UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Animal People: Freaks, Elitists, Fanatics, and Haters in U.S. Discourses about Veganism (1995-2019) Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4hb8n962 Author Skinazi, Samantha Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ ANIMAL PEOPLE: FREAKS, ELITISTS, FANATICS, AND HATERS IN U.S. DISCOURSES ABOUT VEGANISM (1995-2019) A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in LITERATURE by Samantha Skinazi June 2019 The Dissertation of Samantha Skinazi is approved: ________________________________ Professor Sean Keilen, Chair ________________________________ Professor Carla Freccero ________________________________ Professor Wlad Godzich ______________________________ Lori Kletzer Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Samantha Skinazi 2019 Table of Contents LIST OF FIGURES IV ABSTRACT V DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT VII INTRODUCTION: LOVING SPECIES 1 NOTES 21 FREAKS 22 RIDICULE: THAT JOKE ISN'T FUNNY ANYMORE 28 EMPATHY AND SHAME: OMNIVORE DILEMMAS IN THE VEGAN UTOPIA 41 TERRORS: HOW DO YOU KNOW IF SOMEONE'S VEGAN? 64 CONCLUSION: FROM TEARS TO TERRORISM 76 LIST OF FIGURES 79 NOTES 80 ELITISTS 88 LIFESTYLE VEGANISM: GOOP AND THE WHITE WELLNESS VEGAN BRAND 100 BLINDSPOTTING VEGANISM: RACE, GENTRIFICATION, AND GREEN JUICE 112 DEMOCRATIC VEGANISM: OF BURGERS AND PRESIDENTS 131 CONCLUSION: THE SPECTER OF NATIONAL MANDATORY VEGANISM 153 NOTES 156 FANATICS 162 WHY GIVE UP MEAT IN THE FIRST PLACE? 170 MUST IT BE ALL THE TIME? 184 WHY TELL OTHERS HOW TO LIVE? 198 CONCLUSION: MAY ALL BEINGS BE FREE FROM SUFFERING? 210 NOTES 223 CONCLUSION: HATERS 233 NOTES 239 REFERENCES 240 iii List of Figures Figure 1.1: Save a cow eat a vegetarian, bumper sticker 79 Figure 1.2: When you see a vegan choking on something, meme 79 Figure 1.3: Fun prank to play on a passed out vegan, meme 79 Figure 1.4: How do you know if someone's vegan? 79 Don't worry they'll fucking tell you, meme iv Abstract Samantha Skinazi Animal People: Freaks, Elitists, Fanatics, and Haters in U.S. Discourses about Veganism (1995-2019) This dissertation emerged out of my efforts to understand what keeps animal lovers or animal people from identifying as vegans. Animal People traces anti-vegan discourses, alongside problematic white vegan discourses, in the U.S. over the last quarter century in journalistic, film, social media, legal, and literary texts to tell the story of how an eating and living practice that seeks to reduce harm has become a subject of cultural ridicule. If one-third of Americans think that other animals should be protected from exploitation, then why are only three to six percent of Americans vegan? (Gallup 2015). Animal People explores this aporetic discrepancy by analyzing discourses that negatively construct vegans and veganism(s) as sentimental, militant, elitist, anti-American, fanatical, sanctimonious, and misanthropic. Each chapter also addresses problems in mainstream veganism as a counter-discourse, such as white privilege, single-issue optics, consumerism, and perfectionism. Animal People looks at the way many vegans and vegan organizations fail to address issues of race and class in access to non-animal based foods and in animal rights more generally. Eating choices are complicated and contingent: they straddle the borders between the conscious and the unconscious, the individual and the collective, the personal and the political. These choices, or lack thereof, are distributed unevenly along racial and class lines. Vast differences exist across communities and regions in v terms of what foods are accessible. Advertising by the government-subsidized animal-abusing industries and the artificially low prices of many foods made from and by animal bodies compound the confusion. The fact that other animals exist both as sentient beings and as food makes it uniquely difficult to discuss, let alone legislate, justice for them. Veganism should be a bridge to critical re-evaluations of our exploitative relations and the way these relations negatively affect the wellbeing of others and the planet––and not an obstacle to such re-evaluations, which are increasingly urgent, according to every recent major scientific study about the effects of animal-abusing industries on climate change. Animal People tries to clear some of these obstructions to reveal ideological biases, larger philosophical, epistemological issues, and the way vegans sometimes perpetuate the stigmas. Animal People proposes that these stigmas do a great disservice to other animals; the animal liberation movement; marginalized communities that have disproportionate numbers of animal-based fast food restaurants and lack access to fresh fruits and vegetables and bear the brunt of the environmental degradation caused by factory farms and slaughterhouses; and the planet at large, by keeping a large number of non-vegan animal people from taking animals off of their plates. People are far less likely to go against social norms in ways that threaten their social relationships to adopt an undesirable and derided identity position. vi Dedication and Acknowledgement I would like to thank my advisor and dissertation chair Professor Sean Keilen for his unwavering graciousness and intellectual bravery in taking on a project somewhat outside of his usual areas of interest and expertise. This book is very much the product of our conversations over the past four years. Thank you Sean for your open mindedness, sense of humor, empathy, and for always asking me such challenging questions––and listening so thoughtfully to my responses. You took the risk of looking at the world through my perspective and offering back to me the gift of what you saw there. I am very thankful to my other committee members and mentors: Professor Carla Freccero and Professor Wlad Godzich. Thank you Carla for not only introducing me to animal studies but for always pushing me to do my best work. I can't thank you enough for all of the time you have devoted to my writing over all of these years; I am a better writer and thinker because of you. I have so much admiration for your brilliance, scholarship, and dedication to your craft. Thank you Wlad for your continued support and guidance throughout my graduate career. Working and thinking with you has not only been one of the great privileges of my life, but also one of the great pleasures. I am grateful to the UCSC Literature Department for the fellowships and TAships that made this work possible. To my Mom and Dad, Sharon and Maurice Skinazi, I thank both of you for your love and patience with your eccentric daughter. Mom, thank you for showing me the meaning of unconditional love and for always being here, there, and everywhere for me. Dad, thank you for always encouraging me to follow my heart and dreams. I vii would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to my sister and brother-in-law Heather and Jason Axe for all of your encouragement, and to my incredible nieces Penelope and Sabrina Axe (Little Boss and Tiny Boss) for all of the joy you bring to my life. To my very best friend Aaron Berger: What words can offer thanks for your constant presence and unconditional positive regard, or for your thousand and one kindnesses, each one impossible to forget? Wherever you go, there speaks a true friend; I couldn't have completed this journey without you. I am grateful to Levi Gilbert for his delightful companionship. Thank you for all of the inspiration, celebration, adventure, and hours of laughter throughout the thinking and writing process. Thank you also for listening to me talk endlessly about the ins-and-outs of this project, for always challenging me, and for introducing me to the inimitable cat Dozer. Thank you to Sarah Papazoglokis for your friendship, enthusiasm, and unbelievably supportive intellectual camraderie, including your unrivaled editing skills. Your focus and passion inspire me to work harder! To Andy Duncan, (aka Genie), though a world apart you never fail to appear at just the right time; thank you for all of the gentle words and our continued adventures through the looking glass. Thanks to Matt Walker for your friendship, not to mention the formatting and tech support. Thank you to Lara Lenington for seeing me through times of doubt and darkness; I've come out the other side of this experience a happier person, and I thank you for the hand you had in that. My conversations with you have been some of the most profound and transformative of my life. To Dr. Elise Hughes at the UCSC viii Health Center, thank you for being my favorite doctor of all time; your care helped me to stay healthy through many stressful times. Many thanks also to my San Francisco crew: Nicky Garratt, Eva Jay Fortune, Lieu Cooper, Melinda Green, Herbert Victoria, Mei-Lwun Yee and Bailey for all of your support and friendship; and to the wonderful people at Purusha Yoga, especially Joy Ravelli and Eric Sparks. I am very grateful to all of the scholars and activists whose work on veganism and animal ethics has helped to break new ground. Special mention to those thinkers whose ideas and writing stay close at hand: Carol Adams, lauren Ornelas, Matthew Cole, Karen Morgan, A. Breeze Harper, Sunaura Taylor, Aph Ko, Syl Ko, Melanie Joy, Sue Donaldson, Will Kymlicka, Martin Gibert, and Renan Larue. For what it's worth, this work is dedicated to the nameless and countless animals who have been killed and continue to suffer mostly hidden from sight. May your stories see the light of day and may you soon be free from human exploitation. ix Introduction: Loving Species The idea of other animals as kin may be as old and as fundamental to human identities as the idea of certain other animals as food.