“The Speciesism Gaze!?” an Ethical Discursive Analysis of Animal Right Posters from a Postcolonial, Eco- Critical and New Materialist Feminist Perspective
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“The Speciesism Gaze!?” An ethical discursive analysis of animal right posters from a postcolonial, eco- critical and new materialist feminist perspective. ”Blicken av speciesism!?” En etisk diskursiv analys av djur rätts posters, utifrån postkolonial, eko-kritisk och new materialist feministiska perspektiv. Lena Johansson Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Gender Studies III Basic level, 15hp Supervisor: Wibke Straube Examiner: Ulf Mellström Date: June 7, 2017 Serial number Abstract Our western society and lifestyle is to a considerable extent depended on the way we perceive and treat our co-existing non-human species. Industrial farming, vivisection, sports, circuses etcetera are just a few examples of how human use and exploit animal bodies for own gain. A phenomenon that in many ways, is perceived, as natural and normal, and therefore seldom discussed. The thesis purpose is to problematize this phenomenon by examine, what I call “The Speciesism Gaze”, through analysis of posters that promote animal rights, selected online, through the search domain Google. The theoretical framework used, are theories focusing on intersectionality, derived within postcolonial-, eco-critical and new materialist feminism. A brief introduction of animal right movements, its linking to feminism activism and theories derived within affect theory is presented as background for the analysis. As method, I use critical discourse analysis, focusing on intertextuality of the posters context. Asking what discourses emerge, challenging the anthropocentric and androcentric western dualistic hierarchy, whilst displaying mutually reinforced structures of sexism, racism and speciesism? I discuss the western historical and cultural human idea that the human species is separated from nature and animal, and where the “right” human subject standard is perceived as male, white, heterosexual and western in the Anthropocene age. I found that, this standard is displayed, played on, and questioned in the posters selected, in relation to animal materiality, grievability, killability, species necropolitics, sexism and racism. I discuss in my conclusion that oppression based on speciesism is not a power relation discussed in society today to the same extent as expressions of sexism and racism are. It is however an oppression that we all take part in every day and that affect all of us, despite species belonging. In that context, I hope the theorization and meaning of the speciesism gaze will have significance within the field of feminist theorizations and practices. Keywords: speciesism gaze, sexism, racism, grievability, killability, species necropolitics, anthropocentrism, Androcentrism, Anthropocene, intertextuality, intersectionality, eco-critical, new materialism feminism, post humanities, animal rights Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisor Wibke Straube for they´s support, encouragement, and tips on interesting articles and theorizations, whilst writing my thesis. I also want to thank my niece Lina Edvardsson-Ceder for the work and time she spent on proof reading most of this thesis text, regarding my English spelling and grammar. All remaining errors is due to me and nobody else. Finally, I want to thank my two daughters Gila and Ina Edvardsson for the time they spent proof reading, discussing and bouncing ideas with me, always supportive. You have all been part of helping me concretize my thoughts onto paper, enabling me to finalize this thesis. Thanks! Lena Johansson May 30, 2017, Värmskog. Preface According to Donna Haraway (1998), a well-known science theoreticians and feminist scholar, is it important to clarify in which context any writer/researcher comes from and in which academic field they are working in. The writer´s/researcher´s aim is to always express something with their research and therefore, the result should be perceived as political. Haraway claims that knowledge always is produced in a certain context and that it is not possible to construct or discover knowledge in a vacuum, there is always a pre-understading that colours the researchers analysis. The researcher can therefore, never be considered to be completely objective since knowledge always is situated and produced in the researchers context (Haraway, 1988). Following Haraways thoughts about situated knowledge, I decided to write this preface in an attempt to make my background and the reason why I am interested in this thesis topic visible for intended readers; It also gave me the opportunity to reflect over my own heritage, contemporary position and pre-understanding whilst writing this thesis. Animals, and relationships with animals, has as long as I can remember been a natural part of my surroundings. Since I grew up on a dairy farm in the 1970-80s, I have experienced how animals have been perceived as producers of commodities for sale. This as the foundation of the family economics but also how animals where perceived as family members. During my childhood, I witnessed how the global economy system forced small family farms, like my parents´ farm, to expand to survive. In the beginning my parents farm held about ten cows and each one of them had a name and were considered to have their own unique personality. Around the time I was turning eight, our cowshed had expanded due to economic reasons and could now take in around 45 cows and their offspring. That expansion made it more difficult to perceive the cows as individuals and to bond with them on an individual level, I saw my parents struggle to find the time to continue to care and tend for the animals in a personal way. In relation to this, contemporary dairy farms in Sweden house in general about 70 cows and some as many as 700 cows. Worldwide there are animals used for human consumption, breed and held in very large units and the term for this is Industrial or Factory farming. According to the website animal equality more than 56 billion farmed land- living animals are slaughtered every year (animalequality, 2017), and most them are factory farmed. Throughout my childhood, I have struggled with, the for me, ethical dilemmas, regarding the relationship between humans and animals. The dilemmas were raised by how I perceived the practices on the farm, such practices where the calves did not have access to their i mothers’ milk, but were instead given formula. This raised the question if it was right to separate the calves from theirs mothers after birth? Of course, a dairy farms purpose is to produce milk so due to that purpose I could understand those practices as necessity. But the question if it was, and is, right to do so, have since that stayed with me. Eating meat was another ethical question that was more overwhelming for me than any other dilemma I have struggled with, during childhood especially, and that dilemma emerged one day when asking my mother where meat came from? The answer she gave me was that it came from the cows and calves in our cowshed. I struggled with this knowledge for a long time but continued to eat meat because that was the “normal” thing to do, and it had always been that way as everyone around me explained and it should not be questioned. Some years later, whilst I was studying to become an assistant nurse another “defining moment” took place. Since I grew up on a farm I have witnessed slaughter of pigs and cows, and during my internship at the hospital I was due to attend several operations. One of them were an extensive stomach surgery. When the surgeon had made the incision, he pulled out, quite roughly, the patient’s intestines, and laid them a side. I remember thinking that it looked just like the slaughter of a pig, and it made me feel disgusted. That thought affected me instantly and made me acknowledge that on the inside, despite the form, colour and shape of our bodies we are all the same. But it still took me some time to follow my instinct to refrain meat, mostly because it is inconvenient in many social contexts. After several years of ethical concerns and reflections, in my late twenties I decided to refrain meat from land-living animals. My experience is that my decision, many times, made and still makes people around me angry or upset, and there is always a few that will try to convince me to eat meat again. Their arguments differ, but there are three common ones that often gets repeated; The first one is that it is natural to eat meat and refraining from it is therefore unnatural, the second one is that by eating vegetables and greens I am taking food from the animals, and the third one is that vegetables have feelings too and therefore should I not eat them either. When asked why I do not eat meat I often answer that I do not see why it is socially accepted (in Sweden) to eat a pig but not a dog. For me, these animals are quite similar regarding intelligence, needs etcetera. I also explain that my decision is related to the way animals are abused/mistreated in the factory/industrial farming. My answer, often make people want to categorize me as too sensitive, that I am not being rational, that I just want to be different, that I should not start discussing how milk and meat are produced because they do not want to know and so on. ii Despite the questioning and disparaging jokes my decision to not eat meat generates in some contexts. I did not think of it as an outcome of breaking a standard. Even though it felt wrong, I perceived eating meat or use of animals for human consumption as something that just is, and always has been. During my studies in humanities I began to connect the way, many people, reacted and acted around my choice to refrain meat, and even more so my reasons behind it, as a common outcome when someone is considered breaking the standard of socially and culturally constructed norms.