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Can Nonhumans Be Victims of Genocide? Kirstin Waldkoenig

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Can Nonhumans Be Victims of Genocide? Kirstin Waldkoenig University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Graduate School Professional Papers 2019 Can Nonhumans Be Victims of Genocide? Kirstin Waldkoenig Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy . Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Part of the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, and the Feminist Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Waldkoenig, Kirstin, "Can Nonhumans Be Victims of Genocide?" (2019). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 11401. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/11401 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CAN NONHUMANS BE VICTIMS OF GENOCIDE? by KIRSTIN MARIE WALDKOENIG Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA, 2014 Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing, Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA, 2014 Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Philosophy, Environmental Philosophy The University of Montana Missoula, MT May 2019 Approved by: Scott Whittenburg, Dean of the Graduate School Graduate School Deborah Slicer, Chair Philosophy Christopher Preston Philosophy Soazig Le Bihan Philosophy Kathleen Kane English Waldkoenig, Kirstin, MA, Spring 2019 Philosophy Can Nonhumans Be Victims of Genocide? Chairperson: Deborah Slicer “Genocide” appears commonly in critical animal studies literature and sparsely in philosophy to describe human-caused violence against nonhuman beings. However, such uses of the term have rarely been informed by relevant work in genocide studies, nor otherwise formally substantiated. This thesis explores what is at stake when employing the term and proposes a model for appropriate application to nonhuman contexts. Claudia Card’s notion of genocide as social death allows for the consideration of nonhuman animals as victims of genocide. Social vitality is important to the lives of some nonhuman animals and its forcible diminishment results in social death for those nonhuman groups. Thus, instances of violence that inflict social death among nonhuman animals are genocide. By recognizing that nonhumans are, in fact, rendered victims of genocide through human violence against them, we challenge the anthropocentric bias that is fundamental to all genocidal perpetration. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to acknowledge that this thesis was written and defended upon the traditional land of the Bitterroot Salish. This project was written out of a deep desire to bear witness to the genocidal violence the ancestors suffered and the trauma that their descendants carry today. I am profoundly indebted to many, named and unnamed, who made this project possible through their encouragement and influence and inspiration. As Goethe wrote, Alles, was uns begegnet, läßt Spuren zurück. Alles trägt unmerklich zu unserer Bildung bei. Everything we encounter leaves traces behind. Everything contributes imperceptibly to our education. I am grateful to this beautiful place that I have been honored to call my home these past two years. And thanks to its nonhuman inhabitants who brought me joy and comfort: the ponderosas at the top of Sentinel, the various birds who sang me awake in the morning, the deer in my backyard, and the coyotes yipping just after twilight. This project is a convergence of influences from my undergraduate and graduate mentors. Much gratitude to Lissa Skitolsky for introducing me to philosophy, genocide studies, and feminist theory, and for arranging the opportunity for me to meet Claudia Card. I hope this work honors them both. Heartfelt gratitude to Deborah Slicer, my mentor and thesis chair, for her steadfast support and patience throughout my time at UM. I feel incredibly lucky to have worked so closely with her and that she has always thoroughly encouraged me in pursuing this project. I am also fortunate to have studied with the fantastic scholars on my committee: Christopher Preston, Katie Kane, and Soazig Le Bihan. Thanks are due to them for their advocacy of me and my work, as well as their meaningful feedback on scholarship and life. I could not have thrived in graduate studies without the marvelous friendships of Mason Voehl and Henry Kramer. Thanks for making our studies together a rockin’ time. Utmost love to my partner Eric for reading and editing almost everything I have written in the past two years, boosting me with a calm and dependable demeanor in my times of stress, and taking an honest interest in my scholarly endeavors. Finally, to my parents Gil and Amy, I cannot rightly express my love and thankfulness for their wonderful leadership, understanding, and thoughtfulness as I practice philosophy. Some debts cannot be repaid. iii Can Nonhumans Be Victims of Genocide? The “question of animality” is not one question among others, of course. I have long considered it to be decisive (as one says), in itself and for its strategic value; and that’s because, while it is difficult and enigmatic in itself, it also represents the limit upon which all the great questions are formed and determined, as well as all the concepts that attempt to delimit what is “proper to man,” the essence and future of humanity, ethics, politics, law, “human rights,” “crimes against humanity,” “genocide,” etc. – Jacques Derrida, “Violence Against Animals” The first people who were struck by a certain number of points in common between the Holocaust and the industrial massacre of animals were not fanatical advocates of the animal cause but precisely the victims of this genocide – survivors or people who had lost close relatives. They were the ones who – almost against their will – found themselves describing the bitter memories of the Shoah that came over them when they were confronted by the reality of the slaughterhouses. They were the ones who were struck by the similarities between the functioning of the camps and that of industrial breeding operations: the large-scale, methodical organization of the killing, the stripping of all value from the lives of other beings, the convenient ignorance shown by the surrounding population. Lucy, whose two young sisters were struck down by the Nazis before their father’s eyes, tells us: ‘I have been haunted my whole life by the images of the Shoah, and there is no doubt that I was attracted to animal rights in part because of the similarities I felt between the institutionalized exploitation of animals and the Nazi genocide.’ – Matthieu Ricard, A Plea for the Animals Since its coinage during the Holocaust, “genocide” has been a term reserved for violence against humans. Simultaneously, many writers and activists have made comparisons between the Holocaust and human violence against nonhuman animals, or have identified such violence as genocide. A character in J. M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals calls this move a cheap and tirelessly familiar comparison (Coetzee 1999, 50). But what, exactly, is illicit about the use of the term “genocide” to discuss harms against nonhumans? Can nonhumans be victims of genocide? What is at stake in our choice to include or exclude them from our understanding of genocide? To date there has been no systematic philosophical investigation of the term and its use in describing nonhuman contexts. Stanley Cavell and Cora Diamond have written on Coetzee’s novella, supporting his protagonist’s recognition of genocidal violence against nonhuman animals (Cavell, Diamond, et al. 2008). Jacques Derrida has been famously quoted for his use of “genocide” to describe factory farming practices (Derrida and Roudinesco 2004). Still others have discussed harms against nonhumans as holocaustal or genocidal. Isaac Bashevis Singer is widely cited for writing that “all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka” (“The Letter Writer” 1968). Yet these mentions do not justify or explain the use of “genocide” beyond the assumption that there is evident connection between the treatment of human genocide victims and the treatment of nonhuman animals. Karen Davis writes about animal genocide more thoroughly in a section of her piece, “Chicken-Human Relationships” (2010). She cites Rafał Lemkin’s definition of genocide, noting that genocide “includes physical, cultural, and ideological forms of victim annihilation” and attacks the victim group for its identity (Davis 2010, 256). Describing the harmful factory farming practices against chickens, she makes a case for such practices as genocidal because they impose not only physical horrors against individuals but proliferate “in virtually endless re- formations of animal bodies to fit the procrustean beds of global industrial agriculture and research” (Davis 2010, 258). Yet Davis’ argument is focused exclusively on agricultural practices, and has also received little attention regarding her use of the term “genocide” for nonhuman contexts. Genocide studies scholars and philosophers of genocide have hardly touched this issue as well. This paper offers a possible way to substantiate the use of the term “genocide” for violence against nonhuman animals through the work of feminist philosopher Claudia Card. Her definition of genocide as social death both identifies the characteristic harm of genocide
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