Publications by Guy Scotton
Parallax, 2019
Nonhuman animals stalk the perimeters of crowd scholarship, glimpsed in pervasive figures of the ... more Nonhuman animals stalk the perimeters of crowd scholarship, glimpsed in pervasive figures of the unruly (human) crowd as pack, herd, swarm, or stampede, and in the tropes and techniques of "taming" these discourses evoke. Recovering the absent animal referents of these metaphors, I argue that the domination of actual nonhuman animals organises and animates the spatial control of human bodies though the apparatus of crowd control technologies—and vice-versa. Bringing the literature on crowd control regimes into contact with critical animal geographies of ‘trans-carceral’ space, this paper calls for an interspecies politics of assembly with which to resist (military-)industrial regimes of containment and dispersal that police mobility and assembly across species lines.
Animaladies: Gender, Animals, and Madness, 2018
Just what sort of a malady is speciesism? Some animal activists and scholars have sought to evoke... more Just what sort of a malady is speciesism? Some animal activists and scholars have sought to evoke and condemn the institutional mentality of speciesism by appropriating or extending a host of psychological concepts as pejorative frames, such as autism, schizophrenia, narcissism, and psychopathy. Taking disability theorists’ critiques of this unreflective use of terminology pertaining to neuropsychological difference and disorder as my starting point, I argue that this diagnostic impulse to frame speciesism in pathological terms—and vegan praxis in correlative terms of psychic wellness and integration—has hampered the critical project of animal liberation. My criticism does not entail that scholars should retreat to a psychologically thin account of speciesism. On the contrary, I suggest that what is needed here is less psychologizing and more psychology (broadly understood): resisting a current of infatuation with the “madness” of speciesism enables a renewed investigation of interspecies social relations as intricately minded and embodied. I conclude with a call for new emancipatory metaphors for animal liberation, animated by an interspecies conception of neurodiversity.
I argue that humans have a duty to socialise with domesticated animals, especially members of far... more I argue that humans have a duty to socialise with domesticated animals, especially members of farmed animal species: to make efforts to include them in our social lives in circumstances that make friendships possible. Put another way, domesticated animals have a claim to opportunities to befriend humans, in addition to (and constrained by) a basic welfare-related right to socialise with members of their own and other species. This is because i) domesticated animals are in a currently unjust scheme of social cooperation with, and dependence upon, humans; and ii) ongoing human moral attention and ‘social capital’, of which personal friendships are an indispensable source, is critical if their interests are to be represented robustly and their agency enabled in a just interspecies community. I then argue that participation in farmed animal sanctuaries is a promising way to fulfil this duty, lending support to conceptions of sanctuary as just interspecies community.
Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, 2017
The unfolding “political turn” in animal rights theory has enriched the agenda of animal ethics w... more The unfolding “political turn” in animal rights theory has enriched the agenda of animal ethics with the central concepts and concerns of political theory, extending new paradigms for inclusion, representation, and redress to nonhuman animals within the rubric of justice. These projects have concentrated on various forward-looking aspects of the moral, political, and legal standing of different nonhuman animals, with most theorists within the political turn so far having little to say about the symbolic, narrative, and affective dimensions of interspecies justice. In this chapter, I employ a framework of interspecies atrocities in order to begin a conversation with the broad literature on memory and reconciliation after violence and atrocity, exploring the opportunities as well as the limitations and asymmetries this approach highlights for the project of just interspecies community. What might it mean for societies to be sorry, and to take historical responsibility, for vast and still-expanding systems of exploitation and dispossession of nonhuman animals?
Papers by Guy Scotton
In this article, I introduce disgust as a political problem for nonhuman animals, similar in natu... more In this article, I introduce disgust as a political problem for nonhuman animals, similar in nature and scope to recent debates about the politics of disgust within human communities. I sketch an interspecies politics of disgust encompassing both nonhuman animals and animal activism itself, consider some cases of representative species such as rats, snakes, and toads, and suggest some possible restorative measures to prevailing discourses of disgust. In the conclusion, I compare Nussbaum’s work on disgust as a political emotion in human communities to her approach to interspecies justice as motivated by wonder for living beings, arguing that the terrain of political emotions underpinning interspecies justice is more complicated and closer to the human case than is apparent in Nussbaum’s own treatment. In light of this, I suggest that the case of disgust could introduce a broader and timely “turn to the emotions” within the current political turn in animal rights.
Intervention or Protest: Acting for Nonhuman Animals
Contemporary animal ethics literature has focused predominantly on examining the ways in which an... more Contemporary animal ethics literature has focused predominantly on examining the ways in which animals are wronged by human practices and institutions. Consequently, academics and activists alike have pursued interspecies justice by debating, disseminating, and upholding the moral and political obligations humans owe to other species.
Our paper argues that this duty-oriented approach to animal scholarship and advocacy is important but incomplete. Analysing silence and avoidance as the active products of particular cultures of denial, we suggest that an exclusive focus on human obligations to animals hinders the conception and realisation of interspecies justice in four ways. First, it neglects the ubiquitous and deeply embedded cognitive, emotional, and social barriers to our attentiveness to animal suffering and exploitation. Second, it fails to grant explicit normative and political significance to those barriers in terms of how they impoverish or remove conditions for recognizing and fulfilling our obligations to animals. Third, the duty-centric approach may foreclose opportunities for open, good faith dialogue between animal rights supporters and “mainstream” academics and laypersons. Fourth and most broadly, it constrains the prospect of collectively striving for a rich and nuanced yet accessible vision of what is required to live well together.
By identifying and examining these obstructions to intellectual and emotional engagement with the plight of animals, we demonstrate the plausibility and significance of the assertion that humans are wronged through their unknowing and/or unwilling complicity with animal exploitation. As moral and political agents, humans are owed the possibility of living just and reflective lives; we are owed the right not to be perpetrators. Synthesizing an analysis of denial with the right not to be a perpetrator, our paper offers to animal rights discourse a more robust and inclusive approach to cultivating public engagement with just forms of interspecies community.
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Publications by Guy Scotton
Papers by Guy Scotton
Our paper argues that this duty-oriented approach to animal scholarship and advocacy is important but incomplete. Analysing silence and avoidance as the active products of particular cultures of denial, we suggest that an exclusive focus on human obligations to animals hinders the conception and realisation of interspecies justice in four ways. First, it neglects the ubiquitous and deeply embedded cognitive, emotional, and social barriers to our attentiveness to animal suffering and exploitation. Second, it fails to grant explicit normative and political significance to those barriers in terms of how they impoverish or remove conditions for recognizing and fulfilling our obligations to animals. Third, the duty-centric approach may foreclose opportunities for open, good faith dialogue between animal rights supporters and “mainstream” academics and laypersons. Fourth and most broadly, it constrains the prospect of collectively striving for a rich and nuanced yet accessible vision of what is required to live well together.
By identifying and examining these obstructions to intellectual and emotional engagement with the plight of animals, we demonstrate the plausibility and significance of the assertion that humans are wronged through their unknowing and/or unwilling complicity with animal exploitation. As moral and political agents, humans are owed the possibility of living just and reflective lives; we are owed the right not to be perpetrators. Synthesizing an analysis of denial with the right not to be a perpetrator, our paper offers to animal rights discourse a more robust and inclusive approach to cultivating public engagement with just forms of interspecies community.
Our paper argues that this duty-oriented approach to animal scholarship and advocacy is important but incomplete. Analysing silence and avoidance as the active products of particular cultures of denial, we suggest that an exclusive focus on human obligations to animals hinders the conception and realisation of interspecies justice in four ways. First, it neglects the ubiquitous and deeply embedded cognitive, emotional, and social barriers to our attentiveness to animal suffering and exploitation. Second, it fails to grant explicit normative and political significance to those barriers in terms of how they impoverish or remove conditions for recognizing and fulfilling our obligations to animals. Third, the duty-centric approach may foreclose opportunities for open, good faith dialogue between animal rights supporters and “mainstream” academics and laypersons. Fourth and most broadly, it constrains the prospect of collectively striving for a rich and nuanced yet accessible vision of what is required to live well together.
By identifying and examining these obstructions to intellectual and emotional engagement with the plight of animals, we demonstrate the plausibility and significance of the assertion that humans are wronged through their unknowing and/or unwilling complicity with animal exploitation. As moral and political agents, humans are owed the possibility of living just and reflective lives; we are owed the right not to be perpetrators. Synthesizing an analysis of denial with the right not to be a perpetrator, our paper offers to animal rights discourse a more robust and inclusive approach to cultivating public engagement with just forms of interspecies community.