloths are “willing to fight for their lives if we give them half a chance” and her assertion that they are “survivors” again marks a break from discourses of pure victimhood. We hear a language of resistance and agency within Avey-Arroyo’s description of their plight that, while of course not verbally articulated by the sloths themselves, resonates within the political register of voice. Most saliently, her emphasis on social relationships—which points to the relational aspect of political voice—among the sloths, such as mothers’ teaching leaf toxicity to their babies, combined with her emphasis on the dynamic role played by sloths in the forest, suggests a dialogical understanding distinct from narratives in which humans uni-directionally act upon and save their hapless charges. She humbly notes that that experiential knowledge provided by mothers to their babies is something that the sanctuary workers lack; this lack presents

259 problems for raising babies because the workers “can’t teach them how to be very careful about the leaves they eat.”

During our interview, Avey-Arroyo also pointed to the sorts of unique human- sloth relationships made possible through long-term care and trust-building. At the end of our conversation, I asked if there was a particular story she would like to share with our listeners. She recounted an anecdote about a sloth who gave birth to her baby in a bush near the sanctuary’s garden. (Jane is a sloth who came to the sanctuary as a baby, and became pregnant when a male sloth made his way into the sanctuary.) Jane’s choice was notable because sloths typically give birth very high in the trees, which lends protection against predators who might otherwise smell it. Avey-Arroyo recalls,

But she was in a bush at eye level, gave birth to this beautiful baby, cleaned the

baby up. The baby began nursing and suckling. When the baby was settled on

her chest, she and the baby climbed back down to the ground on the bush and

went back to a mango tree where she had come from. To us this was a gift to us.

It was Jane, as we call her, Jane, just to let us know that she appreciated

everything we did for her when she was in trouble with her baby. And maybe she

even thought that if she was in trouble with this birth, that we might be there to

help her. They’re the most amazing...they give so much more back than we can

possibly give to them.

Texts that claim this species gives birth high in trees would miss the variability of that behaviour, which in this context and based on these human-animal relationships, does not fit the typical pattern. The individuality of the sloths is key to Avey-Arroyo’s discourse.

260 Jane’s trust in the sanctuary workers, as suggested in the previous story, is framed within a greater understanding of dialogical exchange between the sloths and people.

Avey-Arroyo observes a profound mutuality at the sanctuary. Nonetheless, despite the fact that the sanctuary ostensibly exists for the sloths’ protection, she maintains that it is the humans who benefit most greatly. Furthermore, the notion of sanctuary is itself complicated: The sanctuary does not so much provide a service to the sloths as much as it helps foster an opportunity for the sloths to fight for themselves. We might challenge

Steve Mirsky’s (2009) simplistic supposition, as articulated within his recent Scientific

American article about the sanctuary, that Aviarios Del Carribe is “on a mission to save sloths.” We hear an intentional acknowledgement of animal resistance within Avey-

Arroyo’s testimony, although this message is not her primary objective, unlike that of the next interviewee. Avey-Arroyo emphasizes all the dynamics of political voice

(subjectivity, agency, experiential knowledge, and relationality) in her descriptions of sloths.

Jason Hribal

Jason Hribal highlights unique and powerful examples of animal agency, resistance, and subjectivity within his animal rights activism. Indeed, these dynamics rest at the heart of his efforts. As such, his work makes a significant contribution to the discussion of animals’ political voices within this dissertation and, of course, more generally. Hribal, an historian and educator, aims to write animals’ “history from below,” which he contrasts to social history. In our interview, he juxtaposed the two orientations:

261 Social history is looking at underrepresented groups in the past— it could be

women, or African-Americans or Irish peasants and then it’s just kind of looking

at this history of these individuals. Now, a history from below is looking at their

agency, how women have influenced and shaped historical events and created

social change themselves. And history from below also has an element of class

involved, class relationships. Women have created different forms of class - how

they align and often, typically, working class history. (Hribal, 2006a)

Hribal centralizes questions of animal agency and resistance throughout his writing (e.g.,

2003, 2006b, 2007); indeed, agency in particular is the definitive characteristic of his research. As he noted during our Animal Voices interview, such an orientation is an intentional departure from discourses of victimhood, which he claims are suggested by analyses (common within the animal rights and liberation movements) that analogize animals to human slaves, and that describe animal use as slavery (e.g., Spiegel, 1996).

When I asked Hribal to explain his construction of animal resistance as a form of class struggle, he replied,

[We can look at] the work on slavery and we can see... PETA’s recent exhibit

[“Are Animals the New Slaves?”] and how poorly that went. You know, people,

they should have expected that because when people are exploited, they always,

almost always, make that comparison. They’re being treated like mules or dogs

or other animals and they hate it. Now if you go through the African-American

slave autobiographies - there’s a whole ton out there. Almost all of it makes this

comparison: They say ‘we were being treated like animals,’ and in many ways

they’re defining their situation through that, so you know people generally don’t

262 like being treated that way or being compared that way, so I think in a lot of ways

you kind of have to move beyond that and look at the more agency access...

[EJxplain to people all that animals have done in this society: I mean, they have

literally build this country, they have built Canada, they built England, the

cultural revolution, the urban revolution, all of these revolutions—cotton, sugar,

you know, the most important elements—gold, silver—all of this production was

done, to a very large degree, by other animals... If you begin to understand that

and then you can move onto resistance and then you can move onto class

relationships, so the move beyond the idea of this victim. (2006a)

Alternative to discourses of slavery, Hribal situates animals’ resistance—a key dynamic of political voice—within a framework of class struggle, and suggests that we ought to be in solidarity with them on this basis (2006b). For him, the most generative point of connection between animals and humans is not shared suffering, but shared struggle. A potent example of solidarity between advocates and animals is illustrated through the concurrent human and animal resistance to horse-driven plows and carts during the 19th century. Hribal explains,

If you look at the historical record you will find constant references to resistance

of horses, constantly. They’re always fighting back. And if s [a] pain. It’s a pain

in the butt to these owners, to these managers, to these drivers and they don’t

want to deal with it and you have to remember that over the course of the 19th

century horses nearly doubled in size. It’s hard to imagine that, that the horses of

today are so much different than the horses of the past—they were—and that’s a

big horse. You know, if you’ve ever walked next to a horse, you know that

263 they’ve gotten very large and if they’re going to kick you, they’re going to hurt

you bad, okay. Growing up in the horse country it was almost weekly that we

would hear from a farm kid, you know, resistance. A cow kicked so and so in the

face and... it’s very common. It happens almost on a daily basis. So if you look

at that resistance, okay. Horses always had the conscious ability, if they wanted

to, to resist. Steam engines did not, okay. And then you look at that combined

with class issues, in particular, the animal rights movement. That was getting

very strong in the 19th century and they were constantly harassing the owners and

operators of horse-driven industry. Constantly. Just not in cities but also in

country situations.

I find instances in the historical record o f some farmer way out in the plains

of Washington who was being harassed by Humane Society for throwing rocks at

his horses. Which he had a little bucket of rocks on his tractor and he would

chuck them at his horses when they resisted and yet he was getting grief, okay: He

couldn’t do it anymore because they were on his back, so when you look at this

combination of horses and mules and donkeys resisting in combination with the

animal rights movement, which was causing tremendous grief and passing all

these laws protecting these creatures it just became a situation where most owners

just had to switch. It’s not worth the pain, it’s not worth the agony; let’s just

make that switch.

The recognition of animals’ agency, and particularly that they resist as part of their agency, leads Hribal to a wide-scale condemnation of instrumental and industry uses.

His arguments are decidedly against animal captivity (for instrumental use), regardless of

264 the specific forms of human-animal relationships that can occur within such contexts.

His detailed cataloguing of animals’ resistance within “Animals are Part of the Working

Class: A Challenge to Labor History” (2003), which was published in the journal Labor

History, “Jesse, a Working Dog” (2006b); “Animals, Agency, and Class” (2007); “The

Struggle of Nootka and Tilikum” (2010); “A Message from Tatiana” (201 lb); and his text, Fear o f the Animal Planet: The Hidden History ofAnimal Resistance (2011 a)

demonstrate that animals actively fight against their exploitation within conditions of

confinement and forced servitude. In his epilogue, for example, Hribal reflects upon the

actions of Tilikum, an orca at Sea World who killed his trainer on February 24, 2010. He

had worked with Dawn Brancheau for sixteen years. He drowned the woman during a

choreographed routine in which he is supposed to “good-naturedly” interact with his

trainer, and then swim (on cue) to the bottom of the pool to pose at a window for

photographs. This time, Tilikum grabbed Brancheau by the ponytail, and shook her hard

enough to fracture her back, ribs, legs, and arms. He then held her underwater for five

minutes.

As with his other descriptions of similar incidences, Hribal refuses the common

narratives that strip animals’ actions of choice and intentionality. Animal attacks on

humans are often publicly figured as accidental, or simply as the behaviour of out-of-

control (in Tilikum’s case, testosterone-driven) wild animals (Hribal, 201 la). In other

words, these behaviors are typically discursively neutralized in such a way as to mitigate

against deeper troubling questions, such as whether the animals want to be there and

whether industries such as zoos and aquaria should exist at all. The benign narratives not

only help ensure smooth economic functioning, but they also further inscribe an image of

265 animals as non-agential and devoid of individual will. Hribal repeatedly counters such claims throughout his writing. In the final paragraphs of Fear o f the Animal Planet,

Hribal (201 la) posits,

The industry encourages you to think that these animals are intelligent, but not

intelligent enough to have the ability to resist. The industry encourages you to

care about them, so that you and your children will return for a visit. But it does

not want you to care so much that you might develop empathy and begin to

question whether these animals actually want to be there.

Tilikum has made two pronounced statements about his captivity. The first

was in 1991 and the second in 2010. Other animals have made their own: from

Tyke, to Ken Allen, to Kasatka. There is a long history to this struggle, which

stretches back centuries. Zoos and circuses live in fear of it and the historical

changes that it can bring. We, however, do not have to be afraid. Instead, we can

recognize that struggle, learn from it, and choose a side. Where does Tilikum

want to be? Certainly not confined in the lonely and sterile tanks of Sea World,

(pp. 152-153)

He collects and analyzes documented stories in which animals have escaped from various institutions or have attacked and sometimes killed the humans with whom they work. He interprets their behaviour through the theoretical lens of “history from below.” As a guide for such analyses, Hribal looks to texts such as James Scott’s (1985) Weapons o f the Weak: Everyday Forms o f Peasant Resistance, which considers resistant behaviors that Hribal claims are also enacted by nonhuman animals, including faking ignorance, rejection of command, slow-down foot dragging, no work

without added food, refusal to work in the heat of the day, taking breaks without

permission, rejection of overtime, complaints, rebuff and detach[ment], false

compliance, breaking equipment and then, of course, direct confrontation. These

are all methods that are used by cows, or chickens, or horses or dogs to resist their

exploitation. (2006b)

My point here is not to suggest that Hribal’s interpretations are necessarily “right” in all circumstances—although extensive evidence certainly fortifies his claims—but rather to again highlight the work of someone whose arguments align with the animal rights and liberation movements, yet who does not conceive of animals purely as victims. In the absence of discourses of victimhood, Hribal stresses the kinds of capacities associated with political voice, including subjectivity, relationality, experience, and resistance. As

Hribal shows, these political voices shape human history, inform the texture of human- animal relationships, and repeatedly defy their oppressors.

Although much of Hribafs writing focuses on analyses of historical events, he also discusses literature as a key site in which animals are represented as agents. According to

Hribal, stories by Jack London (“the famous socialist from Oakland”), Ernest Thompson

Seton, and William Long (“naturalists from outside the academy”) are directly informed by their experiential knowledge of animals (Hribal, 2006a). Furthermore, in some instances such experiential knowledge inspires their activism. That is, not only are animals positioned as agents in their own lives, but Hribal also credits them as catalysts for activism:

267 You know, they lived among these creatures, they worked with them, sometimes

they worked against them. In the case of Ernest Seton, he was often a hunter of

wolves. But these experiences shaped them and taught them lessons and mainly

taught them that they have, that these creatures have agency, and that humans can

identify with the struggles of these creatures and that a solidarity can be formed

between humans and other animals, class solidarity. So we see the creation of an

amazing organization that still hasn’t been studied, the Jack London Club formed

in the early 1900s, and this organization, the sole purpose of it was to advocate for

other animals, in particular, they really focused on zoos and circuses and rodeos

and they wanted these organizations to be shut down and it became so strong that

they actually forced the Ringling Bros and Bamum and Bailey circus to stop

animal acts from 1925-1929. This is an extraordinary feat.... The solidarity

between animals and us can really be significant and powerful in the creation of

social change if people really want it to be, but it has to be together.

In both his historical examination of animals’ resistance and his investigations of animals in literature, Hribal foregrounds animals’ capacities to teach and to guide. From his vantage point, those attuned to animals’ assertions of agency can choose to act in concert with their desires, and can even be motivated to work on behalf of animals they have not personally known precisely because of their prior experiential knowledge with others.

Barbara Gowdy

Toronto author and animal rights advocate Barbara Gowdy (2008) also forcefully opposes animal use, and like Hribal, she believes in the power of literature to motivate

268 humans to act. Crucially too, for Gowdy, animals at times motivate her creativity and writing. In the case of her national best seller The White Bone, it was the ritualized behavior of a particular herd of elephants that first suggested to Gowdy that these animals have their own stories. She understands them as fellow cultural beings who make meanings of their lives. In our interview, she recalled the profound impact of watching a documentary that showed a matriarchal herd of elephants approaching the bones of another elephant:

They came upon the bones, and they suddenly got very still and careful. They

picked up the bones and smelled them and carefully set them back down. Even

the babies did this. They covered them with twigs, and then they turned their

backs on the bones, some of them did, the larger elephants, and lifted their hind

legs and passed them over the bones, and Cynthia Moss, who at that time that I

saw it, she’d been now in Africa almost forty years, but then it was thirty-

something years, says she has seen this many times. And she doesn’t know what

it signifies unless they’re sensing some emanations. And that was so spooky,

because a scientist isn’t supposed to talk in those terms. They have a hard enough

time talking about animal consciousness and all of them in the field believe that

there is a consciousness, but to say that to the lay public, who are all about ten

years behind scientists in what is happening with animals made her sound like

Shirley Maclaine, you know. But she said it. It was very brave, and to see this

ritual, and I can’t think that it’s anything less than a ritual, very moving, so I just

started to read more about elephants and researched them, and with the idea of a

269 novel in the back of my mind, but not knowing whether it would work. But the

more I read, the more 1 realized they have a big story.

Faced with an understanding that elephants have their own story, Gowdy was confronted with the question of how best to render a version of it. She clearly wanted to do justice to elephants. Representing the elephants’ perspectives through “first person” voice was demanding; it required a non-anthropocentric approach. She needed to radically de­ centre her own human subjectivity. I asked Gowdy (2008) to reflect on her marked attempts to challenge anthropomorphism throughout her writing. Sounding somewhat exasperated, she states,

I don’t even know what’s the matter with anthropomorphism, why it’s such a bad

word. All that anthropomorphism is, 1 think in its truest and best sense, is trying

to imagine being inside another creature’s skin. And when you imagine that that

creature is just like you, and so many people do it with their dog— 1 saw a woman

the other day with a dog in a baby carriage dressed up, and she was pushing the

carriage around, and I thought, oh, this is so wrong! She’s not imagining... she’s

imagining that the dog is her. This can happen when the imagination is stymied.

But when the imagination is let loose, then you have an opportunity of getting

inside a creature’s skin, and getting inside the skin of a creature that’s intelligent

and complicated and social and conscious and emotional as an elephant is a lot

easier than trying to get in the skin of a bat, or getting into the caritas of an ant.

And I try to imagine that too. Wherever there are neurons, nerve endings, pain,

wherever there is a will, there is a creature who deserves our attention and our

compassion. Gowdy thoughtfully approached questions of representation in her novel, particularly regarding how she was going to speak for (or rather, as) elephants; this challenge becomes apparent when we closely attend to the political register of voice within her discourse. We hear it in Gowdy’s language, for example, when she talks about writing elephants’ subjectivities and epistemologies:

Well, you know, it’s very presumptuous to think your way into anybody’s mind.

We don’t know the minds of those closest to us, and we’re not supposed to, on

some level. There’s supposed to be this mystery between us. But the empathetic

leap is so necessary to, you know, living together. I think that I just... it’s hard to

describe the creative process at the best of times, but I think it... you know, I just

sat in a quiet room and, you know, I didn’t put on an elephant’s head or

something, an elephant mask. I just tried to go deep into myself and my

imagination and my love of animals, and my lifelong fascination for what it

would be like not to be me. And 1 guess you have to just be this person, feel this

way.... The challenge was to imagine what it was like, what it would be like to be

that big and that threatened, and to have your sense of smell as your major sense,

and so on.... I didn’t find it that much more difficult than going into the mind of a

human. In fact, I had more license, simply, because as I’ve said, an elephant

wasn’t going to criticize this book. But if I did it with an open heart, and with as

much information as I could gather, that’s the best I could do.

271 Corman: Did you have a sense, then, of the elephant sort of haunting you as you

were writing the text? Did you feel that you needed to be accountable to them in

some way to tell a story that would be as accurate as possible?

Gowdy: Oh yeah. 1 researched like mad. 1 wanted to get all the facts right.

Everything the elephants do in this book is what they do in the wild. 1 just

injected intentions. And nobody can know that. Nobody can know, of course,

what they’re thinking and feeling, although they do communicate by their actions

and bodies pretty well, but you know, we don’t share language like that. How

could we possibly know? But I did a lot of research, and I went to Africa, and

then I went back to Africa for a Discovery show, and talked to the scientists in the

field who had read the book, and Discovery wanted me on camera to say “Did I

get this right?” and ask Cynthia Moss and Joyce Poole. I just think it’s funny.

They’re all women and they have natural history names like “Poole” and “Moss.”

But I was told I got it right; as far as whether or not this is what the animals are

thinking is anybody’s guess.

Rigorous research, including direct observation, profoundly informed Gowdy’s representations of elephants. She recognized the difficult and sticky ethical terrain that she treads. She does not simply barrel headlong into conventional humanist constructions, wherein animals are understood as humans’ underlings or humans cloaked in pachyderm skin. Her approach is exemplified through her efforts to prioritize smell within the text, for example, which is a primary sense for elephants. During our

272 conversation, I reflected on some people’s repulsion to elephants’ actions within the novel (which were often related to Gowdy’s olfactory descriptions):

Corman: I thought it was interesting that some of the people who wrote about the

book talked about some of the actions of the elephants as being disgusting or

vile.. ..It sort of stood out for me that what is abject maybe for us—and [what] I

really liked about the book—was that what is abject for maybe Western North

Americans maybe isn’t abject for elephants.

Gowdy: Of course! Of course! You know, you go to a park with a dog, and

they’re all sniffing each other’s butts. If we took our clothes off and started

smelling each other’s butts, we would seem mad. There would be an uprising and

fury! But what we’re missing, we may have at one time in our evolution had way

sharper senses of smell, but what we’re missing is all that information that the

animals get, and we are so frightened of anything that smacks of bodily fluid or

sex, we can’t even really talk about our bodies. I think this also has to do with our

estrangement from each other, our physical estrangement from each other, our

physical estrangement from our own body.

Gowdy’s “empathetic leap” involves keen attention to animals’ differences, their

Otherness, without erasing the possibility of human-animal continuities. The voices of elephants in The White Bom are—necessarily—human, given that Gowdy is the author, but these voices are not completely human either. As postcolonial and animal studies scholar Philip Armstrong contends, “[encountering the postcolonial animal means learning to listen to the voices of all kinds o f ‘other’ [sic] without either ventriloquizing

273 them or assigning to them accents so foreign that they never can be understood” (2002, p.

417). Gowdy consciously engages this problem.

Gowdy’s work is unmistakably meant to motivate us: She wants human slaughter of elephants to end. 1 02 Her text is a creative and literary form of animal rights activism.

She remarks,

What fiction can do is take people unawares, sort of sideswipe them, get them to

think differently without feeling that they’re being lectured to, harangued, and

that was my intent with The White Bone. I knew that for fiction, a lecture is the

kiss of death, and that I’d lose the reader.

Gowdy believes in the power of literature to persuade and to inspire compassion, which is made possible by the “empathic leap” that we ideally take along with her. Through

Gowdy’s writing, we are at once able to inhabit the perspectives of elephants at the same moment that we realize the actual impossibility of this: It is a fiction. Although Gowdy partially defers to veteran elephant researchers Moss and Poole, who assure Gowdy (and the Discovery Show) that she got the facts right, she also states that what the elephants think “is anybody’s guess.” There is an intense self-consciousness of her discourse, an absolute willingness to note our limited capacity to think and feel ourselves into the being of another. Such limitation is figured not as weakness, but as humility.

The meticulous work that Gowdy does, through research and imagination, intensely informs the specific kind of leap she takes. She does not write an allegory. She does not

102 Gowdy laments, “[The elephants] are constantly being culled and hunted, and by the way, if you ever decide, any of your listeners, to go to Africa, don’t go to Kruger in South Africa. They have culls. And they don’t deserve anybody’s business. Kenya, where 1 went, they don’t cull the elephants, and they’ve never had to. Elephants determine their own... females actually don’t go into heat when there’s not enough food, unlike humans.”

274 metaphorize elephants into a fabulist’s oblivion. This story is ultimately not about us. In the end, there is no “getting it right” in terms of animal representation, but we do get the sense from Gowdy that some stories are better than others. Doing one’s homework is crucial. She acknowledges that she has greater imaginative license writing about elephants than she does writing about humans because elephants are not going to critique the narrative. She does not abdicate responsibility, though. She will not and cannot present a totalizing view of their experiences and perspectives. For Gowdy, though, that is not what she is after. Reflecting on her rendering of elephants, she says, “... if I did it with an open heart, and with as much information as I could gather, that’s the best I could do.” Her representations are attempts at genuine empathy, at vicariously thinking and feeling what the elephants experience, not as herself but as elephants.

Bound with her empathetic leap, Gowdy’s The White Bone is collectively infused with the dynamics of political voice: subjectivity, experiential knowledge, relationality, and resistance. The inclusion of these dynamics demonstrates a strong move against the

“ventriloquist’s burden” critique raised by Horwitz. Consider, for example, the following passage from the beginning of the novel when a herd happens upon Mud, an orphaned newborn calf. Her mother has recently been killed. The herd is trying to determine the calf s family, and what has happened to her mother:

Through the palisade of legs Mud saw the hyena skulk through the mist.

“Is it a massacre?” a shrill, quavering voice asked.

The alluring voice said, “I’m picking up only one death fetor. It’s from a

cow, I believe.”

More gasps, and weeping now.

275 “She-Snorts,” the lead cow said, “can you smell hindleggers [humans]?”

“The faintest stink,” the alluring voice said. “They are no longer in the vicinity.”

“We’d better leave, anyway,” the shrill voice said. Nut-sized tears dripped from her trunk. “They may come back and slaughter us all. If you ask me, and of course nobody will, but in my opinion the best thing to do is to leave this newborn here. That cow may not be related to her at all, and if her family comes searching, they won’t know where to look.”

She-Snorts blew a derisive breath.

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t mourn the cow,” the shrill voice said. “But we don’t have to do that right this moment. I’m short of breath. Where’s

Swamp? Swamp!”

“Calm yourself,” the lead cow rumbled. “Wave your ears.”

“Wave my ears. Yes, all right, Mother. Swamp. Stay by me, son. I’m having one of my spells.”

“I would like to go to the corpse,” the fierce voice said.

“No, She-Scares,” the lead cow rumbled. “It’s not safe. She-Screams is right, the hindleggers may not be far. Poor cow. I wonder who she was.”

“The newborn has a She-M odour,” She-Snorts said.

A throng of trunks descended to Mud. When one slipped into her mouth she sucked the tip, although she anticipated the disappointment of drawing no milk from that source. And yet she smelled milk. Where? She turned in a circle and spotted full breasts under She-Snorts and rushed toward her. A tiny calf was

276 in her way. She thought that the calf was herself, and she halted to be

investigated by her own trunk and to gulp in her own milk perfume until,

reminded by that smell of where she was headed, she pulled away and tried to go

between the forelegs of She-Snorts. (Gowdy, 1998, pp. 17-18)

Later in the text, immediately preceding a devastating account of a slaughter, the elephants’ nerves are again piqued. The She-S and She-D’s families seem to inhabit that eerie pre-storm feeling that can descend before a tragedy: the heightened sense; the absolute attention to the environment.

The stench of a vehicle.

Within seconds everybody has gone still, every body has caught the sound

or smell. Trunks pivot toward She-Scares and She-Demands, either of whom will

signal the next move. There is a good chance that the vehicle isn’t headed

directly here—vehicles don’t drink at the watering places and none have been

seen at Blood Swamp in twenty-five years. At this point it would be madness to

run out onto the plain and show themselves to the enemy, who are not even the

vehicles themselves but the humans riding in their bellies. On their own, vehicles

prefer to sleep, but whenever a human burrows inside them they race and roar and

discharge a foul odour.

That odour, even the faintest whiff, bums the insides of Mud’s trunk. It is

all she can do to hold herself still, with her scalding trunk and her shaking leg.

Her vision is weirdly sharp. She watches the hippos bloat out of the water, the

crocodiles slither into it. Only the giraffes do not move, and they are the one who can see the

vehicle, if it is visible. Its roar is so close now. The piping of a bird starts up and

the stench thickens and finally the giraffes begin to lope away. (pp. 84-85)

Such passages are typical of many within The White Bom. The whole text is drenched with sensual descriptions of the elephants’ interactions with each other, other animals, and the environment more generally. The elephants do not just talk: they dialogue. They negotiate. They have arguments and different points of view. They make decisions.

That is, they repeatedly demonstrate relationality and agency, and often in ways not easily transposable over human forms of these capacities. We are less likely to perceive and experience each other’s changing moods through sense of smell, for example.

Resistance is also key to the story: The plot is driven by the elephants’ search for a safe place, free from drought and poachers. Responses to the threat o f human beings are experienced differently among individuals within the herd. They bring particular knowledges to the unfolding circumstances, based on their different experiences and memories. Their unique personalities inform their interpretations of events, as shown above.

Literature opens up possibilities for representing non-anthropocentric forms of animal voices, in which humans can speak as animals, but not through the representational platform of identity politics. Fiction writers are not required to speak their truth from the standpoint of a coherent identity and through appeals to a common group experience, one which must never be presented as a construction for fear of delegitimizing one’s claims and relinquishing one’s right to speak. Instead, fiction presents itself as fiction. A novelist can speak for—and speak as—animals through a

278 shared recognition between the author and the reader: All parties recognize the story is

fiction. As such, fiction can allow us to represent animals’ voices in a way that is

potentially quite different from forms of politics that require us to occupy a particular

(subjugated) standpoint (e.g. as gendered victims under patriarchy) in order to say

anything truthful and meaningful about experience.

That is not to say that fiction is without its own representational dangers, as

human ventriloquism certainly can and has run rampant within its works. Yet, when

approached with the kind of humility demonstrated by Gowdy, fictional representations

of animal voices can definitely take us “unawares” and motivate us to act. These political

voices can encourage us to intimately consider the subjectivities of other animals, while

harnessing the power of story for political ends. As such, they can both show human-

animal continuities (which helps blur the human-animal distinction) and they reveal the

fiction of the Western human subject (which defines itself as distinct and superior to

other animals as well as to human Others who are constructed as animal [see Oliver,

2009]). Fiction can remind us of the multiplicity and specificities of nonhuman

subjectivities. When such efforts help challenge animal exploitation industries and

confront the human use of animals, they suggest exciting forms of posthumanist animal

rights activism.

Marc Bekoff

As my analysis of Gowdy’s writing shows, it is from a place of deep humility that animals are represented as most richly voiced, not—necessarily—on human terms, but as subjects with their own unique sensual experiences and desires, who occupy unique

279 worlds.103 These worlds overlap with ours, but they are distinct. Such recognition is also at the very centre of the relationships with, and arguments about, animals as engaged by advocate and preeminent cognitive ethologist, Marc Bekoff.

I especially wanted to speak with Bekoff in 2003, as I had become heavily immersed in environmental and animal rights debates by that point. I searched for arguments that would confront the negation of farmed animals within certain environmental discourses (based on polarized constructions of domestication as antithetical to valued constructions of “wildness” and “wilderness”), and that would also confront common prejudices within general public discourses: namely, that farm animals are stupid and worthless. In both sets of discourses, these animals are silenced. I explicitly raised this concern in my interview with Bekoff. He responded by detailing some scientific findings that evince the intelligence of dogs, particularly in regards to their problem-solving abilities. He stated emphatically, “For example, dogs can follow the pointing and the gaze of humans, and wolves can’t. Even hand-reared wolves can’t.

103 The keenness of various nonhuman animal senses is also profoundly touched upon by Pradeep Kumar Nath, whom I interviewed a little over two weeks after the massive Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. I asked Kumar Nath to tell our listeners about the work he did with the Visakha SPCA. He replied, “Well, actually in India the worst affected is the Andaman/Nicobar Islands, and then you have the Tamil Nadu coast, then the Pondicherry, Kerala and the Andhra Pradesh. So we are actually located in the centre o f Andhra Pradesh state here. W e’re about nearly five hundred kilometres, five hundred to six hundred kilometres. The waves have come inside and have damaged about sixty streets. So much of the domestic animals have been affected, but not the wild animals, because the wild animals had the sense to get away. But also here, the domestic animals, especially the ones that are let free, they have been able to escape, especially the dogs. They had the sixth sense to tell the people, and to run away. But those that were... they were tied to the posts; they have perished” (2005). Kumar Nath’s use o f the word “sense” is interpretable in two ways: First, the wild animals had the physical capability, a “sixth sense.” Second, as inflected, they also had the wherewithal to act: “...they had the sense to get away.” In other words, they had the good sense to escape. Here animals are understood as being able to do what humans did not or could not. There is a respect that they have certain abilities, or they are tuned into certain abilities, that extend beyond humanity’s reach. Kumar Nath’s commentary is significant to the question of voice and animals because he focuses on the will o f the (wild and domesticated) animals to flee, and also, the domesticated animals’ ability to inform people of the danger. This warning is borne out of relationship. Domestication lends itself to helping people, but it also intensely works against the animals in this case, as those tied to posts most certainly would have also fled.

280 And you know, so the bottom line to that, as I’ve written, is that dogs are not dumbed down wolves...” I then pressed him about animals typically considered food within North

America. He enthuses,

Chickens can remember up to a hundred other animals in a dominance hierarchy.

Chickens have been studied extensively, and you know, they show very clearly

that they take into account who’s watching them when they do something. It’s

called the audience effect. And they modify their behaviour according to who is

watching them...Fish can solve some very, very complex problems. They’re,

quote, “smart” in ways that mammals are smart, in terms of avoiding predators, in

terms of avoiding competitors, in terms of mate choice. So I mean, what seems to

be happening very clearly is that people who study these problems - scientific

problems, if you will — really are showing very clearly that a lot of the

preconceptions that people have are just completely wrong, and so that’s why 1

say drivel, because if people really looked at the available information, then they

would see very, very clearly that many of the animals who we write off as being

stupid or unfeeling are extremely bright and extremely feeling beings....

What I want to do is make people aware of the fact that dogs do things that

dogs do, and cats do things that cats do, and fish do things that fish do, because

that’s who they are. And so as a biologist, I urge people to be very careful in

saying that... dogs are smarter than cats, and cats are smarter than dogs, or

chimpanzees are smarter than cats and dogs, because it really doesn’t matter.

What matters is that the animals are able to do what they need to do to live in their

world. And once we cash it out that way, then we won’t use intelligence as some

281 kind of criteria for justifying putting animals through pain, or abusing them. I just

think that that’s once again, if you will, you know, that’s very, very important, in

terms of reflecting on who these animals are in their own worlds.

On the surface, Bekoff s discourse seems to reproduce an anthropocentric “similarity argument” (Bryant, 2007) because he describes animals’ intelligence as a grounds for regard and respect. In the West, the human-animal distinction in part has been marked and entrenched through claims that humans are the only intelligent species. Or, when other animals are regarded as intelligent, their intelligence is frequently measured in relation to ours, under our terms and criteria. Animals’ intelligence, when granted, is often understood as a less actualized version of our own. As such, some animal advocates have strategically attempted to show that animals are intelligent in ways that are similar to humans in order to inspire more empathy for the former (e.g., Goodall,

1993).

In contrast, when considered more closely, it is obvious that Bekoff s ethical argument is much more subtle than those that only consider animals to be smart in the ways that humans are smart. He does not claim that they are smart like us. He argues they are smart like themselves, in ways that are unique to their species. He suggests that intelligence is a vital part of animals’ unique worlds. We hear a non-anthropocentric conceptualization of subjectivity in his account. Although the excerpt included above points to general claims about certain species, rather than individuals within species,104 his account nonetheless still foregrounds animal subjectivity by noting differences among

104 Indeed, a major focus o f BekofFs (2007) writing is stories about individuals within species, and their unique encounters with humans and other animals.

282 species. Consequently, Bekoffs argument signals not only a presence of animals’ political voices, but also a posthumanist form of animal rights advocacy.

Specifically, Bekoff s research and orientation disrupts Western constructions of the human subject in two vital ways. First, he acknowledges that animals have their own particular perspectives, which, although different than ours, constitute their own worlds; they are also subjects with unique perspectives. Second, by recognizing that there are forms of intelligence that fall outside of those prized by Western society (e.g., those associated with [human forms of] reason), I think Bekoff implicitly raises the possibility of recognizing human forms of intelligence that are also outside of conventional humanist understandings. Might our acknowledgement of animals’ various forms of intelligence also help inspire a reevaluation of neural-atypical human ways of being and knowing, which would certainly benefit humans who have also been considered “stupid”?

Enter Donna Haraway

What has drawn me to Haraway’s scholarship over the years, beyond her intersectional theory that takes seriously the interpenetrations of race, gender, class, and nature, is her absolute dedication to acknowledging the agency and subjectivity of nonhuman animals.

This is precisely a direction in which I hope animal rights and liberation continues to move.105 Indeed, it is in Haraway’s posthumanist discourses of nonhuman animal agency and subjectivity that animals seem most politically voiced, most alive. That said, I approached my interview with Haraway with some trepidation as I anticipated that I would be criticized by some animal rights activists for this decision (which I was): Some

105 For example, Jason Hribal’s (2010) scholarship and its popularity is a testament to the increasingly intentional and explicit foregrounding o f animal agency within the animal rights and liberation movements.

283 of the practices she supports (in some particular configurations), such as dog breeding and animal experimentation, I do not support nor do the animal rights and liberation movements more generally. Haraway is not someone who personally identifies as a member of these movements.

Despite her emphasis on animal subjectivity, experience, relationality, and agency, the extent to which Haraway might be included in the “animal movements’’ is quite limited, so in that sense she is a major interlocutor in my discussion here as well as within the Animal Voices archive.106 However, in light of Haraway’s influence on my own work, particularly in terms of offering intersectional feminist theory that takes the question of the animal seriously and that is directly oppositional to the kinds of essentialism that have plagued aspects of the women’s movement, her scholarship has been incredibly useful to me. Given that my tenure with the program emerged out of the confrontation between transsexual sex worker and animal rights activist, Mirha-Soleil

Ross, and arguably today’s most well-known feminist animal rights theorist, Carol

Adams, Haraway’s feminist insights were invaluable for thinking through the incident and their associated discourses.

At the same time, Haraway also helped me develop a language of animal subjectivity that has significantly informed my own research. In particular, her writing helped encourage me to think critically about the ways in which animals are often presented as victims within animal rights discourse (see Haraway, 1992). Consequently, partly as a response to Haraway’s theory, I sought out Animal Voices interviews with

106 Smuts, too, does not overtly identify with the animal movements, though I propose that her work is quite aligned with the orientation o f its activism and scholarship. For example, as noted earlier, in her scholarship she advocates for the recognition of animals as persons [2006], and she does not justify captivity or instrumental uses of animals. Further, all the feedback I received from activists about our interview was extremely positive.

284 animal rights scholars and activists who offer rich descriptions of animals’ subjectivities, and who do not represent the totality of animal existence as helpless pain and suffering. I tried to pay particular attention to activists who not only speak out against animal exploitation, but who also (as part of their practice) represent animals’ subjectivity, agency, experiential knowledge, and relationality.

On Companion Species

Opting for the language of “companion species,” Donna Haraway directly foregrounds relationality with nonhuman animals in her work, as strongly articulated within her most recent texts The Companion Species Manifesto (2003) and When Species Meet (2008a).

In my Animal Voices interview with Haraway (2008b), I noted that she centrally uses a term similar to “companion animal,” one adopted by many within the animal rights and liberation movements. I asked her to elaborate on what she means by her alternative category, companion species, and why she had now taken up this figure as opposed to her previous figure of the cyborg. As is clear, Haraway uses companion species to name and inspire a particular kind of intensely specific relating between human and nonhuman animals:

Companion species is for me a much more capacious, commodious, inclusive and

interrogative term for things I care about a lot. For example, the word companion

in Latin means “cumpannus” or “with bread,” and has to do with breaking bread

together at table, eating together, perhaps eating and being eaten, not knowing

who’s on the menu. The word companion also in its verb form is “to company”

or “to consort.” It has sexual and comrade overtones. It also has overtones with a

285 guest at dinner, or a company of the CIA. Companion is one of those words that if you start looking inside it or peeling back its layers as if it were an onion, it’s one of those important words that contains a crowd, and so does the word species.

Maybe the first meaning in this context is a Darwinian species, biological species of which homo sapiens is one, and canus, lupus familiaris is another, and so forth, species in that sense. But it also means aliens if you read any science fiction.

Species generally means somebody you encounter. It means a logical type in philosophy. It means the relentlessly specific. It has a visual component in its root... to look, but it connects very closely to rispecere or respect, to look back, to hold in regard, to hold in regard, to hold in esteem....

We and everybody else are always already a crowd of inter- and intra­ relationships, and we do each other in the encounters, whether you’re talking about a molecular level, cellular level, social whole organism level, that no matter where you hold still and come to try to know, what you find are relations in process, and that the actors are the products of those relationships, not pre- established, finished, closed off things that enter into relationship, but rather we are what comes out of relating and go into the next relating. So for me companion species is certainly the crowd of critters, all of us, but it’s also our technologies, our landscapes and histories. It’s the crowd of entities, who and which in inter- and intra-action do again another kind of science fiction term, worlding, that the worlding that goes on in inter- and intra-relationship is what I want to point to as the term companion species. What is most compelling to me about Haraway’s description of companion species is the kind of radical mutuality in her discourse. As part of our conversation, when she spoke of human-nonhuman animal relationships, for example, she talked of “kin” and beings within a “litter.” Humans are part of a “crowd of critters;” we are who we are because of our relationships. As Smuts (2006) states, quoting Haraway, “Beings do not pre-exist their relatings” (p. 115). For Haraway, she also includes nonliving entities as part of her understanding of how all sorts of entities are perpetually coming into being through relationships. In this sense, the whole world is agential and dialogical, its multiplicity of human and nonhuman forms shaping each other in dynamic, forever unfixed, and unstable kinds of ways.

The intensely dialogical and relational aspects of political voice ring through

Haraway’s many descriptions of being with nonhuman animals. Nonhuman animals are undeniably part of the conversation. They are agents in the world, co-creating with all sorts of others. Their presence and interactions matter; they change us and we change them. Consequently, the unidirectional flow of agency (the human [subject] upon the animal [object]) typical of the dominant Western orientation toward animals is disrupted through Haraway’s descriptions of beings-in-process who are continually in the process of doing and redoing each other.

Like many people I have interviewed, Haraway is greatly interested in embodied encounters, as suggested in her description of the species component of companion species. In her most recent text, When Species Meet (2008a), Haraway is primarily concerned with individual human-animal face-to-face encounters, in which each being is actively in response to the other. In this regard, she and Smuts share much in common.

287 It is also precisely here that Haraway divorces herself from the animal rights movement, as she condemns its supposed calculation approach to ethics and its humanism, which allegedly riddles its ranks.

On Animal Rights Discourse

Haraway declares her dedication to the “kin-making” (2008a, p. 66) implied through her use of the term companion species early in When Species Meet, and starkly contrasts her praxis from animal rights. Such a move, repeated throughout the text, is used to throw into sharp relief the difference between her mode and animal rights. Following a discussion that analogizes kin-making with Thompson’s understanding of parents-in-the- making, in which children and technologies and various other actors actively combine with people involved in biomedically-assisted reproduction, she writes,

I am interested in these matters when the kin-making beings are not all human and

literal children or parents are not the issue. Companion species are the issue.

They are the promise, the process, and the product. These matters are mundane...

Add to those many more proliferations of naturalsocial relationalities in

companion-species worlds linking humans and animals in myriad ways in the

regime of lively capital. None of this is innocent, bloodless, or unfit for serious

critical investigation. But none of it can be approached if the fleshy historical

reality of face-to-face, body-to-body subject making across species is denied or

forgotten in the humanist doctrine that holds only humans to be true subjects with

real histories. But what does subject or history mean when the rules are changed

like this? We do not get very far with the categories generally used by animal

288 rights discourses, in which animals end up permanent dependents (“lesser

humans”), utterly natural (“nonhuman”), or exactly the same (“humans in fur

suits”), (pp. 66-67)

Haraway’s approach to human-animal relationships, and the particular and marked way that it interfaces with animal rights discourses, is further lucidly distilled in her correspondence with Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi regarding Haraway’s (2008a) chapter,

“Sharing Suffering,” which Ghamari-Tabrizi read in manuscript form. As Haraway acknowledges, it was she who “forced [her] to come face-to-face with, as [Ghamari-

Tabrizi] put it, ‘the hardest case for the theory of co-presence and response”’ (p. 86). The following exchange offers an excellent summary of the most controversial aspects of

Haraway’s theory within When Species Meet, at least controversial from an animal rights perspective. Again, her marked and intentional cleavage and distancing from animal rights is apparent. The differentiation helps strongly define the parameters of her own work, and the kinds of engagements she promotes. She provides a carefully qualified willingness to justify animal testing in certain circumstances, which includes the suffering and death of animals within those circumstances. In their letter exchange,

Ghamari-Tabrizi queries Haraway about her draft chapter:

It’s much easier to make use of a notion of trans-species relationality in field

studies where scientist/knower can hang out in the animal’s habitat. But the

harder question is when the site is wholly humanly-constructed, where the lab is a

total environment. In the lab, not only is the relationship unequal and

asymmetrical; it is wholly framed and justified, legitimated, and meaningful

within the rationalist materials of early modem humanism. Why? Because it is

289 conditioned on the human ability to capture, breed, manipulate, and compel

animals to live, behave, die within its apparatus. How has it been justified? By

human power over the animal. Justified in the past by divine right and hierarchy

of domination, or by human reason’s gloss on necessary human predation over

other beings.

So if you were going to abandon humanism, in favor of the post-humanism,

ahumanism, non-humanism of the process philosophers, of the

phenomenologists...I still want to know how specifically laboratory experimental

practices get done and get justified. These details, these mundane practices, are

the place where the politics of successor science get worked out.... I want to

know what you would say when someone buttonholes you and says: I challenge

you to defend the slaughter of lab animals in biomedical experiments. No matter

how carefully you guard them from extraordinary pain, in the end, they are

subject to pain inflicted by you for the social goods of: knowledge-seeking in

itself, or applications for human purposes. You did it. You killed the animals.

Defend yourself.

What do you say then? (pp. 86-87)

Haraway writes back,

Yes, all the calculations still apply; yes, I will defend animal killing for reasons

and in detailed material—semiotic conditions that I judge tolerable because of a

greater good calculation. And no, that is never enough. I refuse the choice of

“inviolable animal rights” versus “human good is more important.” Both of these

proceed as if calculation solved the dilemma, and all I or we have to do is choose.

290 I have never regarded that as enough in abortion politics either. Because we did

not learn how to shape the public discourse well enough, in legal and popular

battles feminists have had little choice but to use the language of rationalist choice

as if that settled our prolific politics, but it does not and we know it. In Susan

Harding’s terms, we feminists who protect access to abortion, we who kill that

way, need to learn to revoice life and death in our terms and not accept the

rationalist dichotomy that rules most ethical dispute, (p. 87)

This is a rich passage in terms of a discussion about animal rights. Haraway admits that she will justify animal killing for reasons she deems valid, although she states

(paradoxically) that this is “never enough” (p. 87).

I raised Haraway’s figuring of animal rights within our interview. That discussion occurred as part of a dialogue about identity politics, mid-conversation.

Companion species is a term that is both a name for kinds of relationships and, necessarily, a theoretical tool to help challenge the notion of “the human.” 1 asked about the implications of deconstructing the category of “the human” for identity politics, a politics whose categories have functioned as reclaimed sites of resistance. What is at stake when we deconstruct certain categories, when inhabiting those very categories might be useful? About half way through the show, I raised a concern about deconstruction of “the human” in the contexts of struggles for human rights, which then led into a dialogue about animal rights:

Corman: There was sort of an unpacking or an unraveling of these categories

[e.g., “woman”], and at pretty much the exact same moment where people were

saying, “These are actually really important terms.” [There is] status that comes

291 along with laying claim to a particular label; I’m thinking about that in relationship to this conversation about the human, and [this] seems like it’s such a good thing, 1 think a very progressive thing to do what you’re doing, but I wonder at the same time, as people are sort of scrambling as part of a rights process for themselves... to be counted in that category of human, which is based on human exceptionalism in the West. How do we reconcile that? There’s a lot 1 think at risk in those politics.

Haraway: ....in relation to the other critters, who we call animals, for that matter plants, the notion of rights I think does some important work, but I also think it does some extremely unfortunate work, and in relation to other critters, unlike, let’s say, in relationship to.... most human beings, the notion of rights in its

Western sense assumes at least as an end point a certain kind of autonomous legal status, an actual subject before the law who can make one’s own case. Now, frequently of course, that’s not true in the theatrics of who has voice for whom, who speaks for whom is one of the major problems in human rights politics and law.

But in relation to the other critters, I think animal rights approach—-and I say this cautiously, because I don’t have a dogmatic and finished view of this— but my sense is that animal rights approaches, as I look at the legislation that’s introduced into cities or the various ways to try to deal with the brutality to which we subject the other critters, works on making other animals permanent wards, permanent subjects of guardianship, permanently those who need to be rescued, at

292 best those who need to be protected from human beings; but animal rights law and thinking, as I’ve encountered it, pays way too little attention to the flourishing, important, precious, long history of human and other critter interrelationship....

There’s way too much working to give animals or other critters rights, and then to protect them in the mode of guardianship and wardship and rescue, and very little really honouring the working, playing, living relationships of other critters and human beings over many thousands of years.

Rather humans are either protectors or violators, but almost never really partners in the way human rights...or excuse me, animal rights discourse works, and I think it’s because the other critters...you know, I think there’s some continuity in questions of language and a zillion other things, but let’s face it, we’re better at it than they are, and the game is in our court. And I think they are being constructed categorically in animal rights discourse as subjects of guardianship, and it makes me extremely nervous....

Corman: Yeah. But one of the claims that I’d like to make, however tentatively, is that one of the things that struck me about reading [When Species Meet] was that I think that animal rights discourse, 1 think people do all sorts of animal rights work that is outside of and does not [subscribe] to those sort of legal prescriptive approaches

Haraway: Oh 1 agree with you. 1 think practice is always bigger than formalized.

293 Corman: But then they call, but people call it animal rights. And you know, and

I’ve read lots of footnotes with people’s books now saying, “Ok, I don’t know what to call this. I’m calling it animal rights as a shorthand, although I’m not doing that legal stuff.” So it seems like it’s this kind of amorphous term.

Haraway: It’s a problem, and mind you, I don’t think all animal rights law is a bad idea, any more than I think all human rights law is a bad idea, partly because the courts recognize it. And we don’t necessarily set the terms of our discourse. But

I think we need to be much more creative about inventing new categories that are close enough to ones that are already legible, already useable, but also move away and move towards something more liveable.... I really do think particularly in the more organized areas like Animal Liberation Front and PETA and others, the more radical end of the movement that there is a major disdain for working relations with animals, certainly in agriculture, but even in any serious training or any serious sport, that protection of animals from people is the goal, you know, and I think that this is an outrage. So that it isn’t just the rights discourse, it’s the actually caring about loving, living with, figuring out how to make flourish the relationships of human beings and other domestic animals.... There’s no question that we have become who we are in multiple relationalities with other critters, microbes, plants, animals of all kind, and I want to try to think through how to live better from inside that knot and not from a position o f we are either protectors or violators [italics added].

294 Haraway critiques both the notion of animal rights and the discourse of animal rights.

She wants to throw a serious wedge into the myopic efforts to achieve animal rights (as a legalist project, for example), while she also wants to interrupt broader animal rights discourses, which she understands as greatly detached from the specific and necessary face-to-face relational work that enables and constitutes interspecies inter-subjectivity and also as dishonouring the working relationships that can occur within contexts that are predicated on human instrumental use of animals. To argue for inviolable animal rights means, for Haraway, accepting and perpetuating the rationalist dichotomous discourse that “rules most ethical dispute” (p. 87).

I am struck by her comment, “Oh I agree with you. I think practice is always bigger than formalized.” What is particularly notable about this statement is that both of

Haraway’s aforementioned texts are veritably obsessed with practice. Practice, primarily in the form of face-to-face encounters between humans and other animals, occupies the centre of her arguments. It is the actual doing that she is most interested in, and particularly as the foci of those texts, the ways in which that doing can be done well in the context of human-animal relationships.

For me, like most animal rights activists, animal rights is a lived phenomenon; it is something we theorize but it is also something that we—crucially— practice. She neglects the range of the work that is done within the category of animal rights, which I think in some ways enables her to ignore certain power relations and forms of exploitation that are also challenged by those in this field, as is illustrated in the example below. Companion Species and the Erasure o f Voice

At the same time that Haraway dismisses animal rights in The Companion Species

Manifesto and When Species Meet, texts that concentrate on domestication and human- animal relationships, she writes about eating burgers before taking her godson (Marco) and her dog (Cayenne) to the Santa Cruz RSPCA for puppy-training lessons. With tongue-in-cheek critical self-consciousness, she recalls,

With Cayenne in her crate in the car, 1 would pick Marco up from school on

Tuesdays, drive to Burger King for a planet-sustaining health food dinner of

burgers, coke, and fries, and then head to the Santa Cruz SPCA for our lesson.

Like many of her breed, Cayenne was a smart and willing youngster, a natural to

obedience games. Like many of his generation raised on high-speed visual

special effects and automated cyborg toys, Marco was a bright and motivated

trainer, a natural to control games. (2003, p. 40)

From there, Haraway distills the perpetually in-process human-animal ethical relations

she promotes: In other words, she concentrates on the kinds of inter-subjectivity made

possible through face-to-face interactions when parties arrive at the same moment

radically in tune with each other. Haraway attempts to marshal Marco into such a

relationship with Cayenne. Immediately proceeding the above paragraph, she reflects on

the beginning interactions between her godson and her dog. Her observations provide

context for her subsequent intervention into their emerging relationship:

Cayenne learned cues fast, and so she quickly plopped her bum on the ground in

response to a “sit” command. Besides, she practiced at home with me.

Entranced, Marco at first treated her like a microchip-implanted truck for which

296 he held the remote controls. He punched an imaginary button: his puppy

magically fulfilled the intentions of his omnipotent, remote will. God was

threatening to become our co-pilot. I, an obsessive adult who came of age in the

communes of the late 1960s, was committed to ideas of inter-subjectivity and

mutuality in all things, certainly including dog and boy training. The illusion of

mutual attention and communication would be better than nothing, but I really

wanted more than that. Besides, here I was the only adult of either species

present. Inter-subjectivity does not mean “equality,” a literally deadly game in

dogland; but it does mean paying attention to the conjoined dance o f face-to-face

significant otherness [italics added]. In addition, control freak that I am, I got to

call the shots, at least on Tuesday nights, (pp. 40-41)

How, in a text that is definitively concerned with domesticated animal relationships (both human and nonhuman), is there no mention of the cow or cows 107 they consume before training practice, a practice whose central goal is to enable domestic human-animal inter- subjective flourishing? Yes, it is possible that these were veggie burgers, but one would imagine that Haraway—in her often incredibly detailed and careful writing—would have mentioned this if it were the case.

The detail about the burgers is significant and relates to the larger questions of the usefulness of animal rights discourse, and ultimately, the relevance of voice to that discourse. Animal rights scholars and activists frequently recognize the (desecrated and exploitative) social relationships among animals within industrial farming, certainly the kind that would have produced the Burger King meat consumed by Haraway and her

107 A single hamburger can contain flesh from up to flesh from one hundred cows (“Modem Meat,” Frontlines, PBS).

297 godson, as part o f their animal rights discourse and practice. Specifically, most hamburgers eaten today are composed of the bodies of “spent” dairy cows who, at the age of two or three, are deemed no longer adequately productive and are shipped to slaughter.

The cows Burger King patrons consume have spent the entirety of their lives indoors within free stalls or tie stalls, where they are chained by their necks. They are stripped of significant contact with their babies, who are birthed after repeated rounds of artificial insemination. Their pregnancies are, of course, a prerequisite for continual lactation.

The male “veal calves,” as the industry calls them, are separated from their mothers at birth.

Animal rights activists often emphasize the disruption of calf-mother social relationships as a way of drawing attention to the pathos of the industry, and their reasons for boycotting it. For example, GAN (Global Action Network), a Quebec-based organization that runs both animal rights and welfare campaigns, provides the following summary under its “About Cows” webpage:

When they are separated from their families, friends, or human companions, cows

grieve over the loss. Researchers report that cows become visibly distressed after

even a brief separation from a loved one. Cows are especially dedicated to their

young and the bond formed between a mother and her calf remains long after the

baby has grown to adulthood. Separation causes them tremendous stress and

agitation. If mother and calf are separated by a fence, the mother will wait for her

calf, even through harsh conditions like intense heat or cold weather, hunger and

thirst. Cows have even been known to break fences and walk miles to be reunited

with calves that were sold at auction. One can imagine the trauma a dairy cow

298 must feel when her calf is taken from her shortly after birth. It’s well known to

farmers but rarely discussed that mother cows continue to frantically call and

search for their babies for days after the calves have been sold off to veal farms.

Or, consider the following excerpt from the “Truth or Dairy” webpage (part of the

“Choose Veg” campaign) by the animal rights group Mercy for Animals. Here the U.S.- based organization particularly highlights the social relationships between cows and calves, and notably, the voice of cows:

Cows are extremely gentle and affectionate animals. They form strong bonds

with one another, particularly between mother and child. As Michael Klaper

M.D. recalls: “The very saddest sound in all my memory was burned into my

awareness at age five on my uncle’s dairy farm in Wisconsin. A cow had given

birth to a beautiful male calf...On the second day after birth, my uncle took the

calf from the mother and placed him in the veal pen in the bam— only ten yards

away, in plain view of his mother. The mother cow could see her infant, smell

him, hear him, but could not touch him, comfort him, or nurse him. The

heartrending bellows that she poured forth—minute after minute, hour after hour,

for five long days—were excruciating to listen to. They are the most poignant

and painful auditory memories I carry in my brain. (“Dairy,” Mercy for Animals,

2012)

Cows have much more of a political voice within GAN and Mercy for Animals’ writing than in Haraway’s. In the latter, their bodies are treated entirely as objects and divorced from any (previous) subjectivity. Haraway does write about human-animal relations involved in meat production in When Species Meet, advocating for a kind of modem

299 agropastoralism, 108 but it is the smooth transition from her mention of a meal (which involves domestic animal consumption and is predicated upon the destruction of social relationships) to her promotion of inter-subjective encounters in The Companion Species

Manifesto that strikes me as particularly troubling and revealing.

Haraway so privileges face-to-face encounters that, in the physical absence of their living bodies (bodies necessary for specific human-animal relations), the subjectivity of the cows and calves is not acknowledged nor is the necessary destruction of the relationships that make such objectification possible. Their subjectivities, agencies, relationality, experience, and even forms of resistance— their voices—are not acknowledged. This seems peculiar until one considers Haraway’s writing more closely,

I os Haraway contrasts her vision for a modern agropastoralism against the impoverished and ultimately genocidal orientation of ethical veganism. “I believe that ethical veganism, for example, enacts a necessary truth, as well as bears crucial witness to the extremity o f the brutality in our ‘normal’ relations with other animals. However, I am also convinced that multispecies coflourishing requires simultaneous, contradictory truths if we take seriously not [italics in original] the command that grounds human exceptionalism, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but rather the command that makes us face nurturing and killing as an inescapabable part of moral companion species entanglements, namely, ‘Thou shalt not make killable.’ There is no category that makes killing innocent; there is no category or strategy that removes one from killing. Killing sentient animals is killing someone, not something; knowing this is not the end but the beginning of serious accountability inside worldly complexities. Facing up to the outrage of human exceptionalism will, in my view, require severely reducing demands on the more-than-human world and also radically reducing the number o f human beings(not [italics in original] by murder, genocide, racism, war, neglect, disease, and starvation— all means that the daily news shows to be as common as sand grains on the beach)” (Haraway, 2008a, pp. 105-106). She continues, “From the point of view of situated histories in the United States, I have proposed modem agropastoralism connected to indigenous as well as other struggles, and also embedded in technoculture, as something I find good, that is, requiring response, feeling, and work. Except as museum, rescue, or novelty heritage critters, most kinds (and individuals) of domestic animals and their ways of living and dying with people would disappear unless this hard matter is approached without moral absolutes. 1 find that disappearance to be as unacceptable as human murder, genocide, racism, and war. Moral absolutes contribute to what I mean by exterminism. Faced with hard origin stories and irreducible entanglement, we should not go postal, wiping out the source o f our well- earned disease, but instead deepen responsibility to get on together without the dream of past, present, or future peace” (p. 106). In Haraway’s discourse, ethical veganism (while correctly critical o f certain modes o f practice and resultant brutality) is ultimately aligned with racists and others who advocate the obliteration of certain kinds of living beings. Most scathingly, she casts ethical veganism along with practices of genocide: Animal rights activists and ethical vegans are generally not concerned with preserving particular breeds or lineages o f domestic animals per se, and understand that the logical extension of their argument means that, by no longer intentionally breeding animals, certain kinds of domestic animals would likely die out over time and consequently cease to exist. For Haraway, this is akin to an enactment of genocide. In one fell swoop, we move from an appreciation of “ethical veganism” as presenting a “necessary truth” to a claim that it also implies the promotion of nonhuman holocausts!

300 and discovers that her companion species methodology involves a framing of certain

instrumental uses of animals within the language of interspecies “working relationships.”

While Haraway’s scholarship elucidates nonhuman animals’ subjectivities and agencies, and the recognition of how these capacities profoundly shape us, it is much less

useful for waging any external (human) resistance to animal exploitation industries, a major goal of the animal rights and liberation movements. While activists struggle for the abolition of such industries, Haraway aims to both revalue (and in some cases

improve and condone) the human-animal relationships involved in enterprises such as

vivisection and agriculture. While animal rights activists adamantly oppose the

instrumental use of animals, Haraway refuses to entirely condemn such uses. Indeed,

much of her recent scholarship, as alluded to within the excerpt from our interview, is

about honouring these uses, describing them instead as working relationships between

humans and animals. Although I believe there is great overlap between Haraway’s work

and progressive aspects of the animal movements, which recognize animals as subjects,

agents, and resistors (e.g., Hribal, 201 la)—that is, as politically voiced—any approval of

their instrumental use undeniably drives a major ideological stake between her and those

involved in animal rights.

I want to hold on to Haraway’s commitment to specificity and the valuation of

face-to-face encounters with nonhuman animals as a way of relaying more grounded

accounts of animal lives and inspiring richer human-animal relationships. Such direct experiences should undoubtedly greatly influence the texture and shape of the animal

movements. I want those encounters to inform the kinds of knowledge production animal

rights scholars and activists engage in during the development of our theories and our

301 advocacy. Yet, I do not think that this needs to be the only way epistemological and ethical claims can be made about animal lives, and consequently, the only grounds for animal advocacy. Many in the movements, including myself, are profoundly dedicated to

“actually caring about loving, living with, figuring out how to make flourish the relationships of human beings and other domestic animals” (Haraway, 2008b).

In both The Companion Species Manifesto and When Species Meet, Haraway constructs face-to-face encounters as the most generative and critical site of knowledge production about human-animal relationships because these encounters are specific, and they offer the possibility of interspecies inter-subjectivity. The privileging of such orientation, while perhaps providing an important corrective to the more disembodied approaches of philosophers such as Derrida or animal rights theorists such as Regan, also suggests certain dangers. Similarly, Haraway’s argument against calculus-based approaches to animal ethics, and the associated construction of animals as either permanent wards or victims within certain animal rights legal paradigms, suggests that only those who directly interact with animals can offer any meaningful perspectives about their lives.

Given that the vast majority of nonhuman animal use occurs in places where the public is intentionally both visually and physically excluded from engaging with them

(see Sorenson, 2010), within Haraway’s framework, the most legitimate human knowledge producers in regards to these animals are those who have economic and instrumental investments in their lives. I consider this a major problem, and a real weakness in Haraway’s theory. Moreover, though, at times her theory presents a kind of fetishization of face-to-face encounters that presupposes that real “flourishing” can occur

302 within animal-use industries, such as animal experimentation laboratories, where animals who are used as research tools are figured by Haraway as “workers” who also have responsibilities in these interactions. Such discourses fail to disrupt the intensely and fundamentally unequal power dynamics inherent in those industries, which enable those industries to function. It is here that I, and most others within the animal rights and liberation movements, part company with Haraway. The commitment to situated knowledges and partial perspectives that she powerfully articulated years ago permeates her contemporary theory anew within her discussions regarding the specificity of relationships in the contexts of dog training, agriculture, and animal experimentation.

Drawing on Gaard (2001b), I argue that the

view of ecofeminist ethics as contextual, however, is balanced against the need to

establish certain minimum conditions for ethical behavior; for example, it seems

unlikely that an ecofeminist ethic would develop that justifies an act of rape, on

the one hand, or the siting of toxic waste in communities of color, on the other,

simply because these practices violate basic principles of both feminism and

ecofeminism. (p. 3)

Ownership, confinement, and exclusively instrumental uses of animals do not meet my

“minimum conditions for ethical behavior” (Gaard, 2001b, p. 3), regardless of the potentially rich engagements that may occur between researchers and the animals in their laboratories, for example. It is truly disturbing to me that Haraway’s scholarship, which so greatly centralizes questions of nonhuman subjectivities and so keenly critiques humanism, can nonetheless intentionally legitimate the instrumental use of animals.

303 Perhaps Haraway would accuse me of applying a universalist form of ethics to these contexts, irrespective of the specific and contextual relationships formed between human researchers and technicians and the “lab animals” on whom they experiment.

Perhaps in my condemnation of this industry I am refusing to value that inter-species work that is done, or can be done, or ought to be done there. I am, nonetheless, aligned with the animal rights movement in my wholesale opposition to these industries; I simply do not think they should exist. I do not think we should own animals, and treat them exclusively as a means to our ends. If we were to swap in human subjects as the beings kept within the cages, this would overwhelmingly be condemned, regardless of whatever ultimate purpose it might serve. I echo those who ask what the relevant moral criteria are that make it acceptable to imprison and use animals exclusively as a means to our ends, however “humanely,” while the use of humans in such conditions would generally and forcefully be condemned? This is the sort of hypothetical subject swapping from which

Haraway (in principle) would likely recoil: We are not imprisoning and using “nonhuman animals” per se; the human researchers are in specific relation to specific animals in specific contexts. The kind of middle way for Haraway, between the figuration of ourselves as either protectors or violators, is an engaged worlding that does not necessarily rule out practices such as animal experimentation and animal agriculture.

Haraway would not position herself as an animal welfarist, though. She does not identify as such, and I assume she would vehemently reject the easy parsing off of her approach into one side of the contemporary animal movements’ “welfare versus abolitionist” debate (see Francione, 2009). To be clear, she is not arguing that we can be satisfied with the institutionalization and enactment of even the very best animal welfare

304 regulations. This again smacks of too much calculation. “I am not quit of response- ability, which demands calculations but is not finished when the best cost-benefit analysis of the day is done,” she writes, “and not finished when the best animal welfare regulations are followed to the letter. Calculations—reasons— are obligatory and radically insufficient for companion-species worldliness” (2008a, p. 88). She is primarily concerned with response, wherein humans and animals participate in a kind of continual negotiation grounded in specific inter-relationships that are informed (on the human side) by detailed knowledge of and attuned engagement with nonhuman species. Nonetheless, there are some instances when she is willing to make broad claims about which animals, such as apes, should be taken out of some “working” relationships within laboratories.109

She stresses,

.. .trying to figure out who falls below the radar of sentience and so is killable

while we build retirement homes for apes is... an embarrassing caricature of what

must be done. We damn well do have the obligation to make those lab apes’ lives

as full as we can (raise taxes to cover the cost!) and to take them out of the

109 In “The Broken Promises of Monsters: Haraway, Animals, and the Humanist Legacy,” Weisberg (2009) critiques the humanism that undergirds Haraway’s recent writing. As part o f her critique, Weisberg challenges Haraway’s description o f “lab animals” as “workers.” Instead, in an effort to more accurately name and condemn lab animal objectification, Weisberg maintains that they ought to be called “slaves,” as the term “workers” fails to capture the horror o f their experiences. “In reality,” argues Weisberg, “animals in labs are not workers— not even alienated workers— but worked-on objects, slaves by any other name. To call them anything else is to gloss over the brutal reality o f the total denial o f their ability to act in any meaningful way—namely, as self-determining subjects” (p. 37). While I am also concerned about the potentially euphemistic and neutralizing language o f “workers,” I do not think that the insistence that animals are “worked-on objects” helps us recognize the ways in which animals attempt to resist and survive in such contexts. Also, the slippage between “objects” and “slaves” in Weisberg’s critique is also problematic, given that slaves are also workers. (Thank you to Cate Sandilands for pointing out this out to me.) Haraway’s foregrounding o f animal agency informs her use o f “worker” as a signifier for lab animals. Though I also bristle at the connotation of consent implied through the term “worker” (and 1 refuse to use it in reference to animals in labs), language that also elides the ways in which animals attempt to assert their subjectivity neglects to acknowledge that they do not understand themselves as objects, despite their objectification. How can we say, for example, that monkeys who hold each other within lab cages are not in some way resisting, or at least in some way attempting to be self-determining subjects? Is bringing comfort to each other not a way o f asserting one’s agency and subjectivity? Is this not meaningful to them, even if they lack the ability (in most, but not all) instances to free themselves from their incarceration?

305 situations into which we have inexcusably placed them. Improved comparative

biobehavioral sciences, in and out of labs, as well as affective political and ethical

reflection and action, tell us that no conditions are good enough to continue

permitting many kinds of experiments and practices of captivity for many

animals, not only apes. Note, I think we know this, at least in serious part because

of research. (2008a, p. 89)

Haraway is calling us to rethink approaches that definitively mark nonhuman animals as either killable or not. As a seeming kind of realistic and pragmatic intervention, Haraway bristles both at the vegan and animal rights activists who determine that nonhuman animals are not killable and those who indiscriminately use animals and who conclude that nonhuman animals are killable by virtue of the fact that they are nonhuman animals:

The problem is actually to understand that human beings do not get a pass on the

necessity of killing significant others, who are themselves responding, not just

reacting. In the idiom of labor, animals are working subjects, not just worked

objects. Try as we might to distance ourselves, there is no way of living that is

not also a way of someone, not just something, else dying differentially. Vegans

come as close to anyone, and their work to avoid eating or wearing any animal

products would consign most domestic animals to the status of curated heritage

collections or just to plain extermination as kinds and as individuals. I do not

disagree that vegetarianism, veganism, and opposition to sentient animal

experimentation can be powerful feminist positions; I do disagree that they are

Feminist Doxa. Further, I think feminism outside the logic of sacrifice has to

figure out how to honor the entangled labor of humans and animals together in

306 science and in many other domains, including animal husbandry right up to the

table. It is not killing that gets us into exterminism, but making beings killable.

(p. 80)

In other words, Haraway pushes for human beings to learn to kill responsibly (p. 81) and to resist the categorization of anyone as inherently killable. “The problem is to learn to live responsibly within the multiplicitous necessity and labour of killing, so as to be in the open, in quest of the capacity to respond in relentless historical, nonteleological, multispecies contingency,” states Haraway. To underline this point, she suggests,

“Perhaps the commandment should read ‘Thou shalt not make killable.’” (p. 80).

Voice in Animal Rights Discourse

In part as a response to Haraway’s scholarship as described above, 1 am emphasizing that the work done within the category of “animal rights discourse,” as demonstrated through the Animal Voices archive, for example, is much more complicated than she allows. The ethical and political rejection of the instrumental use of animals (arguably the

fundamental premise of animal rights and liberation) does not necessarily preclude the

kinds of human-animal relationships that Haraway advocates. Further, animal rights and

liberation discourses in certain manifestations actively foster and attend to the kinds of

interspecies inter-subjective relationships that she promotes. In her theory, these kinds of

relationships are juxtaposed against one edge'10 named “animal rights discourse” rather

than included within the scope of companion species.

110 Other “edges” would include the “meat-industrial complex” (2008a, p. 295), and the kind of “human good is more important” discourse implied therein.

307 My analysis of the Animal Voices archive through the interpretive lens of the political voice attempts to evince that, indeed, the practice of animal rights is bigger than formalized. Such practice should necessarily inform theory, including Haraway’s.

Additionally, what is “formalized” as animal rights discourse is also actually much greater than she grants. There is plenty of animal rights activism and scholarship that promotes the kinds of two-way, co-constitutive, interspecies inter-subjective relating that she champions. A recognition of these practices ought to destabilize and complicate

Haraway’s construction of “animal rights discourse,” which unfortunately serves as an over-generalized placeholder for a kind of disengaged, arrogant, and paternalistic humanism that ultimately fails to “meet” other species.

Although I ultimately disagree with Haraway’s form of animal ethics, her dedication to recognizing specificity (that is, recognizing animals as specific individual subjects in specific relation with humans and other animals) and her refusal to construct animals’ ontology as pure victimhood, for example, serve as important posthumanist reminders and generative critiques for the ways in which the animal rights and liberation movements construct animals as “voiceless.” Nonetheless, in some vital manifestations, these movements present provocative representations of human and animal subjectivities that not only offer something extremely useful for interventions into public discourse about animal exploitation, but that also speak back to some current posthumanist theory that misses these powerful contributions. As noted, attending to the political dynamics of voice—subjectivity, relationality, experiential knowledge, and resistance—within the

Animal Voices archive reveals a number of salient examples of the ways in which

308 humans and animals are “voiced” within animal rights discourse. Unfortunately, these are also the dynamics that Haraway ignores in her reduction of its discourse.

Specifically, when considered within the context archive, the uni-directional orientation implied through Haraway’s configuration of human-“rescue”’11 relationships

(which suggests a static and ornamental animal existence) is disrupted by Nunez’s overt recognition of the rescued pigs’ influence on her life: She expresses this as a kind of two- way dynamism, a form of relationality unacknowledged by Haraway within the context of rescue. Not only do these pigs possess the agential capacity to influence Nunez, but they also actively seek human and nonhuman social relationships. This two-way dynamism is also echoed in Lama’s testimony regarding the beneficial relationships

between humans and animals at the Oasis Sanctuary. Each group actively and positively

shapes the other’s lives. Further, jones’ profound appreciation for the ways in which

even very traumatized sanctuary animals assert their agency anew each day informs her

direct opposition to certain messianic animal rights discourses that position animal

activists as animals’ saviours.

Similarly, Avey-Arroyo’s statements that sloths fight for their lives and that they

are survivors break from discourses of victimhood, which Haraway understands as

endemic within the animal rights movement. Avey-Arroyo’s discussion of particular and

trusting relationships formed within the context of sanctuary, such as when Jane gave

birth on the ground in view of volunteers, provides a powerful example of activists’

attunement to the individuality and specificity of the animals with whom they interact.

Such an example provides a moving example of co-flourishing. In contrast, Erkok

111 Haraway includes “rescue” animals as part o f a list o f objectified animal categories, specifically “museum” and “novelty heritage critters” (2008a, p. 106).

309 Neer’s account of a dog’s death is predicated upon an understanding of the dog’s (that specific dog’s) profound interspecies social ability, and the devastating results that can occur when human-animal social bonds are broken and the potential for co-flourishing is destroyed. Such appreciation helps motivate Erkok Neer’s work with animals.

Advocates who do not run sanctuaries also recognize and foreground animals’ agency, as is so clearly illustrated in the work of Smuts, Bekoff, Hribal, and Gowdy. For example, Smuts, like Haraway, is also strongly informed by direct, face-to-face encounters with nonhuman animals. While Smuts’ research on animals includes field research with baboons, wolves, and dogs, the interview excerpt included in the dissertation focuses on her personal relationships with her dog, Safi. She discusses her attempts to build intimate connections with her: She accomplishes this by orienting to her as an individual and by opening to her specific forms of experiential knowledge. She learns from her about how to be in a richer inter-species intersubjective relationship, and this openness and dialogical exchange between them produces profound effects. In the case of Safi, for example, Smuts sheds anthropocentric forms of sociality and relationality so that she can communicate trust in such a way that considers her dog’s subjective position. This dialogical process changes both subjects as it deepens their relationship. They participate in active re-worlding and interconstitution. Smuts’ and

Safi’s interactions suggest a similar approach to Haraway’s methodology for domestic human-animal relationships, and yet their dialogical encounters occur outside the modem agropastoralism proposed by Haraway. Safi, a “rescue” dog who brings her history of abuse to her current human-animal relationship-building, is clearly deeply engaged with

Smuts in a way that changes both of them.

310 Like Smuts’ attempts to disrupt anthropocentrism, the empathetic leap provided through Gowdy’s The White Bone is also infused with the dynamics of political voice: subjectivity, experiential knowledge, relationality, and resistance. The inclusion of these dynamics is, in my mind, a testament to a more sincere and concerted form of empathy than suggested by Haraway’s charge that animal rights discourse figures animals as

“exactly the same (‘humans in fur suits’)” (2008a, pp. 66-67). Gowdy’s fiction is dramatically shaped by her observation of elephants and her other research about their lives: From there, she attempts to write an account of their social relationships that primarily relies on olfactory experience, not as humans experience smell but as elephants

(possibly) do. Gowdy’s literary efforts are not the sort of colonialist humanism that

Haraway suggests are a definitive aspect of animal rights discourse.

Likewise, Hribal’s scholarship, enthusiastically supported by key figures within the animal rights and liberation movements 1 1 (not2 to mention many within the movements more generally), provides a powerful counterpoint to Haraway’s theories regarding animal agency and subjectivity. Unlike Haraway, Hribal makes his pronouncements outside of the context of personal face-to-face encounters with nonhuman animals. Rather, he collects and analyzes documented stories in which animals have escaped from various institutions or have attacked and sometimes killed the humans with whom they work. It is particularly through his language of agency, and his descriptions of nonhuman animals as workers, that we notice profound overlaps between his and Haraway’s scholarship. Their shared refusal to render nonhuman animals as

112 For example, both Ingrid Newkirk, president and co-founder o f PET A (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and Steven Best, well-known scholar and co-editor of Terrorists or Freedom Fighters: Reflection on the Liberation of Animals, provide glowing endorsements within HribaPs (2011 a) Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance.

311 victims, and their impassioned desire to recognize animals’ engagements within certain contexts as work, in one sense places them within the same discursive terrain. However, their valuation of animals as laborers obviously translates into quite different kinds of ethical projects.

Perhaps it is because Hribal was less well-known at the time of publication of

When Species Meet that Haraway does not address his arguments. Perhaps it is because

Hribal does not work within the academy—an institution for which he expresses disdain—that his writing slipped under Haraway’s radar. 113 Perhaps, too, it ts because

Hribal does not excavate his personal face-to-face relationships with animals (but rather analyzes the experiences of others) that he is not counted among Haraway’s litter, as a fellow messmate, as someone who meaningfully contributes to conversations about inter­ subjectivity and human-animal co-flourishing. His positions might smack too much of animal rights, given his opposition to instrumental and industry uses of animals. Hribal would likely agree with Haraway’s statement that (2008b)

[tjhere’s no question that we have become who we are in multiple relationalities

with other critters, microbes, plants, animals of all kind, and I want to try to think

through how to live better from inside that knot and not from a position of we are

either protectors or violators.

Nonetheless, Hribal would argue that we ought to definitively and permanently untie the knot in a number of circumstances, meaning, end certain forms of relationships. I share

Hribal’s perspective that the recognition of animals’ agency and resistance petitions us to stop fostering particular kinds of relationships all together. I think Haraway would agree

113 Hribal’s writing has become popular through his regular contributions to Counterpunch.org and through the recent publication o f Fear of the Animal Planet, published by CounterPunch Petrolia and AK Press.

312 to some extent—she opposes testing on nonhuman apes, for example—that certain forms of working relationships should end. For Hribal, it is clear that animals resist their exploitation, and the recognition of that resistance ought to prompt others to act in solidarity with this knowledge. In this way, Hribal moves beyond discourses of protection and violation: Yet, unlike Haraway, he approaches the question of nonhuman agency less as an opportunity to foster co-flourishing, and more as a baseline for opposition to animal ownership and economic profit. His scholarship resonates with the larger orientation of the animal rights movement.

Considered collectively, the interviews presented and analyzed throughout this chapter are but one snapshot of contemporary animal rights discourse. They cannot encapsulate the entirety of the Animal Voices archive, nor can they encompass all the different perspectives and approaches engaged by animal rights activists. Yet they demonstrate posthumanist attempts to critically disrupt anthropocentrism and blur the

Western human-animal distinction, as illustrated through their emphases on animals’ political voices (experiential knowledge, relationality, agency/resistance, and subjectivity), capacities that are conventionally considered the purview of humanity. The humans involved are powerfully changed by their encounters with animals when approached in these ways. As Nunez’s descriptions of pigs attest, it is possible to hold a complex understanding of animals’ subjectivity, including their specific and unique epistemologies and relationships, alongside a more general condemnation of all animal exploitation industries. Indeed, the former directly informs the latter.

An examination of how animal rights is practiced and articulated by those aligned with, or situated inside of, the animal rights movements suggests much more nuanced

313 understandings of animals than Haraway grants through her reductionist construction of these discourses. The foregrounding of animal voices by scholars and activists complicates her and certain other posthumanists’ (i.e., Calarco, 2008; Wolfe, 2003) theoretical framing of animal rights discourse. This complexity is especially critical to acknowledge given that animal rights discourse perpetually serves as a kind of negated

Other throughout Haraway’s latest work, representing that which we ought not to do.

314 Conclusion

1 take seriously posthumanists’ overt commitments to emphasizing the multiplicity and diversity of animal life, and thus to confronting the dominant Western tendency to represent nonhuman animals as singular, monolithic, and debased (see

Calarco, 2008; Derrida, 2008). As part of that recognition, I also take seriously posthumanists’ desire to unseat the humanism that rests at the centre of Western constructions of subjectivity. They endeavor to re-conceptualize human and animal subjectivity outside of anthropocentric liberal humanist traditions.

As previously argued, voice, as a political metaphor, is largely used to signal a form of subjectivity that differs (and disrupts) Enlightenment configurations of the self.

These dynamics are typically conceived as housed within a broader humanist framework, such that this “voiced” version of subjectivity (which is understood as socially- constituted, relational, dialogical, embodied, epistemologically-informed by experience, and agency, including a capacity to resist) is understood asnecessarily human. In their most extreme humanist form, these capacities are thought to be exclusively humanity’s domain. Consequently, nonhuman animals are not only ignored via the voice metaphor but they are also overtly, discursively denied these capacities within much voice discourse, as is so strongly illustrated within the speciesist writing of Freire (2007), for example. Despite the work that the voice metaphor does to foreground those who have been grossly marginalized and oppressed, its humanism remains pervasively unproblematized.

Animal advocates at times subscribe to humanist renderings of voice in their own discourses and positionality vis-a-vis animals (as a voice of their voicelessness), as

315 shown in Chapter Three, but they also disrupt the conventional humanist configurations of the metaphor, and voice discourse more generally, when they implicitly represent animals in such a way that acknowledges their capacities for political voice. The struggle

for animal rights and liberation is, ultimately, about a struggle for a recognition of

animals’ subjectivities and a willingness to act in concert with this recognition. There is

an absolute refusal within the animal rights and liberation movements to regard animals

as resources and objects. There is a repeated assertion of their subjectivity, and also

simultaneously, there is an acknowledgement of nonhuman animals’ relative

powerlessness to affect large-scale change on their behalf. Paradoxically, in these

respects, activists represent animals as both voiced and voiceless. The Animal Voices

interviews discussed and analyzed through the lens of political voice demonstrate some

creative and varied ways forward. These representations are often crucially informed by

face-to-face relational practices but they are not exclusively defined by them.

In what ways, and to what extent, animal rights discourse perpetuates (and resists)

the colonialist and humanist “ventriloquist’s burden” is a question that must continually

be asked, as a means of critically interrogating and bettering the discourse, not as a

grounds to reject it. As the dissertation attests, the ventriloquist’s burden is actually a

significant and complex question, rather than a simple declaration of fact. Further, the

phrase, the ventriloquist’s burden, is part of the larger “question of the animal” that is

being raised by both scholars and activists outside and inside the animal rights

movement. Following Calarco (2008) I agree that, in one sense, the phrase, “the question

of the animal,” is “meant to convey that the questions raised under this rubric are

316 fundamentally open questions, and questions that open onto related and philosophical and political concerns” (p. 6).

My hope is that the dissertation shows how critical attention to voice opens a space for further self-reflection by the animal rights and liberation movements about how we think about animals as subjects and objects, including how we think about them as voiced and voiceless. Feminist theory and critical pedagogy demonstrate the power of the voice metaphor, and its potentialities to serve marginalized groups and individuals.

These fields have greatly fostered mindfulness about whose voices are excluded and why.

I urge activists and scholars to draw inspiration from these critical perspectives and to continually cultivate the “dynamics of voice” in our work, and as such increasingly centralize animals’ subjectivities, experiential knowledge, relationality, and multiple forms of resistance. We must always listen more closely and more humbly. This is not about forcing animals to speak in languages that are immediately comprehensible to us, but recognizing that they already communicate in their own ways.

Posthumanism, with its critical analysis fixed on the ubiquitous and arrogant tropes of humanism, helps us realize the radical potential of voice articulated within feminist theory and critical pedagogy while also actively challenging its anthropocentric and speciesist legacies. As demonstrated in the final chapter, some animal advocates are already engaged in this sort of posthumanist activism, the kind that refuses to treat humans as the measure of all things and the exclusive possessor of Truth.

The work of Donna Haraway serves as an uncomfortable reminder of the ways in which animal rights activists and scholars sometimes neglect to acknowledge animals’ agency. For example, by stressing interlocking structures of oppression and domination,

317 there has been a tendency by some to emphasize animals’ suffering and victimization over other aspects of their subjectivity. While such focus has vitally raised awareness about the horrible ways animals are figuratively and literally objectified, attention to their nonhuman voices can encourage more nuanced understanding and representations of their subjectivities. I see these additional representations as complementary rather than dismissive of those approaches that stress linked oppressions.

Representations of animals’ subjectivity, resistance, experiential knowledge, and relational capacities offer creative points of coalition- and solidarity-building across species that include, but also extend beyond, overlapping structures of domination and shared suffering. In this way, we can recognize how animals are victimized and explore relationships among mutually reinforcing forms of human and animal oppression without reducing anyone to these experiences alone.

Activism that highlights animals’ rich emotional and social lives strengthens existing calls to end suffering and provides increased depth to our understanding of the harms committed against them. As such, we gain a much greater sense of what is lost when we hurt and kill animals. We also affirm our equivalence with other animals, as their allies rather than their saviours. Even in the direst of situations, animals are trying to assert themselves and do what is meaningful to them. That is, there are many ways that they try to survive and to lay claim their lives in the face of confinement, torture, and death. We must attend to the complexity of animals’ voices inside and outside of these contexts, and act to the fullest extent possible in accordance with this knowledge.

Politics based on this sort of partnership makes good on Haraway’s call for us to become more curious about animals themselves, and to think more carefully about how we can respond to and with them.

As illustrated through my analysis of the Animal Voices archive, many animal rights advocates have already turned their ears to complex forms of animal subjectivities, and allowed this listening to inform their activism. These examples complicate many existing posthumanists’ assessments of animal rights, which often do not deeply analyze a range of animal rights discourses and practices, but who instead limit their critiques to philosophers such as Tom Regan and Peter Singer (and, occasionally, more mainstream campaigns such as the Great Ape Project, or various PETA initiatives). By paying closer attention to a wider array of advocacy and scholarship, we notice different representations of—and arguments for—animals’ other worldliness that escape certain formalized theories of animal welfare or rights. To position animal rights as simply yet another bastion of humanism misses the insights offered through these valuable contributions. By emphasizing relationality and other dynamics of political voice, these offerings help diversify and complicate our understandings and representations of animals’ subjectivities, including our own.

319 Epilogue

My cat (Julian) has been a constant companion throughout my asking and responding to this particular question of the animal. She has sat on piles of papers on the floor, reclined over books on my desk, curled up on my lap, and pleaded for my attention through a variety of tactics, ranging from subtle prodding to outright aggression: from purring, staring, and leg rubbing, to meowing, keyboard occupying, carpet destroying, and scratching. It is hard to imagine that Juli is not a unique subject and that she does not have a voice. She has, for example, determined precisely the amount of assertiveness that will get me out of bed in the morning but will not elicit a spray from the dreaded plant mister. (She presses her wet, cold nose against my eyelids.) She has fallen asleep on my chest, or against my calves for seven years. She expresses a range of desires and moods, though her disdain for Franklin, my other (newer) cat, remains unwavering. She has also served as a constant reminder about the particularity of nonhuman animals and their unique subjectivities.

A friend of mine remarked the other day that he did not like cats. I said,

“Which cats?” Mine are quite different. Their specificity as individuals is apparent:

Franklin is gregarious, warm, and unfailingly enthusiastic about everyone he meets. Juli is cool and stately; she has no qualms about drawing blood. These cats have prevented me from regarding “animals” as abstractions. They have also helped me stay accountable to other animals who wish to flourish, as Franklin surely does, as illustrated through his incredible recovery after too long in a feral cat colony: When I met him he was emaciated. His eyes were glued shut with blood, scabs covered his body, and motor oil streaked down his tail. He walked with a limp, and resembled a scraggily battery cage

320 hen, especially after the veterinarian removed fur mats when he was neutered, revealing his skeletal frame. I am reminded of Avey-Arroyo’s comment, “The sloths are so incredibly willing to fight for their lives if we give them half a chance.” Barring the permanently cracked pads on his feet (frostbite), and his docked left ear (cut during surgery for identification purposes, when advocates assumed he would return to the colony), it would be difficult to guess his past. His efforts to thrive are a testament to his voice.

Writing this dissertation, while undoubtedly about many things, has also been about my own journey of coming to voice. In response to my first act of animal activism

(the publication of an editorial in the University of Manitoba’s student newspaper about the connections between worker treatment and pig welfare in Canadian slaughterhouses), a disgruntled student sent a letter stating that my concern for animals indicates that I

“clearly grew up on Sesame Street.” He concluded that 1 “make no difference and have no voice.” I have struggled with believing that I have something worthwhile to contribute. The doubt has been paralyzing at times.

Animal Voices provided me with a remarkable opportunity to dialogue with activists and intellectuals who have profoundly shaped my scholarship and advocacy. I have appreciated all of the guests who have generously offered their time, and often brought such thoughtfulness and sincerity to the conversation. I am grateful to Maggie, who spoke with me in 2006 as Beirut was being bombed, who—along with her organization (Beirut for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)—risked her life and remained to help animals as most people fled the city. (She briefly stopped our interview to check in with a fellow shelter worker who just picked up an abandoned dog.) I am grateful to

321 Rae Sikora who, unbeknownst to me, made it through our entire interview as water cascaded down her house stairs. I am grateful to Rebecca Aldworth who spoke with me

in 2005 from a helicopter as she flew over the Canadian commercial seal hunt, describing rivers of blood on the ice. I am grateful to philosopher Bernard Rollin who had grown quite skeptical of media requests (“You’re not one of those people who is going to say,

‘But plants have feelings too,’ are you?”), but agreed to an interview anyway. I am

grateful to Martin Baliuch who, over the course of three interviews from 2004 to 2011,

gave our listeners an intimate perspective on the incredible rise and eventual crackdown

on animal activism in Austria. I am grateful to everyone who was nervous to come on the program, but did anyway. Thank you to David Rothenberg who brought embodied

animal voices into the show, as part of his interspecies jam sessions with birds and

whales. For every dog who barked during a show or bird who sang in the background,

and for every animal who inspired an activist, and for everyone who listened, thank

you. Thank you for reading.

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