Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Animal Rights Focus Bad – Entrenches Capitalism
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- Animal Rights Discourse Bad – Biopower
Animal Rights Focus Bad – Entrenches CapitalismCAPITALISM IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF ANIMAL OPPRESSION--FOCUSING ON POLICY REFORMS TO ADVANCE ANIMAL RIGHTS PREVENTS A SUFFICIENT CHALLENGE TO CAPITALISM Matthew Calarco, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at CSU Fullerton, in 2007, [“In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave,” Journal for Critical Animal Studies, Volume V, Issue 1] What is missing from this section, and from contemporary animal rights discourse more generally, however, is a careful and sustained analysis of how global capitalism itself, combined with specific modes of anthropocentrism, gives rise to these problems—which is another way of saying that one of the chief problems facing animals today is global capitalism. By focusing on specific reforms/abolitions of specific practices, as is done in this section of book, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the spread of global capitalism is at the very heart of the problems under discussion here (namely, the growth of factory farms, invasive animal experimentation, and the more general marketing of animals). Capitalism is not a side effect of these practices or something that might potentially thwart reforms made in the name of animal defense; it is one of the chief causes of these problems as well as one of the main obstacles in the way of achieving and sustaining genuine reforms/abolitions. It strikes me as naïve in the extreme to believe that thoroughgoing changes for animals are going to occur without simultaneously developing alternatives to global capitalism. If animal defense activists decide to accept global capitalism as the only game in town, they should likewise decide to accept the fact that the fate of animals on this planet will only get increasingly worse in future years. It is high time, especially in this era of “second wave” animal defense, to confront squarely the problem of animals within global capitalism and to begin to imagine and enact alternatives to the current state of affairs. CRITIQUING ANTHROPOCENTRISM IS A MISPLACED SITE OF RESISTANCE AND MERELY REPLICATES BOURGEOIS ETHICS, TURNING THE CASE Institute for Social Ecology June 11, 2004, [“Ambiguities of Animal Rights,”http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20040611140817458] Many animal rights theorists readily acknowledge that mainstream western traditions of ethical thought are unsatisfactory, but they focus their criticisms on traditional morality’s supposed anthropocentrism. This is unconvincing; the primary problem with the mainstream western tradition is not that it promotes anthropocentric ethics, but that it promotes bourgeois ethics.4 The basic categories of academic moral philosophy are steeped in capitalist values, from the notion of ‘interests’ to the notion of ‘contract’; the standard analysis of ‘moral standing’ replicates exchange relations, and the individualist conception of ‘moral agents’ obscures the social contexts which produce and sustain agency or hinder it. Yet these categories are the same ones that animal rights theorists ask us to apply to those creatures (some of them, anyway) that have typically been neglected by moral philosophy. In this way, animal liberation doctrine perpetuates and reinforces the liberal assumptions that are hegemonic within contemporary capitalist cultures, under the guise of contesting these assumptions. Indeed one of the chief reasons for the popularity of animal rights within radical circles is that it appears to offer an extreme affront to the status quo while actually recuperating the ideological foundations of the status quo. Animal Rights Discourse Bad – BiopowerRIGHTS DISCOURSE INCREASES THE POWER OF THE STATE, SILENCES THOSE OPPRESSED BY STATE POWER Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 84 The critique, elaborated by CLS and others, that rights language deceives is one that implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, suggests false consciousness. The holders of power do not necessarily have false consciousness, but for the marginalized rights language acts as a “filter”. The marginalized buy into the view that rights protect them from interference without realizing that this belief perpetuates their own oppression. “In fact an excessive preoccupation with ‘rights-consciousness’ tends in the long run to reinforce alienation and powerlessness, because the appeal to rights inherently affirms that the source of social power resides in the State rather than in the people themselves.” (Gabel and Harris, 1983, p. 375) PERCEPTION THAT THE GOVERNMENT HAS “SOLVED” DISCRIMINATION MAKES THE STRUGGLE AGAINST PRIVATE DISCRIMINATION MORE DIFFICULT David Nibert, Professor of sociology, Wittenburg University, 2002, Animal Rights/Human Rights: entanglement of oppression and liberation, p. 185-6 What is more, the increased but still insufficient opportunity for some members of devalued groups to achieve economic security and even political and social power—that is, the opportunity to compete more equally with privileged white males for a limited number of desirable positions within capitalist society, in a competition that has created considerable backlash—has led many to believe that vestiges of innate privilege have been eliminated and that the United States is now largely a society of equals. Political and social criticism—particularly in the form of participation in demonstrations and protest marches—now is viewed by many as an anachronism, an outlet only for “kooks” and fanatics.
David Nibert, Professor of sociology, Wittenburg University, 2002, Animal Rights/Human Rights: entanglement of oppression and liberation, p. 184-5 The state in contemporary capitalist society is, ironically, both a crucial avenue for progressive social change and liberation for humans and other animals and, at the same time, one of the biggest obstacles to that change. From its inception, the state has been used largely to protect and enhance the interests of the powerful and affluent, and so it is used today. The economic underpinnings of oppression of humans and other animals, and the complex web of entanglements among oppressed groups, are tightly wrapped and meticulously cloaked by those who control the various powers of the state. From the creation of early laws that institutionalized the characterization of women and other animals as property, to state-sanctioned witch trials that scapegoated women, cats, and others in the ranks of the devalued for social ills caused by tyrannical social systems; from the protection of horrific treatment of animals cast as agricultural commodities and laboratory subjects, with a government seal of approval on their use and consumption, to the displacement of family and subsistence farms in the United States and the Third World, to the abusive treatment of workers and consumers—the physical, political, economic, ideological, and diversionary powers of the state support and build such entangled oppressions while giving such atrocities legal and social respectability. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.43 Mb. Share with your friends:
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