Political Philosophy and Public Purpose

Series Editor

Michael J. Thompson William Paterson University, USA Aim of the Series This series offers books that seek to explore new perspectives in social and political criticism. Seeing contemporary academic political theory and philosophy as largely dominated by hyper-academic and overly-technical debates, the books in this series seek to connect the politically engaged traditions of philosophical thought with contemporary social and political life. The idea of philosophy emphasized here is not as an aloof enterprise, but rather a publically-oriented activity that emphasizes rational refl ection as well as informed praxis.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14542 Paola Cavalieri Editor Philosophy and the Politics of Animal Liberation Editor Paola Cavalieri Milano, Italy

Philosophy and the Politics of Animal Liberation ISBN 978-1-137-52119-4 ISBN 978-1-137-52120-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52120-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016950522

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. New York SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD

Hegel famously wrote that “philosophy is its own age apprehended in thought.” He meant that philosophical refl ection is forever bound to comprehending and rationally reconstructing that which already exists. Of course, Hegel’s point was that this was to include what members of any historical era were conscious of and that of which they were simultane- ously unaware: for it was the role of philosophical refl ection to bring to light both the developed, conscious forms of life and the as yet developed, inchoate forms that existed in potentia . If we accept Hegel’s dictum, philosophy becomes an activity that uncovers new forms of life already embryonic within the present. The notion that new values, an enlarged horizon of moral consciousness, are always being built and evolving means that we need to look at philosophy as a form of practice , as a kind of bring- ing into reality of that which is taking shape in our collective conscious awareness. In this sense, the limits of our own moral-cultural terrain become stark once we consider the moral status of nonhuman animals. Once we see the extent to which our “evolved” moral standards and values are called into question by the ways that we dominate, abuse, exploit, and systematically destroy the nonhuman world, our ethical theories look like little more than fragile constructs, rife with contradiction. Once this is grasped, we can see that philosophy can make concrete what we have become aware of only liminally. In this sense, the relation between philosophy and politics can be recast in a more fruitful, more active light. Paola Cavalieri’s collection of essays on animal liberation is an exemplar of precisely this

v vi SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD philosophical vantage point on politics. For her, as well as the contributors that she has assembled, philosophy plays a central role in illuminating the moral dynamics that circumscribe our relationship to nonhuman animals and the ways that this particular moral-philosophical problem demands a practical kind of solution. The relation of nonhuman animals and humans is and has generally been, as Cavalieri makes clear, one of domination and brutality. The philo- sophical search for moral grounds for the liberation of nonhumans from forms of exploitation, domination, and brutality, however, is unique in this instance since the very essence of the human-nonhuman relation demands that humans themselves reform their practices and commit- ments. The unique nature of the moral-philosophical problem that confronts us with the conditions of nonhumans therefore makes it incum- bent on us as ethical agents to provide the practical context necessary to end the human exploitation and domination of nonhumans. Where Cavalieri and her contributors break new ground is in grasping that the nexus of philosophy and politics needs to be rethought and reconstructed in order to transform social practices. Cavalieri places social movements at the center of an approach that links this moral-philosophical discourse with a distinctly political one. This is because social movements represent a kind of practical, active instantiation of the changing norms and values of a community as moral contradictions and pathologies come more to the fore of collective consciousness. Philosophy’s role here is not only to manifest the moral problems that the abuse and domination of nonhumans poses, but also to show that philoso- phy itself can no longer be confi ned to an academic, professionalized role. Instead, it morphs into something political once we recognize that there exists a kind of practical commitment that follows once we see that resolv- ing the moral problem of our treatment of nonhumans is premised on the transformation of our distinctively human practices . The emancipation of nonhuman animals from human abuse and dominance therefore must lead us to a new synthesis of philosophy and politics, a new kind of practical rationality that demands the transformation of everyday life, social and personal practices, as well as the institutional dimensions of society. The essays gathered here therefore not only present a series of new, fresh perspectives on the current boundaries of discourse on nonhuman liberation from human dominance, they also operate within a distinctive space of reasons. As a foray into the domain of philosophy and politics, SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD vii it is a stimulating and morally compelling series of essays that demand that we push against the limitations of our own moral categories and our reifi ed understanding of politics, of philosophy, and of the moral importance of the nonhuman world.

New York City Michael J. Thompson Winter 2015 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Franco Salanga for his precious cooperation and Harlan B. Miller for his criticisms and suggestions. I am also grateful to Elaine Fan and Chris Robinson from Palgrave Macmillan for their constant help. Finally, special thanks go to Michael J. Thompson, the editor of the series, for his interest in this project and to Tzachi Zamir for his support.

ix CONTENTS

Series Editor’s Foreword v

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1 Paola Cavalieri

Animal Liberation: A Political Perspective 15 Paola Cavalieri

Reorienting Strategies for Animal Justice 45 Matthew Calarco

Make It So: Envisioning a Zoopolitical Revolution 71 Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka

The Problem of Akrasia: Moral Cultivation and Socio-Political Resistance 117 Elisa Aaltola

xi xii CONTENTS

Animal Subjects and the Logic of Human Domination 149 Brian Luke

Counter-Conduct and Truce 187 Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel

Bringing the State into Animal Rights Politics 239 Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker

Epilogue 273

Index 277 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Elisa Aaltola is a philosopher who has been working on animal issues through- out her research career. She has written over 35 peer-reviewed papers on animal philosophy and has published a number of books on the topic (e.g. Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture , 2012, and Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy , co-edited with John Hadley, 2014). She works as a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Eastern Finland. Matthew Calarco is Associate Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Fullerton, where he teaches courses in Continental philosophy, ethics, and social and political philosophy. His research lies at the intersection of animal studies, environmental studies, and radical social justice movements. He is work- ing on a project entitled Altermobilities: Profaning the Streets , and his most recent book is Thinking Through Animals: Identity, Difference, Indistinction (2015). Paola Cavalieri is the founder and former editor of the international philosophy journal Etica & Animali and has published extensively on the topic of the moral status of animals. She is the author of The Animal Question. Why Non-Human Animals Deserve Human Rights (2001) and of The Death of the Animal. A Dialogue (2009). She co-edited, with Peter Singer, the award-winning book The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (1993). Sue Donaldson is a research associate in the Department of Philosophy, Queen’s University, Canada. She is the coauthor, with Will Kymlicka, of Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (2011), which was awarded the 2013 Biennial Book Prize from the Canadian Philosophical Association, and has been translated into German, Japanese, Turkish, French, Polish and Spanish. She is also a founding member of Queen’s Animal Defence, a group working for social justice in a multispecies world.

xiii xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Will Kymlicka is the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy in the Philosophy Department at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, where he has taught since 1998. His research interests focus on issues of democracy and diver- sity, and in particular on models of citizenship and social justice within multicul- tural societies and interspecies relations. His books include Multicultural Citizenship and Contemporary Political Philosophy , and he is the co-author, with Sue Donaldson, of Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (2011). Brian Luke, formerly Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dayton, is currently Director of Worship Arts at the First United Methodist Church in Marysville, Ohio. Together with political theory, his main area of philo- sophical research is the interconnection between gender theory and animal rights, a subject on which he has published essays in collections and journals such as Between the Species and Environmental Ethics . He is the author of Brutal: Manhood and the Exploitation of Animals (2007). Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker is the managing editor of Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture ( www.logosjournal.com ). He is the editor of Strangers to Nature: Animal Lives and Human Ethics (2012) and the co-editor, with Michael J. Thompson, of Radical Intellectuals and the Subversion of Progressive Politics (2015). Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel is Lecturer in Human Rights and Socio-legal Studies and Director of the Master of Human Rights at the University of Sydney. His research interests include sovereignty and the nature of rights, violence, race and critical animal studies. Wadiwel is the author of the monograph The War Against Animals (2015) and has over 15 years of experience working in civil society organizations designed to promote anti-poverty and disability rights.