Challenging Systems of Domination From Below

In this paper I explore the relations between contemporary anarchism and animal rights/liberation through the lens of Deleuze/Guattari-inflected complex systems theory. Specifically, I look at the liberalism and normative practices endemic to the mainstream animal rights movement, engaging with some of the more salient critiques that have emerged from Leftist and radical (anti-)political milieus and exploring the ways in which the theory and practice of anarchism – including its post- and nihilist strains – suggests an alternative, possibly more effective way of conceiving of animal liberation. (Forthcoming, 2015 in currently untitled edited volume on anarchism and animal liberation.)

Studies in the History of Philosophy, 2022

I here present an anarchist critique of the idea of 'animalistic evil' and its common use as a justification for the State's existence and use of force. On this view, 'evil' is a privation of morality, justice, and civilised behaviour. It is then identified with the 'animalistic' since animals are often thought to be defined by the aforesaid privation. I first clarify the idea of animalistic evil within the history of philosophy and science. Aristotle (384-322 BCE), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), and Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895) prominently argue that all that prevents humanity from devolving into animalistic evil, a state of violent and individualistic struggle for bare survival, is the power of State government to forcibly control the animalistic drives within its citizens. I subsequently pose two questions. (1) Is it justified to associate animal life with evil when this is (a) understood as a privation of a morality, justice and society and (b) characterised as an individualistic struggle for survival? (2) If this is not justified, what is the political harm of doing so? Building on the work of the anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), I argue that any conception of animalistic evil is unjustifiable, that it is a false justification for the State's existence and use of force, and that the State, upon making the empty threat of animalistic evil, both violently harms individuals and impedes the socially beneficial practice of mutual aid.

2011

Acknowledgments Introduction Part I. Commodity Fetishism and Structural Violence Chapter 1: Procrustean Solutions to Animal Identity and Welfare Problems Karen Davis Chapter 2: Road Kill: Commodity Fetishism and Structural Violence Dennis Soron Chapter 3: Corporate Power, Ecological Crisis, and Animal Rights Carl Boggs Part II. Animals, Marxism, and the Frankfurt School Chapter 4: Humanism = Speciesism?: Marx on Humans and Animals Ted Benton Chapter 5: Reflections on the Prospects for a Non-Speciesist Marxism Renzo Llorente Chapter 6: Thinking With: Animals in Schopenhauer, Horkheimer, and Adorno Christina Gerhardt Chapter 7: Animal is to Kantianism as Jew Is to Fascism: Adorno's Bestiary Eduardo Mendieta Part III. Speciesism and Ideologies of Domination Chapter 8: Dialectic of Anthropocentrism Aaron Bell Chapter 9: Animal Repression: Speciesism as Pathology Zipporah Weisberg Chapter 10: Neuroscience (a Poem) Susan Benston Chapter 11: Everyday Rituals of the Master Race: Fascism...

Undoing Human Supremacy: Anarchist Political Ecology and the End of Anthroparchy, 2021

Few political ecologists have taken anarchism seriously, while many anarchists have ignored the question of the animal other, treating anthroparchy, or the supremacy of the human species, as somehow different than other forms of hierarchy. Yet the relationship between the state, capitalism, and the subjugation of non-human animals should be clear in light of Ag-gag laws and the targeting of animal liberation activists as 'terrorists'. Building on the idea of an integral anarchism, which considers speciesism as forming the same violent genus as racism, classism, sexism, childism, ableism, transphobia, and homophobia, I argue that these ostensibly separate pieces are in fact interlocking systems of domination. Such an intersectional view leads us towards one inevitable ethical conclusion in the pursuit of an anarchist political ecology: veganism. Consequently I question the indifference that anarchists, political ecologists, and critical geographers alike have assigned to the unintelligible violence that is meted out against non-human animals, primarily through euphemizing their dismembered, decapitated, and disemboweled bodies as 'meat'. I argue that the liberation ecology proposed by Peet and Watts (1996) appears facile in the face of pervasive anthroparchy, which although every bit as vile as gender domination and white supremacy, barely registers within the current literature. Given the extraordinary depletion of water resources, widespread deforestation, intensified climate change, pervasive pollution, and mass murder that all flow from contemporary animal agriculture, our current food practices represent nothing short of ecocide. As an antidote to this shameful apathy and horrendous violence, I propose 'Total Liberation Ecology'.

Corman, L. (2017). Ideological Monkey Wrenching: Nonhuman Animal Politics beyond Suffering. In D. Nibert (Ed.) Animal Oppression and Capitalism – Volume 2: The Oppressive and Destructive Role of Capitalism (pp. 252-269). Santa Barbara, CA/Denver, CO: Praeger Press.

This chapter asks critical animal studies scholars, intersectional nonhuman animal advocates, and anyone who recognizes that profit drives the overwhelming majority of violence against other animals to take seriously their exploitation while refusing to reduce nonhuman animal subjectivities to representations of suffering and victimization. This kind of beyond suffering approach, which some advocates and scholars may see as fiddling while Rome burns, is a necessary antidote to capitalist objectification of nonhuman animals. That said, suffering should not be dismissed or neglected in efforts to end exploitation. Rather, we must discuss suffering, but we should do so in conjunction with other, richer versions of other animals' experiences beyond suffering. This including but beyond suffering approach strongly resonates with other social justice movements that have long resisted both the homogenization and the reductionism of various subjects to pure victims. These movements, which have fought hard against dehumanization, recognize that objectification manifests as denial of full or even partial subjectivity and thus exclusion from the realm of full humanity.

Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 47/1 (2014): 23-45.

Between the Species, 2015

An ecologically and socially just world will not, indeed cannot be achieved until humanity at lasts acknowledges and breaks free from its own self-inflicted economic, moral and ideological enslavement to the materialist exploitation of other non-human animal species. Borrowing heavily from Donald Noel’s theory of ethnic stratification (1968) and David Nibert’s theory of oppression (2013, 2002), this paper argues that many of the most pernicious forms of injustice and inequity are deeply rooted in the ever-increasing scope and intensity of humanity’s oppression and domination of non-human animals, a path upon which we embarked some fifteen millennia ago. Overturning of oppressive, exploitative, unjust and inequitable systems cannot be achieved if the common materialist assumptions and practices that lay at the roots of speciesism, racism, classism, and sexism (among many other ideological manifestations of social and economic stratification) remain unnamed and unaddressed. Using the seminal works of Marilyn Frye (2008), Iris Young (2004), Peggy McIntosh (2008), and Alice Bailey (2009) as a starting point, this paper explores the fundamental concepts of “oppression” and “privilege”. An extension of Charles Mills’ theory of a “racial contract” (1997) will then be proposed to addresses the phenomenon of species oppression. Finally, Noel and Nibert’s theories will be considered in turn, and then employed as a lens to cast light on many of the ecological and social justice implications of humanity’s continued oppression and exploitation of non-human animals. Concrete examples will be provided to illustrate the intersectional entanglement of different forms of oppression and the importance of speciesism for a fuller intersectional analysis.

Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture (PhaenEx)