The Goose Volume 13 | No. 1 Article 25 8-1-2014 Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction by Dawne McCance Rosemary-Claire Collard University of Toronto Part of the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, and the Literature in English, North America Commons Follow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres: https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose Recommended Citation / Citation recommandée Collard, Rosemary-Claire. "Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction by Dawne McCance." The Goose, vol. 13 , no. 1 , article 25, 2014, https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol13/iss1/25. This article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrante de la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactez [email protected]. Collard: Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction by Dawne McCance Made, not born, machines this reduction is accomplished and what its implications are for animal life and Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction death. by DAWNE McCANCE After a short introduction in State U of New York P, 2013 $22.65 which McCance outlines the hierarchical Cartesian dualism (mind/body, Reviewed by ROSEMARY-CLAIRE human/animal) to which her book and COLLARD critical animal studies’ are opposed, McCance turns to what are, for CAS The field of critical animal scholars, familiar figures in a familiar studies (CAS) is thoroughly multi- place: Peter Singer and Tom Regan on disciplinary and, as Dawne McCance’s the factory farm. Singer and Regan are wide-ranging review text, Critical Animal widely credited with initiating central Studies: An Introduction, demonstrates, arguments and debates that comprise its diversity is growing within the recent the field of critical animal studies. As scholarly surge now widely referred to McCance summarizes in chapter 2, as the “animal turn.” One of the key “Animal Liberation on the Factory arguments that unites the field is that Farm,” the “master-narrative” origin the widespread (but not universal) story of animal studies is one in which characterization of nonhuman animals academic concern for animals and their as not thinking or feeling, as “inert moral status was born in 1970s objects, useful, disposable things,” is a “Oxbridge-style” analytic moral product of specific histories, ideas, and philosophy, in particular Singer’s Animal practices. This characterization is not Liberation, which focuses on factory reflective of a pre-existing or “natural” farms, a topic that has continued to order. To loosely paraphrase Simone de occupy critical animal studies thinkers Beauvoir’s famous words about to this day. In the same book, Singer becoming a woman, animals are not develops his anti-speciesist framework born machines; rather, dominant ideas for animal equality, a framework that and material practices make animals has continued, although in contested into machines. From Descartes’s and arguably lessening fashion, to infamous and enduring insistence that dominate CAS. Both Singer and Regan, animals are simple automatons, to who is associated with a stricter animal agricultural technologies that reduce rights approach, have been and domesticated animals to living continue to be occupied with the technologies for meat and dairy question of how to decide who—or production, animals are diminished to what—has moral status. the status of mere machinery—live but But this conventional beginning not quite alive. Introducing key ideas to Critical Animal Studies belies what is from several theoretical fields, including a much more radical and varied book, animal liberation, feminist care ethics and scholarly field, more broadly. For and posthumanism, McCance visits McCance, the “critical” of critical animal several sites—laboratories, zoos and studies indicates a willingness—even a language, among others—to trace how requirement—to continually “question Published by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2014 1 The Goose, Vol. 13, No. 1 [2014], Art. 25 inherited conceptual frameworks and philosophers like Jacques Derrida and modes of action they inform.” And so Matthew Calarco in maintaining that McCance slips from summarizing Singer these concepts “have for centuries and Regan’s arguments into a serious facilitated human domination over and sustained critique of their positions animals.” Second, and related, McCance in the remainder of the book, thus joins a rising chorus of voices from acknowledging and also challenging the feminist thought, continental two philosophers’ position as founders philosophy, and posthumanism arguing and leaders of critical animal thought. In that it is not enough to merely shift the this sense, McCance’s book is more than line that demarcates what is included a straightforward review text, as she and what is excluded from moral urges the field in new directions. In consideration. Rather, the very move to doing so, she suggests that critical mark this line, the logic of the “who animal thought can deepen its critique counts?” calculus, must be questioned. of how animals are made machines by For example, as McCance shows in acknowledging how the very subject of chapter 3, “Animal Rights in the Wild,” the human depends on this this line too often ends up granting subordination of the animal and its moral status to animals “most like us” relegation to machine-like status. For and therefore only reinforces human McCance, it is imperative that critical exceptionalism. animal studies interrogate these Two major forces directing the categories of human and animal, rather logic and effects of the “who counts” than re-deploy them and risk calculus are capitalism and colonialism, perpetuating a so-called “natural order” and so it is curious and unfortunate that and liberal individualism that is at the CAS has tended (with some important root of systemic maltreatment of exceptions) to refrain from critiquing animals. these coupled forms, whose ascendance In particular, McCance calls into is deeply implicated in mass animal question two aspects of Singer and death, suffering, and exploitation. Both Regan’s dominance within CAS. First, capitalism and colonialism depend on she is concerned about the elevated and and perpetuate particular exclusive position that philosophers, configurations of human-animal especially analytic philosophers, have relations and notions of “the human” carved out for themselves within the and “the animal.” For the most part, discipline. For McCance, it is important such discussion is absent from that CAS embrace work outside of McCance’s book, but this should not be “utilitarian and rights-based Anglo- read as a fault of hers as it is indicative American analytic philosophy,” in part of a larger gap in critical animal thought. because arguments from this tradition But over the last decade there have tend to be founded on concepts of the been patchy but hopeful signs that CAS subject and human-animal relations is moving into more collaborations with that derive from Descartian notions of Marxist and Indigenous thinkers, among rational thought, individualism and others who offer critiques of capitalism hierarchy. McCance follows continental and colonialism. Examples that do not https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol13/iss1/25 2 Collard: Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction by Dawne McCance have play in McCance’s book, but are boundaries of contemporary thought noteworthy in this respect, include about human-animal relations. Further, Shukin’s recent Animal Capital, longtime with her clear prose and simultaneous writings by Indigenous thinkers (for theoretical breadth and depth, McCance example Linda Hogan, Jeannette provides an accessible introduction to Armstrong, Winona LaDuke and Leanne key and emerging theoretical arguments Simpson), Val Plumwood’s Feminism brewing in CAS. This is a field that has and the Mastery of Nature, and Ted grown rapidly in the last two decades, Benton’s Marxist-CAS Natural Relations. and shows all indications of continuing Critical animal studies might also to do so, especially within a global engage productively with environmental context of escalating, pressing historians, many of whom have ecological crises. Given this topical and chronicled the unfolding of colonialism scholarly context, McCance’s timely as, in part, a process of domestication book will be an excellent tool for as well as a universalizing of the drawing in new scholars and Western, liberal version of “the human” familiarizing them with the field. Her that CAS challenges. book reviews and encourages It is also interesting to note that desperately needed ideas and there are few actual animals populating interventions that will hopefully Critical Animal Studies pages. McCance’s contribute to sparking a dramatic preface is a visceral and compelling rethinking and reconfiguring of human- account of her experience conducting animal relations. experiments on rats as a (understandably short-lived) ROSEMARY-CLAIRE COLLARD is a biochemistry graduate student. This postdoctoral fellow in geography at the vivid beginning to the book sets a tone University of Toronto, where she studies that is not carried through the text— the role of animals—especially