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“The Gaze!?” An ethical discursive analysis of 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 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- species. Industrial farming, , sports, 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 , selected online, through the search domain Google. The theoretical framework used, are theories focusing on , derived within postcolonial-, eco-critical and new materialist . 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 , 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 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, , 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. , 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 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 , 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 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 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 . 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 and greens I am taking 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.

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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. And it became clear why people reacted with anger or a need to ridicule me or try to convince me to be “normal” again. When I read the introduction of “The sexual politics of meat” by Carol J Adams and the part where she quotes women that say that they themselves could refrain meat but that they still must cook meat for their family, and more precise for their husbands, it struck a core in me of recognition on how imprinted the speciesism gaze is. This cause me myself have bought, prepared and cooked meat for my family for all the years I have refrained it. I have not done this because I believe that one must eat meat for nutrition, but I truly believed that I could not decide to refrain meat for my children, I did not question that serving them meat, also was I choice made for them. Those that are active on social medias as for instance such as Facebook, watch news broadcasts or read newspapers are occasionally destined to come across images or news that show animal suffering and abused within the food industry, vivisection and , images from and transports etcetera. How this can be legal and allowed to go on in such a mass scale, despite the reviling images that are made public, is for me hard to understand. To share with others that I care about how the food I eat and how the leather my shoes are made of are produced is in most contexts just not okay to do. It seems to me that this topic is not considered to be politically correct to discuss since people often assume that if one cares for you do not care for human welfare as if those two topics are in opposite of each other, and it often leaves me with a feeling that I am different and do not fit in. All of this has made me question the human consumption and use of non-human bodies as “normal”, since every attempt to break it always leads to a response, just like other constructed standards that must be reinforced by positive or negative responses from people in our surroundings. And it made me interested to examine something I will continue here to call and investigate, “the speciesism gaze” by analysing contemporary animal right posters, through feminism theorizations using the lens of postcolonial feminism, eco-critical feminism and new material feminism perspective.

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Table of Contents

Abstract Acknowledgements Preface / i

1. Introduction / 1 1.1 Terms and Concepts / 1 1.2 Aim and Problem Formulation / 5

2. Background / 6 2.1 Animal Right Movements and Feminism Activism / 6 2.2 Framing Affect Theory / 9

3. Methodology and Material / 12 3.1 Method of Analysis / 12 3.2 Material and Selection / 13

4. Theoretical Framework / 15 4.1 Postcolonial Feminism / 15 4.1.1 Critical Studies of Whiteness / 16 4.1.2 Orientalism / 17 4.2 Eco-Critical Feminism / 17 4.2.1 The Sexual Politics of Meat / 20 4.3 New Materialism Feminism / 22 4.3.1 Grievability / 25 4.3.2 Killability / 26 4.3.3 Species Necropolitics / 27

5. Analysis / 29 5.1 Tropes for Analysis and Presentation of the Empirical Material / 29 5.1.1 Animal Materiality / 30 5.1.2 Species Necropolitics / 32 5.1.3 Interconnected / 34 5.2 Analysis of the Empirical Material / 36 5.2.1 Animal Materiality / 36 5.2.2 Species Necropolitics / 39 5.2.3 Oppressions Interconnected / 42 5.2.4 Summary Discussion / 46

6. Conclusion / 48 6.1 Endnote / 50

References

1. Introduction

Human and animal species have been co-existing and companions throughout our known history. A co-existing that been both beneficial, filled with joy, love, care and companionship but also harmful with abuse, violence, use, consumption, waste and systematically induced deaths of animals. It is staggering to think of just how much the human species depend on their companion animal species, just to stay alive. Thinking of our food, most of the Western diet contains products made of or from animals and much of the vegetables we consume are fertilized whit manure from farmed animals. Billions of insects pollinating plants and worms processing the soil enables vegetables and plants to grow. Animals also have been and are still used as biological models/bodies replacing human biology/bodies in vivisection. They have been forced to take part in human inflicted wars and conflicts, used and still used, as means of transports, as guardians and in sports for human . These are just a few examples of occasions when humans choose to use animals for their own gain. For me, the paradoxes of this is how animals are used for knowledge making about the human biology, when the argument that justifies the utilization of animals is that they are not like humans. And furthermore, how we as humans fails to recognize that human life, our Western lifestyle and developments to a large degree requires the use and abuse of our co- existing species. As I will argue and discuss in this thesis, the many phenomenon’s or structures that modern western society relies on, are expression of what I call “the speciesism gaze”. As stated in the preface, my reasons for writing this thesis about the speciesism gaze are partially grounded in my personal ethical reflexions. It is furthermore, grounded in an interest of attempting to theorize and display this awareness through an academic analysis discourse.

1.1 Terms and Concepts The terms non-human bodies and animals are used frequently in this thesis. In this context, for me they are used as equal in both meaning and value as they describe an organic body, a being that is not considered to belong to the human species. The reason I use both terms are simply because the material and theories I refer to use both terms depending on academic field, material or context. For example, new materialists often use the term non- human bodies and in the contexts of animal right movements, the word animal is used. Furthermore, I will for practical reasons use the term human as shorthand for human animal. Even so, I use the terms with the awareness, that aligns with this thesis topic, questioning the separation and distinction between

1 human animals and non-human animals as fixed and natural, derived from post humanist criticism. To avoid further objectification of animals by using the term it, will I use the pronoun she, him or the term sic, as non- binary pronoun, borrowed from Adams, described in her book The Sexual Politics of Meat (Adams, 2010) as pronoun when describing and writing of animals displayed in the posters. When referring to humans in the posters I will sometimes use the non-binary or genderqueer pronoun hir, developed within - and trans politics. In this thesis, I will use hir as a non-binary pronoun, when I think that the poster does not specifies gender or when I think that gender is not important for the analysis.

Not all the terms and concepts used throughout this thesis have their own sections of explanations so what follows is a glossary for the terms that are recurrent but not explained elsewhere.

Androcentrism: is according to Charlotte Perkins Gillman, the practice and belief that the male human being, or the masculine point of view have the interpretative precedent and therefore are perceived as universally and normative. Everything else outside are therefore perceived as the “Other”. Masculinity are often defined as not being feminine and therefore becomes the “Other” (Gillman, 2001).

Anthropocentrism: is the belief that the human spices are the most significant entity in the universe and that human experience, needs and values are the norm from which everything else are, and should be measured (Humanistbloggen, 2013).

Anthropocene: is a suggested geological period that often are said to begin with the start of the industrial . It can be described as the period when human activity globally has effected the earths ecosystems and climate, and it is often referred to as “The age of humans”. Astrida Neimanis, Cecilia Åsberg and Johan Hedrén (2015) states that humans no longer have the luxury to think about culture and humaness as separated from nature and matter, in accordance with the overall ideology which has charactizied the age of Anthropocene. The global impact this idea has had on our living conconditions and the enviroment must be addressed. They suggest that the development of an enviromental humanities that includes transdisiplinarity, post disciplinarity and feminst genealogies could address the problems emerged, due to human alienation from nature (Neimanis, et al. 2015).

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Gender: Nina Lykke (2009) professor in , describes gender as a term which emerged in the 1970-80s, used by feminist scholars to separate the sociocultural sex from the biological sex. Following Judith Butler, amongst other feminist scholars, gender is constructed and reconstructed by the expectations and standards society have on the individual, based on the persons’ biological sex. Scholars like Butler, working in the fields of queer theory and poststructuralism have also problematize the biological sex as something essential and non- changing. They argue that both gender and sex are constructed in the interaction between people. Butler advocates that sex and gender are performative which means that actions and practices are created by language. As a series of discursive- language practices through the individual will understand themselves and create their identity (Lykke, 2009).

Heteronormativity: Butler (1999), a queerfeminist theorist, refers to the assumed and accepted standard in today’s western society that is the normality and that there is only two opposite sex, male and , and that one´s sex is depended of the attributes of one´s physical body. is constantly constructed and reconstructed by social structures and relations, that up held heterosexuality as something uniform, comprehensive and natural. Those who do not fit inside the heteronormative frames are marked as deviant and abnormal which often will lead to a negative response from society (Butler, 1999).

Intersectionality: Lykke (2009), emphasis the importance to have an intersectional perspective whilst doing feminist research. Which means to have an understanding and awareness of what power relations between and amongst socially constructed categories as gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity, age, geographical context, disabled/able etcetera, affect and mutually reinforce each other. These categories of identification shall not per Lykke be perceived as static structures, but as categories that are under constant negotiating, construction and reconstruction in relation to each other (Lykke, 2009).

Patriarchal society: refers to an institutional system and structures that are built on androcentric principles and where men have the primary power by holding the leading posts in institutions of politics, economics, religion and finances. Aaccording to feminist scholar and activist, bell hooks, the political-social system of “is the single most life-threatening social diseases assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation” (hooks, n.d.). This understanding, states that structures of pathriarchy not just oppresses and limities womens bodies, behaviours and expressions; But also limities men from express themselves, in ways that does not aligns

3 with the idea that men are the dominant gender, for whom expressions of violoence and aggression is the norm and even encoraged, in order to fullfill and uphold their dominant position. It is also a norm that pushed to its limit will result in men being encourged to participate in conflicts, often with deadly outcomes (hooks, n.d.). In this thesis the term patriarchal society is used refering to the western/european patriarchal society, if not stated otherwise.

Post : theorists claims that the assumption that humans are unique rational individuals and alienated from their environment is a lie, nothing more than a social construction that has followed us throughout history of human ideas. Thinking post human is to question this idea and think of human as part of their environment and nature (Humanistbloggen, 2013).

Speciesism: is a term coined and developed by psychologist and animal rights advocate Richard D. Ryder, for describing oppression and based on species belonging (Ryder, 1972). To animal right advocates and several eco- and new materialist feminism scholars, speciesism is to be compared to other form of oppression as sexism, racism, , discrimination against disabled people, indigenous people and colonialism etcetera (Adams, 2010). Scholars in gender studies like Nina Lykke (2009), (1997) and Judith Butler (1999) amongst others, just as animal rights advocates described by Emely Gaarder (2011), claims that these structures of oppression and unjust power relations are socially constructed patterns which has its roots in the belief systems of our anthropocentric and androcentric society (Lykke, 2009; Gaard, 1997; Butler, 1999; Gaarder, 2011). The human-animal relation is not to be perceived as a static power-relation, throughout history the view of animal’s rights has shifted regarding geographical, cultural, and religious contexts (Gaard & Gruen, 1993).

Queer: described by Tiina Rosenberg (2002) in Queerfeministisk Agenda is a term that historically has had many different meanings. Originally it was a term for describing something being weird or deviant. It has also been used as a disparaging term for homosexual people. The word was later reclaimed by the anti-heteronormative liberation movement and became a positive loaded term. Today queer has a wider meaning, and can be used to describe non- heteronormative people as well as non- heteronormative phenomenon’s and behaviour. And it is over all a term used for describing resistance against all heterosexual standards and categorisation regarding sexuality, gender and sex grounded in binary thinking (Rosenberg, 2002).

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1.2 Aim and Problem Formulation

The aim of this thesis is to examine expressions of speciesism oppression through the discourse of postcolonial feminism, eco-critical feminism- and new material feminism, analysing posters regarding animal right issues, having an intersectional approach.

Below are the questions that will be analyzed and evaluated in this thesis.

1. What discourses emerge in the empirical material which challenge the anthropocentric and androcentric society standards? 2. Are mutually reinforced structures of oppression described and found in the empirical material? 3. In which way are the chosen theories derived from postcolonial-, eco-, and new materialism feminism useful for illuminating and clarify the posters contexts and purposes?

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2. Background

The following chapter contains a brief introduction of and especially their connections to feminism and feminism activism. This as I believe that it is vital as background for the context and analysis of the thesis topic. It also contains some thoughts derived from affect theory, since, at least to my experience, discussions of the speciesism gaze and it consequences cannot be discussed without considering how emotions and affects play part in both the oppression of speciesism and the resistance against it.

2.1 Animal Rights Movement and Feminism Activism “Animal rights are not a gift we give animals... They are a birth right we have taken from them” – Ryan Phillips, author of Anita´s Story: Compassion Is Not a Crime.

It is hard to state the exact start of animal right movements but it safe to state that is not a new idea or phenomena, even if one can perceive animal right issues as becoming more visible to the public eye, for example through contemporary animal rights campaigns. One known historical advocate for animal rights is Henry Salt who was campaigning for social reforms in the fields of economic institution, prisons, schools and more human treatment of animals in the late 1800. He also wrote the book Animal Rights in 1894 (Henry Salt Archive, n.d.). If animal rights worldwide in generally are discussed in relation to the survival of the whole animal species, animal rights advocates argue that each animal as individuals have the right so survive, not being deprived the right of their own lives, and their basic needs and the right to avoid suffering. There are many different discourses within the field of animal rights. Abolitionist´s view is that non-human animals have moral rights, and therefore should be treated according to this. Deontologist´s argues that non-human animals, or at least some animals, are subjects of a life, with their own memories, beliefs, desires and future and therefore must be treated as their lives are their own and not as means for humans. A Sentiocentrist argues that non-human animals are sentient individuals and therefore subjects of moral concern deserving of rights. Protectionist´s and utilitarian´s argues that non- human animals have interest of their own and particularly the interest to avoid suffering and therefore should be granted rights. Protectionist´s advocate that human use of non-human animals should cease to exist entirely, or almost entirely. Whilst the utilitarian perspective is that non-human animals can be used for human means as long unnecessary suffering is avoided. A known

6 advocate for this perspective is who is the author of , 1975 (Wikipedia, n.d.). The largest animal rights organization today with approximately 6,5 million members (according to their own website), are People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Their focus areas are in working to improve conditions, and display animal’s reality in the trade, food industry, entertainment industry and laboratories since they are the largest number of animals suffering intensely, for extended periods of time. PETA also work against cruelty done to domesticated animals and other animal issues. Their work is taking place on many various levels such as cruelty investigations, animal rescues, public , research, celebrity involvement, protest campaigns, legislation and special events (PETA, 2017). In Sweden, the largest animal rights organization is Djurens Rätt, founded in 1882. They state that they are a non- violence animal right and animal welfare organization that work for a world where animals have the right to their own lives, and perceived as sentient beings. Djurens Rätt works to address animal’s reality in the same areas as PETA, to the parliament of the as well to Sweden’s politicians, striving for political changes (Djurens Rätt, 2017). Critics of the field of animal rights argues for example, that since non-human animals do not have the ability to engage or enter a social contract they cannot be possessors of rights. This approach is viewed by philosopher who argues that rights predicts duties and since only humans are considered to have duties only they can have rights (Scruton, 2000).

In her book, Women and the Animal Rights Movement Gaarder states that “A movement dominated by women struggles for legitimacy. The image of animal rights still suffers from stereotypical portrayals of overly emotional and irrational activists” (Gaarder, 2011, p 11). She set out to analyze the politics of gender in animal rights movements, and wants to examine why and how the fact that women are in majority advocating animal rights have shaped the movement and what impact it has had and have for animal right advocates to be taken seriously (Gaarder, 2011). Gaarder states that ethical concerns regarding animal’s rights have evoked different responses from feminism theorist and scholars, all between deep engagement in the eco-critical feminism field to resistance or indifference from others. Gaarder points out that the majority in feminist’s academics do not have much concern for treatment of animals even though most animal rights advocates and activists are women. She is linking this to the necessary phase in feminist theory building rejecting the androcentric attitude that connects , nature and animals as natural, as irrational and less intelligent. This has led

7 to feminists often rejecting animal rights as a feminist cause since the fear of not be taking seriously is so intervened with the necessity to distance women from nature and animals. The reason why the animal rights movement are dominated by women has been given several explanations and they are often essentialist, founded on the androcentric assumption that women are biological more likely to feel empathy with the animals often seen as beneath humans, and are less prone to accept suffering for animals caused for human gain. Advocates for vivisection and industrial farming has used this assumption as an argument that animal rights´ advocates cannot be taken seriously since they are women and therefore more irrational and sentimental and puts the wellbeing of animals before the wellbeing of (Gaarder, 2011). Gaarder has interviewed women in animal rights movements to analyze what drove them do become activists. Their reasons differ just as their backgrounds regarding age, political views, class, ethnics and education level. Some of the women use and reformulate cultural thinking of sex and gender as a reason for their own and other women’s participation in the movement, whilst some of the women reject this linking. But two common reasons emerged were the women’s own experience of oppression and social injustice and that images and writings about animal suffering/abuse, that they come across, led them to study animal issues. “The commitment to learn was followed by a commitment to act” (Gaarder, 2011, p 12). The fact that the animal rights movement is dominated by women does not mean that patriarchal structures do not exist inside the movement. The women that Gaarder´s interviewed stated that just as in society in generally leadership posts are dominated by men and women are left with keeping up the daily, practical work and operations. But a shift in the attitudes to women inside the movement might be on the way. Lyle Monroe, quoted by Gaarder, suggests that women’s long engagement for animal’s rights proves that women can and should be perceived as an asset inside and outside the movement and that this now reflects in the shift regarding holder of power positions inside the animal rights movement (Gaarder, 2011). Gaarder´s conclusion is that despite the androcentric assumption that women are biologically destined to care for the vulnerable it cannot explain the domination of women as animal rights advocates. Most women do not care and are consumers of animal products without questioning how and why the commodities are produced. What she found is that many of the interviewed women said that generally, women in society are more encouraged to show compassion and care and therefore it is more acceptable for them to be advocating animal rights than for a man. But what really emerged was that they because of their gender belonging, by choice or biology, had experienced oppression of abuse, violence, objectification, made to feel invisible, powerless etcetera and therefore recognize human abuse and use of animals as

8 structures of similar oppression, which led to a conscious decision to learn and then act. As Gaarder states “when women make the choice to become animal’s rights activists they should be considered, in the words of bell hooks (Gaarder, 2011, p 60), “political thinkers making political choices” (Hooks, 1989, p 95 quoted in “Women and The Animal Rights movement”, Gaarder, 2011, p 60).

2.2 Framing Affect Theory Affect theory, developed by psychologist Silvan Tomkins, is a practice that categorizes human affects in nine basic emotions/feelings that each one has an immediate typical bodily response and facial reaction. Examples are feelings of joy, anger, shame and fear. These nine basic human affects are perceived as being universal (The Tomkins Institute, n.d.).

In her book The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed a feminist scholar, writes about how emotions are part of shaping and constructing political practices. Emotions, according to most theorists involve forms of cognitions as well as bodily sensations/feelings. Emotions or feelings through western history has been subordinated, hence the constructed belief that they are connected to the material body and especially the feminine body. Whereas rationality and the absence of emotions have been related to intellectual ability, and the male mind. A paradox is that despite this, emotions have played a huge part in construction and the development of intellectual and political practices (Ahmed, 2014). Ahmed discuss affect through how stories and narratives are used as tools for create meaning and purposes for a certain aim. Texts as such, works by dividing subjects and objects, were the subject are the known “us” in contrast to the unknown objects. Through narratives the reader is invited to adopt the “us” as “you” playing on emotions, leaving the reader to interpret objects as the others, either beneficial or harmful, god or bad. Since the subjects are described as the known us, the reader is more prone to adopt the objects, the others as harmful or bad. The others become, using Butlers term, the ungrievables, who’s lives does not count as a life at all (Ahmed, 2014). Furthermore, Ahmed states that to understand grieving or to be able to feel grief on behalf of someone else, there needs to be some sense of recognition between the observer/reader and the ones who grieves or are grieved. This can happen through symbolism or universality, for example an image of a suffering child could be interpreted symbolically, such as the child as the symbol of innocence suffering, and/or the universality of recognition, it could be my child suffering. The loss and associated with the image of the child suffering could be my pain

9 and loss and this recognition able us to grieve for someone else´s loss or pain which helps bring us closer with the unknown others (Ahmed, 2014). Ahmed also discuss how past histories through felt emotions are shaped and embodied, she describes “emotions as performative: as they both generate their objects, and repeat past associations” (Ahmed, 2014, p 194). How an enconter that made us feel disgusteted will colour our next similar enconter, reading in disgust the cognitive and bodily senstation of disgust will be taken as a sign of the reading as true. Making the permaformative loop work powerful. Ahmed also describes how justice and injustice are powerful emotions inbedded in, and as such affecting politics, as well as individual practies. Injustice can leave both emotional and physical scars on the biological body just like on an national level. Ahmed states:

Emotions tell us a lot about time, emotions are the very “flesh” of time.[...] Through emotions, the past persists on the surface of bodies. […] Emotions also opens up futures, in the ways they involve different orientations to others. The objects of emotions slide and stick and they join the intimate histories of bodies, with the public domain of justice and injustice. (Ahmed, 2014, p 202).

Feminist scholar Clare Hemmings (2012), suggests in “Affective Solidarity: Feminist Reflexivity and Political Transformation” that it is the question of affect - “that gives feminism its life” (Hemmings, 2012, p 150)”. Hemmings discusses the relationship between feminism epistemology, (the study about knowledge, how do we know what we know), and feminism ontology, (the study of being, becoming and existence). The gaps between epistemology and ontology, is what Hemmings (2012) calls affective dissonance and that relationship has a political potential. This dissonance, for example, between if believing that all humans have the same rights and possibilities, but lived experiences of subordination due to, gender, ethnicity, class belonging, etcetera will generate affects/emotions of anger, misery, passion etcetera, making feminism political, hence its aim for change. To allow being moved by own and other people´s experiences, letting empathy matter focusing on knowing differently, would lead to what Hemmings call the concept of affective solidarity, which would bring epistemology and ontology closer together inside feminism theory. Hemmings emphasises that thinking through affective solidarity would help move away from a feminist politics grounded in identity or a belief of a naturalised femaleness, and instead highlights “the importance of politicised transformation of gendered social relations” (Hemmings, 2012, p 158). This means that solidarity in feminsim should not be based on a belief of shared identities or a presumpion of

10 others feelings, but about seeking solidarity with others and the shared desire for political transformation embraising the differences (Hemmings, 2012).

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3. Methodology and Material I approach the empirical material in this thesis through critical discourse analysis since that allows me to have an intersectional feminist approach, focusing on structural power relations and interconnection, in relation to the content of the empirical material.

3.1 Method of Analysis and Criticism Discussion Following Marianne Winther Jörgensen and Louise Philips (2000), discourse can be understood as a” certain way to talk about and understand the world (or a section of the world)” (Jörgensen & Philips, 2000, p 7). All tools for doing discursive analyses origins from structuralists and poststructuralist language theory. The most commonly used, are grounded in social constructionist thinking and Vivien Burr categorizes four approaches that hold these together: 1) To have a critical approach towards knowledge that otherwise is perceived as obvious.2) Awareness of the fact how we perceive and interpret our surroundings is always colored of our cultural and historical context, affecting our actions and behavior. This makes us both create and recreate the social reality we are in. 3) Knowledge is produced and reproduced in social processes and interactions. 4) There is a direct link between social actions and knowledge, meaning that our social constructions of what is true or real always have social consequences (Jörgensen & Philips, 2000). I believe that following these four approaches makes a good foundation for analysing the empirical material. Norman Fairclough (1995) professor of linguistics, emphasis in his book Media Discourse that the images of reality that can be found in media just reflects one of many possible discourses and/or images of reality. Fairclough addresses the interaction between discourse practice, text and sociocultural practice as central. The meaning of this is that it is important to be aware of that every text or image is constructed in a sociocultural practice and context and can be said to both mirror a section of social reality and simultaneously be part of social reality (practice). The practice of discourse reality is to acknowledge who and for what purpose the text or image has been produced, but also how it can be interpreted. Sociocultural reality (practice) consists of the context or event that the text or image is describing (Fairclough, 1995). I will for my analyses focus on Fairclough’s critical discourse analyse, as it is grounded in looking at intertextuality, which means to be able to see how texts or images are based on other discourses and elements from other existing text and images (Jörgensen & Philips, 2000). I believe that focusing on intertextuality will allow me to detect reproduction and reconstruction of different discourses and possible changes through new compositions of existing discourses, in the empirical material.

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Critiques that could be raised about my choice of method and material selection is that the empirical material is too small regarding the number of posters analysed, or in fact too diverse, as I have selected posters from several different organisations campaigns, launched during several years. Another critique could be that the method used for selection have limited the empirical material, by searching the earlier specified phrases on only one web domain “Google Search” and that interesting posters for this thesis topic has been eliminated. Despite, all issues that can be raised regarding my choice of selection method, my aim has been to try to make it clear to indent readers in which context I am writing this thesis and why. Maintaining an academic approach within the fields of gender studies whilst trying do the empirical material justice. Another issue to be clarified is that I have not been critical regarding the origin of the quotes on the posters, in the sense that I have not researched if it is valid to say that the people said to be quoted, are in fact the quotes author. I am aware that using historical and contemporary famous people for promoting ideas are useful to reach out and be heard by the public, but for me researching the quotes origins has not been important in relation to this thesis aim and questions.

3.2 Material and Selection The empirical material consists of posters relating to animal right issues available online. My purpose for choosing poster posted on the web can be divided into two main reasons. Firstly, following Fairclough thoughts, that texts and/or images, can be said to both construct and reconstruct contemporary culture belief systems but also reflect signs of resistance towards the same. Secondly, texts and images of animal issues are also something that speaks to intended viewers with the purpose to affect. As Emely Gaarder (2011) states in her book Women and The Animal Rights Movement, posters used by animal rights movements often illuminate animal’s reality in industrial farming, vivisection etcetera. The aim is to evoke feelings of moral shocks by speaking to the intended viewer’s empathy and moral (Gaarder, 2011). For me, the fact that these posters are easily accessible and have the potential to reach people worldwide makes it interesting to analyse them as illustrators of our contemporary culture standard of the speciesism gaze, and resistance against the same. For the analysis, I have gone through hundreds and hundreds of images that appears on the internet when searching on Google for the words animal right campaign posters and animal right campaign quotes. Many of the posters are similar to each other, addressing animal abuse in factory/industrial farming, vivisection, fur farming, the human extinguishing

13 of animal wild life and of wild animals for human entertainment amongst other issues. From this material, I retrieved a first selection of about eighty posters that I believe both visualizes and challenges the speciesism gaze, by questioning anthropocentric, androcentric and heteronormative discourses, from a postcolonial-, eco-critical, and new materialism feminism perspective. To make the empirical material easier to oversee I have chosen to categorize the emerged themes into three tropes, animal materiality, species necropolitics, and oppressions interconnected, that I derived from postcolonial-, eco-, and new materialism feminism theorisations. The term species necropolitics is used according to Groenvald’s development of the term, described previously. Secondly, focusing on the tropes, I selected between seven to eight posters per trope for further analysis. Affect in emotional, political and ethical levels as discussed by Sarah Ahmed in The Cultural Politics of Emotions, are to be found as a common thread in all three tropes´ (Ahmed, 2014). Due to the feasibility of writing this thesis I decided to only reference, the 22 posters selected, and used for analysis. I think that referring to the entire group of eighty posters would be confusing to indented readers and not filling a purpose, for the outcome of the thesis.

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4. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework used in this thesis are theories derived and developed in postcolonial-, eco- critical and new materialist feminism. The theories both share ideological thoughts, as the importance of have an intersectional approach whilst analyzing expressions of oppression; But also take on different perspectives, which I find useful for this thesis purpose and analysis. Both pros and cons with the chosen theories will be described. The theories are used as background for the analysis of the empirical material, discussion and conclusion.

4.1 Postcolonial Feminism “The only thing that we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience”. – Chinua Achebe, author of Things fall apart, 1994.

Postcolonial feminism theorizations originate in postcolonial theory which problematizes how western colonization of other countries and continents from the 1600`s and onwards affected the perception of diverse cultures, both from the outside and within the cultures themselves According to Tobias Hübinette (2016), a contemporary postcolonial scholar, the start of postcolonial feminism theorisations is often referred to the origin of Black feminism1 and chicha (Latin American) feminism during the 1960/70´s social citizen’s movements in USA. It emerged as a critique towards the hegemonic white, European, heterosexual middleclass feminism and postcolonial theory during the latter half of the 1900`s. Post-colonial feminism questioned the gender blindness that had characterized postcolonial theory and middle class feminism, by emphasizing the importance of acknowledging that different layers of oppression such as, ethnicity, gender, sex and class is interconnected and interacts, introducing an intersectional perspective (Hübinette, 2016). Chandra Talpade Mohanty (2012) a well- known contemporary postcolonial feminist theorist problematizes in her article, “Med Västerländska Ögon”, that western feminist’ scholars tends to write about the so called third world2 women’s as a hegemonic and

1 It´s history can be said to origin in the abolitions movement in North America 1770-1860 that fought to abolish . An early example of problematize gender and ethnicity can be referred to Sojourner Truth´s speech, “And aren’t I´m a woman” at the Women´s Convention in Akron USA 1851 in which she questioned that she was not treated as a woman but as a slave based on her skins colour (Hübinette, 2016). 2 The splitting of the world in first, second, third and sometimes fourth is a phenomenon that origins from the cold war period. First world was represented of the west bloc, namely countries with market economy often situated in western Europe, North America and Australia. Second world were represented of the east bloc, countries with communist/socialist economy of which the Soviet Union constituted the biggest part. Third world were represented of, often poor, countries, that didn´t belong in neither the west- or east bloc, often referred to as developing countries, and situated in large parts, to Africa, Asia and South America. The fourth world is a relatively un know concept but are sometimes used for describing indigenous people or very poor developing countries (Hübinette, 2016). 15 unified group, victims of male dominance and traditional gender roles, without considering geographical, historical, cultural and social context. The article also, questions what opportunities a woman living in the so called third world have to make her voice heard, what means are accessible to make her voice heard, and who is willing to listen? Mohanty states, that women from the so called third world has not being given the space or credibility within existing feminism theory building to tell their stories and create their own theorizations and agendas. (Mohanty, 2012). Similar critiques towards western feminism has also been raised from feminist scholars from the so called second world. Jennifer Suchland (2011) states in her article Is Postsocialism Transnational? that voices from the East and so called second world has been completely missing on an international feminism arena of discussion, until the deconstruction of the Cold War in the early 1990´s (Suchland, 2011). Criticism towards post-colonial feminism are sometimes heard from hegemonic feminism regarding worries that the fractioning of feminism into diverse groups can risk hurting the whole feminism movements purpose and that a unified feminism would hold a better chance to strengthen feminism movements towards their overall aim. The criticism also includes a concern that postcolonial risks being ethnocentric and by that limited. The paradox is that this critic in many ways are the same that post-colonial feminism points towards the hegemonic feminism (Hubinette, 2016).

4.1.1 Critical Whiteness Studies According to Ien Eng, (2012) a postcolonial feminism theorist, it is important to acknowledge that the white western hegemonic ideas have not occurred by chance, they are part of a historical global development for the past five hundred years. During the European colonization of parts of the rest of the world non- European cultures have been subjected to European political, economic and ideological views and logics. To be western/European has been connected to being white and the standard from which everything else is measured. Being perceived as not white is therefore always being “the other”. Whiteness and western is so interconnected that wester is perceived as equal to white hegemony at an international level. Where non-white people and nations per definition always are perceived as subordinated to white people and nations. The contemporary world order is a product of the white and western hegemony, which all people are affected of. It is therefore crucial to acknowledge that the division between white and the “other” is a historically and systematically imposed structure that still have not been deconstructed, and if ever possible (Eng, 2012)?

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Tobias Hübinette, Helena Hörnfeldt, Fataneh Farahani and René León Rosales (2012), states in “Om ras och vithet I det samtida Sverige”, that whiteness and who which has been categorized as white has changed with time, depending on geographical, religious and social context. How we are treated and perceived by others are to large degrees dependent on our appearance, the shape of our bodies, the colour of our skins and other characteristics of our bodies. There is a socially constructed expectation of how a white or a non-white body should act and behave, in the same way there is socially constructed expectations for how a male or a female body should act and behave. Just as queer and/or trans studies questions and problematizes the current binary categorization of man and women and its following constructed social expectations, critical whiteness studies raise the question, is it possible as a non-white person fully perform and stage a western identity since social structures sets similarity between western and whiteness (Hübinette et al. 2012)?

4.1.2 Orientalism Edward Said (2003) has within the field of post-colonial studies used the term” Orientalism” to describe and clarify the west´s view of the orient/Asia as “the exotic other”. He claims that the relationship between the west and the orient/Asia contains an inequality power relation grounded in that the west for a long period of time produced knowledge about the orient/Asia from an outside perspective. And whilst doing so exaggerated differences in living conditions, culture and socially practices enabling categorising the orient/Asia as the other, justifying western colonization and oppression for thousands of years. The belief system of Orientalism describes the orient/Asia and its people as irrational, emotional, physical week, feminized and eroticized, as non-Europeans they are the “others”. In contrast Europe, due to the western belief system, are seen as the physical strong, rational and logic, masculine and normative. This hierarchy and binary way of thinking requires an unequal power relation, were Europe and the rest of the western world are assumed to be the normative, the normal and therefore superior, whilst the Orient/Asia are assumed to be “the Other”, the abnormal and exotic and therefore always subordinated (Said, 2003).

4.2 Eco-Critical Feminism “We cannot mourn for the environment because we are so deeply attached to it – we are it. So, ecological discourse holds out the possibility of a mourning without end”. – Timothy Morton, author of Dark , 2016.

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I will use the term eco-critical feminism as a contemporary term that originates from ecofeminism theorizations. Greta Gaard and Lori Gruen (1993), two well-known contemporary ecofeminist scholars, describes ecofeminism as both a theoretical field that regards the oppression of women and nature as interconnected, and a that has its roots in the social change movements of the 1960s and 1970s. As an academic discourse, ecofeminism was not developed until the late 1980s (Gaard & Gruen, 1993). For ecofeminists, systems of oppression are mutually reinforced. They claim that just as racism, sexism and classism are interconnected these forms of human oppression are linked to the oppressive structures of speciesism and naturism, related to the separation between human and nature (Gaard, 1997). In ecofeminism theory building there are several explanation models for how and why this separation between humans and nature have come to exist. Four common explanations are: -The scientific revolution that emerged in the 1700 century, from this period there was a shift of how the nature was perceived. From a view that acknowledge nature to be alive and having self-value, nature and animals became viewed as machines that could be analysed, experimented on and controlled. The human domination of nature could therefore not be regarded as unethical but more as a rational use of resources. This belief is sometimes also referred to as the Cartesian dualism philosophy, developed by René Descartes it states animals and humans to be separated due to the belief that only human possesses soul and the ability to reason. The dualism thought of the separation between the mind/soul and the human body, goes back to ancient Greek (Gaard & Gruen, 1993). -The emerge of patriarchal religions- which goes back to 4500 B.Sc. when the shift from goddess religions to patriarchal religion started. The patriarchal religion structure God as a male and that men are his image. The man was now perceived as Gods image and was here to oversee Gods creation, and women, animals, nature were perceived as created to serve the man (Gaard & Gruen, 1993). -Evolutionary development- the shift when human become hunters. How due to its destructive, competitive and violent elements made man separate from nature. The women’s reproductive capacity and life-bearing activity stood in contrast to the hunting activity that was the males domain (Gaard & Gruen, 1993). -Metaphorical or ideological explanations- Per this theory the oppression of women and nature are the result of patriarchal structures and culture, which describes the world in opposite terms of self as subjects and other objects. As Gruen and Gaard in the article “Ecofeminism: Toward Global Justice and Planetary Health” describes it:

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These value dualisms give rise to value hierarchies, where all things associated with self are valued, and all things described as others are of lesser value. This dualism of self/other is manifested as culture/nature, man/woman, white/non-white, human/non- human animal, civilized/wild, heterosexual/homosexual, reason/emotion, wealthy/poor, etc. Domination is built in to such dualism because the other is negated into the process of defining a powerful self. Because the privileged self in such dualism is always male, and the devalued other is always female, all valued components of such dualism are also associated with the male, and all devalued components with the female”. (Gaard & Gruen, 1993, s 237).

The connection between the subordinating of women and animals/nature is related to the perceived subject, as a man/male and how women and animals are perceived as “The other”. Our metaphors of language reveal the ideological behind this in phrases such as “mother nature”, “virgin forest” and “the rape of nature”. Phrases used to subordinate women as “pussy”, “old hen”, “sow” and “bitch” plays on to animalize women and their non-human nature (Gaard & Gruen, 1993). According to Gaard and Gruen (1993) many eco-feminists place the connection between the oppression of women and nature/non-humans in relation to global economics. On the global market the value of nature or non- humans have no self-value until it is entering the cash economy system. For example, a living forest in a low-income nation that provides the local population with water, food shelter etcetera has no economic value until its products can be manufactured into commodities for sale. Per Gaard and Gruen, the consumption of meat differs depending on location, were people in the geographical North consume 52 times more meat than persons in the geographical South. Therefore, the demand and request for large quantities of cheap meat and dairy products are due to the overconsumption of these products in the Western society. It is estimated that the farmland currently used for feeding the in USA, could feed approximately an additional 400 million people if the land was used for growing crops for human consumption instead of livestock. Furthermore, factory/industrial farming is leading to the shutdown of smaller farms which often focus on in livestock and crops, and are one of the major causes of desertification. Around 80 percent of small farmers are women in low income nations, were the factory farming has a huge negative impact on these women´s and their families, life conditions (Gaard & Gruen, 1993).

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Often heard criticism towards ecofeminism is that it can be considered essentialist and reinforces the categorization of women and nature as natural. As Gaard (2011) discusses in her article “Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-placing Species in a Material Feminist ” there was an antifeminist backlash against ecofeminism in the 1990s mostly driven by the fear of contamination with gender essentialism. Gaard also mention how ecofeminism often are accused of being ethnocentric and elitist, just something for white middle class women to engage in and ecofeminism concerns are often spurned in main stream feminism. To pay attention to nonhuman bodies and nature are not regarded as a suitably political interest for feminists to adress (Gaard, 2011). In recent years, there has been a development in ecofeminism and some scholars advocate that a change of the term itself would be fruitful. A term that has emerged in feminism studies in general, and that I have chosen to use is “eco- critical feminism”. Gaard also suggest the term of “Material Feminist Environmentalism” since the aim of bringing back materiality into feminism theory building has been suggested of scholars like Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, Catriona Mortimer -Sandilands, and Karen Barad, amongst others (Gaard, 2011). Following Gaard, the eco-critical feminist field offers and contributes theoretical analysis to the field of gender studies as well as holding opportunity for new political practices since the connection between oppression of women and nature are so mutually reinforcing and interconnected that:

the liberation of women […] cannot be fully effected without the liberation of nature; and conversely, the liberation of nature […] will not be fully effected without the liberation of women. (Gaard, 1997, s 1).

4.2.1 The Sexual Politics of Meat Carol J Adams (2010) argues in her book The Sexual Politics of Meat, that the connection of human consumption and use of non-human bodies can be directly linked to human oppression towards non-humans, women and other marginalized groups. Eating meat and hunting traditions are often considered to be manly, since maleness often is linked to macho and violent expressions in the patriarchal and androcentric society, and therefore normatively (Adams, 2010). Butler (1999) emphasizes that patriarchal structures varies depending on geographical, cultural, age and religious contexts (Butler, 1999). This is something also Adams acknowledge, she states that patriarchal structures often are linked to eating meat, but that there is variations due to cultural and geographical, etcetera contexts. According to Adams theory there are historical and cultural structures of androcentric and anthropocentric thinking with underlying

20 phrases like “real men eat meat”, and phrases that are used to subordinate women by equating them as objectified animal/bodies for consumption. Adams discusses the concept of the absent referent as what enables “the interweaving of the oppression of women and animals. Behind every meal of meat is an absence: the death of the animal whose place the meat takes” (Adams, p 13, 2010). Adams advocates that animals become the absent referent through three practices where the first is the practice of eating meat, this as it is always preceded by an act of violence “the death of the animal”. The absent referent is then the illusion and structures that separates the food on the plate from that notion and keep us from seeing the animal as having been someone. Second practice is through language, our vocabulary differs describing animals in the meat or diary production in relation to animals that are held as , and it also changes once an animal has been slaughtered. Third practice is how animals are metaphorically used for describing human experiences. An example of this is the expression “I felt like a piece of meat”. A piece of meat taken to its “definition is something violently deprived of all feelings” (Adams, p 67, 2010). The animals own fate “is transmuted into a metaphor for someone else’s existence or fate […] and absorbed into a human-centered hierarchy (Adams, p 67, 2010). And in using the metaphor we fail to recognize the original absent referent in its own existence. Adams also illuminates how sexual violence portrayed through language and in images of women’s bodies, presented as meat and overly sexualized, is due to a cycle of objectification fragmentation and consumption in western culture (Adams, 2010). Criticism towards Adams theory is like the criticism of ecofeminism in general but also targets Adams for claiming that feminist theory and practice logically should contain advocating for a vegetarian practice. Adams also have been accused for expressing transphobic and essentialists ideas by connecting oppression of women and animals and linking that to how meat and dairy advertising plays on pornography and sexuality. Adams herself, claims that this interpretation of her theory is not what was intended by her. She writes:

Feminists like me wanted to explore, theoretically, why such comparisons exist, because we had been involved, on an activist level, with trying to end violence that we saw as arising from destructive attitudes that objectified and fragmented beings. The question I pursue is: Why do meat producers and advertisers gravitate to metaphors of prostitution and draw on pornographic images to promote dead animals’ bodies? Why are images of consumption conflated, associating dead animals and sexualized women? In analyzing this phenomenon, feminists like myself are not the ones who associated these two things; we are the ones who have been trying to expose and

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discuss and challenge this association. […] I saw the consumption model as very dangerous to the lives of a multitude of beings. (Adams, 2012).

4.3 New Materialism Feminism “We are all matter, and we all matter”. – Karen Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity” 2003.

Rosi Braidotti a post humanist philosopher and gender theoretician, advocates in her book, The Posthuman (2013) that there are no sharp lines between technology, biology, and culture. As an example, she mentions the progression in nanotechnology, neuroscience and biotechnology that erases the boarders between human and technological material. She argues that the human perception of us as a fixed subject is an illusion, a self-centred human ideology. She instead suggests a development on the post human subject with an affirmative perspective, where thinking as a posthuman can be meaningful for making sense of more multiple and flexible identities as humans. Thinking as a posthuman also leads to a deconstruction of the categorization of humans and other species, which would resituate human species within nature (Braidotti, 2013). Jane Bennet the author of Vibrant matter (2010) is another scholar within this field. She states that her aim is to introduce sustainable ecological politics that considers the vitality of all matters. Bennet challenges the view of the human subject as a being alienated from hir environment, not dependent on other beings. Or in her own words:

My “own” body is material, and yet this vital materiality is not fully or exclusive human. My flesh is populated and constituted by different swarms of foreigners. […] in a world of vibrant matter, it is thus not enough to say that we are “embodied”. We are rather, an array of bodies. […] If more people marked this fact more of the time, if we were more attentive to the indispensable foreignness that we are, would we continue to produce and consume in the same violently reckless ways. (Bennet, 2010, s 112- 113).

Karen Barads, (2012), theory of agential realism with the entanglement of meaning and matter, questions the human construction of dualism that place culture and nature as opposites. Barad questions the common assumption that certain objects and/or subjects have agency, as in self value due to their mere existence and power to affect their surroundings, and others do not. She means that agency is not something possessed or held, it is “rather an enactment, a matter of

22 possibilities for reconfiguring entanglement” (Barad interviewed by Dolphijn, R & van der Tuin, 2012, p 54). Barad (2003) also problematizing how matter has become a non discussed field within recent gender theorizations, she states: “Language matters. Discourse matters. Culture matters. There is an important sense in which the only thing that does not seem to matter anymore is matter” (Barad, 2003, p 801). Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman (2008) states in their antology Material Feminism that they want to bring materiality back into discussion in the feminist academic fields, theory and practice. They write:

The guiding rule of procedure for most contemporary feminism requires that one distance oneself as much as possible from the tainted realm of materiality by taking refuge within culture, discourse, and language. (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008, p. 1)

Alaimo and Hekman acknowledge that the turn to the linguistic and discursive fields has been very productive for feminism theory building. Questioning the western thought, that leans on the idea that the world can be structured and categorized in a series of dichotomies as male/female, culture/nature, mind/body, rational/emotional, subject/object etcetera which is gendered in that way that the first word in this dichotomy always is the superior and connected to man/male/masculinity and therefore, the second word always becomes subordinated and connected to women/female/feminity. They point out that postmodern feminism analyses have been very fruitful in revealing and explaining how this thinking with constructed categories and how injustice power relations between them are constructed and repeatedly reconstructed through language. Which means that this injustice in power relations also can be deconstructed through language. But as they also claim, the lack of letting materiality count in feminism theory during the later decades, has resulted in another dichotomy, the dichotomy of language/reality. Alaimo and Hekman argues that postmodernism scholars in their eagerness to reject the modernist grounding in the material has turned to the discursive explanation model, claiming that all things; nature, society and reality is a product of language. According to Alaimo and Hekman, upholding this approach is far from the postmodernism aim to deconstruct dichotomies. They write:

The problem with this approach, however, is that the more feminist theories distance themselves from “nature”, the more that very “nature” is implicitly or explicitly reconfirmed as the treacherous quicksand of . Clearly, feminist who are also environmentalist cannot be content with theories that replicate the very nature/culture

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dualismthat has been so injurious-not only to nonhuman nature but to various women. (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008, p. 4)

Alaimo and Hekman (2008) argues that the danger of only leaning on the discursive understanding of the world focusing exclusively on ideology, representations and discourse, excludes biological substances, corporeal practice and lived experiences from consideration, which can be understood as another kind of oppression. For a more holistic view they suggest other approaches that brings materiality back into feminism theory building without losing the important knowledge of social constructionism. Following Barads thoughts and theory of the countless intra-actions that takes place between phenomena that are human, material, discursive, more-than-human, technological and corporeal (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008). Lynda Birke, Mette Bryld and Nina Lykke (2004) want to illuminate the importance of the complex relationship between humans and other animals and what affect this relationship has had for feminism. In their article “Animal Performances: an Exploration of Intersections Between Feminist Science Studies of Human/Animal Relationship” they are following Barads thoughts, using the notion of her development of Judith Butlers term performativity. They argue that performativity can help challenge the dichotomy between nature/animal and human/culture as we can see the relationship between human/animal for what it is, an ongoing co-creation of behavior. The subordination of non human species leans on the dichotomy thinking of human/animal, which entails the idea that animals are not like humans, they are passive in relation to the active human, and therefore percived as having no agency on their own. This thinking enable animals to be used as a convenient resource for humans to exploit. Birke, et al. question this thinking grounded in the dichotomy discursive. They argue that, animals used in science experiment, has played a huge part in the development of biological knowledge of the human body. The understanding of non human bodies has in many respect been directly transmitted to the understanding of the human body. In that regard humans and non humans materiality is the same, all bodies are matter in this context. Therefore non- human species have been co- creators, probably not willingly, with agency on there own, in the development of human knowledge (Birke et al. 2004). According to Alaimo and Hekman (2008), new materialism feminism opens up “new” ethical and political vistas. If human, nonhuman and nature is redefined and acknowledge as their own realms of agency it will have ethical implications. They write:

A material entails, on the contrary, that we can compare the very real material consequences of ethical positions and draw conclusion from those comparisons. […]

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material ethics allows us to shift the focus from ethical principles to ethical practices. Practices are, by nature, embodied situated actions. (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008, p. 7)

By this, Alaimo and Hekman follows Catriona Sandilands (1999), which in her book The Good- Natured Feminist:Ecofeminism and the Quest for democracy, suggest a radical democratic project that would make space for nature in politics, not as a “positive, human constructed presence, but as an enigmatic active “Other” (Sandiland, 1999, p. 181. quoted in Alaimo & Hekman, 2008, p. 9). The criticism of post human thinking often points out that abandoning the human perspective could jeopardize . Post human theorists mean that this is a concern, but a shift from an anthropocentric view to acknowledge other beings and materials would be true humanism (Humanistbloggen, 2013). Criticism towards new materialism feminism is quite like the criticism towards ecofeminism. A fear that taking materiality into consideration would open for essentialism and (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008).

4.3.1 Grievability The terms precariousness and grievability are discussed by Judith Butler (2015) in relation to human lives lost in war. Whose lives are considered to be grievable and whose are not? She states,

For a life that: “can be lost, destroyed or systematically neglected to the point of death, is to underscore not only the finitude of a life (that death is certain) but also its precariousness (that life requires various social and economic conditions to be met in order to be sustained as a life (Butler, 2015, p 2).

Butler discusses how that affects in relation to political and ethical practice and judgement can be seen in what a precarious life is defined as. It is not just the fact of being alive it must be the “right” kind of lived life to be perceived as a precarious life. Grievability precedes and enables the perception of a precarious life. Affect counts in ethical and political contexts since “An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as life at all” (Butler, 2015, p 3). And concludes that since we humans hold the power to destroy someone else or be destroyed by someone, make us all bound to each other by this power and precariousness relationship, in that sense all lives matters and are precarious (Butler, 2015).

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Butler, as previously described, is discussing this division between grievable and ungrievable life in relation to human warfare. I intend to use the concepts of these terms in relation to the thesis topic of human consumption and use of animals.

4.3.2 Killability Tara Mehrabi (2016) a feminist scholar, discuss and theorize the term of killability in her dissertation “Making Death Matter; A Feminist Techno Science Study of Alzheimer’s Science in the Laboratory”. She states that life and death are inseparable, they cannot exist as entities. To be alive always mean that something or someone else have died as killing is a “constitutive part of interspecies relationally" (Mehrabi, 2016, p 152). Two examples of this, that seldom are thought of as killing, is the fact that by simply taking a shower the person is killing the bacteria on hir body, or that the driver of a car will kill insects whilst driving. Killability is about power relations entangled with bodies and knowledge. Who decides which ones are killable and for what reasons? And who or what enables the process of becoming killable? Inspired by Haraway´s term “situated knowledge” and Barad´s term “agential cuts”. Mehrabi suggest that killability is a story about agential asymmetries; As a material-discursive phenomenon: “agential asymmetry […] is enacted through agential cuts” (Mehrabi, 2016, p 153). The intra- action of subjects and objects and “agencies of observation” is what creates a phenomenon. Mehrabi argues that:

nothing exists before relations […] phenomenon which are constitutive of reality and agential- realist themselves come into being through the intra-action of matter and discourse, human and non-human, subject and object which enact and are enacted in relation to apparatus (Mehrabi, 2016, p 150).

Who becomes killable depends on phenomenon’s such as human’s materialization and meaning making, which are always situated and partial (Mehrabi, 2016).

Mehrabi takes in my view; a quite theoretical perspective on the term killability, hence to her dissertations topic, when discussing killability in relation to animals used in vivisection. On one hand animals in vivisection are perceived as beings with agency on their own, in the way, that they are perceived as co- constructers of human knowledge production. Taking on this perspective, the socially constructed dichotomy between the human subject as creator and the animal object as passive are being challenged. On the other hand, animals used

26 in are systematically breed to become biological suitable models, and therefore placed, as a human created model, both as part of and outside the apparatus of experiment. In this thesis, aligning with critical , killability as a term will be used in consideration of the “real” animal and not so much with the “theoretical animal”. As Haraway puts it, in The Companion Species Manifesto, “Dogs are not surrogates for theory; they are not here just to think with. They are here to live with” (Haraway, 2003, p 5).

4.3.3 Species Necropolitics Achille Mbembe a postcolonial scholar, discuss the term necropolitics, as the power of death, assuming that “the ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and capacity to dictate who may live and who must die” (Mbembe, 2003, p 11). Mbembe has a postcolonial perspective and discuss the concept of reason as a one of the most crucial elements in shaping soveriginity and the idea of modernity as culturally agred norms and standards. He states that race in western thouhgts, political and practice has been “the ever present shadow” (Mbembe, 2003, p 17). Enabling western cultural soverigenity to be built on the mechanisms of biopower, the right to kill, inslave and colonize human bodies that do not fit the western Euorpean culturally constructed standard. You could therefore state that modernity and terror emerge from the same roots of soveriginity, since the mechanisms of biopower can be traced in how every modern state functions (Mbembe, 2003).

The concept of Species necropolitics is a term Sara Groenvald, who is a scholar and teacher in Environmental Humanities (2014) use and develop in her dissertation “Animal Endings: Species Necropolitics in Contemporary Transnational Literature”, to chart the cultural and political systems and structures that regulate animal deaths (Groenvald, 2014). Groenvald asks the question “what it takes to see animals as having grievable lives?” (Groenvald, 2014, p, iv), through analysis of contemporary literature she is arguing that some texts “create conditions for grievability, transforming what it means to mourn animal lives in the process” (Groenvald, 2014, p, iv). These texts often question and challenge the thought of animal life as consumable or disposable, instead these texts write about how animal deaths often work to illuminate the definition of “the human” and questions the superiority of humans as the subject (Groenvald, 2014). Groenvald discuss how the concept of Anthropocence suggests and withholds an number of paradoxes, where the first is how humans are considered to be the major force behind contemporary environment changes and disasters and that humans, or a minor section of humanity, holds the power to determine our planets future. The second is that humans are both

27 the reason and the victims of climate changes, environmental pollution and crisis, but also its only solution. The third paradox is that during the Anthropocence era human activity and its impact on the enviroment has been acknowledged for the first time as has the wakening and recognition of human´s interconnection with, and part of the environment. Against these paradoxes of the Anthropocense age, Groenvald raise and questions the mechanics of systematic animal death globally, addressing both philosophical and material levels. Doing so the assumption of human primacy and centrality are challenged, deconstructing the species hierarchy (Groenvald, 2014).

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5. Analysis and Discussion

Looking at the, by me, selected posters thinking of intertextuality all the posters are created in the same general context of promoting animal rights and questioning human oppression, by illuminating animal issues and suggesting change on social, ethical and political levels. In this general context, there are many underlying contexts whose different approaches are mirrored in the various posters. By drawing on my thesis questions; What discourses emerge in the empirical material which challenge the anthropocentric and androcentric society standards? Are mutually reinforced structures of oppression described and found in the empirical material? In which way are the chosen theories derived from postcolonial-, eco-, and new materialism feminism useful for illuminating and clarify the posters contexts and purposes? My aim is to reflect around this, in the following section.

5.1 Tropes for Analysis and Presentation of the Selected Posters The tropes for analysis are as follows: - animal materiality, - species necropolitics, and oppressions interconnected. I believe that these tropes, derived from the selected posters all share an aim to create new individual and political positions working through emotional affects. Many of the posters displays more tropes than one which will be addressed in the summarizing conclusion. The following images of the posters are screenshots. To make it easier for indented readers to distinguish the texts of the posters in my following description of them, the texts of the posters are written in bold.

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5.1.1 Animal Materiality This trope is about how, the posters selected, visualizes and questions animal bodies as objects, commodities for consumption or as trash focusing on materiality of the animal bodies. I believe these posters also highlights animal commodities as the absence of “the right” life lived. Figures 1-7 (trope 1).

Fig 1: Poster used in anti- fur campaign. It displays a rabbit sitting alone in front of a white background, having the top of a metal coat-hanger sticking from sic back. Above the rabbit the phrase “spring collection, 2010” are written in a bold but subtle font.

Fig 2: Poster used for anti-cosmetic testing on animal’s campaign. It displays a woman holding a little dog like a perfume bottle in her left- hand spraying “perfume” from the dog’s mouth, pressing sic head. The phrase “Help us fight the effects of cosmetic testing” is written in the upper- right corner.

Fig 3: Poster used by PETA anti-fur campaign. It displays a man in front of a black background holding a lamb in front of him that is skinned and bloody. The phrase “Here´s are the rest of your wool coat” is written under the lamb in big capital letters. Beneath this it says “Jona Wienhofen or I killed the proom queen for PETA.

Fig 4: Poster used by PETA, anti-vivisection campaign. It displays photographs of a monkey and three beagles constrained in boxes and forced to smoke. There is also a cartoon image of a mouse wearing a gas mask. The phrase “Animals don´t smoke” is typed out, followed by “so why do we force them to?”.

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Fig 5: Poster used in anti- factory farming campaign. It displays a cow/ bull laying on dark and barren soil, nailed down by a huge metal fork. High metal enclosures, on the sides and in the back. Between the forks teeth one can see sic´s sad eye. In the upper-right corner, there is a barcode with the phrase “Factory Farming the Truth is Hard to Swallow”.

Fig 6: Poster with a quote from Paul McCartney - “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian”. The background is a photograph by Jo -Anne MacArthur showing a mother pig constrained and in front of her, beyond her reach, lays a very small baby pig dead.

Fig 7: Poster used by PETA anti-egg farming industry campaign. It displays a photograph of a warehouse. At least five stack of paper boxes can be seen and they are filled with hundreds of chickens, seemingly alive. One can suspect some sort of machinery or conveyor at the back of the picture. Above the photograph, it says “Fact: In the egg industry, millions of male chicks are ground up alive or tossed into trash bags to suffocate”.

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5.1.2 Species Necropolitics The posters selected for this trope, I believe, problematizes and questions ethical, social and political power relations, displaying killability through the absences of compassion, the idea of “ungrievable” lives and the concept of speciesism hierarchies. Displaying ungrievable lives as the ones grieving. Figures 8-14. (trope 2)

Fig 8: Poster with a quote of Paul Farmer - “The idea that some lives matter less are the root of all that is wrong with the world”. It displays a bear with a matted, shaggy and dirty fur sitting on concrete ground. Sic is looking up at three kids that are laying in a metal net that hangs out for over the concrete bunker.

Fig 9: Poster used by organisation. It displays two photographs beside each other, the one to the right shows a calf that is constrained and trapped in some sort of or transport, pushing sic´s´ head trough a gap on top of the cage. Sic´s eye seems full of distress and the images mediates anxiety. In the photograph to the left the calf has been replaced by a dog, the surroundings are the same. Above the images the text “Who do you”, are written followed by “Love, Eat, Cherish, , Slaughter, Beat, Kiss, Cut, Hug, Slice, Hold, Cage, Coddle, Adore, Devour” under the photographs.

Fig 10: Poster displaying a white and brown calf laying on straw looking right at the viewer. The phrase “Eating me is a personal choice?” Is written in capital letters under the calf´s head. Underneath the main phrase, it says “What about what I want?” in small white letters.

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Fig 11: Poster used by PETA anti factory farming campaigns. Displays a photograph of a little white and black calf standing on straw looking at the one taking the picture. Above the calf´s head is the phrase “I miss my mommy” and beneath sic´s head it says “How´s your cheese?”.

Fig 12: Poster with a quote of Martin Luther King Jr - “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal”. Displays a photograph by Jo-Anne MacArthur for the We Animals3 Project of two pigs hanging in their hind legs in a . Beside the pigs one can make out machinery by a switch displayed on the wall and a conveyor belt up in the ceiling.

Fig 13: Poster with a quote from Hog Farm Management magazine article from 1976. - “Forget the pig is an animal. Treat him just like a machine in a factory”. Displays a photograph taken by Jo- Anne MacArthur of pigs in a factory farm. The pig in the forefront is alone and totally constrained in a metal cage, no wider than the pig sic self. The eyes of the pig in the forefront are sad.

Fig 14: Poster used by vegan green planet. Displays a close-up photograph of two cows leaning their heads together supporting each other on a “kill-line” in a slaughterhouse. The text says: “The image was taken in a “kill” line inside a slaughterhouse. It shows two cows seeking comfort in one another while awaiting slaughter. I don´t know how to wake people up? My heart is irreparably broken” -Sande Seldman Nosonowitz

3 We Animals are a world vide project aiming to affect animal rights by display photographs of animals in human surroundings, such as farm factoring, vivisection etcetera (“weanimals. org”, 2017) 33

5.1.3 Oppressions Interconnected. This trope is about how oppressions of speciesism, sexism and racism and its interconnections are raised in the posters in ways that can be both problematic and/or illuminating. Figures 15-22. (trope 3)

Fig 15: Poster with animal right quotes, Animals Australia. It displays a photograph of several bovines (younger cows) standing in a herd with tags in their ears. Under the photograph against a black background in white letter it says, “Slavery was “legal”. Witch trials were “legal”. was “legal”. Killing animals is “legal”. Legality is a construct of the powerful. Not of justice”.

Fig 16: Poster used in campaigns not supporting . It displays two photographs, one with a killer whale in captivity, and one with a row of several elephants that are chained to their hind legs. Over the photographs, it says “Please don´t lie to your child” followed by “There is no happiness in slavery” beneath the photographs.

Fig 17: Poster used by Animal Liberation, for anti-diary campaign. It displays a photograph of a seemingly exhausted cow laying on wet dirty concrete or asphalt pavement. The text above the image says, “In memory of the forgotten mothers” followed by “Dairy is a slaughter industry” beneath the cow. Underneath the image, it says” There babies are stolen from them, they are turned into milk machines, they are killed when they stop producing milk”.

Fig 18: Is an animal right quote poster from Pinks video “Raise your glass”. It displays a scene were four women are sitting in a line being milked whilst a person covered in black clothes are feeding a calf with the milk. Texts are “This seems odd doesn´t it?” followed by “So why isn´t it strange to us the other way around?”

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Fig 20: Poster used by PETA´s “have a heart -try vegetarian” campaign. It displays a photo of a naked Zahia Deha´r taken of her in profile. Her bodily parts are marked in black lines and text such as, feet, leg, round, breast, shoulder etcetera. The phrase “All animals have the same parts” is written above her in bold capital letters. In front of Zahia to the side is the text “Have a heart -try vegetarian” in smaller font. In the lower right corner, it says Zahia- by Bryan Adams. - for PETA.

Fig 19: Poster used by PETA for anti- dairy campaign. It displays a woman4 photographed from the front with her mouth and eyes wide open. making her look surprised. It looks like the persons´ skin on her face and upper body is wet. The text “Some bodily fluids are bad for you” written in bold font. Underneath it says, “Don’t swallow”, followed by “Ditch dairy”.

Fig 21: Poster used by PETA anti- fur campaign with photographs of naked celebrities. This poster displays a photograph of Elisabetta Canalis – for PETA. With the text” I´d rather go naked than wear fur”.

Fig 22: Poster used by PETA anti- leather campaign with photographs of naked celebrities. This poster displays a photographs of Davey Havok- for PETA2. With the text “I´d rather go naked than wear leather. Rock the skin you were born in. Let animals keep theirs.”

4The poster does not state that the person on the phothopraph is to be percived as female, and for me to assume that, can of course be problematic, due to this thesis aim of questioneing dualistic, hierarcich and hetronarmative categorizations. Despite this I have chosen to analyse this poster with the assumption that the person on the phothograph are ment to be percieved as a woman. The reason why, is that I belive that the heteronormative standard of our society, predicts the indentent viewers to assume that the person displyed on the poster is female. This according to socially constructed gender attributes, like the person having long hair and appears to wear a bra.

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5.2 Analysis of the Empirical Material

5.2.1 Animal Materiality “The problem is that humans have victimized animals to such degree that they are not even considered victims. They are not even considered at all. They are nothing. They don´t count; they don´t matter, they´re commodities like TV sets and cell phones. We have actually turned animals into inanimate objects- sandwiches and shoes” – , animal right activist and lecturer.

The materiality of animal bodies and how they are displayed are essential for all the posters purpose and message in this trope. In Fig 1- 3, it becomes clear that human consumption of “luxury” commodities like fur, make up and perfume are produced at the expense of animal bodies. The images display the animals shown, a rabbit, a dog and a lamb, as biological objects emphasizing the objectification of the animals. In Fig 2, the woman is displayed as the subject, the active one, holding the dog as a perfume bottle. In fig 3 there is a slight difference, the subject is still the human, who is holding the lamb in front of him, but it is a more passive pose where the dead lamb is in focus, questioning the animal- human dualism. Fig. 2 and 4 displays the paradox of animal bodies used as deputies for human bodies, illustrating and questioning animal materiality as objects. They are visualising the Cartesian dualism belief developed by Descartes, emerging in the early Anthropocene age, that animals cannot reason or suffer and therefore are objects for human to use without ethical and moral concerns (Gaard & Gruen, 1993). Questing this socially constructed norm by emphasising the animal bodies both as objects and as beings in the images. The process of objectification contains the belief of passivity; the object is passive and have therefore no agency on its own. The images question this by mediating the purpose of using animal bodies as objects, which is to monitor the animal bodies materiality reaction and to transfer this reaction to human bodies materiality. Following Barads theory of agential realism, referred to by Alaimo and Hekman (2008) agency is not something either the perceived subject or object hold themselves, instead it is the outcome of the entanglement of meaning and matter and countless intra-actions that take place between them (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008). The paradox of animal materiality reaction, transferred to human materiality, visualised in the images can be perceived as a deconstruction of the animal- human dualism, since the reactions of bodily materiality, both animals and humans are believed to be compared as equal. Birke, et al, (2004)

36 states that the long human use of animals for vivisection is bicameral, it clings to the scientific practices of separating human and animals through language, viewing animal bodies as apparatus, and the use of unequal power relations. But it also, rests on “our reluctant acknowledgment that humans also belong in the larger category animal” (Birke, et al, 2004, p 173). Fig. 5 - 7 displays animal materiality in relation to human consumption of animal bodies as food. Fig. 5 showing the cow/bull nailed to the soil by a huge fork captures the life behind the meal, a life that is lost on behalf of human apatite, what Adams (2010) refer to as the absent referent of every meal (Adams, 2010). It also mediates a life lived as something, in opposite of a life lived as someone, a life as a mere producer of protein, problematizing the illusion of us humans as fixed subjects and animals as fixed objects. Following Bennett’s (2010) thoughts, all materials have vitality of their own, a stone has materiality just being a stone, due to the impact on its environment, for example leading running water in a direction it would not have done if the stone had not been in that exact place (Bennet, 2010). Aligning with this theorization the image mediates just that, the fork has vitality, it does something, changing the course of animal materiality, in this case, used as a human weapon on, the materiality of the animal body, indirect causing sic´s death. Fig. 6 - 7 displays the casualties of animal materiality in relation to the human consumption of animal bodies, and how the animals biological sex come to matter. Fig. 6 contains a quote of Paul McCartney questioning how the hidden reality of animal lives, and how factory farming and slaughterhouses, allows it to go on. In Fig 6, the materiality of a dead baby pig, out of reach from the, assumed, mother behind sic is emphasised. The baby pigs body is displayed as trash, as unavoidable causalities of the industrial human technology. This I link to Mbembe´s theorization about biopower, as a function of dividing lives in those who must live and those whose lives are dispensable (Mbembe, 2003). Following Adams thoughts (2010) this image can also be said to illuminate that the sex of the materiality of animal bodies are of importance, since most animals constrained and used in production of meat, milk and egg, for obvious reasons, are female (Adams, 2010). Fig. 7 also emphasises this in that male chicken due to their biological sex is seen as trash, as necessary causalities in the egg industry and therefore totally disposable. The view of animal materiality as trash can also be seen in Fig. 1 and 3, which displays images of animal bodies as rest products to the commodities of fur. The images question the human desire of the animals’ fur, whilst the animal bodies become the irrelevant non-desired object which can be thrown away as materiality of non-importance. According to

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Bennetts theorization (2010) about vibrant matter, all materials affect their environment. Also trash has impact on various levels, for example as the material of huge rubbish heaps that pollutes and reshapes the location they are placed in. Trash can also be said to illuminate our “wear and tear society”, where economic and cultural progress often is measured in our ability to consume (Bennet, 2010). The posters displaying animal materiality as trash following Bennetts thoughts, can be said to illuminate and problematize the socially constructed, human consumer mentality. And it also addresses that material perceived as trash affects its surroundings. In that perspective, it can be relevant to ask the question, of how animal material, regarded as trash affects the human attitude towards life in generally, and especially the ones handling animal material as trash? Following Butler (2015) and Mehrabi (2016) theorizations of grievability and killability, this poster highlight the western cultural idea of the perceived “wrong life” as of non-importance, enable their lives becoming resources to the “right human lives”, whilst the rest materiality of their bodies, therefore becomes being perceived as trash.

Fig. 1-7 all problematize and visualises the speciesism gaze by displaying and putting animal materiality in the context of human consumption and use of animal materiality by questioning the belief that animal bodies is mere an organic machinery without agency and value of their own. In relation to this thesis question, I think that the images challenge anthropocentric and androcentric discourses by visualising the consequences of the dualistic hierarchy between human and animals, the making of subjects and objects, based on the belief system of opposites that can be categorized (Gaard & Gruen, 1993). Both feminist science critics Barad and Haraway have developed theories “that define the human, nonhuman, technological, and natural as agents that jointly construct the parameters of our common world” (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008, p. 5). Theories that holds the possibility to deconstruct the material/discursive dichotomy, which we can call “new settlements” that brings a new understanding of the relationship between discourse and matter, were neither of them are superior or subordinated (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008). The Fig, 1-7 are in my opinion trying to do just that by working through affect, aiming to awake thoughts and emotions of ethical and moral concern of the receiver of the poster messages. This agrees with Ahmed thoughts that affect has been and still is of great importance when it comes to construct or deconstruct individual, social and political practices and belief systems (Ahmed, 2014).

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5.2.2 Species Necropolitics “When you start with a necessary evil, and then over time the necessity passes away, what's left?” ― author of Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy.

Species belonging, in relation to killability, grivability and the global political machinery of bio power as a concept discussed by Mbembe, is displayed in Fig 8-14, as well as highlighting that some lives matter more than others, as also is stated in image 8, with the lonely bear looking up at three children. The bear is displayed both in the image and the surroundings itself, as an object for humans to look at for entertainment. The bear´s entire life is reduced to the few minutes every viewer devotes looking at sic. Making it clear that sic´s lived life, in an unnatural habitat for sic, is of no importance since sic is not a human. The image visualises that human domination and exploration of nature and animals is enabled by the anthropocentric dualistic hierarchy belief where humans and animals are categorized as opposites. Therefore, one must be superior and one of the categories must be subordinated, which enables animals being used as objects for entertainment or commodities (Gaard & Gruen, 1993). Fig. 9 questions, quite graphically, displays the socially constructed idea (in western culture) that it is okay to kill and eat a calf but not a dog. The image mediates containment and anxiety inflicted by humans, caused by the idea that some animals bodies are eatable and that some are not. Fig, 10 displays a calf questioning that eating meat is a personal choice for humans but not for the animal that is being eaten. Following Mehrabi´s thoughts what different species bodies are considered as eatable and therefore killable in large numbers differs, within and between human societies and culture, killability as social structures is always situated and partial and always in the hands of those who holds the power (Mehrabi, 2016). Adams (2010) discuss philosopher Jaques Derrida term, carno-phallogocentrism as an attempt to name the primary material, social and linguistic practices that shapes and upheld the western belief of what makes a genuine subject. Derrida suggests that for being recognized and perceived as a genuine subject in the western society, one must be a man, an authoritative and a meat eater, to be a speaking self (Adams, 2010). The poster challenges this by displaying the calf as a speaking subject, visualizing that personal choices always affect someone else, in this case to someone else´s death. Fig. 11 displays a calf stated to miss sic´s mother, asking “how the cheese is”? This image, using Adams theorization visualizes that, with dairy products the absent referent always is a calf, the one not considered, missing sic´s mother and milk (Adams, 2010).

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Fig. 8 -11 evokes question about grievability according to Butlers theorization, that ungrievable lives cannot be mourned (Butler, 2015), highlighting that species belonging is crucial if one’s life is perceived as grievable and therefore precious to humans. These images question this, both in the way it problematizes the phenomenon that a pet dogs’ life is grievable, to some extent, but not the life of a calf, and by displaying the bear and calf’s as the one grieving the loss of companionship during their lives lived, and in the end life itself. Stating that to them their life matters, is mourned, and is grievable, because that is what happens when visualizing the perceived ungrievable life as those who grieves. Fig. 12 displays a photograph from a slaughterhouse with two pigs hanging from the roof and a quote by Martin Luther King Jr, “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal”, wanting to illuminate that legality is a construct of the ones in power. According to Mbembe the ultimate sovereignty is the power of deciding who is killable. In the construction of dominion, the ability to reason has been a key element in the social construction of sovereignty and consists of a twofold process of self-limitation and self-institution. Meaning that the perceived subject is the owner of hir own meaning making, and therefore hold the power of setting fixed borders for hir self and the ones perceived as objects (Mbembe, 2003). In Fig. 13 a photograph of a pig inside a factory farm and a quote from a branch magazine, encourage farmer´s to treat pigs like machines, it visualises that the construction of ungrievable and killable lives are an ongoing process, and following Gaard and Gruen, thinking and treating animals as machines and objects is a learned behaviour in our society, that always must be under reconstruction (Gaard & Gruen, 1993). The Fig. of 9, 10, 12 and 13 displays the bio power machinery discussed by Mbembe in relation to the holocaust during world war II. He argues that in a historical perspective, this was made possible due to the combination of a colonial imperial hierarchic belief system, and the serialization of technical machinery, development in the industrial revolution, now used for mass killing. Domination and marginalization of people perceived as the others, has often been based in stating that they are savages, just like animals not able to reason and therefore sovereignty, is morally and legally justified, over them. Instrumental rationality according to Mbembe is what the modern Western world production and administrations has in common. And its culmination was to be seen in the holocaust, how a lengthy process of , ended in industrializing killing transformed into a mechanic, impersonal and rapid procedure (Mbembe, 2003). To resemble atrocites done to humans against humans, with atrocities done by humans against animals, can be problematic following antroprochentric and androcentric beliefs. Implying that this parable derogate the

40 atrocities done towards human and dehumanizing the human victims. Following Groenvald (2014) the practices of animal mass killings in slaughterhouses are made possible due to the same social structures and mechanicalized industrial killing, discussed by Mbembe, which enhance the objectifying of the animals. Breeding and killing is reduced to industrialization and production. Groenvald reffers to Gayatri Spivak and states that the one subordinated is the one that cannot speak, that is silent and have no capacity and means for self-representation, in that sense animals are the undeniably subordinated and therefore killabable (Groenvald, 2014). In that perspective, this linking can be of importence for highlighting that the social structures that legaly allow billions of animals to be breed and killed, on a contionious mechaninc basis, without regard of how the industry performs this, steems from the same underlyinging structures that enabled the atrocities of the holocaust to be executed. The last image in this trope is Fig. 14 that displays a photograph of two cows seeking comfort in each other standing in a “kill-line” inside a slaughterhouse. This image sums up this trope, displaying grievability, killability and species necropolitcs. The image deconstructs the objectification of animals by displaying the two cows as individuals, showing emotions and mediates that they know what is waiting, suggesting they have the ability to think ahead. Following Groenvald, states “both the ability to mourn and the ability to speak have been named as that which separates human from animals” (Groenvald, 2014, p 6), this image questions this separation and the overall used argument for speciesism oppression, that animals cannot reason, mourn and speak and therefore are lesser than humans, considered to have no rights to their own lives. Following Ahmed´s thoughts of the importance of narratives to both construct and deconstruct the divide between “us” and “them” (Ahmed, 2014), this image tells a story of grief, loss and being powerless, which could raise emotions of recognition and empathy with the viewer.

Fig 8-14 all displays how grievability and killability is linked to species necropolitics. Borrowing Butlers theorizations on grievability (Butler, 2015), species belonging shapes and predicts if one is perceived as being grievable and if not, made killable due to the dualistic norms and standards of the anthropocentric and androcentric society, where animals are always perceived as the others, far from the norm of the human subject, instead of just being seen as different beings. The phenomenon of mass killing of some species due to them being perceived as eatable is discussed by Groenvald (2014) building on Mbembe´s theorization of killability and sovereignty is displayed in all images expect fig 8. Groenvald discuss human politics and practices in relation to the Anthropocene age, where human, and often the male, perspective

41 has been drawn to its limit, the idea that human’s ability to think, reason and speak, makes us disconnected from nature, animals and environment (Groenvald, 2014). The images question this divide between human and animals displaying the animals feel, grief, mourn and suffer just as humans, suggesting a paradigm shift in how animals are perceived. Mehrabi (2016) suggest following Haraway thoughts about “otherworldly conversations” that instead of trying to get animal subjects the status as humans we need other practices and conversations with and about animals. This as they will always be thought of as lesser humans, for- ever “orientalised” and perceived as the others (Mehrabi, 2016). As Ahmed discuss emotions and affect has played a huge part in developing individual, social and political practices (Ahmed, 2014), in that perspective, the images message to mediate animal’s emotions can be effective for construction of other practices and conversations with and about animals.

5.2.4 Oppressions Interconnected “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men” – Alice Walker, author of The Colour Purple.

Fig. 15 is a poster with a quote that links legality as a construction of those that are possessors of power and perceived as superior. It connects the legality of killing animals to the once legality of human slavery, witch trials and apartheid, stating that legality does not mean that justice is done. In the image background, there is a photograph of several younger cows with tag marks in their ears. Following Mbembe (2003), the construction of justice is determined by those who have the means and power to execute their superiority, and are perceived as full subjects with self-value, in contrast to those who are perceived as objects with none or limited rights of their own. Mbembe discuss legality and biopower solely from a postcolonial perspective focusing on injustices between human´s that rests on the constructed androcentric and anthropocentric belief that what defines being a human, is to not be an animal. Mbembe therefore suggests that the separation between animal and human, where humans has the authority to kill animals, is what truly makes the human being becoming a subject (Mbembe, 2003). Groenvald (2014) develops Mbembes theorization and argues that dismantling anthropocentrism challenges the idea that human authority over death automatically would grant human species any privileged status (Groenvald, 2014). Following Groenvald, this question the human production and construction of legality which rests on the mechanisms of biopower.

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Fig. 16 displays a killer whale in captivity and a line of chained elephants, the image message is a plea to the viewer, not to lie to their children, stating that “there is no happiness in slavery”. Fig. 15-16 both links human slavery to animals held in captivity as the same mechanism of slavery. This linking, depending on perspective can be problematic if following Mbembe (2003) due to his theory of necropolitics where the human subject is defined of their superiority above animals and their power over animal’s lives (Mbembe, 2003). According to this theorization it becomes crucial to uphold the division between animals and humans, since the oppression of coloured people often have been enabled by resembling them to animals, saying that they are savages and not civilized. The posters messages can therefore be perceived as reinforcing this linking. If thinking post humanist, according to Braidotti (2013) the deconstruction of the dualistic division between humans and animals is not about dehumanizing people questioning the human subject. It is rather about exploring alternative ways of conceptualizing what it means to be a human. Here she suggests a zoe- centred approach which ethics will be based on embedded and embodied accountability that derives from shared activities across generations and species (Braidotti, 2013). Following Braidotti, Fig. 15-16 can be said to highlight that injustice done is always wrong despite whom it is done to. And that being human does not have to be defined by not being animal. This approach also aligns with Hemmings (2012) theorization, that affect is what gives feminism vitality and political direction; Purposing that solidarity is not based on similar identities, but rather about seeking solidarity, embracing differences working together for the shared aim of political change (Hemmings, 2012). Following this, the message of Fig 15- 16 is to acknowledge that slavery done to humans or animals is oppression performed to its limit, where someone´s entire life and death is owned, controlled and decided by someone else. Fig. 17 displays a photograph of an exhausted milk cow laying on asphalt pavement, the text states that dairy industry is a slaughter industry, emphasis that milk cows are the forgotten mothers, whose babies are repeatedly stolen from them, and as scrapped mothers finally killed, when they are not being perceived as sufficiently effective milk machines. Following Gard and Gruen (1993) the idea where nature, and animals is thought of as machines, originates from the scientific revolution and especially from the Cartesian dualism philosophy, developed by René Descartes and later by Francis . This philosophy centre around the perception that the human mind and body is separated but also that human possesses a soul, and a mind for reason. The separation between humans and animals consists by this distinction. Without the perceived ability for reason and the lack of having a soul, animals become seen as biological machines that humans, without ethical and moral concerns could exploit, use and

43 abuse (Gaard & Gruen, 1993). According to Adams (2010), the industry of “caging motherhood” rests on the androcentric and patriarchal belief that the female reproduction ability is something that can be controlled and exploited. Most of the animals in factory/industrial farming is female for this reason, since they are the ones who can produce milk and in the end meat. Adams calls it a form of reproductive slavery, where repetitive pregnancies are forced on female animals, in a mechanically and industrially way, controlled by humans. Male animals are often discarded as trash, killed immediately, often in brutal ways or allowed to live for a few months before slaughtered. Biological sex has implications of how the animals in the industry are perceived and threaten. Adams states in, The Sexual Politics of Meat that most animal bodies that are consumed by humans are female (Adams, 2010). Fig. 18 is a poster from Pinks music video “Raise your glass”. It is a poster that questions and suggests that drinking another species milk is odd. The video shows a line of several women sitting half-dressed under bright lamps being milked while a fully black clothed person is feeding a calf with the milk. Both Fig. 17 -18 are questioning the human practices of breeding cows for milk production. Whilst Fig 17 focusing on the wrong doing of the animals by containment, forced pregnancies, separations of mother and child and in the end slaughter, Fig 18 focus lays in turning the perspective. The humans, in this case, women become the object and the calf the subject. This can itself be problematic since the socially “natural” constructed connection between animal and women constitutes one of the fundaments in the oppression of women, based on sexism. For example, women bodies are often portrayed as objects for consumption in advertising. The subordination of women following Gaard is so interconnected with the oppression and subordination of nature and animals (Gaard, 1997), that this image can be perceived as both reinforce and strengthen this belief. But it can as well highlight this cultural constructed connection, questioning its foundation of the dualistic divide between constructed subjects and objects. The image asks if this constructed practice does not seem odd? Following Gaard (1997) and Butler (1999) being perceived as queer and expressions of queerness, questions the androcentric and heteronormative standard as well as illuminate its existence (Gaard, 1997; Butler, 1999). In this perspective the image of fig 18, can be said to do just this. Fig. 19 is also a poster from a anti dairy campaign used by PETA. It displays a photograph of a woman, seemingly surprised, and the text says “Some bodily fluids are bad for you, Don´t swallow, Ditch dairy”. The posters aim is to get the viewer to question if milk from cows really are good for the human body to digest. The woman is looking surprised as if this statement is new and unheard of. The text also refers to, and implies human sexual activity. In one way the poster can be said wanting do address and educate viewers about cow milk from a

44 nutritional perspective, emphasize that cow milk is not made for the human biology. On the other hand, is playing on human sexual activities, such as blow jobs, portraying an unaware woman, the best way to do it? Fig 20- 22 are also posters by PETA used in anti-fur and anti-leather campaigns, displaying celebrities. Fig. 21 is a photograph of a naked Zahia Dehar taken in profile. Her body parts are marked with black lines and text, such as leg, breast, shoulder. The posters message is that animal and human bodies are made of the same parts and made of similar organic material, with the urging “Have a Heart- try vegetarian”. Fig 21 is a similar poster that displays a photograph of a naked Elisabetta Canalis, with the text “I´d rather go naked than wear fur”. The posters here displayed as Fig 20 -21 are avialable in several versions with phothographs of other female celebrities, for example Pink and Pamela Andersson. Fig 22 is the only PETA poster, I came across, that displays a photograph of a nude male celebrity. It shows Davey Havok, holding a microphone, ready to sing and the text “I´d rather go naked than wear leather. Rock the skin you were born in. Let animals keep theirs”. The way PETA has chosen to portray the celebrities can in it self be problematic. The women celebrities in Fig, 20-21 are portrayed as passive, doing nothing, and their pose, can be said to resemble erotic literature photographs. Whilst the male celebrity is portrayed as active, he is doing something, holding a microphone, ready to sing. Following Gaard and Gruen (1993) the subordination of women is connected to the historical social androcentric standard where the man/male is perceived as fully subjects, the ones that act, whilst women are perceived as lesser subjetcs or as objects, having a more passive role in the public areas of culture, economics and politic etcetera (Gaard & Gruen, 1993). In this perspective the way the celebrities are portrayed can be said to be reproducing the connection between men as subjects and women as objects. According to Adams (2010), the meat and dairy industry often advertises by using erotic images of women, limking them to meat and diary, with phrases such as “we have the best racks” or reffering to women breasts linking them to milk production. She says it is problematic that animal right organizations use similar posters, objectifying women, in the attempt to reach the consumers of meat and diary. Developing Derridas theorization of “carno- phallogocentrism”, these images are produced to speak to the male subject, who, according to Adams likes the idea of consumable women. This implicates a belief that the male subject cannot, or will not change. Adams instead suggests that animal right advocates and organizations must think of the male subjectivity as changeable, and speak to them without strengthening the idea of womens bodies as sexual objects (Adams, 2010). The fact that there are several female celebrities that has taken part in PETA campaigns, and chosen to being

45 photographed naked, whereas not so many male celebrities, as I came across, can indicate that Adams have a point. Following Gaarder (2011) it can also be the outcome of the phenomenon that the majority within animal right organisations are women, and that lived experiences of embodied subordination hence gender or ethical belonging can be related to the embodied subordination depending on species belonging (Gaarder, 2011). In that perspective women may be more prone to engage in animals right campaigns by displaying their own bodies.

All Fig, 15- 22 is displaying interconnections between oppression of sexism, racism and speciesism. Thinking anthropocentric and androcentric they can be interpreted as reinforcing the dualistic hierarchic categorization that links women, non-white people, animals and nature with the concept of “the other”, the abnormal. The opposites to men, white people, human and culture as the normal standard. If instead following scholars such as Mohanty (2012), Gaard and Gruen (1993), Adams (2010), Birke et al. (2004) amongst others, acknowledging that it is the same anthropocentric and androcentric structures from which sexism, racism and speciesism originates. This knowledge contains the possibility of deconstruction of these same structures (Mohanty, 2012; Gaard and Gruen, 1993; Adams, 2010; Birke et al, 2004 ), From this perspective, all poster in trope three questions and challenges anthropocentric and androcentric dualistic beliefs and constructed structures on which phenomenon as sexism, racism and speciesism rests.

5.2.5 Summary Discussion All Fig 1-22 in the three tropes, can be said to challenge, questions and deconstruct the overall used argument, “that they are not like us”, to enable and legitimize the oppression and exploration of other beings. The posters both play on, illuminate and questions constructed androcentric gender roles, and the perceived subject as male, as well as the anthropocentric cartesian dualistic division of humans and animals. Following Alaimo and Hekman (2008), Barad (2003) and Bennet (2010) amongst other new-materialist scholars, that emphasise the importance of discussing both human and non-human materiality, within feminism studies and theorizations, all the poster focus on bodily materiality. Animal bodies are displayed as commodities, objects and trash, exploited, controlled and used, and some of the female human bodies displayed as objects. Species belonging, gender and ethnicity are central themes both regarding grievability, following Butler (2015), killability, following Mehrabi (2016) and species necropolitics following Groenvald (2014). These posters challenge and questions the

46 idea that lives perceived as grievable must meet the standards of human, western and white, to be the right life lived. They also question and illuminate that who becomes killable is situated in social and cultural contexts and structures of subject and object making. Subjectification and objectification of the “others” are always done in relation to the “right” human subject. To be perceived as a grievable life and therefore non-or less killable, the life must be of importance to a human, and preferably the “right” male, white human life. Groenvald (2014) discusses that factor farming and the mass slaughter of billions of anonymous animals is both legal and socially accepted, since these animal lives only have value to the human as dead? Whilst the same humans can care for and love their family pets and be outraged over cultures where there is socially accepted to eat cats and dogs (Groenvald, 2014). The factory farming industry itself, following Mbembes (2003) theory that biopower is enhanced if means of mechanized anonymous killing is available (Mbembe, 2003), both enables and reproduce the idea of animals as objects that lack any rights to their own lives. In that perspective, our western society demands for cheap and available animal commodities, and where nations economic and political progress often are measured in relation to the nations human inhabitant’s ability to shop and consume, our blindness and ignorance of who pays the price for this mentality are visualised and displayed in all the posters analysed.

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6. Conclusion Following Fairclough’s discourse analysis and theorization of intertextuality the posters are all produced in the context of promoting animal rights. They are also produced reflecting the intertextuality of linking and questioning oppressions of anthropocentric and androcentric origins, in the way that their message all rest on historical and current social structures. For example, in the case with Fig 21-22 where the way they reassemble erotic photographs, is used as a way of getting the male subjects attention; Or as in Fig 12 where parallels between atrocities done during the holocaust is linked to the current mass mechanized mass slaughter of animals. The posters display various arenas where speciesism oppression is the foundation of this phenomenon, for examples factory farming, vivisection, ´s, circuses, means as transports and various sports. These phenomena are all example of the anthropocentric and androcentric assumption that the human species are the norm and the strongest species and therefore perceived having the legal and moral right to use those who are considered weaker for their own purposes and gains. From this thesis aim and problem formulation I draw the conclusion that postcolonial- eco-critical and new materialist feminism theorization has been valuable in the analysis of the empirical material content. The emerging discourses that challenges anthropocentric and androcentric standards are how the posters display animal materiality and life as something that should matter to the viewer. They are questioning the anthropocentric idea of human lives and experiences as central. Mediating animal lives as grievable and as them having the ability to grieve, mourn their losses and feeling pain themselves. Speaking to the human subject displaying animal emotions aims to evoke feelings of recognition, and suggesting political and individual change of how our culture perceive animals. The way they raise and display mutually reinforced structures such as sexism, racism and speciesism oppression is also a way of getting the human viewers’ attention. I suggest that the posters analysed seem to highlight how the human subject cannot perceive animals lives as valuable if they not are measured in relation to the human subject, despite the anthropocentric emphasised human ability to reason, as the distinguishing human feature. This generates that animal lives therefore are not perceived as valuable and is possessor of their own life. Life itself does not seem to count to the human subject. In the same way, the norm of the “right” human subject perceived as white, western, male and heterosexual, seems to have problems of perceiving human life as valuable if it does not resemble the standards of the human subject like similar bodily features and appearances and/or exhibits cultural similarities. The many

48 expressions of speciesism oppression visualized in the posters, linked to sexism and racism, emerges from the same source. The anthropocentric and androcentric hierarchy dualism of categorising everything in opposite pairs, where one always must be perceived as superior and one as subordinated. I advocate that “The Speciesism Gaze” means just this, that everyone’s and everything’s condition are measured in relation to the human (preferable white, male and heterosexual) subject. And that the consequences of the speciesism gaze, for the non-human animals are displayed in the posters analysed. Furthermore, I suggest that post humanism theorizations find in eco-critical and new materialism feminism holds the possibilities for individual and political changes and practices regarding deconstruction of the anthropocentric and androcentric dualism hierarchy. Where humans, animals, nature, culture, female, male, white, non-white, homosexual, heterosexual, non-binary, object, subject etcetera is perceived just as various expressions, of organic and non-organic materiality, without the necessity of imbedded static power-relations. I argue that speciesism oppression is not disputed in principle, to the same extent as other forms of oppression and power- relations today, but I advocate that it is an oppression that affect all of us despite of our species belonging, and it also an oppression, we, often unaware of, all take part in every day. Furthermore, I suggest that the lack of discussion about environmental problems caused by the human species, and the overall perception of non-human animals as lesser within most contemporary feminism academic fields is problematic. Eco- critical feminism and new materialism feminism critiques often advocates that taking animal and nature issues in consideration could jeopardize human rights, and be used to promote essentialism and elitism. I am aware of this being a risk, but I also think that humanity and feminism should hold the possibilities of living a sustainable life where compassion with those who cannot speak for themselves is acknowledged and encouraged. If discussion and problematizing of environmental and animal right issues are rejected within feminism theorizations and practices due to the fear of empowering socially constructed dualistic, androcentric beliefs, or the fear of not be taking seriously; I suggest that this itself can be said to reconstruct the very same constructed dualistic, androcentric beliefs, in the way that it allows one hierarchic dualism, the division of humans and animals/nature, to be unchallenged and unquestioned. In that context, I hope the theorization and meaning of the speciesism gaze will have significance within the field of feminism theorizations and practices.

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6.1 Endnote Whilst writing this thesis I have come across countless of images of animal used, abused, constrained and plain tortured by humans, which many times left me heartbroken, feeling power-less and questioning humanity in its current interpretation. With that said, my perspective is privileged, regarding ethnicity, geographical location, social context and species belonging etcetera. The animals fear, pain, grief and powerlessness displayed in most of the posters should be in focus, since it is them that suffer most, and made completely powerless, due to the speciesism gaze. But as I stated earlier it seems that it is the human subject that must be affected to enable human individuals and political practices to change, even though the wrong doing, in this context, mainly is not performed towards them. My concern is that this thesis result being taken seriously can be affected by the fact that I as the author, do not fully meet the standards of the human subject since myself and others perceive me as a woman. This concern could be perceived as an indicator of how the interconnected oppressions of sexism, racism and speciesism must be challenged, to enable various expressions of fully perceived subjects to exist simultaneously and in the same place and space.

Suggestion for further research is to examine and analyse comments on social media regarding animal right issues. I think this could be of interest as I during my research for empirical material, noticed that critics of animal rights commenting on animal right advocates, stated them for being violent and aggressive, whilst the commenters described killing and as natural and non-aggressive behaviour. This topic also includes a gender perspective since most of the animal rights critics, that I come across, where men addressing their comments to women.

Another approach that would be of interest is to interview consumers of animal commodities. Examine their thoughts about speciesism belonging and oppression would be enabling a deeper understanding of the speciesism gaze, were consumer’s awareness or indifference of this topic, is analysed.

Finally, I suggest a more profound research of the, by me, suggested term speciesism gaze, where its existence and/or belonging within gender studies, is examined and tested. Asking the question, is the term useful and/or relevant for further developments in feminism theorizations and new practices making?

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References for the Empirical Material Figure 1). Poster from the” Design Against Fur Fashion” competition. Available online at: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/YJ_3yJdP0ro9wz5EgV2CBecCDsxexYm8lvd4UD-scVX_- BSQ8HR9daaYABsRz7v3uHb7PQ=s85 [Accessed May 5, 2017]

Figure 2). Poster for the “World Animal Protection, (Italy)” used in campaign against cosmetic testing on animals. Available at: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/3ufQ3RaV7t5TzSnHVfJgRKVbGvJ4VYjWMx3uTLmEwd1VN9qoj6h9cdNf G59XyJHqAEsYbw=s130 [Accessed May 7, 2017]

Figure 3). Poster for PETA, anti-fur campaign with celebrity advocates. Available at: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_jT4Cgv-5VZgBUnSHa73NlxotxW3VmHkpupzblhWvmxKKtvAK- Dg8ZHn22gnJFaBgECA=s85 [Accessed May 7, 2017]

Figure 4) Poster for PETA, animals don’t smoke campaign. Available at: http://www.petacatalog.com/images/products/preview/stu482.jpg [Accessed May 10, 2017]

Figure 5). Poster for “The Truth is hard to Swallow” campaign by the animal right organization Voiceless. Available online at: http://www.mamamia.com.au/wp/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Screen-shot-2012-02-21-at-8.33.54-AM- 380x481.png [Accessed May 6, 2017]

Figure 6). Poster for PETA, campaign against factory farming with celebrity advocates. Available at: https://pics.onsizzle.com/peta2-free-for-all-if-slaughterhouses-had-glass-walls-everyone-6781701.png [Accessed May 7, 2017]

Figure 7). Poster used by PETA, campaign against factory farming eggs industry. Available at: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/60/1b/1f/601b1fa0cb60665a129179a0d6061fc1.jpg [Accessed May 8, 2017]

Figure 8). Poster with animal right quote. Available at: https://d.justpo.st/media/images/2015/06/24/the-idea-that-some-lives-matter-less-is-the-root-of-all-that-is-wrong- with-the-world-1435187521.jpg [Accessed May 7, 2017]

Figure 9). Poster used by the organisation Mercy for Animals. Available at: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cs-eNhqWcAE-wBv.jpg [Accessed May 6, 2017]

Figure 10) Posters in campaigns for , used by several organizations. Available at: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CoNJkb3XEAA4JEH.jpg [Accessed May 8, 2017]

Figure 11) Poster used in campaigns against factory farming and dairy farm practices. Available at: https://s- media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/3c/58/7e/3c587e7894cd0bee4530419a163eb405.jpg [Accessed May 8, 2017

Figure 12). Poster used by PETA, amongst other organizations. Photograph by Jo-Anne Macarthur for the project We Animals. Available at: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/82/38/34/8238349ba27079b1d1fe4ef5e9d045a9.jpg [Accessed May 7, 2017]

Figure 13) Poster of photograph by Jo-Anne MacArthur used in different campaigns against factory farming. Available at: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/22/f3/41/22f34195850d77d2d7c951cecbb366dc.jpg [Accessed May 8, 2017]

Figure 14), Poster used by vegan green planet. Available at: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9tlhdLUIAA1qxz.jpg [Accessed May 10, 2017]

Figure 15) Poster with animal right quotes. Available at: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9d/3a/5d/9d3a5d130d378f7e85fa30d78fc47e2b.jpg [Accessed May 8, 2017]

Figure 16) Poster used in campaigns not supporting zoo´s. Available at: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/cf/0a/db/cf0adb504a8750819c22689780764b2d.jpg [Accessed May 22]

Figure 17) Poster used in anti- dairy campaign. Available at: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d6/bc/15/d6bc15805cfe9ecbe0509ee0fd3a26e2.jpg [Accessed May 24, 2017]

Figure 18) Poster from Pinks video raise your glass, used by PETA. Available at: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/600x315/94/aa/ad/94aaad70b7f437eb4bdf7792ee7fab86.jpg [Accessed May 12, 2017]

Figure 19) Poster used by PETA campaign against dairy farming. Available at: https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS-vYAq- kmXhehXiHvlikIm9bDMmeNLA6QuhMwwIzUH8XoTP3RW [Accessed May 8, 2017]

Figure 20) Poster used by PETA, Have a heart- try vegetarian campaign. Available at: http://www.peta.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/PETA-UK-Zahia-Ad.jpg [Accessed May 8, 2017]

Figure 21) Poster for PETA anti- fur campaign. Available at: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/31/22/0e/31220e65532ed07dd069df03d0c2330c.jpg [Accessed May 10, 2017]

Figure 22) Poster for PETA and anti- leather. Available at:https://encrypted- tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTIWBIToT5SVoKrb7aQBTPKN1WG6YVQl_YpeKuPclHtPrvbHAikfg [Accessed 10 May 2017]